The Cleric Quintet: Night Masks

 

Cadderly saw her fall away, his face locked in a stare of helpless denial.



A crossbow quarrel smacked into the back of the young priest's thigh. He turned about as he sank to the deck, sheer rage splayed clearly on his usually calm features. Without even thinking of the movement, Cadderly lifted a clenched fist toward the bowman and uttered, "Fete!" the elven word for fire, the command word for his magical ring.



A line of flames shot out from Cadderly's hand, seeking his attacker, immolating the man in a burning shroud.



With a mental shriek of revulsion, Cadderly ended the fire. He spun about again, his walking stick leading, and got a solid hit on the swordsman. He didn't really care how badly he had hurt the man; all he wanted was to get the man out of his way, to clear the path to the axe-wielder who had sent Danica away.



Again, inexperience had led Cadderly to an unwise single-mindedness. Before he ever got near to the axe-wielder, strong hands grabbed at his shoulders and drove him to the side railing.



Ivan threw the heavy door aside, meaning to charge right to the stairs. A gruesome sight off to the side slowed him, though, for just a moment, and when he resumed his charge, his fury had heightened tenfold.



Pikel, too, thought to head straight for the stairs. "Uh-oh," he mumbled and he ran to the right, for the cover of the room's bar instead, for several dark shapes knelt in formation on and above that staircase, all holding deadly crossbows.



Pikel dove over the long bar, coming to a crashing halt along the narrow walkway behind, up against kegs of thick ale. To the dwarfs surprise, he was not alone, and he just managed to convince Fredegar Harriman that he was not an enemy a split second before the terrified innkeeper bonked him over the head with a full bottle of brandy.



A quarrel ricocheted off the blade of Ivan's axe; another struck the dwarf on the head, stunning him, though his fine helmet managed to deflect the thing up between the deer antlers. Perhaps that particular quarrel knocked some sense into the thick-headed dwarf, for Ivan wisely cut to the side, skidding in around the staircase and scrambling for cover underneath it. He slammed hard into one of the structure's supports as he rushed in, getting all tangled up with it. By the time the dwarf figured out that it was just an ordinary wooden pillar and not some lurking enemy, he had battered it to pieces.



Ivan blushed, thinking himself incredibly foolish. Then he looked around, noticing the other four supports - one more on this side, two on the opposite side and one in the middle - and a wide and wicked grin spread over his face.



Danica caught hold of the feeble trim along Cadderly's balcony, and her strong hands would not let go, despite the nagging weight of the Night Mask, still clutching at her waist.



The woman wriggled and squirmed, freed up one foot, and slapped it back and forth across the stubborn man's face.



Only a dozen feet from the ground, the attacker wisely let go, dropping heavily but unharmed, on the cobblestones.



Danica's thoughts of climbing back up to join Cadderly on the balcony lasted only a moment, until the trim split away on one end from the main frame, sending Danica on a swinging ride around the corner of the balcony.



Instinctively, she kicked out and leaped before the trim broke away altogether, latching on to the sill of a window near the building's corner, opposite from where she had left Cadderly. Unable to break her momentum, Danica was forced to leap out again, farther from the fight, but this time landing with a more solid handhold and foothold on a gutter running up the side of the building, just around the corner.



By the time she managed to peek around, the balcony was crowded with black-and-silver-outfitted assassins. She didn't see Cadderly at first amid that throng and could not pause long enough to sort him out, for one crossbowman put her immediately in his sights and two other assassins came over the rail, walking the ledge toward the gutter.



Danica scrambled the ten feet or so to the rooftop. Only as she pulled herself over did she realize that she had somehow badly twisted her knee, probably in the struggle over the railing.



"Cadderly," she mumbled over and over; this scenario reminded her vividly of when she had left the young priest to join the fray in Shilmista, when she had been forced to trust in Cadderly to take care of himself.



She started across the roof, thinking to go right above the balcony and leap down upon the enemy. She turned, though, hearing the gutter groan under the weight of a pursuer.



"Do come up," Danica muttered grimly, thinking to clobber the fool as soon as he poked his head over the roofs edge. It never occurred to her that this well-prepared band might already have someone planted on the roof.



She heard the crossbow click behind her.



"A valiant fight, Lady Maupoissant," said a baritone voice at her back, "but a futile effort against the skill of the Night Masks."



Cadderly's walking stick flew away when he collided with the railing. He hardly kept his bearings as he spun over, but did manage to loop one arm about the railing.



It seemed a wasted effort, though, for the Night Mask clubbed at that arm mercilessly, determined to drop the young priest over the side.



Cadderly's first instinct told him to just drop - the fall probably wouldn't kill him. He realized, though, that another assassin loomed below, and he would be easy prey before he ever recovered from the fall.



