Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (60 page)

Climbing the tower to take a look-down seemed the best
choice.  He sheathed his sword at his back and gripped the rungs.

After the first three, Marik abandoned his magesight. 
The black iron bars against the blackness of the tower’s brick made them hard
to see.  He groped as a blind man for a door handle he knows is somewhere
near.  Under the regular starlight and the moon, the rungs were much more
easily discernable.

The climb proved harder than he had considered.  He
disliked the way the narrowness of the bars provided purchase for only his
foot’s center, making the yawning space below his toes and heels all the more
apparent.  His sword altered his center of balance so his weight always verged
on tipping away from the tower.  Halfway to the top he seriously reconsidered
whether this had been a good idea.  Marik’s dislike of heights had temporarily
been overshadowed by his desire to catch the bastard who nearly killed his best
friend.

Finally at the top, his breathing harsh from the
knowledge of how much space stretched between him and the ground, he clambered
over the edge.  There were two square protrusions atop the tower.  They looked
like small sheds though they could not have held half his body, so they must
have a different purpose.  The square blocks rested five feet back to either
side of the rungs.

Across the tower top, which Marik realized must be
constructed in the nature of a massive chimney, wooden planks had been set to
form a rough, circular roof.  Marik stepped onto the planks to place distance
between him and the edge.  He withdrew his sword from habit.  It comforted him
to hold it in his hand.

He stepped toward the left box.  It might serve as a
seat while he drifted around the refinery searching for the last assassin.  The
crumbling, disintegrating feel of the wood beneath his boots dissuaded him. 
Whatever this tower might be used for, the owner had let the wooden planks
rot.  Apparently he only replaced the planks nearest the rungs or where his
workers needed to step whilst up top.  Marik turned to the other box to see if
it had been kept in better repair.

The flashing steel in the moonlight startled him
badly.  He reared back a pace.  Instead of ripping open his neck, the assassin’s
blade struck Marik’s sword, which he had propped against his shoulder.  It had
tilted forward when he reared.  With sickening slowness Marik felt the hilt rip
from his fumbling grasp.  His sword bounced against the wood before sliding
over the tower’s side.

No time to think, only react.  His constant, endless
training took hold.  The assassin, who must have crawled up the tower to hide
bare seconds before Marik had emerged from the building, made another slash at
his enemy.  Marik ducked since only the void of a deathly plunge lay at his
back.  He heard the sword whistle over his head.  Its audible
swish
parted the air and snatched at his hair before he leapt forward in a bulldog
rush.

His left shoulder impacted the assassin’s stomach.  It
drove the air from the man’s lungs.  Marik used his muscled frame to good
advantage.  He angled up with his shoulder while wrapping his other arm around
his foe’s waist, intent on lifting the man into the air.  The sword slapped
down against Marik’s back as the man bent at the waist from the blunt force of
the tackle.

Lift him from the wooden roof Marik did, bellowing an
angry roar.  The assassin’s weight toppled them forward.  Marik fell with him,
still running as they crashed hard against the tower top amidst a sudden
cacophony of cracks, snaps and splintering wood.

They separated when they hit.  The assassin rolled
several feet closer to the far edge as Marik plowed full length onto his face. 
Both quickly rose to hands and knees, feeling the rotten wood beneath begin to
fragment.  Marik spun in an attempt to return to the relative solidity of the
planks near the iron rungs when the floor caved in under his weight.

His feet penetrated the splintering boards, dangling
into an unseen void that terrified Marik.  They were quickly followed by his
knees.  When his stomach struck the next plank’s edge with the full weight of
his body and mail, Marik felt it crumbling away as a man might slowly crumble
sandstone in his fist.  He grasped hard at the roof’s available surface.  Fingertips
dug into a crack between planks.

The full-scale destruction of the wood supporting him
seemed to stop once his chest finished crushing its plank to fragments.  Marik
dangled above a dark plunge of unknown depth, arms at right angles to his
torso, only his head showing above the gaping hole his body had furrowed.  His
chest was pressed against the next plank, his armpits were full of splinters,
his fingers gripped wood that felt like soft loam.

