The Amazon's Pledge Ch. 05

"One of many reasons," I said, trying to ignore the stench of smoke and seared flesh. My hands and arms tingled painfully; the Aetheric backlash was already taking its toll on my body. "I'm sure you have the same problem with your sorcerers back home."

"Not like this," she whispered. "Never like this..."

I frowned, confused, before I heard a pleading whimper from somewhere inside the keep. "The prisoner," I said, standing. "Can you walk?"

Kaseya nodded and retrieved her sword. "I am nearly at full strength."

She led the way into the keep. I followed closely behind her, wondering if there was some way I could extend the protection of my spell armor to her. It had worked with my vision enhancing technique, after all. Perhaps I could find a way to exploit our bond in other ways.

The fortress interior was much smaller than it had appeared from the outside. Most of the original rooms had been crushed in cave-ins over time, though the original dungeon had apparently survived more or less intact. We followed the whimpers down a staircase, and a horrid, rotting scent assaulted my nostrils halfway down.

"In here," Kaseya said. "Goddess be merciful."

I swept in behind her and examined the area. Half a dozen cells were arrayed around the rectangular room, all sealed by rusty iron bars. The source of the foul smell was obvious—two of the three current prisoners were dead. They were clad in the gray-blue robes of guild wizards, and they had clearly been tortured quite thoroughly before someone had finally slashed open their throats.

The final prisoner, a short human female, was alive and visibly unharmed aside from the fact she had been stripped naked. I winced when I thought about how many times these bandits had probably raped her, but I didn't spot a single bruise or lesion anywhere on her body.

"Oh, thank the gods," the woman gasped, glancing up through her tangled brown hair. "I knew the Archmage would send someone to rescue us eventually! I just..." She paused when she belatedly realized we weren't wearing guild attire. "Wait, who are you?"

"It's all right—we're mercenaries from Highwind," I told her. "We're not technically with the guild, but they are the ones who offered the bounty."

"Bounty?" she rasped. "But I heard the sounds of magic! I thought they'd sent a hundred wizards to fetch us!"

"Not quite," I murmured.

"Jorem is more than capable of handling the situation himself," Kaseya said, dashing forward and fiddling with the lock. "Just remain calm and we will free you."

The woman seemed to freeze up the moment she heard my name, and it was only then, when she flicked the haggard strands of hair from her face, that I realized why.

I didn't gasp or swear or do anything else so obvious, but I could actually feel some of the puzzle pieces in my mind slide into place. Suddenly this whole situation made a lot more sense.

"Well whoever you are, I can't thank you enough," the woman went on. "They already killed Rogan and Donnel."

"You are fortunate they did not kill you, too," Kaseya said, glancing back to me when she sensed the abrupt shift in my mood. I locked eyes with her and did my best to silently communicate that she needed to play along.

"I know," the woman breathed. "It was horrible. I spent every minute just waiting for them to barge in here and rape me."

While Kaseya opened the door and helped the prisoner to her feet, I glanced around the rest of the dungeon. I didn't see her clothing or equipment anywhere, nor did I see any sign of the missing guild supplies.

"Did they say why they didn't touch you?" I asked.

"N-no, not specifically," she stuttered. "I think they were planning to sell my off to slavers. One of them mentioned something about unspoiled females fetching a high price with the Black Mistress."

I nodded and resisted the urge to grin. To her credit, she was pretty good at thinking on her feet. That excuse probably would have persuaded me if I'd heard it a minute ago.

"The bounty said that you had valuable cargo with you," I went on. "Do you have any idea where they kept it?"

The woman shook her head as Kaseya threw a tattered cloak over her shoulders to hide her nakedness. "They already sold it yesterday. I don't know who bought it, though—I could barely even hear voices from in here."

"Well, the important thing is that you're safe," I said. "Let's get out of here in case they have any scout patrols on their way back."

