High Druid's Blade

TWO

IT WAS NOT AN OVERLY LONG WALK TO THE TWO ROOSTERS, which was situated at the northern edge of the city, just a quarter of a mile downhill from where Paxon’s parents had built their home. It was a small, intimate tavern, the sort Chrys would choose because she liked to claim places as her own. She had been Jayet’s friend all her life, and that had probably contributed to her choice of taverns after her friend went to work there. Jayet was older, but not necessarily more levelheaded. Chrys was clearly the wilder of the two, the one who needed an older sister to help guide her. Unfortunately, Jayet wasn’t up to the job.

Still, she was better than nothing. At least she thought to voice an objection now and then, and occasionally to provide a different point of view before things got too far out of hand.

Paxon was thinking about this as they reached the Two Roosters and pushed through the doors into the main room.

Everything was quiet, as if nothing of what Jayet described had occurred. Paxon glanced around the room. There was no sign of Chrys.

Raffe was behind the bar trying hard to look like he was busy but not succeeding, his eyes shifting to find Paxon then moving quickly away again.

“Do you see the man she was with?” Paxon asked Jayet.

She shook her head. “He’s gone. So is she.”

Paxon could see that for himself. He strode over to the bar and Raffe. “Where is my sister?”

Raffe glanced up and shrugged. “She left with some man. Not too long ago. Why?”

“Where did they go?”

“How should I know?”

“Think about it.”

“Look, Paxon, it isn’t my job to look after girls who make foolish bets and then find out the hard way when they have to pay the price. Especially ones who just seem to be asking for–”

He never finished whatever it was he was going to say. By then, Paxon had seized him by his tunic front and dragged him halfway across the bar. “I’m only going to ask you once more before I break your arm. Where is my sister?”

“Let go of me, or you’ll …”

His hand was groping for the club he kept under the counter, so Paxon dragged him the rest of the way across the bar and threw him on the floor, stomping hard on his wrist for good measure. Raffe screamed as the bones crunched.

Paxon knelt with his knee on the tavern owner’s stomach and his hand around his throat. “You should answer me, Raffe. Right now.”

“Airfield!” the other gasped, grimacing in pain. “He has a ship there!”

“What’s his name?”

Raffe shook his head.

“Answer me or I’ll break your other arm.”

Raffe spit at him. “Go ahead! He’ll hurt me worse than you can even imagine if I tell you who he is!”

“Paxon!” Jayet was beside him, pulling him back. “Forget this! Go after Chrys. That’s what matters. You know where she is. Maybe you can still reach her before they leave!”

He was so enraged he almost didn’t hear her. But she yanked him backward again and he finally rose, taking a moment to look down at the man at his feet. “If I find out you’ve lied to me, Raffe, I will be back for you. If I find out you lied, I’ll kill you. She’s fifteen years old!” He stepped away. “Let me know if he does anything to you because of this, Jayet.” Then he was out the door.

Maybe he should have taken time to find out more, he thought as he raced toward the airfield. Maybe he should have beaten it out of Raffe. But there wasn’t time. There was every chance he was already too late to catch them. If the stranger, whoever he was, had an airship waiting, he was likely already on his way back to wherever he had come from.

But why he was bothering to haul along a fifteen–year–old girl, lost wager or no, was troubling. Most men wouldn’t have made the effort. Most wouldn’t have gotten into a dice game with her in the first place. But Chrys was tall and mature looking for her age, so he may have thought her much older than she really was. What really distressed him was the thought that it wasn’t the money that mattered, that it was Chrys he had been after all along. Young girls were taken by force all the time to work in the pleasure houses of the large Southland cities. Chrys wouldn’t be the first to end up that way.

Except that she wouldn’t end up that way, he reminded himself. He would find her and bring her home long before she got anywhere near that life. That was a promise.

He ran through the city, charting as direct a path as he could to the airfield, avoiding major avenues and crowds, trying not to exhaust himself before he reached his destination. If Chrys had been taken to the airfield on foot, he might still be able to catch up to her. There was no mention of horses or carriages or other travel. He had to hope. Using alleyways and cut–throughs, he shaved a few more minutes off his time. And the airship would not necessarily be prepped and ready to lift off. It would take time to attach the radian draws and power her up.