He heard fragmenting crunches from the assassin’s direction,
followed shortly by a crash that emanated from below. 
Must have fallen
through.  I need to get back on firm ground before I join him!

The thought of a long fall through pitch blackness
made perspiration slick his skin.  His fingers threatened to slip from their
fragile hold.  Marik shifted to bring one of his dangling legs up and crook it
over the side.  As soon as he moved, the spongy wood disintegrated further.

His fingers had dug an inch into the plank.  If this
continued they would puncture all the way through.  While that might make for a
better grip, it would surely destroy what fragile structure kept it from
collapsing altogether.  Attempts to shift his other leg only resulted in the
same degradation.

Teeth chattering, sweat running into his eyes, Marik
held perfectly still for several seconds, his frantic mind gibbering as it
strayed from rational thought.  To his horror, he felt the plank pressing his
chest slowly giving way to the pressure from his weight, his elbows digging
grooves of their own when his arms tightened in fearful reaction.

I’m going to fall!

His control snapped.  Abruptly unconcerned about his
fingers, all he cared about was getting his legs up over the edge.  He twisted,
swung, pulled without regard to the rapid decomposition of the remaining wood. 
Only when he felt his body sinking through the plank did the reality hit him,
nearly breaking what little sanity his mind retained.

A strong hand slapped against his wrist, a hand that
could have belonged to a new legion of assassins for all Marik cared. 
Must
be Kerwin,
a small rational pocket within his mind whispered.  He twisted
his wrist to grasp back and released his tenebrous hold on the fracturing wood
with the other.  Clutching firmly, Kerwin pulled him back across the rotted
planks.  Marik kicked with his feet the moment his legs cleared the edge,
breaking loose a fresh shower of old wood yet also propelling them firmly back
onto the newer boards near the iron rungs.

Marik shuddered terribly.  He swung his head to tell
Kerwin he owed the man his life.  For some reason Landon looked back at him,
confusing the younger mercenary greatly.  “You’re not Kerwin.”

Landon raised an eyebrow.  “Not the last time I
checked, no.”

Marik blinked rapidly.  “What happened to him?”

“He is dealing with the night watchmen who showed up
to see what all the commotion was about.”

“But he’s fighting the last thief.”  Why was his mind
so clouded?

“That one’s more a danger to himself than anyone
else.”

“What about Dietrik?  Who’s looking after him?”

“He can look after himself.  The wound isn’t so bad as
it first looks.  Nowhere near as bad as the last one he took.  He walked in to
watch our prisoner while Kerwin talks with the guards.”

“Prisoner?  We aren’t supposed to take prisoners.”

Landon shook his head.  “You’re in shock, Marik.  Sit
with your head down between your knees for a few moments.  You’re lucky I heard
you bellowing.”

Marik’s whole body shivered.  “No.  Not up here.  I
need to get down off of this deathtrap.”  The reason he had climbed the tower
in the first place struck him hard.  “And the last assassin!  He fell down, but
he might not be dead!  We need to get inside this tower and look for him!”

The archer bowed his head in agreement and pulled
Marik to a stand with his strong, archer’s arms.  At the edge Marik nearly fell
all over, his legs trembling badly.  Landon helped him dangle over the edge
until he secured a grip on the rungs.  If he got down in one piece, he swore he
would never climb the walls of Kingshome again. 
Never
!

On the ground his legs shook no less for having
descended safely.  He collapsed into sitting position.  Landon stepped down at
the same moment two men came running at the pair. 
And now a fight!  I can’t
even stand!  I’m going to die shaking like a coward!

Marik struggled to rise until the new men slowed to a
stop several feet away.  They both gripped the hilts of long swords firmly,
though kept them sheathed.  One barked a question in a harsh voice, full of
belligerence, words Marik missed because he still fought his own legs.  Landon
answered, which made the new men relax.

