Squire of War

by M. H. Johnson

  Jess trembled and swallowed, raising her blade in tierce, sound becoming tinny and faint as movement began to stretch, battle madness mixing with terror as she forced her roiling belly to still, accepting the most horrific of bouts, death come for her at last.

  Only to hiss and lurch back as the pulsating ball of inky midnight that had been forming coalesced into a writhing mass of twisting shadows hovering over Usel.

  Scythe raised high.

  Jess blinked, advancing no further, slowly stepping back.

  Cruel, mocking laughter washed over Jess. “Coward, Jess? I knew you to be trembling and weak! Now you shall pay the price for daring to cross me, for failing to come to my quarters on your hands and knees when you had the chance!"

  The scythe came down.

  Ubel shrieked, a blade of midnight piercing his chest.

  The massive apparition of midnight grew ever vaster, filing up the chamber entire, a kicking, screaming Ubel dragged along with him, hooked to the massive scythe still.

  “Ah, little worm. You have served me well with richest sacrifice.”

  Ubel shrieked with those words.

  “But now it is time for you to come home, little worm, and savor the fruits of your efforts.”

  “Master!” A choked whisper. “There is so much to be done. So many souls to harvest. Please… let me serve longer.” A desperate plea.

  Cold laughter filled the chamber, tiles crashing down from the ceiling below. “Ah, my dear, sweet fruit. It is you that I have come to harvest. At the peak of ripeness. Another day, and you might rot on the vine.”

  Mocking whispers turned black and cold. Jess gasped, almost drowning in the bitter ice of his words. “For these sacrifices were not made in my honor, but Lilith’s alone! You serve me, worm, and I shall take exquisite delight, reminding you of your place.”

  The shadow that had been Ubel shrieked and begged, writhing upon the massive scythe.

  “No, my little pet, no need to beg. You have served me long and well, this endless, cursed autumn. The rewards promised shall be yours. Darkest knowledge, sweetest power. Now it is time for you to savor the hideous joys of torment and submission. The dark rapture of obeisance, as I suck every iota of free will from your bones.”

  Hideous laughter washed over Ubel’s shrieks. “You shall derive no greater joy than suffering for my pleasure, even as I drown you in knowledge to melt your brains, boiling the soup of your soul into a weapon worthy of standing by my side.” The eldritch thing nodded. “You shall be my favored slave. The hideous potency that shall burn through your rotted flesh every moment you serve me shall make all my other slaves tremble with avarice and horror.”

  Crimson coals suddenly locked upon a trembling Jess. Liquid blackness shown with a line of burning flame that curved into a smile. “More sacrifices? What a pity we have run out of time.”

  “Jess,” Twilight cried, voice tinny and strange, and Jess blinked, gazing towards a shrieking Ubel and the abomination of Shadow that had hooked him with his monstrous scythe as easily as Jess might hook a fish. And how Ubel kicked and writhed as crimson lightning began crackling into him. Yet Jess had to squint, so distant they had become, the back of the room twisting in hideous directions she could barely fathom.

  “Jess, run!” Twilight cried, compelling Jess to look behind her. Malek and Twilight were at the doorway along with the one child they had managed to save, only feet away but fading from Jess, even as the chamber was rocked and jolted by strange tremors, tiles now crumbling from the ceiling, and Jess instantly realized her peril. This cathedral of horrors was about to collapse, in the heart of Highrock mountain.

  Jess raced forward with a desperate cry, desperate to keep from stumbling as the tremors worsened, just making it through the doorway as the roar of crashing stone filled the chamber behind her.

  Jess gasped, wheezing, stumbling to trembling feet before collapsing once more, her saber falling out of a suddenly weak grip. “By all the gods, what’s happening?” Jess whispered.

  Malek’s gaze shook Jess to her core. “Dark things, Jess. Awful, vile things.” He resheathed her sword for her, helping her to her feet with one powerful hand, the other holding the sobbing child close.

  Jess trembled, gazing at the walls, now deathly certain that the odd nobs of stone dappled with shadow were, in fact, the effigy of countless souls, writhing and shrieking in torment. And the corridor ahead grew misty and strange.

