by Dan Decker
Oh no! he thought, I did it to myself. A shudder ran through his body as he remembered the words he and his wife had exchanged in front of the scribe. He clenched his teeth and wished that he’d just killed the girl. Her escape had unraveled his whole plan.
Helam hadn’t been able to get an exact count of the Redd Guard but he pegged them at about sixty in number. If that was accurate, he had enough mercenaries to fight them. If only Briggs would show up.
His chest flared with pain as they stopped before the Portal doors. When Adar had stabbed him, Helam had thought that was the end of it. It was lucky for him that the Redd Guard had gotten in the way; otherwise, he would have been lying on the floor right now fighting for his last breath. The chicken scratch he suffered was nothing compared to what it could have been. The bandage had come loose while he struggled but the wound was no longer bleeding anyway.
As the Redd Guard forced his hand to the Portal door, he gave up and let it happen. He watched the doors move to the open position as if in a trance. It wasn’t until he lowered his hand that it brushed against the pocket of his pants and he remembered the small vials he’d taken from Molach.
He’d pocketed them because they could be traced back to the Kopal and he didn’t want Molach to have the sycanon root poison beside his bed. That action hadn’t just saved Molach; it had given Helam a fighting chance of getting out of this. A plan formed, it was desperate but he was out of options.
He killed a bitter chuckle in the back of his throat as he hid what he was doing by twisting to the side. He slipped his hand into his pocket and clasped the vials. He was relieved to see that they were all still there and none of them had broken. As he encircled his hand around them, he wondered if they would work as he remembered. There were three. One was probably the poison, but he hoped the other two would be what he wanted.
As he brought his hand out, he thought about running into the Portal but discarded the idea.
The guards would be stunned for a few seconds at most. The door was his best option to escape even though it was further away. He knew nothing about what options the Portal might hold.
Something caught his eye and he looked at the doorway. Briggs was there and Helam could see some of the mercenaries behind him. Helam bit his lip to keep from smiling; his chances of escaping had just improved.
He might even be able to turn around the situation; all he had to do was get to the door. From their position at the stairs, Briggs and the men shouldn’t be as affected by the bright flash and would move into the room to meet him.
He’d never used the vials before and didn’t know if he could just drop them or if he had to throw them with enough force so they would break. He decided he wouldn’t chance it and threw them to the ground with all the strength he could muster. At the last moment, he remembered to close his eyes. What a mistake that would have been, he’d have been just as blind as the others.
When he heard the sound of the vials shattering, he was already running towards a gap in the Redd Guard that he’d taken note of just before he closed his eyes.
***
Adar moved several steps forward before he opened his eyes. While he ran, he’d taken a hold of the hilt of his sword and had unsheathed it at the same time his eyes sprung open. The blinding light was gone and there was now an acrid smell in the room. Smoke hung over the area where Helam had broken the vials.
Helam had moved with his eyes shut as well but in a different direction than Adar had assumed. Adar spun on one foot and sprinted to close the gap.
As he ran, he was careful to watch where he stepped to avoid tripping on a corpse or slipping on blood. The carnage made for a gruesome obstacle course. He noticed movement at the doorway.
Melyah’s nine bleeding burning fires! he thought when he saw that a Paroke Lieutenant General had entered and that he was followed by a number of other Radim soldiers. He did a double take when he realized that the soldiers were missing their insignia patches, just like the bandits he had put to death earlier.
It had been Helam behind those attacks all along.
Helam was almost to his men when Adar lashed out with his sword and sliced into Helam’s arm. The blow caught Helam off guard and he stumbled. Adar had already anticipated and compensated for Helam’s misstep. He rammed his sword into Helam’s back. As he watched, Helam cried out in pain and slumped forward.
Adar knew this moment would haunt him forever. He hadn’t known what else to do. Letting Helam escape to his men would have given him another platoon to continue the fight and even more lives would have been lost. However, Adar was already feeling the guilt swell within him for taking a man out by stabbing him in the back.
He didn’t have time to dwell on it because the Lieutenant General screamed and charged to his fallen general’s aid while Adar skid to a stop and let Helam’s forward momentum take his body off Adar’s sword.
The Lieutenant General attacked and Adar was barely able to keep the man from taking his arm, he spun out of the way at the last possible moment. Adar’s sudden movement caused him to trip over the outstretched arm of a corpse and he fell. He rolled to his feet as the Lieutenant General’s sword cracked a tile where he had been moments before.
Adar attacked and the other man’s sword met his half way, the man’s mouth deranged as he howled. Careful to keep an eye on his footing, Adar circled around the man as they fought, looking for an opening. The man looked inhuman, his face wracked with pain and grief. It was hard for Adar not to admire the man’s devotion and he wondered if any of his own men would feel anything like it if they ever witnessed his death.
