Tanys Gladiatrix (The Chronicles of Tanys Book 2) (16 page)

"We have a number of witnesses that say you did," the Duke said, indicating the cowering nobles with a sweep of his hand. "A terrible thing you have done here, Haru. It will be up to the noble houses to keep order in the city, now that you have deprived us of our beloved Prince."

"You actually believed yourself worthy to sit at my table," the Malchesse sneered, wiping a drop of blood from his robe with a napkin edge, "Your insolence sickens me!"

Danella moved closer to Tanys as the guards advanced, pressing against her back as though for protection. Tanys felt a hardness there, a knife handle.

"What of the others here?" Haru asked, his shoulders sinking in defeat.

"Everything will be cleaned up by morning," Torke said.

"I suppose there's nothing left to do then," Haru laughed ruefully, "...except for my little surprise."

Torke's eyes narrowed. The Duke chuckled, unsure of the joke.

"Badger bite!" Jorva yelled, leaping from the bushes onto the back of a red-clad guardsman. The little man was armored head to toe in his spiked badger suit. The satyr screamed as Jorva ripped a bloody chunk from the side of his neck.

As the satyr guards spun to face the threat, a score of red-sashed humans in desert garb swarmed over the top of the garden walls, howling for blood, with swords in hand.

Tanys gutted the nearest guard with her knife as she pulled Danella from the center of the fray. "Who are these guys?" she asked.

"Remember the bandit boy with the nice ass?" Danella asked.

Tanys nodded.

"Long story," Danella grinned.

Tanys wheeled to take stock of the battle that raged across Haru's garden. Desert raiders clashed with satyr guards, and Jorva rolled between them like a spiked ball of destruction. At the far end of the garden, Torke had gathered a few guards around the tight little group of nobles, and they had Haru with them, his arms pinned behind his back by a massive beastman guard.

Tanys' eyes met Torke's. The one-eared faun sneered back at her as he pulled the knife from the Prince's body and shoved it into Haru's belly.

"No!" Tanys screamed. She leapt forward and, with all her rage and all her strength, hurled her knife end over end toward the vicious little faun. Torke half turned, seeing the dagger too late. It plunged hilt-deep into him, pinning his yellow doublet to his groin. Tanys realized at that moment whose knives she had been given for the fight. She watched Torke slump to the ground in agony, knowing that Brecia would have been pleased.

Haru fell beside him in the sand, a little smile on his ashen face as he looked up at Tanys. The satyr guard stooped to lift Torke over his shoulder and hustled the nobles toward the rear gate. Beyond it, Tanys saw the red glow of flames licking against the dark sky.

Tanys rushed to Haru's side. She knelt with Danella beside him, cradling his head as the healer struggled to staunch the terrible wound in Haru's belly. The look in Danella's eyes told her it was hopeless.

"I'm sorry, Tanys," Haru gasped, "I should have listened..."

"Shut up, Haru," Tanys said, "I was the one that should have kept my wits."

"I'm sorry... I just wanted to be someone... so stupid" Haru let out a ragged, painful cough.

Tanys forced a little laugh as she held his hand. "Well, you're about to go down in history as the one who liberated your people from the rule of a rotten Prince."

"Father would be..." Haru gasped, "...proud."

A column of fire leapt up above the nearby villas, and screams sounded in the street.

"Those fires are for us," Danella said, tears on her cheeks, "It was Haru's idea... we have to go."

"Haru?" Jorva said, confusion in his voice, as he stood beside them. His blood-streaked armor sat on him like a grim foil to the childlike look of hurt on his face.

Tanys lowered Haru's head to the sand. He was gone.

"The horses are waiting!" the young bandit called from nearby. He had taken the time to retrieve his pants but remained bare-chested against the night air. He flashed a crooked smile at Danella. "We will be nestled in the warm bosom of the Rashaki by the time these fires burn out."

Danella pulled Tanys to her feet. "He bought you this chance with his life! Don't you waste it!"

