THE BRAVE

They assemble:

Two from the ocean front, where Zretaian cliffs plunge beneath the waves, and the pirate dreadnaught of the Black Eagle lies moored in its infamy!

Two from the High Reaches, where lightning-blasted towers totter between the sky bridges in the shrieking winds.

One from the mazelike slums beneath the shadows of the cliffs, an abyssal deep where the ramshackle roofs are darkened by the jutting roots of towers above, where the glint of sunlight is rarer than gold, and every man is a desperado, and every child a thief.

And one from the Tower of Voua Azrain!

"I have come," declares a red-armored warrior, "But I have sworn no oath to fight. The enchantments on that tower are said to be impregnable. Surely this raid is lunacy!"

"I swear to you," Mathras replies, "that tonight those enchantments shall be in chaos!"

Those who have assembled—Mathras, the summoned six, and the chief courier—are arrayed in a circle, standing on a crystal balcony as translucent as an infant's breath, which keeps them from falling toward the twinkling torchlights of the slums in the distance below.

The fuming windows of Mathras' laboratory are hissing and smoking in a cliff face nearby, and beyond the huge dark shoulder of the mountain with its web of steep, lantern-lit alleyways, tonight's moon ascends among the thunderheads, a vast amethyst. Its thrilling light is shattered by the wind-chased clouds into translucent sheets which drift between the towers in glacial radiance, while across the black chasm of Zretaia's core, the Tower of Voua Azrain, still flaming with the last reds of the sunset, looms like an upjutting fang, razor-edged, cloud-piercing, rooted amidst its castle walls and courtyard jungles of emerald vegetation.

On the crystal balcony, the chief of the couriers lifts off his crested helm. Now without his mask and cloak, he is revealed as an officer of the guard, glittering in steel plate, decked in the blue braidwork and golden chevrons of a captain of the Law. His name is feared and famed, a curse on wicked tongues, but a cry of hope among the just—Cusáhn!

Cusáhn! Lion-eyed and lion-strong, he has stood for six years recklessly at the crux of Zretaian chaos, upholding justice in a sordid city—alone, slandered, demoted, unshaken—obstructing personages of invincible force despite his own fragile mortality, a man who at any moment could be struck by sorcerous lightnings and blasted to pieces! Six years he has survived at his post through luck, and strength, and audacity, and now, at long last, he has a tantalizing chance to gamble on a cherished hope—to slay the demonic Ulto! The flaming of this dream of justice spreads to the summoned six, breathtaking and glorious!

Mathras proclaims, "But before I speak any further! there is one among us who Cusáhn once espied within the Tower's walls!" He rounds on one of the six, a black-shrouded figure, and points a crooked finger. "What proof have we that you are no servant of the sorcerer, but a true traitor for our cause?"

"No proof but my scars, Alchemist," the black-cloaked figure says, and the others turn in surprise; it is the voice of a woman. A hand missing its smallest finger extends from beneath the cloak, clenched, "My scars, and a gift!" The hand opens, and a waterfall of silver keys showers onto the crystal, jingling and spinning above the city. "Certain ways within the dreaded Tower will be open to you now – though not all."

Mathras bends to examine the keys, and then declares, "You speak the truth! And desperate as we are for aid, such tokens give us grounds enough to wager on your loyalty. But what of you others? Before I unveil my scheme, what causes have you to join in our crusade? And what powers can you lend our common cause?"

A pause, a hush, a breath of ocean-wind in the gloaming, and then there steps into the center the warrior in red-hued armor, who wears a mask of iron crowned with horns of steel. The ominous metalwork of that dark visage, blackened by fire and shimmering with score-marks from a hundred gouging blades, is rumored to be the emblem of an inescapable curse. For it is whispered that a mighty foreigner once came to Zretaia from the mountains of uncharted Kaurthure, a mercenary who laced his long white hair with knives and possessed rare powers, who slew a mighty sorcerer not for pay, but for honor, and looted his mask, and fell beneath his undying malice and immortal curse.

Never has this masked man dared to enter a tower as dread as that of Voua Azrain, yet lesser spellcasters fear him, for now he is an assassin who has slain sorcerers thrice, driven by his wrath against their kind as one accursed. Thus he has become an outlaw, a half-legendary figure to the folk of Zretaia, among whom it is rumored that his eyes, which glitter unseen behind the slits of his mask, can discern invisible spells as clearly as torchfires, and that his halberd, with its blue and crescent blade, can cut enchantments as easily as silk.

