Villains by Necessity (27 page)

"Well, that's right, you shouldn't be," muttered Sam.

"After all, you might have hurt yourself running away and leaving us to Fenwick."

"I saved your stupid hide, sun-crawler!"

"Yeah, sure. You saved this, right?" he reached into a pocket and took out the amulet. It spun gently. "Despite the fact that you gave me third degree frostbite all over my chest doing it?"

"Toss it, Sam," muttered Arcie. "We all knew do she ever get hold of it she'll have our heads for stew meat.

Even without it she's more trouble than she's worth."

"You do that," hissed Valerie, "and I will tear your throat out." She bared her sharp teeth.

"And just where do you get off ordering me around, Arcie?" Sam asked, tucking the amulet back into its hiding place and turning cold hazel eyes on the Barigan, who glared back at him.

"Somebody has to. Ye're too cow-headed to do anything for yerself!" Arcie gripped the hilt of his morning star.

"Cow-headed, eh?" Sam's hand went for one of the daggers. "You little sack of nightsoil, you haven't been worth a rat's ass since you were a maggot. You've been an annoyance all my life; blowing my cover, liquidizing my profits, and now getting me thrown into prison, robbing me blind, and more than once running off, just like sharkbreath, and leaving me to be killed!"

Robin cleared his throat, and started to say something, but was interrupted by Valerie's interjection into the argument.

"Sharkbreath, hm? I'll have you know it makes a hell of a lot more sense to run away than to back a suicidal idiot like you, and as for you, you fat little-" she rounded on Arcie.

"Um, my fellows, we are supposed to be saving the world ..." interjected Kaylana.

"This whole thing is stupid!" barked Sam. "The biggest mistake I ever made ..."

"Other than being an assassin," sneered Valerie. "For all your boasting you've done nothing but bungle this whole enterprise."

"Aye, some adventure," snapped Arcie.

"Adventure?!" Sam shouted incredulously. "Where do you get the idea that this is anything more than a wild goose-chase through the most hellish parts of the world with everything in existence trying to kill us! I don't know why I ever went along with this! You, Druid, are an idealistic dreamer with your mind in the past, and you, Valerie, are an insane bitch."

"Silence, you asinine bastard!" she snapped. The rain poured, and thunder rumbled. They had to shout to be heard over the storm.

"This would never have happened if we had just decided to enjoy the laxity of the law 'stead of trying to change things," grumbled Arcie. "We could all be rich now if you lot had not insisted on tromping off after dreams."

"I think ..." began Robin, and Arcie shut him up with a tirade.

"Quiet, you rabbit-headed pansy! We've had nothing but trouble since you showed up. You're a nuisance!"

"Almost as bad as this ominously quiet fellow," interjected Valerie, casting her gimlet eye on Blackmail. The knight sat unmoving on a tussock, head lowered in grief over his lost horse. "He's as weak as the donkey there, seeming so tough and then goes to mush when his pet horsie dies," she scoffed. The knight raised his head and seemed to glare in silent rage and sorrow at them. "Let's get rid of both of them." The knight stood up warily, the rainfall drumming on his armor.

"What's this let's business?!" hissed Sam. "It's all letus-do-the-work-while-Valerie-sits-and-plots. And Arcie only does that because he knows that without us to coddle him he'd be dead in five minutes! I'm not going to do a damn thing any of you suggest or say!"

"You are all a cluster of fools," growled Valerie. "I would be better off killing you all now, while you are battered and sick, and taking my amulet and going it on my own." Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the rain lashed in icy sheets.

"I think if it's a question of taking over you'd better not talk too casually of killing," snarled Sam, slowly rising to his feet, a glistening blade appearing in his hand.

"And I'm not going to go under so easy either, to Valerie or you, Sam," said Arcie with quiet menace, swinging his morning star. Kaylana stepped back from the open hostility radiating from the small circle as Blackmail drew his sword and stood ready. Robin gave a squeal and galloped away.

Kaylana cleared her throat. "Stop it, all of you," she said with strange calmness.

"Shut up, Kaylana," came the terse reply simultaneously from the combatants, who were watching each other like cobras in a too-small pit. Kaylana knew she couldn't pull them together again. They'd have to do it for themselves.

