his shield making his hand hard, like steel, and that made the other man's head swing around after a sickening crack.
Tor nearly threw up, but kept the fact off his face and out of his voice. He could cry about how evil he was later, right now these men needed to respect him as being in charge. Lacking the thousand years it would probably take to do it properly, fear would have to suffice. The taller Ancient spit out a tooth.
Tor forced a grin and reminded himself he could regrow a tooth. It was the only thing that kept him from sobbing.
“Now, gentlemen, I'm going to ask you some questions, if you don't answer honestly, I'll kill you. I don't want to, since your both family of mine and all, or so you keep claiming, but I will. Or more to the point, I'll have the Royal Guard do it. If I give the order, you die, even as I stand here crying about it. Now, are you ready to answer?” He waited since Burks still seemed groggy.
“What the hell?” The Green man said softly. “Tor? Wha' Why're we tied up?”
The other man spoke then, his words mush, his mouth already swelling up and from the way his jaw set it was probably dislocated now.
“Seems the Green boy isn't as soft as we all figured. Hah! And I always took you for a bit of a wuss Burks. Sorry about that.”
Tor nodded and then hit the man on the other side of the mouth, not as hard this time, because he honestly couldn't bring himself to. As it was he winced when he did it, but hit hard enough to make the man’s head twist the other way.
“Tor. Not Green, not boy and not Burks. Say it again and I'll end you right here. My patience is long gone and I have no reason not to kill you and bury you out in a snow bank to wait for spring.”
“Tor…” Burks said, his voice sounding annoyed. “Let us go, we didn't come to fight, just check on you all. I understand that you may be angry with me at the moment, but Black didn't have anything to do with that, and I didn't hurt you. I know you're a good person and don't want to hurt anyone, so if you could remove the ropes and possibly let us have something to wear?” His voice had gone reasonable fast, as if it were just an ordinary conversation, just a little mix-up.
Dorgal moved forward and looked at the scene.
“Excuse me… why are their two Tor’s? I think I might have missed something here.”
Rolph walked over and set a hand on Dorg's shoulder gently.
“The tied up one is Count Lairdgren, he's an Ancient and Tor is too, except that Tor’s only nineteen. This other man is one too it seems, but I don't know from what land.”
Tor did, “Tellerand. Probably why he keeps trying to act superior to everyone else and is ignoring the real danger around him. Tellerand is built in his image and none of the Ancients seem able to see their own flaws. I know I can't see mine, so it may be a pattern thing. He's blind to any reality but his own most likely.” It was just said to mess with the man a bit, mainly for continuing to call him boy each time he spoke. It was true enough, but annoying. He had a name after all.
Burks cleared his throat, “Correct, Black is from Tellerand and I'm the Ancient of Noram, so if you could be a good man and just loosen these bonds a little?”
Sighing Tor looked at the guards.
“They have two minutes to start talking and telling us the truth or we need to kill them. I'll try to do it myself, but if I fail, they still can't be allowed to go free.” He looked at Wensa, since he knew her best, and more, she knew him.
Nodding she pulled one of the multi sigil weapons, Tor hadn't realized that any of the Royal Guards had them, which made sense, because the one in her hand had a small nick in it near the base. It was Tor's personal weapon from his room. She held it up.
“What's this fifth one do again?” She pointed at the sigil casually.
It was an imploder. Basically it was the opposite of an explosive weapon, but would kill a flesh being instantly. Without even making a mess of the room. Tor explained it carefully so that the men would understand what they faced.
“About a minute left for you to start talking please.” He said, his voice unhurried.
The thing about using a Royal Guard as a threat like this was that sitting Count and Ancient or not, Wensa wouldn't bluff, there'd be no blinking or hesitation either. Black didn't seem impressed.
“You’re going to set a whore on us? Funny how intimidated I am.”
Wensa didn't move, her eyes cold the whole time. Well, it was up to them. All they had to do was talk after all, and tell the truth.
Burks cleared his throat again.
“Well, what do you want to know?” His voice was still calm and reasonable.
That was a good sign, but it didn't get them off the hook totally. Walking around the chair that held his grandfather Tor looked directly into his face.
“Let's start why you betrayed me and Noram and then what you and your Ancient cronies have planned?” Sure, it was a little selfish to ask about his own issues first, but no one bothered to call him on it.
Burks tilted his head.
“Betrayed? I put you to sleep and hid you in a closet. OK, not nice, but it wasn't some huge betrayal either. That's just being over sensitive. Seriously Tor, what kind of betrayal is that?”
“How about treason to start with? You prevented me from telling the King about a threat to the kingdom so that you could help that threat escape. It sounds like a good place to begin. Do you deny that you did it?” Tor didn't sound angry, even to his own ears. No one moved at all though for about half a minute, then the count spoke softly.
“I don't deny it, but it wasn't like that-” He stopped suddenly.
Tor just waited patiently. After half a minute Burks blinked groggily.
“Oh. Sorry, normally when I try to explain things like this I get cut off after the initial admission that I did it, before I get to the reason why. I had to let Denno go, because without him we can't take out the Larval without killing a large amount of innocent Austrans. That and I really want to get to the bottom of who's behind this. Den's not a world conquest kind of person, truth be told. I tried reading him, but I think he caught on and stopped thinking about anything involved in the matter at all. It isn't mind reading… Which you know.” Burks looked back at Tor with that face that was supposed to be the same, but was too pretty by far. Inside his own mind he was ugly though. Tor wondered if the other man still felt the same way, even after thousands of years. It was supposed to be built in after all. Well, the guy had said that was the case, but Tor didn't really trust him right now. It was a problem with lying. Once people found out, everything else you ever said had to be taken with a grain of salt, measured and examined for trickery.
As far as Tor could tell he was telling the truth right now however. If it was a lie, it was more subtle and intricate than he could determine. Of course if he had three thousand years to work on things like that Tor could pull that off too, couldn't he? Maybe with less time than that.
Instead of pushing all that out into the open, he walked around to the other man, who really was looking swollen and uncomfortable. Tor pulled off his healing amulet and activated it, resting it on the man’s forehead.
He screamed. The wounds healed, but so did the ravages of time, which meant each cell repaired itself, and the man's appearance shifted down until he looked about like himself, but in his mid twenties. So his version of extreme longevity was different? That or something had happened to Black along the way that hadn't to Burks or Lara Gray. Tor waited for the knocked out tooth to grow back in and then took the amulet away.
“Alright, what's your place in this then? Why come here and try to attack me? More to the point, why try to do it without weapons? It doesn't make sense. You’re fast, but if it’s just an assassination, it makes sense to come prepared anyway, doesn’t it?” His voice was innocent sounding and the tied man grimaced.
“Screw you.” It wasn't exactly what Tor expected from the head of the most spiritual, and annoying, land on the planet. Maybe praying or sanctions, being told he'd rot in hell for ever when he died, or something from one of the other, more obscure faiths of that place. Instead he growled.
“I didn't attack you, you came at us! All I did was respond to the threat you bastard. We came for a polite visit to check on my friend’s grandson and end up with our asses kicked and tied naked to chairs to humiliate us! I'm not telling you anything you little American cocksucker! Go ahead and kill me, then you'll never know the secret, will you?” Tor had been reading the man the whole time and easily picked up that the secret was a lie. All religion
