Villains by Necessity (62 page)

"Oh, Baris's balls," muttered Arcie, putting his face in his hand. If the centaur had remained free he might have worked an escape ... instead, there was this, a noble gesture, but a stupid one. Fenwick seemed to agree.

"A turncoat, eh?" he scoffed. "Then you shall die too." He addressed his band. "If anyone hits the redhaired woman, I will be exceedingly cross. All right, on my signal..."

"Wait!" spoke a deep voice. Tasmene was scowling at Fenwick. The woodsman sighed and loosened his draw a bit to look at his friend.

"What is it now?" he asked petulantly.

"You can't do this. It isn't right. We've got them outnumbered, surrounded, helpless. I say, capture them and take them back for justice."

"I'd rather be shot, thanks," said Sam brightly. Arcie shushed him. Valerie started to speak, and a single bowstring twanged. She cried out in pain and sat down suddenly, clutching her arm. Deep magenta blood welled against the white skin in the moonlight.

"We know of your tricks, Nathauan," shouted %%%Fenwick. "You shall die as all your vile kin did, at my hands!"

"Steady on. Fenny," spoke Tasmene. He addressed the renegades. "We have twenty-two fully armed and armored fighting men on horseback here, as well as a green-robed mage. If you surrender, you shall be taken as prisoners, but no harm shall come to you."

"And how d'you define harm," snapped Arcie, while Kaylana quickly bandaged Valerie's wound. Fenwick watched Kaylana with open lust in his eyes. Sam seethed.

Robin fretted. Blackmail stayed still and silent. Tasmene ignored all of them, and said, "It is your choice ... surrender yourselves, or Fenwick and his company will cut you down dead where you stand."

"We'll take some of you with us," growled Sam dangerously, stepping between Kaylana and Fenwick. Another bowstring twanged. Sam dodged ever so slightly, to save his vitals, then stood unmoving, an arrow in his shoulder. The fire was leaping in Sam's eyes, even through Towser's magic, and Fenwick found he had to look away from that cold gaze. The salty ground cackled at the blood dripping onto it, and Arcie staggered to his feet.

"Och, we surrender," he gasped, raising his pudgy but nimble hands above his head. "Halt your arrows ...

Bring on the chains."

"Well, now what?" muttered Sam disconsolately. They sat in a wagon-cage of iron bars. Their weapons had been taken. Kaylana was nowhere to be seen. The sky was at its darkest now, but still not very dark; about the depth of early morning. Sam had begun to get slightly dizzy with blood loss by the time they had finished searching him, leaving him with nothing more to wear than his patched and faded leggings. He hung his bare feet out the bars, waving them in the night air. The fawn-color mark on his shoulder was clearly visible, and he rubbed at it with weak annoyance. After the Company had disarmed

%%%the renegades, the two healers of the abbreviated Company healed Sam and Valerie with curt apologies for the rough treatment. Valerie had tried to bite one of them, and Robin had managed a half-hearted kick. Blackmail's sword and shield had been removed, and he sat in silent dignity in one corner of the cage.

The Company had been unable to find either Valerie's amulet or her raven, and had settled on posting a warrior-wizard guard named Zanithir outside the cage.

Robin, shackled on all four hooves and both hands, stood tethered disconsolately nearby. The clouds were thick now, and the feeling of thunder in the air was sticky and oppressive. Occasionally a faint rumble could be heard, but the clouds retained their heavy burden stubbornly.

At last Arcie sighed and muttered in the language of rogues: "Time for escape."

Sam sighed, and answered in the same language. "Escape?

Guards, bars, locks, no weapons. No way."

"You get guard."

"No weapons," repeated Sam in a gesture of futility.

"Since when do you need those?" snapped Arcie in exasperation in his normal language. The guard glanced their way suspiciously, and Arcie pretended to be fascinated by something under his thumbnail. Sam stiffened.

True, he didn't need weapons ... the only weapon he needed was the fire that danced in his blood.

"I do lock," offered Arcie, in cant again, with a trace of a smile. Sam shook his head doubtfully. Arcie was a very skilled thief, but to try to unlock the padlock on their cage door with only his bare pudgy hands was ridiculous.

