Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (53 page)

“You do carry stock for magicians, don’t you?”

From the twitch in her dangling left arm, Marik
guessed Reed’s two friends had not escaped her attention.  Time to set a wolf
amongst the shopkeeper’s flock.

He began forming the etheric sphere, the only attack
he had mastered.  Unlike the last time he used it, he formed it small, into a
ball hardly larger than his fingertip.  Marik poured energy into the sphere
much slower than usual, being exceedingly careful.

“Of course I do, but you don’t sound like a component
is what you want today.”

After a moment he felt it was ready.  It held less
energy than the spheres at the chapter house, remaining invisible to the naked
eye of non-mages.  He hovered it over Ilona’s right shoulder and raised his
fingertip so it pointed toward the leather tube sitting beside Reed.

At the same moment his fingertip made contact with the
floating orb, he gave it the final bit of energy that would make it seen to the
shop’s other inhabitants.  He remembered at the last second to utter a nonsense
word which he made up on the spot, “Bluvumm!”, and then his finger stung with a
sharp burn, a cutting razor formed of fire.

A tiny flash and a smoky wisp curled upward, then he
sent the small orb shooting forward.  Reed let out a startled yelp when the
leather tube bent in half at the midsection.  Sticks exploded everywhere like
autumn leaves gathered by a spiraling wind dervish.  They rained down in a
shower as the tube hit the far wall with a soft
thup
before dropping to
the floor.

Marik stood still for a moment.  Ilona stared at his
hand, which still hovered over her shoulder.  He had his fingers half-curled
while his index pointed in a graceful, upturned arc.  Movement caught his
attention before Ilona could react.  The two thirsty men moved with speed. 
They had decided he was dangerous, yet still prey they could handle.

He almost reached back for the sword he no longer
carried before adjusting his reactions accordingly.  His fighter’s reflexes in
full swing, Marik swept his hand down to the pouch.  This time he shoved his
hand fully into it, coating all his fingers to the first knuckle with black
soot.

The pair came within a step a heartbeat later.  He
thrust his hand forward, fingers spread wide.  “Careful!” he shouted, which
made them freeze in their tracks, their knuckles brushing his coarse robe.  His
hand held steady inches from their faces.  “I’ve got five shots loaded and
locked.  The next one might punch through your skull like a crossbow bolt.”

Their expressions clearly indicated that this
development was not supposed to happen.  Reed spoke, his composure regained. 
“That’s a pretty gods damned unfriendly gesture.  I—”

Marik cut him off by swinging his hand to aim directly
at him.  “Don’t take me for an idiot, Reed.  Or a fool.”  He stepped closer to
the table, pleased to see his bluff working.  Reed leaned away the closer he
drew.  “Tell your boys to step back or I’ll take exception to it.”

Infuriated, knowing he’d been caught out, Reed nodded
to the two thirsty thugs.  The others stayed in their chairs, minding their own
business for all appearances.  Marik sat in one of the vacated seats and
continued pointing his blackened fingers at Reed.

Ilona resumed the proceedings.  He gave her credit for
her unwavering voice.  “Are we done with the bullshit?  I’ve lost my patience.”

Marik held up his other hand before Reed could
respond.  “Hold a moment.”  He fumbled with a different pouch.  Ilona glanced
at him, an expression on her face beyond his ability to interpret. 
Probably
she’s angry everything went to the hells so fast.  Probably mad I made such a
scene when she likely already had an out planned.  And right after I decided to
keep her happy, too.  Damn.

Once his clumsy left hand finally undid the tie, he
reached in and was pleased to see she had filled it with the sand from the
Spell’s ashtray.  He had guessed so from the weight and feel, believing she
only meant the pouches for show.  His luck, if it held, might be able to bluff
Reed further with another false spell.  If the man truly did know enough about
magicians to see through his façade so quickly, then the sand might work
against him.

