Rise of the Blade - Charles Moffat [72]
Blades thrust faster than fat fingers could load and Chev left the two giffs in a puddle of their blood. The rage inside lasted only a moment more as he sliced at the pistols with Sharkslayer and ruined them beyond repair. It took him a moment to realize how severe the wound in his side was before he sheathed his swords and ran from the alley, stemming the blood with his left hand.
"Three giffs," Martinez reported. "And not one of our people know who killed them. One of us think that the one is Hiortan but its too hard to tell because his head was so stained in blood. All three of their pistols were sliced in half as if they had been placed on a guillotine. I can't think of any sword except yours that could through metal so effectively."
Pierce looked down at Tarrasqueslayer and shook his head. "I can. We had a sword kept in the vault called Sharkslayer. It had almost twice the slicing power as mine which is why we kept it locked away. It was simply too dangerous to be allowed into the hands of an inexperienced fighter. In Chev's experienced hands though-"
"What is the sword on a scale of one to ten?" Martinez asked, pouring himself a drink from a bottle. Pierce had always noted that the warrior liked to rate things on a scale of one to ten, most likely because that was the way he rated sweetness of wines. An eight was very sweet and a two was a very dry wine.
"Tarrasqueslayer would be a six and Sharkslayer a perfect ten."
"Doesn't make much sense that a tarrasque is forty times bigger than a shark, but okay," Martinez muttered and downed his drink.
Pierce smiled and looked about the empty cafeteria. The huge wooden tables and benchs had been pushed off to one side for a jig party this evening. A prize of one magical object from Pierce's vault for the best bard would bring the best musicians in all of Waterdeep.
Over time the warrior had collected a vast assortment of magical items and he didn't have much use for the bulk of them. Most of them had been brought back from his trips to Chult where lucky treasure seekers had found the very best in magical artifacts. Pierce hadn't found much of great value other than gold a wide assortment of magical twinkets. Draque occasionally drained some of the twinkets of their magic in order to create some more powerful enchantments but other than that the stuff stayed in the vault where they were safe.
Twice a year, since the opening of the Academy last spring, Pierce had a party and gave away a twinket to the best bard. Last spring the winner had been a half-elf bard Pierce hadn't seen for almost twenty years. Diego had adventured with Draque and Witter so long ago it seemed like another life time. The bard was the bastard son, one of many, of Diego the Wistful, the man who had taught Pierce to read and write.
"You aren't going to compete tonight are you?" the Doctor said, turning back to the little table in the corner and Martinez with his bottle.
"Me? I haven't sang much in fifteen years. I don't have much reason to either. I have everything I need right?"
A sense of purpose would be nice Pierce thought, but chided himself that sometimes he didn't know what his purpose was. "Right," he said. "There's no everfull wine bottles in the vault as far as I know."
He wondered if Martinez was insulted by the comments he made sometimes and was always certain to delve into the Harper's alcohol-fogged mind. As usual, the bald warrior didn't give a damn. He had long ago given up caring about his pride because he knew it was the truth of the matter. He was a drunk and didn't care.
Pulling himself back out of the man's mind, Pierce focused his attention elsewhere. He always got depressed if he delved too far into Martinez's mind. Sometimes