A Sellsword's Hope

by Jacob Peppers

  “Not without you,” Caleb said, surprised by the strength in his own voice. “I can help you. Now, come on.” He rushed to her bedside, draping one of her arms over his shoulder, and lifted. He was shocked by how light she felt, as if she were hardly real at all. “We’re going to get out of here,” he said, “and we’re going to do it together.”

  She winced with pain, but nodded grimly. “Very…well. It seems there is no end to the debt I will owe. Lead on, young man. I will come with you as best as I may.”

  Caleb nodded to the Akalian who had watched the proceedings in silence, then the black garbed man moved to the door, again checking the hallway before stepping outside and starting down the corridor, pausing when Tianya spoke. “No. Not that way,” she said, rubbing at her temple weakly, as if she had a headache. “They block the path.”

  Caleb started to ask her how she could know that, but then remembered that she possessed the Virtue of Perception and only nodded, following after the Akalian who didn’t argue but started in the other direction, blood dripping from his wounded arm and leaving a crimson trail behind him. “H-how many are there?” he asked.

  “Too many,” Tianya hissed through gritted teeth as she shuffled after the Akalian. “Our only chance…is to…get out. While they’re distracted.”

  “But what about the Speaker and the others?”

  “They’ll be fine,” she said, but Caleb didn’t need the Virtue of Intelligence to hear the uncertainty in her voice.

  “Are you sure?”

  She heaved a breath. “No, child, I am not sure. But what I am sure about is if we remain or try to help them, we will die. We are neither of us warriors, and at the very least we would only get in their way. Either they will escape, or they will not. There is nothing we can do to help them and dying here will be of no use to your friends in Perennia.”

  Caleb winced, but didn’t argue. For a time they walked in silence save for when Tianya guided the Akalian around the fights raging in the barracks. Yet for all the powers the bond gave her, a few of their turns took them terribly close to the fighting, and more than once Caleb could see figures locked in combat at the ends of the hallways they passed.

  At such times, they did their best to hurry past, taking the corners as quickly as they could, but Caleb knew one glance would be all it would take for the creatures to find them. And if one did decide to come at them, it didn’t take a genius to know what would happen. He was a kid, Tianya a wasted woman who could barely stand, and over the last few minutes, the Akalian’s steps had grown less and less sure as blood loss took its inevitable toll.

  All these thoughts, these worries, crowded his mind, along with a thousand others, as they made their way through the barracks, taking hallways seemingly at random, always at Tianya’s direction, but eventually they arrived at the main door. “A-are they out there?” he asked.

  “A moment,” the woman said, closing her eyes. Several tense seconds passed, and Caleb, his nerves frayed, was just about to ask her what she was doing when she opened them once more. “I can’t be sure,” she said. “But I don’t hear any of them close. We’d best hurry.”

  The Akalian eased the door open and scanned the darkness before stepping out of the barracks, Caleb and Tianya following. He motioned them toward the shadowy tree line, barely visible at all in the pale light of the moon. They crossed the open area as quickly as they could, Caleb’s heart hammering in his chest.

  He was just beginning to think they were going to make it, when he heard a rush of displaced air behind them.

  The Akalian reacted instantly, spinning and gliding in front of Caleb and the woman with a grace completely at odds with the stumbling walk he’d shown thus far. “Wha—” Caleb began, but then he saw. One of Kevlane’s creatures stood not far away, and the sound he’d heard had been it taking advantage of its impossible speed, rushing forward. Its skin was pale, almost translucent in the moonlight, and the shadows contrived to make its scarred face look ghastly, its cruel, twisted features suited for no living man. It had the slender, too-long arms Caleb had come to associate with Kevlane’s swiftest creatures, but it wasn’t just its appearance—or its unnaturalness—that made a gasp erupt from the youth’s throat, but the blood-slicked sword, almost black in the moonlight, it held in one limp hand.

  The creature studied them with its head cocked, as if trying to determine what or who they were. There was a confused, almost pitiable quality to it, but one that vanished quickly enough as the Akalian raised his sword. The creature’s attention turned away from Caleb and Tianya, eyeing the blade and the man who held it.

