44: Outnumbered
Liam
Liam groaned and turned to the side. He expected the death blow to come at any moment, only it never happened.
No. The Inquisitors were ignoring him entirely. The one in armor was walking towards his cottage. Walking towards Ana.
Damnation!
He struggled to get up. Only he was having trouble catching his breath. Even with the mana pulsing through him. Whatever that armored asshole had done, it hurt.
“Gather up the demoness along with the girl. Bring that one along as well,” a new Inquisitor in deep purple robes with faintly glowing lines of gold thread all over it said.
Oddly enough, he had no beard.
The man turned his attention to Liam for a moment. Only a moment. He smiled, and then he turned his attention back to his work. He acted like Liam was no threat at all, and he was pointing to Conrad as well as Andrea.
Liam’s grip tightened on the felblade in his hand. He still had that, at least. The idea that they thought so little of him that they didn’t even see him as a threat filled him with a quiet rage, and then it filled him with a less than quiet rage.
“How dare you,” he said. “Leave Ana alone!”
“Ana?” the Inquisitor asked, cocking his head to the side. “Who are you talking about? I believe the baron’s daughter is named Andrea, and it’s going to go very poorly for him indeed now that we know his daughter has been consorting with demons along with the ward he allowed to live in this cottage. No wonder you wanted to be out here close to the corrupting stench of the Felwood.”
Liam looked over to the left. The Inquisitor in the armor was approaching the cottage, and he lifted up a piece of what had been Liam’s wall as though it was nothing. Truly, that armor was powerful. Or maybe the Inquisitor in it was powerful. There was still a slight limp as he moved, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from moving.
“Andrea has nothing to do with this. The baron has nothing to do with it,” Liam said. “And I’m not talking about Andrea anyway.”
“Oh, so the demoness has a name,” the Inquisitor said.
He reached into his robes, and in a move that brought to mind Alistair and how he reacted to things, the Inquisitor pulled out a small notebook and started to write in it with a pen that he pulled out of another pocket.
“That’s very interesting,” he said. “Can you tell me any more about the demoness?”
“What are you doing?” Conrad said, spluttering and sounding utterly indignant.
Liam looked down at him. He was crawling away from the Inquisitor on his back, and it looked like he wasn’t going to get very far. Another Inquisitor stepped in his path and lowered a felblade to the tip of his nose. Conrad went cross-eyed as he looked up. It was the kind of thing Liam almost would have thought comical if the situation wasn’t so serious.
“Stop where you are,” the Inquisitor said.
“Do you have any idea who my father is?” Conrad said, again spluttering.
Liam wasn’t sure Conrad’s father would impress these men. They were all members of the Inquisition, after all. It was said that the only people who could stand up to them were demons and the king himself, and there were whispers that the Inquisition had been able to take out members of the royal family, so Liam wasn’t so sure about even the king being able to do anything to stop them.
“Who is your father?” the one with the sword pointed at his nose said.
“I’m sure we would be very interested in learning about how he’s supporting a child who appears to consort with those who consort with demons.”
“I’m not consorting with those who consort with demons,” Conrad said. “I’m the one who pointed out to you what is going on here!”
“Everybody has an excuse when we root out their wickedness,” the beardless Inquisitor said. “And I would love to hear what your excuse is, but rest assured that we’ll get the truth out of you in time.”
He smiled. It was an unpleasant smile. It showed off teeth that seemed unnaturally bright and white.
They were so preoccupied with Conrad that Liam took advantage of the moment and threw himself away from them. Mana both arcane and infernal had been flaring within him, and the injury from that punch felt better, even if it hadn’t quite healed.
He made a stumbling run straight for the one with the armor. He’d managed to do a little bit of damage thanks to what Albert had told him, and he figured if he could do a little bit of damage then he could also do a lot of damage.
The armored Inquisitor was still moving through the cottage. Liam worried that Ana hadn’t so much as made a peep since she was thrown in there. He worried that the Inquisitor had truly done something to harm her, and he promised that if that was the case, then he was going to do everything within his life and his power to make these men pay.
For all that there were so many of them, he wasn’t sure what he could do. He wished he could work on some of the spells he’d learned. All of the Inquisitors seemed like they were around the same Ascension as him. Maybe slightly higher, maybe slightly lower, but somebody who was within a few Ascensions shouldn’t be too much trouble if he was facing them alone.
Only he wasn’t facing them alone.
He threw himself at the armored Inquisitor and raised his blade again. He brought it down at the back of the knee joint this time, and again he was satisfied as he watched the armor buckle under the Inquisitor’s weight. Or maybe it was buckling under the weight of the armor, and the Inquisitor wasn’t able to hold it up without mana to hold it in place.
Either way, the Inquisitor moved down onto his knee again, turning to hit Liam with an irritated look.
“What have I told you about interfering with your betters, boy?” the Inquisitor said, reaching out to hit Liam with a backhand.
He moved out of the way, jumping back as the armored gauntlet sailed toward his face. He could see it moving slowly, like time had slowed, and he moved to bring his sword up. He couldn’t see the exact spot where he was going to hit. He imagined the whole gauntlet going limp and holding the Inquisitor down with the sheer weight of the armor.
