CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Ambush at the Shrine
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“Phoebus’ cock!”
Bram couldn’t help cursing again after nearly avoiding a second arrow aimed at his head.
“I thought you said you’d cloaked the waypoints?”
Ravi couldn’t answer right away, and Bram could see why.
From his peripheral, he caught sight of the vice master erecting an arcane shield that protected him and the prince from a bolt of cold energy that would’ve incapacitated their steeds if it had hit.
Bram didn’t wait for Ravi’s excuse either, for he’d already tightened his hold on Renfri’s reins, urging the hart to charge at the shadows moving underneath the trees. He assumed these were the attackers that had been lying in wait for them to arrive.
He saw four of them.
Their faces were veiled by hoods, with their bodies wrapped in cloaks.
The White Rose…?
No.
Though such parallels were being drawn in Bram’s mind, he doubted these ambushers were like the ghostly riders who’d hunted him across Lorraine Shire. They didn’t have the same menacing aura. But even if they did, the prince was far different from who he was back then.
Bram’s hand flew to Dusk’s hilt, and, with a biting pain streaking across his palm, he drew the hilt forward and a blade of violet-orange hues blazed to life. This time, as a wide single-edge blade reminiscent of Rowan’s ‘Bloody Falchion.’
Seeing the light from that magic sword, the first of the attackers—a tall, lanky fellow wearing the same black hood as his companions—got out from behind a yew tree he’d been hiding in and made a run for it.
Foolish.
No man could outrun a charging hart, not without magic, and certainly not while in a panic. So, it was no surprise when he fell prey to Renfri’s antlers skewering him in the back.
Definitely not a member of the White Rose…
The hooded attacker let loose a pain-filled shriek, a final death rattle to his violent end.
Meanwhile, Bram deflected another arrow that had been aimed at his side. And, with a twist of his hand, the violet-orange blade that had stopped the last attack careened forward in an arc that swept a second attacker’s head off his shoulders.
Only then did Renfri’s charge end.
The hart smashed the corpse against the side of a tree, violently dislodging the dead man from its antlers.
Two down… Out loud, Bram roared, “At least make it a challenge for me!”
A while back, he’d have had trouble with those two assailants. But now, empowered by his new status, Bram thought he might win this fight unscathed for once. Of course, it was never a good bet to tempt fate.
Suddenly, Bram felt intense heat on his back, but it didn’t worry him. Having been around Ravi for a month, he was used to the vice master’s love of burning things down. Besides, it wasn’t like Bram could turn his head to check on Ravi’s situation. Two other assailants were standing in his way, and these two hooded figures didn’t look like they would accept death as swiftly as their fellows had.
The scrawnier of the two held the bow that had shot at Bram earlier. He drew its string again, but without an arrow notched.
“Magic is such a cheat…”
It was barely perceptible, the clump of wind energy gathering around the bow and forming the shape of an arrow twice the size of a wooden one.
Bram didn’t know if he could deflect it with his magic blade.
“Renfri,” he patted his hart on the neck, “brighten the day!”
As Bram shut his eyes, Renfri’s ivory antlers shone with an inner light that intensified quickly, showering the surroundings in a flash so bright that it banished the shadows clinging to the trees.
“Warbringer’s balls!”
Bram heard the curse a second before he felt his enemy’s ‘Wind Arrow’ pass harmlessly by him, meaning Renfri’s ‘Antler Light’ had done its job in messing with the archer’s aim.
That light was only beginning to dim when the prince opened his eyes again.
“Good boy.”
It wasn’t over yet though.
While the archer was temporarily blinded, the other hooded figure managed to escape the hart’s light thanks to a hastily erected ‘Arcane Shield’ much like the one that had protected Ser Jasper when Bram had tried to cut him down the first time.
This second hooded figure held a staff aloft. Its crystal tip glowed fiercely, the telltale sign that of a spell being cast.
Bram pointed Dusk’s blade forward.
“I bet you I’m faster.”
