Martyrdom

If you get caught in a dragonstorm, things happen to you. You might get the Tox, and develop a warp feature or two. Or six, for that matter. You might shift. If you’re human, you’ll probably turn into a werewolf, though you might be a gargoyle. If you’re an elf, you’ll probably be a unicorn, or maybe a pegasian, though you might be a werewolf. Dwarves become gargoyles, Tigreans become werecats, Foxfolk become werewolves. And pretty much any of them might be a dragon. Necromancers look on warpspawn as potential slaves, and shifters as potential food. Valarians think warpspawn should be healed or killed, if healing isn’t an option, and they see shifters as potential allies. Either way, you’re better off with the Valarians. And of course sane people just stay as far away from the whole mess as they can.

–Leod, the Storyteller of Freepost

If you ever find yourself inclined to commit martyrdom, I have some advice.

First, get it over with quickly. Do not, for instance, give yourself three days to think about the situation.

Second, if you MUST delay the event, do it in prison or some other situation where backing out is not an option. Do not, for instance, put yourself in a position to have to walk for three full days lest you be late for your own execution, with nothing but your own will to keep you going.

Third, if you MUST take the long walk, do not saddle yourself with a companion who will question your motives whenever you get your own mind to stop questioning them.

Finally, if you MUST saddle yourself with such a companion, try to make sure that his survival is not critical to the success of your own mission, so that you can at least have the satisfaction of strangling him at some appropriate juncture.

The plan was simple enough; we had a day’s start on the caravan carrying Philo and Stragus, and all we had to do was stay ahead of it until we reached the fork in the road that led to Brickwall’s New Mercer, then turn around and make our play the next time the caravan made camp. This meant that we had to walk for three days before I would have a chance to commit noble suicide. Three days of intermittent conversation with Ghost.

“Quill,” he asked at one point. “Didn’t you say that Stragus was a brain-damaged bully? And that Philo was as deep as a mud puddle?”

I looked at Ghost and kept walking. “Maybe. What difference does it make?”

“Well… You’re expecting to get yourself killed rescuing them.”

I thought for a moment. “Why are you here? You might get killed, too.”

Ghost shook his head. “Only if I get caught. And I won’t. But you’re not just taking a risk, you are committing suicide.” He paused a moment. “And I guess that I’m here because you asked me to come.”

I smiled. “Well, then, I’m pretty sure that they would have asked me, if they had had a chance.”

“But you don’t LIKE them!”

I sighed. “I like Philo well enough. I’m not sure it’s possible to DISLIKE Philo, when it comes to that. Even if I do think he is an idiot much of the time. And Stragus… I keep thinking that Stragus might have been a decent person, if he had had any chance at all. It isn’t his fault he was raised by sadistic sybarites.”

“What?”

“Creeps.”

“Oh.”

I smiled again, and then shook my head. “But beyond that… If I let those two die, I am going to have to live with the knowledge that I could have done something and didn’t for the rest of my life. And that the only reason I didn’t help them was that I didn’t want to. And not wanting to isn’t a good enough reason.”

“But no one else is doing anything.”

“No one else is available. ‘Bacco would be too easy to trace back to Perrin.”

“I mean from Lechmore.”

I laughed. “More creeps.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t stop thinking about it. At another point he asked, “We have a day’s head start. Why don’t we set up an ambush? That might give you a chance to survive.”

I nodded. “It might. But it also would mean that no one in the caravan would have a chance to back out.” Ghost gave me a puzzled look; I continued. “If you are a merchant, or a driver, or a guard, you may not be working for the necros at all. You may just be in the same caravan. I don’t want to kill anyone just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Even if it means you get killed?”

I chuckled. “ESPECIALLY if it means I get killed.”

Ghost rolled his eyes and went back to thinking about it.

Eventually we reached the cut off for New Mercer. It was not quite noon; we backtracked to a likely spot and had a sort of odd picnic until mid-afternoon, then started marching toward home. The sun set and we continued walking; we saw the fires of a camp ahead shortly after full dark,

“VERY nice timing,” Ghost whispered with a grin.

I shrugged and grinned back. “Just logic.”

I waited with Ghost’s pack while he made sure we were at the right camp. He returned quickly.

“It’s them,” he said. “Six wagons, about a dozen people.” He drew a circle and a line in the dirt to indicate the position of the road relative to the camp. “The cages are on a wagon here, and there is a fancy tent that I guess is the leader’s right here. So if you come in here, and I come in from here…”

“Looks good,” I answered. Ghost helped me put on my armor, and I tried to go over his instructions one more time; he kept interrupting me. “And even if Stragus absolutely refuses to do what you say, keep after Philo…”

“He’ll behave if I drop your name often enough. I know. Philo first, then Stragus, don’t let Philo run until Stragus is free, fly across the river, and then turn north. It isn’t a problem, Quill, really it isn’t.” He stepped back and looked at me. “I think you’re ready.”

