The Way of Pain

by Gregory Mattix

  “Come on, faster, Iris. We’re almost there,” Sianna urged.

  Her friend didn’t reply but increased her pace slightly.

  “Protect the queen at all costs,” Colm ordered. “Rafe, stay between her and those archers. Tamzo, run ahead and get that damned postern gate open.” The bearded Tamzo huffed and sprinted ahead while Colm and Rafe fell in close behind Sianna, shielding her with their bodies as best they could from the enemy archers as they ran.

  A glance over Sianna’s shoulder showed the six Nebarans gaining on them. A quarrel streaked between Colm and Sianna, ricocheting off a cobbled path a short distance ahead. Another impacted behind her with a clang. She glanced back again and saw Rafe adjusting his helm, which had slipped down over his face.

  “I’m all right, Princess. I have a hard head,” he said with forced cheer although his face was pale. The fact that she was now queen obviously hadn’t registered to anyone besides Sir Colm yet, and Sianna had no desire to correct them.

  She could barely accept the fact herself.

  Tamzo reached the postern gate and threw the heavy beam to one side. He struggled with the latch then slammed it back and shouldered the gate open.

  “Hurry!” Tamzo cried, waving them on.

  A dark shape briefly blotted out the moon and stars, swooping from out of the night sky past the fleeing group. What Sianna at first thought was a lightning bolt shot down and wrapped around Tamzo’s neck. He cried out and wrapped his gloved hands around what she now realized was a whip crackling with magical energy. She gasped in horror at the armored figure revealed hovering overhead on rapid beats of pitch-colored wings.

  A woman with flowing ashen hair and eyes that glittered like silver coins watched with a sneer as the group skidded to a stop ten paces from the struggling Tamzo. She tugged on the lash, and it tightened around Tamzo’s neck. The guard’s eyes bulged, then his head was wrenched free of his body in a fountain of blood. The head tumbled away on the ground, and his body pitched over.

  Iris and the kitchen boy screamed in unison. Terror gripped Sianna, and she looked desperately around for some other path of escape. The pursuing Nebarans had stopped to watch the confrontation, cutting them off from retreating.

  The kitchen boy lost his nerve and turned and bolted off to the right. One of the Nebaran crossbowmen calmly loosed a bolt at the boy. It struck him through the neck, tossing him to the ground. The boy made a wet mewling sound, his limbs twitching for a few moments before going still. The Nebarans laughed.

  Iris had her hands over her eyes and was whimpering in terror. Sianna felt the urge to retch at the gruesome violence, but she tried to hold her composure together and hugged her friend to her.

  If Sol sees fit for us to die now, then it’ll be with my head held high. I won’t give this evil bitch the satisfaction of cowering before her.

  The winged woman observed the scene for a long moment before dropping to the ground in a graceful swoop, her wings folding neatly behind her. The lash crackled with energy as she twirled it lazily across the ground, squarely blocking their path to the postern gate.

  “This must be the young princess,” the woman said with a predatory smirk, those awful silver eyes regarding them, reflecting the nearby firelight like windows to the Abyss. “Or, shall I say, the momentary monarch of Ketania. Your Majesty.” She gave Sianna a mocking curtsey.

  “Oh, Sol, protect us,” Iris muttered, trembling, and Sianna feared her friend might faint from fright.

  The winged woman laughed and strode forward a couple paces, her long stride languorous as a stalking panther. She was tall, towering over Sianna, her body leanly muscled and wearing a suit of dusky armor that somehow clung to her body like a second skin.

  “Sol is not here, girl. It is only I, Nesnys. And the line of Atreus ends here, this night.” Nesnys’s white pointed teeth gleamed like those of a shark Sianna had seen once in the city’s fish market. Nesnys flicked her wrist, and the whip retracted in a flare of magical energy, sharp pieces seeming to detach and reform into a large sword. “I told your father the king as much before I slew him.”

  Colm stepped protectively in front of Sianna. “I won’t allow you to take her, fiend.” His back was straight and his longsword steady in his hand. He caught her eye and nodded solemnly, the expression nearly breaking her heart—the look of a man who faced an opponent over whom he knew he couldn’t prevail but who was determined to die in the attempt anyway. “Sianna, remember you are your father’s daughter. Take heart, and may Sol guide you to save our people. Rafe, take the queen to safety while I distract this demon.” He spoke the last in an undertone.

