Chapter 31 Sage
Sage
The first time death came for Sage, she hadn’t seen it coming.
One moment she was nearing the end of a simple mission with her party, and the next she simply wasn’t.
Or if she was—if any part of her left this plane for elsewhere before Webar brought her back—she’s no memory of it.
There was pain and then nothing and then, miraculously, a second chance in a world she was determined not to leave again without making her mark upon it.
This time, Sage sees her fate coming, even if the bard doesn’t.
Rather, Sage suspects she doesn’t want to believe it.
They both know Menorath won’t want a loose end like Sage running around the kingdom with the Claunecks’ secrets on her tongue, any more than she’d leave Araphi to roam the Northlands.
Still, they might have fought their way through to the gate, drawn the notice of the Queensmen, made their case.
There was a chance as long as they were together.
But even if Sage had the artifact to hand over, and even if she were willing to abandon Araphi (she isn’t), the mercenaries never meant to let her make it so far as the gate, nor to slip away north.
When Araphi cranes around to look back before the mercenaries hustle her around the bend toward Briarwall, Sage gives her an encouraging nod as though to say, Go on, I’ll see you shortly.
Then she’s gone.
The two hovering over her with an iron grip on her shoulders step back, but only to join the dozen mercenaries who step carelessly over their comrades on the ground to cage her in.
Sage casts her bow and quiver aside as she scrambles to her feet.
They’re useless in these close quarters, too awkward and flimsy even to whack a mercenary with.
Instead she draws her daggers, which are only nearly useless.
At least she stands a chance at taking one or two of them down with her.
None seem eager to break the circle and risk their own throats first, but then, there’s no need to rush with Sage thoroughly penned in.
“Here now, don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be,” reasons a mercenary with chips of gemstone and copper coils braided into his long beard. An ugly welt speckled with blood swells across his cheekbone from one of Araphi’s flying rocks.
“Wait…this isn’t right, Remy,” Nura cries from outside the circle, her young voice high-pitched with urgency. “They’re not supposed to hurt her! I don’t care if they stole, she’s going to be—”
“Hush, now,” the Agent says, though with less certainty than Sage would expect from him.
She dares a glance back at the path into the Northlands but can no longer see the pair nor Bramble beyond the bristling hedge of mercenaries. “It’s all right,” Sage shouts for her to hear. “Just stay back.” There’s no point in the kid going down with her.
At least she got to mend things between her and Araphi.
At least she got to love her.
At least she found a home at the end of the road.
Out of the corner of her vision, a man darts forward, clearly hoping to capitalize on her distraction and put her down for good.
She spins just in time to block his downward swing.
With their forearms locked together, the tip of his shortsword is hovering inches from her face.
She draws her second dagger up to slash across his side, then plants a boot in his chest, sending him falling back into his own ranks.
But as she dashes forward, hoping to leap through the gap, a stave swings out of nowhere to clip her in the shoulder.
Though it doesn’t truly connect, sparing her a broken collarbone or shoulder blade, it sends her crashing to the dirt, where she rolls away from her attacker and into the boot of another, knocking the breath from her body.
Sage lies there gulping as the mercenaries swarm forward all at once, like sand pouring into a pit to bury her alive.
Her own heart pounds deafeningly in her ears, frantic as the beating of wings.
Wait…
Sage flops to her back just in time to watch the owls—scores of them, perhaps a hundred in number—slam into the huddle of mercenaries above her.
They batter themselves against helmets and sword hands and faces until the scene descends into chaos.
There are barn owls with rust-colored wings, great horned owls with wingspans near as wide as she is tall, and palm-sized elf owls just the right size to peck at the eyes of the scattering mercenaries while avoiding swords and shields.
And circling above them all, a golden-eyed snowy owl screeching like a battle commander to their troops.
“Goway?” Bewildered, she climbs cautiously to her feet to watch Goway dive through the chaos and come to perch on his master’s shoulder, preening her wild red curls and his feathers in turn.
As the mercenaries scatter to dodge claws and beaks, Wren stands perfectly still, the eye of her own hurricane.
“Where the devils did you come from?” Sage calls, still catching her breath.
“Oh, I’ve been following your trail for days. I kept a respectful distance, of course. The mood you two were in when you set out, I thought you could use some privacy to make it up to one another. But I figured if you were leaving, I might as well too. Good thing I did, eh?”
“A very good thing.” But her relief melts away as she notices Wren’s eyes. Instead of their usual gray, they flicker with orange light, like fire burning around the coal of her pupils. “Wren…You didn’t…”
The woman grins, one hand drifting to a small hide pouch on a cord around her neck, where it rests outside the collar of her coat. “What good is power if you don’t use it to help your friends?”
Suddenly the clamor escalates, impossible as that seems, and Sage whips her head around to find the mercenaries preoccupied not only by the owls, but by Nura, who’s charging into their midst. Despite being a full head shorter than the slightest of them, she plows through them like a cannonball, scattering men in her wake.
“What are you doing?” Remy cries. He’s scavenged a shield from a fallen mercenary to hold above his head, but stands far enough from the fray that the owls aren’t menacing him.
“Can’t you see they’re up to no good?” Nura shouts back, clobbering a man with the hilt of her sword as he swats at an owl, then backhanding him to the ground. “Are you planning to stand there and let them kill our leader?”
Sage doesn’t hear Remy’s reply, as an armored elbow drops down on the back of her neck and she falls to her knees again.
Even as her head rings, her skin prickles in the way that warns of danger, and Sage spins on her knee to throw herself backward as a mercenary’s sword pierces the earth between her boots.