He ran faster, close now, the buildings beginning to thin out and become smaller as the edge of the city neared. He was running full–out, eating up the yards, setting a blistering pace. He would reach her, he told himself. He would find her.

And suddenly it occurred to him that he had no weapons.

After all, talk might not be enough to persuade the stranger to let his sister go. Just the fact that he had taken her in the first place–an act that amounted to the kidnapping of a fifteen–year–old girl–showed a certain disdain for authority or any interest in the moral high ground. By deliberately taking Chrys, this man had revealed his character and likely his intentions.

Paxon slowed, trying to think what to do. He should have brought that old sword. Weapons weren’t something they kept in large numbers in his home, although there were hunting knives and a solitary long knife. But the black–bladed sword was a real weapon, and he should have thought to bring it.

Too late for that now. He began to run faster again, catching his first glimpse of the airfield through gaps in the buildings at the end of the street. He would try to find a weapon on the way. Anything would do.

Then he was past the last of the buildings and out on the open field amid the airships. Leah was small compared with the big Southland cities, but even so there were dozens of vessels moored over acres of ground. He slackened his pace, casting about anxiously. He searched through the ranks of airships, advancing slowly as he did so, trying to find something that would show him the way. There were men and women everywhere, servicing the airships. A few pilots stood by watching or walked the decks of the vessels or stood in the pilot boxes. He scanned the insignia emblazoned on the pennants that identified the ports of registration of the airships.

He did not see Chrys anywhere.

And then he did.

She was being led up a mobile boarding ramp to a sleek vessel of a sort he had never seen before. The ship had caught his eye because it was so different, and there was his sister. He charged forward, breaking into a run once more, darting through the forest of hulls and masts as he did so. He kept searching for a weapon as he ran, but none appeared. The workers on the field were not wearing weapons, and there were none lying about.

Finally, in desperation, he snatched up an iron bar. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

When he was still fifty yards or so away, he slowed to a walk. He could tell the ship wasn’t leaving quite yet. The crew was still rigging her; the diapson crystals hadn’t been powered up. He had time. He wondered suddenly why Chrys wasn’t fighting. She seemed to be boarding willingly, offering no resistance. That didn’t seem like her, especially given the story behind her abduction. The confrontation at the Two Roosters did not suggest that she had suddenly changed her mind about accompanying the stranger to whatever fate he had in store for her. No, something about what he was seeing wasn’t right.

Chrys was no longer in sight. The stranger who had led her aboard reappeared at the railing of his vessel, caught sight of Paxon, and moved to the boarding ramp. Paxon continued to approach, but more cautiously than before. He watched the stranger descend and walk out to meet him.

“You would be the brother, I expect.”

Paxon stopped six feet away. “I want my sister back.”

“She hasn’t stopped threatening me with you since I brought her to my vessel.” He smiled. “She keeps telling me what you will do to me once you get here. I must admit to a certain curiosity, given all the terrible injuries she has assured me you intend to inflict. Is she always like this?”

Paxon was a little taken aback by this friendly chatter, but he was in no way deterred from his purpose. “You’ve kidnapped a fifteen–year–old girl,” he snapped. “That’s an offense everywhere. It doesn’t matter what she did, you have to let her go. But I will make good on her debt, if that’s what it takes.”

The man shrugged, but the smile did not fade. He wasn’t a big man, wasn’t even striking in any particular way. Yet there was an unmistakable confidence about him, and no visible sense of concern over Paxon’s appearance. “I’m afraid her debt is much more than you can afford, young man.”

“I’ll work it off”

The smile widened. “In a couple of months, if you work hard, you probably can. But she can work it off more quickly by coming with me.”

Paxon was both enraged and frightened on hearing this. He was beginning to feel that talk alone was not going to be enough to get Chrys back. He was going to have to be more aggressive, and he wasn’t sure he was up to it. “The City Watch is on its way,” he warned.

The stranger shook his head. “I doubt it. But even if it is, they won’t be able to do anything about your sister. I have immunity from interference from the local authorities. I can pretty much do what I want. Which, in this case, means taking your sister with me to pay her debt.” He paused. “She might be willing to go with me by now, you know. She might have reconsidered; she knows she is in the wrong, and she might be ready to pay the price for her foolish behavior. You should be proud of her.”

