by Heath Pfaff
With my hand freed, I made quick work of the ruined shreds of my cloak and shirt. Dressing in the new clothes was difficult. I hadn't ever thought about how much my arms worked in unison to accomplish simple tasks. In the end, Malice helped me pull on my shirt, and fasten my new cloak. I did my best to not be embarrassed by the aid. I felt useless. Once dressed, we moved out together in silence.
The army was on the march again. Some of those in the rear-most sections were aiding with burying the dead and managing the traveling resources, such as the medical pavilion, and the food and weapon supplies. For the most part, however, they were once again on the road, a long line of marching soldiers and the reave haulers carrying their gear. Malice and I quickly overtook the front of the army, and were in the clear, running freely ahead.
Without my left arm, it was more difficult to balance my body as I ran. I adapted my stance, but it took some time. Every time I stumbled, it was another reminder of the fact that I was no longer whole. I tried not to let that bother me, but it did. I would have to relearn all of my fighting skills. Instinct would only take me so far. My eyes scanned the country around me. A feeling of panic was creeping into me. It had been rising ever since Malice had woken me in the medical pavilion, and every step closer to Lucidil that I took, that feeling of wrongness grew.
"Something isn't right." I spoke aloud, and Malice was at my side in a moment.
"I know." She answered. "The way the Hungering left. . ." She let her sentence trail off, but I knew what she meant.
The Hungering should not have just abandoned the field the way they did. I half expected, with every footfall, another ambush to spring up around us. The further we traveled, however, the clearer it became that the Hungering had left the area. The world had resumed its normal pace. The birds sang in the trees, and the winter wildlife had taken to the woods once more. Why had the Hungering left the battlefield? What could compel an unstoppable force to stop?
"We should warn Lucidil." I said, though I guessed that he would already know something strange was occurring. He had been fighting the Hungering for a long time, and such a straying from their normal patterns must have alerted him as well. I pushed myself harder, speeding the pace of my run. Malice matched me step for step.
We ran with urgency, driven by a growing sense of foreboding. The hours flew by, and with them, distance fell away before us. Time became meaningless. I knew nothing, had no thought but that we needed to reach Lucidil's camp as fast as our legs could carry us.
The camp opened up before us. The area where the ground rams had been set was in chaos. Most of the stations were entirely destroyed. Men moved through the wreckage, picking up bodies, sorting them into groups. The enemies would be burned, and the fallen soldiers of the king's army would be buried in the proper fashion deemed suitable for a fallen soldier. We pushed through the battlefield. The closer we drew to Lucidil's central camp, the less the damage became. That should have been a good sign, yet I still could not shake the feeling of foreboding.
All those who saw us coming cleared way, as though they could sense that we were on important business. Even the Black Patch Brigade gave way to us as we drew near. It might have been our haste, or it might simply have been because we were both Knights of Ethan. Of course, in my new cloak, I looked more like one of the human-Fell Beast amalgamations. After a time we came upon the tents of the small residential camp that Lucidil had erected. I stopped for the first time since I'd started running hard, my eyes surveying the scene before me.
Malice ground to a halt at my side. "Is something wrong?" She asked, and though her voice was set cold and dispassionate, I, who knew her well, could hear the worry hiding beneath her tone.
I thought in silence, but not for long. I couldn't place what had caused me to stop. Though the tents seemed to have not changed at all from the last time I'd been to Lucidil's camp, I felt a heavy weight upon my shoulders. I was tempted to reach for my sword, and had to force myself to stay my hand. Something was amiss. What few figures that were here, guardsmen and servants, moved between the white canvas tents quietly, as though they too were a part of the dreary dark that had descended upon the camp. I walked forward slowly.
"Lowin, is there something wrong?" Malice repeated her question, and it was only then that I realized I hadn't answered her the first time.
"Yes." I replied. "Though I do not know what it is yet. . ." I trailed off in thought. It was the best answer I could give. I could hear my heartbeat thrumming like a drum in my ears. I felt as though I were willingly walking into a terrible storm.
"Something has happened here." I heard Malice say, though her voice was low. "The people wear it on their faces."
I didn't need to reply. I had seen it as well. My trepidation grew as I drew nearer Lucidil's tent. The flap was closed, and four of the Black Patch Brigade stood outside guarding the entrance. As Malice and I drew near, they stiffened and placed their hands upon their weapons.
"His Majesty is not seeing vassals." One of the black cloaks announced.
"He will see us. Let him know that Malice and Noble return from the field, and that we wish to speak to him immediately." I made my voice firm, commanding. Malice had been about to speak, but I had preempted her. She did not look displeased.
The guards looked at each other, uncertain as to what they were supposed to do under the circumstances. They were creatures of one order, and it was not mine that they listened to.
"Inform him that we are here. He will wish to speak to us." Malice commanded, reinforcing what I had said. It took them a moment, but finally one of them lifted the tent flap and walked into the relative darkness within. We waited, the three remaining men never taking their hands from their swords. I wanted nothing more than to draw my own blade and strike them out of my way. Such was the frazzled state of my patience. I forced myself to bide my time. It was no easy task.
