by Mark Barber
Tancred dragged the smiling man in the hood toward the door at the other end of the tavern. A hand fell on his shoulder.
“I am coming with you,” Xavier murmured under his breath, “but do not kill this man, Tancred. Do not sacrifice your soul only to become the very man we are pursuing. This wretch is not worth it.”
“Understood,” Tancred nodded.
***
“Wait!” the innkeeper called as he dashed after Aestelle. “You can’t just come barging in here like this! These people are my guests!”
Aestelle paced up the stairs to the second floor, the center of each wooden step giving a little and creaking even under her light weight. The innkeeper, a short man approaching middle age with a balding head and ratty features, scrambled after her up the stairs.
“Where is he?” Aestelle demanded as she reached the first floor hallway. “You have a soldier staying here with you. Which room is he in?”
The innkeeper winced as Aestelle walked along the corridor, slamming a fist on the door of every room she passed. The walls and floor were, like the rest of the building, made up of simple planks of wood with no paint or decoration, warped in places and faded by exposure to sunlight in others.
“Stop that!” the short man demanded. “These people don’t deserve to be intimidated by you!”
“Then tell me where the soldier is!” Aestelle insisted. “The one you claim was brought here by an Elohi.”
“Shh… keep your voice down!” the innkeeper whispered desperately as Aestelle reached the end of the corridor. “People will think I am mad! Business is bad enough with devils roaming the hills without you scaring off what few paying customers I have left!”
Aestelle stopped at the end of the corridor. The sharp intake of breath the innkeeper made told her all she needed to know.
“He is in here, then,” she nodded to the last room, “open the door.”
“I don’t think he wants to be disturbed.”
“Open the door or you shall see me properly disturb your place of business.”
Sighing, the short man took a small, brass key chained to his belt and unlocked the door ahead of them. Swearing under his breath, he turned and scuttled quickly away down the corridor. Aestelle opened the door and walked inside. She immediately winced from the brightness of the late morning sunlight streaming in through the only window at the far side of the small room. A neat bed took up most of the room, with its only other furnishings being made up of a chair and a small wardrobe with a cracked mirror to one side.
A familiar, tall and muscular man sat in the chair, looking up at Aestelle as she entered the room. Clean shaven, blue eyed and with short, blond hair, Aestelle found herself taken off guard by the young soldier’s handsome face. He wore only the padded trousers usually worn as a protective layer beneath armor and had clean bandages around his abdomen and along one shoulder. He carefully closed a book, the Eloicon, and stood up. It was only when she saw his full height that the familiarity she had felt developed into full recognition.
“Ogre?” she exclaimed.
“Orion,” the paladin corrected patiently, “I have a name. It is Orion.”
Aestelle let out an audible breath and took a step back as clear memories flooded to the fore of her thoughts.
The two bandits sprinted headlong at Aestelle, the closest clumsily swinging a hammer at her head while the second man lunged at her midriff with a small axe. Aestelle slipped easily beneath the first attack and brought her flail up to ensnare the wrist of the axe wielding bandit and forced him over near the edge of the mountain path before bringing her knee up into his gut and swinging an elbow around to break his nose. In an instant, the first, taller bandit was on the attack again, but Aestelle was faster, despite the bruises on her back from the ordeal of the past few days. She swung her flail around to connect the ball into the man’s chest with a cracking of bone, dropping him wheezing to his knees.
Realizing the skill of the woman he faced, the shorter bandit turned to run. Aestelle took her knife from her belt and slit the first man’s throat and then flung it after the second bandit, striking him in the center of the back. He fell to his knees and called out weakly for help. Aestelle silenced his pleas, bringing her flail down to crush his skull.
Up ahead, the two paladins she had seen earlier were sheathing their swords after a successful confrontation with their adversaries. Aestelle turned to face their hapless squire; a boy, perhaps four years her junior, who would probably grow up to be handsome if he bothered to bulk up with some muscle. Her breathing labored through the blue cotton scarf she was forced to wear around her mouth and nose, Aestelle folded her arms and looked down at the quivering squire with disgust.