  Sianna marveled at the old knight’s poise and courage, even as her heart quailed at the thought of seeing him cut down. How can he stand up to such a fearsome creature?

  “All that remain to face me are old men and children with swords? How disappointing.” Nesnys took a step nearer to Colm, holding her sword with the point dipping low.

  With that form, she shows her contempt for Sir Colm.

  A hand settled firmly on Sianna’s shoulder. “Princess, we must take the opportunity he buys us.” Rafe’s face was tight with barely concealed fear and sorrow.

  Where will we go? She will find us in moments once she slays Colm. Sianna drew her short sword, determined to not flee and die like a frightened mouse to a raptor.

  “The cub shows her teeth. I’m impressed, Your Majesty.” Nesnys circled Colm, but her eyes remained on Sianna, the old knight a mere nuisance keeping her from her true prize.

  A sudden flash of brilliant white light blinded Sianna. From the cries around her, she could tell she wasn’t alone.

  “Begone, fiend! Sol protects his faithful! Your kind holds no power here.” The voice rang out with conviction.

  Sianna blinked, and the spots of color cleared enough to reveal Brother Horst, holy symbol in hand and his medallion blazing with a beam of glowing light that bathed Nesnys.

  “Save the queen!” Horst called out, maintaining the beam of light on the demoness.

  Rafe’s hand clamped onto Sianna’s arm, and then he was dragging her forward, circling to the right around Brother Horst and away from Nesnys, who remained pinned in the light about ten paces to the priest’s left. They passed only a couple paces from the murdered kitchen boy’s corpse.

  “Courage and honor!” Colm charged forward to attack.

  Then Sianna, Iris, and Rafe were running for their lives toward the open postern gate beyond the beheaded corpse of Tamzo.

  Nesnys shrieked in rage, and the sound made Sianna shudder and her knees feel wobbly, but she continued on, clutching Iris’s clammy hand in hers, Rafe puffing along beside her, his bulk reassuring as he blocked the conflict from view.

  The holy light extinguished abruptly, casting the bailey into darkness once more. Steel rang out. Someone shouted in alarm, and Brother Horst cried out for Sol’s blessing.

  They passed through the postern gate then were slipping and sliding down the steep escarpment of the bluff the castle was perched on, avoiding the switchbacked path in their haste and heading directly toward the reassuring concealment of the woods below.

  Iris twisted her ankle and fell in a cascade of loose dirt and pebbles. Rafe helped her up and shooed Sianna forward, his eyes nervously going back to the gate behind them, as if it were a portal to the Abyss. Sianna thought perhaps it was, for the winged creature within couldn’t have been from Easilon. Multicolored light flashed through the gate, backlighting the dark wall of the castle, and somebody screamed a long, drawn-out wail of agony.

  Thankfully, they reached the woods, and the terrifying scene was put behind them. Bare branches and pine needles alternately struck at Sianna as Rafe urged them on frantically. After a few paces, he picked up Iris despite her protests, cradling her in his arms like a child while Sianna ran just ahead of them between the shadows of the trees.

  “Bear left, Princess. There’s a stream yonder where we can hopefully find a boat.”
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br />   Sianna didn’t question the guard, seeming to recall Rafe had grown up in a village on the other side of the woods. She hoped he was right although she expected their flight to be for naught and the winged fiend to swoop down on them at any moment.

  In the meantime, she mourned her friends: Sir Colm Bithell, loyal protector of House Atreus, and the kindly Brother Horst, who’d been only a few years older than Sianna herself. And then her mother, murdered in her bed.

  To her shock and relief, Nesnys didn’t appear, but that blessing wasn’t enough to prevent the tears from falling.

  ***

  Nesnys withdrew her blade from the guts of the old knight. He’d fought bravely in defense of his liege, but even with Nesnys’s blindness at the hands of the priest, she’d defeated him without much difficulty. Hailing from the Abyss, she was adept at fighting in dark places, and this had proven no different. Flying and searching for the escaped girl while blinded was another matter.

