Blood Ties

  “You call that a plan?”

  “It beats blowing yourself to bits.”

  “Not by much,” she said dubiously.

  “Come on,” I said, not wanting to hear any more. “This is getting us nowhere, and while we’re arguing, the Half-breeds are moving somewhere through the woods, bearing down on Blackholm. Clash! Lunch break’s over!”

  Moments later, we were once more on horseback and pounding down the road toward Blackholm.

  The gnome had remained oddly silent during the trip thus far. He continued so as we continued down the path. I wasn’t sure why, but I was hardly prepared to knock it.

  I kept imagining that, in the near distance, I was hearing the Half-breeds as they made their way through the forest. I even kept worrying that they would, at some point, leap out directly in front of us, or drop down from overhead, knock us to the ground, tear into us before we had a chance to fight back. But nothing did assault us, and if I was hearing their cries from the distant woods or whether it was just my imagination, I would never really know.

  We kept riding hard, and soon we were drawing within sight of Blackholm. I had no idea of what we were going to find. I hoped it was something that played to our advantage.

  The wall still appeared intact, so I supposed that was something. We rode around to the great gate, and I was pleased to see that it had been repaired. That would be an invaluable asset.

  I had to think that we had gotten there before the onslaught of the Half-breeds because all sounded relatively quiet within. I had no idea whether we were going to be dealing purely with Droogan’s men or if the townsfolk were still alive as well. Then I realized that we, in fact, did have a way of finding out.

  “Can you get up there?” I said to the gnome. “Do some reconnoitering?”

  “Some what now?”

  I blew air impatiently through my lips. “Look around and see if the place looks like it’s nothing but Droogan’s men, or if the people who lived there before are still living there, or even living at all.”

  “Ah. Got it,” said the gnome. “Stay here. Be right back.”

  We were positioned at a far corner of the wall. The gnome vaulted off Clash’s back and latched onto the surface of the wall with his fingers or claws or whatever it was that he had that enabled him to climb so adroitly. In no time at all, he scampered up the side of the wall, achieved the top, and dropped out of sight onto the other side.

  “He can be handy to have around,” Page was forced to admit. “How did you meet up with such an odd traveling companion?”

  “I told you. He saved my life. He gave me warning of some hobbes that were creeping up on me. If he hadn’t, they’d have had me cold.”

  “And since then he’s been tagging along?”

  “Mostly so that he could insult me with impunity, yes.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and there was actually a trace of whimsy in her voice. “I think he’s come to like you. He seems anxious to serve you.”

  “He just has some gripes with humanity. If you actually take the time to listen to him and even be sympathetic, he’s really not so bad.”

  A few more minutes passed, and the gnome appeared at the top of the wall and made his way down so quickly that it almost seemed that he was falling. Yet he managed to slow himself just enough that he landed noiselessly on the ground in front of us.

  “Droogan’s forces aren’t there,” said the gnome.

  “They’re not?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “But I thought they took over—”

  “They did,” the gnome told us. “But then Bowerstone royal forces showed up. Apparently they caught wind of what was happening and didn’t want this Droogan fool getting even so much as a toehold here. As soon as Droogan’s hired idiots saw that real men with real guns and real ready to use them were marching toward them, they abandoned the place.”

  “They told you all this?”

  “No. I heard them singing drunken, self-congratulatory songs about all this. You humans are certainly huge fans of singing your own praises.”

  “But that’s fantastic!” I said, my spirits buoyed. “Page, did you hear that?”

  “Every word. It almost seems too good to be true.”

  The warning was right there in her words, but I took no heed of them because I was so excited by the prospect that we had finally caught a break.

  The gnome chucked a thumb toward the gate. I could see that it was starting to open wide, welcoming us in.

  “Excellent!” My heart was racing with anticipation as I wheeled Clash around and sent him running toward the inviting gate.

  “Finn, hold on,” Page was saying, “maybe you should wait a moment and double-check—”

  I didn’t listen to her. I had heard what I had wanted to hear, accepted the best-case scenario blindly.

  We rode through the open gate.

  The instant we did, figures came at us from both sides, grabbing Page and me and hauling us off Clash. The horse whinnied and bucked, but someone grabbed him by the reins and quickly gained control of him.

  I lost track of Page as I was slammed to the ground, all the wind knocked out of me. I looked up in confusion, the world spinning in front of me, and I saw a very familiar face leering down at me.

  It was Trevor. Trevor, the mercenary who was missing both a left arm and any sense of humor about my doing things like making off with one of their best horses.

  Chapter 16

  Sacrifices

  AS TREVOR LOOMED OVER ME, HE spoke, and his foul breath washed up and through my nose as if mounting a frontal assault. “So it’s himself, the great Ben Finn, is it?” he said. “Delivering himself right to us like a great big birthday gift.”

  “Is it your birthday?” I managed to gasp out. “Because if so, I need to go back out and shop.”

  The air was still knocked out of me, and I was able to offer only token resistance as they grabbed my weapons.

