Page 46 of Swordheart #1
“Seems like we might not want to do that, then.”
“Probably not.”
“A gnole would at least wait until dark.”
“What do we do?”
Zale gave her an ironic look. “I have no idea. I’ve never actually been kidnapped and tied up before. This is a new experience for me.”
“Oh. Really? Because you seemed to be handling it really well, so I thought you must have done it before.”
“Thank you. The Temple of the Rat does run us through a fair amount of training, you understand. I know what to do, in theory. It’s just the first time I’ve had to put it into practice.”
Mina glared daggers at them from across the clearing.
“What gets me,” said Halla, after the better part of an hour dragged by, “is that people are tying each other up and robbing each other when there’s those godawful slimy things lurking out there in the Vagrant Hills. I mean, don’t they realize we have much bigger problems?”
“I don’t think they do, no.”
“We could tell them.”
Zale leaned their head back against the trunk of the tree. “Somehow I don’t think that will help much.”
“Probably not. It just seems so shortsighted.” Another, more immediate thought struck her. “Oh no! You don’t think they’ll bother Bartholomew and his friend, do you?”
“Hard to say,” said Zale. “I suppose they might.”
“This is terrible. ”
“What, only now?”
“A gnole isn’t getting paid enough for this.”
The bandit leader came back over and looked at them like a man with a problem.
“You’re absolutely certain you’re not a wonderworker?” he said.
“Very,” said Halla.
“And this light that Mina says she saw?”
Halla lifted her bound hands and let them drop back into her lap, hoping he couldn’t read the lie. “I have no idea. You’d have to ask her.”
“You have no explanation for it?”
She wrinkled her forehead. “Why do you want me to explain somebody else’s hallucination? I really would have to be a wonderworker for that.”
Did that sound convincing? I hope that sounded convincing.
“What would you say if I tortured you?” asked the bandit leader conversationally.
Halla blinked at him. “Err… ‘ow,’ probably? ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ something like that?” What a bizarre question. What does he expect me to say?
The bandit leader’s face took on an expression that Sarkis would have found immediately familiar. “I meant about being a wonderworker.”
“Oh. I mean, it’s torture,” said Halla uncertainly. “I’ll probably say anything you want to make it stop. But I’m still not going to be able to make anyone invisible afterward, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“If you release us now,” Zale put in, “I am happy to let bygones be bygones. But my superiors would undoubtedly consider torture to be excessive.”
The bandit leader walked away again, muttering to himself.
They continued to sit under the tree. One of the bandits came back with a rabbit, skinned it, and began cooking chunks over one of the campfires. Halla’s stomach growled.
“Do you think they’re going to feed us?”
“I am not entirely hopeful.”
Halla started to reply to that, then noticed that two more bandits had sat down alongside the pile of their possessions confiscated from the wagon.
She bit her lip. She couldn’t even say anything to Zale for fear of being overheard.
They examined Zale’s crossbow first, with appreciative noises, then set it down. The gear taken from the dead Motherhood priests was next.
“Now where do you suppose they got this?” one of the bandits asked his companion, who shrugged.
Halla watched, holding her breath, as he picked up Sarkis’s sword.
He idly drew the sword, examining the blade. “Not bad. Good edge on it, don’t you think?”
His companion’s opinion was lost to the ages, as a foot of steel slid into his throat.
The first bandit gaped, and then Sarkis jerked the sword free and smashed the hilt into the man’s face in the same motion. He fell backward, clutching his face, and Sarkis reversed the sword and chopped down into his neck like a man splitting a log.
The attack was so quick and so brutal and above all so silent that for a long moment, Halla thought that she was the only person in camp who even realized what was going on. Even the crunch of steel into bone sounded like a snapping branch.
Sarkis looked around the campsite.
Halla held her breath for what seemed like an eternity, and then someone finally realized what was going on and began to raise the alarm. Suddenly it seemed like everyone else in the bandit camp was rising to their feet.
“Oh dear,” said Halla, to no one in particular. “I hope his arrow wound is healed up.”
She was aware that this was probably not the right response, given that there were now a great many dead people in front of her. She should be horrified. She should scream her head off. But mostly she was just enormously relieved to see Sarkis again.
He’d take care of things. The man was a hero. These were just decadent southern bandits and anyway he was nearly immortal, so as long as she didn’t have the poor taste to die in the interim, he would come for her and Zale. She had faith.