Blood Eagle

Words in the Night

The following day consisted of the usual routines. At the evening meal, Arn ate while letting Domitian prattle on about whatever was on his mind; the skáld did not pay much attention.

"Domitian, the sister's here, if you want the rites," another gladiator told him.

"Ah, thanks." The Aquilan got up and glanced back at his Tyrian companion. "What about you? You still have your lessons with her?"

Arn looked up at him, taking a few moments to understand everything, as his thoughts had been elsewhere. He finally shook his head.

He watched Domitian leave the common room; he had not realised his friend had a match tomorrow. Finishing his food, Arn thought about Helena and their last conversation. Matters were cold between them, if not necessarily hostile, but they were also on an even footing. They had the same secret, and neither of them could afford the truth to be revealed.

Of course, in Arn's case, it would mean execution. In her case, she would simply be trained as a healer and her skills put to use. He could not fathom why this fate seemed so wrong to her, or rather, why she despised magic to such a degree that she would scorn her gift. Usually, such opinions about magic belonged to either ignorant peasants and commonfolk, afraid of what they did not understand, or the elite, fearful of what they could not control. Arn had never heard of a mage who feared herself.

Maybe spurred on by his musings, maybe curiosity born of another reason, but Arn ended up drifting towards the training yard. He had arrived at the end of the ritual; each of the gladiators knelt before the priestess, who marked their foreheads and consecrated them for their battle tomorrow.

As the fighters got up and left, Domitian winked at Arn while moving past him. The Tyrian stayed, staring at the sister picking up her staff. As she turned and saw him, she hesitated; for a strange moment, they simply exchanged looks in the silence that was hard to break.

Finally, she put her staff aside and signed to him. 'Why did you say you used to sing?'

He blinked. 'I didn't. I said nothing.'

'Not now. The other night. In the garden.'

He slowly exhaled. 'I wanted to explain something.'

'Which was?'

Irritated by her swift questions, which emphasised how slowly the right signs came to him, he raised one hand to request silence; ironically, that same frustration was the answer she was looking for. 'I'm slow. With the signs. It's hard for me,' he explained.

She remained silent, physically speaking, waiting for him to continue.

'I was a bard. I knew how to say anything through song. Make you laugh, cry. Forgive. Or without song, I could still put words together to say things right. Say them well.' Bitterness filled his face. 'Now I speak like a child.'

She regarded him, and with the veil covering her expression, he could not read her reaction. 'An apology is not about how good it sounds, but how sincere.'

'Yes. Of course.'

'You threatened me. You used me. Lied to me.'

'I know. I'm sorry.' At least those gestures came swiftly to him, and yet they felt so inadequate. 'I was desperate. I was wrong.'

He saw the fabric move in front of her lips as she exhaled deeply. 'I may believe you, at this point.'

'And I am grateful that you taught me these signs.' Arn thought about saying more, that his conversations with Helena were the only times he felt a little like his old self, that he could forget his circumstances; for one reason or another, he kept quiet.

'You used to sing, you say.'

The residue of a smile touched Arn's face, mostly because the sudden return to the beginning of their conversation amused him. 'Yes.'

'Is that why they cut out your tongue?'

Any sense of levity abandoned him. That was not the full reason, but part of it. 'More or less. They feared my words, magical or mundane.'

'I'm sorry,' she signed, and it felt odd to watch those familiar gestures coming from her now. 'They've treated you cruelly.'

There was nothing Arn could say to that; he did not want her pity. He did not want to be reminded that he was not a skáld, not the Bladesinger, not the man he once was, but a gladiator and hired thug. 'Yes,' he simply replied.

'I should have liked to hear you sing.'

'I should have liked for you to hear me.'

Time was up; she had to leave, and Arn had to go to his cell. "Farewell, Master Arn." She made her departure, and he went to his room, waiting for the full cover of night that he might sneak out and kill a stranger.

*

After collecting a sword from a bread stall with a vendor more friendly to Magnus than the local criminals, Arn continued to the warehouse. Although the lack of windows and entrances provided an obstacle, the nature of the buildings also helped to hide his approach. The tall, imposing structures often lay with only narrow pathways between them, covered in shadows thanks to the height of the warehouses. And since none lived here, nobody walked those alleys or stuck a head out the window to watch strangers pass by. The only people would be the guards that patrolled in lazy patterns; easy for Arn to evade with his rune that drew the darkness around him.

Reaching his destination, staying around the back, Arn looked up at the warehouse wall. Collecting himself, he drew upon his rune of strength and began climbing. His fingers could barely grip around the bricks, and his boots found no footing, forcing him to haul himself up entirely by the strength of his hands. If not for magic, he would have failed immediately. Now, hanging by less than an inch, his fingers pulled him up.

It was a gruelling climb, and Arn had no magic that would protect him should he fall. His shoulder complained, not from physical exertion, but the strain he placed his rune of force under, like a muscle suffering from an old injury that never healed right. When he reached the top, he rolled over and lay flat on his back, breathing deeply in relief.

The darkness on a moonless night gave him some trouble; the warehouse was big, as large as the ludus and the inner house together. His eagle eyes still required a minimum of light to work by, and stomping with his boots would make too much noise; instead, he knelt and touched the roof with his hands, sending a pulse of magic through the stonework to feel where it changed. Following that sensation, his fingertips found wood. A hatch, allowing for escape should a fire erupt and block the only entrance out of the warehouse.