Shaking her head to clear it, she scrambles upward only to watch the mercenary crumple at her feet.
Behind him stands Bramble, hoisting a thick branch in their trembling hands. “Sage, I…I…” they stutter. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never meant…I only wanted…”
“I understand, Bramble.” She cuts them off, stopping short of: I forgive you, Bramble.
It’s enough, it seems, because they steady themself to speak in a rush.
“Those women—Phi’s people—told the guards at Briarwall that she’d gotten lost in the Northlands last fall, and they’d hired a new party to search for her.
But Remy spent the winter recruiting men from the villages south of the wall at their bidding.
They don’t want you getting back to the gate, Sage. ”
It’s no less than she’s realized already.
Menorath has gone this far to keep her machinations secret, so why not add Sage’s dead body to the pile of her ill deeds?
“And what do you want?” she asks as she shoves Bramble aside to strike at the helmet of the mercenary sneaking up on them.
“If it’s penance, then find Araphi. Help her. ”
“I…yes. Yes, I will,” Bramble decides, then their eyes brighten. “I’ve still got her lute! It’s in the barracks. We brought it back from the temple, along with both of your packs. Nura insisted.”
Sage doesn’t understand bard magic so intimately that she can guess whether the instrument makes the difference, whether Araphi stands a better chance with her mother’s lute in hand than the one acquired in Arkney.
But certainly it can’t hurt, and at least Bramble will be on hand with their branch.
“Then go now, get it to her. I’ll follow shortly. ”
Bramble nods, drops the branch with relief, and turns to dodge the mercenaries, Nura, and the owls on their way to the gate.
From over the treetops, she can see the great doors begin to swing open again to admit them.
Then Sage is submerged in battle once more—a shifting blur of feathers and steel in sunlight, Nura’s fists and Sage’s boots, dented helmets and dropped swords.
She stands back-to-back with Nura while Wren directs her birds like an orchestral conductor, and they hold their ground, peeling off mercenaries one at a time.
For every two that go down, one stands up again, and Sage’s arms grow tired from the weight of her sword as her breath comes short.
She’s definitely lost a bit of her edge in Arkney over the winter—something to remedy if she survives.
A thunderous sound rings from the direction of the outpost, and the ground quakes beneath their boots, sending them all stumbling.
Nura doesn’t waste a moment of the mercenaries’ weakness.
“Go now!” she commands, spinning to shove Sage in the direction of the gates before she can properly wonder what’s happened.
“We’ll keep the last few off your back!”
Sage needs no more convincing than that.
Leaping over a fallen mercenary on the ground, she sprints hard for the entrance to Briarwall. If she can just get to the gate, get through to Araphi—
Then the Agent steps onto the path.
“Move, Remy,” she growls, tightening her grip on her dagger.
He raises his own empty hands before him, placating, but doesn’t budge. “You know I’ve a job to do. And alas, you’re the new mission, Sage. The Client—”
“You mean Menorath Clauneck,” she accuses.
He shrugs. “A client is a client, and this one’s exceptionally rich—and dangerous. She’s also not a fan of yours at the moment. First you take her artifact, then her heiress…”
“I didn’t take the dragon’s tooth,” Sage insists before pausing to consider. “Or…I suppose we did, but not for our own profit. We were doing what’s right.”
“I know. Bramble’s story was shaky from the start.
They don’t have the heart of a liar, pity for them.
But it doesn’t matter. As I said, the job has changed.
When we made it back to Briarwall, I had to send a missive explaining the situation.
I didn’t really believe you two had drowned in the Swallow. Honestly, I hoped you hadn’t.”
“You mean you hoped we hadn’t drowned with the dragon’s tooth in hand.”
“Can’t it be both?” The ghost of a fond smile haunts the corners of his lips before he continues. “I told you once that I was the insurance policy. Do you recall?”
Of course she does. “You came along to make sure none of us compromised the mission, or Menorath’s secrets,” she guesses. “If anything threatened them, you were told to eliminate that threat, whether it came from within the party or without. Have I got that right?”
“Just so. And since the artifact seems like a wash, all that’s left is to make sure that you can’t stop the Claunecks from bringing ‘Phi Runesong’ back to the capital, where she belongs. They’ll never let her go now.”
Despite her aching arms, Sage lifts her dagger higher. “You know I won’t let that happen.”
Remy sighs, his hands drifting inevitably toward his belt and his own daggers.
“You’re willing to throw away everything you’ve ever wanted for the bard?
Your reputation would have been made had you fulfilled our contract.
You’d have more gold than you could spend.
Your name would have been whispered among Ashaway’s elite as a party leader to seek out for the most difficult quests—by me, if nobody else.
You’d be picking jobs where and with whom you like, with every road open to you.
You would have been as free as anyone in the kingdom. Why, Sage?”
“Because that isn’t freedom,” she replies, realizing the truth as she gives voice to it.
“I’ve spent ten years running toward nothing, only running from.
From the fact that I didn’t know where I belonged, and believed I never would.
But now I do. So you can complete your mission—rather, you can try—but if you’re not prepared to kill me with your own hands in order to stop me, then get out of my way. Time to make a choice, Remy.”
The Agent wavers on the path, his hands resting briefly on his dagger hilts, his deep-brown eyes sharp as arrows as he watches her.
Perhaps those twenty-four years of choices flicker in front of him now.
Then his eyes soften, and he drops his hands to his sides.
“In you go, boss,” he says, stepping off the path.
Sage doesn’t stop to yell at him for the nickname. She only nods her thanks before she lowers her sword and runs through the still-open gate before the confused guards can stop her.