At the center of the circle this outlaw and criminal, faced by the man of the law, Cusáhn, raises the butt of his halberd with its gleaming blade, and strikes downward, setting the crystal ringing. He declares, "Who here has not heard of the mighty Rokál, dreaded in the High Reaches! The whipped watchman Cusáhn could speak to my deeds as well as I; he has dogged me long enough! And if this be a trap, then trapped I be, but shall not go easy!" He thumps his breastplate with savage vigor and advances toward Cusáhn, who holds his ground, jaw tensing as Rokál demands, "But why should I reveal my purpose here when you, guardsman, have not given yours? And you as well, alchemist, for you are no friend of the law!"

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Mathras bristles, "My reasons are beyond your comprehension! But if you must have some glimmer of them, then know that I require a tool which can cut the deepest ores of this mountain, ores that can be scratched by only a handful of elements, none of which I possess! But Voua Azrain, a breeder of wyverns, must have fashioned teeth for his creatures that will be equal to the task."

At the mention of wyverns, a ripple of unease passes through the company, but Mathras continues undeterred, "Any one of you who can bring me the teeth of a wyvern shall win prizes beyond imagining!"

Throughout this speech, Rokál's horned mask, foreboding in its swirls of dark iron, never glances away from Cusáhn, and now he demands, "And you, dog of the law! Why choose you this night, after all these years of cowering? The kidnappings of Ulto began long ago – you have done nothing!" He jabs one armored finger into Cusáhn's breastplate.

Cusáhn leaves his rival's finger there, contemptuous. "Tonight," he says, "Voua Azrain is to be in the throes of mighty spellcraft—strained to his limits and unable to spare even a fraction of his titanic mind for lesser matters. Mathras assures me that the tempests of his rampant energies shall wreak havoc on all lesser spells, throwing into chaos the enchantments that protect his fortress, and thus exposing it, for the first night in a hundred years, to assault by mortal arms! And at the height of this pandemonium, Mathras has sworn to pit his substantial powers from afar against the Tower! Lastly, but of no lesser consequence: two days past, Ulto, in the form of a gigantic raven, snatched two children from the docks as they were fishing. They may still be alive!"

Rokál answers, "Then for once our thoughts agree. Never have I slain a child—not since I was one! So I will tell you of my purpose after all: I seek a bargain and an oath. Swear to me, Cusáhn; swear that if I am the one who hurls Ulto's head before your feet, you and the leprous dogs you command shall guard my passage down the cliffside stairs and throw open the harbor gates, that I may board the Black Eagle, to sail when her captain sails, and to suffer nevermore the lightning stink of these storm-demolished cliffs! I have had enough of sorcerers!"

Cusáhn does not hesitate, for unlike Ulto, the assassin Rokál is at least an honorable man, without whose power the raid may meet disaster. "Done!" He and Rokál spit and utter vows, clasping hands gauntlet to gauntlet.

"And as for me," says the woman of the silver keys, "Voua Azrain cut out my heart, and now my only master is revenge: I shall guide you warriors, for I thirst for sorcerous blood. Glaneir is my name!"

She speaks the truth, save only at the last: for her name was never Glaneir—but Ulto! The scent of human blood is on her breath!

Next to speak is UrokYann, massive as a bull, pale and bent and heavy with muscle, chains jangling at his wrists. His hair has been hacked off above shoulder-length, unmanfully short, for less than an hour ago he was a slave, bound forever to a windmill wheel, burdened with the arduous task of turning it whenever the treacherous winds grew slack. But as the sun had neared to setting on this fateful night, UrokYann, alone as always at the wheel, had heard the couriers shouting along the sky-bridges, promising freedom to the brave, and he had raised a yearning bellow, and been heard. It was Cusáhn who bought his freedom, trading his own gold and the gilded sword of his captaincy, but grudging no part of the sacrifice; for though the giant slave had no skill in battle and no knowledge of raids, Cusáhn saw in his eyes a spirit of infinite promise and longing, the look, he thought, of an innocent who might one day grow to be renowned for heroic deeds.

As UrokYann drinks in the sight of his new companions and the twinkling skyline beyond, he knows he shall forget no single moment of the night to come, his first in the wider world, a time to be cherished as he cherishes the memories of childhood, when every sight was sharp and fresh, and every smell was new.

And now, on the crystal balcony, with his arms wide to the sky, UrokYann wears the wondering smile of one who knows himself free, unexpectedly and startlingly, with a free future unfolding before him like a new land under his feet, limitless and unexplored and gloriously wild. Cusáhn is obliged to introduce him to the company, for UrokYann cannot calm himself enough to say anything beyond, "Look at the lightning in the clouds! See the purple of the moon! Feel the breeze cool your sweat, my friends! Aren't you glad of life? What a night! What a night for fearless deeds!"

