Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (43 page)

Dornory’s brat opened his mouth to shout a denial. 
Marik moved in with fresh strikes.  “Interesting how you cared more for your
horse than your men.  Or how you always stayed as far to the rear during those
patrols as you could without actually running.”

“You…you
slandering
vulgarian!  You dare to
belittle me?”  He reached for his rapier, but missed the first grab.  Too much alcohol,
Marik suspected.  This only caused renewed laughter.

Though still furious with this phenomenal idiot, Marik
was no longer so far lost in his anger that he could delude himself.  An actual
fight with Balfourth would end in nothing except disaster.  With luck, he would
only land in a prisoner work gang for the crime of drawing a sword against a
noble.  He needed to stop the fight before it began, and he had only one idea
at the moment that might work.

Marik had never used his strength working in quite
this way before.  He prayed hard that his idea had legs.  For a single instant,
he suffered a confusion regarding whether a prayer to Ercsilon for a mage
working to perform correctly was sacrilegious.  No time to figure it out at the
moment.

While he enabled the strength working and felt the raw
power flowing through his muscles, he calmly asked, “Are you sure you want to
draw that,
Lord
Dornory?  Didn’t I already tell you I was the one you
owed your life to?  You couldn’t defeat me stone-cold sober and on the best day
of your life.”

Balfourth persisted in grasping for his hilt.  He
finally managed a grip and began drawing the thin blade.  Apparently he believe
himself above the standard courtesy of cording his sword.

“Then allow me to demonstrate.”

Marik had drawn abreast of one chair pulled out from
the table.  He raised his right fist, then suddenly swung backward without a
glance.  His fist struck the flat chair back and he hoped his advanced strength
would hurl the chair away at an impressive speed.

Instead, the chair’s back ripped off.  It sped fast as
an arrow, the splintered wood smashing to pieces high on the wall behind him
while the remaining bottom half spun faster than a top.

Marik smiled, a feral cat, hoping his bared teeth
masked the howling pain racing up his arm.  Slowly, he brought his fist up and
flexed it as though what he had just done was absolutely nothing.  In reality,
he checked to see if his hand still functioned.  Judging from the screaming
agony he must have broken a bone or two.

Whatever he looked like, it stopped Balfourth in his
tracks.

“Oh, hells!” a voice shouted.  “I recognize you!  You
and that other man killed Ronley and his retinue of knights!”

New rumblings passed through the crowd, much of it
appreciative.  Balfourth snapped, “That’s a bald lie!”

“Is it?” Marik asked, refocusing attention on him.  He
folded his arms, tucking his injured hand into his armpit.  “If you’d care to
see the duke’s sword, complete with his family crest, I’ll be happy to produce
it.  Of course, you’ll have to spend a day in Kingshome if you want to see it
that badly.”

“A nice ploy,” Balfourth hissed through his teeth,
“but I know better!  Claim whatever you wish, but I can see through you!”

Balfourth was not going to back down.  It had gone too
far and his pride lay on the line.  If he cried off after suffering such
humiliation in front of his peers, in front of the men he would be standing
alongside the rest of his life, he would never regain whatever respect he once
held.  Marik had meant to humiliate him, and succeeded in grand fashion.  Too
grand.  Unless Ercsilon or Fate personally reached a hand down to intervene,
Balfourth would force him to fight.

“And what’s all this?” asked an interested voice.

Marik turned, finding Ferdinand framed in the entryway
accompanied by ten beautiful women.  Before anyone else could respond, Marik
bowed.  “We’ve been discussing the recent war against Nolier, Lord Sestion.  I
believe I have made my point, and so I’ll beg your pardon.”

He walked past a confused Ferdinand to rejoin Dietrik
in the hallway.  “What was that?” he heard their host asking as the dining room
fell away into the distance.  “And what happened to my chair?”

Before they got far, Marik darted into the hunting
room.  “Bloody daaamn!” he moaned softly, clutching his hand and crouching low.

