Damiynn
Fantasy Author
Remember second book and well into it so the characters are already known, Im just looking for flow and grammar errors please let me know what you think. This will go out to my publisher really soon
Chapter 16
Betrayal
Travis set a furious pace out of the mountains. Weary and footsore, the party was greatly relieved when they finally put step onto the softer earth marking the forests paths.
Everyone, including the steadfast Kendle, was dreaming of the moment they entered one of Embry’s inns and could for the first time in almost two weeks fall into a soft bed.
Alyssa, wrinkling her nose in disgust, said to each, “The first thing all of you need is baths. You don’t want to be fouling up some hardworking innkeeper’s sheets with your stink.”
That comment drew a glance from everyone that ranged in expression.
No one noticed anything odd in the darkening woods as they contemplated the coming delights. Passing into a narrowed section on the trail they saw a group of mounted horsemen facing them farther down wearing the brown armor of mercenaries.
The moment their eyes met, the knights spurred their mounts. Their large warhorses thundered out of the semi darkness, hurtling towards the group.
Travis yelled, “Spread out! and the blademaster leapt out of the way. His warning was a hair late. Kendle, Alyssa and Mathis were captured as more knights in brown armor dropped out of the trees and caught them in a large wire mesh net.
The knights criss crossed each other as if they had done the same thing a hundred times before. In half an eye blink, three of the companions were caught and wrapped tight. The wire net prevented them from moving inside of it, the cutting mesh didn’t allow them any space to draw a weapon.
Alyssa began chanting and Kendle roared defiantly. One of the knights seeing her raised his sword. Viciously swinging the flat side of his blade, he hit her hard on the side of the head, silencing her voice before the spell was finished.
Damien, out of the corner of his eye saw that Travis’ leap had carried him out of the net’s reach but it had placed him in the path of the charging horses. One rider, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Murderer!” swung his heavy broad sword in a fast descending arc at the blademaster’s head.
Reacting without thought and using years of fighting experience the blademaster dodged quickly and the blade’s edge cut nothing but air. If the bald headed blademaster hadn’t already cut off all of his hair, the sword’s sharpened edge would have shorn it from his head.
Gathering his magic, Damien quickly said the words to a steelskin spell. Silver ripples surrounded him, encasing his body in living metal. Unless one of the mercenary knights was wielding a magical sword, he would be impervious until the spell wore off.
Twisting both bracers on his cleverly designed Esian ironwood staff to the left, Damien released the two hidden double edged blades. Moving like a black and gold blur, he threw himself into the fray with a resolute and determined expression etched onto his face.
He wasn’t about losing another friend to Morid’s doors and if these mercenaries were looking to reap the thousand gold mark reward put on Alyssa’s head, he was going to make them earn their money. That made them fair game.
Mathis, struggling with all his might against the wire mesh called out to Damien in an alarmed voice, “Watch out!”
Throwing his body, he dove forward as a sword stabbed where his back had been a second before. Rolling over, he saw another mounted knight lean low in his saddle and attempt to stab him again.
Damien’s mind processed the distance and he almost grinned in spite of the situation. Using years of strength honed through martial arts, he thrust his longer weapon upwards. The ironwood staff drove the tempered foot of folded Esian steel straight through a gap in the knight’s armor, burying deep into his armpit.
Damien saw a startled expression cross the mercenary’s face as the blade pierced his lung. His hands involuntarily letting go of the reins and his sword, he slid off of his mount sideways and dropped onto the earth with a dead thud, almost falling directly on top of Damien. The battlemage scrambled backwards, and narrowly avoided being crushed by the armored man.
Using his magic, the young dark haired battlemage who had been Westlake’s city champion in both open handed and weapons combat propelled his body up off of the earth and back onto his feet. Working more magic as fast as he could gather it, he cast another spell on himself, making his movements twice as fast.
It was then that he remembered he didn’t have to move out of the sword’s path. It couldn’t have hurt him due to his steelskin spell. This though was the first real time he had used his abilities in mass combat and that little tidbit had fled his mind. Damien resolved to never forget again how his magic aided him.
Feeling an odd sort of unease as if danger was almost on him he turned. Caliban stood behind him, his slate blue eyes blank and an unreadable expression on his pale face. Another man was also there, behind the white haired the white haired young man, his sword raised. Using the speed of the spell he had just cast and stretching out his whole body in a lunging thrust, Damien struck.
