A Brother's Oath

His body hit another rock, absorbing the new shock much as it had done the others. His sides were bruised black and blue under the tatters of his shirt. His knees he had ceased to feel after the first half mile. His elbows and arms had been scraped raw by the dust and dirt in the road. His face was covered in grey grime with splashes of blood and dark wet soil from the narrow track along which the horses of his captors trotted. They did not move fast enough to cause any permanent damage but briskly enough so that he would not escape unscathed.

His wrists, rubbed raw by the tightly bound rope, were numb, streaking blood in stained rivulets down his arms. His magic was out of reach, the result of the drug in the little bubble attached to the dart that protruded from the left side of his throat. Even if he had enough concentration to magically loosen the bonds he would not be able to do so with the drug coursing through his bloodsteam, making his heart stutter and his lungs labour to draw breath. The dust and dirt in his mouth and nose did not help matters either. He felt hollow, an itch of lack – he had no other way to describe the absence, the inability to draw on his magic power. The emptiness did itch, annoyingly so. He needed just a little... to escape. Just a little! But wishing to break free did not make it so.

Another rock jolted him out of his musings. This one hit him in the chin, making his eyes water. He groaned. It went unheard over the hoofbeats for which he was grateful. He did not want to give his captors any more reason to notice him or jeer him. He'd ridden into the ambush like the eager idiot he was. His friends had been in danger. So the note had said... Maybe he should have checked for magic tampering on the paper or the ink. The note had been in Kyle's hand. When he'd looked closer the hairs on the back of his neck had risen. Blood. It had been blood. Kyle's blood. He had felt the imprint of his friend's substance. He had bandaged Kyle up enough times to know his friend's feel, that mortal signature that was unique to every human. His own signature was weaker, the Elven strain overwhelming the human one.

To know that the false note had been written in Kyle's hand and with his friend's blood....

Another rock shook him from his thoughts. Without even thinking about it he began to work his injured hands up the rope one over the other. He gritted his teeth with the pain in his almost dislocated shoulders and the enormous effort it cost him to drag his battered body along the dirt road. Rain had fallen recently. The narrow track was almost dry but from time to time there were pools of dirt. The horse's hooves threw up even more into the prisoner's face.

Gradually the flying hooves came closer, the horseshoes flashing not far from his face. His body swayed from side to side, complicating his task and sometimes he had to stop to gather his strength and to avoid some of the rocks. Bushes ripped into his skin and a tree bole smashed into his shin bone. He closed his eyes, his matted black hair falling over his face as he bowed his head to push the sudden pain away.  The leg did not appear to be broken. That, however, was only a matter of time. Eventually a thicker tree would come along and break his legs. He had to be on the horse before that happened.

The edge of a clearing came into view just as he reached for the saddle to pull himself up. He'd maneuvered himself to the side of the moving horse. The man dragging him, the rope looped around his saddle horn, had not noticed the change in the tautness of the rope yet. That worked in the captive's favour. With a reflex born of desperate need he grabbed hold of the rider's leg and yanked hard. Startled the bandit let go of the reins and thew his arms up – which only served to make it easier to throw him off the horse. He fell with a shout that was heard by his comrades up ahead. By the time they'd turned around the captive had managed to lever himself up onto the horse and turn it around. Despite the drug he found his motion free – adrenaline. Eventually it would wear off, he knew. He had to reach Kyle at that farmhouse and get him out before the drug, a massive dose, overcame him completely.

There were shouts behind him. An arrow flew near his shoulder, missing by an inch. Another came whistling just as he broke into the trees to try and shake them off. Lose them in the trees. Break their line of sight. His thinking was pure instinct, ingrained by long training. He acted without conscious volition. He was grateful for his Assassin training. Without it he would have broken many a time.

He panted, the drumming of the horse's hooves an overwhelming noise in his hearing, in his world. His erratic heartbeat was subsumed in the thunder of the horse's movement. It was almost as if he were one with the animal, were the animal itself, not a rider. The beast and the wounded Assassin moved as one, a strange happenstance where their purposes were one. One...

His breathing grew more ragged, the drug sapping his physical strength as much as it had his magical abilities. He swayed in the saddle, away from another arrow. A spear came through the trees and missed entirely. The horse swerved towards a downward slope to the river that gurgled its way from the mountains to the farms below. One of those farms... One of them... Kyle...

His thoughts wandered as the horse splashed across and up the opposite bank. More shouts behind them but the Assassin was increasingly oblivious to the pursuit. The only thing in his dulled mind was the farm and his friend's name, a repetitive litany that would not stop, that kept him in the saddle. Even the pain of his wounds was a distant throb.
How long he rode he never knew. The sky had grown darker when the forests ended and he found himself in the back yard of a large farm. The paddocks were empty, the barns locked. The animals were resting inside no doubt, warm and fed and watered. Such mundane things were far from his mind. He had only a single goal in mind: finding Kyle. Alive. He had to be alive. Had to be...