It was bolted from the inside, with no handle or ring to pull upon. Yet wood, even dead and bereft of life, came from the earth, and it obeyed Arn's magic. Placing his hand on the planks, he used a burst of spellpower to break it apart. It caused noise, perhaps rendering his earlier caution pointless, but he had to get through. It also left him with precious little spellpower for his abilities, and he would have to rely on his rune of force again to win the fights for him; while Arn only needed to kill once tonight, he doubted he would have the good fortune to only face a single adversary. Reaching through the hole to unbolt the hatch, Arn prepared to enter.

*

The warehouse lay in absolute darkness. Arn extended one hand to touch the wall and send his magical sense through the stonework. It gave him a rough idea of the hallway and the doors along either side. He was on the top floor, naturally, but he could not feel what lay below; the sensation provided by his magic faded out, the further it went from him, and it became hard to interpret the jumbled impressions he felt.

Sword drawn, Arn moved forward. One hand on the wall constantly, he sent out a new pulse of magic every other moment to warn him of tremors in the ground that would herald footfall moving in his direction.

Reaching the first door in the hallway, Arn looked down at the thin gap between wood and floor. No sliver of light that might suggest someone awake inside, working the late hours balancing ledgers. Of course, this Karl might have gone to sleep already, but Arn could always return and check the rooms he had passed by. He continued.

Arn knew little of a merchant's world, but he assumed offices would be higher up, since it was most practical to use the ground floor for storing the goods. So he would avoid that, also the most likely place to encounter guards. But the warehouse was tall and had several levels; perhaps the offices were placed in the middle, and the top was used to provide storage for sundry goods, or sleeping rooms, or other such purposes. That would explain why he saw no light or heard signs of activity.

Reaching the end of the hallway, Arn's magical sense told him of a staircase leading to the floors below; trusting his intuition that the offices might be one step below, he moved down.

Although the winding stairway continued further to the ground floor, Arn stepped off before that, looking down at another corridor. This time, his eyes easily caught the sliver of light below one of the doors ahead. Steeling himself, Arn crept forward, using his rune of subtlety to disguise any sound he might otherwise make.

Hoping they oiled the hinges – the minor rune on his body could only cloak him to a certain limit – Arn pushed the handle down slowly and pushed open carefully. Across the room, he spotted a hulking figure seated at a desk, back towards him, with an oil lamp burning merrily. Foolish to place the furniture in such a way, blinding yourself to anyone who entered.

Arn pushed the door further, ready to slip in, when his fears about creaking hinges was made into a mockery; a tripwire stretched across the threshold became pushed as well and pulled a mess of crockery down from a drawer behind the door. The giant seated at the table jumped to his feet, grabbing a great hammer leaning against the wall. "Guards! Guards!"

With a curse on his lips, if not his tongue, Arn attacked. Despite Magnus' words about this Karl using his fists like hammers, he had no trouble swinging an actual one with enough force that threatened to break every bone on impact.

But Arn had magic. He called upon his bladesong, spending his remaining spellpower, and the weapon in his hand leapt to action. With strength that belied Arn's slender frame and nature, the sword intercepted the arc of the hammer and led it astray, allowing him to step forward. Already, the blade continued with the aim to impale itself in Karl's chest and claim his life, when, but an inch away, the magic faltered.

Gold. He wore the accursed metal around his neck, on his hands, his belt buckle, and bootstraps. Like a stench that deadened magic, it surrounded him.

With a roar, Karl shoved Arn backwards, allowing him to use the range of his hammer again. He swung it repeatedly, forcing Arn to evade. But the small room had barely any space for retreats or manoeuvres, and from the hallway, more enemies appeared to threaten him from the other side.

Realising these disadvantages could be combined to serve him, Arn moved as far back as he could, allowing the nearest guard to approach him – and thereby get in the way of Karl, unable to swing his hammer without hitting something at this point.

Arn did not worry about the guards or their number; they did not seem protected by gold, and he could easily kill them. But Karl was both a threat and his task tonight; he had to die for Arn to make his escape and collect his reward.

Remembering another time he had been in dire straits, Arn reached out with his magic, this time searching for any trace of water. He felt it; calm liquid in a jar, in the corner of the room. Arn dove underneath the guard's sword and grabbed the jar to throw it at the oil lamp.

It immediately became extinguished, plunging the place into darkness. The Aquilans cried out, swinging their weapons heedlessly in fear. Arn did not require light; extending his magical sense yet again, he felt every footstep in the room.

Like an invisible stalker, Arn struck out with empowered strength to land a killing blow at the guard. The skáld felt the tremors from his entire body hitting the floor, sending reverberations through the stonework.

Karl continued to swing his hammer back and forth, hoping to blindly hit something. Arn crouched low and waited until the weapon had passed by before leaping forward, finally sinking his blade into the man's throat; gold or not, steel succeeded where magic had failed.

Arn turned towards the hallway, still full of guards. They were frightened; the darkness had turned them into children, fearful of the monsters in the night, except they had good reason to feel this way. A creature moved in the dark, able to see and kill them at ease, and they could do nothing to defend themselves.

For a moment, Arn considered striking them all down. He could claim the energy of the last, fuelling his magic further. But that would take time and leave him vulnerable afterwards, and he could not be sure if more guards were on their way. This rationale allowed him to overhear the voice that whispered how the old Bladesinger would never have even contemplated slaughtering men without the slightest chance to defend themselves – or worse, that he would earn the disapproval of a priestess whose opinion should be irrelevant to him, and who would never hear of this anyway.

As the guards continued to yell, swinging their weapons at every sound only to hit each other, Arn shrouded himself with his rune of subtlety and evaded them all, going up the stairway. By the time they brought torches and realised what had happened, he was making his climb down the outer wall, disappearing into the night like a vanishing spectre.