“A thousand pardons, Sir Knight,” Cael said with a smirk.
The rage-filled Knights roared and advanced as one. Cael dodged lightly over the fallen Knight, attacking the next closest. He parried the man’s overhead swing, flipping the Knight’s own blade back into his face. His iron helm prevented a split skull, but blood poured from a wicked gash above his eyes. He staggered back, blinded by his own blood.
Two Knights rushed Cael now, while their leader held back, shouting orders. They came at him side by side, so the elf slipped to his left, blocking the high thrust of one by placing himself opposite the other. At the same time, he lightly knocked aside the low thrust of the second Knight. Like a snake, he followed his block with a short chopping stroke that disarmed his opponent. Blood fountained from the remaining stump. The first Knight tried to shove his screaming companion aside while simultaneously delivering a high slash at the elf’s neck. Cael ducked this blow, thrust his blade completely through the still-screaming Knight, and pinked his companion in the heart before he’d recovered from his failed attack. Both slumped together in death’s embrace.
Now, the blood-blinded Knight staggered forward, blinking furiously. He aimed a cut at Cael’s forearm, but the elf’s blade caught the attack, slid round it, and quivered home. It caught the Knight in open-mouthed surprise. Steel grated against teeth as Cael withdrew his blade and let the man fall, already dead, to the cobblestones.
The elf spun, facing the captain, just in time to see the man raise a crossbow and fire. Cael dodged, while at the same time his hand leaped up, as though jerked by a string, and caught the bolt a hairsbreadth from his chest. He stared at the bolt in amazement. The hand that gripped the deadly dart glowed with a yellow light, which quickly faded. The gloves he’d taken from Jenna’s vault, he suddenly realized. They must be magic!
A slow grin spread across his face as he regained his composure and tossed aside the crossbow bolt.
“Gods!” the captain swore, staring in horror at the elf. He dropped his spent crossbow and drew his blade. “Do you know the penalty… ?” he began. “Gods! Takhisis, my Dark Queen, help me!” he swore anew.
The elf smiled at him and waved his sword as if to say, Come on then, if you are coming.
“I cannot in honor flee you,” the Knight said, “but know that you are undermatched and gain no glory in this battle.”
“I seek no glory,” Cael responded. “There is no reward in the death of another. So say the elves.”
“Then surrender,” the captain said.
“I cannot.”
“Neither may you go free.”
“Then attack me, for free I shall be.”
Without saluting, the captain raised his sword and charged. Cael stepped into the attack and with a single lightning quick stroke of his blade unseamed the man. His still-beating heart swelled through the rent in his armor. Cael stepped back. The Knight hugged himself pathetically, and toppled to the ground. Cael looked down and watched the darkness close over the man’s eyes.
Alynthia, still standing in the midst of the alley, was thunderstruck. A staff that became a glowing blade, and the freelance elf a deadly master of it.
Abruptly, she was shoved aside. “Out of the way, dog,” a voice growled. She fell into a pile of garbage heaped against the city wall. Looking up angrily to see her assailant, she winced and crawled deeper into the safety of the offal. A regiment of Knights tramped past. One or two glanced at her and laughed, but no one seemed to recognize her, for which she was heartily glad.
At the head of the Knights strode gray-robed Arach Jannon, bearing his bandage-swathed hand like a standard before him. “That’s the thief!” he shouted, pointing at Cael. “By the gods, he’s slain our brethren!”
Cael was taken aback by the force of arms arrayed against him. So much trouble, so many deaths already, and for what? There would be more to come, his own most likely. He passed his hand over the blade of the sword, changing it back to an ordinary staff.
“I want him alive!” Sir Arach commanded. “A hundred steel coins to the one who brings me his staff.”
The Knights poured forward. As they came, though, a great noise arose around them. Rocks, stones, bricks, and roof tiles rained down into the alley. A fireball erupted as a flask of burning pitch shattered in their midst. Screams, sickening thuds, and resounding clangs were heard as stone and brick struck flesh or bounded off upraised shields. From their rooftops and windows, the denizens of Smith’s Alley rose up, hurling curses, and anything else that was handy, down on the invading Knights.
Cael stole that moment to duck away. He fled north, leaving the Knights to their riot-quelling.
A pottery jar exploded on the cobblestones near Alynthia, raking her with tiny razor-sharp fragments. She clambered from the refuse heap and fled south toward Temple Row. As she ran, a high-pitched voice shouted arcane words. A thunderous boom shook the narrow alley, and behind her a lightning bolt exploded against the side of a building. People screamed. Flames leaped up, turning the sky an angry red. She stared back for one moment longer, then slipped away into the shadows as alarm bells rang out all over the city.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The door cracked against hewn stone old as the city itself. Cael staggered through, letting the door shudder closed behind him. He reeled down the stairs into the noisy, close familiarity of The Dwarven Spring. Kharzog Hammerfell stepped from behind the bar and greeted him harshly at the foot of the stairs.
“Where in blue blazes have you been? It’s been weeks!” the old dwarf scolded.
“I’m in trouble,” Cael hurriedly gasped to his old friend.
“What kind of trouble?” the dwarf asked under his breath. The bar, he indicated with a nod, was lined with drunken, off-duty Knights of Neraka.
“That kind,” Cael said in a low voice.
“Reorx’s beard!” the dwarf swore. At the foot of the stairs stood an old wooden hat stand and coatrack. From this, the dwarf snatched a green cloak and swung it over the shoulders of his friend. Cael pulled the hood over his head to hide his features from prying eyes.
“What have you done now?” Kharzog growled in a low voice, then louder said so that any listeners might hear, “Welcome, friend. May I show you to a table?”
He pulled Cael through the crowd to a table near the fire. A band of minstrels strummed a lively air from a corner, bowing to the two companions as they passed.
When Cael was seated at a table in another far corner of the inn and his friend had pulled up a chair near him, the elf whispered from deep inside his hood, “A little matter of burglary.”
“Who?”
“Mistress Jenna.”
The dwarf slapped his forehead with open palm, reeling back in his chair. “Good heavens! Why not just pick the pocket of the Lord Knight himself! Or try steal the Founderstone?”
“It wasn’t my choice!” Cael replied.
“Whose, then? Gods! Who could be so ignorant?”
“ ’Twas the Guild’s decision.”
“I might have known. They were using you, I’ll warrant.”
“I am a member now.”
The dwarf tugged at his snowy beard and stared into the fire. Finally, he said, “So you probably need a way out of the city-and fast.”
“No, I need to get over to the Dark Horizon,” the elf answered.
“Oros uth Jakar’s ship?”
“Aye.”
“Why not leave for a time?”
“There are others to think of,” Cael said.
“I smell a woman.”
“Actually… two.”
“Wonders never cease… Reorx’s black boots, not Oros’s wife!”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Put her out of your mind, son! Who is the other one?”
“A girl.”