"I won't," Tanys said. She turned to the bandit, pushing Danella toward him. "Take her and get out of the city! Jorva and I will meet you at the desert rock in three days time."

"There are a lot of rocks in the desert," the bandit laughed.

"The one where we camped the night before we met your new boyfriend," Tanys said to Danella.

"I know it," Danella said. "but where are you going?"

"I'm not leaving any friends behind tonight."

Tanys and Jorva raced through the streets toward the Malchesse villa on the outskirts of the Holy City. Panicked satyrs and slaves alike struggled to douse the fires set by Haru's bandits. Here and there, full-scale rioting and looting had broken out.

"Are you sure you know the way?" Tanys shouted as she ran behind Jorva. She clutched her left hand over her injured breast as she ran. There had been no time to have Danella treat the wound, despite the girl's protests.

"Jorva know. Jorva know right way."

They pushed their way through the crowds that had gathered at the gates to Fountain Street. Among the mass of slaves and lower class satyrs could be heard the mutters of, "Let them burn," and, "Let their fountains quench the fires!"

Beyond the gates, the cool shadows and narrow alleyways of the lower city closed around them. Tanys' bare feet slapped on sand-polished cobbles as she followed the bloody dwarf toward, she hoped, the Malchesse manor house. A raider's sword swung and bounced in its scabbard against her bare hip.

The sky glowed red by the time they reached the manor house in the hills overlooking the Holy City. Tanys looked back and thought she could make out groups of people moving through the dark streets with torches. Where they passed, new fires sprang up. Tanys smiled.

The walled perimeter of the house glowed with the light of a hundred hanging lamps, yet they saw no guards posted on the walls. Tanys and Jorva paused in the shadow of an outlying carriage house to catch their breath.

"Jorva know secret way in," the dwarf said, pointing toward the Malchesse slave quarters.

"Can you get me into the main house?" Tanys asked, indicating the taller building, central to the compound.

"Jorva only spy on Tanys, never been in goat house."

"You were spying on me?"

"Haru say to," Jorva said, "He say Jorva no fight, just make sure Tanys safe. Haru real worried."

Tanys suddenly felt very ashamed to have thought such ill of Haru'Luk during her imprisonment at Malchesse House. A chill ran through her body as she thought of the beastmen who had taken her friend's life.

"Jorva," she said, "Did you ever see me inside there with a girl that couldn't talk?"

Jorva blushed. "Jorva cover eyes when Tanys with her. Jorva promise!"

It was Tanys' turn to blush. "Never mind that! I need you to find her. Find her and tell her that I'm going into the manor house to find Baran."

"Jorva go too."

"No, I need Naietta to gather the others and be ready to get out of the city."

Jorva nodded.

Tanys watched the little man scramble up the rough stone wall of the slave quarters and disappear over the peak of the clay-tiled roof. She then turned her attention to the high, smooth walls that surrounded the manor house.

Tanys realized that she could never hope to scale the walls of the house itself. The few windows of the manor house were little more than slits cut into the stone walls, too high to reach and too narrow to slip through. The only way in was to be invited.

Tanys hurried back to a small garden she had passed near the outer gates of the manor. A small, poorly kept fountain bubbled weakly amid the dry weeds and skeletal branches where flowers and figs once grew. She knelt beside the pool and washed her body clean of blood and ash. Her nipple still ached where Danella had torn out the delicate ring of her piercing, but the bleeding had stopped. The wound was barely noticeable once she had washed it clean.

Tanys found a scrap of old sackcloth, half-buried in the sandy soil. It ripped as she pulled it up, but she was able to salvage enough to wrap around the raider's sword and a strip of cloth to tie back her hair.

Gathering the bundled weapon in her arms, she ran back to the manor. Securing the concealed weapon over her shoulder with the belt strap, Tanys climbed over the low curtain wall that stretched between the main house and the slave quarters. She dropped silently down into the little courtyard, just beyond the sight of the guard post at the house's entrance.