The magicians Marik had seen use sand always used it
for casting various sorts of vision aiding spells.  He took a pinch between his
fingers, holding it so Reed could easily see it.  “Hold still, and don’t try
anything clever.”

Reed made no protest while Marik sprinkled the sand
through his hair while uttering a nonsense phrase.  He held his fingers close
to the man’s scalp so his friends would not see the sand remained undestroyed
by the spell he pretended to cast.

“There.  If you lie at all, I’ll be able to see it.” 
He darted his sooty fingers close to Reed’s eyes.  “Don’t lie,” he advised.

Ilona began her questioning as though she’d expected
everything Marik had done.  Sweat beaded the shopkeepers brow.  His eyes darted
between Ilona and Marik’s hovering fingers.  From time to time, Ilona would
glance at Marik, silently asking if the answer tendered had been truthful.  He
would always nod, praying the man was still soiling his smallclothes in fear.

In the end, they cleared Reed’s shop from their list. 
Ilona insisted on going into the backrooms to see the stock the cityguard
wanted to catch him dealing in.  Reed rolled back a small rug to reveal loose
floor planks that opened onto a hole about two feet deep.

The hole’s contents were unsavory.  Marik looked at a
jar of eyeballs suspended in liquid and felt sick.  Were the former owners
fledgling magicians who had come to Reed’s shop in hopes of obtaining greater
power?  To judge by Reed’s answers…yes.

Nothing in the concealed hiding place was an actual
item.  Only spell components of the most gruesome type.  Ilona ended the
questioning by telling Reed that if she ever returned to his alchemy shop, she
would not be so polite if he attacked her again.  The man found little comfort
in this.

Out on the street, Dietrik rejoined them the moment
they stepped into the fading sunlight.  “That one took long enough.  Three
separate recruiters tried to convince me to rejoin the bloody army.”

Ilona faced Marik, who cringed slightly.  Instead of
the withering condemnation he expected, she suddenly smiled in a way that made
his legs turn watery.  “I was wondering about you.”

“Uh...wondering?  About what?”

“About if you actually were a mage, or if that was a
load of horse elbows you thought might impress me.  I see it wasn’t.”  She
sauntered down the street to find the next shop.

“What happened this time?” Dietrik wanted to know. 
“Trouble?”

Marik shook his head in utter bewilderment.  “She
reacts exactly the opposite way I think she will to everything I do!”

Dietrik slapped his back.  “That’s how women are,
mate!  A thousand generations of men have not been able to figure them out. 
Don’t waste time thinking you might succeed in that.  Tell me what happened in
there.”

They only visited two further shops before evening
cloaked the world in blazing pinks and businesses across Thoenar began closing
for the day.  At both, Ilona manipulated the situation to where he needed to
demonstrate his powers, though their lives were hardly in the danger they had
been at Reed’s.  He struggled to understand why she suddenly wanted him to show
off.  In the end he adopted Dietrik’s advice.  Hoping to figure her out would
only end with him howling at the moon.

When they exited the fourth shop with no luck, Dietrik
could see it in their faces.  “So that’s a flop as well, is it?  That makes
four out of eighteen.  Or three I suppose.  The first shop might be worth a
second visit if we reach the end of the list without finding anything.”  They
walked back to the Standing Spell, the streets thick and noisy with the evening
traffic of people returning home from a day at the tournament.

Before Marik could raise the issue, Ilona suggested,
“Then we had better get an earlier start tomorrow, hadn’t we?  Why don’t you
two come by around about the second morning bell?”

Marik nodded eagerly.  He might be imagining it, or
only hoping for it, but her words were slightly less hostile toward them than
earlier in the afternoon.  Tomorrow might be very enjoyable indeed.

Oh, yes…indeed.

Once again, the nearly physical torrent of noise
battered Marik like storm winds.  The crowd did not, apparently, believe in the
theory that allowing the competitors silence in which to concentrate on their
shots was proper spectator etiquette.  Blazing heat from the sun’s renewed
onslaught made sweat run into the mercenaries’ eyes while they watched Hilliard
draw back his eighth shaft.