  “Damnit,” Tianya wheezed between her ragged breaths. She’d moved better than Caleb would have thought possible, given her malnourished state, but it had clearly cost her, and he felt her trembling where her arm was draped over his shoulder, though whether from fear, pain, or simple exhaustion, he could not have said for sure.

  “W-what do we do now?” Caleb asked, hating the naked terror in his voice.

  The question—and its attendant possibilities—were driven out of his mind a moment later as there was an audible pop, and the creature launched itself forward in a blur. If the Akalian shared Caleb’s fear, he didn’t show it. Instead, he was already moving before the creature started forward, whipping his sword around so it stuck directly out in front of him.

  The creature, moving at such a great speed, was apparently unable to stop its momentum, and an instant later it impaled itself on the Akalian’s blade. Caleb felt a great sense of relief, one that quickly vanished as he realized that, though it was stuck through by the Akalian’s blade, its own had found its mark, burying itself deep in the shoulder of the black-garbed man’s sword arm.

  For a frozen moment, the two stood without moving, seeming to regard each other, then they collapsed to the ground where they both lay unmoving. Caleb overcame his own shock an instant later and started toward the Akalian. “We have to help him, we have to—” He cut off as Tianya’s hand latched around his arm with surprising strength, her fingers digging into him.

  “Don’t be a fool, boy,” she hissed. “He’s dead, and if not, he will be soon enough. Anyone with eyes can see that.”

  “B-but,” Caleb stammered, suddenly very close to tears, “I-I can help him. Maybe I can find some herbs to make a poultice and—”

  “And maybe,” she said, “that creature’s fellows will just sit back and relax while you see to him, is that it? Is that what you think, boy?”

  He turned back to her then, desperate, his words coming out in a plea. “But he saved us. He…we have to help him.”

  “The only ones who can help him now are the gods,” the woman said, her voice softer than it had been. “He gave his life for us, lad, a trade he chose. Now, I know you want to help, but we’ll do no one any good if we stay here to die.”

  “N-no,” Caleb said, “I won’t. I won’t leave him.”

  “Think, boy,” she growled, shaking him. “Kevlane, the great enemy, has only one of the Seven now, yet with it he has managed to create an army great enough to threaten the world. What, then, do you think he will be able to do once his creatures have finished with us, and he has two more Virtues to enhance his power? What horrors will he be able to create with your intelligence and my perception to guide his workings?”

  Caleb glanced helplessly between her and the Akalian. Had he only imagined the man moving the smallest amount? Or was he, even now, bleeding out, dying while they stood and argued. “I-I can’t,” he said, the tears that had been threatening spilling from his eyes now. “I can’t leave him. We…we can’t—”

  “Then you’ll die,” the woman said flatly, no mercy or understanding in her tone now, only cold, hard truth. “And I will die as well, and your compassion, your mercy will doom not just us, but the entire world to a cruel and terrible end. Do you want that on your conscience, boy? Do you?”

  She grabbed both of Caleb’s shoulders as she said the last, giving him a rough shake, her fing
ers digging into him so hard that it was all he could do to keep from crying out in pain. “N-no, of course no—”

  “What about Aaron?” the woman went on. “What about Adina? I’ve heard something about how they saved you, how they’ve cared for you. Is this, then, how you repay them? By dooming them all with wasted heroics, by giving their foe the exact thing he needs to ensure their slaughter? Is it?”

  Caleb’s shoulders slumped, his head hanging as he stared at the ground, blurry from the darkness and his tears, anything to keep from meeting the woman’s cold, unforgiving eyes. A second passed, then another, and when he finally looked up, whatever innocence, whatever childish faith in the world he’d still held was gone. In its place was a grim understanding, an adult’s understanding. “Okay,” he said, his voice weak, barely more than a whisper. “Okay. What do you want me to do?”

  “Can you find our way back to the city?”