“Not quite,” I answered. I drew my dagger and gave it to him; it was the gilga-clawed dagger that Perrin had made for me. “I’m not going to need this, but you might. Remember me from time to time.”

Ghost stared at the dagger for a long moment, then nodded and tucked it into his belt. “Give me a thousand,” he said, then turned and faded into the night. I leaned back against a tree and started to count.

It was a good moment; I was at peace. The doubts were gone, and everything was going according to plan. All that remained was a short walk, and then a final flurry of violence.

I finished counting and began to walk; 500 steps later I found myself on the edge of the camp.

“Who is your leader?” I bellowed, much to the dismay of the sentry. “I have come in the name of Dyson Brickwall to claim the shapeshifters which are his rightful tribute.” There was much scurrying about; a thin man stormed out of the pavilion, pulling his robes over a bare chest as he approached. His companion followed a moment later without bothering to find clothing; she was yet another multiply warped elf whose short brown fur, oversized ears, wings, and oversized claws formed a remarkably cohesive whole.

A Haskalad soldier faced me. “Who are you, and what do you want?” he barked.

“I am the emissary of Brickwall, and I have come for the shifters,” I answered, loudly enough for the approaching necromancer to hear.

“You’re WHAT?” the necromancer shrieked. “Stand back, everyone. Get away from him.” He followed his own advice; when I was surrounded by a 20-foot circle of bodies, he turned to the warped girl. “Precious,” he said. “Kill him.”

I barely raised my shield in time to meet her first attack; she was that fast. She was also very strong, and her claws dripped poison. Fortunately, she had no martial skills to match her gifts; she was quite happy to catch every shield fake I threw at her, while I chopped away at her. My fourth strike broke one of her wings, and her master ordered his other bodyguards into the fray.

The bodyguards were typical Haskalad warriors; big, fast, and well trained. I did my best to concentrate on “Precious” anyway, and trusted my armor to deal with the other two. It was almost an effective tactic.

The four of us danced for quite a while; I acquired a number of minor wounds, none of them serious enough to matter; I wore “Precious” down steadily, in spite of her master’s efforts at healing her. Eventually I landed an overhead smash that took off her ear, a piece of her skull, and broke her collarbone. She staggered backward and I expected her to settle to the ground, but she shook it off and charged back again. If I hadn’t already been planning to die, it would have scared me.

I dodged away from the Haskalads and landed a perfect death thrust, just below the breastbone and rising to the left. Again she staggered back, and again I expected her to go down and stay there.

She didn’t. She stepped back, coughed up blood, shuddered, and attacked again; a feint toward the Haskalad on my left turned into a full strength backhand swing off my right shoulder that caught her perfectly and took her head off.

I shifted so that one of the Haskalad’s would have a chance to trip over her body, and grinned just a bit when one of them did. I heard the necromancer shrieking in the background, and suddenly I had several new playmates.

I concentrated on the Haskalad warriors; the teamsters that the necro had bullied into the fray didn’t matter. By the time the first warrior had fallen, I was exhausted; my maneuvering consisted of little more that a quarter turn to the left after every blow fell. I had been hit more than a dozen times, but never seriously.

The second warrior fell, then a teamster, than another, then another. The footing went from bad to horrible; I took more cuts. My mind retreated inward, and waited sleepily for my body to accept the inevitable and get on with the business of being dead. And then I ran out of foes, and I found myself blinking in the firelight and sudden silence.

I heard a shriek, and saw the necromancer charging at me with a spear he had taken from one of the fallen teamsters; I cut him up unconsciously, as if I were practicing a sword drill. And then the silence returned.

I was alive. I was bleeding from an even twenty (by later count) sword, spear, and claw cuts; the claw cuts burned from some sort of warpspawn poison. I cleaned my sword on the necromancer’s robe, then staggered to the wagon that held the cages.

The cages were empty; there was no sign of Ghost or the captives. I leaned against the side of the wagon and bowed my head in exhaustion while my mind tried to deal with the fact that I was still alive.

The poison saved me. I might well have stood there until I had lost enough blood to die in fact, but the pain from the poison was so sharp that it brought me back. I woke up enough to strip off my armor and clean my wounds, and then I staggered to the necromancer’s pavilion and collapsed into his bed.

The next day I recovered my pack and then loaded the camp back into the wagons, bodies and all. I kept one wagon, the cages, and the necromancer’s matched horses for my ride home, along with the better half of any valuables I found. I made sure that each corpse had at least a few coins in its pockets; I would have hated to have the slaughter mistaken for a robbery. When all was loaded, I hitched up the taurs and set them ambling down the road toward Bogtown. That done, I hitched up my newly acquired horses and headed back to Ferrypoint.