“You, boy!” she demanded. “You’re armed! You shouldn’t need me to save you! What were you thinking? Well, boy, speak!”
The squire looked up at her pathetically.
“I…I…”
She took a pace closer.
“How old are you?” she demanded, standing in front of him.
“Fif… sixteen,” the boy managed.
“Sixteen?” she forced a healthy amount of disgust into her words, although that was the age she had guessed earlier. “You should be wearing spurs by now, not groveling around as a squire! When I was your age, I’d already fought a full campaign against the orcs!”
“Orion?” the older of the two paladins called as he made his way back down the winding mountain path. “Are you hurt?”
“Orion?” Aestelle laughed at how ill-suited the useless squire’s name was, “Your parents named you after the patron of courage and hunting? I hope the irony isn’t lost on you.”
“And your name?” the younger of the two paladins demanded as he followed his senior along the path back to their squire.
“My name is unimportant, Paladin,” Aestelle replied, eager to spend as little time with their little expedition as possible so she could return to her own ordeal on the mountain. “I’m a sister, you will refer to me as that.”
“You were the boy on the mountain all those years ago,” Aestelle whispered, half to herself, “the one I saved.”
Orion leaned back against the wall behind him and folded his powerful arms.
“I do not know what you mean,” he said suspiciously.
“The mountain!” Aestelle repeated. “What… ten, eleven years ago? Tarkis! You were a squire with two paladins. One was your uncle. I was the nun who met you the day your uncle died.”
Orion’s eyes slowly widened.
“You… cannot have been!” he exclaimed. “You are not old enough!”
“I was twenty years old the day we met,” Aestelle recalled.
“But you kept calling me ‘boy’!” Orion shook his head, the incredulity of the situation still clearly baffling him.
“When you are twenty, a sixteen year old is just a boy, if you can remember back that far,” Aestelle gave him a slight smile.
Orion returned the smirk, his striking features lighting up with his smile.
“This is just incredible,” he muttered, sinking back down into the rickety chair by the window.
Aestelle took her bow, arrows, and greatsword from her aching back and carefully laid them down by the wardrobe, shutting the door behind her.
“We have a lot to discuss,” she said, walking over to the bed and sinking down on it with a creak of leather.
Placing her hands behind her head, she stared up at the dull ceiling above her and the patterns in the shadows created by the bright sunlight pouring in through the window. She looked across at the paladin.
“You don’t mind me taking your bed for a few minutes?”
“Be my guest.”
Aestelle exhaled.
“I have one question before I start,” she said. “Rumors reached me that you were brought here by an Elohi. Is that true?”
“Yes,” Orion nodded, “I was gravely wounded in battle when the forces of the Abyss ambushed us at our encampment, not lo
ng after you left. I was as good as dead. I fought as long as I could, but I was overwhelmed. I do not remember much after that. I woke up here. There was an Elohi, a tall woman clothed in white, sat in this very chair. She said she brought me here.”
“What did she tell you?” Aestelle turned her head on the pillow and looked over at him, crossing one tired ankle over another at the foot of the bed.
Orion let out a contemplative breath.
“She said… that she had done all she could for my wounds and that I would heal in time. That is why I have waited here, I…”
“What else did she tell you?” Aestelle insisted, familiar enough with the tales of visits from Elohi to know that there were always messages in their words.
“She said my uncle – one of the men who died that day on the mountain when you were with us – feels… disappointed in me. That I need to change. And that I need to find another Elohi. When I find her, she will know what to do. I was saved to protect her.”
Aestelle nodded slowly, her mind racing with each new piece of information.
“You’ve found her,” she said, “that’s me. I’m the Elohi.”
“Impossible,” Orion shook his head, “I have seen Elohi before, on the battlefield. You… share traits with them, but you are not one of them.”