  Page, as it turned out, was providing a significantly more impressive account of herself. As near as I could tell, they had never actually gotten a firm grip on her, and she had managed to fight herself loose before they could reapply it. She was standing with determination, her back against the wall—literally—and she had her sword out and was whipping it threateningly back and forth. One of the approaching men tried to engage her. She knocked his sword out of his hand in three quick moves, then kicked him in the crotch for good measure, doubling him over and eliciting a crunching noise that caused every man witnessing it to say, “Ooooo,” and wince in sympathy. After that display, no one was quick to be the next one to the attack.

  I looked around, getting the lay of the land for the first time, to see where the supposed troops of our illustrious leader were. There were none to be seen. I did spy, however, Trevor and also Baron and the rest of that crew, along with a goodly number of men whom I didn’t recognize. They were all wearing the black colorings and crests of Warlord Droogan. Unable to keep the disappointment out of my voice, I said, “Seriously? You signed on with Droogan’s lot? After all the things you said?”

  “He came up with decent money,” said Baron. “Sorry, Finn, but we go where the money is.”

  “A loan from Reaver, no doubt.”

  “Don’t care about money’s sources,” said Trevor as, even with one hand, he was able to haul me to my feet. “Just its spendability. Oh, and I also care when someone robs me of my property.”

  “How about your lives? You care about that?” I said.

  “What, you’re threatening me now?” Trevor said with a sneer.

  “No, I—”

  Apparently getting me to my feet was simply to give him a better angle so that he could knock me off them. He slammed his fist into the side of my head and sent me flat to the ground again. I lay there for a moment, trying to stop the world from spinning. Then I spotted, perched nearby, out of sight of the others but more than obvious to me, the gnome. The little cretin. He’d know
n exactly the reception we’d get, and yet he’d fabricated precisely what I’d wanted to hear so that I’d go riding blithely right into it. I thought he’d changed, but that was what he wanted me to think. He was still as anxious to see me die as he had ever been; he’d just been more creative in finding a way to bring that about.

  I didn’t know whom to feel more disappointed with: the gnome because I thought he was changing and growing, or me because I’d been naïve enough to fall for it.

  “Shut up and listen!” Page called. She was continuing to keep her sword between herself and her would-be assailants. We had to convince them quickly of the severity of the situation because sooner or later, someone was simply going to take a gun and shoot Page from twenty feet away. “Everyone here is in great danger!”

  “What, from you?” said Trevor with a sneer.

  “The Half-breeds,” I said. Putting my palms flat against the ground, I managed to push myself up to standing once more. It’s difficult to make your case for something when you’re lying facedown in the dirt. “Reaver’s half-man, halfanimal creatures. They’re on the way here.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You’re talking rubbish!” Trevor drew back his hand to knock me over again.

  The blow didn’t fall. Instead, Baron caught his wrist. Trevor looked at him in surprise.

  “Let him speak,” said Baron. “We’ve fought beside the man in the past. He’s earned that much.”

  “He’s earned a quick death rather than a slow one if he’s earned anything at all,” said Trevor. “But fine if it’ll shut you up.”

  Baron tentatively released Trevor’s wrist. I looked around the town square, and all I saw were men working for Droogan . . .

  No. No, I was wrong. There they were. Citizens of Blackholm, peering out fearfully through windows of their homes. “You let the people here live,” I said to Baron. “That’s great.”

  Trevor spoke before Baron could. “We’re not wholesale slaughterers, no matter what you may think of us. Yes, the civilians stayed. They work for us. Bring us what we need, act as our servants. Entertain us.” And he chortled in an ugly manner that made me want to pick up my gun and put a bullet in his brain.

  But there was no time for that.

  “Reaver,” I said, “has lost control of his Half-breeds. They’re out, they’re even more animalistic than before, and they’re coming here because apparently this was the last place they had been sent to overrun. Their most recent mission is embedded in their brains, and they’re determined to complete it.”

  Droogan’s men looked at each other in uncertainty. They seemed to have forgotten Page entirely, distracted by this new and disconcerting piece of information.

  One of them said, “Even if that’s true—”

  “It’s not. He’s lying,” Trevor said. “That’s what he does. He says whatever’s convenient for him . . .”

  “But let’s say that it is,” insisted the other man. “Even if they came here, we work for the warlord who hired them in the first place. So we’re all on the same side. The townspeople, they’re well and truly screwed.” And this prompted some laughter from the other men. “But not us.”

  “The Half-breeds aren’t going to distinguish,” Page spoke up. “Reaver was quite clear about that. They’ll tear into whoever’s still here, and once they’re done with that, they’re going to keep on going and spread out through the countryside, leaving destruction in their wake.”

  “It’s a miracle that we got here ahead of them,” I said. “You can thank Clash for that. But we have hours at best, and minutes at worst, before they come swarming over the walls.”

  “That’s . . . that’s ridiculous,” said one man, who stepped forward and, from the way the others were looking at him, had a good deal of authority. “If that were happening, then Warlord Droogan would be here to tell us that himself.”

  “Worked with him a long time, have you, General?” I said.

  “ ‘Captain’ will do, and yes, I have,” said the captain defiantly.