His staff moved in a blur of lightning speed in Caliban’s direction. The deadly blade passed within an inch of the white haired assassin mage’s ribs and pierced the heart of the knight standing behind him. The outstretched thrust was perfect and before the man’s sword had dropped out of his fingers, he was already dead.
“Thank me later,” Damien called out, dark blue eyes flashing, then spinning with an almost impossible quickness he disappeared into the melee erupting all about him.
Caliban stood motionless, watching the battlemage move into the fray and a wave of indecision tore through him.
The first thing Damien noticed was that the angular faced Braden had been knocked down by a group of the mercenary knights and they were taunting him, calling out, “Kill us killer, try killing a man awake,” as they circled him with their swords. Of Travis, he saw nothing, then the blademaster spun out from behind a tree. Flowing in a living dance of death and working his weapons in unison, Travis quickly disarmed one man with several well placed strikes and swings of his sword and mace. Kicking out with a booted foot, he caught another opponent in the stomach, doubling him over. A quick flash of steel, a twist of his body, and both mercenaries fell to the earth, their bodies spurting red blood.
Caliban, Damien noticed, still wasn’t fighting. Instead he was just staring at him as if he had never seen him before. Suddenly as if reaching a decision the white haired young man’s hands shot down to his thighs and withdrew the same talon like fighting blades that he had used the fighting the Golath. He threw himself at the knights taunting the fallen Braden.
Damien watched in shocked amazement as the white haired young man with the slate blue eyes became a living breathing killing machine. He was awed by the devastation that the white-haired young man created with his long talon like blades in a matter of seconds. Using the double blades that ran along the outer edges of his hands and the hand guards protecting his fingers, Caliban parried and caught swords with one hand and with movements flowing like quicksilver he cut his opponents arms and legs almost in half with his other. Blood fell like rain around the white haired young man as he hacked apart the mercenaries.
Damien stared incredulously as he realized Caliban wasn’t just using the blades, he was also used his elbows, knees, feet and head as weapons.
Somebody, Damien realized, watching him cut through three men in about as much time as it took for him to swing his bladed hands, had spent a lot of time training this young man claiming to be nothing more than a simple bodyguard. His strikes were perfectly precise in their application and the way he fought almost seemed familiar. In an odd sort of way Damien knew what the silver haired young man was going to do a moment before he did it. At first Caliban started out sluggishly to Damien’s trained eye as if he was being deliberately slow, but once his body took over, his training showed through. Not many men knew how to use all of the weapons that a body gave them.
No moves were wasted by the young man out of the capitol city. It was an economy of motion and movement, simple, efficient and with devastating results much like Damien realized, he had been trained.
Caliban was halfway through the fourth man encircling Braden when he stiffened, recognizing him. His blades froze in mid swing. These men weren’t mercenaries at all, they were krannion knights from the palace in Kallamar, protectors of the Throne and Crown like himself. He knew the one who he had just about thrust his blades into.
Quickly he realized these men must have been sent by his father or the Royal Regent to intercept the group and dispose of them and recover the rings. The Dragon rings that Damien wore.
Indecision filled him and his feelings about Damien truly being the true heir swam once more up to the surface. As Braden regained his feet with a grateful nod, he turned away from the older man and watched the younger battlemage move into more of the fighting, not sure what he should do. His job was to kill Damien Daverge at the first opportunity and this might be a good time.
As Caliban watched, he too was filled with awe. Damien’s lithe and lightening fast form moved quickly into the chaos of the battle, his deadly staff twirling like a spinning whirlwind of death. A solid thwack, thwack, thwack sound accompanied it each time it moved. As the staff struck a succession of multiple targets consisting of arms, thighs heads and chests, blood flew from its blades, drenching the grass around the battlemage’s feet.
The men around the black haired battlemage fell away from the brutal assault and the enhanced speed of his attack and tried hard to regroup. That was what Damien had been waiting for. Fire filling one of his hands, it shot out from his fingertips in a spray of flame engulfing two of the closest retreating knights. Globes of force power filled his other hand and he threw them at the other men attacking his companions. His magic guided the globes unerringly towards his enemies and they were blown back away from his friends in an explosion of power.
Risking a quick glance away from his fight Damien saw Travis and Braden surrounded by men in brown armor. As his dark blue eyes met the blademaster’s, Travis called out in a desperate voice, “Run Damien, there are way too many to fight off and you must not allow yourself to be captured.”
