Charmcaster Read online

  Ferius turned to me. ‘Kid, fire again. Now!’

  Fast as a rattlesnake, I pulled powder and cast the spell a second time just as the Berabesq slammed his bleeding forearms together. The air in front of him shimmered. The twin fires of my blast faded before they got within a foot of him. ‘We are the Faithful,’ he declared. ‘Did you think God would command that we hunt warlocks without blessing us with the means to protect ourselves from their foul magic?’

  In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m not much of a fighter. Outside of one pretty decent spell and a few tricks I’ve picked up on my travels, my usual defensive strategy is to get beaten up a lot and wait for Ferius to rescue me.

  ‘Dang it!’ she complained as a volley of her razor-sharp steel cards bounced off the blood shield the Berabesq had summoned. ‘Now that’s just plain cheatin’!’

  ‘It is by God’s hand that we are protected from your weapons,’ the woman opposite said, her curved kazkhan blade weaving in a swift figure-of-eight pattern as she approached. ‘Just as it is by God’s will that your meddling ways end in blood.’ With a sudden lunge forward she swung her blade in a horizontal cut that came right for Ferius’s neck. The Argosi stumbled backwards – awkwardly, it seemed to me, until she turned her fall into a backwards roll and came right back up to her feet, flinging a pair of steel cards at our enemy. Once again the man with the metal sheaths on his fingers drove the sides of his forearms together and the same shimmering of the air appeared, shielding both him and his partner. The cards dropped to the sandy ground.

  Ferius drew the short steel rod from inside her waistcoat. With a flick of her wrist it extended out to almost two feet in length. ‘About forty seconds,’ she said to me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The shield, kid. That’s how long it holds up each time Fingers over there summons it. Haven’t you been paying attention?’

  How was I supposed to notice things like that when people were coming to kill me?

  ‘Guess that makes it about thirty-six seconds before my next meal,’ Reichis said, stalking along the ground to outflank them. His surreptitious movements would probably have been more effective if he hadn’t felt the need to boast.

  The broad-shouldered Faithful took another swing at Ferius, who dived once more in a bid to come up behind her opponent. But the swordswoman was too fast, spinning around with her blade, forcing Ferius to back away once again. I had my own problems of course, because whether from random choice or some weird Berabesq gender rules, the man with the steel-tipped fingers was coming for me. He grabbed at my face. I shuffled backwards only to find my boots digging into the soft sand. I had to settle for falling onto my butt to avoid having five gouges marring my features to go along with the shadowblack markings that already weren’t doing much for my looks. Fingers loomed over me with an expression that was somehow both sympathetic and disgusted by my inability to present any kind of threat. ‘Stay down, boy.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  Had it been forty seconds yet? It’s oddly hard to keep track of time when people are trying to kill you. I decided to take a shot and reached inside my pouches. I may not be much for fisticuffs, but I’ve spent a lot of time practising using my powder spell from all kinds of awkward positions. My attack was swift, smooth and well-aimed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t well-timed. The blast dissipated against the shield barely two seconds before it faded.

  Fingers came after me with those claws of his a second time. I rolled away with more speed than either of us expected, and might have felt good about it were it not for the agony of five steel points slicing through the back of my shirt and into my skin. When I got to my feet and turned to face him, my blood glistened along the metal tips of his finger-sheaths.

  ‘Kneel and bow,’ he said. ‘The next time you see my tiazkhan they will be holding the remains of your throat.’

  I began to retreat, or at least I thought I was retreating. Turned out I wasn’t moving at all. I was just standing there, unable to convince my legs to get me out of there. Fingers raised his hand for the kill. That should’ve been enough to get my body moving again. Too bad it didn’t turn out that way.

  Here’s an interesting fact I’d discovered during my year as an outlaw: your brain never really gets used to fear. I mean, sure, you become accustomed to the idea of being terrified all the time, but when someone comes to kill you, everything still goes straight to hell.

  ‘You like claws?’ Reichis growled from where he crouched off to the side. ‘Try mine!’