At last, the black cloak that had entered the tent emerged.
"Malice and the Oath Breaker may enter the tent. We are to give them privacy." He said to the others as he emerged. The tent flap was drawn back, and the guards ushered us inside before turning and leaving their posts. I thought it more than passingly peculiar that Lucidil would dismiss his guards. It was yet another symptom of a problem that I didn't yet understand.
The space inside the tent was large and open, though the lighting was dimmer than it had been when last I'd visited the king only a few days before. The table was pulled to the center of the area, Lucidil sat at one side, and Ethaniel stood at his right. I was surprised to see the Knight of four eyes had already returned to the king's side. Malice and I had made good time, but he had obviously started long before us. He stepped back into one of the shadows of the tent as we entered. Something about his motion, or the look on his face, struck me as inherently wrong. Again, it was some aspect that I couldn't quite place.
My hands were cold, and my heart still sounded in my ears like a drum. Something terrible was about to happen.
Beware the fire. A gravely female voice whispered softly from somewhere inside of me. I didn't know what it meant, or where it came from, but the advice seemed sound. Lucidil's eyes burned like fire, and I felt a strange tension hovering about him.
"Malice, Noble, it is good to see you returned safely from the field of battle. I was quite worried about you." Lucidil said, his tones conversational. He did not rise from where he sat at his table.
I drew back my cloak, exposing the missing arm. "You had cause to worry. The field of battle was quite dangerous." I said, doing by best to keep my emotions from my voice. I exposed my weakness as a way of putting the king off balance. I felt I needed to position myself in a dominant stance for the encounter.
Lucidil eyes opened wide, but only for a moment, and then he stifled his surprise at my injury. Whether my missing arm gave me any lasting edge, I couldn't know.
"It's not often a Knight takes such a heavy injury and lives to tell of it. You surprise me. How did you lose it?" T
he king asked after he'd recovered.
"A Hungering Blue's fire." I answered truthfully. "He lured me in and then killed himself, and tried to kill me, in a spill of his own blue fire. I got out in time to save my life, but as you can see, not unscathed." I gestured towards my damaged shoulder.
Lucidil's face soured, his eyes taking on a note of disappointment. "That injury will ruin you as a fighter. Though, I suppose you've earned your right to retire. I hear that you felled multiple black drakes on your own?"
I wasn't sure whether he meant to slight me by saying that I was ruined as a fighter, but if he did, it was ineffective. I had never been a brilliant fighter to begin with. I knew I could never get past the technique and into the actual art of fighting. Malice had told me that my adherence to form was my weakness, and I could accept the truth of it, even if I could do nothing to fix it.
I nodded my reply to Lucidil's question, unwilling to go into details on events that I could not remember. Certainly I recalled killing the first drake, but the second was little more than a hazy half recollection and the third and fourth were a complete mystery to me. An admission that I had killed them would be paramount to admitting that I had lost control during the course of a battle. I knew it was true, but Lucidil did not need to. That was my private shame.
"That is an impressive accomplishment for any man, be he human, Knight, or otherwise. I shall make sure you receive the proper glories for your deeds. A Knight wounded is no one, but a Knight wounded while fighting like a hero, that is the making of a legend. Isn't that so Ethaniel?" The red-eyed warrior asked the Knight who stood in the shadows at the corner of the tent.
"Indeed." Came the quiet reply. Once more I was assaulted by the sense that something was amiss. Lucidil's casual talk of glory and the events of battle were skirting the issue at hand.
"The Hungering walked off the battlefield." I said, feeling that it was time to cut through the pretense and get to the point.
"Yes." Lucidil replied, nodding as he did so. "It is most fortunate, since we had no chance of pushing them back with the forces that we had at our disposal. I believed we could, but I was wrong." The king had never admitted to being wrong before. It struck me as strange.
"Why would they do that?" I asked, pressing the point. When Lucidil didn't answer immediately I asked again. "Why would the Hungering leave a battlefield while they were still winning the fight, Lucidil?" My ire was rising. I was now certain that I was honing in on the source of the problem, and that Weaver knew what it was.
"I made a bargain with them. They demanded something, and I gave it to them. Once I had given it to them, they left the battlefield, and because of that we are all still alive to have this meeting." Lucidil sounded exasperated, as though he had already had this conversation before and he was tired of repeating it. There was something in his eyes that put me on edge, something I had never seen there before. It was fear.
"The Hungering don't bargain. They take what they want, and what they want is to kill and devour everything that they encounter." Malice spoke quietly, but with the authority born of years of service as a weapons master. Her voice had a dangerous edge to it.
