[Mkguild] "Burning Time" pt. 4

[Nathan Pfaunmiller]

Part 4...

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Andwyn was in no mood to deal with any more troubles when he left Lois’
room, but he felt it was his duty to return with his report to Lord Thomas.
On his way, he tried to think of some way he could skip around the
information about Lois drawing him into a word trap, the very same method
that he had been sent to prevent in any other messenger.  No matter how
Andwyn minced words in his head, though, he always returned to the one
certainty; he needed to tell Thomas everything.  It would hardly be possible
to explain why he didn’t fear Lois’ threat anymore if he didn’t.



            It didn’t take Andwyn long at all to reach Thomas’
apartments.  Between
his physical ability to fly, and the keeps ability to reshape at a whim, he
was there far faster than reality should have allowed.  He was long since
used to this, however, and so dropped to the floor, against his usual
instinct to cling to the ceiling, and was quickly recognized and announced
by the Duke’s guards.



            The Duke was sitting at his desk when his spy master entered.  He
looked weary, but there was no doubt in Andwyn’s mind that sleep had not
been on his liege’s own mind for a good while.  He still wore most of the
garb that he used on those occasions when he heard the townsfolk’s
complaints, and it was still relatively orderly, showing that the Duke had
not attempted to catch any rest since doing so early in the afternoon.



            “Good news, my liege,” Andwyn said as he entered.  Thomas leaned
forward to listen, but didn’t move to interrupt.  “I believe that Lois is
here with no intentions on your life, and that it would take extreme
circumstances to force him to change that opinion.”



            Thomas looked relieved, but still wasn’t satisfied.  “What have
you found that makes you suspect this?” he asked.



            Andwyn sighed, then started the arduous task of retelling his
visit with Lois in as much detail as his memory could recall, including the
humiliating loss of the battle of wits, and the special message that Lois
had sent along to Thomas.



            “And what makes you trust this?” Thomas said.  “It seems to me
that he had fully defeated you by that time, and knew exactly what you would
want to hear.  How do you know that he did not tell you what you wanted to
hear?”  Thomas was obviously somewhat annoyed that Andwyn seemed so quick to
trust this man without true cause.



            “First, Lois doesn’t care about whether or not his target knows
he is coming,” Andwyn explained.  “In the past, he has intentionally given
hints of his intentions in preparation for a job.  Fear is one of his
greatest weapons, and if someone suspects that they are going to die soon,
their actions will become less founded on reality, and more on Lois’
preferred battlefield: the mind.”



            Andwyn waited a moment for this fact to settle in before going
on to the next reason.  “Then again, I know better than to think you would
be satisfied with what an assassin tells you.  Perhaps you will be put more
at ease when you learn what Lois chronicled for us in his own records over
these past few weeks.”



            Andwyn flicked out a small cylindrical case from its hiding
place somewhere in his strange suit of clothing.  He opened the scroll case
and tapped it lightly until the contents slid out and unrolled partially on
the table.  “These are pages, copied from the journal of Vincent Lois,”
Andwyn said, taking some pride in the small bit of redemption.  “He left it
on the table when he left to run, and I did a bit of reading during the
wait.  It seems that he is as much in search of a home as many of the other
refugees we have received this past year, if for slightly different
reasons.”



            Thomas looked over the pieces of parchment, noting the tight
curls of the letter and the fine calligraphy that the assassin used.  He had
not been aware that this man had an education, but the quality of his
writing looked almost like that of nobility.



            “I suppose you think Lois will not note the absence of a few
pages of his journal?” Thomas asked as he scanned the contents.



            “I did not take the originals, sir,” Andwyn assured him.  “I
used a new concoction that Pascal brewed up recently.  When placed on a
paper and pressed against another page, it will make an exact duplicate of
the original.”



            Thomas nodded slightly in approval, thick brow rising slightly
as he read over a particularly interesting section of the page.  “Very good,
Andwyn,” he said at length.  “I trust your judgment in this.  Still, I would
like to be able to be more certain of his loyalty before giving him any sort
of confidence.”



            Andwyn nodded.  “I have thought similar things myself,” he
admitted.  “As I see it, though, if you want to see his dedication, send him
on a far northern patrol where he will be likely to see some action.”



            Thomas looked up from the page for a moment.  “I thought we had
discussed that.  It was determined that Lois would see it as being sent
away.”



            “That was determined in the case of us stationing him to the
north for a long period of time.  He would know immediately that you were
trying to be rid of him.  Send him far north on a long patrol, not a
station, and he would be far more likely to think of it as a challenge, and
if appearances hold, an opportunity to demonstrate loyalty.”