None of it seemed to matter when the second Night Mask, the axe-wielder, joined the first at the railing above him.



"Farewell, young priest," the man said evilly, lifting his cruel weapon to split Cadderly's head wide.



Cadderly tried to utter a magical command at that man, but he could do no more than groan as the club connected again against his already wounded shoulder.



The young priest glanced around desperately, only a brief moment left open to him. He saw a tiny ledge along the building a few feet away, behind him, and for some reason he did not understand, a memory of Percival, the white squirrel, came to him, an image of Percival skittering happily and easily along ledges at least that thin back at the Edificant Library.



There was no way that any man could make that leap to the ledge, as twisted as Cadderiy was. Yet somehow, he was there, and not holding desperately. Hand over hand, foot over foot, the young priest ran along the ledge.



"Get him!" he heard one of the frustrated and astonished assassins yell from behind, and then the other called for a crossbow.



Cadderiy came up fast on the corner, with no intentions of turning aside. The alley was only about eight feet wide at this point, but the only apparent handhold on the buDding across the way was several feet higher than his present perch. By the time Cadderiy registered this fact in the still-dim morning light, though, it was too late for him to alter his course. /



He leaped, soared, impossibly high and impossibly/tor. Hardly slowing, he found himself scrambling easily up the side of the other building, disappearing over the top before any crossbowman back on the balcony could begin to get a shot at him.



Pikel peeked up over the bar to see one of the assassins bearing down on him, the other two leaning over the far side of the staircase, trying to get a shot at Ivan.



The green-bearded dwarf hopped up, club in hand, ready to meet the challenge.



"Here," came Fredegar's call behind him. Pikel glanced back to see the brandy bottle, now stuffed with a burning rag, coming for nun.



"Oo oi!" Pikel cried, too startled to catch it, as Frede-gar had intended. The dwarf did get a hand off his club fast enough to tap the bottle over him, though, and he spun about immediately and shimmed the slow-moving missile with his club, creating a small fireball and showering the approaching assassin with glass shards and flaming liquid.



"Oo oi!" Pikel squealed again, this time happily, as the man fell away to the floor and rolled about desperately to get the stubborn flames off his robes. When the assassin finally got back up, he ran screaming for the door, having no more heart for the fight.



The dwarf hopped up on the bar, then fell back again as the bowmen on the stairs took note of him.



Cunning Ivan's only mistake was that he saved the center support for last. Not until he knocked it out, with a single powerful swipe of his axe, did the grinning dwarf realize that he was stood directly under the heavy structure.



The stairs, and the two surprised Night Masks standing on them, came tumbling down.



Only one of the assassins had regained his feet when Ivan finally managed to burst through the pile of broken wood. The dwarf came up with a roar and tried to swing his axe, only to find its head caught fast on a random beam.



The assassin, bruised but not too hurt, grinned at him and pulled out a short sword.



Ivan tugged mightily, and the axe pulled free, coming across so swiftly that neither the dwarf nor the assassin even realized its movement as it struck the assailant, cutting cleanly through the man's belly.



"Bet that hurt," Ivan mumbled with a helpless, almost embarrassed shrug.



Again Pikel hopped up on the bar, and again he reconsidered, seeing a pair of dark shapes rush out of Cadderiy's room into the aisle above, right to the lip of the fallen stairway.



The frustrated dwarf groaned loudly - these two also carried those wretched crossbows.



Pikel realized that he wasn't their target, but he knew, too, that Ivan, standing unsuspectingly right below the ledge, was.



Scramble



ight Masks. The words stung Danica's heart as surely as



could the crossbow quarrel aimed her way.



Night Masks. The band that had killed her par-



ents; the wretched, evil assassins of Wsstgate, the town where Danica had been raised. The questions that rushed into the young woman's mind - Had they come for her? W*re they working for the same enemy that had sent Barjin and the invading army into Shilmista? - were no match for the bile, the sheer rage, that climbed up the young woman's throat.



Slowly, she turned to face her adversary, locking his gaze with her own. He was a curious sight, bleeding in several places, leaning to one side, and struggling to draw breath, with half of his face swelling in a grotesque purple bruise and wooden splinters sticking from his hair, face, and arms. And for some reason, the man was barefoot.



"I will not ask for a surrender," the assassin slurred, waving the weapon. "Not after the dwarves ..." He shook away the frightening memory of the fight at the other inn, dropping several splinters to the roof with the effort.



"You shall be offered none," Danica assured, barely able to spit the words through gritted teeth. A growl escaped her lips as she dove to the roof and rolled.



The crossbow fired and Danica felt something thud against her side, though she was too enraged to know the seriousness of the wound or even to realize the pain. She came up near where the man had been, to find that he had taken flight.



