GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 9

Ingram and his friends were in real trouble...

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Chapter 9.

Ingram blinked his way slowly back to consciousness into a blurred world filled with a vaguely underwater green. The dim green light, he finally realized, was from sunlight filtering through the innumerable leaves of the Forest Sea.

Having made that determination, and finding his mind starting to gain some coherence, he blinked again and forced himself to focus.

He was sitting up, bound to and against something. From the feel – without raising his head – it felt like two somethings. Backs. Quester's and Urelle's, almost certainly. Moving only his eyes, he looked to one side and then the other. Yes, on the left his wrist was bound to Urelle's, and on the right to Quester's armored primary hand; out of the corner of his eye he saw other rope, which indicated that their captors had also efficiently bound Quester's second-hands.

They were also gagged, which didn't surprise him. Some mages, and others, could evoke power just by speaking. He thought there might also be power inhibiting cords wound through the ropes, but it was hard to tell. Either way, getting out of this was not going to be easy.

There were voices around him, and now he could finally make them out.

"…been tracking them this whole time!" A tenor voice, controlled but angry.

"You and all the others, yes. But you didn't catch them, did you?" That voice was deeper, a touch smug. "That was our group, and a good thing, too; they were laying for you, remember."

Both had familiar accents. From Aegeia, definitely. Urelle was right. But this sounds like there were at least two groups hunting for me?

He raised his head.

Eight people sat or stood in a rough circle a short distance off. They all fit the descriptions Urelle had given them. All part of the same general force? He didn't recognize the specifics of their outfits, but that didn't mean much; a private guard or secret operations group wouldn't publicize their dress code and insignia. Three of them were unhelmed, though likely not without head protection, but they all had the same dark clothing with hints of some form of armor underneath and, with one exception, all of them were clearly armed. One trained in bare-handed fighting, perhaps, maybe even a God-Warrior candidate, or possibly just has a concealed weapon.

There didn't seem to be any others, at least not to Ingram's quick glance around. That didn't, unfortunately, mean that they were unwatched.

"Hey, the boy's awake."

"Forget him," the deeper voice said, showing that it was the bare-headed, unarmed one talking for his group. "He's not the target."

What? I'm not? That makes no sense!

"The Coins are not absolutely clear on that," the tenor – this one holding a rune-covered staff, obviously the leader of the group Urelle had seen. "They're wavering."

The unarmed man, whose head was shaved so it shone, grimaced. "Eliane?"

One of the armored figures drew out a glittering golden coin – a full Shield, in fact, over an inch and a quarter across – with a golden thread attached to it. The woman let it drop to hang from the thread, and gestured over it, muttering an invocation too low to hear.

The Coin immediately swung away from the vertical, pointing in the direction of the bound captives. But it was not steady; it swung erratically across a noticeable arc, and occasionally even twirled around to point away from them by almost ninety degrees, although most of the time it stayed somewhere in the arc bounded by the three captives.

"Hmph. What's wrong with the Athena-cursed thing? It was behaving perfectly fine up until now." The bald one ran his hand over his head in a distracted gesture.

"Ours started having trouble earlier – around the time we approached that outlying estate I mentioned before," said the one with the staff. "It concerns me."

Ingram tried, despite the gag, to say "Who are you people and what do you want from us?" It of course came out as incomprehensible murmuring, but it did get some attention.

"Sorry, boy, but since we don't know your abilities, you stay that way," the woman named Eliane said, putting away the Coin.

The one with the staff sighed. "Look, arguing gets us nowhere. We both followed the Coins here, and even if they've decided to get confused now, that can't be argued. The girl's the one we want. The longer we wait, the more chance the other groups find us. Let's all just agree we both found her, and we can all get the reward."

"I don't like it," the bald man said, now rubbing his chin and glaring at the three captives. "Word is that the Ainax Stratei brought these straight from the hands of Ares himself. Something is messing with them, Takis."

"Pretty sure the girl's a mage of some kind," Takis said. "Maybe she was working on getting a protective spell going?"

"Let's just take all three," Eliane suggested.

There was a pause. "All right, you know, that's not a bad idea. There's something familiar about that boy, anyway. I can't place it, but I know I've seen him somewhere, so maybe he's important too."

"And the bug?"

"They said the target was a woman. Do you know how to tell what sex an Iriistiik is? 'Cause I sure don't. We'll take it, too."

"How do we work this, Panos?" Takis asked the bald-headed one. "The retrieval scrolls were meant to send back a prisoner and two guards."

Panos sighed. "Look, in the interests of getting us all out of here with a piece of the credit, I'll let you choose. We've got two scrolls, yours and mine. One of us takes the girl, sending two of theirs along, and the other gets the other two prisoners, but only sends one with them."

"And we both instruct both sides to support the fact that we were both in on the capture?"

"Agreed." Panos turned to the rest. "You all hear that? As far as anyone back home's concerned, all of us were in on the catch, we're all in on the reward. Got it?"

The others nodded, with a chorus of "yes."

Panos and Takis gripped hands. "Agreed," said Takis. "And for that, you get to take the girl, we'll take the other two."

"Done." Panos began to turn.

"You will release those children immediately!"

The high, clear, cold voice cut across the clearing like an arctic knife, freezing all eight of their captors for an instant.

Striding out of the shadows of the forest came a tall figure, clad in a long battle-coat of black and silver, hair matching the coat, eyes cold as the voice. Victoria Vantage locked gazes with the others as she came. She had no weapons visible, but her very movement was a warning of peril, every step unwavering, confident and icily furious.

"What the … this is none of your business, woman!" Takis said, and at his gesture the others were unsheathing their weapons.

"First, I am Zarathanton Guilded, young man, and that makes any instance where people are taken captive and their captors argue how to divide their spoils my business." The Adventurer's Patch gleamed high on one shoulder. "And second, that is my niece you have there, and that makes it utterly and inarguably my business." She had approached to within seventy feet of the group.

"Stop where you are," Panos said, matching her chill voice with his own stone-solid tones. "Or you're going to regret it, whoever you are."

While they spoke, Ingram noticed Eliane was silent, studying Victoria with a narrowing, worried gaze.

"On the contrary," Victoria Vantage said, and without so much as a movement, a gargantuan double-bitted axe, six feet from helve to head, was in her right hand, her left coming down to get a grip, "you will release my child and her friends now, or I assure you: not one of you will leave this place alive."

"Enough! Take her!" snapped Panos and Takis at once.

Seven of them started forward; Eliane gasped and suddenly shouted, "Ares' Balls! That's the Vantage V—"

The warning was far too late.

Victoria Vantage streaked forward to meet her assailants, and a single shout in Artan echoed with supernatural power through the clearing: "Sharee-Ka-Hazi!"

A ripping storm of silver-glinting light tore through the clearing, the titanic axe a blur that caught and shattered weapons, cleaved through armored torsos and exposed heads, a spinning, zig-zagging streak of death that ended with Victoria on the far side of the clearing.

All eight of their captors collapsed to the ground, blood fountaining everywhere.

Victoria sagged, her axe's handle her only support for several minutes as she slowly regained control of her breathing. "Honestly, I'm far too old for this."