Rise of the Blade - Charles Moffat [37]
Darkness seeped away from the City of Splendours, leaving behind the golden wake of the sun as it poured down its light from the heavens. In the Academy, Rambertz gave thanks to the Morninglord and assumed the form of a gold falcon as he soared up above the city and was absorbed into the feeling of freedom he felt under the sun's rays.
Elsewhere in the city, a man named Belchamp Dumont sat up in an alley and looked around. He was thankful to be alive, but the thing he was more thankful for, and even more perplexed by, was the fact that he still had all his jewelry and coin pouch. Surely, the thugs last night hadn't done this for sport?
"Wake up beautiful," Martinez shouted and waved a cup of coffee under Nicole's nose. "The pigs and roosters are up and so should you be!"
The lady rolled over in the filth and covered her ears with her hands.
"Well, that settles it. She's hungover," the Harper said with a grin and downed the coffee for himself. "No need to waste good beans!"
Pierce glared up at the Harper, once again remembering that he rarely counted Martinez among his friends. "Could you be a little more discreet? Surely you've had your share of hangovers?"
The bald man frowned and nodded. "Aye, but I haven't had one in about five years, which tells you the last time when I was sober."
"Sober?" mumbled Nicole with a self-mocking giggle. "What is 'sober'? I didn't know there was such a word!"
The half-elf boy on the hammock groaned and tried to roll over but Martinez caught him before he rolled clear out of the hammock. "The cleric fixed most of his injuries while you were asleep but the boy still won't be able to walk for at least two weeks," the Harper said matter-of-factly.
Pierce nodded and swallowed. "I'll give him a room at the Academy."
"Well what if he has parents? They're not all orphans you know."
Pierce shook his head. "Nope, this one is an orphan."
"How do you know?"
Pierce swore inwardly and hated himself for not paying more attention in the early hours. His mind was still in a daze from the night before. "A hunch. Sort of like how a mother has hunches that an unborn child will be a girl or boy."
Martinez shrugged and changed the subject. "Still nothing new from Durnan. Everything is annoyingly quiet and he says that it means something is up. No doubt all of our enemies are going to do something at roughly the same time and the end result will be a dragon's worth of chaos."
"A dragon can mix up a lot of chaos," nodded Pierce. "Lets hope it doesn't blow up like some gnomish experiment."
Chapter 6
"Only one man could have pulled off the stunt of kidnapping d'Or's daughter Kipriana. A Harper called Rewt Nachent-"
Chev interrupted the farmer by nicking his neck with a levelled sword. "A Harper? Why did the Harpers help the Bravepikes?"
The farmer swallowed slowly, the lump in his throat brushing the tip of Chev's sharp blade. "Well, as you may have heard, their family was really into smuggling things under the cover of rug merchants-"
"And wine, armour, weapons, slaves. Get to the point!"
The farmer was sweating now. "The Harpers were against their slave dealing and had no qualms about allying themselves with the Bravepikes."
Chev sheathed his sword again. "Sorry about that. Please continue."
The old farmer nodded thankfully and resumed his story that had last most of the night and into the morning. His knowledge was incredible, despite his tendency to ramble and go into detail about nitty gritty things that Chev didn't care about. Still, the old fellow had an unexplainable charm about him.
Now however, as the man rambled on, Chev sat quietly, deep in thought. The Harpers were the real reason he had been trapped in that accursed statue! Even more importantly, they had separated him from Kipriana d'Or, the only person he had ever loved. The thought tore at his soul like a barbed dagger.
"Old boy," the warrior interrupted as he stood and stretched. "It's