Danica was on him in a few strides. He spun to face her, and she leaped into him, grabbing him tightly. Her knee moved repeatedly, each blow connecting on the man's groin.



She hit him a dozen times, grabbed his hair and ears and yanked his head back from her, then pulled it forward and drove her forehead in to meet it, splattering the man's nose and knocking out several teeth.



She kneed him a dozen more times and butted him again. Her fingers raked the beaten man's face; she drove one finger right through his eye.



Danica jumped back from the doomed man, spinning a circle kick that snapped his head to the side violently and forced him into a series of stumbling steps. Somehow he did not fall down, though he was hardly conscious of his surroundings.



Danica leaped high behind him, lay herself fiat out, planted both feet on the man's back, and sent him in a running takeoff over the roofs edge.



She pulled herself back to her feet, saw that two men had gained the roof by the gutter, though neither had summoned the courage to charge the furious woman.



Too many emotions assaulted the wounded and weary monk. The appearance of the assassin band, the knowledge that these were Night Masks, sent her mind careening down a hundred corridors of distant memories. More recent memories, too, like the strange dream of the previous night, when she had, for a moment, entered the consciousness of her mental attacker.



What had happened to Cadderly? Danica's fear multiplied when she learned the identity of the killers. Had the Night Masks again taken the love from Danica's life?



She fled, her eyes filled with tears, her arm and side throbbing. Up the sloping rooftops, across the uneven angles, leaping the small gaps, the young monk went.



The two killers followed her every step.



Ivan looked down, an inch to the side, to the neat hole the crossbow quarrel had drilled into the lumber pile. Slowly, the dwarf lifted his gaze to the men standingJen feet above him, one leaning over the broken ledge, smiling grimly, with a cocked crossbow pointed Ivan's way.



Sheer desperation shoved new heights of insight into the mind of Pikel Bouldershoulder. Ivan - his brother! - was about to die! Pikel's eyes darted all about, taking in a surrealistic view of the grim scene.



Bar . . . pile . . . dead man (guts, yech) . . . struggling men . . . Ivan . . . precipice . . . crossbowman . . . chandelier . . .



Chandelier? Chandelier above the leaning man.



They had to bring the thing down to light the candles, Pikel reasoned. The dwarf whipped his head about, his gaze coming to rest on the crank, conveniently located at the back of the bar.



The assassin standing over Ivan paused long enough to wave good-bye to the helpless dwarf.



Pikel could have just pulled the pin out of the crank to set the spindle spinning, but now was not the time for finesse. With a "Whoop!" to try to distract the crossbowman a moment longer, the green-bearded dwarf hopped from the bar to the shelving along the wall, crashing aside scores of mugs and bottles, the shelves breaking away under his weight.



"Ooooooo!" he wailed as he slammed his club against the crank. Spindle and all broke out from the wall, hanging stubbornly by a single peg. Pikel, on his knees beside Fre-degar, looked at it as though it had tricked him, but then, with a loud popping noise, the last peg gave and the whole assembly rocketed up into the air.



"What?" the confused crossbowman asked.



His companion behind him gasped.



The chandelier took the crossbowman on the shoulder, spinning him over the precipice.



He crashed into the wood pile beside Ivan, the stunned dwarf nodding, stupefied. As though the gods had decided to play some macabre joke, Ivan heard the distinctive click a moment later as the crushed man's crossbow, pressed harmlessly between the man and the broken stairs, fired.



"Hee hee hee," chuckled Pikel, standing again to watch the spectacle. He forgot that the spindle above him was fast unwinding, and fast dropping, and he was back to his knees when it ricocheted off his skull.



"Oooo."



"Set the rope!" he heard Ivan cry, and, shaking away his dizziness, Pikel wrapped the rope in his arms.



Ivan grasped his axe handle in his teeth (not an easy thing to do!) and started up. He noticed that the remaining assassin in the pile behind him was getting to his feet, so he jumped back down to the raised end of a plank lying between him and the man. Ivan's end snapped down and the end under the crawling assassin went up, slamming the man under the chin. He groaned and rolled away, grabbing at his shattered jawbone.



That done, Ivan leaped up again, stubby arms pulling him up the rope to the level of the other crossbowman. To the side, he noticed that Pikel was similarly climbing.



Ivan rushed on, finally getting his head high enough so that he could see the other man.



It was not a pleasant sight.



For the second time in the last few moments, Ivan Bouldershoulder stared into the wrong end of a readied crossbow.



Pikel made the ledge and let go of the rope, realizing only then that he had not secured it below him.



Ivan dropped like a stone. The crossbow fired, harmlessly high. And the stubborn assassin on the first level, his jaw grotesquely shattered, realized his folly in going to the rope under the climbing dwarf.