"Then, while you are sizing each other up," asked Kaylana, "why do you not take a moment's thought ahead, to what the future holds for you; if you, any one of you, survives this battle and kills the rest of us?"

Such was Kaylana's persuasiveness that they did begin to think ahead. There was silence, broken only by the drumming of rain and roll of thunder and the faint hissing of angry breath.

Robin ducked behind a bank and pressed the two gems on his bracelet. In an instant he stood before Mizzamir.

The wizard looked at him with mild surprise. Robin, soaking wet and muddy, bowed, embarrassed at his quick return but glad to be away from the angry evildoers.

"Yes, Robin of Avensdale? What brings you back so soon?" asked Mizzamir. Robin stood and looked at him in respect and confusion.

"Sir, it is as you predicted when this all began ... they are at each other's throats in the Fens ... I do not think any will survive."

Sam looked at Valerie. "We're only cutting our own throats, fighting like this."

Valerie looked at Blackmail. "That is true ... it is a waste of energy and time."

"I'd thought we was friends, Sam ..." said Arcie.

"But I don't guess as we ever were, really."

"I don't know if evil people can have friends," replied Sam, straightening from his alert crouch. "That's what Mizzamir said."

"They say we cannot have friends, or trust anyone, or love anyone, either," answered Valerie, looking into the mist and rain. "But I trusted. I loved. And I am perhaps the most dark-'souled person here." There was a pause.

"When you think on it," piped Arcie, "when ye're of darkness, on yer own, all society hates you, and even other people of darkness will want to kill or betray you to get ahead..."

"Who could need people to trust and rely on more?" finished Sam. "No wonder evil went down the gutters..."

"For large-scale success," said Valerie, "There must be some laxity somewhere ... in the days of the War, the forces of evil were strong... how did they manage that, if they fought constantly as we do?"

"I heard somewhere as evil people dinna work well together because they're too self-centered," offered Arcie.

"Perhaps that is true," said Valerie. "But it's also said we work together in order to use our companions. But isn't that what any group does? The strengths of the party are varied, and the different work of different members allows the group as a whole to survive."

"The only thing lacking is trust and perhaps friendship," mused Sam, sheathing his dagger.

"We don't need those," said Valerie, "if we have the solid knowledge that we all need each other to survive."

Perhaps, she thought, it was not a wise idea to attempt to gain control of the party, despite it being what would please her the most... it would be very foolish, for not only would her position be constantly in danger, but she could not rely upon getting the full effort that the party only put out when working unfettered. "We do need each other to survive," Sam decided, looking around. "We need Kaylana for healing, for a voice of reason, for her magic. We need Valerie for her knowledge, her power. We need Arcie, as I needed him in the past, to go where we cannot and use his talents to help us survive. We need Blackmail, for he has demonstrated his strength to us, and his loyalty ... a valuable asset." The knight drew himself up and sheathed his sword. Sam looked around for Robin, didn't see him, and left him out. "And I think you need me, because one of our main enemies, I feel, is the wizard Mizzamir ... and I will wager I'm the only one here who can kill him when we meet him."

The others digested this and nodded. The fate of the world, now that their minds were cleared of anger, was as clear as it had ever been, their goals as destined as ever. It has been said that it would take circumstances that were drastic and strange in the extreme to ever allow a group of people of darkness to work together ... but perhaps the otherwise inevitable destruction of the entire world was just enough.

As the rain slowly drizzled off, there could be seen through the mist in the moonlight a string of figures making its way to higher ground, walking in each other's footsteps.

"I'm sorry about your horse," Sam said quietly to Blackmail, who nodded in silent thanks.

When Robin returned early the next morning, he trotted to where he expected to find a pile of broken bodies. Instead, there was nothing but the remains of the failed fire, and what might have been footprints heading east.

He at last caught up with them on top of a rocky tor.

The rain had vanished, replaced by a bright sun scattering clouds. They were sitting about on the sparsely grassed flat top of the plateau, with a small fire of twigs and grass burning off to one side. They looked up as he trotted up to them.