  Malek hissed. “Come on, Jess. I don’t think we're through yet!”

  “Your Hound is right!” Twilight snapped, darting forward. “To the end of the hall, as fast as you can!”

  Jess gave a panicked nod, racing as fast as her feet could take her, the corridor stretching without end.

  “Faster, Jess!” Malek’s frantic shout, already so far away.

  A curious howl as the corridor began to buck and twist.

  “Faster!”

  A jolt of panic. Whispers of shadowy laughter growing ever closer.

  With a desperate howl Jess lurched forward, blinded by brilliant light at the end of an impossibly long tunnel, crashing into oddest resistance, as if the nightmare she was trapped within would suck her back, and with a desperate sob she was free.

  Stumbling to the ground, trembling with relief, knowing, somehow, that the nightmare was over.

  A brutal foot stomped down on her back, another slamming into her fingers.

  Jess screamed in pain.

  Her ear was twisted, neck arched back. “Did you truly think you could flee me, you disgusting wretch? I will see you expelled and shamed for your monstrous acts!”

  Jess felt her guts roil, trembling with exhaustion, utterly overwhelmed.

  Having crashed right into the clutches of the waiting proctors, Hatsk all too eager to make her pay.

  41

  You don’t understand,” Jess cried, before Hatsk slammed her skull into the stone tiles.

  “Silence, wretch! You are less than nothing! Guilty of insubordination, deception, attempted murder. You are a smear upon your family name, and I shall see your forehead burned with the mark of a criminal. See if I don’t!”

  Roughly she was dragged to her feet, Malek as well, even the child, screaming in pain.

  Hatsk glared at Jess. “What dark, twisted games are you playing at, witch? Harming a child? Oh, I shall dearly love to make you pay for that!”

  “But you don’t understand...”

  His fist pounded into her gut, harming her not at all as she braced herself, wearing her gambeson still. Then he boxed her ears with all his fury, her hands bound, in no position to fight back.

  “Sir, you must stop, she’s noble-born...”

  “She is a penitent! She has no rank! She is the lowest of the low! You there, get her robe!”

  And before Jess could blink, the men had thrown the robe over her, binding it tight with cord, her arms double pinned, Hatsk taking vicious pleasure in cracking his baton into her flesh with every step.

  “Malek!” Twilight’s voice, filled with urgency even as Jess stumbled from the blows.

  “Get up, penitent! I gave you no leave to rest!”

  For the barest moment, Jess caught Hatsk’s gaze, lips flecked with foam, skeletal face stretched with the darkest of grins. He was reveling in his fury, savoring any pretext to beat her. The malice she sensed from him sickened her.

  And the corridor seemed to shudder with a terrible roar.

  Men cried out, bodies slammed against the walls.

  Jess caught a flash of Malek, one arm alone manacled once more, this time with iron, grabbing a suddenly hollering Hatsk and dashing him to the cobblestones.

  Jess heard a sickening crack as the Head Proctor cried out in pain

  Malek roared, picking him up once more, the desperate man shrieking, his companions groaning upon the ground.

  Jess caught her shieldbrother’s gaze. Saw the murder within them.

  “Sousel! At attention! Put the man down now, and face me!” />
  Eloquin’s voice. Jess and Malek both freezing where they stood, gazing with terror and relief at the man they admired above all others. Features otherworldly, yet so fierce, so hard. Few would dare to call him handsome, for all that Jess ever ached for his approving gaze. Decked out in odd scale armor of cobalt blue, hilt of shimmering glass strapped to his waist, and Jess could only wonder what type of sword would be so designed.

  He looked nothing like the tactician covered in steel and death Jess knew so very well.

  Malek trembled still, Hatsk raised effortlessly, kicking and thrashing.

  Their mentor’s eyes hardened. “Do not disappoint me, Sousel.”

  So much said with those words.

  Trembling, Malek gently lowered Hatsk to the ground.

  “Bring your sister-in-arms to my side, Malek, and the child as well.”

  “They are my prisoners!” Hatsk roared. “You will not undermine my authority again, sirrah!”

