The Paladin Caper (49 page)

She felt it then, in the anvil beneath her hands, and pulled at the power around him, twisting it into the form she needed as she slid the magic into the altar.

It was vital work, but it took a moment’s concentration, and so she did not see him coming.

He slammed into her, and again she crashed through the pews, landing in a pile of smashed wood.

“Magic would have been faster,” Lively said, cracking his knuckles, “but a good smith takes pride in honest work. I will enjoy beating you to death with my bare hands.”

Two minutes or a quarter of a mile. That had been the lesson the scouts had drilled into Loch during her training. Two minutes or a quarter of a mile. If you could lose a pursuer in that time or that distance, do it, because you don’t die in a fight you escape from.

“This woman, whoever she is, seems determined to rain devastation down on these good people!” shouted someone on the screens. The griffon or the manticore, she couldn’t tell anymore.

But after two minutes or a quarter of a mile, if you hadn’t cut their line of sight or seen them slow to a jog to watch you flee, you might as well turn and fight, because anyone you couldn’t shake by then was probably going to catch you eventually, and you’d fight better after running for two minutes than after ten.

“We just have to ask why? Why does she hate the people of the Republic so much?” someone on the screen demanded.

They had drilled hard in those days. At the end of training, every scout in the ranks could run hard for two minutes, then turn and fight as well as if they’d been fresh.

Loch had been sprinting and diving and dodging for ten minutes now. Her breath was coming hard, ragged in her throat, and her feet fumbled on the quick turns, clumsy beneath her as they pounded on the turf.

“It looks like she’s sending the dragon after the crowd again! Guards are doing their best to stop it, but the damage so far has been horrible.”

Mister Dragon killed people whenever she stopped.

The exit was no longer an option, given the mass of competitors pushing and shoving to get through. Up in the stands, spectators bunched around the stadium exits as well, far from the flames that licked the stadium seats or scored the field itself.

She saw a hole in the smoldering wreckage of the stands, a space where she might get through if she were willing to brave some burns, and she turned and ran for it.

She’d missed the stakes placed in the ground to mark distance on the javelin throw, though. Her foot slipped on one, her ankle twisted on the turf, and she went down onto her hands and knees.

She was almost back up when the hand closed on her ankle.

“LOCH,” Jyelle snarled, and Loch kicked free, got back to her feet, and then took a backhand to the face that put her down again.

Jyelle had put herself together well. In bad light, she could pass for human, with grass for hair and earth for a body that even had her slim curves.

“GET UP AND FIGHT ME,” Jyelle said, and beckoned.

Loch turned, spat a little blood from her mouth, and pushed herself back to her feet. She’d held on to her walking stick—a scout who lost her weapon was a dead scout—and she raised it grimly. Jyelle smiled, the earth of her face twisting in pleasure, and then she looked up overhead and shouted, “NO!”

Flame scored the ground a few feet away and a great billowing wind knocked Loch to her knees as Mister Dragon landed. She looked up into red scales and rainbow wings and golden fangs, all looming over her shackled by silver chains, and in that moment, Loch felt glad that she was exhausted, because otherwise she’d have felt obliged to try to fight, and that would have been downright embarrassing.

Then a cry rang out across the field. “Paladins, now!” And as Loch and Jyelle looked around in confusion, nobles and athletes rushed in from all sides. They wore the crimson paladin bands, and as they gestured, energy snapped out like ropes, lashing around the dragon and bringing him down to the ground roaring in pain.

“It looks like—yes, the paladins are using some sort of magic!” shouted someone on the screens. “They’ve brought the dragon down and stopped the woman’s attack!”

“YOU ARE
KIDDING
ME,” Jyelle muttered as Loch dropped her hands to her knees and sucked in great lungfuls of air.

“Skinner,” one of the paladins said as he came over. “And you’d be this Jyelle woman, or the daemon with her memories? Makes no difference to me.” He smiled. “You weren’t planned.”

“I WANT LOCH,” Jyelle said, glaring at the blond man.

“This goes one of two ways,” Skinner said, apparently unoffended. “You attack, and we put you down, and you’re just another monster Loch brought to kill people. Or you come with us, all nice and smiling, and you’re a security-daemon that helped catch her, and there’s a pretty good chance that Mister Lesaguris lets you do whatever the hell you like once he’s done with Loch himself.”

Jyelle looked at Skinner, and then at Loch, who was still doubled over, trying to catch her breath.

Jyelle’s hand slammed down onto Loch’s shoulder, gripping with force that was just short of crushing.

“I HAVE APPREHENDED THE CRIMINAL,” Jyelle said.

Skinner grinned, and then turned to Loch. “Mister Lesaguris will see you now.”

“You are the overseer,” Icy said to the paladin who had enthralled Westteich and coated his body in crystalline armor, all gray save the paladin band on his forearm. “May I understand that you are responsible for the enslavement of the elves and dwarves in the mine outside?”

“You may.” The overseer came forward. His steps thudded on the ground, but he nevertheless moved with the speed of an unarmored man.

“Tern,” Icy said, “please do what is necessary. The overseer and I will be having a discussion about the morality of enslaving sentient beings.”

Tern blinked. “Um.”

Icy shrugged out of his robes, and they slid to the ground in a pool of golden silk around him. He stood in silk slippers and loose pants that left him free to move. His chest and arms were bare, tan, and corded with muscle.