  He leaped at our opponent, limbs outstretched and mouth wide, showing his fangs. Unlike me, Reichis is fast and deadly in a fight. Until that moment I’d never seen anyone evade him, but the Berabesq Faithful sidestepped the attack, spinning around as he did. When he was facing me again, the metal sheaths on his fingers had more blood on them.

  ‘Reichis!’ I screamed.

  The squirrel cat landed about ten feet away in the sand. He got back up only to have his rear leg give out on him. He unleashed the kind of growl that to most people would’ve sounded like vicious rage, but I knew it meant he was hurt and scared.

  The Berabesq Faithful, apparently having decided Reichis was the greater threat, strode after him. ‘Leave him alone!’ I shouted. My legs finally obeyed my commands, and I tried to grab the man’s shoulders. Almost negligently, he spun around again and backhanded me across the face. The sting of his metal claws on my left cheek was followed by a dribble of blood down to my jaw.

  He looked at me through narrowed eyes, a mix of curiosity and maybe even empathy in his expression. ‘You would die for the animal?’

  I was spared having to answer by the wind picking up, spraying sand all around us and temporarily blinding us both. Our fight had taken us far from the others. I no longer knew where Ferius was, or if my Argosi mentor had finally met an enemy she couldn’t outwit. Reichis snarled as he struggled to rise up on all fours and leap at the man’s back, but his injured leg kept failing him. It was pitiful to watch.

  Ferius says that when things are bad – really bad – then all that’s left is to decide whether to die on your feet or die on your knees. That’s when you become truly free. That’s when you can risk everything, because there’s nothing left to lose and fear has lost its hold on you.

  Ferius is stupid.

  ‘Kneel,’ the Berabesq Faithful said. ‘The end will be swift, I swear.’

  Then again, maybe the Argosi has a point.

  ‘Let’s dance, dirtbag,’ I replied.

  6

  The Second Talent

  The Second Talent of the Argosi is called arta eres, which means ‘graceful defence’, or as Ferius calls it, ‘dancing’. When she fights, it’s like watching water swirling at the bottom of a whirlpool: twirling, swaying, always moving, always in harmony with her opponents even when she’s beating the hell out of them.

  It doesn’t quite look that way when I do it.

  ‘You have spirit,’ the Berabesq Faithful congratulated me after I’d somehow managed to slide under his arm and punch him in the kidneys. Something to be proud of, all things considered, and all it had cost me was another set of bloody claw marks along my ribcage. Fingers shook his head as we squared off again. ‘But you are a heathen and a fool. You sacrifice yourself for what? A warlock you’ve never met, being brought to justice by foes you cannot defeat. By now he is dead, and you have traded your life for nothing.’

  The guy’s got a point, I thought. ‘Okay, I give up.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Just as soon as I’m done kicking your ass.’

  I slipped left then right, evading Fingers’s attempts to skewer me with his metal claws even as my right foot kicked sand up into his face. He ducked and made a grab for me, but by then I was already on his other side. I performed what’s called a carry-over, in which you take your partner’s elbow and pull them into a new direction to send them careening off to their new partner. In this case, that new partner was R
eichis.

  The squirrel cat still couldn’t quite stay on his feet, but he didn’t need to for this manoeuvre. As the Berabesq Faithful struggled to regain his footing, Reichis delivered a vicious bite to his ankle, drawing blood.

  ‘Damned rodent!’ Fingers cried out. It was the first decent blow we’d scored since this whole thing began. I think that enraged him more than the pain. Unfortunately he was still bigger than us, faster than us, and more skilled at combat. Before Reichis could get away, the Berabesq kicked him, sending the squirrel cat tumbling over and over along the sand.

  Again I ran at our enemy, momentarily forgetting the dance and relying on raw fury to help me land a blow. It didn’t. The Berabesq evaded me easily. This time instead of clawing me, he tried to drive those metal finger-sheaths into my side – no doubt to rip out one of my kidneys and present it to me.

