[Wade_Gustafson]

(Continued from part 1 due to message size)
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“Shhh!” Paragas hissed at me.


We’d taken cover in an old warehouse when the foreman’s attention was elsewhere. I could hear yelling outside – a mercenary guard, I figured, telling everyone that he’d found our horses ditched in the Market. Even terrified as I was at the thought that I’d be put up on the gallows if they caught me, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d ever see Copper again, or what they’d do to him. I was at the end of my rope with Paragas and his schemes.


“How are we going to get out of here, Paragas?”


“I know another way out of the city. Follow me!”


We waited at the warehouse door, hiding in the shadows there, until the sounds of the Black Down mercenaries faded away. When we were sure it was safe, we slipped out alongside a wagon pulling away from the workhouse across the street.


Our heads were kept down as we walked, and it wasn’t long before Paragas suddenly pulled me away from our escort and into a group of slaves working at repairing the city wall. The slaves stopped to watch us curiously as we moved through them to a crack hidden by the scaffolding.


“What’s this?” I asked.


“A way out!” Paragas glanced back to make sure we weren’t being followed, but behind us were only the slaves, now facing lashings for the delay we caused them. Paragas pushed me down into the hole. “Crawl, you fool.”


I squirmed through the crack quickly, my heart beating painfully in my chest. When I reached the other side I pulled myself out and found that I’d emerged at a place looking out upon fields of wheat and flax.


Turning around to see what was keeping Paragas, I was startled to see the air before me shimmer as the Rahist mage stepped out of a swirling vortex.


“You’re going to die a horribly painful death,” the mage threatened as he raised a bloody, trembling hand toward me.


I felt my body stiffen against my will. There was a great heat rising within my veins and my heart began to feel like a lump of hot coal burning within my chest. I opened my mouth to scream, my eyes squeezing shut against the building agony.


And then it was gone.


I opened my eyes and staggered back at the sight of Paragas’ dagger slicing clean across the mage’s throat. A curtain of blood ran down from the wound, staining the Rahist’s shirt crimson. Eyes wide with surprise looked at me pleadingly, but the cut was made, and the mage slipped quietly to the ground.


“Come on!” Paragas yelled as he turned to run alongside the city wall, making a point to keep in the shadows thrown by the rising sun. “We’ll jump the wagoner in the woods and hitch a ride to Kemble.”

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“It’s cold,” Paragas complained, pulling his cloak tightly around him. “What the hell are we doing way out here?”
I crouched beside him as we caught our breath from the frantic flight. The chill was a welcome bite after my ordeal at the hands of the blood mage.


“I can’t go back to Johannasburg with the cabal after me,” I said. “And like you told me, the cabal will find me no matter what village I hide in.”


Paragas looked angry. “So we’re going to hide here on the tundra, freezing our eggs off? That’s your great plan?”


“No,” I said as I looked back across the barren landscape. I glanced to the south and focused for a moment on the distant treeline that marked the edge of Kemble. “I need to have powerful friends who can protect me. It’s time I joined a guild.”


Paragas let out another infectious smile and threw his hands wide, pulling me into a crushing hug. “Finally,” he yelled to the heavens, “My friend has seen the light!”


I smiled and took a flask of whiskey from my knapsack. “To a new life,” I toasted, handing the flask to Paragas.


He took a heavy draw and coughed. “Whew, that will warm a man up.” He laughed. “That’s good, where’d you get that?”


“Well, while you were busy robbing that peasant girl of her honour, I had a talk with that mercenary that we’d been following”


Paragas began to look a little pale. He handed the hardened leather flask back to me and I smelled the rim of it.


I continued, watching out of the corner of my eye as Paragas began to sweat heavily. “I told him about my gambling and the cabal back in Johannasburg. And he told me that I should keep my gold, and not pay them.”


A fit of coughing came from my friend. “He took me over and introduced me to a man named Ewyn, a member of your guild actually. I paid him the last of the gold I had on me for the whiskey. I forget what he said he’d put in it – digi… – diga…”


“Digitalis?” Paragas sputtered in rising panic before he fell over to his side and began thrashing around in a fit of painful spasms. He screamed horridly, but way out here in the tundra, nobody other than myself could hear him.


I watched calmly. “That’s right, digitalis. He assured me that it would kill you quickly.”


Paragas looked up at me through watery eyes, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “Why?” He managed after some time.


“Because one dead Kneyan is as good as the next, as Argarath said. I need the head of a Kneyan to prove my worth to the Black Down.” I smiled. “I have indeed seen the light, my old friend, and I have enough people wanting me dead without you getting me into trouble everywhere we go over a skirt or a score.


“In a few minutes, Paragas, I’m going to cut your head off. Not only will I be able to pay off the cabal in Johannasburg with the bounty that the Rahists have no doubt put out for you for killing that mage, but I’ll be a part of one of the most feared guilds on The Isle. If I’m lucky, I might even have enough gold left over to get old Copper back.”


I grinned and looked down at Paragas who lay still and pale on the frozen earth.


Paragas was dead.