He blinked and startled. He'd almost fallen off the saddle. He had to stop daydreaming and keep moving. If he ever stopped, Kyle would not have a chance. If he stopped, he'd betray his principles. He could not do that. He would not let himself do that.
With great care he slid off the horse. His legs buckled under him, weak from the dragging ride. He held onto the saddle with equally useless hands and somehow forced himself to stand up. For some time he leaned on the horse, taking in its warmth and feeling the surge of blood. The animal was well trained. It stood still as if realizing his travail.

“Alright,” he whispered at last, his voice hoarse. The animal flicked its ears at him. “One step at a time... make it...”

Carefully he walked to the horse's nose, still holding on to the reins. He had little time to search the farm. Kyle could be in the barns or in the house. Most likely in the house. It was made of stone, what he could see of it by moonlight. A better prison than a wooden barn.

His steps shuffled across the churned soil of the paddock. His hand lay on the hilt of his knife, the one weapon that his captors had not taken since he'd never had time to use it on them. His sword and axe were gone. He'd better forget about them, for now.
He was half way across the dark paddock when his body gave out on him, his knees buckling. He swore weakly and began to crawl. He was shivering, the drug chilling his bones, making his muscles stiff. He chewed and spat – saliva dribbled out of his mouth and into the dirt. He was sure that there was more but decided not to think about that. Kyle was waiting for him... he had to be alive. Had to be...

He shook his head, reaching up the paddock fencing and pulling his weary body into a standing position. Again he paused to gather his flagging strength. He had little time left. His pursuers would be here soon. He'd only bought some time.

Shivering, he came up to the back door and put his ear against it. He heard nothing over the thrum of the blood in his ears. He could have sensed how many men there were using his magic but that was not available. He rested his head against the rough wood. Only one way then.

He shambled to the front door which was unguarded. The bandits clearly had not expected a rescue attempt. More fools they, he thought with grim humour, raising his hand and knocking on the stout door.


The man who opened the door had just opened his mouth when a hand grabbed him and pulled him forward and a knife was pushed into his chest to the hilt. He stiffened, his words dying on his lips. There was light in the front room and two more men were sitting around the large table piled with cards, dice and beer mugs. The room smelled of flour and meat, overlaying it all the stink of sweat and a miasma of violence. The two men at the table started to their feet as the apparition in the doorway, a most unexpectedly unpleasant surprise, moved with uncanny agility to embed the same knife in one's throat. The remaining man gave a shout and ran at the half dead Assassin who let him go by and then tripped him up. The bandit sprawled on the porch and the door was shut behind him, the bar thrown across. The man got up and tried to open it and then banged on it repeatedly. The Assassin inside ignored him and began to move about searching for his friend. He called out his friend's name and no answer came. The farm house was a two story structure of stone and wood. At the far corner there was a staircase leading to the sleeping quarters. In the centre of the front room door, under the table, was the door to the underground cellar. A ring stuck up out of the planks.

The Assassin, his body shaking with another chill, heaved and pushed at the table until it moved aside. His arms and legs shook while the pounding on the door continued and then abruptly stopped. He paid it no mind. The bandit probably would try to get through an upstairs window but that would take time. Taking hold of the ring he heaved up on it. The door did not budge. He groaned wiping sweat from his face. His hands were wet. Hastily he grabbed a towel from a rack nearby and wrapped it around the ring. With a groan that became a yell of effort the wearying Assassin pulled until he heard the door grate and shift. Slowly the hatch came up and then fell over onto the floor. A darkness yawned, several stairs illuminated by the lamplight in the kitchen room.

“Kyle,” he croaked down. No answer came. “Kyle, are you there?” he called again, his strength almost out. Black spots were dancing in his eyes. He sighed, his hand on his chest. The cold was getting worse. His heart was slowing down. Not good. Not good at all...

“Kyle?” he tried one more time and then began to descend down the stairs. He had little choice. His senses told him little. He was so compromised that he could not rely on the information his nose, his ears, his touch gave him. “Kyle,” he whispered.

A movement in the dark. His head turned quickly, his reflexes working despite his condition. In the dark his vision was much better than any mortal's. His eyes,  blurred with the drug and the chill, still made out a tied up form. He staggered over, his knife cutting the bonds on instinct. He knew the feel of his friend's soul. The familiarity of his presence served to steady his fraying willpower.

“How did you get here?” Kyle asked once his mouth was free of the gag the bandits had put there. He reached out for the Assassin's arm and hissed. “Atar? What happened to you?”
“Later,” Atar grated. “We have to go. They'll be here soon.”