  All those hours Ferius made me practise country dances saved my life just then as my knee came up reflexively in what’s called a ‘fancy canter’. No doubt I looked pretty silly, but instead of losing a vital organ I only got stabbed in the thigh. Almost by accident, I drove my elbow into my opponent’s face even as I stumbled away. I landed next to Reichis who was, at that moment, trying in vain to launch himself at our opponent. ‘Damn leg wound,’ he growled. ‘Can’t jump high enough to get airborne.’

  I rolled onto my back and then to my feet. The wind picked up, sending so much sand into the air that I couldn’t see the Berabesq any more, and hopefully he couldn’t see me either. ‘What good would getting airborne do?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d show that lousy skinbag the difference between a squirrel cat and a rodent, that’s what!’

  It’s worth noting that, zoologically speaking, squirrel cats are almost certainly a type of rodent.

  ‘I have an idea,’ I shouted over the noise of the wind. ‘But I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

  Fingers had recovered and was now coming for us again, a little warier than before. That might have been flattering had it not also meant that he wouldn’t be falling for any more of my dancing tricks.

  ‘Will I like your idea more than being cut to shreds by a stinking human wearing fake claws?’ Reichis asked.

  ‘Maybe, but not by much.’ The wind died down just long enough for me to pull red and black powders from my pouches and send my spell screaming towards our enemy. As before, the Berabesq slammed his forearms together and summoned that strange shield of his. But I hadn’t been aiming for him. Instead, the twin fires blasted the sand at his feet. In a better world, that would’ve somehow turned the sand into slippery glass, but the fires the spell creates aren’t nearly hot enough to do that. It did, however, distract Fingers long enough for me to execute the main part of my plan: I reached down, grabbed Reichis by the scruff of his neck, and hurled him as high as I could up into the air.

  ‘You dirty rotten—’ The rest of that sentence was lost to the gale-force winds that spun him far away into the swirling sands above us. Having perfectly executed that manoeuvre, I then proceeded to the next part of the plan. I dropped to my knees and begged for my life.

  Fingers looked down at me, a trace of a gentle smile on his face. ‘I would that I could offer you leniency, brave one, but you have struck one of the Faithful, and attempted to hinder our most sacred duty. Mercy is no longer within my power to give.’ He brought his right arm back, the now bloody metal claws oddly bright in the haze of the sandstorm.

  I clasped my hands together. ‘Could I pray? Just for a moment?’

  ‘To worship your heathen gods so close to your death would only tarnish your soul further.’

  ‘It won’t take long, I promise!’ I bowed my head and spoke very quickly. ‘Ancestors, I know I haven’t exactly been a model Jan’Tep mage up until now, but if you could see your way to granting me this one last wish, I’d really appreciate it.’

  ‘Cease your prattling and face His judgement with some small measure of—’

  ‘Almost done.’ I clasped my hands tighter. ‘Ancestors, if you’re out there, please send the squirrel cat a strong breeze so he can kill this bastard for me.’ I looked up at the Berabesq Faithful. ‘See, that wasn’t too long, was it?’

  The Berabesq’s confusion was understandable since he’d probably never seen a squirrel cat before that day and so didn’t know what they could do with a little altitude and a strong wind. Too late my opponent figured it out and turned to find a furious, snarling monster swooping down on him from fifty feet in the air. Reichis’s paws and back feet were fully extended, his glider wings angled down as he used the wind to strike like a bolt of lightning hurled by an angry god. The Berabesq Faithful got his arms up to protect his face and turned his hands so the metal sheaths on his fingers would skewer the squirrel cat. But Reichis is a slippery flyer; at the last instant he turned, coming round the other side so that even as he flew past the Berabesq, his front claws tore a strip out of the man’s neck.

  The Faithful roared with indignant outrage, blood from the deep gashes mixing with the sand swirling around us. This time when he turned it was with considerably less elegance than before, slashing wildly with the sharpened sheaths on his fingers. But Reichis was already gone by then, once again borne aloft by the strong winds, into the storm and out of sight.

  I jumped back up to my feet, causing the bleeding wounds in my thigh to scream in agony. I pulled powder again and fired the spell. The Faithful was too fast of course, getting his shield up, but this time I’d directed the fires almost straight at each other, closing my eyes tightly against the unbearably bright flash of light. My opponent wasn’t so lucky: he’d known his shield would protect him so he’d been staring right at the blast. Now he was blinded by it.

