Villains by Necessity (3 page)

The crimson flames in the darkness of his aura, seen only by the wizard, roared forth like the bitter flares from an ancient sun going nova. Mizzamir faltered, surprised.

To Arcie, watching on his wall, it seemed Sam muttered something, his pupils dilated for an instant, then there was a sudden sharp crack.

Sam's wrist snapped the cuff out of the wall and too fast to follow swung about and slammed it into the side of the Elven wizard's head. Mizzamir flew halfway across the cell and landed in the doorway, very still. His spell, uncompleted, sparked and gave off a smell of burning lemons. Oarf gave a cry of surprise and went for his sword, tugging at it in anger when he discovered he still had his peace-knot tied. He fumbled with it as Sam in silent hunting fury grabbed his other shackled wrist and yanked. Mortar shivered, but this cuff held. He yanked again, and this time his wrist actually pulled free of the cuff, almost the entire surface layer of the skin scraped away, pure white for an instant before every pore began welling scarlet.

Sam lunged for the mage on the floor, but his ankle cuffs held and he fell on his face, narrowly dodging the sword Oarf had finally managed to unsheathe. As Sam clawed at the straw on the floor, Oarf tried to club him with the sword's pommel, but Sam grabbed the guard's heavy leather boot and gave a powerful pull. Losing his balance, Oarf staggered back. Arcie made a grab with his toes and snagged the keys off the belt, as the guard recovered and switched to using the blade of his weapon. Sam was now pulling at the cuffs on his legs, his efforts scattering drops of blood from his scraped hand. Oarf slashed again, this time coming closer; the blade drew a line of crimson from Sam's side. Oarf was about to strike again when he heard the groan of the metal cuffs under strain, and one of Sam's arms almost broke his kneecap. Deciding at once that a blood-maddened assassin was not someone to cross in a small cell, Oarf scooped up the limp form of Mizzamir, and dashed out the door, slamming it behind him. Sam thrashed in his bonds in a silent fury.

"Sam! Sam! Ho up there a second, my fellow... here, I've got the keys..." Arcie jingled the keys in his toes.

Sam lay on his side in the straw, his legs twisted up from his struggles. He looked up at Arcie.

"Give them here," he rasped, holding out his gory hand. Arcie gave a flick of his foot and tossed the keys to him. Sam caught them and bent himself double working . at his bonds while Arcie fidgeted. Sam's hunting was normally cold and methodical, the result of the rigid discipline of the Guild. This berserk rage must be the fault of the wine. Had the Barigan known it, he would have realized it was also due to something not normally part of the assassin's contract: emotion. Sam's anger at the loss of the only home and family he had and his fear at the prospect of what the wizard had attempted.

The last lock clicked free, and Sam lunged for the door, slamming his shoulder into it once, then thrusting one long arm through the tiny window to scrabble for the lock. Arcie piped up.

"Here, laddie, wait a tic ... aren't ye forgetting something?"

Sam glanced over his shoulder at Arcie, who squirmed in his bonds. "You'll be safe," he said shortly.

"I don't wants to be safe, blast your eyes, I wants to be free. Let me out or I canna pay your fee and ye canna take it out of my hide, either."

Sam relented and quickly undid the cuffs that held the Barigan. Arcie dropped to the floor with a thump, pulling off his gauntlets. Sam returned to the door, as Arcie rubbed his neck and said, "We aren't going to be far popular around here shortly... I'll see if I can't borrow some horses, well enough?"

The door snicked open. "Whatever. He's still alive, Arcie. I saw him breathing. While he lives, neither we nor anyone like us is safe." The assassin was gone in a stagger of black cotton and silk. Arcie sighed, and followed at a more dignified pace. A quick stop at the empty guardroom yielded him his clothes and equipment and Sam's weapons. He paused to shudder a moment wondering how Sam was going to be able to carry out his instructions with only his bare hands, and then swiftly went down the dingy halls, keeping to the shadows and wielding a morning-star he'd picked up just in case. Not a real thief's weapon, but impressive looking.

The stable hand, dozing with a jug of cheap wine, was jerked wide awake by a
thock
right next to his ear, and the accompanying pain as a sliver of his earlobe parted company from the rest of him. He jerked up with a cry, and saw a small shadowy figure leaning against a wall across the room. The light hid the figure's features, but a small shaft of late afternoon sun glinted off a dagger blade held loosely in its hand, twin to the one in the wall next to his bleeding ear. A voice spoke softly.