This afternoon, Hilliard’s turn to participate came
far earlier due to the absence of over seventy entrants cut during the racing
and swimming events.  Noontime sunlight baked them alive.

Hilliard drew his line on the target two-hundred feet
away.  In the island center of the horse track, long aisles had been painted on
the ground with chalky limestone dust.  Ten contenders stood in a row shooting
at straw men targets while Galemar’s entire population made the best attempt
they could to collapse the bench stands.  The previous summer’s war was still
fresh in the event coordinators’ minds.  They had dressed the straw men in the
dark blue uniforms of the Nolier army.  Perhaps they were legitimate uniforms,
confiscated off Nolier prisoners, or else the palace had created over
one-hundred-forty mockups.

One official stood away from the targets.  He shouted
to release the flight.  Since no one could hear the man, he also waved a red
flag.  Hilliard loosed his shaft.  It flew true along the corridor and struck
the target in one straw leg.

Landon let out a held breath.  “It’s a point, at
least.”

“Yes,” Kerwin agreed, “but he’s riding awfully close
to the line.  He’s only one point ahead of Crossley and Delouen both.  Wait,
strike that,” he abruptly amended.  He peered, as they all did, at the straw
men lined in a matching row opposite the contenders.

Officials examined each arrow while the archers nocked
their next shafts.  The official lofted a white flag at Hilliard’s, signaling
one point scored for a strike on the body.  At the next, Crossley’s, he raised
the brown flag.

“Damn it,” Kerwin swore.  “He scored on the
centerline!  He’s tied with Hilliard!”

Pages holding large boards with numbers, as they had
at each event thus far, kept them steady while a taller youth, who might be a
squire, painted black lines under each, representing the score.  He added one
line beside Hilliard’s six tick marks to display a total of seven points. 
Crossley’s received a pair.

The official scrutinized Delouen’s straw man
carefully, paying particular attention to the three inch red line painted down
the torso’s center.  Finally, he raised the brown flag.

“And him as well,” Kerwin said sourly.  “Must have
nicked the centerline.  Hilliard’s tied for eighth place.  Not good.”

They stood in nearly the same place as they had during
the horse race.  Hilliard glanced toward them from across the way while waiting
for the next draw signal to come.  Landon swung his arms in large, sweeping
gestures that, if Marik hadn’t known what he mimicked, made him look comical if
not slightly deranged.

“With the
whole
chest,” Landon mouthed largely
as he could.  “Pull back on the draw with the
whole
chest!”

Hilliard returned his attention to his own doings. 
They would have to wait and see if he’d understood Landon’s message.

That had struck Marik as extremely humorous the day he
and Dietrik returned to Paddy’s stable to collect the others.  In spite of all
the advanced resources the nobles claimed over the commoners, the practical
experience of the lower classes would always be the better teacher.  He kept
his peace, though.  Marik liked Hilliard and thought the observation might hurt
the younger man’s feelings.

Despite his numerous instructors in swordplay,
Hilliard only ever had one master in archery.  A master Landon had come to
think little of.  The man taught Hilliard the basics, true enough, and saw to
it the young man practiced enough to hit a specific area on the side of the
proverbial barn at the very least.  But that had been that.  Archery, in the
upper-classes, meant being able to hit the deer you were hunting, and little
else.

No one ever believed that teaching him advanced skill
with a bow could be nearly as important as skill with a sword.  While that
thinking followed a certain logic, considering the battlefield positions the
future baron would likely be in if he ever participated in actual combat, it
meant harder work on Landon’s part than he’d anticipated.  Hilliard had been
eager to hear everything the experienced archer could say on the subject, yet
no one mastered the greater techniques of shooting in only two days.  Or two
months.

