The Black Bouquet

The Red Axe charged and swung the cudgel. Aeron lunged in close, avoiding the stroke in the process. He didn't bother to thrust out the knife in another futile attack. Instead, he dropped it to free up his hands. He shifted behind the orc and kicked it in the knee.

The assault likely would have lamed an ordinary foe. He was sure it hadn't hurt the Red Axe, but it did cost the creature its balance. The orc stumbled, and Aeron threw himself on its back and bore it to the ground.

Using his weight, Aeron fought to hold the orc down. He grabbed its neck and squeezed. It heaved and thrashed, trying to buck him off.

Once or twice, it nearly succeeded, but then its struggles grew weaker. As he'd hoped, though the potion's magic kept its flesh from being pierced or pulped, it couldn't stop Aeron from pressing its windpipe closed and cutting off its air.

Eventually the Red Axe stopped squirming. Aeron choked the orc for a few more seconds, just to be sure, then he let go. His hands ached.

"Are you all right?" Miri asked.

He turned. At some point in the last minute or so, she'd disposed of the gnoll, which lay on the ground behind her with a deep cut on the left side of its chest.

"Yes," Aeron replied, panting, "and from the looks of it, you are, too."

He rose and hurried to the fallen hobgoblin. Miri followed.

To Aeron's relief, the slave was still breathing, and though he was no healer, speaking to it and patting its hairy, big-nosed faced sufficed to restore it to consciousness.

"How are you?" Aeron asked.

The hobgoblin sat up and rubbed its head.

"I've had worse," it said. "My people are hard to kill."

"I reckon so," Aeron replied. He took out some gold and pressed it into the goblin-kin's hand. "Plainly, you have more grit than these others. Can you make sure they get to the Barony of the Great Oak before you strike out on your own?"

"I can if you get this crossbow bolt out of my shoulder."

"I'm no chirurgeon," Miri said, kneeling down beside it and drawing her knife, "but I've done this a time or two, when none was available. Let me."

It made Aeron wince to watch her cut the quarrel out. The hobgoblin, however, bore it stoically. Only its clenched jaw revealed how much it was hurting. Once Miri bandaged the puncture as best she could with strips of cloth, the former slave gave the two humans a nod, then hauled itself to its feet and appropriated the strangled orc's scimitar.

It glared at its fellow thralls and said, "What are you all standing around for? Loot the bodies and the shack. We want weapons, coin, and any clothes that aren't bloodstained. You've got three minutes. Move!"

Aeron turned to Miri and asked, "Do you feel up to wrecking another of Kesk's operations?"

"Why not?" She sniffed the breeze and said, "We've still got a while before it rains. Let's salvage my arrows, leave your mark on the wall, and move on."

Sometimes the Red Axes struck or spat on Nicos as they passed by the chair to which he was tied, but no one had made a serious, sustained effort to torture him since they'd decided he really didn't know where Aeron was hiding or where he'd stashed the strongbox. Still, it hardly mattered. His body screamed with the memory of the agony Sefris Uuthrakt had inflicted on him.

He'd thought he understood pain. It had, after all, been his constant companion since the night the master of a caravan from I

Miraculously, the noose didn't kill him. He dangled for hours, slowly strangling yet enduring, until friends found him and cut him down, to suffer, hobble, and silently curse his infirmities forever after. Or rather, until just then. Nicos thought that after the torment Sefris had inflicted on him, if he somehow managed to escape Kesk's mansion alive, he'd never, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, complain of his everyday afflictions again.

He must have passed out for a while, because suddenly, or so it seemed to him, the long row of windows shone with the soft silver light of a rainy morning. Despite the grime on the panes, to say nothing of his own distress, the cloudy sky and rippling river were lovely, and lifted his spirits for just a moment.

Then, her garments wet and dripping, Sefris stalked into the solar, and any semblance of peace or ease in Nicos's soul died in a spasm of terror. He hated himself for feeling so afraid, but after what she'd put him through, he couldn't help it. Toward the end, had it been possible, he might even have betrayed Aeron to make it stop.

To his relief, the monastic ignored him to focus on Kesk, slouched in his golden chair with his battle-axe across his knees and a half-eaten sausage in his fist.

"Well?" the tanarukk snapped through a mouthful of meat.

"I haven't found him yet," Sefris replied.

She ought to have been feeling a chill, but if so, Nicos saw no sign of it in her ma

"Well, he found us," Kesk said. "He stole some of my slaves, and killed the Red Axes who tried to stop him. Hurt and robbed two more whose job it was to collect protection coin along the docks. Burned a wine shop I operated onboard a barge. Didn't even try to steal the till, just destroyed the place."

"He's sending you a message," Sefris said.

Kesk trembled, and his eyes shone red.

"That I have his father, but he can hurt me, too, by interfering with my business," said the tanarukk. "I understand. I'm not a fool. The question is what to do about it."

"The same thing we have been doing. Hunt."

"We've already seen how pitiful you are at that."

If the taunt nettled Sefris, Nicos couldn't tell that, either. She remained as calm as ever, as composed as she'd been throughout the torture and the amputation of his finger.

"Aeron only escaped me by a fluke," she said. "It won't happen again."

"So you say. I never should have trusted an outsider."

"I'm better able to handle this chore than are your underlings. You may recall that I proved that by defeating three of them at once. In any case, you still want the jewels, don't you? If so, let me break my fast and sleep for an hour or two, then I'll return to the search. I imagine we'll have Aeron in hand before we see another sunrise."

"I don't want you relaxing just yet. Have another go at the old man."

Nicos cringed, straining against his bonds. His chair rocked and bumped against the floor.

"If he had anything to tell us," Sefris said, "we would have heard it already. His only use is as bait."

Nicos prayed Kesk would believe her and relent. But everything he'd seen or heard about the outlaw chieftain suggested otherwise.

And sure enough: "I don't care if he's got nothing to say. I want to hear him squeal. I promised Aeron we'd make the father pay for the son's treachery, and so we will."

The monastic inclined her head.

"As you wish," she said as she advanced on Nicos.

Nicos fought the urge to squinch his eyes shut or twist his head away. Her fingertips wandered about his body, pressing here and there. She didn't seem to be straining or exerting any extraordinary force, yet the sensation was excruciating. Nicos prayed for her to ask some questions. That would stop the pain for at least a moment. When she didn't bother, he still cried out the lies he hoped would satisfy her. They didn't, though, and before long, he was screaming wordlessly instead.

He didn't know how long the torture continued. Long enough for him to shriek his throat raw and reduce his already ruined voice to the thi