by Heath Pfaff
I agreed with my friend's choice to help the people in the inn, but I worried what Silent might have to say. He wasn't thinking rationally. Malice may have just agreed us to a course of action that would bring us into direct conflict with our paranoid travel companion, and whether we liked it or not, we still needed Silent to take us to where Kaylien was kept.
We made the return trip to the room in silence. Malice did not speak to me, and I was too anxious at the prospect of what Silent might do when we told him that we were taking on the humans below to create any conversation myself. There were many things Malice and I still needed to discuss, but everything had its time, and I knew that time was not yet upon us.
We re-entered the room to find Silent lying exactly as we'd left him, sprawled on the bed and staring blankly at the ceiling. Whether he was aware of the fact that we'd gone and come back I couldn't be certain, as his eyes seemed to be tracing empty paths across the woodwork above the bed. I found his trance-like state both disheartening and disturbing. There was an unnerving aspect to his display of mental unraveling.
"Silent." Malice called the black-eyed warriors name. He slowly turned his head to the side and stared at us without answering.
"There are a group of people gathered downstairs. They've been trying to escape the city, and need our help to get out alive. I've agreed to help guide them out." She did not give him the chance to voice his own opinion on the matter, simply stated that she had made a decision, and he was being informed of it. I watched his face for the adverse reaction I felt certain would come.
His expression was completely blank, a vapid emptiness that sent a chill down my spine. "That is a good idea. Are there many?" His voice was relaxed, almost relieved.
"There are nearly a score." Malice answered, and I could tell by the timbre of her voice that the ease of our negotiations was striking her as odd as well. "Why?"
"A knight's first service is to his king. His second service is to the king's people." Silent recited a line from the knight's code of ethics. "It wouldn't be right to leave these people helpless." His face was blank, and his tone dispassionate.
"Silent, if you hurt those people. . ." Malice began, but Silent broke in over her words.
"I will not lay a finger on them, Malice." He said, anger tinting his voice, the first sign of emotion from him since we'd re-entered the room. He pushed himself up from the bed, coming to his feet, hand on the hilt of his weapon. "Do you think me a monster? They are the king's people, and I am loyal to my king."
I sensed that his words were only a portion of the truth, and I could tell by Malice's face that she was thinking much along the same lines. Silent was not telling us everything that was going on in his mind. What worried me most was what that might mean for the people who were trusting in us to save their lives, a task which would be difficult under the best of circumstances. Without Silent's cooperation, we could wind up in a situation from which none of us would be able to survive. His words seemed to indicate that he would help, but his attitude, his strange blankness, worried me.
"Remember your words, Silent." I said, stepping forward to speak. "The king's people are second only to the king. While they are under our care we must do everything in our power to assure their safety. It stands to reason that their safety might well contribute to our own. The more eyes we have to watch, the more ears to listen, the better our chances of survival." I tried to hammer home the importance of the lives we would be guarding, making them seem not only important for their own sake, which should have been enough, but also for our own, which I hoped would encourage more help from the difficult-to-read warrior.
Silent looked at me, but he said nothing. Beneath his eyes I could almost hear his churning thoughts.
The sound of footfalls hammering up the stairs grabbed my attention, and I turned my head, breaking my focus on Silent, though I did see his hand, already on his sword hilt, tighten about the leather binding. The sound of a fist resounding against wood echoed down the hallway. It was still a few doors down from the room in which we were currently sitting.
"Malice, Noble!" A voice yelled. "They're coming. The Hungering are coming!"
All three of our swords left our scabbards in one smooth motion, and Malice turned back to the door, opening it into the hallway. The man, Liet, nearly ran into the door in the dark hallway. He scrambled around it, bowing half-heartedly.
"Mer'am, Seir'ir, Seir'ir," he addressed each of us in the formal manner, nearly stumbling over the archaic titles in his haste to get to his point. "Our lookouts have spotted two hunting parties circling the inn. They tried the door several times, but when it wouldn't open they began to circle the building. They have their six-legged tracking beasts with them. I think they know that we're in here."
Liet, who I had taken to be much older when he was standing firm and leading his group, I now realized was probably younger than I was, though not younger than I appeared, having not aged a day since I'd become a Knight of Ethan.
"Return to your people. We'll hold the lower floor. Make sure those who cannot fight are in the center of those who can." Malice issued her commands in a firm, but calm voice.
"Yes, Mer'am." Liet, the young knight, bowed only slightly before turning and running out the door through which he'd just entered.
"We'll need to split our forces." Malice said as she turned back to face Silent and me. "There are only three of us, and we can't be everywhere at once. Our best hope is to form a triangle around those who are defenseless and to work to actively push back any enemies as they come in. Don't let yourself be drawn away from those you're defending. Only worry about the enemies that approach you."
"They might just leave . . . just... not attack. Maybe they haven't figured out we're here yet?" Silent said, the nervous look that had at least momentarily, left his eyes was returning.
