EXCERPT:

“Are you prepared to surrender?” he asked incredulously.

Aaryn stifled a yawn and smiled. “Why should I surrender, when you are the ones who are surrounded?” With that he waved his hand, as if to someone behind the guards, and said in a low voice, “Defend me.”

Immediately, there reverberated from behind them a series of thunderous war cries, and the thirty-four guards turned in horror to see their fourteen hypnotized comrades rushing upon them—cutting and slashing.

Aaryn leaped to his feet and wrapped his chain-mail lined cloak around his left arm for a shield. He was now in a position so that the walls of the corner would protect him from a multiple attack. Normally, a contest between thirty-four seasoned veterans on the one hand, and fourteen on the other, would be resolved rather quickly in favor of the larger number. In this case, however, the thirty-four loyal guards of the Primo’s forces found themselves crowded shoulder-to-shoulder in one corner of the room—their single-handed long swords, almost completely ineffective in such close quarters.

Also, in that corner, now behind them, the magician, protecting himself with his mail-lined cloak, had become a veritable blue-devil. His short sword flashed red again and again as those closest to him tried vainly to skewer him or force him out of the corner.

Before them, the fourteen hypnotized guards, spread in perfect formation, were decimating their front.

Lubock suddenly yelled above the fighting: “Someone run for the household sentries!”

A guard broke free from the ranks and dashed up the stairs. No sooner had he reached the massive door, however, than he stiffened and turned. A dagger protruded from his throat. He toppled from the stairs to the stone floor below.

Immediately, another guard rushed toward the door and up the stairs. “I’ll get them!” he yelled and ducked as a dagger whizzed over his head. He slipped through the door just before another dagger—a fraction of a second too late—whizzed through after him.

Lubock smiled. It would soon be over. In a few seconds the twelve sentries would dash down the stairs, catching the fourteen hypnotized guards between themselves and the loyal guardsmen. He hoped the blue magician would be taken alive. I want to watch him tortured, he thought.

But minutes passed and no sentries came down the stairs. The loyal guardsmen no longer numbered thirty-four. If the carnage continued, the numerical advantage of the loyal guardsmen would soon be gone. At last, after what seemed to be hours, rather than the few minutes it must have been, the guardsman reappeared at the dungeon door.

“Where are the sentries?” Lubock yelled.

The man stared blankly. “I sent them away…as the magician ordered,” he said mechanically. “I told them your orders were to find and slay the black-robed man at the Nauters Dawn Tavern…to tell the men you had sent earlier that he was a traitor and impostor… There is no one upstairs, now…not even a maidservant… I have sent them away as the blue magician ordered.”

“Mesmerized fool!” Lubock screamed and rushed at the blank-faced guard who, in turn, easily and mechanically turned away Lubock’s thrust, and countered as if going through a drill.

Lubock realized—too late—as he fought his zombie-like opponent, how he had been tricked. It was Aaryn’s dagger that had felled the first messenger on the dungeon stairs. The second messenger had not volunteered but had been sent by Aaryn himself from the hypnotized group. The two daggers thrown after him were deliberately missed—to make Lubock think that Aaryn had tried to stop the guard and to allow the false messenger time to send the sentries and servants away.

“Fool!” Lubock yelled again and he slashed at the hypnotized guard who mechanically blocked and parried, and blocked and parried, as Lubock raged and slashed. Finally, in a desperate effort, Lubock, whose cunning and trickery at sword-craft was almost as legendary as his slow wit in other areas, feinted at the zombie’s knees. The swordsman mechanically dropped his guard, and Lubock’s sharp long sword sliced upward into the man, severing his head from his body.

Now, the battle was raging in full. The high dungeon echoed the din of combat. The screams of the chained and terrified dancers mingled with the curses of the combatants and the groans of the dead and dying. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and blood. And the gray stone walls were now bespattered with red.

Soon, however, the tide of combat began to turn. For each time one of the Primo’s loyal guards fell, his death made room for his comrades-in-arms to wield their long swords more effectively. And before long, Aaryn found himself standing alone, facing the nine remaining loyal guards of the Primo. Experienced fighters that they were, they began to form a wide half-circle around the cornered magician.

