The Dragon's Prize Page 10

  “You can’t win, human.” He advanced a menacing step. “One mistake and you die. One mistake and I’m fine.” He laughed.

  “You’re right. I guess I shouldn’t make any mistakes.” Sandra turned and ran back toward the camp.

  She had an idea.

  The troll was right on her heels as she ran, clawed fingers swiping at her and twice nearly clawing deep furrows into her back. She managed to stay just far enough ahead of the beast that it didn’t catch her, and as she went past the loot pile she skidded to her knees and swept the glowing sword into her hands. Her knees howled in pain at the treatment, but she ignored them and surged back to her feet and turned.

  She expected to be fending off a renewed attack, but the troll was looking instead at the fire.

  “My brother!”

  The troll’s brother had a giant hole burned through his body, right where his organs should be, and wasn’t moving.

  Dead?

  She hoped so.

  “My brother! Murderer!” The troll turned an enraged face toward her.

  She didn’t give him the chance to attack. She launched forward with the sword, starting a vicious and forceful combination. She slashed across the troll’s arm, stabbed his leg and slashed up his chest. He howled in pain and backed up a step.

  She came again, slashing and stabbing, sending great gouts of green blood flying through the air. Some of the caustic, foul-smelling stuff landed on her face, but she didn’t flinch. She pressed forward, not letting up.

  The troll had no choice. He retreated. Blood poured from his wounds, and though they knit back together almost instantly, she gave him new ones just as fast. When he tried to press forward or counter, she would punch him in the abdomen. He was just at the right height that she could hit his kidneys and bladder without aiming too high or too low. While he did a decent job at protecting the area from her sword arm, he wasn’t as careful about her unarmed hand.

  When he tried to sidestep, she stamped hard on his instep and punished him with deeper wounds to the torso.

  “You’re a demon!” His shout was part rage, part fear and part pain as she continued to drive him backward. Sandra grit her teeth and said nothing.

  They left the circle of firelight, then they started to stumble through the brush. Sandra kept coming, screaming and slashing and pressing forward as if her life depended on it.

  Well, it did.

  Ka-chunk.

  The whole forest split with the sound of the trap. Sandra leapt backward. The troll, suddenly left with no one to fight, looked confused. Then eight wooden stakes blasted through his body. They speared his legs, immobilized his arms and pierced his torso.

  His screams of pain made the woods vibrate, and Sandra clapped her hands to her ears against the sound. They did not, however, free him.

  He tried to struggle. He tried to shake himself loose of the stakes, and eventually, he might succeed. At the moment, he couldn’t quite get the momentum needed to do much more than wiggle. They pierced him at so many angles that there was no way for him to get free.

  Good.

  “Hungry?” Sandra walked toward him, her voice cold and level.

  “What?” The troll growled and surged against the stakes. They shook. They held.

  “I said: hungry? You were earlier.”

  “You’ll die for this!”

  “I have something for you.” Sandra pulled a small flask out of a pocket. They’d done a terrible job at searching her. “Looks tasty.”

  “What?” The troll, suddenly curious, squinted at the flask. “Wait! No!”

  Acid.

  Sandra walked up to him and dunked the acid flask into his open mouth. He immediately stopped screaming and locked his jaws open. The flask teetered at the back of his mouth, and he worked his tongue to spit it out.

  Sandra stabbed her sword upward through the soft part in the middle of his jaw. Blood and fragments of glass burst all around her, but it had the intended effect. The troll swallowed. Hard.

  Yellow smoke started to pour out of his nostrils, then between his teeth, then out of the hole appearing in his throat.

  He started to struggle again, so hard that Sandra was thrown away from him with her sword still wedged in his mouth. She somersaulted with the impact, but stayed in a crouch. If he managed to escape, she could make a quick getaway from there.

  It didn’t look like he would.

  The hole spread to the top of his chest, then got wider as the acid worked its way down his esophagus and into his digestive tract.