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The staff wielder might be casting a spell Bram didn’t have the means to block outright, but the seconds it would take him to finish his whispered invocation was enough time for Bram to cast a spell of his own but without the need for all the pageantry.
“Shatterstone!”
With ‘Ability Replication’ aiding him, rock and dirt flew up to form a fist floating next to Dusk’s blade. Not as large as what Hajime could summon, but one that was sharp and spiked and shone with the same crimson aura often emitted by Bram’s borrowed power.
Within a second of its casting, the fist shot forward and struck the staff wielder before his spell could finish.
‘Wham!’
His shimmering shield may have kept him standing, but it shattered from the power of ‘Shatterstone.’ More importantly, with the staff wielder’s concentration disrupted, his incomplete spell dwindled into nothingness.
Another ‘Wind Arrow’ shot at Bram, but it came too late and missed its mark entirely because Bram had already jumped off Renfri’s back. He landed, kicked at the ground with his back foot, and at a speed enhanced by his status’ growth, charged at the archer with his right arm extended. He caught his enemy’s neck in a ‘Lotharian Clothesline,’ a blow so intense it sent the man twirling in the air before crashing face-first onto the ground.
“We won’t need this anymore.”
Bram stomped hard on the bow lying on the ground to snap the wood in two.
‘Get bloody off me!” someone yelled.
Ever the faithful beast, Renfri was harassing the staff wielder with its antlers, drawing his attention away from Bram who used that moment to aim the tip of his sword at the throat of the archer who’d just risen to his feet.
“Wait…”
Bram’s eyes widened in recognition.
“…I know you.”
In their recent collision, the man’s hood had fallen off.
“Fuck.”
He was an unsavory-looking fellow with a greasy face.
“You’re Grabby Hands!”
It was the name Bram had given to the guard who’d accosted him at a Lowtown tavern on the day he’d set out for the lonely mountain of Sundermount.
Seeing as Bram had donned his bard’s disguise too—the purple hair and coat that made him familiar to the bandit siblings—Grabby Hands recognized him too.
“Pretty bard…”
His voice was strange. It was distorted, deeper, more manic than the drunken one Bram recalled.
“No,” Bram recalled hearing such a voice before, “not again…”
Betrayal by one of his own, an odd change that couldn’t be understood; this was Baer all over again. And just like Bram’s former coachman, Grabby Hands had no intention of surrendering.
Steel flashed in the traitor’s hand, and Bram, his mind distracted by unforeseen circumstances, couldn’t react in time to the dagger that parried Dusk’s blade away. In the next second, Grabby Hands lunged forward. He would have gutted Bram if the prince had been any slower.
Bram was a quick learner. He didn’t make the same mistakes twice.
He stepped to the side, avoiding the dagger’s reach, and then slid back into range to swing Dusk’s violet-range blade down on the traitor’s outstretched hand.
Dusk severed the arm just below the elbow, causing blood to spurt out of the stump.
“Ga~~ah!”
Grabby Hands screamed. It was stifled by Bram’s right haymaker catching him in the chin. He crumpled to the floor, his eyes rolling back.
“You’re lucky I let you live,” Bram growled.
True, he could’ve killed him. It would’ve been easy enough to aim for the man’s neck instead of his arm. But if Bram did that, he’d lose the chance to get answers from this traitor and his cohorts. Answers to the many questions he had about those who wanted him dead.
Speaking of cohorts, Bram took this brief pause in the violence to survey his surroundings.
On the other end of the clearing, Ravi Samal was fending off about the same number of assailants with the help of a summon Bram didn’t know Ravi had.
It was a fire elemental. That was obvious in the ‘Fire Breath’ it just unleashed on the poor fool who’d tried to attack Ravi’s flank. Its magic was potent too because it left its target charred beyond recognition and lying dead on the ground mere moments later.
“That’s a salamander.”