Hilliard, like most sword fighters Marik knew, pulled
back on the bowstring with only the strength in his arms.  Landon had spent an
afternoon explaining that drawing on the bow’s true strength meant he needed to
pull back with his entire chest.  They practiced that, but Hilliard was unable
to match Landon’s precision or power.

When Marik and Dietrik arrived at the stable, he’d
been telling Hilliard, “You can still improve, if you are willing to invest the
time in it.  It would have been better for your form if you had wielded a bow
since you were a child.  Only a person raised in the way of the bow can fully
tap into its true strengths.”

That was news to Marik, and he intended to ask Landon
about exactly what he meant later.  Hilliard had been so enthralled in his
practices with Landon once the absinthe’s lingering affects finally wore off
that he’d been disappointed to call it a day.

The tournament officials, no doubt acting under orders
from the palace, were running this year’s contest in a slightly different
manner than normal.  With the goal of making it as exciting for the commoners
as possible, they sought out rivalries such as between Sestion and Gardinnier. 
From the beginning they had kept the one-eighty block as intact as possible. 
Rather than shuffling the contenders down into the previous block to fill
spaces left by the disqualified, they redistributed contestants from less
exciting blocks to keep the most interesting match-ups paired together.

Three other blocks had also been marked for special
consideration.  The thirties held three men who were all longtime bitter
neighbors.  Their skirmishing thus far had incited the crowds into roaring cheers
while sending the bets placed on the thirties block through the roof.  Further
up, both the one-twenty and one-thirty blocks each contained rivals who
captured the population’s enthusiasm.

And the crown is turning the tournament more into a
show than ever.  I wonder what the first Arm would say if he saw what it has
sunk to?  The process he created to provide a strong champion to protect
Galemar has become a festival acrobat exhibition dominated by the haves to keep
the have-nots under control.

No matter how much fun the Arm of Galemar tournament
might be, did it still serve its primary purpose of supplying the king with a
warrior capable of snatching victory from near-certain defeat?  Marik hoped the
question would not be put to the test in the coming years.

Renewed roaring from the crowd drew Marik’s attention
back to the pages.  Ferdinand and Keegan had again swapped the lead.  With
every flight, the other would step forward to claim the highest score, only to
fall behind on the next.  The squire painted three ticks on Keegan’s board
after the official held up his green flag.  He had raised it for no one but
those two the entire round thus far.  Once the squire finished, Keegan led with
a score of sixteen against Ferdinand’s fifteen.

The draw order came.  All down the line bows lifted,
targeting on the mock Noliers two-hundred feet away.  Hands drew back
bowstrings.  Men sighted.

When the red flag came down, ten arrows sliced through
the air.  Hilliard’s struck, apparently on the small target of concentric rings
over the straw man’s heart.

Kerwin jumped up, his fist pumping the air.  His glee
quickly switched to a string of profanity as the official raised the white flag
for Hilliard’s target.  “What the—”

They let him rant until Landon, his voice calm, simply
said, “It did not strike.  It was close, but didn’t score the triple.”

Worse yet, Crossley had also scored a point on the
body as did Delouen.  The three were still tied at the bottom.

“Comes down to the last shot,” Kerwin mumbled.  “Last
shot.  Let it all roll of the last throw of the dice.”  His words were nearly
lost under the constant thunder from the crowd.

“I thought you said these were the best types of games
to watch,” Dietrik demanded of the sour gambler.  “Something about tensions
being thick enough to peel with a knife, I believe.”

“Not when you’re the bloody one playing,” Kerwin
snapped waspishly.  He spun on Marik and Landon.  “What if our boy Hilliard
goes down?  Do we stick, or fly back to Spirratta with the dawn?”

“I don’t know,” Marik admitted.  Landon shrugged. 
“Hilliard hasn’t said, and Locke’s instructions don’t mention if there’s any
end-of-tournament banquet or ceremony the contenders are required to attend.”