Damien hesitated for a moment, watching the two struggling blademasters, wanting to lend assistance but held back and heeded his father’s blademaster’s words. He knew his duty and what had to be done, but it was hard. Travis had been like a family member to him since he was ten and he couldn’t bear to leave him or any of the others behind if he fled.
Kendle and Mathis were also shouting from their wire mesh prison for him to run away, to flee into the woods. Then he saw both blademasters fall under a rush of charging knights and despite the agony filling him at doing so, he turned away, doing exactly what Travis and the others were telling him.
As he started to run somehow Caliban’s foot ended up between his legs and he sprawled headlong onto the soft forest floor. Before he could get back up and scramble away he felt a solid weight land on his back. A hand pushed him back down, face first into the earth. Long fingers intertwined tightly in his dark hair holding him there, forcing him downward. Then a sharp blade pricked the back of his neck.
Damien actually felt the cold edge cut through his steelskin spell. He knew whoever had him pinned on the ground held a magical blade. Not knowing what else he could do the young battlemage stopped moving.
Caliban’s soft voice filled his ear with a whisper, “One move, one spell, one single twitch sire and you are dead! Do you understand me Damien Daverge? Don’t speak, just nod your head.”
Damien did the only thing that he could do if he wanted to live without that razor sharp blade against the back of his neck piercing him. He slowly nodded. He did notice something odd, Caliban had called him sire.
In a loud voice Damien knew was infused with magic, Caliban called out over the sound of clashing blades. “Cease fighting and surrender or else I will kill him!” The tone in his voice was enough to let all know he was serious and his position showed the two blademasters he could do it.
Only Braden remained standing and he froze, his sword dripping blood.
“Put down your weapons and surrender or,” Caliban turned his blade slightly and nicked the inside of Damien’s ear. In spite of himself Damien felt his body jerk away from the edge and intense pain. He knew that the blade Caliban was holding up to the others had his blood on it. Glancing sideways from his place on the ground he saw Braden lower his blade his blade to the earth.
“Good,” said Caliban and they both watched as men in brown armor grabbed hold of both blademasters arms.
Suddenly Damien felt surge of warmth from Caliban and his grip on the back of his neck tightened into an iron vice. The surge shot through his body and weakness filled him as Caliban’s magic sucked the life out of him.
Chapter 16
Betrayal
Travis set a furious pace out of the mountains. Weary and footsore, the party was greatly relieved when they finally put step onto the softer earth marking the forests paths.
Everyone, including the steadfast Kendle, was dreaming of the moment they entered one of Embry’s inns and could for the first time in almost two weeks fall into a soft bed.
Alyssa, wrinkling her nose in disgust, said to each, “The first thing all of you need is baths. You don’t want to be fouling up some hardworking innkeeper’s sheets with your stink.”
That comment drew a glance from everyone that ranged in expression.
No one noticed anything odd in the darkening woods as they contemplated the coming delights. Passing into a narrowed section on the trail they saw a group of mounted horsemen facing them farther down wearing the brown armor of mercenaries.
The moment their eyes met, the knights spurred their mounts. Their large warhorses thundered out of the semi darkness, hurtling towards the group.
Travis yelled, “Spread out! and the blademaster leapt out of the way. His warning was a hair late. Kendle, Alyssa and Mathis were captured as more knights in brown armor dropped out of the trees and caught them in a large wire mesh net.
The knights criss crossed each other as if they had done the same thing a hundred times before. In half an eye blink, three of the companions were caught and wrapped tight. The wire net prevented them from moving inside of it, the cutting mesh didn’t allow them any space to draw a weapon.
Alyssa began chanting and Kendle roared defiantly. One of the knights seeing her raised his sword. Viciously swinging the flat side of his blade, he hit her hard on the side of the head, silencing her voice before the spell was finished.
Damien, out of the corner of his eye saw that Travis’ leap had carried him out of the net’s reach but it had placed him in the path of the charging horses. One rider, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Murderer!” swung his heavy broad sword in a fast descending arc at the blademaster’s head.
Reacting without thought and using years of fighting experience the blademaster dodged quickly and the blade’s edge cut nothing but air. If the bald headed blademaster hadn’t already cut off all of his hair, the sword’s sharpened edge would have shorn it from his head.
Gathering his magic, Damien quickly said the words to a steelskin spell. Silver ripples surrounded him, encasing his body in living metal. Unless one of the mercenary knights was wielding a magical sword, he would be impervious until the spell wore off.