We rushed out of the fortress in a hurry, though before we opened the main gate I surreptitiously retrieved a fallen dagger from one of the dead bandits and slipped it into my sleeve. I also made sure to keep our new friend in front of me the entire time. The way her eyes gaped at the flames and bodies outside suggested amazement and horror, but I knew better. She had probably known who I was the moment the first explosion had rocked the courtyard, possibly before.

Once we approached the edge of the forest a few hundred yards away, I signaled for a stop. Our new friend glanced between us, confused.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Did you see something?"

"Only a face I recognize from back home," I told her, smiling. "You know, I will give you some credit: you're pretty good at this 'damsel-in-distress' thing. Though flashing your tits at us was probably overkill."

The woman froze in place. "What are you talking about?"

"I'll take a wild guess and assume you threw yourself in that cell the moment you heard the first explosions outside," I went on. "The whole 'unspoiled slave' thing wasn't a bad story, but there's no way in the abyss a bunch of haggard, sex-starved bandits would have kept their hands off you this long. Yet here you are, without a single bruise or scratch."

She glanced nervously between us. "I don't understand."

"That said, I probably would have fallen for the whole thing if I didn't recognize you," I said. "Lenara, right? As I recall, you spent a lot of time at the Castarium." I glanced over to Kaseya. "It's a lovely little place where the Senosi torture and humiliate male sorcerers, right before chopping off their balls and letting them bleed out in front of an audience."

Kaseya's face twisted in horror. "Despicable..."

"One of many reasons I'm not eager to return home," I murmured, turning back to the naked Huntress. "Unlike you and your kin, I'm not a butcher. If you give us some information, we'll let you go."

Lenara didn't respond, and her face became an indecipherable wall. I knew almost nothing about her personally, but hopefully she wasn't a complete fanatic. Some of her "sisters" were more reasonable than others, in my experience.

"First things first, why don't you tell me what really happened here?" I asked. "Here's my guess: you took control of this gang a little while ago, probably by emasculating and murdering their leader, at which point you directed them to intercept the Mage's Guild caravan. You gave the supplies to another Senosi, probably to take them straight back to Vorsalos, but then you stuck around in the hopes of capturing or maybe even converting any of the wizards the guild sent up here on a rescue mission. Does that sound about right?"

When Lenara remained silent, Kaseya drew her sword and placed the blade at the other woman's throat. "Answer his questions."

"I would listen to her," I said. "We were promised a lot of coin for this bounty, but since the cargo's not actually here...well, I at least need you to give me some useful information. What does the Inquisitrix have planned in Highwind? What was in that shipment that is so important?"

A few more long, heated seconds ticked by before Lenara's lips curled into a smile. "I guess you really are as clever as Valuri said. I'm sure she'll be pleased to know you escaped Vorsalos unharmed."

My entire body seized up like she had just blasted me with a bolt of electricity. "Valuri...she's alive?"

Lenara laughed. "Of course she is. Death would be far too merciful for a traitor. She'll be the Inquisitrix's pet for a while yet, I suspect."

I stumbled backwards as a fresh knot of guilt twisted in my stomach. Convincing myself that Valuri was dead was the only way I had been able to justify leaving Vorsalos behind. But if she was still there, if she was a still the Inquisitrix's prisoner...

I was so overwhelmed and distracted that my emotions bled through Kaseya's collar and paralyzed her as well. She reached out in an effort to console me—

And in that exact moment, Lenara struck.

She whirled around and kicked Kaseya's arm, battering the sword from her grip. Before the amazon could regain her balance, Lenara deftly sank into a crouch and swept Kaseya's legs out from under her, knocking her flat onto her back. The Senosi used the distraction to dive across the grass and retrieve the fallen blade. She rolled back to her feet, weapon clutched in both hands and a dark smile on her lips.

"The Inquisitrix has wanted your head for a long time, Jorem Farr," Lenara spat. "She'll reward me with a dozen slaves when I present it to her...and probably a dozen more when I mount the head of this amazon cunt along with it."

