CHAPTER FIVE: ESCAPADE

Is humankind good or evil?
A mistaken question…
akin to asking:
is humankind male or female?
The two exist in perfect balance,
rarely in their purest form.
-Cosari, 'Meditations'

Thea and Matthias waited in a little copse, clinging together and peering out with baited breath. In those few minutes, perhaps a dozen people passed along the road, all of them fleeing from the Heron estate. A dozen people out of well over a hundred guests and servants. Thea hoped that others had escaped in different directions though, he suspected, it might not be too many of them.

There was a rustling in the foliage behind them and Matthias turned around, a small buck knife clenched in his fist, ready to gut their attacker. A slim hand shot out and stayed his wrist.

"It's us," Larian whispered. She crawled out from behind a fern and set herself next to Thea. Further back, he could see Heath - only his eyes were visible in the nighttime foliage, illuminated by twin moons on the wane, but he could recognize the young man nonetheless.

"What in the thirteen hells happened back there?" Matthias said. He choked back a sob - understandable, as he'd just seen his father die and, it was to be assumed, his brother and a dozen acquaintances and friends. "I... when that bastard said to kill, I felt it, you know? I felt it in my bones... and, when I got knocked silly, the anger tumbled right out. I think it was... am I crazy if I say it was magic?"

"You aren't crazy," Thea said. He wiped the blood from Matthias's scalp - it was close to the exact spot where he'd been bludgeoned from behind two days before, so he knew the wound probably hurt.

"I think we lost Cano," Heath said, still close to invisible in the darkness.

"I think Cano can take care of himself," Larian said. "I saw him toss a grown man like he was a sack of dishrags... nobody's that strong."

Thea had to agree. Even when he'd been broad and beefy, it would have taken some pretty decent oomph to toss a man. Now he couldn't even stagger a large man with his best punch... it was frankly a bit frightening. He clung to Matthias, hating how helpless he felt in that moment. He released his grip and balled his slim hands into fists. He couldn't brawl anymore… but now he could speak and think.

"We need to warn the city," he said. "And then we need to get as far away from here as we can..."

"Hold on," Matthias said. "We can't just leave. We need to get the militia and have them skewer that rat bastard. I'll take my revenge from his rotting flesh."

Larian nodded. "I understand - I want revenge, too... if you hadn't guessed, Bestel isn't quite our uncle. But, as the good book says: 'revenge is patient, revenge is cold.' None of us can help you if you go running off alone - your hot anger will only get you killed."

Matthias chewed at his lip and glanced between the guttering lights of the Heron estate and the lamp-lit towers of Nortsair a mile or so distant. He sighed. "Come on, I know a back-way into the town... and you'll tell me the whole story along the way."

+++++

They indulged him, telling Matthias the whole of their shared history as honestly as they could. Even Thea's astounding transformation, far more extreme than any of the others. And, to Thea's surprise, Matthias believed them. He supposed that made sense - the man had just seen a sickening display of corruptive magic at the lord's estate and, therefore, was more open to supernatural interpretations than usual. Again and again, he looked to Thea, squinting, as if to gauge the transformative magic at still work.

"You were a man?" he said. "A proper one, I mean?"

Thea shrugged, a bit put off by the question. "More than proper - I was four or five stone heavier than you."

"And he was star-touched," Larian volunteered.

"And now?" Matthias asked.

Thea took a moment to gauge his body's state, probing at his groin and finding absolutely nothing there, neither where at the front his manhood had been, nor further back along the gentle inward curve of his pubis. Matthias would have to tolerate such impropriety if he wanted an answer.

"Not so much on either front," he shrugged. "But I can dance and play the lute, thank the gods."

They continued onward, along a narrow path barely more than a slight thinning of the countryside scrub in parts - it was a lot longer than the main path but, if Thea had to guess, a lot safer, given the circumstances. They continued in silence and under moonlight, with Heath and his keen eyes leading the way, stopping to consult with Matthias whenever the path split or meandered. And, Thea couldn't help but notice, the merchant's demeanor toward him had changed, as well, from protective to standoffish. Thea wondered why - while he was clearly attracted to women, Matthias hadn't had a problem with Thea's being a eunuch, and now he was even less masculine than that. His hips were broader, his gait having shifted from straight-hipped to a gentle sway, with his belly just as lean as ever and breasts a tick past average, bulging slightly from the bustier. And Larian and Heath? Essentially the same as that morning. Their transformations were finished or very close to it. Thea wasn't sure he even wanted Matthias to feel protective of him, but he certainly didn't want hm irked, either. What had he done to upset the man?