  The struggles died off quickly, replaced by a horrid choking gasp. Then nothing.

  He fell limp against the stakes, leaking thick blood into the dirt. Killed by his own trap. Sandra eventually stood up and moved toward him. He didn’t move. She kicked his leg experimentally.

  Nothing.

  Excellent.

  She pulled the sword out of his mouth, which caused the lower half of his jaw to fall wetly to the ground. The acid burned away even the bone connecting the two halves together. She considered the bloody mess, then in one swift blow severed his neck. The head came free easily, falling to the ground and rolling to her feet. She grabbed a grubby lock of hair, pick it up, and headed back to the camp.

  When she returned to Velmar, she would need proof.

  Would she? What was the mayor’s game? The trolls said they were working with him… too bad they didn’t reveal their secrets before she killed them. If she’d been thinking more clearly, she would have asked about that.

  It seemed pretty clear, though. The mayor used the threat of trolls to extort more taxes from his people, growing richer and fatter while they withered and died under the twin threat of trolls and taxes. And, with the trolls in his pockets, he could make sure no one actually stopped them.

  Like her.

  Wait.

  Mira was with him! She was going to wait at his house for Sandra to return. Panic, which she hadn’t felt while fighting the trolls, welled up and blossomed with sick certainty in her stomach. Mira was in grave danger because of her…

  Well, that was unfair. If Mira came troll hunting, she might be dead by now. She might still be dead…

  Sandra lopped off the head of the first troll as well, then threw both into a large sack that whoever was wearing the plate armor had with them. Now that she was closer to it, the plate was covered in fine etching and religious iconography. Probably a paladin.

  A dead paladin.

  Sandra closed her eyes for a moment of silence. This was a brave soul who’d sought to end this evil, and treachery brought them low. This was nearly her.

  She burst back to action a moment later. Given the trolls’ predilection for eating interlopers, she didn’t think she would find a body to bury, and as sacrilegious as it might be, she needed some of the equipment the paladin had. So, she had nothing to bury, and she had every reason to hurry.

  Besides the sword, the paladin had some decent equipment. Sandra scavenged two cure moderate wounds potion, some magical gloves, twelve thunderstones and half a dozen cure minor wounds potions.

  “What?” She held up one of the cure minors, turning it this way and that. “Why?” A cup of her spit had almost more magic in it than a cure minor potion, it boggled her mind why anyone would have so many.

  Then again… now that she was holding them up, her wrists were somewhat the worse for wear. The skin was rubbed raw from where it was tied to the stake and there were bruises from the ungentle bindings. And, she felt bruised everywhere. Her chest, her legs, her arms… they obviously had not been nice while removing her armor.

  She threw back her head and downed the cure minor potion in one gulp. It tingled on her tongue, and she immediately felt better. The pain of the bruises lost its edge, her purple wrists turned a more pleasant flesh color, and in general she felt like she’d had a good night’s rest.

  “Oh!” In addition to the healed wounds, she had her energy back. Fighting the trolls was tiring, but now she felt lik
e she could run through the streets of the capital and fence with a dozen guards. That was why he had them!

  With the renewed burst of speed, she stashed the paladin’s equipment that she could take with her, then set about getting her own back.

  Most of her knives, daggers and her short sword were still available. She retrieved her sword from the burnt troll’s body, wiped it off on the ground and sheathed it. She tied the paladin’s sword to her waist. She had no particular personal attachment to her own weapon, and the paladin’s was clearly better: cleaner balance, sharper blade and the subtle benefit of magic.

  The armor was more troublesome. To put it all on would take almost an hour, especially if she wanted to borrow the paladin’s plate.

  Did Mira have that long?

  How long had Sandra been unconscious?

  No answers were forthcoming, and the only ones who could possibly help were dead.

