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 | | From: | Robin Banco | | Subject: | [College/Mage in A Minor] -19 | | Date: | Tue, 28 Dec 2004 05:58:11 GMT |
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 | Astarte felt an impact on her thigh, then another on her ribs and hurriedly
turned towards the club-wielding man; his club hanging lightly in one hand,
he puffed another spray of tiny darts at her. They spread out on leaving
the blow pipe insuring some hits. The world began to fog on the edges....
The ground was damp and the smell of rotting vegetation seemed to hang in
the air of the alley. Astarte cracked one eye open. She was alone in
another alley, and everything hurt.
Something moved in front of her slitted eyes. Faint light glittered on
scales and talon as weight was shifted from one leg to another. Behind her,
very quietly, the mellifluous tenor voice said, "Should we bring help? Shani
will kill me if her bodyguard gets broken while babysitting me."
The bard moved into her line of sight, wearing his belt of daggers and
keeping a wary eye on the surroundings.
:She's awake,: said Figment. His gold eye peered at the prone elf from just
beyond her nose. He moved again to bring her within sight of both eyes. :The
rest don't know we've gone out looking for you. Robin spilled beer on his
shirt and went upstairs to change. That's the story, anyway. Can you move or
should we call the cavalry?:
"You shouldn't have come outside the inn's wards," grated Astarte. Her
throat felt bruised and stiff. She shut her eyes again to assess the
damage. Cut to the scalp, still bleeding as any wound to the head was
likely to do, possibly a black eye, bruised neck, pocket ripped off the
front of her shirt, cloak gone, knives, daggers, belt and associated pouches
all gone. At least she still had her boots.
She opened her eyes again and focused on Figment's snout, and beyond him,
Robin's knees. With a groan she pushed herself up into a sitting position,
hands, arms and shoulders all working, though a sharp pain in her side
didn't bode well.
"Help me get up, please," she said.
Robin got an arm around her waist and as gently as possible helped her
stand. Figment's bulkiness hadn't been a trick of perspective brought on by
the injuries after all, she saw - he was his full size, taking up much of
the alleyway and wore his harness. He lay down to allow her easy access to
his back then once she was astride, stood up again. Robin stayed afoot, one
hand on her ankle, the other on a dagger.
"You want to go back to the Inn, the College or to the cops?" asked Robin.
Astarte was poking her ribs experimentally with one hand while holding her
sleeve to the bleeding head wound with the other. She winced.
"Inn, please. I can fix most of this myself, and I'd rather the guard
weren't involved." She looked down at Robin, with an expression that was
trying to be a confident grin.
"Get up here where I can keep an eye on you." Her eyes crossed briefly and
she swayed. "And you can stop me falling off or going to sleep."
"Who's babysitting who?" said Robin with a grin as he mounted behind her.
"Shani's a better teacher than she realizes; I'm actually pretty good with
these knives now and not too bad with a quarterstaff." He rummaged through
the saddlebags and produced a piece of fabric, which he offered her for her
head wound. "You might need stitches for that."
Neither he nor Figment asked how she'd come to be in the shape she was.
"I hope the local wildlife is back in its den for the night," Astarte said,
accepting the piece of cloth. "I might need you to stitch me up. Working
on your own head is a bit of a challenge. How did you track me down anyway?
Is Figment part blood hound?"
Robin tapped a forefinger on her head. "In a manner of speaking. But he's
following a mental 'scent' rather than a physical one. I can do it, too.
That's how we knew you were in trouble."
His friends had been gone for quite a long time, Lycari thought. Maybe he
should head out to look for them? After all, towns were often quite rowdy
at night. They could be in trouble.
While Danys tried a few stilted pick-up lines on one of the human serving
maids, Lycari slid out of his chair and slipped into the kitchen. One
finger to his lips, he hushed the staff and quietly opened the door to the
stable yard. He drifted out onto the packed dirt of the yard and
disappeared into the shadows.
Inside the stable, Sim flipped her ears forward and roused from her doze.
The mage had passed by and had not stopped to see her. She turned about in
her box stall and craning her neck over the half door, she lifted the latch
with her teeth and let herself out into the aisle. She did the same with
the stable's outer latch and trotted into the open yard. She sniffed at the
eddies of air that swirled her way and followed the one that held Lycari's
scent.
He had gone straight down the main road, she found, skirting the well lit
areas and keeping to the darkness. Her forehead itched terribly and once
she stopped for a moment to rub against a handy tree. The blood that
trickled down her nose didn't surprise her, sometimes it happened that way.
Once the process had started, it generally took no time at all to complete.
Unknown to him, Lycari was heading for one of the seamier parts of town. In
all innocence, he had picked the very worst spot to start his search. After
avoiding a couple of near misses from footpads, he decided to head back to
the Inn and try the other end of town. About halfway back a heavy form hove
out of an alley.
The huge swordsman thanked his lucky stars! This was the one Genovese was
offering money for. If he could take the pale young man alive, he might be
able to force the information about the horse out of him. Like all crooked
minds, the possibility of selling the horse back to Genovese and maybe even
starting the condemned man on the road to slavery in the mines found a hand
hold.