Kerwin’s reply vanished under the cheers as
Ferdinand’s scoring board elevated to eighteen, a single point beyond Keegan’s
new seventeen.  The crowd members who had attended all three events so far were
well aware of the rivalry between the two, and had begun cheering for their
favorites.  Marik had noticed that the numbers for those two on Walsh’s betting
board were rising quicker than most others, including Hilliard.

“Nock up!” the official could be seen to shout, if not
heard.  He raised the red flag, which signaled the ten archers to sight on
their targets with their last arrow.  Marik could feel the hammering against
his back from waves of noise washing over them.

Do it, Hilliard
,
Marik prayed silently.  He badly wanted the youth to win, yet his thoughts
never touched on the Arm of Galemar.  If Hilliard lost, and they immediately
set out for Spirratta to see their charge safely back under Tilus’ roof,
as
we should!
, then he would never see Ilona again.  Never walk the streets
with her in search of a shop that might not exist, never watch her feline grace
or feel the scorching heaven/hells burn of her angry gaze. 
Are you going to
put your coin where your mouth is and win this?  You’d better, damn it!

The red flag dropped.  Ten arrows, the last arrows of
the day for these men, cut across the field.  Marik and the others were heartened
to see Hilliard’s shaft bury its head in the dark blue of the imaginary
Nolier’s arm.  Delouen’s shaft sailed too far to the side, missing the target
by inches.  It streaked past into the hay bales and Delouen began cursing.  He
almost snapped the bow in half before hurling it to the ground with force
enough to nearly plant it as a tent stake.

“He’s out!  Out for certain,” Kerwin crowed, but then
studied Crossley’s target carefully.  “Look’s like Crossley scored too, damn it
all!  Landon, can you see how he struck?”

The archer, who possessed the best eyes of them all,
shook his head.  “It might be a two-point hit.  I can see it is close to the
target’s center, but only that.”

Kerwin chewed on a cuticle while they waited for the
official to score the flight.  Hilliard received a white flag, as expected.  It
seemed to take all afternoon for the man to walk on past to Crossley’s target. 
Marik expected yet another close examination to determine the points earned,
but his study was perfunctory.  He lifted the white flag and moved on.

This had happened before while they waited through the
day’s previous rounds.  Marik knew that both Hilliard and Crossley would be
given new arrows and they would shoot until one outscored the other at the end
of a flight.  During the third block, the bottom three had needed to shoot a
tiebreaker.  After four additional flights, one finally dropped out.  A further
three flights finally left one man the victor.

He looked far down the stands of benches, feeling
queerly off balance from the odd perspective.  The end lay far away and
countless people crowded every available inch until it apparently stretched on
forever.  If he had not known exactly where to look, he never would have
distinguished Walsh’s C-Double-R Unit from the rest.

Sitting a mile distant, or so it seemed to his eyes,
they had escorted the young contender and his bodyguards earlier that morning. 
Yet as early as they arrived, the common room regulars only barely managed to
claim seats in the stands.  High in the back row, they struck him as crows on a
battlefield.  Indistinguishable dots moving among lumps that had once been men.

Except all of these lumps were moving rather than
stationary in their demise.  And the stenches of blood and excrement and rancid
carnage rotting in the sun were instead the smells of honeyed dough-cakes,
roasting meat and ale spilled everywhere.  So maybe, Marik decided, the image
was not quite accurate.  Only the boiling sweat odors were consistent, but the
picture refused to leave him.

On their distant top row, Marik could see the regulars
jumping up and waving their arms.  The runners from the center island must have
reached the group of page boys manning the score boards at that end of the
field.  Delayed encouraging shouts or derision always floated from the far ends
after the nearer sections had yelled their own say.  Their boards must have
been updated, for the regulars gyrated their exuberant support of Hilliard
Garroway, the Swan’s Down’s pet contender.  Watching them bounce up and down
only enforced the carrion crow image in Marik’s mind.  Crows disturbed from
their feast, yet gluttonous enough to not be frightened off by the living who
still walked the fields of the slaughtered.