  She cursed the priest of Sol for blinding her. Even his death, with Willbreaker cleaving the young man nearly in twain, hadn’t restored her sight. He’d proven unusually powerful for one so young. She was confident her vision would return in time, but for now, the young queen of Ketania had earned a momentary reprieve. The thought of drawing out the hunt longer might have appealed to her had she not been so angry over her blindness.

  Nesnys sensed the group of Nebaran soldiers watching her warily a short distance away. The louts had seemed to grow roots during the battle.

  “Why are you standing there, you worthless fools? Find them, and bring them to me! I want the queen alive. The others I care naught about.”

  Even bereft of her vision, she could tell her orders had their intended effect, by the sudden jingling of armor and slapping of boots on the ground as the six soldiers ran past her and out the gate.

  Nesnys followed them, feeling her way through the gate until she stood outside the wall. She listened to the soldiers scrambling down the slope. One man cursed as he lost his footing, and his armor clattered as he fell in an avalanche of dirt and pebbles.

  No matter if the Atreus child eludes me for now. Lord Shaol will be well pleased at the strife. The child queen shall be an extra prize when I capture her.

  She turned back to the bailey with a smile and inhaled deeply of the air. It smelled of sweat and fear, fire and blood. The scent was truly glorious.

  Chapter 18

  A loud metal clanging jarred Elyas awake. With pulse racing from the clamor, thinking the enemy upon them in the night once again, he felt around for his sword, but it was gone. Three other alarmed faces surrounded him, and he recognized the faces of his fellow slaves, along with the tiny cell they were confined to, illuminated by torchlight.

  After a moment, he regained his wits enough to realize Shoat was standing in the corridor, banging a cudgel against the bars of their cell. Half a dozen house guards were grouped in the corridor outside, a pair holding torches and the others with hands on the hilts of their swords.

  “On your feet, worms!” Shoat roared. “Master has arranged a test of your skills, shite though they may be. Line up!”

  Elyas and the other three men fell into line, all bare chested and wearing naught but their short breeches and sandals. Shoat unlocked the gate and motioned for them to exit. They filed out into the courtyard, where Dirich stood waiting with another half dozen guards. Shoat went about chaining their wrists together while Dirich looked on.

  “Tonight, there is to be a demonstration of your fighting skills, if you have any, to separate the worms from the shite they crawl around in, if you will. Try not to disappoint.” Dirich gave them a lopsided smile. He mounted a horse, as did the guards.

  Shoat remained on foot with the worms. The compound gates opened, and they were hustled out with Dirich leading the procession, spurring his horse to a trot. The mounted house guards surrounded them on either side, and Shoat followed with whip in hand as they were forced to jog to keep up with the pace Dirich set.

  They traveled in the darkness beneath a half moon for what felt like two or three miles before arriving in a field with a crowd gathered by torchlight. Both Harlan and Foyal, with his shuffling gait, were puffing hard and struggling to keep up by the time they reached the gathering. Dirich reined in and dismounted, as did the guards. He led the slaves through the crowd of roughly three score people, and Elyas discovered a bizarre sight.

  To one side of the crowd, several nobles sat in grandiose chairs, nearly thrones in appearance, attended to by servants bearing jugs of wine and platters of food. Across from the nobles milled a crowd of common folk. At the center of the gathering was a pit, about ten feet deep and twenty paces in diameter. What appeared to be several daggers glinted in the center of the pit, blades stuck into the earth. Directly across the pit from Elyas and his three companions was another group of chained slaves, surrounded by rough-looking men.

  Bets were wagered, and money changed hands among the crowd, and men jeered and heckled. Seemingly unwilling to be outdone by their male counterparts, even a handful of women shouted and taunted the slaves with equal abandon. A nearby cart was loaded up with several casks of ale and wine, and a vendor and his son were filling tankards and goblets as fast as they could.

  “Lovely fete they have going on here,” Harlan remarked dryly.

  “What the Abyss is all this about?” asked Foyal, wide-eyed and pale faced.

