Fires That Forge, page 26
part #1 of Lords of Order and Chaos Series
Dunewell called his left arm to respond, but there was no reply save pain from that quarter. Dunewell had to look down at his hand to confirm he still held the dagger in his fist.
He must be stopped.
Dunewell adjusted his grip on the hammer to a hand and a half higher on the shaft. Then he walked calmly forward.
Silas smiled, feeling his energy draining from his side and back rapidly.
“There is still time,” Silas said. “You could leave the wretches of Moras to me. I’ll serve more justice in a week that the Reeve and all his men have served in decades.”
“I cannot let you leave this place,” Dunewell said.
Dunewell quick stepped in and swung the hammer across from right to left. Silas brought his shrou-sheld up to parry and caught the corner of the weapon where the hammer’s head met the shaft. Dunewell pivoted the hammer around the blade and struck Silas with the pommel in his right eye.
Silas’s head rocked and he lost all vision for a moment. Dunewell dropped the head of the hammer in a chop downward then and struck Silas a vicious blow to his right knee. Before the knee had a chance to crumple, Dunewell struck Silas with the pommel once again. This time crushing ribs on that same side.
Silas dropped to his knees under the weight of the blows and the subsequent pain inflicted. A few blinks of his eyes brought back vision in his left eye. His right knee was a bag of glass shards that sliced away at nerve, muscle, and tendon with each pulse of blood that flowed through the limb. The crushed ribs gouged his side with every ragged breath. He was bleeding to death, and quickly.
“You know…”
Silas’s words were cut short by a blow that crushed his left collar bone. His left arm yielded the shrou-sheld involuntarily. Dunewell walked around him to stand in front of Silas again. Dunewell was weeping.
“I cannot let you leave this place.”
Dunewell raised his hammer and Silas sprung to his feet and leapt. The sudden move almost cost Silas his consciousness. When he landed, more than forty yards away, he cried out from the pain. He had not cried out from pain since he was a young child. Now he screamed.
The sound of that scream drove birds from the night sky, caused rats and bugs to scurry for their holes, and chilled the blood of numerous cutmen and murderers in the streets and alleys of Moras.
Dunewell stood stunned by the sudden and incredible feat.
Silas must survive. He wasn’t concerned for his own life, such that it was. He still had vengeance yet to be satisfied. Fortunately, he’d prepared for this possibility. He pulled a steel flask from his waist and downed the potion within. His iron will drove him to stand. With a brief look over his shoulder to Dunewell, Silas fled.
That quick look back broke Dunewell’s paralysis. He pulled the dagger from his unresponsive hand and scabbarded it. Then he tucked that hand into his waistband and burst into a sprint. Dunewell pursued.
Silas drained the rest of the blood, Dyllance’s blood, from the wineskin as he ran. This refreshed him some. His path was clear to him. Silas sprinted for a nearby, single story, stable that backed up against a three-story inn. One leap brought him to the roof of the stable. Three quick strides and he was jumping to the roof of the inn. Traversing the roof of the inn with a speed almost impossible for witnesses to perceive, Silas jumped across the street to land on the fourth-story balcony of a temple. Silas maintained his momentum and bounced from the balcony to the roof of a five-story bank; the Bank of Morosse in fact.
As Silas ran across the roof of the bank, he spared a look behind. Dunewell was no more than twenty yards away and closing with him fast.
Silas downed his head and bent into his run. He sprinted for the corner of the bank roof that overlooked Othlynn’s Square. Silas leapt.
The clothier’s shop on the opposite corner of the plaza was more than eighty yards away. Dunewell closed with him and watched as Silas’s jump fell far short of that mark.
Silas landed hard against the stone of the garden, which had been a well in ancient times, in the center of the square. Cracks raced in all directions from Silas’s point of impact. The few tavern patrons gathered in the area, drinking and enjoying their evening, were stunned into silence.
In that moment Silas looked up to see Dunewell. Silas smiled and Dunewell wept. Then the marble of the ancient well, now a garden, gave way. and Silas, the well, and the garden it held dropped into the black emptiness below.
Dunewell started for him but a scream off to the side stopped him. The street had collapsed in all directions for several yards and two tavern girls, along with an inebriated patron, clung to the edge of the crumbling stone.
Dunewell considered jumping to the street but decided it would likely cause more damage and risk more lives. As quickly as he could, he scrambled down the side of the building. His movements were slowed in that only one arm would serve him.
Dunewell raced to the edge of the developing cavern and offered a hand to the nearest girl. With an ease that shocked all who watched, Dunewell lifted her from the perilous perch and sat her down on the reinforced steps of the tavern porch. In quick succession Dunewell pulled the other girl and a drunken sailor from the edge of the pit. There was a low rumble in the ground beneath them and everyone gathered there took an involuntary step backward.
Dunewell looked to the center of the pit but, even with the aid of Whiteburn, saw no signs of life.
“You there,” came from the end of the street. “You there, hold!”
Dunewell turned to see two watchmen running toward him.
Good men.
Dunewell did the only thing he could. He fled.