“I can offer a
big
second on that, mate.  Gods,
Marik!  Are you trying to get yourself bloody killed?  Do you have any idea how
bloody foolish that was?  You must be the luckiest bastard alive that those
lads back there thought Balfourth’s history was amusing!”

“Will you save it for later?  I think I broke my
hand.”

“Good!  You damned near took my head off with that
slat you chucked into the wall!  You can use two or three times a normal man’s
strength as much as you like, but your
flesh
will always be the same,
dummy!  Twice the strength mean’s twice the bloody damage when you punch a
brick wall!”

The pain receded, so perhaps it was not so bad as he
feared.  Even his shirt sleeve had loosened up.  Elation slowly crept into
him.  He began to laugh.

“What’s so bloody funny?”

“Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to do that?”

“You’re a reckless fool at times, mate.  Right out of
your crack-brained tree!  Do you know that?  You’ve just made the enemy of your
life out there.  He may be an idiot, but he does have
some
power.”

“I don’t care.  I’ll take whatever he thinks he can
hit me with.”  Marik’s mirth suddenly cut off.  “Oh, damn it!  I forgot all
about Hilliard!”

They crept back to the entryway in time to see
Balfourth mounting the steps, his arm around a goddess’ waist.  “You see he
didn’t have enough spine to face me in the end?  Of course he took the first
excuse he could muster to flee!  A coward like him take down a knight?  I think
not!”

He climbed the left stairway.  His assertions sounded
like a yapping dog.  The kind of dog a distracted man could step on without
ever noticing.  Instead of growing angry anew, Marik took satisfaction in the
fact almost no one paid him any heed.  Only his five sycophants, each of whom
were younger than he, shared in his indignation.

The moment he vanished off the top step, Marik and
Dietrik crossed over to Hilliard.  He still sat at the table, apart from
everyone else, studying a small glass of dark green liquid.

“That washn’t verry nice,” he greeted Marik with when
he recognized him.

“He’s not a very nice man.  Or a very smart one
either.”

“Watch thish,” Hilliard demanded, and lifted a crystal
water pitcher.  His voice slurred noticeably.  “Have you everr sheen this
beforre?  Thish ish verry interreshting.  Ferrdinand showed it…to me.”  He
squinted while he concentrated on pouring water into the small, half-full
glass.  “Green for Galemar!” he suddenly shouted, then peeled into laughter.

After pouring water all over the master-crafted table,
he finally directed the stream into the glass with the green liquid.  “Shee
that?  It went and turrned…turrned white as milk!  Ish that not shtrrange?”

“Very strange,” agreed Dietrik.  “How much of this
concoction have you had?”

“I can’t rrememberr,” Hilliard admitted.  “But it
punchesh you like nothing you’ve everr had beforre!”

He swallowed the contents and flopped face forward
onto the table.

“Let’s go find Ferdinand,” Marik whispered to
Dietrik.  “He’s disappeared again and I think it’s time we left.”

“Past time, I judge.”

Their search was slowed by several future barons, none
of whom cared what had become of Ferdinand but all of whom wanted to hear about
the fight against Ronley.  After several minutes, their fruitless search
brought them back to the table, where they discovered Hilliard had gone
missing.

“Now what?”

“There,” Dietrik pointed.  Halfway up a staircase,
Hilliard laughed while clutching a woman close.  Probably to keep from falling
over.  “Seems we won’t be going yet after all.”

“I’m not sure about this.”

“Come on, mate.  We were hired to guard his body, not
coddle it.  That’s her job.”

Marik picked up the glass from which Hilliard had
drunk.  Dregs still clung to the bottom.  He took a sniff.  “What
is
this stuff?  It smells evil!”

Dietrik lifted a nearly empty bottle.  “At a guess, I
think it’s absinthe.”

“And what’s that?”

“It comes out of Vyajion.  I remember the Stygan
traders used to hire dozens of chaps to guard certain shipments being
transported off Vyajjonese ships.  Silk was always the big one, but absinthe
usually ran the rumor gamut as well whenever a ship docked carrying the brew. 
I’ve only heard about it, so I’m no expert.”