Twisting both bracers on his cleverly designed Esian ironwood staff to the left, Damien released the two hidden double edged blades. Moving like a black and gold blur, he threw himself into the fray with a resolute and determined expression etched onto his face.
He wasn’t about losing another friend to Morid’s doors and if these mercenaries were looking to reap the thousand gold mark reward put on Alyssa’s head, he was going to make them earn their money. That made them fair game.
Mathis, struggling with all his might against the wire mesh called out to Damien in an alarmed voice, “Watch out!”
Throwing his body, he dove forward as a sword stabbed where his back had been a second before. Rolling over, he saw another mounted knight lean low in his saddle and attempt to stab him again.
Damien’s mind processed the distance and he almost grinned in spite of the situation. Using years of strength honed through martial arts, he thrust his longer weapon upwards. The ironwood staff drove the tempered foot of folded Esian steel straight through a gap in the knight’s armor, burying deep into his armpit.
Damien saw a startled expression cross the mercenary’s face as the blade pierced his lung. His hands involuntarily letting go of the reins and his sword, he slid off of his mount sideways and dropped onto the earth with a dead thud, almost falling directly on top of Damien. The battlemage scrambled backwards, and narrowly avoided being crushed by the armored man.
Using his magic, the young dark haired battlemage who had been Westlake’s city champion in both open handed and weapons combat propelled his body up off of the earth and back onto his feet. Working more magic as fast as he could gather it, he cast another spell on himself, making his movements twice as fast.
It was then that he remembered he didn’t have to move out of the sword’s path. It couldn’t have hurt him due to his steelskin spell. This though was the first real time he had used his abilities in mass combat and that little tidbit had fled his mind. Damien resolved to never forget again how his magic aided him.
Feeling an odd sort of unease as if danger was almost on him he turned. Caliban stood behind him, his slate blue eyes blank and an unreadable expression on his pale face. Another man was also there, behind the white haired the white haired young man, his sword raised. Using the speed of the spell he had just cast and stretching out his whole body in a lunging thrust, Damien struck.
His staff moved in a blur of lightning speed in Caliban’s direction. The deadly blade passed within an inch of the white haired assassin mage’s ribs and pierced the heart of the knight standing behind him. The outstretched thrust was perfect and before the man’s sword had dropped out of his fingers, he was already dead.
“Thank me later,” Damien called out, dark blue eyes flashing, then spinning with an almost impossible quickness he disappeared into the melee erupting all about him.
Caliban stood motionless, watching the battlemage move into the fray and a wave of indecision tore through him.
The first thing Damien noticed was that the angular faced Braden had been knocked down by a group of the mercenary knights and they were taunting him, calling out, “Kill us killer, try killing a man awake,” as they circled him with their swords. Of Travis, he saw nothing, then the blademaster spun out from behind a tree. Flowing in a living dance of death and working his weapons in unison, Travis quickly disarmed one man with several well placed strikes and swings of his sword and mace. Kicking out with a booted foot, he caught another opponent in the stomach, doubling him over. A quick flash of steel, a twist of his body, and both mercenaries fell to the earth, their bodies spurting red blood.
Caliban, Damien noticed, still wasn’t fighting. Instead he was just staring at him as if he had never seen him before. Suddenly as if reaching a decision the white haired young man’s hands shot down to his thighs and withdrew the same talon like fighting blades that he had used the fighting the Golath. He threw himself at the knights taunting the fallen Braden.
Damien watched in shocked amazement as the white haired young man with the slate blue eyes became a living breathing killing machine. He was awed by the devastation that the white-haired young man created with his long talon like blades in a matter of seconds. Using the double blades that ran along the outer edges of his hands and the hand guards protecting his fingers, Caliban parried and caught swords with one hand and with movements flowing like quicksilver he cut his opponents arms and legs almost in half with his other. Blood fell like rain around the white haired young man as he hacked apart the mercenaries.
Damien stared incredulously as he realized Caliban wasn’t just using the blades, he was also used his elbows, knees, feet and head as weapons.
Somebody, Damien realized, watching him cut through three men in about as much time as it took for him to swing his bladed hands, had spent a lot of time training this young man claiming to be nothing more than a simple bodyguard. His strikes were perfectly precise in their application and the way he fought almost seemed familiar. In an odd sort of way Damien knew what the silver haired young man was going to do a moment before he did it. At first Caliban started out sluggishly to Damien’s trained eye as if he was being deliberately slow, but once his body took over, his training showed through. Not many men knew how to use all of the weapons that a body gave them.