"Well, well, laddie. I think we'll be taking yon gray gelding there, and that nice sorrel pony, with tack and saddlebags, if ye dinna mind. And no yelling, thank ye ... or the next one's through your skinny neck." The stablehand gurgled in fear.

Sam ran through halls, gray halls with red air. Speed took priority over stealth and his footsteps slapped on the flagstones. He ran out of the dungeons, up into the castle that served as the center of the rule of the city. A guard stepped out from an annex, surprise evident on his face. "Here, you can't go ... Awwk!" he said as Sam wordlessly rammed his bloody fist into the man's gut.

The guard crumpled, and Sam ran on, hunting.

It was more than an assignment now. It was both survival and revenge. He remembered the tales he'd heard about Mizzamir. Mizzamir was one of the greatest Heroes. He'd located the forces of the enemy, he'd supplied the other Heroes with guidance and magic. He'd set out to defeat one of the main wizards of the Dark and had hunted him for many months before the final confrontation in which he had emerged triumphant. It was said of him that, as a matter of pride, he never let a job go half-finished. Well, Sam thought, neither do I. He's destroyed all my friends, the only family I ever had. Old Miffer and Tich and Cata and Black Fox and Darkblade ... I thought they were just being stupid... but they were dead, their brains and souls turned to vanilla pudding by this white-robe's magic.

He passed a doorway, then with a flip turned and leaped in. Something other than logic sent him crashing through a door and there, sitting up in horror with an ice-pack on his head, was the impressive silvery figure of the arch-wizard. Mizzamir grabbed one of his rings and shouted a strange word, and Sam stumbled as the air around him suddenly turned thick and heavy, as though he were trying to run through neck-deep honey. The magic effectively halted his rush, losing him his one advantage of speed.

Both men froze. Sam knew better than to rush a wizard in this state. They faced each other, the black-clad assassin, his face bloody and stained with sweat, dirt, and sooty grease, his clothes torn and filthy, bleeding heavily from a sword-wound in his side, his eyes burning with frozen fire, and the stately old Elven wizard, in his flowing silver-white robes, his silver hair falling gently around his shoulders, his green eyes wide in surprise, the afternoon sun pouring in a window and making him shine like a star. They faced each other warily, each waiting to see what his opponent would do before moving.

Mizzamir spoke first. "You are a villain, but I see in you the potential for goodness. I will save you from the darkness, as I have saved many others."

"Save yourself first, wizard," Sam answered softly, and leaped, a burst of will giving him the strength to counteract the mage's spell for an instant. But he was still not fast enough. As he lunged, Mizzamir stepped back and, with a gesture as of parting curtains, a phrase of magic and a flash of indigo light, he wrapped the very fabric of reality around himself and vanished, the air rushing in with a
whumpf
where he had been. Sam had to twist himself in midair to keep from crashing into a table, and only partly succeeded. He rebounded and collapsed against the wall, panting, his energy draining fast now that his target was out of range. A whistle sounded outside the window.

He craned his head around to look. Down in the castle courtyard, Arcie, mounted on a swaybacked pony, held the reins of a Troisian riding horse and beckoned impatiently.

With the last ounces of his strength, Sam climbed out the window and slid down the trellis, climbed heavily aboard the gray horse and clung tight as it galloped after Arcie's mount.

The two riders charged through a clustering mass of guards and ran through the town, through the gates, out into the fields and farms beyond, then vanished with the blood-red sun into the forested hills of the wilderness.

"How are ye doing, Sammy?"

Sam opened his eyes to a bleary sky filled with red curls and blue eyes and white teeth. He gasped and tried to roll away, but suppressed pain flared in his side and hands, bringing him back to the present. He shook his head and groaned.

"Pooka piss, Arcie, where are we? What happened?"

Satisfied as to the well-being of his companion, Arcie sat back on a hillock and commenced filling his pipe.

"Have a look around, old chap."

Sam looked. They were in what he supposed was called a glen, or maybe a meadow; he wasn't sure of the proper term. Woods on all sides, the two horses grazing a short way off, and a glossy black raven watching him from a dead tree to see if he was going to die or not. He thought about throwing something at it, but with the way his hands felt he didn't think he could. He looked at them.