  “All right, then. If you know him—if you really know him, as you claim to, rather than just holding to some idealized vision of what he is—then which do you honestly think is the most likely? That upon learning from Reaver the seriousness of the situation, he would hasten here, hoping to get ahead of the oncoming wave of slaughter, so that he could die at your side? Or that he would accept Reaver’s offer to remain as a guest in his fabulous mansion until such time as this entire ‘unpleasantness’ blows over? Which sounds more like him, eh? Honestly?”

  I had partly expected the captain to dismiss the disparagement of his warlord out of hand. Instead, he actually seemed to be considering both possibilities quite thoroughly. It had suddenly become deathly quiet in the town square, all eyes on the captain, curious to see what he would say.

  He came to a conclusion.

  “That bastard,” he said.

  Apparently, he’d come to the right conclusion.

  He was looking around, his eyes narrowed, and I could guess what was going through his mind. I spoke up quickly in order to nip it in the bud. “Running away isn’t going to help,” I said. “I mean, you could do it, yes. And the Half-breeds will come tearing through here, and you’ll be gone. But if they find little to no resistance, they’ll just keep right on going, like a horde of locusts. If you don’t stop them here and now, the damage they’ll inflict beyond this place will be incalculable. And they’ll catch up with you, sooner or later. We’re talking about creatures with human cunning and the viciousness of balverines. You really want them roaming the countryside, hot on whatever scent they happen to pick up on once they come rolling through here?”

  Trevor kept looking from the captain to me and back. “You’re . . .” he finally managed to get out to the captain,

  “you’re not actually thinking of listening to him, are you?”

  Apparently, the captain actually was. He was a broadly built, intelligent-looking man with a bristling red beard. He raised his voice, and said, “Man the parapets! Hurry up! I don’t know how much time we have, but I’ve seen these things in action. I was there for one of Reaver’s demonstrations in the arena. Once they get going, there’s no mercy in them.”

  “You’re going to need all hands,” Page said, seizing the opportunity. “Shouldn’t the villagers have the right to battle for their lives as much as you?”

  “She’s right,” Baron said.

  “She’s not right!” Trevor protested. “We conquered these half-wits. Put guns in their hands, and they’re as like to shoot at us as anything else!”

  “Gather them together. Let me talk to them. You’ll be allies by the time I’m done, trust me on that,” I said hurriedly, addressing the captain and ignoring Trevor.

  The captain nodded once, then pointed at Trevor. “You. One arm. Make sure it gets done.”

  “But—!”

  Clearly in no mood to be questioned, the captain said angrily, “If the man’s lying, we’ll find out soon enough, and he’ll pay for it. If we assume he’s lying, and it turns out he’s not, well . . . do you want to die later or die right now?” His hand hovered around the pistol in his belt.

  Without further word of protest, even though he was clearly burned by the order, Trevor gestured wordlessly for Baron and some of the others to follow him, and he set out across the square.

  Minutes later, all of the townspeople had been gathered in the square. A number of the warlord’s men were standing around them in a half circle, including the captain. The citizens were eyeing the warlord’s men warily, but then a number of them spotted me and quickly word passed among them. I was relieved to see that Russell was among the survivors. His eyes widened, and a grin split his face when he looked upon me. Many of the other men who had fought alongside me on the battlements were there as well although they looked downtrodden and frustrated.

  Immediately, there were excited murmurings spreading through the crowd. I put up my hands to silence them. Page w
as standing next to me, watching me with interest. I think she was curious to hear what I was going to say.

  “We’re about to be under attack,” I said. “You’ll notice the men already taking stations around the battlements. If some of them look apprehensive, it’s natural that they do, because it’s the beast-men who are returning. You remember them, I take it.”

  The terrified expressions on the faces of the citizens were all the proof I needed that they most certainly did remember them. “These men,” I continued, “are out to defend this town from being destroyed by the beast-men, which I assure you is what they most definitely want to do. But there are not enough men here, not nearly enough. I need every one of you who can wield a gun with any accuracy—whether you fought earlier on the battlements beside me, or simply now want to fight for a chance to survive—ready to fight alongside these men.”

  “They’ll give us guns?” said Russell.

  “There are armaments aplenty,” said the captain. “But I have to know that you’re not going to try and avenge yourself on my men for taking over this town on the orders of the warlord.”

  “It doesn’t seem an unreasonable concern,” I said. “Some people will elevate fulfilling grudges above their own best interests.”

  There were uncertain looks among the townspeople, then Russell stepped forward, his shoulders squared, and when he spoke, he reminded me very much of his father. It was the first time I could recall that being the case.

  “We wish to fight for our town,” he said to the captain. “And your men want to fight for their lives. Where our interests intersect, I don’t see any reason that we shouldn’t be battling side by side for our mutual interests.”

  I saw the others nodding slowly in agreement and immediately looked over toward the captain to see his reaction.

  He didn’t hesitate. In a loud voice, he called out to his own men, “Get them armed! Hurry it up!” Then, as his men hastened to do his bidding, he strode over to me. He held a warning finger up in my face. “If this turns out to be some sort of massive hoax on your part . . . an attempt to get these people armed so that they can try to fight back—”