The red-skinned lizard wrapped around Ravi’s neck like a scarf. Bram recognized it quickly since he’d seen a much larger version of a salamander from afar once. It was years ago during a state visit to the Hilltop Kingdom of Yamadai, but he remembered it clearly because he’d been in awe of the massive beast that swam in the Bay of Swords with only the spikes of its spine visible above the emerald water.
Bram had been on the prow of Camilla’s skyship back then. He’d been nauseous during the journey and was about to puke his guts out over the railing, but seeing the great spirit that protected Yamadai swimming below their skyship made him forget his nausea entirely.
“Zumi once threatened to feed me to her salamander if I ever visited her kingdom again…”
In his mind, Bram wondered if his sister’s summoned spirit would win against Rowan in a fight. He couldn’t see it happening. Such was his belief in the rebel trickster of legend that even a massive spirit—what Hajime called a ‘Kaiju’—would lose to Rowan’s power.
In any case, Bram needn’t worry about Ravi. Surrounded by the charred bodies of the salamander’s victims, Ravi didn’t look like he would lose to the last enemy left standing.
The problem was on Bram’s side of the grove.
Renfri had done an excellent job keeping the staff wielder’s attention fixed on him, but it couldn’t defeat the shimmering ‘Shield’ the man kept summoning whenever Renfri’s antlers drew too close. The final blow would have to be Bram’s—and he wasn’t one to shy away from a free kick when it was offered. Literally.
He bounded forward and struck the staff wielder’s unshielded back with a well-timed ‘Drop Kick’ like the one he’d used against Baron Archibald. Bram’s kick struck the staff wielder’s spine, forcing him to stumble and smack his head against Renfri’s front hoof which had risen to stomp him.
Truly, the master and his hart were two of a kind, both thinking to hit a man at the same time in nearly the same way.
As a result, the staff wielder dropped his staff. Surprisingly, he didn’t fall with it. He just barely managed to plant his feet, his whole body swaying as if on the verge of teetering over. By the time sense returned to him, the tip of Dusk’s blade was pressed against his chest.
“Stop,” Bram commanded, then threatened, “or you’ll join the rest of your fellows in a shallow grave.”
He needn’t point out the bloody remains of the corpse Renfri had dashed against the side of a tree. It was close enough for the stench of iron to waft around them. Not to mention the moans of Grabby Hands who spasmed on the nearby ground.
“There’s no point in you dying too.”
Then, as if to pile on Bram’s threats, an explosion rocked the other side of the shrine. A glance to his right revealed Ravi standing triumphant over his final assailant.
The enemy’s ambush had been successfully thwarted. It was a perfect victory, the first among Bram’s many life-and-death battles in Lotharin.
“I have questions that need—”
The staff wielder’s whole body began to convulse.
“No,” Bram gasped, “not again…”
He pulled off the man’s hood.
“I haven’t even asked my questions?!”
The gray-haired, gray-bearded man staring back at him with a panicked face was another one he recognized. He hadn’t dealt with this man himself, but he’d been present when Ser Anthony stripped him of his title as Captain of the Watch.
This was many moons ago, days after the purge that came with Baer’s betrayal.
“Weren’t you in prison…?”
Indeed, all the Northern sympathizers in his household as well as Bastille’s guard were arrested and imprisoned underneath the city’s barracks. Yet here was a man Ser Anthony himself had sent to the dungeon, alive, though not for long.
“H-Help—”
That was all he could manage to say because his convulsions worsened. He fell twitching on the ground, his limbs extending in awkward angles—and all Bram could do was watch as the clock ticked down on the former captain’s life.
Indeed, Bram might have stood there for longer, his gaze mesmerized by the man’s bloating form, his body stretching past the limits of nature’s intention, if Renfri had not bumped his master’s shoulder, urging Bram to see sense again.
The prince and his hart barely scurried away when it happened.
‘Boom!’
‘Boom!’
‘Boom!’
‘Boom!’
It wasn’t just a single man, but all four of Bram’s assailants exploded—blood and guts scattered in all directions—signaling the end of their failed ambush.