“In there, eh?” one repeated, his voice still growling
like an approaching storm.  “And from up there, eh?”

“Yes,” Landon affirmed.  “How do we get in?  We need
to make sure he has not escaped.”

“No way outta there,” the second watchman answered. 
“That’s as good as a prison cell, I warrant.”  He addressed his partner. 
“Sure’n picked the right place to die though, didn’t he?”

The first watchman reserved any reply.  He instead
approached the tower.  Landon and a shaky, barely mobile Marik walked with him
around the base.  On the far side they came to a small doorway shut with a
deadbolt.  After throwing it back the watchman opened the small door, ducked
his head and entered.

He lifted a glass-enclosed lamp from a narrow shelf
beside the entrance and lit it near the open door.  “Got to be careful with
fire in this place,” he told them.  “We only got minutes before we come back
out.  I’m not risking the glass getting too hot.”

Though he did not understand specifically why fire
might be a risk in this chimney-like tower, Marik had enough experience with
black powder to accept the warning as serious.  A ceiling cramped the space
only a foot above their heads.  The gruff watchman led them up a ladder thorough
a trap door.

There existed a narrow space hardly a few feet tall
before the ladder continued through a second trap.  Marik briefly saw from the
watchman’s lamp that the ceiling of the narrow space had been drilled with
thousands of tiny holes.

What they found in the next level nearly put him in
shock again.  In the tower’s remaining forty-foot space rested a monumental
pile of bones.  A space along the ladder had been kept clear of the white
debris.  For nearly twenty feet upward stretched the fragmented mountain. 
Every bone appeared polished to a finish.  Not one displayed a trace of flesh. 
None looked human.

The watchman continued up the ladder until they drew
level with the pile’s top.  Holding out the lamp, he said, “Ai-yup.  Guess
that’s him.”

Marik nodded.  The assassin had fallen into the bone
pile.  His pain-filled, dead gaze stared back.  Sharp fragments of cattle ribs
impaled his body in a dozen places.

“What are all these bones for?”  Landon asked the
question from below while Marik stared at the man who had meant to kill him;
who had died the death he’d barely avoided.

“This is the phosphorus tower,” the watchman
answered.  “You get phosphorus by leeching it outta bones like this, if the
conditions are right.”

“Phosphorus, huh?” Marik whispered.  The sound carried
within this enclosed tomb.  “Your friend was right.  He certainly picked the
right place to die.”

“Let’s get back,” Landon said.  “We need to check on
Dietrik and Kerwin, then I expect we’ll spend the rest of the night talking to
the cityguard.”

“Too right you will,” the watchman growled.

“At least we have a sacrificial lamb we can hand over
to them,” Landon added while he descended.  “I’m sure he will be full of tales
to tell that will corroborate our stories.”

Outside, as Landon and the two watchmen returned to
the room where Kerwin kept guard over their prisoner, Marik paused to look back
at the tower.  “Betrayed by phosphorus,” he muttered.  “And done in by
phosphorus.  Funny how life works out.”

Wondering at life, he shuffled inside to see how
Dietrik was faring.

*        *        *        *        *

They collected Hilliard when dawn broke, rousing him
out of the stall Paddy had converted into a temporary room complete with wash
basin, portable cot and enough blankets to supply a new campaign against the
Noliers.  The stable hands, fervent supporters of Hilliard as a contender after
his archery practice sessions in their yard, had crowded the stables to hear
his first-hand tales as well as surround him with a protective host.

Every handler swarmed to bid the young noble a
heartfelt farewell when he departed under a brightening sky.  Halfway back to
the inn it was decided to split their forces.  The mercenaries were exhausted
after an entire evening of relentless questioning by the cityguard, an experience
that depleted their strength worse than the fighting had.  With Dietrik’s right
arm in a new sling, Landon and Kerwin would return to the Swan’s Down with him
to sleep the remaining morning candlemarks.