Arcie of course realized this. He had a much better idea. Wincing, he yanked a long tuft of his curly auburn hair out and twisted it straight. The hair-twist was far too flexible for a lockpick, of course ... but not after he'd picked up Valerie's discarded bandage and soaked the hair in the thick Nathauan blood congealing there. Papa might be proud of me, he thought, as he waited patiently %%%for it to dry. If he wouldn't of been so ashamed of me for getting caught in the first place. Of course, the improvised pick wouldn't stand up to repeated work... one shot or nothing. And he wouldn't want the guard to see him at it.

At last he tested the point. Stiif. He nodded to Sam and casually went over to lean against the door of the cage near the lock. Sam put on his best dead-dog face and looked out of the cage.

"You there, guard," he called in a raspy voice, dangling his hands through the bars with every sign of extreme weakness. "Could you ... possibly ... get me ... water?" he croaked, wheezing. "Please?" he added in a desperate tone.

The guard came over to see what was wrong with the assassin. He didn't get quite close enough for a killing attack, Sam noted, clever cautious bastard ... but he did get close enough for Sam to kick him extremely hard in the groin with one of his dangling feet. As the guard folded, there was a sudden extended clicking sound and the cage swung open. Sam jumped to the ground and put the struggling guard down for a nice nap.

"Robin! Horses!" hissed Arcie, jumping out, and he grabbed a ring of keys off the guard's belt and freed the centaur. Robin lifted his feet free of the chains and galloped away swiftly and silently. As Valerie and Blackmail escaped to freedom, there was a sudden shout and the sounds of running footsteps coming closer. The renegades scattered.

In the well-appointed tent of Sir Fenwick, the prince looked up from his glass of wine across the small table at the Druid, She said no word, just looked at him with those impossible green eyes. She hadn't touched her aphrodisiac-spiked wine. She hadn't responded to his winsome words and seductive charms ... He'd let her keep her staff, confident that he could block any blow from it or stop her in the process of any spell. But now, Fenwick was wondering ... perhaps she would be more tractable without it. He knew Druids had some powers to resist charms and magics. Perhaps something of that was caught up in the staff. %%%"Don't you think you'd be more comfortable setting that stick aside for a moment?" he asked reasonably. She blinked coldly at him.

Suddenly the hue and cry reached their ears. Fenwick raised his handsome eyebrows, and stood up, flashing her a smile.

"Well, duty calls ... don't go anywhere, lovely one this tent is surrounded by my men at arms, and they sometimes get a bit rough. I wouldn't want you to have to face them without me there to protect you."

With a last sly grin, he vanished out the door, warning the guards as he did so to keep close watch on the tent.

They did so, very carefully. But they did not look inside as Kaylana, gently resting on her staff, closed her eyes.

Slow, easy magic parted the salty soil as easily as water, and Kaylana slipped down through the floor like a dignified upright mole.

She rose up from the earth again some yards away, out of sight behind a cooking tent. But there were too many people around ... it would be best to continue on in a form that would attract less attention.

Valerie heard a welcome sound of flapping wings amidst the chaos as she hid under a wagon. Nightshade dropped down with a satisfied croak, her amulet dangling from his beak. She took it gratefully and hung it around her neck, cold power thrilling through her once more. "Wonderful, precious, flufiykins Nightshade," she muttered evilly, "let's do something nasty." She flexed her fingers.

Sam ducked and rolled as a sudden explosion echoed behind him, then another and another. Valerie must have found her amulet, he thought distractedly as he dodged into one of the tents. A series of female curses greeted him as a number of lady warriors and archers drew their swords and came at him, and he jumped back out and ran away. A sudden foot stuck out and tripped him, and he fell sprawling to see Arcie hiding under another wagon. The Barigan grinned at him.

"This'n has our weapons," whispered the Barigan.

They scrambled up into the wagon and quickly recovered %%%their weapons. Sam's were still in their places in his confiscated clothing, and he slipped his shirt, belt, boots, and tunic on in relief, adding the few extra knives and suchlike to their loops in the folded seams of his leggings. As he was doing so, Sam saw Blackmail laying about him with a tent pole amidst a group of warriors. He picked up the knight's sword and black shield and hurled both as hard as he could in the knight's direction. They were dreadfully heavy, and never should have sailed more than a few feet, but they crossed the distance easily.

Blackmail raised a hand without looking up and caught the heavy blade easily by the hilt, even as it spun and knocked down a member of the Company. The shield also scythed into the ranks, propelled by Sam's curse/blessing of never-miss, and the warriors fled in terror, allowing Blackmail to scoop up the shield.