            Thomas nodded, dark brow furrowed as he thought.  “Very well.  I
assume you would advise this action to be taken as soon as possible?”



            “After the Curse takes him,” Andwyn replied.  As Thomas began to
ask, Andwyn clarified.  “Lois is likely to take it as a challenge, but it is
not certain that he will.  If he does react against it, we need to know what
he looks like so that he can be tracked.”



            The possibility of failure made Thomas’ expression sour some,
but he still nodded.  “Very well, then.  Tell George to prepare an able
patrol group for a journey up north, and explain what we have discussed
here.  With luck, he won’t like it, but he won’t come up here to argue the
point himself, either.”



            Andwyn chuckled slightly.  “With luck, Lois is completely
earnest,” he added.  “He is not the sort of man that you find seeking to
swear his loyalty very often.  He has a presence, an undeniable
self-assuredness that would work simply beautifully in any negotiation
situation.  When it comes down to any one person and Lois over a negotiating
table, Lois never loses.”



            “Keep that in mind, Andwyn,” the Duke cautioned.  “Where we are
now, and where we may yet go with this man may essentially put him at a
negotiating table with us.  I don’t want him to walk away with more than we
can stand to give.”



            Andwyn nodded.  “Understood, sir.  I’ll make sure that we can
afford to give whatever we offer, if it comes to that.  With luck, all he
will need is a home…”



            “With luck, Andwyn.  I just hope luck is with us in this case.”
The horse lord coughed to clear his throat, looking at the bat with tired
eyes.  “Get some rest, Andwyn.  I think we both could use it after a day
like today.”



            “Yes, sir.  My spies will be watching Lois; we’ll make sure he
stays where we can find him.”  Andwyn hopped out the door on his claws and
sighed.  It had been a long day, even for his usually nocturnal body.  Perhaps
he could take a few hours to sleep off the day without wrecking his sleep
pattern entirely…



                                    *                      *
*                      *



<i>November 25, 707 CR</i>



Lois moved quietly through each part of his warm-up routine, more
contemplatively than usual.  He moved slowly, but no less skillfully as he
switched back and forth between differed styles, a guard he had set for
himself to make sure that he would be able to switch rapidly between those
styles.  It served him well; his mind was elsewhere at the moment, thinking
over what had happened the night before.



He had outthought Andwyn the night before, but the fact that the spy had
been able to sneak up in him at all was troubling.  Truly, he could have
been dead before he even realized that there was anyone there.  He had been
off his guard, something that never happened before he began his
self-imposed retirement.


 He didn't want to think about the implications.  He thought that it was
obvious what the main implication was: he had been away from the assassin's
trade for too long.  He had been entirely honest last night; he knew he
didn't want to go back, but he also had no intention of hanging up his
blades anytime soon.


 He sighed and dove into a faster section of his routine, trying to focus on
his breathing to distract from his wayward thoughts.  He had no real
success, as he inevitably came back to the pressing question at hand.  How
was he going to recover his well-schooled, cautious manner?  He could rail
on himself fondue time being to keep his mind focused, but it always took
real, present danger to keep his mind sharp, and that was something that he
was currently short on.


 Something finally distracted him, and he spun around into a solid defensive
position, facing the person who had stood behind him.  The boy who stood
behind him was far from being a threat, but Lois allowed him a pause to make
sure that he wasn't trying anything.  After a moment of awkward silence,
Lois stepped back to show that he meant no harm.


 "Who are you?"  Lois was the first of the two to ask, but he had a while to
wait before the boy recovered enough of his breath to say anything.


 "Wow," was the first thing out of his mouth.  Immediately realizing how
stupid this made him look, he shook his head in an attempt to collect his
thoughts.  "I—I’m Paul,” he finally responded.



Vincent Lois grinned slightly at the boy, dropping both daggers into their
positions at either side of his body.  He took a deep breath before
speaking.  He finally made the choice to try to make another
acquaintance.  After
his first encounter, he had not been so thoroughly put off that he didn’t
want to talk to the strange-colored fox again, but it had been unsettling.  He
hoped that this boy would be much more… normal.



“My name is Vincent Lois,” the assassin finally said.  “You apparently have
never seen my style of combat before; that was hardly my best stuff, or my
most flashy.”  Lois generally didn’t advertise his skills, but he felt
reasonably certain that this boy was simply curious because he thought it
looked good, and had no real cares about what it was generally used to do.



The boy seemed sheepish now that he realized that he had been found out.  He
had hoped perhaps that the man wouldn’t have noticed how closely he was
watching the moves he used; now he found that not only had he been found
out, but he had been entranced by something that Lois didn’t even consider
very impressive.