As he sat atop the man, atop the pile of broken stairs, Ivan, for perhaps the first time, thought it was not such a bad thing to have a scatter-brained brother.



Still on all fours, the young priest skittered fast and surefooted along the edge of the adjoining building. His spindle-disks clung tightly to his hand, hanging to the end of theff-cord and bouncing along the building's side. Cadderly hardly noticed them, and had no time to stop and replace them in any event. Nor did the young priest note that the pain was no more in his wounded thigh.



He spotted Danica, running weakly away from him, limping, and then he spotted the two black-robed killers in pursuit, gaining on the stumbling woman with every stride.



Cadderly came up on the other side of the building, where the alley opened perpendicularly to a wide lane of craft stores called Market Square. Two merchants, up at dawn to prepare for the coming day, spotted the young priest and stared, then pointed up and called out something that Cadderly did not bother to decipher.



Too enraged to think of his movements, Cadderly slipped headfirst over the side of the building, going down hand over hand. A banner had been strung along thick ropes across the alley as a sign for one of the craftsmen's shops.



Hand over hand, foot over foot, Cadderly ran across the tightrope. He heard a shout of disbelief from the street below, didn't even realize that it was aimed his way. Back on the many-angled roof of the Dragon's Codpiece, the young priest charged off, nothing but Danica in his thoughts.



He spotted her a moment later - she had leaped across the narrow alley to the next building - stumbling over the crest of a dormer, going headlong. The two men went over right behind her.



"No!" the young priest tried to call out, but his word came out as a strange, squealing sound.



Never slowing, his eyes focused straight ahead, Cad-derly flew over the short alley expanse.



One of the black-robed killers emerged from the region Danica had entered, in full flight. Cadderly feared he was too late.



The remaining man in the corridor darted into Cadderly's room, brushing aside the smoke and stench of charred flesh that blocked the doorway.



Pikel grabbed the rope again, and Ivan began to climb, his efforts aided by his brother's hauling movements toward Cadderly's door.



Pikel drove on, much relieved when he saw Ivan's stubby hand come over the lip of the hallway. But then four shapes emerged from Cadderly's room.



Pikel instinctively let go of the rope.



He winced at Ivan's diminishing wail and the dull thump as Ivan landed again on the assassin at the bottom of the rope.



Pikel couldn't worry about it, though, not with four killers just a few strides away.



But the Night Masks were no longer interested in battle. Seeing the stairs gone, they sought other avenues of escape. One grabbed the rope and, without even testing to see if it was secured, leaped over the precipice. The others ran the other way down the hall, scrambling over the railing wherever they found high spots - tables mostly - where they could get down.



Pikel thought to give chase, but he paused when he heard a door creak open, heard chanting. The next thing the green-bearded dwarf knew, he was lying several feet from where he had been standing, a sharp and burning pain in one side, and his shocked hair wildly dancing on end.



Me brudder. The words cried out in Pikel's mind over and over, a litany against the swirling dizziness, a reminder that he could not remain up here, lying helplessly on the floor.



Ivan heard the man land heavily beside him, and he felt the other one squirming slowly beneath him. The dwarf opened one heavy eyelid to see the assassin standing over him, sword in hand.



The thrust came before the dwarf could react, and Ivan thought he was dead, but the assassin struck low, beneath Ivan.



Ivan didn't question his luck. He struggled to a sitting position, trying to locate his axe, or anything else he might use against the standing killer.



Too late. The assassin's sword came up again.



"Me brudder!" Pikel cried as he flew over the precipice.



The assassin dove away, rolled to his feet, and followed his companions out the door.



Pikel hit Ivan full force.



Ivan groaned as he waited patiently (he had no choice in the matter) for Pikel to crawl off him. "If ye're looking for thanks, keep looking," Ivan grumbled. *



Cadderly was too late in getting to the scene - for the sake of the other assassin.



The young priest relaxed as soon as he crested the steep roof. Danica was below him, in a valley between several gables. The remaining assassin was there, too, kneeling before Danica, his arms defenselessly by his sides and his head snapping to one side and the other, blood and sweat flying wide, as Danica landed blow after blow on his face.



"He is dead," Cadderly remarked when he got beside the young monk.



Danica, sobbing, slammed the man again, the shattered cartilage of his facial bones crackling under the blow.



"He is dead!" Cadderly said more emphatically, though he kept his tone calm and unaccusing.



Danica spun about, her face contorted with a mixture of rage and sorrow, and fell into his arms. Cadderly stared curiously as he wrapped his own arms about her, and Danica jumped back, staring at the young priest in disbelief.



"What?" she stammered, backpedaling even farther, and Cadderiy, noticing the change for the first time, had no answers for her.



His arms and legs, covered in white fur, had become those of a squirrel.