“Half,” Aestelle continued, “my mother was mortal, but my father was an Elohi. He was wounded in battle and unable to return to the Mount. My mother nursed him back to health and they fell in love. Two things happened on the night they consummated that love – one was what happens whenever an Elohi and a mortal spend a night of passion together. The Elohi becomes mortal. My father awoke as but a normal man, of normal height, without his wings. The second result was, well, me. It is my blessing and my curse. I am faster, stronger, more intelligent and more beautiful than normal mortals. I am harder to kill, I age slower. But as a half breed, I am still very much mortal.”
“So how did you end up in the Sisterhood? And for that matter, how did you end up leaving?”
Aestelle propped herself up on her elbows and looked across at him again.
“My parents passed away in the Great Blight Plague, when I was five years old. My mother’s brother thought it best to entrust my upbringing to the Sisterhood. One assumes that decision was taken out of love, or at least one hopes so, but it… did not end well for me.”
“How so?”
“Long story,” Aestelle sank back onto the bed, “suffice to say, I’ve never done well at accepting authority. And then there are adolescent girls. Horrible at the best of times, but when jealousy rears its ugly head when a half-angel is in their midst, trouble is bound to follow. I never fitted in, I was never accepted, and every time I was provoked, my reaction was always somewhat explosive. That is why I was on the mountain the day I met you. I was taking the fifth step. My last chance for deliverance before damnation.”
Aestelle remembered her conversation with the temptress and the comparisons the demon woman had made.
“You cannot be damned,” Orion said, “I cannot sense it.”
“I succeeded in the fifth step,” Aestelle replied, “but I did not accept it. I left the Sisterhood of my own volition; I was not expelled. But enough of me. What happened with you?”
Aestelle leaned forward, bringing one knee up to wrap both arms around her leg and rest her chin on her knee, her blonde hair falling over one eye as she glanced across at the paladin.
“There is not much else to say,” Orion leaned forward, his folded arms resting on his lap. “My older brother took the family estate. My father paid a lot of money for me to join the Order to train as a paladin. It was not what I wanted, and it hurt me deeply as a young boy to leave. Now? I do not know. Perhaps it was for the best. Either way, I became my uncle’s squire. Jahus was a great man. He never held much rank, he was not the greatest warrior, but respect? Everybody respected him. I think that came from his kindness. He was wonderful with people of all walks of life; he had a way.”
Aestelle listened in silence, seeing the paladin sat next to her in a completely new light.
“The day he died, everything changed,” Orion continued. “You saw what happened. Dionne’s men killed him and I did not stop them.”
“You could not have stopped them,” Aestelle said softly. “I was there, remember. Neither of us could.”
“I could now,” Orion countered, “if you put me on that mountaintop with the skills I have now, I could have stopped that happening. That was what made that day so important. It changed my life. I promised I would never let anybody else down again. I trained harder than every other squire, every other paladin; any warrior I found that I could learn anything from, I fought them. I have known nothing else since the day my uncle died. Just the sword. And now I do not let people down. Or, at least that is what I thought until the Elohi spoke to me.”
“What did she say?”
“As I said, Jahus is disappointed in me. I have lost my way. I have sat here for days, reading this Eloicon, the very book I took from my uncle’s body on the mountainside. I have been searching the scriptures for guidance, looking for whatever direction my life is supposed to take me. And of all places, I realized that the answer lay with my squire. Kell, his name is, or was. I was responsible for his training and his mentorship. He did everything right, spent years cleaning my armor and weapons, shoeing a warhorse I did not even have the common courtesy to give a name to. He stood steady on the night the Abyssals attacked our encampment. He died more of a man than I ever was. My lot was not to roam the land, beating down warriors for my own pride. I was supposed to provide guidance to those who needed it. I was supposed to be there for Kell.”
Aestelle swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat upright, facing the tall paladin. She took a few moments to reflect on his words, carefully weighing up her own before speaking again. She took one of his hands in hers.
