stalked and killed a wolf that had been preying on the local herd. Shiv followed after her, rarely speaking, but intently watching.
“I’ll start toward Telvan tomorrow,” Risana announced one evening.
Shiv growled. “There are Dark Knights there.”
“I guess you would know.” Again the telling words. “But I need some clothes. These can’t stand up to many more washings.”
He knew he could find the Dark Knight commander there, or someone else of authority, and that he could collect his fee simply by marching her into the camp.
“I’ll lead the way,” he said.
It was shortly before sunset, two days later, that the tall buildings in Telvan appeared in the distance and another band of assassins struck.
This time Shiv caught their intake of breath from around a sharp bend in the trail in front of him. The assassins were using the spires and overhangs for cover. He drew his knives and spun around the bend, jamming the blades deep into the stomach of a man he knew well, one he’d trained himself years ago.
“Risana is my contract,” Shiv said, half under his breath.
The man collapsed, his weight taking Shiv down with him. As Shiv struggled in a failed attempt to pull the blades free and to get out from under the corpse, he heard Risana drawing her sword behind him. She stepped around him and his fallen foe, quickly engaging her own target Shiv finally pushed the body off. It rolled down the side of the mountain, with his twin knives protruding from it
“Ah, thank the vanished gods for this!” Shiv retrieved his onetime student’s dropped short sword.
A few yards away, Risana was exchanging blows with a pair of Dark Knights.
“Given up on assassins, have they?”
Shiv watched her for a moment, noting with admiration that she had some skill with a blade, but her two opponents were gradually wearing her down.
“Time to share, Rish!” Shiv called, as he pressed by her and engaged the shorter but bulkier of the two men. The Knight he fought was strong, his swings forcing Shiv back. Shiv spun to his right, the Dark Knight following him, then he pivoted to the left and entangled the Knight’s legs. Pressing the attack, he rained blow after blow on the man, one finally biting into the chainmail gusset of his armor between the shoulder and breastplates. The Knight dropped his sword. Shiv kicked and sent him to his knees, knowing the man was dying.
Shiv whirled to see how Risana was faring. She was parrying her foe’s repeated strikes. Her wide charcoal eyes were unblinking. A corner of her mouth turned up as she shifted her weight and became the aggressor, varying her swings and forcing the Dark Knight to back up.
Shiv watched in admiration as she increased the tempo. Unarmored, she was more agile than the Knight, and within the span of several minutes she had her foe gasping for breath. She made quick work of the man now, wresting his blade from him with one fierce swing, then thrusting her sword into a gap between his plates.
She jumped back as he fell, then leaped forward and over the dead knight, charging along the narrow trail straight toward Shiv.
“Shiv!” she cried. “Move!”
Shiv turned as she raced past, following her movements in horror as he saw the Knight he thought he’d killed back up on his feet, his arm drawn back to hurl a dagger.
The metal caught the sun as the dagger flew deep into Risana’s abdomen.
“No!” Shiv stared in disbelief as she fell, sword clattering on the path.
The Dark Knight was unsteady, blood flowing down his breastplate. Still, he refused to die, drawing another dagger from a band at his waist, taking aim at Shiv this time. The master assassin stood frozen. Then he saw a bloodied dagger fly over the Knight’s head. Risana had tugged the weapon free and sent it back.
The bad throw was enough to distract the Knight. Shiv plunged in, ramming his borrowed short sword into the knight’s chestplate, cracking the armor and lodging it deep in the man’s chest.
“Rish!” Shiv hurried to Risana’s side. For an instant he considered doing nothing, waiting for her death to come and hiding her body, collecting his pay. Instead, he found himself groping for her pouch that held herbs and powders. He’d become knowledgeable at using them just by watching her, but he didn’t know how to treat such a serious wound. “Tell me what to do. What do I use, Rish? Tell me! What can I do?”
She stared at him a moment, doe eyes meeting his worried and confused ones, lips faintly smiling. He bent close, turned his ear so he could hear her.
“Maybe they’ll think I’m dead and stop sending assassins,” she mused.
It was spring, and the snow had started to melt on the slopes. Shiv was walking behind her, listening to her cloak flutter in the breeze and enjoying the scent of the pale purple flowers that were poking through the snow here and there.
“Maybe,” Shiv said after several moments. “Maybe they’ll think I’m dead, too.” We make quite a pair, he thought, a former Solamnic Knight and an old assassin.
“A pair of deserters,” Risana said, as if she’d heard what he’d been thinking.
Shiv looked over his shoulder, studying the spires and overhangs, watching for out-of-place shadows and the glint of steel.
They were heading north, to a string of villages that were being visited by a bothersome pox. There would be herbs to gather along the way, their healing pouches to be refilled, roofs to be repaired, fences to be mended…
Shiv knew an old man’s luck would not last forever. What mattered to him now was how long hers would hold out. He realized now he’d become undone that first night he saw her, when he peered through the crack in the shuttered window and watched the firelight dance across her selfless, determined face. He had a new contract now, one he’d made with himself-he would protect her as long as he could.
“Till my last breath,” he said as he walked.
Hunger
Richard A. Knaak
“Massster Brudasss! Massster Brudasss! May I beg of you leave to enter?”
Brudas looked up from his work, barely containing the rage that had swelled up the moment the irritating voice of the Baaz had grated on his sensitive ears. If he could have fulfilled this mission without the aid of the lowest of all draconian kind, he would have done so, but that would have meant muddying his hands himself- something the Bozak would only do for his mistress, the great black dragon Sable. Digging in swampy mud was definitely work for Baaz, and they were welcome to it.
“Enter, you fool!” Brudas snapped, eager to get on with his own responsibilities.
He and a trio of Baaz had come to the half-sunken ruins of the city of Krolus on a quest for their mistress. Sable had come across scraps of information that led her to believe that some powerful relics, including those created by a dark wizard of the Third Age known for his trafficking with the undead, still lay buried somewhere in the heart of the old kingdom. In the past, her minions had comhed the devastated area for such items without success. Brudas, however, hoped to change that. He had uncovered old scrolls that hinted of places missed hy his hapless predecessors and had convinced the black dragon to let him lead this latest hunt for the elusive artifacts.
Success would further the draconian’s own ambitions. Of course, at the time he volunteered, he had not considered that there was no more stench-infested, waterlogged region in all the overlord’s domain than this one.
Bowing as he entered, the Baaz hurried to the bench and table where his superior sat glaring at him. He quickly fell to one knee. Brudas eyed the newcomer with distaste. Baaz were the least of the draconian races, a far cry below the elegant Auraks Brudas so admired and emulated, and certainly not nearly advanced as the Bozaks, of