Epilogue
Fugitives
Gyllorn, flanked by two guards, burst into his office to investigate the explosion of sound. The blood drained from his face when he saw Dunewell standing next to his iron and steel safe. An iron and steel safe whose door had apparently been ripped free and thrown across the room.
“Was this the dagger she used?” Dunewell asked as he dropped a serrated blade onto Gyllorn’s desk.
“I’m not… I don’t… there’s a warrant for your arrest,” the Lord High Inquisitor finally managed to say.
“No one here will be arresting me today,” Dunewell said. “I found Rugan’s missing ledger in here as well. Care to explain?”
“I’ll explain nothing to the likes…”
Gyllorn was cut short when Dunewell, with one hand, lifted the safe and hurled it. The iron and steel box struck one of the guards with unyielding momentum. The box crushed his breastplate, his ribs, and his spine against the stone wall of Gyllorn’s office.
“Four people have been murdered at your direction,” Dunewell said.
With that, the other guard fled.
“Will you die with your sins confessed?” Dunewell asked. “Or will you just die?”
“You… you’re not… you have a demon!”
Dunewell felt Whiteburn’s smile. A short walk brought Dunewell to Reeve Sevynn’s quarters.
Dunewell walked past the two guards and through the barred doors with ease; having learned how to shift into the ethereal plane. Within he found Reeve Sevynn’s body resting in his chair at his desk. He had to assume it was the Reeve’s body because there was no head attached to it.
On the Reeve’s desk Dunewell noticed a smear of blood with a message written in the same fluid beneath.
“Nana nana, boo boo, we raced and I beat you.”
“Who are you?” Lady Evalynne asked. “Ka! Get in here!”
Lady Evalynne drew a sword she kept close at hand and circled the intruder.
“How did you get past my guard?”
“Good Lady,” Silas said. “Please be at ease. I am your faithful servant, Silas of House Morosse.”
“That is a black lie,” she said. “You look nothing like…”
“Be at ease,” Silas said, smiling. “And please tell your wizard that if he sparks that ring of his I’ll be obliged to pluck and eat another finger from his hand. It is true what they say, you know. The flesh of those castrated at a young age is more tender and tasty.”
“What do you want?”
“Just to confirm our arrangement,” Silas said.
“What arrangement is that?”
“My mistress,” Silas gestured behind Evalynne and she noticed Dru reclining behind her for the first time. “She now rightfully owns and legally possesses House Morosse and all its holdings and assets. I am now Cambrose of House Wellborne of Split Town and you will introduce me as such tonight.”
“What happens tonight?”
“Tonight, you invite all the nobles, Stewards, and Stewardesses of Moras to a party to announce me as your ambassador of trade,” Silas said. “You will also be introducing Stewardess Delilah, the new Stewardess of House Morosse. You haven’t much time, so you should get busy.”
“I’ll have your head…”
“I will feast on your lungs while your heart pumps just enough blood to your starved brain for you to witness the feat!” Silas screamed.
The raw hatred in his words shook the retired pirate/established lady to her core and set her nerves alight with fear.
“Of course, that would be an unpleasantness I would like to avoid,” Silas continued in a calm, diplomatic tone as he brushes a few wrinkles from his waist coat. “I think the party would be a much better idea. Don’t you agree, Mistress?”
“I do.”
Evalynne felt Dru’s breath on her neck as she gently whispered her reply into Evalynne’s ear. The unexpected guests had made the Lady of Moras’s position very clear.
“Now, we have much to do,” Silas continued. “The party should start three hours before the mid of night. We’ll see you there.”
With that they were both gone. Lady Evalynne had seen wizards and mages use their magics to teleport from one place to another. She had never seen anything like this. They were simply there one moment and gone the next. Without word or gesture they disappeared.
Leagues away and more than a furlong underground, Silas followed in Dru’s exact footsteps. He had never seen anything to match the splendor that he now beheld in this underground city of the drow. There existed here a wealth of magic in this huge cavern that he had never dreamed possible. Much of which he only saw thanks to the abilities seized from Shezmu. The expanse of this underground metropolis more than doubled the size of Moras.
The streets were lined with an entire populace of the ebony skinned race. Craftsmen, warriors, wizards, and clerics lined the street. Creatures of all varieties wore the chains of slavery and were pinned thus to their posts of labor here and there.
“That is far enough,” a drow he recognized said.
“A’Ilys,” Silas said. “It is very good to see you.”
“You should be silent now,” A’Ilys said. “You will not speak unless spoken to. I understand in your world you had a name of power. Here the color of your skin makes you abhorrent. Here if you are not drow, you are only property. Despite myself, I like you, Silas of House Morosse. I would hate to have to take your head for an infraction of etiquette.”
“And my mistress, here?” Silas asked.
Dru smiled a delightful and deadly smile.
“Here, as in all the world, I am uniquely powerful.”
Silas, in a rare moment of feigned humility, bowed his head.
“You will take a knee,” A’Ilys said. “You will not look up unless told to do so. If you are asked a question you will not take your eyes from the ground.”
Silas took a knee as did Dru. Silas did not mind averting his eyes for the abilities of Shezmu allowed him to take in everything around him regardless of the direction the orbs in his head pointed.