  She settled for unbuckling the paladin’s breastplate and strapping that on, then grabbed her chain gloves and set off at a run while putting them on. The breastplate was heavier than her chain shirt, but overall she was wearing far less metal than she normally did and the woods seemed to fly by. She took the same path she’d taken into the camp, relying on her familiarity with the route to help her avoid the traps. If she hit one of them at a run…

  Best not to think about that.

  “I’m coming, Mira.”

  *

  Sandra dimmed her torch just out of sight of Velmar and approached the city with caution. It was getting close to midnight and the only lights for miles were the ones burning at the top of the city walls. Above the moon might be shining, but the thick foliage of the trees blocked it out and left the ground in inky darkness.

  She was expecting the towers to be less well-defended than before, but she was wrong. Each of the sixteen towers still had two guards on them. One held a torch and looked out into the darkness (stupid!) while the other lounged. Every ten minutes or so, they would switch.

  Sandra couldn’t imagine anyone doing something so…

  On the other hand, she realized that they weren’t really guarding against anything. The trolls were working for the mayor, and with trolls around there would be no other predators daring enough to intrude on their territory. Which meant that the guards could do whatever they wanted and events would always play out exactly as they wanted them to.

  Not tonight.

  During a shift change, Sandra bolted across the open space between the edge of the forest and the town’s wall. She left the bag of troll heads in the hollow of a dying tree so they wouldn’t weigh her down; they might be important later. Not now.

  She reached the base of a corner tower while the guard with the torch was still adjusting his eyes to the bright light, and climbed as fast as she could. If the guard was really looking, he might be able to see her until she was just under the lip of the crenellation. It was a chance she’d have to take.

  “They got a new delicacy at the mayor’s house, didja hear?” The lounging guard had a deep, slow voice. He sounded tired. Good.

  “No! What?”

  “Butter wrapped in bacon!”

  “No! You can’t do that!”

  “You can. And they did. And it’s delicious.”

  “I’ll bet… yum… I can just imagine it now.”

  They both lapsed into silence. In that silence, Sandra lobbed a thunderstone through one of the arrow slits in the tower.

  BOOM!

  The tower shook briefly with the noise of the stone activating when it hit the wooden stairwell inside the tower. Both of the guards perked up.

  “What was that?”

  “Sounded like it came from below! Maybe… maybe the trolls decided they aren’t on our side anymore?”

  “No…”

  “You better go check it out.”

  “Fine!” The lounging guard sounded less slow now, more’s the pity. He was the one to head down the stairs looking for whatever made that noise. Sandra heard him draw his sword as he cautiously proceeded down into the tower.

  Once he was far enough down the stairs that he was out of view of the top of the tower, Sandra surged up over the edge of the wall.

  The guard with the torch looked shocked to see her charge across the empty space between him and the wilderness, and nearly cried out. Sandra shoved a mailed hand directly into his mouth, blocking the sound, and shoved her sword directly into his throat. His shout turned to a burble of pain and blood instead. Bright splashes of it covered Sandra’s face and hand, but she didn’t flinch. She just held him, one hand gripping his lower jaw, the other gripping the sword, while he died. He pawed at the front of her armor, then tried to draw his own sword, but he had no strength. It left him in quick, bloody gushes. It spurted across his killer.

  Finally, he slumped in Sandra’s grasp. She lowered him gently, quietly, to the ground.

  “Well! I don’t see anything!” The guard in the tower shouted up at her. He wasn’t even halfway down!

  Sandra approached the top of the stairs and waited with her sword raised high in the air, tip pointed downward. Both hands on the pummel.

  “I guess I’ll just come back up.”

  …

  “Okay, fine, don’t answer me!”

  …

  “You investigate the strange noise next time, why don’t you?” The guard’s heavy booted feet echoed on the tower stairs as he climbed back up. Slowly. Too slowly. Sandra needed to be off the tower before anyone noticed her. The other guards might not be paying much attention, but they would eventually notice that the torch was dimmer now.

  Right?

  Finally the man’s head came into view, directly below her.