"They've never bargained before. . ." Lucidil replied, his voice trailing off for a moment. "This time there was something they wanted, though, and I had to give it to them. My defenses were pressed to their limits. We had felled five of their black drakes, but they had more of them, and they just kept coming. I knew that even if our backup army came, we would never be able to clear them all away. Things were hopeless here. When the Blue came forward and proposed negotiations I had to listen . . . for the people of this land. I had to do what was necessary to keep the people safe. You can understand that, right?" Lucidil was looking at me now, his eyes were defensive, but the fear lay beneath. What was he afraid of? Was he afraid of me?
I stepped towards him, and he shot out of his chair, his hand going to the sword at his side.
"I had to Lowin. They said they wouldn't hurt her, so it was a situation in which everyone survives. I did this for the people!" Lucidil's voice was strained, and his eyes seemed almost manic.
My mind caught on one phrase. "They said they wouldn't hurt her. . ."
My heart hammered at the front of my ribs. "They said they wouldn't hurt who?" I growled, and I heard in my voice that same dangerous edge I'd just caught in Malice's a moment before. I asked the question, but I knew the answer already because I knew who Lucidil was afraid of. He was afraid of me. Why would he have any reason to fear me? The answer was only too clear; because he no longer held the key to keeping me at bay. I had already pieced this together, yet somehow I stayed my hand, waiting for the words to come from Lucidil's own mouth. If he hadn't said them, then maybe I was wrong. I wanted dearly to be wrong.
Lucidil did not answer, though he had drawn his weapon now, and held it steadily between us. His eyes held fear, but they held a dangerous confidence as well. He had spent hundreds of years fighting, and his skills were legendary.
"Trillia, they said they wouldn't hurt her. She will be fine, and we will all live in . . ." Weaver began his answers, but I did not wait for him to finish speaking.
"You gave Kaylien to the Hungering?" My voice boomed dangerously, my composure was faltering fast. Inside of me, the beast howled, sharing in my rage and grief, and reveling in the dark tide of emotions that swirled in my mind. I had trouble wrestling it back.
"I gave one life to save all the peoples of our land, and she is not dead, Lowin. You don't have to worry. They assured me that she would be. . ." Lucidil's words fells away in my mind. He kept speaking but I was no longer listening to them. In my head I saw my daughter as she had been at two, smiling at me from the arms of Wisp. Then I envisioned her as she had been in Weaver's tent just a few days earlier, a quick witted and loving child with so much life and promise ahead of her. Now she was gone, given over to a force of evil so great that it threatened our entire world. Lucidil had given my daughter to the enemy.
A peel of fury erupted from me, so loud and so terrible that it tore at the flesh of my throat, sending a mist of blood into the air. I drew my sword and charged at Lucidil, falling into the full wrappings of my speed.
Lucidil's mouth dropped open and the words, the inane, useless words that had been flying from his lips, fell away. He brought up his weapon and turned my blade away with ease. He was fast, and dangerous. There was fear within him, but it was buried beneath hundreds of years of training and an incredible amount of power.
Such was my fury that I charged on heedless of his skill with the sword. His blade knocked mine from side to side, leading every attack I made in useless circles. He parried one blow and dashed in with one of his own, his blade piercing my side deeply. I fell away, and the world lurched back into normal speed. Lucidil now stood at the opposite side of the tent.
"You can't hope to defeat me, Noble. You haven't the skill, and you're injured. You don't know how to fight properly with your missing arm. Your sword swings are sloppy, and your technique is lacking. Quit now or I will kill you. Do you think you really stand a--"
Lucidil's words faltered as Malice blurred into motion at my side, and I let the speed fall back in around me. Lucidil too picked up speed, and the three of us met in a knot of combat at the center of the tent. Lucidil had leapt to the top of the table, giving himself a high position, but my senses were numb and I didn't care that he had the high ground. I pressed towards him anyway, haphazardly dodging and blocking his blows as I sought to claw my way closer to him. I wanted to kill him. I needed to feel his blood spilling out onto my claws. I wanted to watch the red light fade from his eyes.
At my side, Malice was attacking with a fury as well. Her blows were beautifully timed, and delivered with a finesse I could never achieve. Somehow, Lucidil kept us both at bay. He moved like he'd been born with a sword. Every swing of his arm served to throw me further away, and turn Malice's sword aside at the same time. The king's steel blade in his hand, was an impenetr
able wall of death. I would not be turned aside. My mind was full of darkness. He had to die. For all that he had done, for all those he had killed, and finally, for giving my daughter to the Hungering, I would finish him. The world could not keep him any longer.
I lunged upwards at him, my sword leading my attack. He struck my blade aside but my body's weight still drove me forward. His blade shifted direction, impossibly, in mid swing, and it was only at the last moment that I realized I had too much forward momentum, and no way of stopping his blade from striking. I didn't care - I wanted him dead. I didn't bother trying to alter my suicidal arc. I let myself fall towards his slicing weapon. In my eyes, he was the only creature that stood before me, and only killing him could ever bring me peace. I let go of my sword, knowing I would be too close use it, and willed my claws as sharp as I could. The Fell Beast in me called for blood, the father and brother in me called for vengeance, and the man in me called for an accounting of all that had been lost for Lucidil's cause over the years.