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," Thea said. "I didn't think you'd believe me."

"I wouldn't have," Matthias admitted. "I was just thinking, though..."

"About?" Heath asked eventually, not bothering to look back from his pathfinding.

"The four of you... three, at present. You really are Robin Brindle-hair, aren't you? In a way, I mean... and Lara the Learned and Astra Stargazer. Tales to put young children to sleep... I used to tell them to my Maddie and Sy at night..."

"You have children?" Thea asked. He'd never got the impression that Matthias was a family man - to be sure, no family lived at the Mendic brothers' house.

"Had," he sighed. "Before I joined my father up in Nortsair, Nero and I were homesteaders in the south. A little hub called Attist, barely a village."

"I know the place," Thea said.

"Then you know it got sacked, as bad as Rouentz or worse..."

"I didn't know," Thea said. He hadn't exactly kept abreast of intervillage politics as Theo.

Matthias shrugged. "They killed my Hannah... and my Mattie and Sy, I think."

"You think?" Larian said.

He nodded. "I have to think so... I never found them beneath that burnt heap. But, otherwise, I'd have to believe they were taken. That's even worse. Those men aren't kind to their captives."

Thea had never had a family, not since he was a boy. But he hated to imagine what might happen to a friend's family - young Albard and his clan, for instance. The other day, when Theo had saved Larian from the raider, the savage had been chasing the girl down with a slavering gleam in his eye - even old Theo could have told you what was going to happen there. The only question was in which order. And younger children? He shuddered to think of what such savages might do to them. "We'd better return to Rouentz as soon as we can," he said.

+++++

Along its nigh-impregnable stone walls, Nortsair had three entrances: the Great Gate in the east, which is what they'd entered upon their arrival at the city; the Lord's Gate, barely smaller and overlooking the homesteads to the west; and the Trader's Gate to the north. To get there, one had to traverse around the rocky hill at the city's northwestern side, up a steep and well-concealed stairway, and bang in the right way upon a reinforced oak door not much larger than the entrance to the Mendic's house. Then Big Bardo, who ran the gate, would let you in. This entrance was, Thea suspected, not for traders as much as it was for people who wanted to enter and exit the city unnoticed...

Unnoticed, that is, by anyone except Big Bardo, who was very nearly as large of frame as Thea had once been, and far fatter. He opened a little slat when Matthias banged on the door: bang... bang-bang... bang-tap-tap-bang. He opened the slat and held out a grubby, pudgy hand for coin and, after counting out the coins as slowly as Theo had ever counted to ten, unbarred the door from the inside and saw them in.

"Passage for four," Big Bardo said with a burp. "Where's your fourth?"

"Right here," Heath said, and the man squinted and nodded, as if noticing him for the first time.

"Welcome to Nortsair," he said, grunting to his feet, closing the door, and barring it with a great iron beam as soon as they passed within.

Thea was a bit intimidated by the immensity of the man - it was laughable to think of somebody weighing three times what old Theo had weighed. Only the giants of legend got that big. But Big Bardo probably weighed very close to three current Theas put together and she was very quickly coming to adjust her sense of scale. In the close confines of the Trader's Gate entryway, Bardo seemed to loom over the space, perched atop a wooden stool that couldn't possibly support that much weight for very long. His hair was black and wiry, streaked through with gray, and his eyes were closely-spaced and dark like Theo's had been, though they were beady and wary in a way Theo doubted he'd ever been. Bardo nudged Matthias, burped, and leaned into him.

"Any idea what all this nonsense is about? Out in the streets, I mean."

"What are they saying on the streets?"

Big Bardo scratched at his stubble and pursed his lips in thought. "'The lord is dead! Long reign Lord Myrdon!' Any clue what that means?"

"It means," Matthias said carefully, "that we'd better conclude our business and make ourselves scarce."