No moves were wasted by the young man out of the capitol city. It was an economy of motion and movement, simple, efficient and with devastating results much like Damien realized, he had been trained.
Caliban was halfway through the fourth man encircling Braden when he stiffened, recognizing him. His blades froze in mid swing. These men weren’t mercenaries at all, they were krannion knights from the palace in Kallamar, protectors of the Throne and Crown like himself. He knew the one who he had just about thrust his blades into.
Quickly he realized these men must have been sent by his father or the Royal Regent to intercept the group and dispose of them and recover the rings. The Dragon rings that Damien wore.
Indecision filled him and his feelings about Damien truly being the true heir swam once more up to the surface. As Braden regained his feet with a grateful nod, he turned away from the older man and watched the younger battlemage move into more of the fighting, not sure what he should do. His job was to kill Damien Daverge at the first opportunity and this might be a good time.
As Caliban watched, he too was filled with awe. Damien’s lithe and lightening fast form moved quickly into the chaos of the battle, his deadly staff twirling like a spinning whirlwind of death. A solid thwack, thwack, thwack sound accompanied it each time it moved. As the staff struck a succession of multiple targets consisting of arms, thighs heads and chests, blood flew from its blades, drenching the grass around the battlemage’s feet.
The men around the black haired battlemage fell away from the brutal assault and the enhanced speed of his attack and tried hard to regroup. That was what Damien had been waiting for. Fire filling one of his hands, it shot out from his fingertips in a spray of flame engulfing two of the closest retreating knights. Globes of force power filled his other hand and he threw them at the other men attacking his companions. His magic guided the globes unerringly towards his enemies and they were blown back away from his friends in an explosion of power.
Risking a quick glance away from his fight Damien saw Travis and Braden surrounded by men in brown armor. As his dark blue eyes met the blademaster’s, Travis called out in a desperate voice, “Run Damien, there are way too many to fight off and you must not allow yourself to be captured.”
Damien hesitated for a moment, watching the two struggling blademasters, wanting to lend assistance but held back and heeded his father’s blademaster’s words. He knew his duty and what had to be done, but it was hard. Travis had been like a family member to him since he was ten and he couldn’t bear to leave him or any of the others behind if he fled.
Kendle and Mathis were also shouting from their wire mesh prison for him to run away, to flee into the woods. Then he saw both blademasters fall under a rush of charging knights and despite the agony filling him at doing so, he turned away, doing exactly what Travis and the others were telling him.
As he started to run somehow Caliban’s foot ended up between his legs and he sprawled headlong onto the soft forest floor. Before he could get back up and scramble away he felt a solid weight land on his back. A hand pushed him back down, face first into the earth. Long fingers intertwined tightly in his dark hair holding him there, forcing him downward. Then a sharp blade pricked the back of his neck.
Damien actually felt the cold edge cut through his steelskin spell. He knew whoever had him pinned on the ground held a magical blade. Not knowing what else he could do the young battlemage stopped moving.
Caliban’s soft voice filled his ear with a whisper, “One move, one spell, one single twitch sire and you are dead! Do you understand me Damien Daverge? Don’t speak, just nod your head.”
Damien did the only thing that he could do if he wanted to live without that razor sharp blade against the back of his neck piercing him. He slowly nodded. He did notice something odd, Caliban had called him sire.
In a loud voice Damien knew was infused with magic, Caliban called out over the sound of clashing blades. “Cease fighting and surrender or else I will kill him!” The tone in his voice was enough to let all know he was serious and his position showed the two blademasters he could do it.
Only Braden remained standing and he froze, his sword dripping blood.
“Put down your weapons and surrender or,” Caliban turned his blade slightly and nicked the inside of Damien’s ear. In spite of himself Damien felt his body jerk away from the edge and intense pain. He knew that the blade Caliban was holding up to the others had his blood on it. Glancing sideways from his place on the ground he saw Braden lower his blade his blade to the earth.
“Good,” said Caliban and they both watched as men in brown armor grabbed hold of both blademasters arms.
Suddenly Damien felt surge of warmth from Caliban and his grip on the back of his neck tightened into an iron vice. The surge shot through his body and weakness filled him as Caliban’s magic sucked the life out of him.