Before he could try to work his way out of the hole he had made for himself,
however, someone else approached from behind, causing Paul to turn around.  The
person wasn’t looking at him; instead he was looking at Lois with an odd
smile on his muzzle.



Lois gave a curt nod to the new arrival.  He was significantly shorter than
the assassin; Lois was tall, true, but the man was almost a full foot under
Lois’ impressive height at five and a half feet.  He was some sort of cat
morph, with long whiskers and tall, pointed ears covered in tan fur spotted
in darker colors all around his face.  It was undeniably the face of a
predator, and even at his disadvantage of height, he wielded his vicious
look effectively.



The assassin, however, remained stubbornly unfazed by the strange, deep eyes
that watched him.  Instead, he returned the predator’s smile with one of his
own, resting his left wrist nonchalantly against the hilt of one of his
daggers.



“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Lois asked after a few moments of silence
passed between the two.  He kept his most sincere smile on his face,
although he also made a point to keep his hand on his dagger at all times as
well.  The cat seemed intent on staring right through him, though, so Lois
spoke again.  “Whatever species you have become gets my fullest marks for
its predator’s eyes,” he commented.



The cat widened his smile, showing quite a few of his impressive teeth.  “You
simply owe it to my interest in unique combat styles,” he responded.  Despite
vicious appearances, his voice sounded quite calm, and oddly free of any
rumble to give evidence to changed vocal chords.  “As for my form, it is a
northern cat that lives in the area of the Keep.  They call it a lynx.”



Lois nodded.  “A student of combat, then?” he asked, filing the latter
information away without comment.



“More of an enthusiast,” the cat replied waving a paw dismissively.  “The
greatest reason that I remain simply an enthusiast is that I lack the skills
necessary to become anything more.  I am a fighter in my own right, but I do
not adapt my own style well.”  He gave a chagrined grin before continuing.  “I
like studying other styles simply because I cannot use them myself.  It
allows me the opportunity to continue wondering at things, even here at
Metamor.”



Lois couldn’t keep from laughing outright at this, and even the lynx gave a
chuckle.  Paul, however, had made a marked retreat from the cat that had
stood beside him a moment before and only managed to chuckle weakly at the
conversation not meant for him.  He felt uncomfortable, and even a bit
downhearted at the fact that his own conversation had been so abruptly
interrupted.  He didn’t have the courage to try to cut back in, though, so
he simply watched the two new acquaintances as they spoke.



“Well, if you would like an opportunity to wonder, I have not had a good
sparring session in a good while,” Lois said, putting slight emphasis on
implying his superiority.



The other man chuckled and carefully removed his sword from his scabbard.  It
was a broadsword, ornate enough so it was obvious that it was not from the
Keep’s armory, but simple enough that it showed that its owner was not one
who relied on excessive flare in fighting.  The cat held it loosely in one
hand and lazily wove it around his body, showing considerable skill.

 “I have no appointments for the day, so I don’t suppose facing you for a
while will do me much harm,” the lynx said.  “If you are short on time at
all, though, you might want to clear your schedule for an unexpected visit
to the healer’s.”



Lois grinned and stepped away towards the sparring circles to one side.  At
this time of the morning few of them were in use, so he easily found one
with no one else fighting around it.  He stepped into the circle, drawing
his daggers one at a time as he did so.



“I must warn you,” he said.  “I did not bring any practice blades with me,
and I have nothing with which to cover the edges of my blades.  If you trust
me, I promise to not do any more damage than your healer’s can fix within a
few days’ time.”



The cat snorted in a feline chuckle.  “I trust you with your sharp blades if
you trust me with mine,” he responded.  “I make no promises though; with
luck, you’ll recover from whatever I do to you before Yule arrives.”



Lois waved a finger at his opponent reprovingly.  “It may be a skill to be
able to strike your enemy,” he said, “but it takes even greater skill for a
warrior to miss his opponent when he wants to.”



“Now you’re not making any sense,” the cat said, smiling viciously and
stepping into the circle with Lois.  “Whoever said anything about me wanting
to miss you?”



Paul had already begun to feel better after being so rudely interrupted
before.  The two men had begun to circle around each other, and the boy
finally concluded that a good fight was better than an awkward conversation
anyway.  Since so few people were there to watch, Paul easily found a
vantage point from which he could see the fight in detail.



Neither opponent had so much as tested the other yet; both seemed intent on
finding a better position solely by using footwork.  Every now and then one
or the other would step into an advantageous position to gauge the other’s
reaction, but each of these attempts was dealt with through positioning and
stance shifts.