"That is well enough, for those of us who are drunken!" a voice interrupts. It is the smallest of the group, a young man whose hair has been bleached pure white, like snow in a cascade. He hails from the mazelike slums beneath the towers, and though his sleek attire conceals his poverty, his stomach rumbles, and beneath the fine leather of his stolen shirt, his ribs form ridges on his hungry sides. He sits relaxed and faintly smiling on the edge of the balcony, juggling a trio of the silver keys—one-handed—with careless skill. He asks, "What is this madness I hear about wyverns? I have appointments on the morrow; it is inconvenient to die tonight."

"Only one wyvern, in the lower tower!" Mathras protests. "And smaller than any of you here!"

The white-haired man hops to his feet and lets the keys spill back to the floor. "So too is a viper! And they do not breathe fire." He makes as if to depart.

"Wait!" Mathras commands. "I am not without a plan!" He reaches beneath his outer robes and lifts a sheathed broadsword, proclaiming, "On my master's grave I vow, this spark-edged sword will cleave even the gemstone scales of a wyvern! To Cusáhn I loan it. Steal it on pain of my eternal curse!"

Cusáhn receives the sword and draws it in a shower of blinding white sparks. Then, unsheathing his dagger, he tests the two blades edge to edge: the spark-edged sword slices through the dagger's steel with a hissing noise and a blaze of molten light.

Seeing this, the white-haired man returns from his feigned departure with a smile, saying, "Call me Tzark. My reason for risking the Tower is simple. Money. Dawn, I swear, shall shine on a wealthy Tzark. I care not whether I become so by selling wyvern teeth to the alchemist, or Ulto's head to the law, or by pillaging the treasures of the Tower while you lunatics spread chaos."

Cusáhn asks, "But what can you do for us?"

Tzark glances sidelong at the lawman. "Purely by coincidence, whatever a skilled thief could do."

Now all present have declared their names but two, those from the ocean front. Neither steps forth. The taller one is a man of commonplace appearance, perhaps a merchant or a bookkeeper, distinguished only by a flowery scarf bound around one arm. Thus it is the shorter one on whom the group's attention falls.

Wolf-scarred, wolf-muscled, body lean and taut as lashed cables, she has her crimson hair braided very long, blood-red even in the twilight, vivid as a fresh gash. Despite her face, she is seen as a young man, because she moves and acts like one, and more surprisingly seems to have a chest like one—a disguise that has allowed her to live, undiscovered, among packs of wild desperados and bands of untamed warriors, fighting side by side with savage men, struggling and journeying and laughing and bleeding and starving with them, a well-loved battle-brother, making beloved friends and beloved enemies. Thus she once thrived on the blue ice-fields of the desperate mountains that are her home, yet she felt a yearning for fresh horizons, and so she walked one morning into the distance, and now has lived the free life in many climes, as a warrior, a wolf-hunter, a wanderer on running feet, a bandit preying on caravans, and a mercenary protecting the same, a thief in the orchards when the pears are ripe, a berserker howling in the shield wall with blood on her face, and a wild animal dust-bathing in a jungle, two-hundred leagues from another human life, somewhere on an unknown continent where the first footprints belong to her, where she is an aimless explorer without a pack or shoes or a plan, free and sun-soaked and barefoot upon the dazzling crust of the world.

Now a fascination for the ocean has brought her to the sea-sprayed isles around Zretaia as a fighter aboard the Black Eagle; and because she is a warrior, first and always, she has climbed to this crystal balcony purely for a warrior's cause—to fight.

Cusáhn asks the pirate's name, and in answer she raises a forearm to cover her mouth and says, "Vivict," which is the alias the pirates know, but not the name her father gave her: Viványa.

Asked why she dares the Tower, she only smiles without showing her teeth. Asked her usefulness, she flicks her many weapons – throwing axes, javelins, a dagger, a knife, a spear.

"I saw him debark," puts in the taller one from the docks. "He was with the Eagle, so I think it unlikely he is a henchman of our foe." Seeing the eyes of the others upon him now, he continues, "Harrin is my name. I was a slinger in the war at sea, and I think the knack of it remains in my wrists. As for my purpose, it is very simple. Not a pair of days past, my two children were fishing on the docks."

Glaneir scoffs beneath her hood, "A common slinger? Do you truly think you can stand amid this company?"

Harrin, earnest, asks of Cusáhn, "Do you accept my fellowship?"

"Prowess is needed," Cusáhn replies, "but boldness most of all. Tonight you belong with us!" The two men clasp hands, and Harrin's flowery scarf streams in a rising wind; it is a token from his wife, given in desperate hope of his safety and success. Harrin thinks that fortune has smiled once on him already, for now he has many doughty comrades for his trial, which he would have dared alone, but in despair.

Little does he know that Ulto herself, the kidnapper of his children, is one of those who touches him, when eight voices swear their loyalty, and eight hands meet as one.