“Vyajion?  Must be expensive as all the hells then.”

“I imagine so.”  He set the bottle back onto the
table.  “Another toy of the rich and idle.  I hear it is suppose to let you see
bloody strange things when you drink it.”

Marik dropped the glass down beside the bottle. 
“Definitely not for me, then.  I don’t know much about these sorts of things, except
that they usually end up using you instead of the other way around.”

“I will make sure to mention that to young Hilliard in
the morning.”

Tired yet still elated from shaming Balfourth, Marik
decided he wanted another sandwich.  This time when they set off down the
hallway they made it slightly further back before Marik came to an abrupt halt.

What grabbed his attention sat in a much smaller room
off to his left.  The room, only large enough to hold five or six people
comfortably, possessed no furniture other than a long couch.  It bent at right
angles hugging three of the four walls.

Sitting with her legs crossed was the most stunning
woman Marik had ever seen.  She did not see him, so immersed was she in the
book she held in her lap.   Her dark brown hair rippled past her shoulders,
breeze-dimpled wavelets on a summer river.

The dress looked as expensive as the ones worn at the
opening ceremony.  It folded back in pleats below the waist, the top half
apparently a single length of cloth wound around her body, though still hanging
loosely.

“Who is that,” he whispered to Dietrik, who had
continued further down the hallway.

Dietrik stepped back to look.  “She came in with the
other women.  I saw her step away from the group after you nearly beheaded me. 
So what?”

Marik gaped at his friend.  So what?  How could
Dietrik look on her and only say ‘so what’?  “You don’t know who she is?”

“She arrived with Sestion’s other high-priced
prostitutes.  You need not be an academy head to add up the possibilities. 
Ferdinand probably asked her to wait for him until he finishes his rounds.”

“How do you know?”  Marik glanced back through the
doorway to where she remained oblivious to them.  “I’m going to talk to her.”

Dietrik grabbed his arm.  “Mate, you have already swum
through enough dangerous waters tonight.  Don’t make an enemy out of Sestion as
well by attempting to stake a claim to his property.”

That he had come so far already was what prompted
Marik to yank his arm free.  Elation from his successes still coursed through
him.  He was on a roll.  Unstoppable.  No puffed-up noble could face him down,
life’s misfortunes would each pass him by and Kerwin would lose every copper he
owned if he rolled his dice against him tonight!  Nothing lay beyond his grasp
at this moment, so he stepped into the room.

It slightly stymied him when, stopping three feet
away, she kept her gaze firmly on the pages in her book.  He plunged forward
anyway.  “I couldn’t help noticing you when I walked by.  Are you a friend of
the Sestion family?”

No reply issued, but he noticed her eyes held still
instead of following the words back and forth across the page.  So she was not
ignoring him.  Or rather, she
was
ignoring him, but was not oblivious to
him.  He pressed on, hardly considering his words in his rush to capture her
attention.

“It’s just that I didn’t see you around earlier.  I
heard you came in with the other…uh…women.”

She looked away from the book at last.  An annoyed
expression graced her features, a fact Marik only noticed for less than a
moment.  The angle of her cheekbones quickly drove out all other thoughts.  Her
face had a narrow quality, unaccompanied by the sharp chin he usually
associated with such.  The dark brown eyes gazing at him were clearer than any
others he had ever seen.

“In case it escaped your attention, I am reading.”

“Uh…yes, of course.  I can see that.  But I thought,
since you’re alone, you might enjoy talking.  I’m working as a bodyguard for
one of the contenders in the tournament,” he added for some reason.  Ever since
the first sentence, he had no idea what might come out from his mouth next. 
Perhaps because he was too busy studying the way
her
lips moved,
sensuous, light, forming the words of her response.

“Why else would you be here?”  His duty obviously made
no impression on her in the least.  She blatantly returned to her book, making
her point unequivocally.  “And you better put a rein on your reserve brain.  I
am not for sale.”  The last came out pointedly, with distinct emphasis.