  “I…I think…” You are a child no longer, he thought. Never again. “Yes. But Aaron and the others won’t be there, not now. They’ll be marching toward Baresh—the Speaker received news earlier tonight.” And it said something of the death that had occurred within him, that he did not so much as even glance at the barracks as he was reminded of the Speaker, the man who had saved him and the others, did not allow himself to think that, even now, the man might be fighting, might be dying along with the rest of the Akalians.

  “Fine,” Tianya hissed. “And can you lead us to them?”

  “I…I can.”

  “Good,” she said, nodding sharply. “Then let’s go.” She started into the forest, shuffling and using the trees as support, and Caleb watched her.

  He gave one last look behind him at the barracks, perhaps to mark the death of those Akalians who were battling within its walls, perhaps to mark the death of his own innocence and saw that the large wooden building was in flames. Small now but growing by the second. Soon, they would reach far into the night, a funeral pyre on which burned the bodies of men who had sacrificed everything for the world, the only thanks the world seemed to have for its heroes. He could see figures moving around in the distance, vague, indistinct, and there was no telling if they were Akalians or, more likely, Kevlane’s own creatures.

  He looked for another moment. Then, without saying a word, Caleb turned and followed the woman away from the light and into the darkness.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Boyce Kevlane was weeks away from getting everything he wanted. With each day that passed, the tournament went on and men and women who’d spent their lives training in combat battled for a chance at the purse of gold they’d been promised. And each night, Kevlane worked his Art, adding more and more troops to his army. He worked without sleep, without rest, stretching the power of his bond with the Virtue of Adaptation to its limits. And all the while he imagined Aaron Envelar and his companions laid low beneath him.

  He should have been pleased, should have been eager for the victory to come, but he wasn’t. Instead, he was angry.

  He growled, crumpling the letter he’d been reading and tossing it to the ground in disgust. The members of Baresh’s council, seated around him on the stage in the tournament ground, recoiled at his obvious anger, turning away from the current match—a tall, muscular man who fought a thin, wiry one almost half his size—to glance warily at their king.

  Kevlane knew their suspicions of him grew with each day, knew he should say something to console them, to reassure them he was the same Belgarin he’d always been. But he couldn’t find it in him to care. They could believe what they would—soon, they would die like all the rest. They watched him from their seats even now—the old High Priest, a pompous fool, convinced of his own importance, his own sacredness; the general, his back stiff and straight in a manner he thought noble, a military man who wanted everyone to know it. And then there was the woman, Maladine, representative of the Golden Oars bank. Of all of them, she alone presented any real danger, and if one of them discovered the truth of his identity, Kevlane did not doubt that it would be her.

  It doesn’t matter. Their fear, their suspicions, were irrelevant. They would all be dealt with, soon enough. Frustrated, unable to stand their gazes any longer, he stalked away from the crowded platform, feeling the almost irrepressible urge to unmask his true self, to show these fools that they sat before a god.

  Caldwell followed at his heels, as Kevlane had known he would. “It seems,” Kevlane said, once they’d gotten out of ear shot of the others, “that the good councilman has failed.”

  The advisor nodded. “Yes, Master.”

  “Too many failures, Caldwell,” Kevlane hissed. “Far, far too many. This Aaron Envelar and his friends have proven to be a nuisance.”

  “Forgive me, Master,” the advisor said, “but, in the end, it matters little. Our armies will crush them just the same, and they will soon learn the futility of opposing you.”

  “Our armies?” Kevlane asked softly, and Caldwell’s eyes went wide.

  “Your armies, of course, Master. I meant no offense, I only intended to say—”

  “Forget it.” Kevlane turned and looked in the direction of Perennia, where, even now, an army marched toward him, and he was reminded of a time, long ago, when another army marched toward the city he called home, an army bent on destroying everything he had come to call his own. “They are too confident, Caldwell. Send some of the experiments out—let each step they take toward us be bathed in blood, until they learn the true meaning of fear.”

