His spin ended with him facing them both, and as one clutched at his eyes, Haern kicked him in the groin, parried a second thrust from the sword, and then finished off the first with a stab that went through the orc’s fingers and into his already wounded eyes.
“I said stop him already!” shouted the same orc, and Haern realized it was Gremm. Heart pounding in his chest, he turned to face a mad rush of five orcs, with Gremm watching behind them with his weapons crossed above his head and banging together. A quick glance at the wagon showed that those within were being completely ignored, and Haern felt relief. They’d stolen away their attention. Now he just had to live.
Just before the orcs reached him, he spun, flinging the intersecting parts of his cloak into a bewildering array. There’d be no way for them to predict his movements, and that was exactly what he was counting on. Two more steps and he dashed straight at them, even though the last they’d seen of him, he’d made it appear he was preparing to retreat.
Each of his swords stabbed the chest of an orc, and he drove them both to the ground while they screamed in pain. His left hand released, and he rolled while yanking out the right. Coming out of the roll, he slammed the saber into the knee of the orc beside him, then sliced upward as he turned and ran four steps. The distance was all he needed, for when he spun, he caught one orc chasing him ahead of the others, ax raised to the sky. Haern cut his throat, kicked his dying body into the way of the others, and then grabbed the fallen ax.
“Come die,” Haern told them, readying both weapons. The ax was heavy, but he had no intention of using it for long. Only two remained to attack him, and one of them was limping from the cut across his leg and knee. Haern faded to his left as they hacked at him, blocking a downward slash with his sword and shoving the orc’s sword out of position, freeing up an easy hit with his ax. He buried it in the shoulder, snapping the orc’s collarbone and splattering blood across his chest. Leaving the ax there, Haern turned on his final foe, who screamed at the top of his lungs in a vain attempt to intimidate.
Haern clutched his sword with both hands, blocked two simple swings, and then finished off his opponent with a riposte that ended with the blade of his saber deep in the orc’s belly. When he yanked it free, he kicked the orc across the face to send him to the ground to die.
His lone saber dangling from his hand, Haern approached Gremm, who stared at him with a mixture of hatred and abject horror.
“What are you?” Gremm asked, lifting his swords and preparing to fight. “Why attack us?”
Haern yanked his other saber free from a corpse as he walked past, not even slowing his walk.
“Because I wanted to,” Haern said, and he grinned as he realized he was parroting his father’s words. “That reason not good enough?”
Gremm swung both his swords in a dual chop, and when Haern blocked, he realized how much smarter it’d have been to just dodge. The orc was incredibly strong, and his swords connected with his sabers in a ringing clang that jarred his arms and hurt his elbows. Gremm took a step closer, trying to ram him with his shoulder while their weapons were interlocked, but Haern was the faster. Instead of avoiding, he slammed his shoulder right back into Gremm, and as they hit, Haern rolled along his body, spinning as fast as his feet could allow. Coming out of the turn, he slashed for Gremm’s neck, but the orc was quicker than the others. Around went his swords, parrying away Haern’s finishing hit.
“You’re fast,” Gremm said, slashing again. Haern, never one to consider himself a slow learner, hopped back and out of the way. “But I am strong. Stronger than you!”
“Perhaps,” Haern said, catching movement from the corner of his eye at the wagon. “But I have better friends.”
He closed his eyes as another brilliant flash surged across the battlefield. As Gremm screamed, Haern slipped both his sabers between the orc’s defenses, then jammed them upward through his chest and into his neck. The orc lifted his swords to strike, but the blood was draining out of him fast, and his legs gave way before he could swing. The weapons hit the ground with a thud, followed by the orc and a much heavier thud. Haern stepped back, shook blood from his sabers. A quick look to the other wagon showed Thren finishing off the last of the orcs, chasing down two that had turned to flee.
“Well, then,” Haern said, walking toward the wagon he’d defended. “I daresay you all owe me a…”
He froze as a woman hopped out from the back of the wagon, red hair falling down past her neck and a smile on her lips.
“I was wondering if you’d show up,” said Delysia, and as the rest of the survivors piled out of the wagon, relieved men and women in plain clothes and dresses, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.
“…thank you?” Haern said, and as the rest surrounded him, eager to offer their thanks, he glanced back to the other wagon in search of his father, found him at the edge of the clearing, arms crossed over his chest, bloody swords leaning against a tree.
Strangely enough, he was still smiling.
CHAPTER 5
It was the pins that were the worst of it. Ghost had endured stabbings before, broken bones, and brutal beatings. Those he’d always known how to black out in his mind, to ignore as if they were happening to someone else. But the gentle touchers were too clever and too patient. As he wandered down the street, his entire body wrapped in a thick robe with a heavy hood, he could still hear the sick words of the man first sent to torture him after he’d been found dying in Leon Connington’s room.
“You’re a big man,” the gentle toucher had said. In all four years, Ghost had never learned his name. His face had been withered, his nose thin and scarred, his skin paler than the moon. “A big man, and you might be responsible for the death of our lord. So, I’m going to break you with the tiniest of things; do you hear me?”
The first pin slid into the flesh of his forefinger.
“The very … tiniest…”
Every hour, that man had come and inserted another pin. Underneath his fingernails, into his fingertips, his toes, his toenails. If the man slept, he didn’t for long, because for three weeks straight, the man had come, always cheerfully telling him the hour as well as the pin’s number.
“It’s just after midnight,” he’d say, grinning, stabbing a pin just left of Ghost’s eyelid. “And this is your seventieth. I’ll see you for seventy-one.”
At the three hundredth pin, the last sixty of which had been focused on his groin, Ghost had finally relented and begged for death. But death hadn’t come.
Only more pins.
“One day,” Ghost muttered, shivering despite himself. “One day, I’ll return as the one holding the pins.”
The hour was dark, which suited Ghost fine. He kept his hood pulled down across his face, hiding the white paint. Now was not the time for attention. The pins had done their work, and while the gentle toucher had removed them over the years, the ones in his fingertips had remained the longest. Even now they were puffy, scarred, and ached at the slightest pressure. The idea of holding a sword and wielding it in combat was preposterous. At least, without aid …
Ghost stopped before cracked white steps he recognized well. In what felt like a previous lifetime, he’d fought on those steps, keeping back a mad horde of mercenaries bent on desecrating the temple of Ashhur in their attempt to slaughter more of the thieves that infested the city. Doing so had earned him the help of a certain priest, a priest Ghost hoped would still be living within. He climbed the stairs, grunting at the pain in his feet. At least the gentle touchers considered themselves artists above the more basic forms of torture. If they’d resorted to breaking bones and hacking off limbs, he’d have been hobbling up the steps like a toothless cripple. Perhaps that was the real secret to their art as well as their longevity. They could drag the truth out of kings and lowborn alike, yet still send them back to their lives without significant damage. What person of power wouldn’t have the occasional need for such a tool?