That was the way to do it. Clearly, there was something about this armor that was too heavy to move without magic to help. All he had to do was…
He felt arms wrapping around his own on either side. He looked from side to side. It seemed like those arms were moving as slow as the armored Inquisitor, but they were also impossibly strong. Two robed Inquisitors to either side holding him in place.
He moved mana into his own arms to try and break free, but it was too late. They didn’t need to hold him forever. No, all they needed to do was hold him long enough that he couldn’t miss that backhand coming from the armored Inquisitor.
The armor struck his face. He felt some of the blow being absorbed by the mana pulsing through his veins, moving through his mana pathways. He tried to reinforce his face, something he hadn’t thought to do in the moment because why would he think to do that in the moment?
He was new to having any mana, either arcane or infernal, pulsing through his body. He was new to all of this, and he didn’t know how to use any of it.
He thought of Albert telling him that he needed him there to tell him what to do, though he wasn’t sure the cat would have been able to do a godsdamned thing either, considering it felt like there were two Inquisitors holding him back at each arm.
The backhand finished and his head jerked to the side. Then things started to speed up again, and he felt something odd. Something that he hadn’t felt since that mana storm and the tornado of mana moving all around him. There was a white-hot pain in his cheek, and it threatened to overwhelm him.
Then everything returned to normal speed. He stared at the armored Inquisitor.
“That hurt,” he said.
“That’s the point, boy,” the armored Inquisitor said.
The armored prick tried to stand, but he had trouble. There was something with the mana pathways in his knee that was interrupted and keeping him from moving freely. Liam could see it even from here. A faint glow that was getting brighter and brighter.
“I would very much like to know where you learned how to do something like this out here in the countryside near demon lands,” the armored Inquisitor said. “Then again, maybe that’s the question asked and answered in the same breath.”
He tried to get up again, but nothing happened.
The armored Inquisitor looked at the men to either side of Liam. Meanwhile, Liam felt a little woozy. His head spun as he tried to feel at the pained spot where the Inquisitor had struck him, but he couldn’t move. The Inquisitors to either side of him were too strong. They held him fast.
“I’m going to need somebody to come up here and work on this armor,” the Inquisitor said. “He’s managed to disrupt some of the pathways, and we’re going to need an armorer to fix it.”
“The High Inquisitor isn’t going to be happy about that,” the one to Liam’s left said.
“I didn’t ask what the High Inquisitor would think,” the armored one said. “I said to help me!”
“As you say, Captain,” an Inquisitor off to the side that Liam couldn’t even see said.
Though Liam filed that away. There were undercurrents here. Different layers of their organization. He didn’t know how he could use that, but any information was better than nothing.
“As for you two,” the armored Inquisitor said. “If I can’t move close enough to face this little brat, then I want you to bring him closer.”
“As you say, Captain,” they said.
Meanwhile, there were more Inquisitors digging through the ruins of Liam’s cottage. It had collapsed at some point. Maybe when the armored Inquisitor hit him, maybe at some other point. He was having trouble thinking straight. He worried for Ana and Albert. Both of them were in there. What if something terrible had happened to them? He would never stop blaming himself.
The Inquisitors holding him tight moved him closer to the armored Inquisitor. He pushed more mana into his pathways and tried to pull free from them, and he was rewarded by a surprised grunt from both of them as they went stumbling forward.
But then they both pulled back and managed to hold him in place. Liam realized this was never a fight he was going to win. Not with sheer strength. No, the Inquisitors had the numbers to overpower him in a direct fight, and he didn’t know enough about spells to do anything there. Yet.
This wasn’t like one of the stories where the hero would somehow be able to fight off superior numbers by sheer virtue of being the hero in the story.
“This one is tough,” the one at his right said.
“Very good,” the armored Inquisitor said as they brought him to stand right in front of him. “I’m going to very much enjoy trying to get the story out of this one and figure out exactly what it is he’s doing here, and how he got here in the first place.”
Liam stared down at him on his knees, though even on his knees the Inquisitor was almost as tall as him.
“For now though,” the Inquisitor said, gathering his fists together.
Liam could see some sort of mana diagram appearing in front of the Inquisitor’s fist as he brought it to bear, and arcane light gathered there. Is that how he hit Liam hard enough to knock the wind out of him despite the mana pulsing through him?
There was so much he didn’t know, and he was starting to realize that lack of knowledge might just get him killed.
“We can’t have you continuing to cause trouble for us, so I’ll talk to you later after we’ve taken care of our business. Then I’m sure the High Inquisitor will want to have a chat with you as well.”
Liam heard a cry that sounded like Ana coming from the cottage. Even as the Inquisitor’s fist moved toward his stomach, he turned and he saw Ana there trying to pull away from several Inquisitors who’d surrounded her and were putting a collar as black as night around her neck.
He tried to cry out, but then something slammed into his gut, and the whole world went as black as that collar they were affixing to her neck.