  ‘Coward!’ he shouted. ‘I showed you the honour of a fair fight and yet you come at me with tricks and deceptions.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, not bothering to sound sincere. ‘But tricks and deceptions are kind of my thing.’

  I probably should have kept my mouth shut, because the Berabesq followed my voice and came at me with a series of slashing attacks – any one of which would have got me if his vision hadn’t been impaired. But even that temporary advantage faded as the Berabesq blinked several times in quick succession and focused his gaze on me.

  Damn it. Too soon. ‘Reichis, now!’ I shouted.

  Fingers spun around, hands held high to grab at an attacker who wasn’t there.

  ‘Apologies,’ I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out one of Ferius’s razor-sharp cards. It was the four of clubs. Not a particularly impressive card, but it was the one she’d given me the first time we’d ever fought together so it had sentimental value. ‘That was another deception,’ I informed the Berabesq Faithful as I slashed with the card into his left side, paying him back for the cuts he’d given me.

  Not the ones he’d inflicted on Reichis though.

  The squirrel cat descended from on high like a spear launched from a tornado. His claws got caught in the flesh of the man’s upper back and shoulders. Reichis didn’t seem to mind though, and went about the business of shredding his enemy’s skin, screaming all the while about eyeballs, ears and tongues.

  It’s really not a good idea to piss off a squirrel cat.

  With the Berabesq Faithful’s attention now fully on Reichis, I prepared our endgame. As the man spun around, trying to grab at the squirrel cat, I pulled powder, desperately hoping I’d worked out the timing. Just as the Berabesq was coming back around, I shouted ‘Reichis, get off him now!’

  He barely paused in his attack. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s been forty seconds!’

  The squirrel cat used his uninjured rear leg to push off from the man’s shoulders and leap away. My fingers formed the somatic shapes, my mind envisioned the required mystical geometry, I sent all my will hurtling through the glinting metallic tattoos of the breath band on my forearm, and I spoke the word. I even remembered to breathe first. ‘Carath,’ I said.

  Despi
te his numerous injuries and the chaos around us, the Berabesq almost got his forearms back up to form his shield, but by then the twin fires, red and black, had already torn into his exposed chest. He’d have died instantly had I not used less powder than usual. I’d like to think it was thanks to a streak of decency within me, but more likely it was because I’d been shaking so badly that I’d dropped half the powder into the sand at my feet. Either way, my enemy fell to the ground, unconscious, severely burned, but still alive.

  ‘A little help here!’ Reichis screamed, drawing my gaze. A patch of his fur had caught on fire.

  I ran over and leaped on him, covering his body with mine to snuff out the flames before they could spread. It went out quickly, thank the ancestors, and he and I were left huffing and puffing on the ground, neither of us with the strength to deal with the fact that we looked embarrassingly like we were cuddling.

  ‘You stink,’ the squirrel cat said.

  ‘You too,’ I replied.

  That, in a nutshell, is our relationship.

  We couldn’t have been lying there for more than a few blissfully peaceful seconds before a voice said, ‘Well now, ain’t you just the cutest pair?’

  I looked up to find Ferius practically standing over us. I don’t know how she sneaks up on people like that, but one day I’m going to find a way to make her teach me. ‘Come on,’ she said, reaching out a hand to help me up. I groaned from the pain emanating from my back, my thigh, and, well, everywhere. ‘Those gashes need tending to.’ She knelt down to examine Reichis. ‘And the squirrel cat’s leg’s going to want stitches.’

  Reichis snarled at her. ‘Tell the Argosi that if she tries to sew me I’m going to—’

  She didn’t so much cut him off as ignore him. ‘Put the little fella in a sling and start headin’ back the way we came, kid,’ she said, then strode off deeper into the storm.

  ‘Wait, where are you going?’

  ‘There’s still two more of them Faithful out there with that mage. Can’t very well let them kill some poor sap just because they think he’s you.’