  “Hey there!” She barked at him in a harsh whisper. Loud enough for him to hear, not loud enough to carry to the other towers.

  “What?”

  He looked up in surprise. Right into her eyes.

  The sword plunged down, fast and ruthless. The tip went into his open mouth, burst through his spine and skewered him in place. His eyes went wide with pain and fear and he struggled against the blade, bringing mailed hands up and scrabbling against the unforgiving steel. Blood choked his throat and rose in gory bubbles up around the sword, but he couldn’t dislodge it. It wouldn’t do much good if he could, but it was harder to shout with hard steel between your teeth.

  He stopped struggling soon, leaving Sandra alone on the top of the tower. She went back to the torch-carrier and dragged him over to the edge of the wall. There, she used his sword to prop him up on the edge of the tower with the torch stuffed in his collar.

  Not a great ruse, but it would give her time to get down into the city and get lost.

  She hustled down the stairs of the tower, stepping gingerly over the guard’s corpse and then tip toeing gently across the blood which was spilling down the stairs. Slipping and breaking her neck would not be very heroic after dealing with the trolls.

  When she reached the bottom of the tower, she slowed her pace and stopped to look out the door before proceeding.

  No guards in the street.

  Of course not.

  Why would there be?

  The danger was in the woods.

  Sandra kept low and stuck to the shadows, of which there were plenty, on the way to the mayor’s house. It was the largest in town and easy to see even while running through back alleys she’d never been down. Unlike a normal city, the presence of trolls had chased away most of the homeless, or sent them indoors, leaving her and the alley cats as the only living things on the cobbles.

  She reached the mayor’s house without incident and considered just knocking on the door. Cheeky, but it would probably get both her and Mira killed.

  Mira!

  Mira had to be okay…

  Sandra climbed the side of the house. The decline and neglect helped: handholds existed where none should, moss cushioned the sound of her boots and the house creaked even without her scaling the side. She went for the b
iggest window on the backside of the house with a light on, which was probably the mayor’s study or bedroom. He would know where Mira was.

  “What if she killed them?”

  “Nonsense. She might be formidable, but there’s no way she can kill two trolls while drugged!” The mayor sounded very sure of himself. Sandra let herself have a quiet smirk of triumph.

  “Alright. If you’re sure, we’ll stage this little circus of yours.”

  “The townspeople have to know what happens when they try to cross the troll. One will come to the gates at midnight and ‘demand tribute’. We’ll give him the girl, and be free of these meddlers forever.”

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  “Look. You and your men signed up for a cushy life guarding villagers who aren’t really in danger and eating food that’s way out of your pay range.” The mayor sounded cross. “This is the price for that.”

  “A girl’s life…”

  “She’s not a girl! She’s a squire to a royal guard! She knew the dangers when she left the castle.”

  Sandra grit her teeth in anger. No one could prepare to be drugged by a supposed ally and eaten by trolls. Still, the mayor’s plan gave her an idea of her own. This was bigger than her revenge on the mayor, or even saving Mira. Now that she knew Mira was safe, and was going to be safe since there were no actual trolls to eat her, there was more at stake. Sandra now had a chance to embarrass the mayor, throw the corrupt mercenaries out of town and show the people that there were real heroes in the world.

  Part of her just wanted to get Mira and leave, but the rest of her knew this was the right thing to do.

  The mayor never knew how close he came to having a sword driven through his spine. Sandra snuck away quietly and disappeared back into the darkness of the streets to wait for his little show.

  *

  Mira could barely keep up as they dragged her to the city’s square. The night was cold and someone had replaced her travelling clothes with a filmy white dress. She guessed it was to highlight the idea that she was an outside: no one else in the town, except the mayor, could afford to wear something so extravagant. Technically, she couldn’t either, which was why the mayor supplied it. Hopefully one of his daughters had been the one to stuff her into it, because she couldn’t bear the thought of him doing it.