But Sam had been seen; he and Arcie had to jump away as a shower of arrows rattled into the wagon.

Sam ran down through an alley of tents, suffering vivid flashbacks of the battle in the Plainsmen's camp, found himself cornered, and feet coming his way. He prepared to fight, then saw Valerie's head appear in the air a few feet away.

"Get in here, fool!" she hissed. Sam didn't bother to question the logic, but ducked behind Valerie into the magical invisible space-surrounding her. Valerie, concentrating on her spell, was bleeding slightly from a few sword slashes. She closed the shimmering curtain of invisibility behind him.

"Where's Kaylana?" asked Sam; Valerie shook her head.

Fenwick saw the chaos, figured that the villains must be escaping, and saw the need for speed. He threw himself onto the back of the nearest horse, a chestnut mare, and gripping its mane, clapped his heels to its sides. He could ride bareback without any reins as well as most men could ride with full tack. But the mare refused to move. He kicked it again, harder, and suddenly it reared and twisted, smashing sideways into a tent. Fenwick fell off as the mare galloped away. He barely had time to %%%wonder why the horse would behave like that, and why it should have such strange greenish eyes.

"Come on!" cried a panicked voice near Arcie, and an arm scooped him up from the ground at a full canter.

Robin dropped the Barigan onto his back and started to run. Ripping through another section of crowd was Blackmail, mounted on Lord Tasmene's huge roan war' horse. The knight's sword was swinging like a scythe, and arrows rained off his armor and the horse's chain barding. Arcie would have sworn the fellow was having the best time he'd had since they'd fought the dragon in the flood-canyon.

Valerie and Sam crept from their hiding place. With a quick slash of a dagger, Sam knocked a Verdant guard off his horse, and boosted the sorceress into the saddle.

She grabbed the reins and motioned for Sam to join her on the prancing animal. He shook his head.

"Got to find Kaylana," he gasped. "If Fenwick's hurt her ..." he ran off into the chaos, daggers whirling and slashing as he cut his way through the crowd. Valerie didn't stay to wait for that crowd, but spurred her horse and took off. Nightshade flapping in the air after her.

Sam did not escape unscathed through the army of the Verdant Company. Arrows and swords and hand axes pressed him on all sides however he ran, dodged, and hid. By the time he finally tumbled up over another wagon, he was just about done for. He rolled off the wagon and onto the neck of a large animal. Horse? Yes, a horse.

Before he could move, the animal bolted, and out of instinct he clung to its long mane. It wasn't wearing a saddle, but he held on as best he could. Through whipping chestnut strands he saw himself break away from the camp and head out across the frosty plains. Just ahead were three running figures that he hoped were his companions ...

He risked a look behind him. Coming up fast were the forces of the Verdant Company, with a figure in a plumed hat leading the charge. Sam shut his eyes tight and hoped the horse knew enough to follow the others in front of it.

Someone blew a hunting horn, and the dogs began to %%%bugle and bay. The noise woke Lumathix from his sleep at the Einian camp, and his keen dragon eyes saw the running figures. With a roar he took to the cloudy, turgid skies.

Hooves pounded on packed earth and salt, and shouts rang out in the dim light. A huge shape blotted out the moon for an instant, too fast for a cloud, then again, circling.

It swooped down, and Sam tensed as he waited for the horse to bolt and run as the reek of dragon washed over them. But the animal held a straight course, even when the dragon came in at a low dive toward them from the front, illuminated awesomely by a brief flicker of lightning.

Fenwick heard Towser shout, "No!" as there was a sudden burst of flame in the twilight. Lumathix blasted fire into the path of the fleeing renegades, and they would surely have been finished had it not been for the properties of the salts. Lumathix, who made his home in the secret high wild places of Goodness, had never seen a salt-desert before, and did not know why Tasmene and Fenwick had carefully kept their fires small, and lit only on large slabs of stone.

Ignited by the exploding-hot dragonfire, the complex chemicals burst into wild blue flames, sweeping across the sands. Lumathix shrilled as the unnatural flames singed even his fireproof skin, and jumped into the air with a great downrush of wings. The fire licked and roared about the hooves of horses and centaur, going too fast to burn yet, then swept back, growing in strength, to threaten the charge of the Company.