  Dirich gave them a humorless smile, displaying brown, crooked teeth. “This is about you surviving the night. Or failing to.” He let that sink in for a moment. “Now, listen up. Either you climb out of the pit or that lot over there does, you hear me?” He pointed at the slaves across the pit, being harangued by their own slave master. “Don’t think you’ll refuse to fight. Those bastards there will kill you in a heartbeat, for they’ve got the same motivation. You fight and win or fight and die. You refuse to fight, you still die. The only outcome that ends up well for you is the first one. If you survive, you get your wounds stitched up and go home. Master is pleased, which makes me pleased. Everyone wins. Now be ready.”

  Elyas briefly studied the nobles while they waited and saw a couple pennants posted behind them: the crimson and gold of House Pasikos, along with orange and white for their opponents. The Lord Pasikos was a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache and black hair streaked with gray. His dark eyes remained hard when he glanced over at his slaves even though a false smile was pasted on his face at some banter from the other noble. A voluptuous woman with smoldering eyes sat beside him, sipping from a wine goblet. The other noble was a man of about the same age, but fat and sweating despite a servant waving a fan of woven reeds at him. His female companion was fair skinned and about half his age.

  Elyas’s attention was drawn back to Shoat removing their manacles.

  “Fight or die, worms,” he growled.

  A man approached the nobles and conferred a moment, then he bowed and walked to the edge of the pit. He looked toward Dirich and the slave master of the other house and received nods of readiness.

  “It is my great honor and pleasure to announce that this night, slaves of the noble Houses Pasikos and Tucelle shall be competing in a preliminary match!” the man shouted, his voice easily carrying over the quieting crowd. “The survivors of this contest shall earn the honor to be trained as gladiators and, should they prove to have what it takes, to be in turn given the chance to earn their names in the world-renowned Pits of Leciras. Who knows, perhaps one of these worms before us may claw his way up from the mud to prove himself a mighty champion in time!” He paused a moment to allow the crowd to cheer. Then he chopped an arm downward sharply and shouted, “Fight!”

  Dirich and Shoat shoved Elyas and his three companions hard in the back, knocking them into the pit. Elyas dropped and rolled instinctively from the impact, as he had done for years as a boy jumping from the high boughs of the oak tree beside his house. Harlan landed badly and fell with a cry, rolling onto his back
and gripping an ankle with gritted teeth. The other two men landed clumsily but were uninjured.

  Across the pit, their four opponents faced them, all uninjured by the drop, and each looking as scared as Elyas felt in that moment.

  This is madness! Being forced to fight and kill on a slave master’s whim. These other men have done nothing other than being unfortunate enough to get captured as we were. They might even be fellow comrades in arms.

  Cheers abounded outside the pit, the commoners crowding close to the edge to better see the action.

  “Get at ’em!” Shoat roared.

  The slaves continued to regard each other warily until someone threw a burning torch into the pit. It struck one of House Tucelle’s slaves on the head, sparks spraying as the man staggered sideways with a startled cry.

  As if the torch was a signal to charge, the opposing slaves all ran forward. Elyas instinctively moved as well, as did Burge, with Foyal a couple steps behind. Harlan was struggling to get to his feet with his injured ankle.

  Elyas’s eyes were locked on the row of four daggers protruding from the ground, ten paces away. We’re all dead if they claim all the weapons.

  One of the other men slid in the dirt and snatched up a dagger. The slave beside him also went into a slide, reaching for another blade, but Elyas got there at the same time. He kicked the man in the face, sending him sprawling, then seized the nearest dagger for himself. Burge was right beside him, taking a third dagger, while one of the other Tucelle slaves claimed the final one.

  The roar of the crowd intensified, then two men were rushing Elyas, one armed and one unarmed. He jumped back to avoid a knife slash. The unarmed man took a swing at him, and Elyas cut him across the forearm. He fell back with a yelp, cradling his wounded arm. The armed slave slashed and stabbed wildly at Elyas, clearly not the attacks of a skilled fighter. Elyas caught his opponent’s wrist in his left hand, wrenching it hard and throwing the man off-balance. He thrust his own blade into his attacker’s chest, burying it to the crossguard.