Two days later, I stopped well south of Lechmore and made camp out of sight of the road; in the small hours of the morning I made a fire and broke camp, then drove north. At the first sign of dawn I entered the town and made my way to the waterfront; no one challenged me. I watched ‘Bacco board the ferry and cast off, watched him clank his way across the river. I drove my cart onto the landing stage and waited.

‘Bacco didn’t recognize me in the hooded cloak I was wearing; he made no comment on the lumpy cargo under the tarpaulin in the back of the wagon. He said, “50 Imperials to cross,” with bored indifference.

I flipped back my hood and said, “But I thought I had a free pass, ‘Bacco.” ‘Bacco stared at me open mouthed, then pulled the chain out of the way and waved me onto the ferry. I pulled up my hood and drove forward.

We were halfway across the river before ‘Bacco managed to get control of his jaw. Once he did, he said, “You know, it just occurred to me. You didn’t get this job done right, either.” And then he gave me his best sharp-toothed grin. I did my best to stare back at him impassively, but the laughter started deep in my chest, and fighting it hurt more that letting it out.

Perrin complained about the damage that had been done to the shield and hauberk; Jasmine hugged me and wanted to get right to work on treating my wounds; Chalice scolded me for not saying goodbye, and Brindle bit me again.

They dragged me off for healing while ‘Bacco rifled my stolen goods; Chalice shifted to unicorn form to treat the poison. And then they told me that they had still not had any word from Ghost or Philo or Stragus.

I wanted to get up and go hunting for them immediately, but was told I would be hamstrung if I tried. I agreed to spend one day and night resting, and Perrin said he would do everything he could to get Whiskey’s help.

There was a storm of wolfsong off to the south right at sundown; Perrin had Jasmine, Chalice, ‘Bacco and I gather in the store with weapons. “Something is coming,” he said. “That was a warning if I’ve ever heard one.”

The wolves arrived shortly after full dark: Light, Shadow, and about a dozen other wolves, running easily and taking turns harrying another wolf with ram’s horns and broken and torn bat’s wings. The warped wolf was terrified and exhausted, but did not look injured beyond its maimed wings.

Shadow knocked the warped wolf off of its feet right in front of us, then grabbed it by the throat in his jaws. Light stopped in front of us, looked us all over, then stood on her hind legs and turned herself into a werewolf.

“Keep him away from my wolves,” she growled. “At least until he has learned some manners.” The warped wolf transformed itself into Stragus while she was speaking. “The only reason we haven’t killed him already is that I thought you might put some sense into him.” She looked pointedly at me as she spoke, then turned to Perrin. “Can you cure him of the warp? It would help if he were not so ridiculous.”

“I can try, Lady Light,” Perrin answered.

She laughed at that. “Willow. My name is Willow. I have been trying to get that through to Hunter Rat for more than two years.”

“We will deal with Stragus, Lady Willow,” I said. “One way or another.”

“Lady?” Willow laughed. “Hardly.” She threw back her head and howled, then dropped to all fours and resumed wolf form. She howled once more, then trotted away; Shadow and the other wolves followed. We watched them leave in awed silence, then ‘Bacco and I picked up Stragus and carried him into the store.

“I don’t suppose there is any question of asking his permission?” Perrin asked no one in particular; all eyes turned to me.

I shrugged. “This is Stragus. If we’re going to wait for him to figure it out on his own, we might as well kill him now.” ‘Bacco chuckled and nodded.

All right, then,” Perrin said, and cast a spell; Stragus’s horns started to shrink and retreat into his head. Jasmine cast another spell, and the maimed wings started to do the same. Perrin cast a third spell, and Stragus’s murky Haskalad complexion faded to Farillan hues. Jasmine indicated that Chalice should heal the wounds that the wings had left behind, but she shook her head and stepped to hide behind me; Jasmine did the healing herself with a puzzled look on her face.

We carried Stragus to an upstairs room, and I retreated to my cellar; Brindle promptly curled up on my chest and fell asleep. I had nothing better to do, so I joined her.

Sometime later I was awakened by a hand on my shoulder; Chalice crouched next to me with a candle in her hand; Brindle was nowhere to be seen. “Why did you save him, Quill? Why didn’t you leave him with the Haskalads, or with the wolves?”

I sat up and stared at her. “Because he’s… Gray lady, you’re the one he was obsessed with. The one he beat every night for not being happy.” Chalice didn’t bother to respond; she just stared at me accusingly. “I didn’t know, Chalice, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised…” I shook my head sadly. “By the Lady, Chalice, I’m sorry. I’ll make it clear to him that things have changed. He’ll learn eventually.”

She was trembling; I took her in my arms and rocked her to sleep. I tucked her into my bed, and went up to sleep in the smithy. As I fell asleep, a thought drifted through my head: Stragus got a bed, Chalice got a bed, and I was sleeping on the floor. Four days after my failed martyrdom, and things were very much back to normal.