Just then there was a banging on the door: bang-bang-bang... bang-bang-bang...

"Let us in! For God's sake, let us in!" a woman cried out from the other side.

Bardo slid the door slat open and bellowed at the top of his lungs: "No entry! Fuck off!"

Matthias tugged on Thea's sleeve and they proceeded - now was not a good time to challenge Big Bardo about his entrance policy. He then tossed a handful of coins into a bin next to a row of lanterns by the door, took a minute to light the wick of one with Bardo's torch, and led them into the city. They squeezed through Nortsair's back alleys, sour and reeking, brown and cloudy droplets drizzling down and spatting on their heads and shoulders. Thea didn't care to think about where the water was coming from. At least he had his boots to keep his feet out of it. They were night-black leather and oily chrome, far better than any shoes anybody he'd ever known had owned, even if Fra Hollen once claimed that the hole in the sole of his boot was lucky. Thea's hair, though - and there was a lot of it now - would probably smell like whatever was pat-pat-patting onto it every few steps. The only lighting beyond Matthias's lantern was a violet gash of sky above them.

They passed transients huddled in doorways, hopped over refuse and night soil, and climbed the mouldering ruins of a wagon, perching atop the thing to look out into the avenue. Despite the late hour, there were a lot of people out, most of them scared and some of them running. Soldiers with spears were shouting at people to go back to their homes. Across the way, Thea could see three of them pummeling somebody curled up on the ground as a terrified and wailing woman looked on. Nortsair did not appear to be a well city... though, apparently, it wasn't all bad:

"Get away from him, you swine!" someone just out of view boomed. Was that?...

Thea gasped - it was Cano, all right. Bronze skin, copper hair, and a cuirass that glinted gold in the torchlight, he strode up to the three soldiers, throwing a fourth over his hip as he tried to wrestle Cano to the ground. The three soldiers stopped pummeling the man long enough for the wailing woman to rush in and start struggling to drag hi away. It was just Cano and the guards There were four of them - the three pummel-happy soldiers, plus the other one sneaking up behind Cano... he was going to get himself killed!

"C-!" Thea started... Matthias muffled him with his hand.

And he was probably right to do so - shouting was a lot more likely to distract Cano than it was to alert hm, but Thea still resented being handled like that. He elbowed Matthias, leapt down from the ruins of the cart, and was about to dash in to help Cano. But it now appeared that assistance was not required: Cano lazily leaned back and, with a sudden backwards jerk, smashed his head into the face of the guard sneaking up behind him just before the man could lunge in for a sneak attack. Then he swirled around, lightning-fast, knocking the spear away from one of the guards, grabbing it before it could fall, and using the butt to crush the toes of the next man over. The third guard pulled out a cutlass and saw it ripped right out of his hands...

"We're not going to get a better distraction than this," Matthias said. He nudged Thea and the four of them took off down the street, dashing past a half-dozen militia sprinting the other way to help the guards.

Behind them, Cano whooped and the civilian onlookers cheered - they actually cheered. Thea hoped he'd be all right - the militia had dirks and short bows - but Thea was resigned to being pretty much useless in fights. Thea couldn't even shout without somebody stopping him, let alone help Cano fight power-mad guards. He followed after the others, the diaphanous fabric of his skirt whipping behind him, his black hair fluttering every which way, the heels of his boots going kik-kik-kik-kik against the cobblestones as he ran.

+++++

"Damn! Damn! Where did he put it?" Matthias said. He stomped across his brother's bedroom floor.

"Put what?" Thea said.

"Our cache. Our secret cache. Nero and I have a 'rainy day' fund... the idea being that one or the other of us would buy out father's council shares some day or, barring that, buy our way out of trouble."

"Either of those seems unlikely now," Thea observed.

"Yes. Thank you," Matthias said tersely. "But the money would be useful, no?"

"No?" Thea said, confused. She was still getting the hang of rhetoricals.

"What?"

"Horses ready," Larian said.

Matthias sighed, ran his fingers through the dark curls of his hair, and paced to the other side of the room. "Yes, I'll get them ready... fine. But first I have to find my - our - fucking money."