“I am sorry for everything that happened to your comrades when you were attacked at the camp,” she said quietly, “but you’re my Kell, my equivalent. You wanted to know the reason I left the Sisterhood. Because of you. I let you down. It took a lot of reflection for me to realize that, but it is true. Do you remember the last thing I said to you before I left you on that mountainside with your uncle’s body? I told you that you needed to grow up. Those words have haunted me for ten years. When I knelt at the altar, ready to receive my absolution and acceptance back into the Sisterhood, that was all I could think of. I thought about what the Sisterhood meant, that it was about a life of selflessness and sacrifice, of protecting those who needed it. I was unworthy. I still am. That was why I left. I could never match the expectation of what it meant to be a Sister.”
Orion’s face broke into a sad, sympathetic smile.
“I forgive you,” he offered meekly, “for what it is worth, I forgive you.”
The words meant more to Aestelle than she was prepared for. She felt a smile spread across her lips, threatening to escalate to a relieved laugh.
“Thank you,” she said genuinely, “I am sure Kell would say the same to you.”
“Let us hope so,” Orion looked down at the floor again.
“But this, all of this, is part of something bigger, don’t you see?” Aestelle continued. “It cannot be a coincidence that we met on that mountainside. Not just you and I, but Dionne was there, too. The Shining Ones trade in fate, and I believe it was our fate to meet. It is our fate to be on the same stage again now. Old tales claim that the offspring of Elohi are destined for a higher calling, so maybe this is mine. So enough talk, let’s do this.”
Orion’s eyes widened in confusion.
“Do what?”
Aestelle stood up.
“Fight,” she smirked, with a wink, “throw these bastards back out of Basilea.”
“We are but two,” Orion sighed, “they number in the hundreds.”
“And if I understand their plan correctly, they will number in their thousands if we do not stop the
m,” Aestelle said as she slung her weapons back over her shoulders. “I was a demon hunter in the Order. The first rule of hunting a demon is the understanding that they thrive on fear. Both their physical manifestation and their non-corporeal presence. So to become a demon hunter is about the attitude with which you face the devil. You don’t fear them. They fear you. And I’ll teach you how to become a thing of fear to them. Are your wounds healed enough for you to ride?”
“I can ride alright,” Orion said, “but I have no horse.”
“I shall fix that,” Aestelle said.
She stopped for a few moments, looking at the boy she had left on the mountaintop a decade before.
“I won’t let you down again,” she said seriously, “if you ever need me, just say you want me to save you, and I’ll be there for you.”
She offered the paladin her hand. He closed his fingers around her forearm.
“Then you and I are now our own Order,” Aestelle said, feeling determination smoldering into life within her soul, “so let’s go show these bastards what fear really means.”
Chapter Sixteen
Yet another dawn sun, and another aching ride north along the coastal trade road. Valletto looked to the northwest and the Mountains of Tarkis, desperate to see a glimpse of The Mount itself, Kolosu, but the holy site was still many miles over the jagged horizon. The two paladins riding with Valletto were certainly polite, but not the most talkative. The older of the two, a knight named Silus, bore the scars of a veteran of many campaigns beneath his flowing but faded locks of blond hair. Valletto had heard him make reference to being present during the disaster at the Forest of Galahir alongside Dictator Trence Andorset, but beyond that, the aging soldier had let very little slip about his past. The younger paladin, Lyen, spoke even less and, given his subservient nature, Valletto guessed he had only recently been elevated from squire to full paladin.
Days of traveling left Valletto bitterly unhappy, resenting every minute spent away from his family. He spent his nights alone in tavern rooms, writing letters home that he knew had a less than even chance of reaching his wife before his own return. He remembered his life on campaign as a far younger man, newly married but with no other commitments left behind him at home. It had all seemed so exciting when he was in his mid-twenties; he felt as if he was part of something heroic and important, looking forward to returning home as a hero, the center of conversation at family events, seen in a new light as a figure of respect and admiration. Then the battles began and very quickly Valletto realized the folly of his immature expectations.