After a few minutes of this, Lois finally spoke up.  “So, are you ready
yet?”



The cat grinned.  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he responded.



Lois faked a look of shock.  “Well, then, we’ve been wasting time.”  He
continued circling for a little bit, but he seemed to be widening his
circle, giving his opponent a much wider berth.  The cat noticed, but taking
a half-step in was his first, and last, mistake of the battle.



Lois closed the rest of the distance between the two before the cat could
even react, and the scream that he let loose in advance of the attack sent
the cat into a panicked paroxysm.  The lynx was on the ground before he
could even recover, pinned with one arm beneath him and his sword almost a
foot from his face, too far to be reached with Lois’ knee pressing his arm
down.



The two daggers that Lois held were each pressed against the cat’s neck,
shaving off strands of fur for every second he rested them there.



“Yield?” Lois asked simply.



The cat could hardly control his stuttering enough to give him an
intelligible response.



Lois grinned and stood, letting his opponent scramble back to his feet and
take his sword back.  The cat stood there for a few moments, replaying the
scene in his head, trying to figure out how he had been caught so totally
off guard by Lois’ scrambling attack.  His fur, although it had been
well-groomed before, was now a mess of hairs standing on end in no
particular order.



The assassin himself finally broke the silence that followed.  “By the way,
I don’t think that the two of us have been properly introduced,” he
commented.  “My name is Vincent Lois.”  He held out a hand for them man to
take, and the feline fighter shook it weakly.



“Alex,” he responded.



“Well then, Alex, I really have little else to do with myself today.  If
you’re interested in trying a few more times, I would certainly welcome the
challenge.”



Alex nodded, but he was, for the moment, too busy recovering from a near
heart attack to seriously consider meeting Lois again for a few minutes.  He
obviously had no intentions of letting the opportunity get past him, though..
He had to make sure that his opponent didn’t get the last word, especially
in such a humiliatingly short fight as this first one had been.



Once Alex had learned how to avoid a nervous breakdown when Lois’ launched
his attack at him, he was rewarded by a quick switch from intimidation and
strength to flexibility and mobility by his opponent.  When he learned to
counter that, Lois switched back to strength with a few variations to keep
his opponent guessing.  Every time Alex stepped into the ring, he stepped
back out after facing a different attack strategy.



This didn’t always translate into victory for the human.  Every now and then
Alex would work by Lois’ defenses, but it rarely happened more than once
without Lois making the necessary adjustments to defeat Alex’s strategy at
the very next opportunity.



Their last fight, however, ended far differently from the others.



Lois had long since stopped using the raw intimidation tactics on his
opponent, and so the duels they had were now more focused on trying to be
the last one standing than on trying to end the fight as quickly as
possible.  This was the third straight battle where the fight lasted longer
than ten minutes, and Lois had started working closer and closer to Alex,
showing remarkable reaction time by still blocking each attack in such close
quarters.  Suddenly, however, one of his daggers slipped right as he was
about to block another close strike, and he barely had time to flinch to the
side as the sword came straight for him.



“Hold!  Hold!” Lois yelled, dropping to his knees on the ground.  He panted
slowly and reached for the pain in his back.  He already knew what he would
find there before he reached back, but touching the wound just confirmed his
suspicions.



“I’m going to need a healer,” he announced quietly, slowly standing to his
feet.  He could feel the wound slowly bleeding under his light clothing, and
he knew that there would be a bright red blotch on the side of his shirt.



Alex grabbed him by the shoulder.  “Hold on, make sure you’re going to be
all right before you go anywhere,” he advised.  Lois winced and grabbed at
the cat’s hand.



“I’m not planning on going anywhere, except to find somewhere to sit,” Lois
said hoarsely, pulling the paw off of his shoulder.  He was doing remarkably
well with the pain, but Alex could see that it was bugging him.  He had
enough difficulty concentrating that he even stumbled as he walked,
something absolutely foreign to the powerful, agile man that he had just
been fighting.



“Someone get a healer over here!” Alex announced.



Paul was already off at a run before Alex even finished his sentence.



Lois finally arrived at a stone bench where he had left his things.  By this
point he was shivering; the weather had been cold ever since the cold snap
just a few days before Lois had arrived, but now he began to feel it more
than ever.  He felt it so much that he draped his coat over his shoulder
without even trying to do anything about his wound.  Still, shock kept him
from getting any relief, and he felt the cold slowly stealing away his
consciousness.


!DSPAM:4c5a3944273502041213656!
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