  Eloquin’s stare did not waver. Hatsk paled, stumbling back.

  “The dean will hear of this. See if he does not, and he will see you all expelled!” Hatsk hissed, stumbling away, the two proctors by his side as they beat a hasty retreat.

  Eloquin took in their battered forms; Malek’s stark nakedness, lacerations still dripping blood. He stared at the boy, trembling and sobbing, his injured hand held close. “Please, take me home. Take me to my mother. Please.”

  Wordlessly Malek freed Jess of the penitent’s robe, donning it as attire, working to remove the manacles from Jess with a key picked off the ground.

  “What happened, Calenbry?” Eloquin’s icy gaze bore into her own.

  Jess trembled, licking dry lips even as her body throbbed with injuries suffered, Hatsk’s vicious beating having left her dazed.

  “Calenbry!” A voice that brooked no delay.

  “I… we…” Jess gazed helplessly at the boy crumpled up and sobbing, a robed Malek now holding him close. “We went in to rescue the boy,” Jess whispered finally. “And we encountered… horrors.”

  Eloquin’s frown deepened. “Horrors? Explain.”

  Jess shivered, exchanging haunted stares with Malek.

  “A hideous thing of darkest shadow. It wielded a scythe, sir. Its lips and eyes roared with all the flames of Hell.”

  Eloquin trembled. Jess shivered to see her mentor look so furious.

  “Where?”

  Jess blinked. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Where did this happen?”

  Jess blinked. “Right there, sir.”

  Pointing at a passageway long abandoned. A rough corridor free of rooms or alcoves that came to an abrupt dead end, as if the original designers had thought it futile to tunnel any further through solid stone.

  Jess shivered. “That can’t be right.”

  “I need an explanation, and I need it now.”

  Jess swallowed, shamed to hear her voice so nervous, like a raw recruit being chewed out. “Yes, sir. I came, I believe I came down this way looking for this boy. Hatsk and his men were right behind me. They gave chase after...”

  “After?”

  Jess grimaced. “After Duggin came at me with a knife.”

  Eloquin’s features were hard as granite.

  “To be honest, I had all but forgotten him, but he obviously hadn’t forgotten me. I had taken his challenge last year, when a new batch of students hungered for the right to serve under you. I had bested him in the training rings. He is not a bad fighter, but that was only the beginning. You know the tests we perform to measure potential recruits to our ranks better than all of us, sir. Regardless of his skill, his ability to think on his feet was no better than that of the common soldier, and we all got the sense that in the din and cry of battle, he was as likely to turn tail and flee as not.”

  Jess shrugged, wincing with pain. “He failed to make the cut, and he never forgave me. He thought it was my beating him, not his failures as a tactician, as a man, that prevented his recruitment. So, he took my robe as an excuse to heckle and assault me, tonight intercepting me in the hallways, with a cinquedea in hand.”

  Eloquin’s gaze narrowed. “He just happened to be where you were, in the middle of the night, as you were chasing down that which has yet to be made clear?”

  Jess nodded. “Though come to think of it, I was in such a hurry to leave my quarters that I managed to stumble over an end table covered with dining ware. Which is strange, because up to now, any attempts to leave food outside my door has resulted in it being an inedible mess by the time I find it."

  Eloquin flashed a bleak smile. “You have many flaws, but a lack of agility is not one of them.

  Jess sighed. “Only after my fight with Duggin did I suspect a trap. Perhaps a line was tied off with silk. In any event, the moment I had disabled him and had him on the ground, that damn proctor charged me, accusing me of assaulting Duggin, ignoring the cinquedea entirely. He then chased me down the corridors, and well, that’s when I went down the hallway that used to be right here.” Jess shivered. “It was very strange. Things happened.”

  Jess exchanged a haunted stare with Malek. “But, well, I feel like some of it is missing. Like, well, maybe it was a dream.” She frowned. “I know we rescued this boy, I know there was an awful being of shadow with a dreadful scythe. And that’s basically all I remember.”

  A confused Jess caught her familiar’s strangely sympathetic gaze, though he said not a word.