“Right,” Kyle said, already up and at the stairs. His boots clunked up, and then he was across the kitchen into the pantry to retrieve his weapons. He turned just as Atar made his way over the lip of the cellar and collapsed in a heap. Kyle swore, running to him and turning him over.

“Atar,” he began and then noticed the dart. “Shit!” There was no time to draw it out. In his bones his instinct screamed at him that they had to get out of here, right now. Drawing his half comatose friend's arm over his shoulders he headed for the back door just as it crashed in and one of his captors charged in, sword in hand. Kyle pivoted, dropping Atar, and his fist smashed into the side of the man's head as he dodged the sword. The bandit fell into the wall, his sword falling from his hand. He got up almost at once and charged again, this time pinning Kyle against the opposite wall and drawing his long sharp knife to slit his victim's throat. Kyle's knee came up into his groin, driving the soft tissue into his sternum. The man howled like a wounded hog and let go of the knife. Kyle did not waste a minute but grabbed the knife and stabbed at the bandit's exposed throat. With a half strangled scream the man fell. Leaving him to die, Kyle helped Atar to stand. His friend was much weaker now. His shivering had gotten worse. Muttering under his breath Kyle led him out and into the paddock. Atar was muttering about horses, blood and bandits – raving. He needed a healer – one who knew how to deal with magic and drugs and Elves.

“Damn it, Brother,” Kyle said out of the side of his mouth. “If we make it back to town...” He never finished his sentence as a horse neighed. Across the paddock he saw it standing near the back, close to the forest. Atar must have ridden in. Half sick he had still somehow stayed in the saddle. Kyle shook his head. His half-Elven friend's willpower and discipline were nothing short of amazing. Only that could have kept him in the saddle, nothing else.

With great difficulty Kyle was able to mount Atar on the horse and secure him to his own body with the ropes that dangled from Atar's arms. Somehow, he had cut them perhaps not even being aware. If his eyes were any indication, the Elvish Assassin was doing everything on instinct. Shock would set in soon and then Kyle did not want to be anywhere near here.

“Hold on, Brother,” he said encouragingly, taking the reins in his hands.


Atar started up in bed, turned over onto his side and vomited violently into a basin that sat near the bed on which he lay. His stomach heaved once, twice. Everything it contained went out of his mouth and into the basin and more besides. He felt wrung out, drained – like an empty waterskin. His hand shook when he wiped it across his mouth which felt like a cesspool. He flopped back onto the bed, spent entirely. The vomiting fit had taken him hard, interrupted his dark dreams.

He shut his eyes tight, held them closed for a count of fifty, and then opened them. Nothing had changed. He was in a bed at an inn – if the noise from beyond the door was any indication. He turned his head, ignoring the dizziness and the ache the motion caused, and scanned the room. There was not much. A table near the open window. A wash basin in the far corner with a mirror that reflected the trees and the sun outside. A trunk close by the bed on which a fresh Assassin outfit lay. One of those inns then. The ones that the Brothers ran. He sighed, relieved. He could rest truly now. He was as safe as it was possible to be.

The door opened and Kyle stepped in, his eyes lighting up on seeing Atar awake.

“Good morning,” he greeted setting down a tray of cakes and soup on the table. A flagon of beer followed in the hands of a servant. “You sure look better than when I brought you in.” He paused casually. “A few days ago.”

Atar started. “Days?” His mind had not registered the passage of days, not yet. His body, however, knew. His stomach knotted at the smell of food. Nausea rose and he forced it down. He would eat. He needed his strength.

“You were in and out a few times,” Kyle supplied pulling up a chair. “That drug hit you like a very large hard rock.” He looked keenly at Atar. “Can you reach your magic?”

Atar shook his head and then realized that he had not even tried. “I don't know,” he said slowly. Kyle raised his eyebrow and took a draft of beer from the mug he'd poured himself. “I'd give you some,” he apologized. “But doctor's orders.”

Atar could not help but smile. Kyle's lightheartedness could seem flippant to those who did not know him better. Atar did know him better.

“I have not tried reaching for the magic. I was busy throwing up whatever it was I had eaten earlier.”

“Ah,” Kyle said with mock sympathy. “That would be chicken soup.”

“Chicken soup,” Atar said matter of factly. He shifted about on the bed, his body sluggish and almost unresponsive. At least his heartbeat had returned to normal and he no longer heard the blood drumming in his ears.

“Chicken soup,” Kyle repeated, a sly smile on his face. “A mighty remedy for the dead and the near dead.”

Atar snorted laughter as Kyle began to cluck like a chicken. The laughter turned into a cough spasm that shook him hard. He fell back onto the pillow, sweaty and spent.

Kyle put a hand on his shoulder. “Rest, Brother,” he said, all humour gone. “And thank you.”

