“There,” said Cimozjen. “It’ll still be sore, but it’ll not keep you up all night. So. Who sent you?”
“Not likely. If I tell you, they’ll kill me.”
“Tell me who you’re with.”
The man sneered. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you? We were just going to teach you a little lesson, send you packing back to Karrnath with your hands covering your backside. But now, now you’re in real trouble. Pomindras will find you.”
“I healed your cheek,” said Cimozjen sternly, “and I can retract that service if you have no gratitude for the Host’s blessing.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
Cimozjen hit him with the hilt of his sword again, a hard blow right where he’d broken the cheek a few moments earlier. The man went down with a cry. Cimozjen hauled the man up by his collar and kneed him hard in the stomach twice, then let him drop again. He hauled him up a third time and pressed the tip of his bloody sword against the man’s jugular vein.
“Hoy,” whispered Minrah, “Cimmer is boiling over.”
“Listen, Aundairian, I’m going to spare your life, and you’re going to show me some gratitude. Do you understand?”
The man nodded.
He pressed the sword even more firmly into the man’s skin. “Neither you nor any of your friends is going to attack us again, or I will not be so merciful. Do you understand?”
The man nodded again, more emphatically.
“And you tell your masters that we want the one responsible for the death of Torval Ellinger of the Iron Band. If they turn him over to me, we’ll leave. Understand?’
The man nodded once more. “Torval Ellinger.”
“It’s not good enough, Cimmer,” said Minrah. “I know his type. He’s a thug. Brave when in control, weak when threatened.”
“Do you swear it?” shouted Cimozjen.
“Swear!” said the man. “Yes, I swear, we’ll let you be. Torval Ellinger.”
“Not enough, Cimozjen,” said Minrah. “The instant he’s away from your sword, he’ll be plotting to kill us-and with more people. You have to kill him.”
“He swore. By the soldier’s code-”
“He lied, Cimmer. He’s no soldier. You can’t trust those like him. My folks, they did, and-! Just do it, Cimmer.”
Cimozjen released his grip on the man’s clothes and took a step back, lowering his sword. “I’ll not kill a defenseless man, Minrah.”
“You have to!”
“No,” said Cimozjen. “It’s not right.”
“He knows you won’t. That’s why he’ll swear anything to get you to let him leave. Cimozjen, you have to kill him!”
“I can not.”
Four stepped forward and swung, cleaving the man’s skull where he stood.
“I can,” he said.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
Idyllic, Not Peaceful
Zol, the 24th day of Sypheros, 998
Cimozjen stared at the warforged, aghast. “What was that for?”
“Minrah said it had to be done, and you said you could not do it.”
“But there was no reason to kill him!”
“Yes, there was,” said Minrah, who nonetheless shielded her eyes from the carnage. “People like that are like rabid rats. You can’t let a single one of them get away. If you do, they only-”
“One of them did get away, Minrah,” said Cimozjen. “Pomindras? Commander of the Silver Cygnet? Perhaps you remember meeting him once or twice. He ran off when he saw he was the last one standing.”
“So did the third one I faced,” said Four. “If I had known that fleeing was an option, I would have tried it once or twice during my battles. It is probably better that I did not know, for I did win all of my fights.”
“See?” said Cimozjen. “Two of the six already ran off! Here I had a chance to send a message back to them, but no, you had to get bloody handed! Not even you-you left it to him,” he added, jerking a thumb at Four.
“I’d rather be bloody handed than a pristine snob who can’t do what needs to be done! I swear, Cimmer, you’d let a troll eat your legs if it were using proper table manners!”
Cimozjen rolled his jaw for a moment, then wiped his sword on the cloak of one of the fallen and grabbed his staff. “Clean your axe, Four. Let’s move.”
He led them on their way, and after a short block or two, they left the zone where the magical fog held sway. Seeing only one or two other civilians in the distance, Cimozjen sheathed his sword.
“I tell you the truth, your perception is fundamentally flawed, Minrah,” he said. “You see my oaths as chains. You think they restrict me from doing things that I would otherwise normally do. Now I can understand that to a point. Even the name ‘oathbound’ brings to mind the trappings of slavery. But my oaths are not a fetter around my limbs, nor a yoke upon my neck. My oaths protect me, uphold me, and assist me to prevail. They are not a noose. Rather they are the straps that hold the armor of virtuous ideals securely in place, protecting my heart, my mind, and my soul. They are the firmly embedded nails that hold me together. They keep me upright, defend me against doing that which is indefensible, and they shield me from shame and self-loathing. Just like armor halts the blade that one fails to deflect, so do my vows halt me from the evils I might perpetrate when my guard is down.
“In short, Minrah, any warrior’s fury can get the better of him in the midst of battle. My oaths bind my highest ideals to me so that in the midst of rage or self-pity or bitter vengeance, I, unlike a certain other person, do not end up with my undergarments around my ankles.”
Minrah clucked her tongue. “Are you insinuating something?”
“I have no need to.”
“You’d better strap your lips, Cimmer.”
After a pause, Cimozjen nodded. “That was uncivil of me, and for that, I apologize.”
Minrah giggled. “Besides,” she said, waggling her eyebrows, “dropping my straps is my best weapon.”
Cimozjen shook his head and sighed. “You are a very beautiful young woman, Minrah, intelligent and energetic. So sad it is that when the day of your wedding comes, you’ll have nothing special left to offer your husband.”
“I’m special.”
“Your own actions speak otherwise of you.”
“I’m not going to get married, anyway,” said Minrah. “And at this rate, you’ll ever get me under the sheets.”
“On that we are agreed,” said Cimozjen, disappointed in spite of his better judgment.
“Ah. An agreement,” said Four. “Now that you are done with the requisite arguing, I have a question. When does the man come to repair me?”
The other two stopped. “What?” said Minrah.
“The man. When does he come to repair me? As I said earlier, I have a damaged neck and several severed linkages within my torso.”
“There’s no one who does that for you now, my friend,” said Cimozjen. “Come morning, though, we can find someone.”
“Why does he not find me? He always has every other time I have been damaged.”
Cimozjen gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder. “That’s part of being free, my friend. You get to take care of yourself.”
“That’s great!”
Minrah laughed. “I don’t much think so,” she said. “Life was a lot easier when my parents took care of me. I had hardly a care in the world.”
“I meant ‘great’ as in vast and powerful, because this state of being free impacts the entirety of my future existence and requires that I attend to my preservation and restoration in a way that I had not previously been required to do.”
Minrah rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say, Four.”
In the morning they found an artificer who was able to work on repairing Four. Cimozjen’s coin was running a bit low, but the artificer agreed to work in exchange for a promissory note from Cimozjen, drawn against the coffers of the Karrnath Temple of the Oathbound and redeemable from the moneylenders of House Kundarak. Granted, the artificer appended his usual bill with a hefty “runner’s fee,” but Minrah was nonetheless amazed that someone could garner such valuable services based solely on upon his word. Or, as she put it, “I’m going to have to try that trick.”