The Webbing Blade

ON THE RAMPARTS

THE CLOAK BILLOWED out in the wind behind Ma’reygar. He felt the stiff, cool breeze blowing in from the north. A slight scent of roast pork carried on the breeze, making his mouth water a little. His staff dangled from his hand but he kept his grip tight about it. He felt his calloused fingers find the deeply embedded ruts there. Those ruts he’d worn in there. In the middle distance he heard the babble of laughter drifting upwards. If only they knew he was here, they wouldn’t think to laugh. They’d grab for the hilts of their swords without a second’s delay.

He stood up on the battlements of Ilsnare Palace. It had been easy to get inside, to get into. A few mind hexes and the odd paralysing curse and he’d got right up here. And now he was inside there was nothing they could do to stop him. He was too far away for the Council to do anything to stop him even. Before they caught an idea of what had gone on, what he’d done, he would be far away and the curse would be impossible to overturn.

He stared along the ramparts, picking out the pair of guards dawdling about up there, talking among themselves. They both wore swords at their hips, and a crossbow dangling off their shoulders. In the flicker of light from the burning torches hanging off the sides of the ramparts, he could make out the faint lines of expression on their faces. Their crooked smiles, their matted eyes and the few worry lines in their foreheads. Neither of them saw him, neither of them even so much as glanced in his direction.

It was almost too easy.

Ma’reygar kept to the shadows. He brushed his gloved hand along the stone wall as he approached them, mumbling the hex beneath his breath. This hex would keep him hidden till a counter hex was uttered. They would never even see him. All they might register would be a slight waver of the clean air about them, and then it would be too late for them too.

He stood only a matter of steps from the two guards now. The two of them continued to chatter away between themselves, making some joke about their boss, a man called Herimyre, Captain of the Royal Guards. They might joke but if Herimyre had been there he would’ve sensed there was a mage in their midst. He might have had a chance of saving the two of them.

But he wasn’t there.

And so Ma’reygar could cast the killing curse without a moment’s hesitation.

One of the men dropped dead. Stone-cold dead, grasping his throat. His skin turned pale and his eyes lolled back in their sockets. All that marked his fall was a tiny groan which escaped his slightly parted lips and then the slump of meat wrapped in cloth as he dropped onto the stone of the rampart.

Ma’reygar turned his attention to the other guard.

The other one was on his knees, doubled over. His shoulders rose and fall with the exertion of his breathing, as the fire crackled away in his chest, burning him from the inside.

Ma’reygar approached him, crouched down, and reached for the man. He seized hold of his hair in his fist and yanked his head back so that he could look into his face. “Where’s the king?” Ma’reygar said, his voice gruff through his gritted teeth.

The guard stared at him with wide eyes. His lips trembled as he tried to speak. And then Ma’reygar saw that the guard’s hand, shivering almost uncontrollably, was making its way down to his belt, to the hilt of his sword. The loyalty of some of these guards was beyond belief.

The differing resistance to magic, though, was to be expected.

Ma’reygar supposed this guard had some magical blood in his line, somewhere a long way back. A shame that no one had noticed it, never thought to teach him to fully understand it. He might have been able to fight back. But the very fact that he had the blood in his veins was just enough for him to resist these few of his dying seconds.

Ma’reygar could make it easy for him. Mutter the killing curse a second time. Better for him to end this here right now, to put the man out of his misery. Summon a fresh torrent of flames to burn within the man.

But, no, he would cause the man to suffer. Just a little. He deserved it. He was as guilty as the rest.

He was allied with those that had taken her from him.

Ma’reygar reached for his own belt and unclasped the buckle keeping his dagger in place. He slipped it out of its sheath with the lightest scraping of the blade against the leather holder. He breathed in deep, savouring that rich, earthy scent. He could almost taste that dank earth in his mouth. He could almost certainly hear that snickering sound of giant spider fangs scraping, one against the other.

He felt the freezing cold of the blade in his hand, passing right through its well-bandaged handle. He had had to wrap as much cloth about it as he could, to keep the chill from freezing his hand right off. And still he wore gloves whenever he handled it. The blade always seemed to get colder whenever it sensed death nearby, or the prospect of a life which it was soon to end.

Ma’reygar watched the guard’s hand shudder on its way to the sword hilt, before growing uncontrollable. Yes, the fire was truly taking its hold on the man now. In a matter of minutes the man would be dead.

But Ma’reygar hadn’t time to waste.

And if he left the man alive, to live out his final shuddering moments of life, there was no telling what he might do. He might raise the alarm. He might bring Herimyre to bear on all this, and Herimyre was the only one who could possibly stop him now.

In a single, swift movement which betrayed the appearance of his old bones, Ma’reygar lurched forward and grabbed hold of the guard, spinning him round so he held him tight around the chest, and so that the blade tickled the man’s throat.

He watched its dull grey, razor-sharp edge sink into the surface of the man’s skin, a smear of blood appear on the blade. “Tell me where the king is,” Ma’reygar said, his voice steady and cool.

He felt the man shuddering in his hold, his whole body seeming to enter some kind of a frenzy. Then, through his chattering teeth, the man got out, “In his chamber . . . he’s in his chamber.” And then, with a strength that belied his induced fever, he craned his neck round, his whole head shaking uncontrollably, and met Ma’reygar eye. “That . . . that blade, what is it? I’ve never felt anything so cold.”

Ma’reygar kept his hand impossibly still, the blade still at the man’s throat. And he continued to look him right in the eye now sure that he saw some magical blood in there somewhere, still fighting hard against the curse.

Against the flames.

It was a pity the man had to die. If someone had unearthed him, told him of his potential, then he never would’ve joined the Royal Guards, never would’ve got himself on the wrong side of Ma’reygar’s grudge.

But that was all so much speculation now.

As Ma’reygar stuck the blade into the supple skin, slipping it in behind the man’s windpipe, he said, in a gentle, almost fatherly voice, “This dagger. It’s called the Webbing Blade.”

He withdrew the blade from the man’s neck, and let the guard fall away from him, into a heap alongside the other one.

Dead.

He wiped the Webbing Blade carefully with the hem of his cloak and then headed on along the ramparts, to the king’s chamber, to finally get his justice.