Larian sighed back, eased across the bedroom floor, pulled a vanity chair out of the way, and tapped on top of the secret compartment in the floor. "Your money. You're welcome," she said. "And it wasn't a question: horses ready. Heath and I have the three of them ready to go."

"Ah." Matthias turned away from them, squatting to open the compartment and retrieve its contents. "We're only taking two horses. I'm leaving one for Nero..."

Thea didn't bother to mention that Nero was probably dead. Most of the people at the masquerade were probably dead, and Nero more probably than most. Matthias already knew that. But there were four of them and three horses, so somebody was doubling up, regardless. He felt useless, unsure of what to do and feeling every bit the oaf he'd been for most of his life.

"What can I do?" he asked - even his voice sounded helpless, high and pleading.

Matthias sighed again. "Go downstairs and bar the door. We've got three extra locks, so slat all three. Nero will know to go in through the back. Can you do that?"

He didn't care for Matthias's tone, but he just nodded - he'd dealt with that patronizing tone all his life, so why make a big deal of it now? Thea descended to the main floor and examined the front door for locks. He found them: a big bar of reinforced oak and three slats to anchor the door into the wall. He wasn't sure what that said about the Mendics' expectations of home security, but it wasn't good.

He'd just fitted in the first slat, wanting to save the oak bar for last, when something thumped into the door, jostling the whole entryway. Thea yelped and scooted away from the door just in time to avoid getting flattened: the door burst off its hinges, skidded a few yards into the house, and crashed into the far side of the atrium. It stood there for a moment before slowly tipping and slamming into the stone floor with a deafening clap. Cano staggered through the gaping doorway.

"They're coming for us," he said. He wiped blood from his eyes - whether his or somebody else's, Thea couldn't tell. "All of us," he clarified. "Fifty of them... well, probably forty now. But fifty at first," he said. From the sheer amount of blood on Cano's hands, Thea could guess what fate had befallen the other ten... and he could deduce that they'd been the militia, with their dirks and small bows.

"You've got a..." Thea said.

Cano had been struck with least several arrows and two were still sticking out of him - one in the shoulder, right where Theo himself had been struck not too long ago, and one in the thigh. Neither of them seemed especially deep, so Theo went ahead and pulled them out. Cano winced but didn't cry out.

"I don't think you're supposed to pull arrows out," Cano said.

Thea rolled his eyes. "Shall I put them back in?"

Cano smiled at that. "I'll pass. Have we got horses?"

"Three of them, whether Matthias wants us to take them or not. It sounds like we'd better get going."

As if on cue, three squads of militia jogged down in formation, assembling in front of the Mendics' house. Their sergeant motioned and one of the squads started around to the back - all this was visible through the completely-missing front door. Why they didn't just storm in en masse and slaughter every last one of them, Thea couldn't say... though she was glad they didn't. She dashed up the stairs and tugged at Matthias's belt.

"Come on, we're going," he said.

"Just a minute, I..."

"Now."

Matthias thought about challenging him, but then thought better of it. He slung his pack over his shoulders, mostly full and jangling with coin and valuables, and gestured to the door: ladies first. Thea wasn't a lady under any definition, but this wasn't the time to quibble. He took the stairs down two at a time, his two-inch heels giving him a lot less trouble than he'd have thought, and dashed out the back just in time to collide with the flanking militia squad. He crashed into a slight man barely larger than himself and, by virtue of momentum, bowled the man right over, sending him tumbling in his gambeson and silly leather cap.

"Sorry!" he called back out of reflex.

"Get her!" the squad corporal shouted...

Before they could raise their bows or unsheath their dirks, two arrows flew out from the nearby stable - thwick-thwick, they struck the corporal in the eye and the throat. There was a lot of blood, and he was very clearly, very instantly dead. Before the startled, scattering men could regroup, Thea sprinted into the stables.

"You got arrows!" she called to Heath.

He stepped from the shadows and shrugged. "This bow doesn't seem to need them. Just pull back and - thwick - arrow."