  “Calenbry, I need to know everything that has occurred to you from the moment you first donned the robes of a supplicant and all the burdens that entails.”

  He shook his head. “I did not expect perfection, but a week spent quietly licking your wounds, forced to accept bitter lessons, forged all the stronger for your trial. Never did I think you would break, surrendering your dreams, your service to me. Yet I had expected at the very least, reflection.” He shook his head. “Quiet you have been anything but, the head proctor himself daring to strike you in ways that would see him hanged, were you other than student and supplicant both, and never have I seen a man so eager to see you expelled.”

  Trembling, Jess confessed everything to Eloquin that she dared, spotty and broken as her memory had become, for reasons she could not fathom. And she recalled that visceral rush of a puzzle solved, a stratagem uncovered, a riddle at last understood. Yes, for all that she once knew, now she felt frustrated, lost in the dark, so many pieces of the puzzle somehow torn free.

  “I… there is so much I don’t remember, sir! There were other players besides that damned proctor and Duggin, I am sure of it! I was on the hunt for someone… children.” She rubbed her suddenly throbbing head. “But we found this child, yes? We save one child, at least.”

  Desperate eyes met her shieldbrother’s. “Malek, what was our plan?”

  Malek grimaced, shaking his head. “I remember being bound in a room of horrors, catching sight of some hideous thing, straight out of nightmare. And I ache, my body trembles, and somehow we are here, safe once more. By the gods, Jess, do you think we were drugged?”

  Jess adamantly shook her head. “No, the poisoner was killed.”

  “What poisoner?” Eloquin demanded.

  Jess trembled. “By all the saints, I don’t even know why I said that. I don’t remember!”

  Eloquin frowned. “So, you suspect children went missing, you saved this one clearly spiked through his hand, and assert there were others?”

  Jess grimaced. “I think so? At least… oh by the gods, I don’t know! Didn’t the cook… didn’t she have a son?” Warm brown eyes flashing with mirth, a soup bowl handed to her. “someday I want to be a Squire like you, Jess.” And how her friends had chuckled at the thought. Jess had grinned, turning to face the boy, and there was nothing. Nothing at all.

  “This isn’t right, sir. Something’s wrong!” Jess was panicked to hear her own hysteria.

  “Impossible,” Eloquin said flatly. “The cook is barren. Everyone knows that, and no one is so foo
lish as to mock the pain we all see in her gaze, or why she has takes in so many homeless youths as cook’s help, treating them as her own. As for the boy you’ve found...” At last, an approving nod. “Assuming the lad corroborates any of your story, so long as he does not accuse you of causing him harm,” Jess spluttered at the very idea. “Then that will go a long ways to mitigating the consequences you will otherwise face.”

  Jess gulped and swallowed. “But sir, Duggin set me up. Hatsk was beating me half to death.”

  “Enough!” Eloquin shouted. Jess trembled to see him seethe. “Enough, Jessica. Enough harm has been done here. The fact that Hatsk struck you so violently, bruises to show for it, might mitigate your sentence somewhat, the sentence you and Malek will both be forced to share, he nearly killing the man.”

  “But sir...”

  “Silence, Malek!” Eloquin snapped. “Do you fools still not understand? More is at stake than toeing the line, which you have done exceptionally poorly, the both of you! All three of those proctors will serve as each other’s witnesses, and Hatsk has made it absolutely clear he wants you both gone. If he is working in concert with Duggin, they took care to dispose of the dagger. There is no more evidence than your word that mutual assault was in play, yet you with your penitent’s robe will be the one judged to be at fault.”

  He flashed the bleakest of smiles. “He thinks to move against me. Though he might rue his folly one day, on this day he has the advantage, and he will use it to the utmost. Now let’s get all three of you to the healers. If nothing else, they can treat your bruises and attest that you are not drunk or raving, though with the story you are choosing to tell, even your allies will wonder.”

  Jess stumbled, at a sudden loss for words, unable to refute him, because, in truth, it all sounded like madness to her ears as well. Knowing pieces were missing from the board that would make all the difference, yet having no idea who or what they were.