She recalled what Torke had said about humans all looking the same to a satyr and prayed there was truth in it. She wrapped her arms tightly around her bundled sword and quickly worked herself into a frantic state of appearance.

"Guards, guards!" she shouted, running towards the guard post, "They've set fire to the slave quarters!"

She threw herself against the bolted door, giving the guards beyond only a moment's glimpse of her face before turning her head and pointing back toward the smaller house. She continued her panicked tirade about escaped slaves and crazed arsonists.

A satyr guard pressed his face to the grate, but could see little more than the shadowy outline of the slave quarters silhouetted against the red glow of the sky. "See what the trouble is, and shut that bitch up!" muttered his companion. Only two guards sat at the post tonight.

The first satyr growled as he threw open the bolt. "If you're wasting my time, I'm going to whip the skin off your back girl!"

"Don't worry," Tanys said, dropping the cover from her sword and her voice to a whisper, "This won't take long."

The moment the door swung open, Tanys drove her blade through the armhole of the door guard's breastplate, into his heart. The second guard died where he sat, a bit of seed cake dangling from his lips and a look of absolute confusion on his face.

Tanys wiped her blade clean on the red curtain that hung between the guard post and the house proper. A quick glance proved the hallway beyond empty. Tanys hastened into the next room, her bare feet padding silently on the black marble floors.

She reached the room where Torke had handed her over to the house women before, finding it empty as well. She searched a few moments before finally discovering the half-remembered servant's passageway. She slipped inside just as an angry voice cried out in the hallway. "Intruders!"

Tanys had no idea in what part of the house Baran might be imprisoned. The effects of the satyr wine had muddled her only memories of the place. Her hope was to evade capture long enough to stumble across the captive gladiator. She pushed away the terrible thought that he might no longer be in the house at all.

Tanys mounted a narrow staircase that lead upward, having some sense that she may have been upstairs when she saw him last. At the top of the steps, she found a tiny landing and a featureless panel that could only be the backside of a hidden door. With no way to see beyond the panel without opening it, she pressed her ear against it and listened. She held her breath at the sound of voices beyond.

"We should kill them," droned the passionless voice of the Malchesse.

"Nonsense!" the Duke answered, "We'll need their help. Besides, we're not murderers."

A long silence followed.

"Well, you know what I mean," the Duke amended, "That business with the Prince... there was no other way."

"And what of your assassin?" the Malchesse asked.

"Torke?" the Duke laughed, "Well, now his ear isn't the only thing he's got just one of... but he'll live."

"It might have been better if he hadn't"

"I don't think I like your tone, old friend. There's been enough bloodshed for one evening."

With a powerful shove, Tanys threw open the secret door, sending a small table and vase, which had evidently been placed against it, crashing to the floor. The Malchesse stood, red-robed and gaunt in a nearby doorway, his golden eyes wide. The corpulent Duke, draped in yellow, sat up in his chair and gasped, "By the gods!"

"I'd say there's a bit more blood to be shed tonight!" Tanys shouted. The Duke, trying to lift himself from the chair, rose directly into the tip of Tanys' sword. She pushed it through his chest, bending the tip against the wall behind him. With a whimper of pain, the Duke slid back into the chair as Tanys withdrew the sword from his chest.

"That wasn't supposed to happen," he said, looking down at the spreading stain on the yellow fabric of his robe. He sighed then, his hands falling lifeless at his sides.

Tanys turned to deal with the Malchesse next, but the black-furred master of the house had fled the room. Tanys gave chase, catching a glimpse of red silk disappearing down a stairwell. She leapt down the stairs in pursuit, but found a trio of guardsmen waiting for her at the bottom.

The halls rang with the war shriek of the Raven Tribe and the clash of steel on steel. One satyr fell headless beside another who clutched at the stump of a leg and screamed. The third satyr, a gray-maned veteran, held his own against the barbarian woman's onslaught. He turned aside Tanys' wild sword thrust and kicked out with a gnarled hoof, catching Tanys in the stomach.