Moments later a drow who could only be the Queen was carried down the street on the backs of four animated suits of armor. Silas had read of such creations, although none were known to exist in the whole world. Virtually indestructible, these constructs obeyed their master’s, or mistress’s, mental commands without question.
Although Silas was no drow, that did not prevent him from appreciating the beauty and poise of this Queen Jandanero. She rode atop her carried throne in an air of absolute confidence and control.
As she drew close Silas looked up to her and smiled.
“Hello.”
Upon the deck of a ship far out to sea, Dunewell stared at the horizon. He stared toward Moras behind him and wondered what would be before him. He wondered about the spell cast on him by young Erin. He had tried to put that odd affair behind him but his inquisitor’s mind would not let it rest. Why had she charmed me?
“If you remained it would only be a matter of time before you would be forced to make the choice of surrender or kill an innocent,” Ruble said from behind him.
Dunewell nodded. Somewhere, either back there or in a distant land, Silas was at work. Had he been too slow, or had it been a lack of conviction? Dunewell was unsure. The one thing he was sure of now was that when he found his brother again, and he would find him, he would not hesitate.
“Well,” Dunewell said. “We are at sea with men that you trust. I have placed my life in your hands, and you have saved it. May I know where we’re going or what your plans are?”
“There will be time for all of that, Lord of Order,” Ruble said.
“Then perhaps your real name?”
“Jonas.”
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About The Author
R. J. Hanson
RJ Hanson has been a cop for over two decades. In that time, he accumulated a number of real-world experiences that have served to give him a unique understanding of the human condition and a perspective that gives his writing an honest grit. He has also benefited from years of training ranging from interview and interrogation techniques to hand to hand combat to SWAT tactics. RJ is a certified Firearms Instructor and Linguistic Statement Analyst. He currently serves as a Lieutenant in the Criminal Investigations Division of a small Texas police department where he specializes in crimes against persons.
In his youth he worked as a cowboy having grown up on a small ranch in north Texas. At the age of 16 he was selected for the TAMS (Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science) project at the University of North Texas where his young eyes were opened to the world.
In his spare time, RJ has studied medieval combat and military tactics as well as arms and armaments of various cultures and times.
RJ and his wife, Michelle, live on a small ranch where they maintain a modest heard of cattle, two dogs, a variety of barn cats, a peacock named Henry and a peahen named Margaret (aka Ferd).
Books By This Author
Roland's Path
When two spies escape during young Roland’s watch, they begin a chain of events not intended by Fate that may threaten a kingdom. Roland is driven by his shame to take up his axes and track them down. Raised on the rural edges of Gallhallad, can he survive the dangers of the road ahead? Can his ideals of right and wrong weather the complexities of the path before him?
With the help of his lifelong friend Eldryn, the Cavalier hopeful, and an uneasy bargain with a dagger wielding cutpurse, Roland pursues a wizard of unknown powers and a woman of uncommon beauty and deadly skill.
Will Roland’s vanity not only doom him, but his friends and a king he hoped to one day serve as well?
In Roland’s world of Stratvs, vanity has a high price. A price paid with the blood of the innocent and the guilty. Around him, swords once pledged to justice rust on the altars of the self-righteous.
“Hanson’s very visceral writing style captures the breathtaking excitement, terror, and wonder of fantasy adventure…” – Jon Black (award-winning author of the novel Bel Nemeton)
Roland's Vow
The Warlock of the Marshes is a man marked and cursed by a past of horrible deeds. Will Roland hear his plea? Can Roland trust the daughter of such a man, or will his own desires betray his reason?Roland and Eldryn take to the seas of Stratvs, alongside their new Slandik friends, and discover an exotic city that exists in the shadow of harsh laws and savage practices. Lavon is home to every type of trade and pleasure. However, such riches place its very soul in peril.In the distant land of Lawrec, Roland will face trials that will test not only his physical strength, but his own code of honor as well. Roland’s constitution continues to be forged as he struggles against the evils of the world and his own pride. But will his efforts be enough to save a land besieged by raiding armies and a people starved of hope?Join Roland as he takes Swift Blood in hand to battle pirates, fallen champions, and worse. Roland’s quest to earn his father’s approval continues in Roland’s Vow, Book II of the Heirs of Vanity series.
Roland's Triumph
An unseen evil gathers just beyond perception. In the quiet mornings jaundiced eyes peer out from imagined shadows. Daeriv’s forces have withdrawn, but his pall touch still lurks in Lawrec. Its presence stirs Roland’s every nerve. Will he understand its nature before it’s too late?Roland faces a choice. He struggles to fulfill two vows, one to his lord and another to his betrothed. Will he ignore the wisdom offered by his father? If he does, what will it cost?An army that curses the very ground it walks upon puts the future of Lawrec at stake and threatens a bloodline. How does a knight weigh the life of a single child against the possible desolation of thousands of families?Bound by his struggle between oaths, Roland may fail to see Claire’s own dilemma. As she risks what may be fatal rejection, will her love for Roland be enough to see them through?Roland’s journey continues in Roland’s Triumph, the third book of the Heirs of Vanity Series.
