Meddling in Foreign Affairs

Chapter 14: An Attempt at a Peaceful Night

Dismas was woken up by the sound of someone moving about in the room. He stayed still, assuming it was Byulat or Aya, until he heard unfamiliar voices speaking an unfamiliar language. He reached under his pillow for his knife and inched towards the the edge of the bed so he could see what was going on below him. It was fairly dark, but he could see two hooded figures looking through his and Byulat's belongings.

He briefly considered yelling at Aya with his mind to wake her up, but decided she would cause more trouble if she woke up surprised. It would be best if he could get at least one of them before they realized that he was awake. As he was thinking of how best to do this, he heard Byulat shifting around in the bed below his. Unfortunately one of the figures also noticed this and turned their attention on Byulat. After another brief exchange of a foreign tongue, the other figure went over to the bed Aya was in.

Byulat let out a surprised shout as he woke up, and Dismas got into a crouching position on the edge of the bed while they were all distracted. The figure by Aya's bed didn't turn around when Byulat shouted, but looked like he was about to reach out towards Aya. He never got the chance to injure her, as Dismas jumped onto his back from his bed, knocking him to the floor. Dismas didn't wait for the figure to respond and slashed his throat with his dagger before turning around to see how Byulat was doing.

The figure above Byulat had his hands on the dwarf's throat and they were struggling against each other. The figure must have assumed that the thump and dying sounds behind him were Aya dying, not his friend, because he didn't check his back. Which made Dismas' job easy. He wrapped an arm around the figure's neck and plunged his dagger into their back where the heart would be on a human. He really hoped it was a human, because he knew nothing about the anatomy of dwarves or elves.

As he pulled the figure away from Byulat and pulled his dagger out of his back, he realized it must be a human, because he was taller than Dismas by a few inches. He let the man slump to the ground as he let out his last few dying gurgles and looked at Byulat with his eyes wide.

"What was that? Aren't you supposed to be good at this stuff? Why do you carry around all those weapons if you don't even use them when you need them?" Dismas asked in an angry whisper.

Byulat looked even more shocked than Dismas. "Why would I expect such a fight? Our opponents had no honor, sneaking in and attacking while we slept!"

Byulat didn't keep his voice down as he spoke, but before he could reprimand him, Dismas heard voices on the other side of the door. "Get ready for more. And they won't be any more honorable than the others," Dismas whispered as he climbed back up onto his bed and waited so he was above the door. Byulat didn't say anything as he grabbed a two-handed warhammer from his pile of belongings and stood in front of the door.

They didn't have to wait long as another two figures burst through the door to see the fate of their companions. Byulat swung and hit the first one solidly in the knee to knock him down. Dismas winced a bit as he heard the bones shattering and the man crying out in pain as he hit the ground. Byulat wasn't able to recover fast enough to face the second figure, so before he could lay a hand on the dwarf, Dismas threw his knife. It made a horrible sound as it sank into the figure's forehead and the man was pushed back into the door frame before falling.

Dismas jumped down from the bed to the injured man that Byulat had shattered the leg of. He realized that these men were probably the suspicious people he had seen the night before. Which meant that this was all of them. "Why were you and your friends invading our room?"

The man spoke a few words in that language Dismas didn't understand in response.

"Now, come on, I can't understand what you're saying. Talk in common!"