She abruptly lunged forward at Kaseya, and my instincts took over. Acting on pure reflex, I thrust out my hands and unleashed a coruscating beam of pure Aetheric energy. The assault would have vaporized any normal person even through the thickest armor, and it did blast Lenara several feet backwards and flatten her to the ground. But she immediately rolled back to a knee, and a moment later a score of glowing blue tattoos became visible beneath her pale skin as they fed upon my power.

"Fool," she hissed, charging Kaseya again.

Fortunately my distraction had given the amazon just enough time to draw her shield and get back to her feet; unfortunately, it had just empowered Lenara with enough energy to double or even triple her strength. The Senosi were called "mage-killers" for a reason. Despite all my power—despite the fact I just wiped out a fortress filled with bandits—I was completely helpless against this woman.

But Kaseya wasn't. Her shield intercepted attack after attack, even as Lenara drove her backwards across the grass with her magically-enhanced strength. Kaseya couldn't actually win like this—it was taking every scrap of her training just to survive—but she was buying us some time.

"Go, Jorem!" she shouted. "Get out of here!"

I had no doubt in my mind that she would have stayed behind to defend me as long as she could, knowing full well that eventually Lenara would overpower and kill her. But I had spent the better part of the last three months chiding myself for being a coward and abandoning Valuri to the Inquisitrix—I was not going to make the same mistake twice.

Mentally crossing my fingers, I reached out through the Aether again. I might not have been able to directly harm Lenara, but that didn't mean my magic was worthless. I focused instead on strengthening Kaseya, bolstering her muscles and reflexes with Aetheric energy. Within a few seconds, I was confident that I had empowered her just as much as I had accidentally empowered Lenara.

And given those odds, I would bet on Kaseya each and every time.

The amazon counterattacked the moment she realized what I had done, fluidly shifting from a defensive stance to an offensive one in the span of a single heartbeat. Her shield became every bit as much of a weapon as a sword, battering Lenara backwards and forcing her to cede all the ground she had gained. The Huntress didn't give up, of course—she was every bit as well-trained, and she nearly cleaved off Kaseya's head with her backswing on three separate occasions.

But after another thirty seconds of skirmishing, Kaseya finally got the upper hand. She slammed the corner of her shield into Lenara's gut, pummeling the air from her lungs and causing her to drop the sword. Kaseya rushed forward and snatched it out of mid-air, twirled it around in her free hand, and then plunged it straight through the Senosi's bare stomach.

Lenara collapsed almost immediately, her eyes locked in disbelief at the handle of the sword jutting out of her gut. After another second her head slumped backwards and tilted towards the woman who had killed her.

"He doesn't even know, does he?" Lenara whispered through her blood-splattered lips. "Ayrael..."

Her head slumped to the side as she sank into oblivion. I had no concept of how long I sat there staring at her corpse before I swore under my breath and glanced up to Kaseya.

"Ayrael? Who is that?"

"It is the name of the woman who attempted to kill Hestiah and I back in Vorsalos," Kaseya said.

I frowned when she didn't elaborate, and I was half-tempted to activate my ring and probe further. But right now we had bigger problems, and there was another name I was a lot more concerned about.

Valuri is alive. All this time you could have been thinking of a way to rescue her, but instead you gave up. You need to make this right.

I grimaced and let out a long, slow breath. "We have a serious problem. The Senosi don't normally travel this far outside Vorsalos, but now we've seen two of them in as many days. The Inquisitrix is up to something here in Highwind—something big."

"I assume the Mage's Guild will want to know what happened to their people and their supplies," Kaseya said. "Perhaps they will reward us for the information."

"Maybe," I murmured. "Either way, we need to get back to the city."

Kaseya nodded. "And then what?"

"Then you and I are going to find a way to rescue Valuri from the Senosi," I said. "No matter what it takes."

To Be Continued