Paxon shook his head in denial. “I don’t know what you are talking about. She would never go anywhere with you willingly, whatever you say. Let me ask her face–to–face. Let me talk to her.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. It would be better if you just turned around and went home again. She’ll be back in a few weeks. There won’t be any permanent damage. And she will have learned a valuable lesson.”

Paxon hefted the iron bar. “If you don’t release my sister right now, I will board your ship and take her back myself!”

The stranger nodded. He raised his arm, making a small gesture with his hand. A signal. “I was afraid it might come down to this. You have no idea who I am, do you? If you did, you might think twice about threatening me.”

“I doubt it. Are you going to set my sister free or not?”

“What I am going to do is to give you one last chance to walk away. You should take it.”

All at once there were three men standing behind him, crewmen from his vessel from the look of them–big and strong, hard men much older and undoubtedly more experienced at fighting than Paxon. They carried no weapons, but gnarled hands and muscular arms suggested they did not need them.

The stranger had quit smiling. “Drop your iron bar, Paxon,” he said. “Let’s make this fight more even. Fists only.”

To Paxon’s surprise, he did as he was ordered. He couldn’t have explained why; it just seemed that it was something he had to do, and so he did it. He stared down at his discarded weapon, horrified.

“Much better.” The stranger stepped back and his men stepped forward. “Don’t hurt him too much,” he told them. “Don’t break anything. Just show him the error of his ways.”

They came at Paxon in a rush, slamming into him with such force that they knocked him off his feet. They were on top of him instantly, fists pummeling him as he tried to fight back. He might have landed a few good blows in the struggle, but in the end there were still three of them and only one of him, and he was overwhelmed.

Eventually, the pain and the shock caused him to lose consciousness. When he came awake again, a hand was slapping his face in a rhythmic fashion while another was holding up his head by his hair.

The stranger was kneeling before him. “My name is Arcannen. If you wish to pursue this, you can find me at Dark House in the city of Wayford. You should stay away, but if you can’t help yourself you had better bring a real weapon, not an iron bar. Because if I see you again, I will kill you.”

He rose and stood looking down. “Let him go.”

The fingers tangled in his hair released their grip and his face slammed into the earth. Pain exploded in his head, and bright flashes appeared behind his eyelids. He lay helplessly, fighting to stay conscious. But it was long minutes later before he could bring himself to open his eyes and turn himself over to discover that the stranger’s airship had begun to lift off, light sheaths gathering in sunlight for the radian draws to channel to the parse tubes, thrusters powering up. As battered as he was, as defeated as he felt, he found himself admiring the sleek lines of the vessel, wondering again why he had never seen this sort of airship before. He made himself memorize her look, the emblems on her pennants, the insignia on her bow.

A black raven, wings spread, beak open wide. Attacking.

Then the vessel wheeled south and sped away. By the time Paxon was back on his feet, she was little more than a dot in the distant sky.

He stood looking at nothing for a few moments, waiting to recover from his beating, then turned about and stalked from the airfield. He had really never had a chance at getting Chrys back from the stranger. Arcannen–that was a name he wouldn’t forget. He had provided it willingly–something Raffe had refused to do–so he was confident that it wouldn’t help Paxon to know it. He was a man possessed of a new style of airship and a crew that likely would do anything he asked them to. Somehow, he had been able to persuade Paxon to put down the iron bar when that might have made the difference in the fight.

And he had Chrys in his possession. He was flying her back to Wayford to something called Dark House. Paxon could only imagine what that might turn out to be.

Come find out, Arcannen had challenged. Believing Paxon would never dare to do so, that he had found out the hard way what would happen if he did. The beating was a warning. Stay away. Don’t come after me. Let your sister go. She belongs to me, and I can do with her what I like. You can’t prevent it, and you shouldn’t try. You are a Highlander of no importance living in a place of low regard, and you can never hope to be the equal of me. Stay where you are and stay healthy.

He left the airfield and trudged through the city toward home, picturing Arcannen’s face and hearing his smooth voice in his mind.

So certain that Paxon had been put in his place.

Well, he was in for a surprise.