“Go, Tern,” Icy said, and started walking toward the overseer.

The overseer laughed. “You call yourself Indomitable Courteous Fist. You were formerly Unstoppable Deferential Fist, until you grew ashamed of your power, and swore an oath never to fight again. You knocked down my slaves with gentle throws. I will be a little harder to—”

Icy leaped into a spinning kick that lifted the overseer off his feet and sent him crashing onto one of the moving belts, spraying crystals everywhere as he landed.

“I swore an oath never to
kill
again,” Icy said as he hopped up onto the moving belt and raised his fists. “Please try not to die.”

“Excellent!” The overseer laughed and lunged in with a punch, and Icy dodged it, parried the next blow, leaped over a kick, landed
on
the next kick, and leaped from it into the overseer’s face with a blow that struck hard . . . and bounced off an invisible barrier. “Ah, well struck, and wise to strike at a perceived weakness.” The overseer’s blow caught Icy as he landed, and Icy rolled with it and came back to his feet on the ground, grimacing. “But my face is warded, so you may not simply kill my slave to defeat me.”

“I will not kill anyone,” Icy said, and charged.

He came in low, ducking under a punch and slamming a blow into the overseer’s gut, then stepping behind him and sending the blade of his foot into the back of the overseer’s knee. As the overseer collapsed, Icy stepped in with precision, took one perfect step, pivoted, and struck a blow with bone-shattering force at the overseer’s spine.

The armor cracked, and the overseer grunted. He dropped to his belly and kicked out behind him, catching Icy with a blow that flung him back onto another moving belt.

He rolled back to his feet and came up in a fighting stance, ignoring the shallow cuts left by the crystals and the deep bruise he would have from the blow.

Again they clashed, and again. Icy leaped from moving belt to moving belt, dodging and weaving and striking blows that would have shattered stone, but which only left the faintest cracks in the armor. The overseer laughed as he fought, chasing Icy from one side of the processing center to the other. He smashed the belts, and Icy leaped and swung from the chains. He threw tables, and Icy slid under them and came up with perfect blows that did nothing.

Icy fought as a master. The overseer fought as a god.

“How does it feel,
Unstoppable
?” the overseer asked as they stood upon yet another belt moving toward a great furnace at Icy’s back. “To break your oath after all these years and lose? To see that all your skill, impressive as it might be for a chattel race like yours, avails you so little against our superiority?”

He came at Icy with a lazy punch, and Icy ducked under it, came up, and struck the overseer more than a dozen times, hitting every chakra and three vital nerve clusters.

When he was done, the overseer grabbed Icy by the throat and slammed him down on the moving belt. “I should crush you,” he said as they slid toward the furnace. “I have earned it in righteous battle.”

“You earned nothing,” Icy said, forcing the words out, though the overseer’s hand made breathing all but impossible.

“Ah, but I did,” the overseer said, “because I
took
it. You trained for years, and you think that makes you
better
, but I was
born
with this power, passed on from my parents, and with these resources, you had no chance against me.” They drew closer to the furnace, and the overseer smiled. “I think I have a better end for you,
Unstoppable
. I think you will die in the fires
my
people use to forge their own greatness. And as you die, you can tell yourself that it wasn’t
fair
.”

They were almost to the furnace, and the fire bore down ahead of them, blazingly hot waves of heat billowing out across both of them.

“You keep calling me Unstoppable,” Icy said, still pinned, and smiled at the overseer. “It shows a truly unfortunate ignorance on your part.”

The overseer sneered, and in preparation for whatever last gambit his foe might make, he brought his other arm, the arm with the paladin band, down on Icy to pin him in place even more securely.

“I did not simply choose Indomitable Courteous Fist as my new name,” Icy said quietly, and as he edged into the furnace, he found within him the perfect stillness, the center where concentration met emptiness in alignment of the energy inside him.

“I chose a name that could be shortened to
Icy
.”

Lips pursed, he blew out one long breath.

The furnace twitched, clanked, whined, and rattled to a stop, along with the moving belt.

The overseer leaned down and looked in.

Icy smiled out at him, from beneath a ceiling that had frosted over, with glittering icicles dangling down.

Then, before the overseer could pull away, Icy reached up, grabbed the paladin band with one hand, and struck three times along the underside of the glittering red crystal.

The paladin band popped off Westteich’s wrist and clattered onto the belt. A moment later, Westteich himself stumbled back and fell off the belt, crying out wordlessly.

Icy eased himself out from the furnace and stared down at the band of red crystal. He took it from the belt and placed it gently on the floor.

“I did not know the pressure points of a creature such as you,” Icy said, “but I believed that if I fought long enough, struck enough blows, and gauged the manner in which your body reacted, along with the body you controlled, that I could make a guess. It seems that I was correct.”

He looked down at the red crystal, and then over at Westteich, who stared at him warily. “Do you wish to continue our hostilities?” he asked.

“I, ah, in light of current events . . .” Westteich stammered.

“Good.” Icy looked back at the crystal band of the overseer, and then knelt down beside it. “I do not believe that killing you would result in me being prosecuted for any crime,” he murmured, “nor would my friends think any less of me. This world would, by any measurable standard, be no worse for your absence. The only reason you live is because I choose to let you, and the only reason I choose to let you is because I swore an oath.” He stood up, rolled out his shoulders, and bowed briefly. “Please try not to die.”