"It would be suicide to count on that." Malice snapped. "We need to act as though it's just a matter of time before we're attacked. We don't want to be caught unprepared."
Silent said nothing, but his face looked grim.
Seeing Silent's bleak face spurred me to speak. "We are holding a point. That gives us the advantage. We have people to back us up as well. They might not be skilled fighters, but they can take advantage of the distractions provided by our fighting to score hits. We are not dead yet."
If my words had any effect on the black-eyed warrior, his facial expression did not reflect it. He looked as though he were condemned to death already. My anger boiled up inside me, and before I could even check the impulse, I flashed across the room and slammed my fist into the side of Silent's face with explosive force. The other Knight flew backwards, landing half on, and half off, of the bed.
He jumped up, anger burning across his features, his sword coming up into an offensive posture.
"You are a warrior, and a Knight, Silent. Stop sulking and start acting like it. Do you think Lucidil would be proud of one of his men giving up so easily?" My voice was quiet, but it simmered with pent up anger.
Silent's sword point dropped. "I have seen what they do to us, Noble. I've seen the things they. . ."
". . . the things they are not going to do to us, Silent. I am not going to die here, and if I can help it, no one else is either. Do you understand?" I cut across his words.
Silent looked at me, and for a moment a slight smile, an honest one, the first I'd seen from him since exiting my prison cell, touched his lips. ". . . a noble fool." He said softly.
"If you two are done, there are scared people below who are waiting for us, and time is slipping away." Malice said, breaking whatever peace may have existed in that moment. Silent's face hardened again, any remnant of good cheer fading, but his manic fear did not seem to return entirely.
Silent walked towards the door to the room. He stopped just before exiting into the hall beyond. "You should never have betrayed us, Noble." He said, and then he left the room, and I heard his footsteps walking down the hall, the soft pad followed by
the click of a clawed foot.
"Come on." Malice said, gesturing for me to follow her. I did, and we departed the room together. Silent's last words loomed over me, a black cloud across an already troubled sky.
Downstairs the knight and his collection of armed farmers were packed tightly together around the children, the elderly man, and the woman who was tending the children. She held a young boy close to her chest, silencing his fearful sobbing. My eyes fixated on the children and unarmed adults, and I realized I held them in a kind of awe. They represented a life I had long ago left behind, and an existence I would never be able to return to. When I looked at them I thought to myself, "These are humans, living their lives." and I realized that, for the first time, I was not counting myself one of them. In my heart, I felt that I was no longer human. Certainly when they looked back at me, their eyes heavy with fear, they did not see a human staring at them, but a monster from some fairy tale.
A loud crash sounded from somewhere around the inn's perimeter. I couldn't exactly identify the direction, but I turned my head, trying to get a fix on the sound. The Hungering were coming.
"Spread yourselves out further. You'll kill each other if you stand that close. Keep your distance from the enemy unless absolutely necessary. We'll do the brunt of the fighting. If you see a place where you can strike without getting killed, don't hesitate to do it." Malice called out her orders in a whisper, but with a tone that denied dissension. She turned to Silent and me.
"Silent, you take the left, near the front entrance. Noble," I noted that she only used my Lucidil given name in public situations, probably in order maintain the illusion that we were just Knights of Ethan like all the others. I rarely used it myself; it had never suited me, for it seemed to me that my actions had never been made in nobility, but always out of necessity. "You take the right, near the stairs. I'll defend this side."
Our orders given, we split up, placing ourselves well out in front of those we were to defend. Laouna. Malice's real name, the one she'd been given at birth, floated through my memories. I had never spoken that name out of fear that I might offend my green-eyed companion by doing so, but every time I looked at her the word whispered across my mind. It was a pretty name. It was a human name, with none of the connotations carried by the blunt names given to us as Knights of Ethan. I was struck by a sudden impulse to say Malice's real name aloud. I resisted the urge, knowing it would be foolish to speak it then, when danger pressed in from all sides. Someday, though, I promised myself, when everything was safe, and I could just be Lowin, and she could just be Laouna, I would use her real name.
The waiting dragged on. I knew that the Hungering were coming, but I didn't know from where, and I didn't know when they would choose to strike. Waiting for a battle is often times more difficult than the battle itself. No amount of training, and no amount of experience, can ever erase the uncertainty that exists directly before a confrontation in which one's life is at stake.
A tremendous crash sounded, followed by the screams of children, and chaos erupted in the Traveler's Stew Pot. The wall nearest the stairs collapsed, and the Hungering began to pour through, climbing over the rubble like insects fleeing a flooding ship. Their ghastly skin and burning red eyes gave them the look of the dead reanimated by pure malice, crawling up from graves. Another crash came from behind me, accompanied by more screams, and I knew that they had broken through at another location as well. The fight was on, and we would have to survive until dawn.