"Ho hi, Robin," greeted Sam. His clothes were dry, his hair flipped a little in the faint breeze. "We figured you'd catch up sooner or later." He had a look of calm complacency that seemed somewhat familiar to the centaur. The assassin's collar was loose, and a faint brown mark showed in a star-shape against pale skin near his shoulder.

"You... you didn't fight?" asked the centaur, looking around at the members of the company.

"Nay," said Arcie, warming his toes in front of the fire.

"Just a tad o' grouchiness was all."

"There is some rushroot soup in that pot over there,"

Kaylana said. "Help yourself. Since you have just arrived, I think you should take the first watch."

"Um, all right." Robin folded his legs up under himself and lay down by the fire as the others drifted into slumber one by one. He got the impression that Valerie's raven was watching him from its perch on a stone. With extreme puzzlement, he ate his soup and set his beloved harp out to dry in front of the fire.

"I say, Arcie, do you get the impression we're being followed?"

The Barigan looked over his shoulder. It was night now, and in the dimness he looked out over the Fens, back the way they had come, to the moonlit glisten of the sea in the distance. They had slept through the day, breakfasted that sunset, and had been marching on through the darkening twilight. The mist was thin and low, and in the odd half-light of the new night you could see quite far. At the outlet of one of the slow rivers that emptied into the channel was the faint flicker of campfires.

The others had noticed it too.

"Looks as it," said Arcie. Kaylana shook her head in annoyance.

"Of course. Who would venture into this forsaken place but to follow us?"

"They seem to have camped for the night," wavered Robin uncertainly.

"Naturally," replied Valerie. "Only a bunch of lunatics would try to cross the Fens of Friat in darkness." 

There was silence a moment, broken only by the soft whispers of the night wind.

"Let's get moving then," said Sam at last, with a sigh.

The company turned and slogged off through the boggy, festering land.

"I don't see campfires, sir," said Jeffries, the young scout posted at watch in the Verdant Company. They had crossed the water when it had fallen to manageable level that evening, and now were pausing to dry clothes and equipment. Fenwick thought for a moment.

"They must be moving by night," he decided at length.

"Trying to put distance between us as best they can without horses. We'll have to go after them."

"Into the Fens, sir?" quavered Jeffries. "B-but..."

"Teams of three, with horses and hounds," decided Fenwick. "We'll spread out, keep in contact with horns.

Just like the old chases, eh, Jeffries?" Fenwick flashed his white teeth and clapped the young scout on the back.

Jeffries still looked doubtful.

"But sir... what about the barrow-beasts?"

"All defunct now, my friend," answered Fenwick cheerfully, whistling for his horse-captain. "The Light has driven those creatures of shadow into nonexistence."

"And the Orthamotch?" asked Jeffries, nervously.

Fenwick laughed. "The Orthamotch! Don't tell me you're jumping at children's stories now! Come! You shall ride with me." The young hero sprang down from his post and began dividing men into teams, still chuckling.

"I'll protect you from the nasty Orthamotch."

Soon the night was torn by the drumming of hooves.

"I don't think I like this very much," decided Robin. His hooves sloshed in the mud, and he had to pick them up like a hacking pony to keep from getting them tangled in the swamp-weeds. "Well, it's no picnic, that's certain," agreed Sam.

"Why don't you give us a jangle on that harp-thingy of yours, if no one objects?"

The others made various noises of non-objection, as they stumbled their way through the mud. Robin shivered, conscious of Mizzamir's words that a single false note might earn him a dagger in his neck, but took out his harp, and tuning it as he walked along. The darkness and danger seemed to fall away as he worked, the carved dolphin on its head gleaming in the moonlight, the notes of the strings sounding first dull, discordant, then slowly adjusting to perfection as he tuned them with the silver key. Ears pricked as he bent over the instrument, feet left to find their own way, until at last every note sang true.

He rested the instrument in the crook of his shoulder, resting against his human side so that it was not shifted by the motion of his walking. He had built the instrument himself, as the son of one of the finest woodcarvers in the Commots and with the aid of a genuine minstrel. It fitted his form and style of playing perfectly. He watched the renegades walk for a moment, running mentally through his repertoire, and finally decided upon