  “Master,” the man said, “are you sure that’s wise? With the creatures we lost to the failed ambush, the numbers have been diminished and—”

  “Do not question me!” Kevlane roared, and the advisor recoiled as if struck. The mage turned to see the council members watching him from their seats and sneered before turning back to the thin man. “They think to challenge their god, Caldwell, and they will suffer for it.”

  “O-of course, Master,” the man said, bowing his head and starting away.

  “And Caldwell?” The man turned, and Kevlane bared his teeth in a grin without humor. “If you ever think to question me again, I’ll rip you apart from the inside out. Do you understand?”

  The thin man nodded, his face pale and waxy in the sunlight. “Y-yes, Master. F-forgive me.”

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Gryle couldn’t sleep. He knew he should, knew that he would need rest in the days and weeks to come, yet try as he might, he couldn’t quiet his troubled thoughts, and so the peace of sleep eluded him. A condition which, judging by the number of campfires burning in the darkness, was shared by many of the army’s soldiers.

  He knew he had changed, knew that the past months had made him a different man than he once was but here, in the darkness of the woods, great sentinels of trees all around, he felt once more like the overweight, middle-aged chamberlain who had felt absolute terror at something so simple as a stain on his clothes. He thought that, while people changed, they never did so completely, always keeping some of their old selves, snakes who, try as they might, could never fully shed their skin and become something—or someone—new.

  He wished, not for the first time, that he had Aaron’s courage, or Adina’s. They, at least, always seemed so sure, so confident, as if they knew how to handle any problem that might arise. Or, he thought, perhaps your sleeplessness isn’t caused from worry at all, at least not from worry of Kevlane. You have the Virtue of Strength, after all, and you do remember what it did to Aster Kalen, don’t you?

  Yes. He remembered. The Virtue had driven the man insane, and although he wasn’t ready to start gnawing on his own hands or laughing maniacally while he rocked in a dark corner, Gryle sometimes wondered how much of the change in him was due to his experiences and how much to the Virtue inhabiting him. Unlike the others, his Virtue did not speak—had, perhaps, lost the ability to do so in its madness. From time to time, Gryle thought he detected what might have been the Virtue: unintell
igible, animalistic sounds that could have as easily been his imagination, but such sounds were rare and, when he quested inside himself, seeking out their source, he inevitably found nothing.

  “Chamberlain Gryle, ‘ello there!”

  Gryle jerked in surprise at the sound of his name and turned to see a soldier approaching him from a nearby campfire. He realized with a start that he had wandered to the edge of the camp; the torches that burned at regular intervals, marking the army’s perimeter and serving as a means of keeping anyone from creeping up on them in the darkness, were close, the nearest less than a dozen feet away.

  As the man walked closer, Gryle promised himself that, should the man offer him a drink, he would not accept it. The last time he’d taken an offered drink, he had woken to find himself in a clearing with a battle raging around him. “H-hello,” he said.

  The man’s grin was visible as he drew near. “Thought that was you, sir. I hope you don’t mind me botherin’ you. I was just over there, havin’ a bit of a drink as I can’t sleep.”

  Gryle tried a smile of his own. “It’s going around, I think.”

  The soldier laughed at that, slapping his knee as if the chamberlain had told the world’s funniest joke. “So it is, so it is. Well, sir, I won’t keep you, as I’m sure you’ve got important things to be about. I just wanted to shake the hand of one of Perennia’s heroes, if you don’t mind, that is.”

  Gryle stared at the man’s offered hand in surprise. I’m sure you’ve got important things to be about. Hero. For a moment, he couldn’t understand what the man could possibly mean, then he realized with a shock that the soldier was talking about him. “I uh…I’m not a hero, but thank you just the same,” he said, giving the man’s hand a shake.

  “No?” the soldier asked, grinning. “I got the wrong man, have I? You ain’t the same chamberlain as helped take back Queen Adina’s kingdom single-handedly? Not the fella who helped stop the execution of the good Lady May, and Councilman Hale, the gods keep ‘em? Ain’t the one is said to possess the strength of a thousand men?”