I waited for them to come, holding formation, but I didn't need to wait long. They swept in like a tide, and I flashed into action. My heart thrummed like a hammer-fall in my chest, resounding with the energy I now knew could only come from my Kaziem heart, the last legacy of Whisper of the Mist. The Hungering had not known we were inside the building, and had not come prepared. Silent, Malice and I fell on them like a wave of death, our blades washing their lives away like a morning tide's ebb.
Through the syrupy slow world, the Hungering barely moved. There were many of them, but they could not break the line we formed with our blistering speed and adept sword skills. For a time it seemed we would press them back with no trouble, but our luck was not to hold. The first wave went down, and we barely had time to catch our breath before the second came barreling in. They came in first with their six legged monsters, and I knew immediately that we would have trouble.
Those creatures were fast, and dangerous. They charged us, rising up on their hind legs and slashing with their dangerous forelimbs. I was forced to fight sword and claw, using both to fend off attacks and make counter attacks. Even then, with all my skill and power at work, the creature had a distinct advantage in the sheer number of fast moving weapons provided by its many legs. A guttural gurgle sounded from behind me, different from those made by the Hungering and their monsters, and I knew that one of our numbers was down. I didn't know if it was a Knight, or one Liet's men, or even Liet himself. The only thing I was certain of was that it signaled our line had been breached.
I concentrated my effort, forcing my body to move faster, and strike harder. My heart still beat steadily, though sweat was forming on my skin, and I could feel the heat of my flesh rising. The beast I was fighting snapped its terrible jaws at me, and I dodged backwards, and an instant later propelled myself forward, charging blade first at its body.
The attack took the beast by surprise, and my sword tip struck flesh. The creature fell in a writhing pile of blood, rage, and gnashing jaws, thrashing until the last of its life fled it. This I noticed only peripherally, for I had already moved on to my next target.
The bodies piled high, the Hungering falling in droves. Multiple times voices called out in pain and terror, but there was no pausing in the battle to check on the dead and wounded. The fight had to continue, the sword must be lifted, and it must fall, without breaking pace. We were the wall of death, the final hope of the defenseless.
The burning of dawn's first rays of light swept across the ground, coming in through the hole that had, until that moment, only brought more and more of the Hungering. Those creatures still alive who were touched by the light fell away, not necessarily hurt, but discomforted, distracted by those glorious rays of crystalline beauty. They began to retreat, scampering out into the dazzling brilliance, and disappearing down side streets. It did not happen all at once, and the battle remained fierce for what I guessed to be another hour, but finally only dead enemies lay around us, and I could, for the first time in the entire night, look around myself and see what remained of our party.
The sight before me was terrible. Liet still stood, though his right arm was mostly destroyed, hanging in bloody tatters at his side. Silent lay in a pool of blood, his chest rising and falling raggedly. Railan, the old man, had fallen and would not rise again, torn to pieces, his bottom half missing entirely. I guessed, though I didn't wish to think about it, that it had been taken away for eating by the Hungering. Of those men who'd been fighting, only one besides Liet remained alive. He was a young farmer, his ichor-covered pitchfork still in hand. He had several wounds, though none that looked fatal. His eyes were wide, haunted.
The old man was dead, lying with his head split open just a few feet from the inner defensive circle. The woman was still alive, along with three of the children. The fourth was mostly gone, though three quarters of an arm still remained, laying just beyond where the old man's body sprawled. I guessed that he had died trying to save the child. Never before had the horrors of battle seemed so visceral and real. Only Malice and I stood relatively unharmed. She had not a scratch on her, though her face was pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She had pushed herself to her limits.
I was scratched, cut and bruised, though I had taken no serious injuries in the night of fighting. I guessed I looked much as she did, for I felt feverish and tired, worn thin. I, too, was at my limits. I had fought, staying deep within the throws of full speed, for most of the night.
"We need to get out of this
city before dark." Malice said, her voice a rasp.
I simply nodded my agreement, too stricken and exhausted to say anything more. The enemy was gone, but rest would have to wait.
Silent slipped in and out of consciousness, riding upon my back as we traveled. His wounds were severe, possibly fatal if he'd not been blessed with the healing abilities of the Knights. However, he'd lost a lot of blood. As such, he was useless for giving directions, but luckily we had Liet. His tattered right arm was causing him a great deal of agony, but we had cleaned and treated the wound and he was at least able to keep moving, though he was obviously tired. We were all tired.
Malice was carrying all three of the children, one on her back, and one in each arm. They had been frightened of her at first, but after a few minutes of walking through the city, they had settled down to sleep, too tired to worry about the strange, green-eyed woman who would be watching over them. The woman, Reana, stayed close to Malice and the children, distrustful of us despite all we had done. I did not blame her. It was difficult to trust anyone, let alone we who looked little better than the monsters they were running from. Where I saw Malice as a beautiful woman, they saw a grim warrior, with the arms and legs of a beast known for killing and eating men.