“Now!” Lubock declared triumphantly. “We shall see how well you fight without trickery.”

Ignoring Lubock’s remark, Aaryn spoke to the nine advancing guards—as if he were talking to each of them alone. “Wait,” he whispered, “until I say attack. Do nothing yet. But as soon as the men on either side of you step forward to attack—then—when I give the word and their sides are exposed—strike them down!”

The nine remaining guards had just finished a great battle with their own comrades-at-arms, a battle in which it had been almost impossible to tell friend from foe. Now, the magician was obviously speaking to one of them—one who was ready to betray and attack the others at his command. They stopped their advance and each eyed the man next to him.
“Do nothing yet,” Aaryn continued, still speaking as if to each of them, “but as soon as I give the word, strike down the man on each side of you.”

Then staring directly into the face of the guard in the very middle of the semicircle, Aaryn yelled, “Now!”

The surprised man’s jaw dropped slack as the guards on either side of him—taking him to be Aaryn’s unnamed ally—plunged their long swords through him.

And while their swords were thus embedded in their falling comrade, Aaryn leaped forward decapitating one of them with a quick stroke of his short sword and slitting the throat of the other with the backstroke.

He ducked under the swings of the next guards and somersaulted across the bodies of the three dead men to the center of the room. The other guards had no time to stop him. He was on his feet instantly.

A dagger from his boot flashed a second in his hand, then flew like a quarrel from a crossbow into the eye of the guard on the far right. Blood gushed down the man’s face and soaked his blond beard red before he fell with a thud on top of another already dead comrade.

Lubock, finding himself suddenly in the area of the fighting again, closed ranks with the six remaining guards, though he did not take the center position.

They again moved forward in the semicircular squad-formation. But now there was no one between Aaryn and the dungeon stairs, and, his cloak streaming behind him, he dashed wildly for the door.

“After him!” Lubock yelled, and the guards ran in full pursuit.

It was a mistake.

As soon as Aaryn reached the top of the stairs, he turned around. From his higher vantage point, he cut down the first two men following.

The others, now realizing the trick, held their shields in ready position and began to back slowly away. There were only five now—Lubock and the four remaining guards.

Aaryn charged down the steps at full speed. He twisted his body, ducked, threw his cloak up to catch the thrust of one long sword, parried another with his blade and thrust his short sword home twice. At that precise moment, he heard Jordana’s scream.

As the two guards collapsed, dead, to the floor, Aaryn quickly looked toward the scream—and saw Lubock. The henchmen had retreated at Aaryn’s onslaught, fleeing to where Jordana—now regaining her senses—lay naked on the dungeon floor. He had yanked the half-conscious girl to her feet by her hair and now held her there—the sharp blade of his long sword at her throat.

“Hold!” Lubock croaked, as Aaryn backed away from the two remaining guards. “One more move on your part, Sir High Islander, and I shall slit this wench’s throat clean through to her backbone.”

Aaryn hesitated, needing time to think. But it was apparent that Lubock was not to be bluffed. At the slightest provocation, the henchman would indeed slit the throat of the lovely princesa.

Jordana looked pitiful. Her face contorted in pain from being lifted by her hair. She vainly reached up with one hand, striving to relieve some of the pressure on her tresses. Her other clutched futilely at the blade of the long sword as if she might stop its horrible path should Lubock elect to draw it across her throat. “Please do as he asks,” she whimpered. “I don’t want to die.”

Lubock chuckled again. “Drop the short sword, Wizard,” he commanded, “and your life, and that of your lady-friend, will be spared. Fail to do so—even for a second—and she will surely die.”

Aaryn waited but half a second. Then his short sword clattered on the stone floor of the dungeon. “I am your prisoner,” he said.

Lubock turned to the two remaining guards. “I do not wish to risk any more of his trickery. Kill him now!” he ordered, and drew the blade of his long sword across Jordana’s screaming throat.