Thea wondered whether he'd have to wait until he finished changing to get any incredible abilities - or whether he'd get any at all. He wondered whether he'd get out of Nortsair alive to find out. That would be a good start, at least. He mounted the nearest horse in one go and had it turned around just in time to see Heath fire two more arrows out... and two militia arrows zip through, one of them burying itself in the wooden post two feet from Thea's head. Matthias and Larian stumbled in through a side entrance and Cano charged in through the front a moment later, two more arrows dinging off his golden cuirass.

"We're taking two horses," Matthias stated.

"We're taking three," Thea said - and, to his surprise, Matthias didn't argue. He mounted up behind him, sliding his hands around Thea's slim waist for support.

Heath fired a few more arrows out for cover and then they were off. Thea's horse went first with a little kick, charging out of the stables with Cano right behind on his own horse, a small but agile 'mountain blue'. Larian and Heath brought up the rear, with Larian taking the reins and Heath firing off arrows. He'd pull back, let loose, and an arrow would simply appear, zipping through the air with pinpoint precision. He might have taken out the whole militia by himself like that but seemed to be going for debilitating but nonlethal shots when he could - which Thea approved of.

+++++

The five of them charged out into the nighttime streets with Thea and Matthias shouting at people to get out of the way as they bore down on the Great Gate. The gate itself was open, with a stream of frightened people fleeing the city and a single-file line of hired mercenaries marching in, perhaps a hundred sellswords in all. People dove out of the way - nobody trampled yet, thank God - and the line of incoming mercenaries cried out and scattered... and the men driving the great gears of the gate scrambled to close it.

"Reverse! Reverse!" they cried out.

The gears ground, a chain snapped with a metallic crack, and the gate started to swing shut. A detachment of a dozen or so archers filed in along the wall, ready to make pincushions out of them as soon as they were forced to stop at the gate. The gate, as big and as wide as it was, was nonetheless closing too fast. They weren't going to make it out...

"Hiya!" Cano shouted. His horse burst forward with incredible speed, Cano's coppery hair streaming behind him, his sword arm raised like a victorious general's upon a memorial statue.

For a moment, Thea was sure that Cano was about to leave them behind. He'd use whatever super-horsemanship he'd just pulled off to squeeze through the gate and leave them all to get skewered with arrows in the Great Gate courtyard. Only that's not what he did - he leapt off the horse, leaving it to gallop through, and hit the ground mid-stride, sprinting so fast that the horse could barely pull away from him. One of the mercenaries lowered a spear to stop him, and it snapped like a twig against his golden cuirass. Then he skidded to a stop at the gate and shot his arms out just as the gate creaked into them - he was holding the gate open for them!

"Go!" Cano shouted.

Once the archers got over their initial astonishment and the awkwardness of such an acute angle, they opened fire. Most of the arrows badly missed, but not all of them did. Most of the ones that hit bounced right off Cano's cuirass, but not all of them did. Thea saw an arrow sink deep into the base of his neck just as he and Matthias leapt clear over their friend - it would have been an impressive feat of horsemanship, but it paled to whatever Cano had just done and was still doing.

"Gears! Gears!" the gatemen were shouting, trying to crush Cano in the gate.

Heath and Larian leapt over Cano and, an instant later, the gate slammed shut.

"Forward! Forward!" the gatemen cried out from inside - now they wanted the gate open.

Thea cried out - Cano had just been crushed or, barring that, skewered by far too many arrows to survive, no matter how impossible his strength or speed. He wanted more than anything to do something useful - to save Cano, to undo what had just happened - but all he could do was ride. After a mile, their gallop slowed to a canter, and to a trot not too long after that. Their horse was breathing heavily and kept trying to stray from the path - not a bad idea, actually.

With a gentle tug, he veered their mount off the path, clopping perhaps a hundred yards along rocky, gently-sloping forest, until the canopy blocked what little moonlight there was. Thea heard the babble of a stream - water for the horses and for them, and he dismounted, stumbling along the uneven terrain. Behind him, Matthias groaned and slid off of the horse - he would have dashed his head against the rocks if Thea hadn't redirected the fall. The momentum pushed him back onto his butt and the merchant landed heavily across Thea's lap, groaning, eyes wheeling about his head. Thea felt a warm wetness at his side - Matthias had been struck and was losing a lot of blood. Thea cried out into the night, cried out for help as his friend slipped into unconsciousness.

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