They were a rich blue-purple all around the wrists in a six-inch spread, and one hand was almost black with dried blood. Dried blood also caked a gash in his side, bound inexpertly with shreds torn from his cloak. As he summed up his wounds, recent events slowly returned to his memory, and he sank back in the grass with a groan.

"Arcie, you overweight son of a tomato, how could you do this to me? How could you set me into bloodfever when I was already four-thirds drunk and after an arch-mage at that?" He looked at his raw hand. "And you don't even bother to bind my wounds."

"I'm a thief, not a healer, Sam," Arcie reminded him, lighting his pipe. "I did the one on yer side, though. Ye bled all over the horse, had to stop ye from leaving a trail.

Careless of ye. Ye slept all night." The Barigan grinned at Sam over clouds of blue smoke. "It was your wrists and hangover or both of our souls, Sam ... Ye were great, though, really fierce. Snap wham crash! Did ye kill him?"

Sam stood and shook his aching head. The sun beat down, bright and unseasonably warm. They must be about a day's normal ride out of the city. "No. He got away."

"Och, well." Arcie shrugged philosophically. "Forget it then. Urk!"

Sam picked the thief up by the front of his cloak, and raised him up to eye level. The lank black hair around his face made him look almost supernatural. His voice was dangerously soft.

"Backing out of a deal, little man?" he asked kindly.

Arcie wriggled to clear his windpipe enough to speak.

"Urk, uhg, no, no, course not. 'is 'ead. T'ousand gold.

Paid on deli'vry..." He grimaced ingratiatingly. Sam set him down gently and flexed his sore fingers.

"I thought not. One doesn't hire an assassin lightly. I want a deposit. Five hundred."

"Two hundred," retorted the Barigan.

"Three or I rip your head off."

"Dinna get so vicious." Arcie tossed him a small emerald.

"I've had that valued at three-fifty... gives ye a margin for not trusting me."

Sam pocketed the stone. "You don't bother to carry paste, I know that much." Indeed, the thief carried quite a sizable sum of wealth with him at all times, in the form of gold and platinum buckles and buttons on his clothing, and gems contained in various pouches, always ready for a quick bribe or getaway to safer cities.

Arcie adjusted his clothes and his dignity. "There's a brook over yonder if ye want to wash up ... I would, if I were you. Ye look a fair grunge-worm."

Sam went to look. The brook was clean, bubbling softly over a lot of little pebbles. Arcie followed him and sat down to finish his pipe.

Sam dipped his hands into the water where it swirled in a clear deep pool. His scrapes stung painfully at first, but the cold water soon numbed them. He began working at the caked blood.

"Are ye going to go back and kill him, then?" Arcie asked after a moment.

"No..." replied Sam thoughtfully. "I'm certainly not going to go berserk again, no matter how entertaining it may be for you. It's time for calm, cool, collected action."

His blood swirled red in the clear water. "He's going to come to me. He's going to come looking for me. And you. He's going to get friends and they're all going to come looking for us, to save us from ourselves. They're all going to come after us."

"Will they bring food, d'ye think?" wondered Arcie, looking up at the sun. "I'm half-famined."

Sam noticed that he too was getting hungry. "We're in a forest... aren't there supposed to be berries or mushrooms or rabbits or something like that around?"

"We could perhaps eat that big black bird," suggested Arcie, looking up at the raven. It clicked its beak at them and shuffled farther down the branch.

"I think, before you go eating anyone, you should explain what you are doing, polluting my stream with your blood," a powerful female voice said, not three feet from Sam's ear as a figure stepped inexplicably from the trunk of a solid tree. Arcie was so startled he dropped his pipe, and Sam fell neatly into the pool. The raven flew off, croaking.

"Never would have thought of ye as a blond, Sammy."

"Shut up."

The two refugees were huddled in the strange home of their equally strange hostess. After an initial bit of suspicion on all sides she had apparently decided to apprehend them, but the promise of food made the idea not unwelcome to the pair. The young woman had led them through the tangled forest, Arcie ducking under branches, and Sam bruised, sore, soggy, and covered with mud, as well as leafmold and twigs, by the time he had clumsily scrabbled through the thick vegetation.

They had arrived at a stone hill that thrust through the leaf-covered forest floor, and their hostess had pushedc aside a lethal-looking thorn bush to reveal an open doorway.