With a speed that belied his bulk, the rogue tried to tiptoe up behind
Lycari, deciding that clipping the slimmer man on the head was the best way
to go. He was shocked when Lycari spun, belt knife in hand, to defend
himself. A nasty smile played across the heavy man's features. His sword
gave him reach on a knife fighter and he well knew how to play that game.
Lycari knew that his chances against a sword would lie solely with his
agility and a fair bit of luck, unless the other was a total lout with a
sword. As the other man lunged, the shifter knew that he was in a fight for
his very life, with no time to shift or to run. Now his athletic form
showed its true colors as he leapt and dodged, always parrying the big man's
sword with his long belt knife. Lycari's assailant never once gave him an
opportunity to get within his guard. The shifter would have to rely on the
endurance his kind had to keep him alive.
In this end of town, discretion was key and not a single soul looked out a
window or darkened a doorway when the sounds of struggle echoed in the
street. However a pair of milky white ears heard the racket and hooves
thudded on the packed earth street, coming closer and closer.
Sim had taken myriad small scratching stops as her forehead was driving her
to distraction. She never forgot to take up the scent trail again; it was
the only way she could have tracked the wily shifter, he left not a mark on
the ground as he walked. The last tree that suffered her ministrations was
left with more than a few white hairs and blood; bold scrapes marred its
bark. She rounded a corner into a side street and saw Lycari fighting for
his life and she bellowed a challenge.
For a second, Lycari let his eyes focus beyond his enemy. Behind the large
man, there stood Sim, her eyes gleaming and something about her head was a
little odd. His attention was pressed back to the fight when the other
almost nicked him on the arm. A screaming horse was nothing to the
swordsman, money meant the world. However when Lycari's eyes widened at
some sight to his rear, the heavyset man checked behind himself.
A smallish white horse blocked the end of the street nearest the main road
through town. It neighed again, a shrill, ear-piercing sound. The horse
reared and struck out with its front hooves and even at the distance he
stood, the swordsman noticed the animal's head. Something seemed to be
protruding from between its eyes.
Sim pulled her chin in close to her neck and launched herself into a charge,
head held like a battering ram. Lycari backpedaled as she came nearer,
leaving her as much room as she would probably need to do what she intended
to do.
The white horse covered the short distance from the mouth of the sidestreet
in no time, but it was more than long enough for the big man's eyes to
goggle in fear at what came at him.
Before the stunned fighter had time to turn and run, the unicorn's horn
impaled him and punched out of his back just to the right of his spine. Sim
powered into a dust-churning stop and the muscles of her neck corded as she
flung her head up, lifting the man up and over her back in a whipping
motion. The body hit the side of a nearby house and slid wetly to the dirt
of the street.
Figment shied, almost unseating both his riders, as the body almost hit his
muzzle on its way past to impact the house. Robin's hold on Astarte
tightened to keep her in the saddle as his other hand drew a dagger, ready
to throw, then he saw Sim and Lycari.
"You okay?" he called to both of them, then did a double-take. "Sim? You're
a unicorn? I thought unicorns only allowed girls to touch them."
Astarte drew in a shallow breath. She was aware that Robin was faced with
an age old question: where was he supposed to put his hands? He'd plumped
for an arm low on the waist, avoiding chest and sore ribs both. Still, the
jerk had bounced her around a little. For less than a second, she had been
hovering over the street, before she caught up with where Figment was now.
This was one of the reasons she prefered her own feet. Usually she knew
where they were going to come down.
"Has everyone I know decided to take a stroll in the low rent district
tonight?" she asked, waving with the hand not hooked into Robin's shirt.
Blood dripped wetly from the tip of Sim's horn and covered its slim twisted
surface almost to her eyes. She shook her head to clear most of it from her
forehead and ambled over to Lycari, who stood and warily watched her.
Keeping her horn high enough that he was in no danger of getting poked, she
halted just in front of him.
:Safe?: she asked.
:Safe,: he replied so that everyone could hear. Gesturing at the spiral of
bone on her head, he queried, :When did that happen?:
:Tonight: she answered. She circled him and stood where he could mount and
waited. :Stable? Sleep now?:
"Hold on a moment." He walked to the corpse and ripped a clean piece of
shirt from the body. He returned to wipe the blood from Sim's horn. "There
that's better," he said once all of the gore was gone.
Lycari grabbed a handful of mane and launched himself onto her back. Then
he rode her to where Figment stood with his passengers. The dragon
eyeballed the stiletto that adorned the mare's forehead.
"I noticed that both of you were gone and came out to see where you were,"
the shifter explained. "I had no idea that areas like this existed." He
sneered at the seedy neighborhood. "I guess I was a little bit foolish."
He patted Sim's sleek neck. "Thank you my friend, for coming to my rescue."
:Help mage,: the unicorn sent. :Welcome.:
"Let's go back to the Inn. I need a good night's sleep. Or something." As
he rode by, he added, "And I'm no girl."
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