Chapter 42: Attacking the old man

OLD MAN’S POV

The door of my inn creaked open, and the cold night air slipped in with two figures behind it.

I was wiping a mug. Both of them were cloaked in black from head to toe, hoods pulled low, and each wore a glassy metallic mask with a smooth, symmetrical pattern that caught the firelight in thin lines. There was no face behind them, only that blank, polished stare.

One was tall and broad, his shoulders almost filling the doorway. The other was smaller and slimmer. On the larger one’s back hung a massive slab of a sword, thick and heavy, its edge wrapped in cloth.

My hand stopped moving. My eyes went over the masks, then the sword, and for a second my face went still. I didn’t like any of it. Then I smiled and set the mug down.

"Welcome, welcome. Cold night out there, isn’t it?"

They crossed the room and stopped in front of my counter. The floorboards groaned under the big one’s boots. Neither of them said a word.

"Looking for a room?" I asked, keeping my smile in place. "I have a few free. Good beds, hot water in the mornings."

The smaller one stepped forward. The voice behind the mask was soft and flat.

"We are looking for someone. A woman. We heard from people that she was brought here." She paused. "An elf. Do you know anything about her?"

I tilted my head as if I was thinking, then shook it slowly.

"An elf? No, I’m sorry. Nobody like that has come through here. I’d remember something like that."

"Think carefully."

"I don’t know anyone like that. I haven’t seen one in years."

They looked at me for a few seconds.

"Refusing to tell us is hindering the kingdom," the smaller one said quietly.

"I’m really sorry," I said. "But I don’t know anyone."

The tall one wasn’t looking at me at all. His masked face was tilted toward the ceiling, turning slowly from one side to the other, as if he was reading the building floor by floor. My stomach tightened. Then he stopped.

"She is here," he said, his voice deep and rough. "I can sense her. Upstairs."

The smaller one moved before I could.

Her hand came up, and a fireball bloomed in her palm, spinning and bright. She didn’t hesitate. She hurled it across the counter.

BOOM!

It hit my chest like a kicked-in door. I was thrown backward into the wall, and the world went white and loud. I heard the wall crack and the shelves come down.

The two of them didn’t even look back. They turned toward the stairs.

My chest was on fire. Every breath felt like swallowing glass. But my feet were under me, and my hand found the handle of a cleaver on the rack beside me. I threw it.

THUNK!

It flew past the smaller one’s face, close enough to cut a few strands of her hair, and sank deep into the wall beside the stairs. They stopped.

Slowly, they turned.

I stood behind the counter with my shirt burned open and my chest raw and bleeding, smoke curling off the edges of the wound. My breath came uneven, but I planted my feet and took a fresh cleaver in each hand, gripping them tight.

"I don’t know what you want," I said, low and steady. "But anyone under my roof is under my protection."

The smaller one looked at the larger one. Neither of them spoke. Then the tall one shot forward.

He pulled the huge sword off his back in one motion and swung. The cloth tore away from the blade, and the slash ripped across the room, cleaving through everything in its path, the counter, the tables, the posts. Wood exploded into the air.

I leaped.

I cleared the arc by a hair and felt the wind of the blade pass beneath my boots. I hit the floor and charged, swinging one cleaver at his side. He pulled back and dodged, his heavy sword rising to guard. I spun and brought the second cleaver around, and I felt it, the opening, the blade about to land.

A fireball slammed into me from the side.

I got both cleavers crossed in front of my body in time, but the force of it still lifted me off my feet. I crashed into the wall and slid down it, dust and splinters raining over my head.

I coughed. Blood ran from my mouth and from the burn on my chest. My hands were shaking as I pushed myself up, one knee at a time. The room spun around me. I was bleeding and weak, and I knew it.

I took a deep breath.

Then I called it up.

Pale light surged around my body, thin at first, then thicker, wrapping my arms and chest and then the blades in my hands. It rolled off me in waves, pressing against the walls, making the lanterns flicker and the floor tremble beneath me.

The smaller one took a step back.

"Aura?" she said, and for the first time her voice wasn’t flat. "Who are you?"

I didn’t answer. I ran at them, and the big one raised his sword to meet me.

CLANG!

We collided in the middle of the room. The shockwave blew out from the impact and tore the tables apart. I pushed with everything I had, and he pushed back, and neither of us gave an inch. He was my equal. My cleavers screamed against that great blade, sparks flying, and the floor cracked under our feet.

We broke apart, and swung again.

CLANG! CLANG!

Every strike sent another wave through the building. Beams groaned overhead. Plaster fell from the ceiling in sheets. A window blew out, then another, and the staircase sagged to one side. My inn was coming apart around us, and I couldn’t spare a thought for it.

We drew back to clash again, both of us gathering our strength.

That was when I lost track of her.

She stepped between us just as we started to close. Fire poured from her hands in a wide wall of flame, and it swallowed me whole. It lifted me and threw me straight through the front wall of my own inn. I flew out into the street and rolled across the cobblestones until I stopped.

Everything was ringing. Dust and smoke drifted out of the hole after me, and above me the night sky was cold and clear. I couldn’t feel my arms.

Through the ringing, I heard her voice.

"I did not expect to find an aura user in a place like this."

The big one said nothing. I heard his sword lower.

Then footsteps, calm and unhurried, coming toward the hole in the wall, and a dark shape moving through the smoke toward me.