With his own hand, Atar pressed his friend's. “We're Assassins, Kyle,” he said, his voice cracking on the words. It did not sound like his voice at all. “Brothers in arms. Brothers in magic. Brothers in deed. We never leave one behind.”

“Aye,” Kyle replied slowly. “We never do.” He set his beer aside. “The Master was furious at first when he found out that you'd gone off to risk your life for me. In his eyes the mission is more important than one man's life.” Kyle shook his head, bitterness straying across his features.

“He knows, Kyle. He knows. He does not like unnecessary sacrifices but he knows that sometimes they are necessary,” Atar assured the other man. “Otherwise he would not have sent us to complete the assignment.”

Kyle sniffed. “You're right. As usual. I just wish that the old man would snap out of being the Master all the time and be a human being.”

“He has a hard job – managing the Brotherhood, and keeping our enemies at bay, playing them off one against the other.”

“You're defending him again,” Kyle accused straightening up. “You always do.”

“No,” Atar disagreed, his headache worsening. Kyle, noticing his friend's pallour, got up and poured him a glass of water. He held it to Atar's lips as the wounded man – Elf, he corrected himself, Elf – drank the cool liquid that soothed his throat.

“No,” Atar repeated, his head reclining again on the pillow. “I am only explaining him...”
Kyle shrugged. “Does not change a thing. He still should have known better.”

“He does, Kyle. He does.”

“If you say so.” Kyle was not convinced. He stood again and walked over to the bags stacked against the trunk. “Just so you know, the mission went off as planned. The spy is dead and his secrets died with him. The Kingdoms are saved another war – until another minister somewhere gets too ambitious and greedy.” He came back with a pouch in his hands. Untying the drawstring he upended the pouch from which fell a royal seal cracked in two. “He carried this on him. He was taking it to his master when we found him. In the fight it broke. The pirate princes might have to make a new seal to replace this one. Its magic is gone.”

Atar studied the seal, feeling the deadness of the thing. Magic was something sentient, aware. It imbued objects and people and animals with a sense of liveliness that many mortals could not feel except as a strange gut feeling or a wind on the back of their neck. The royal seals generally had a magic of a sort. The kind of magic that ensured the authenticity of the document that the seal was stamped into and prevented any tampering with the wording of the document. The magic was not fool proof. Breaking a seal negated the wardings and allowed forgeries.

The seal was the size of Atar's palm and was just bits of clay with no sense to it whatsoever. On its cracked surface was the image of a shark for the maritime kingdom of the pirates. Someone had tried to implicate them, set them up, as the perpetrators of the destruction of the tradeships of the Kargonds, a trading island where merchants were the rulers organized into a strictly controlled guild. No one who was not born on that island could become a merchant, let alone a member of the Council. The Kargonds traded far and wide. Their customers, mostly kings and nobles in other countries, would surely not wish their trade curtailed severely or their goods destroyed wantonly. They would have reacted with force against the pirate principalities in the event of a war. The pirate princes had called in the Assassins to help restore order before the conflict escalated. Kyle and Atar had been working on that when Kyle had had the bad luck to be captured. They had tracked down the spy and were on the verge of taking him out of the picture when the ambush had happened. Torn between duty and friendship, Atar had chosen friendship. Not an easy choice. And the Master definitely would not approve. However, the Raven had. And that had been all the permission he'd needed. The god understood the value that Atar placed on Kyle. Without his friend his actions would have been successful still but the capture would have served to distract him at the crucial moment. The last thing he'd needed was a hostage situation.

“We did it then,” Atar said.

“Aye,” Kyle replied. “We did. Now we can go home.” He stretched theatrically and rose. “I better go before the healer puts me into a bed for keeping you up so long,” he added noting Atar's fluttering eyes and pale skin. “You can rest easy. We won't leave until you're up to travelling on horseback.”

“Listening to the Master's bristling lecture is better when you're not half dead on your feet,” Atar admitted, the fortress rising in his mind's eye. Home. His home. Their home. The Assassin stronghold where they trained, rested and recuperated. A warm bath, a massage – those were the things that waited for the weary Assassins who came back from their assignments. He was rather looking forward to that, despite the forebodings of his Master's displeasure. He did not fear the old man. He respected his judgement, if not his sometimes inhuman resolve. Being the Master of the Assassins, the ultimate intercessor with the Raven, was not a job for the faint of heart. The Raven was demanding and not distant at all. The Raven took an almost humanly personal interest in his Assassin woshippers. Hence the tattoo on every Assassin's chest, the mark of his favour. His brand. Atar had not minded being branded at all. The black bird over his heart meant that he belonged, that he was a part of a big family where his contributions were valued. Given the fact that he was a half breed, that was an important consideration.

Settling deeper into his bed, after a strong dose of the sleeping potion Atar gave himself over to sleep where the fortress and the Raven drove away the darkness of his dreams.