He grunted at the thought as he met the man’s next attack. None of his men knew him well enough yet.
The mercenaries hadn’t moved into the room but had crowded the entryway to watch. Most of the Redd Guard were still shaking off the effects of the blinding light. Adar looked at Boulder, who was blinking but had a look of utter calm on his face.
Boulder frowned, as if annoyed by what Adar had done. Adar ground his teeth. Boulder didn’t have a grateful bone in his body. How many times would Adar need to save the man’s skin before Boulder would start to show a little appreciation?
Pushing away his thoughts about the Redd Guard, Adar focused on the Lieutenant General, who was charging again. Adar almost felt bad for what he was about to do next, but the man was being careless and would be easy to fool. Adar pretended to move to the left but went right, slashing with his sword as he did. The Lieutenant General shifted his blade but was unable to bring it to bear in a way to do significant damage. Adar felt the man’s blade cut into his coat and scratch his back while Adar’s sword connected to the man’s chest. Adar pushed his blade in up to its hilt. The officer’s eyes closed as he screamed. Adar ripped out his weapon as the man fell.
It was no surprise the mercenaries hadn’t charged with the Lieutenant General. Some stared at Helam, others at the fallen Lieutenant General, and still others towards the open Portal.
Adar could hear sounds from behind as the Redd Guard began to move. Boulder said something that he didn’t hear and the Redd Guard charged toward the doorway. The mercenaries saw them coming and fled. Those at the bottom of the stairs were cut down while they tried to fight their way through the congestion. Some went down the next level, instead of up, and Adar was about to point it out when he noticed a few of the Redd Guard break off to follow them.
While that was going on, Adar looked down at Helam and felt the scar on his chest flare up with pain. He couldn’t decide if it was his imagination or not, and he wondered if this would be the last time he would feel it.
Helam had fallen on his right arm and blood was pooling around on either side of him; his face was pale and his hair was matted with sweat. When he saw Adar staring at him, he opened his mouth.
“The Hunwei are coming,” he said, gasping for breath. “Soon.”
Adar frowned, not sure what to make of the statement. Helam had suffered a mortal blow and would soon bleed
to death. Nelion had reported that Elaire had said the same thing to Helam.
The Kopal had no way of knowing anything different from the rest of them. The Hunwei had never made an effort to communicate during the Hunwei war. Those that had decided to blindly follow the lunatics behind this movement were no better off than anybody else.
Adar knelt beside Helam, with his sword point resting on the tile floor, ready to use if necessary.
“Molach was the man who attacked me. He’s Kopal as well, isn’t he?”
Helam’s nostrils flared. “My son has nothing to do with them. It was somebody else.”
“I was wrong before about it all being about Elaire. You did this for Molach, didn’t you? You had every Kopal connected to them executed.”
Helam growled and spoke through clenched teeth. “Molach is not Kopal.”
Adar was right. It was obvious that his words had touched a nerve. If Adar was trying to protect his own son, he wouldn’t have wanted his adversary to be focused on tying off any loose ends that involved his family. No, he’d want his enemy focused on the Hunwei. Even in death, as small and inconsequential as his effort was, Helam was trying to protect his family.
It was a shame that Helam and Adar had been enemies, but Helam’s actions had made it impossible for them to be anything else. Adar couldn’t deny that Helam was skilled at making plans and that they could have worked together to a greater end. It was a lucky thing that Molach and Elaire had become involved with the Kopal and forced Helam’s hand tonight.
If Helam would have been able to see his plan play out, Adar had a feeling that he would not have been able to stop Helam because he wouldn’t have known about it until it was all over. Actually, he thought, that’s not correct. Helam would have killed me long before he’d taken over the palace. If both Adar and Abel had been dead, the council would have had no choice but to allow non-Rahids to take the tests to enter the Portal. Helam would have been a likely candidate.
The thought made him pause. How did you fight against someone like that? Blind luck wasn’t a battle plan.
Helam gasped and moved his lips as if to speak but nothing came out.
Boulder spoke, his voice sounding far away. “The mess just gets bigger.”
Adar followed Boulder’s eyes around the room as he refrained from pointing out that half of the deaths had been caused by the Redd Guard. He stood and looked at Boulder, with his hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword. He wasn’t surprised to see that there were still ten Redd Guard surrounding the now closed Portal.
“What now? Are you going to kill me? I am the only one that knows the truth about what happened down here. Everybody else is dead, except for the women, and they didn’t see much. What if I give you an oath that I won’t talk and I’ll require a similar oath from them?”
“And if they won’t give the oath?”
“They’ll give it.
Boulder shook his head. “A normal oath won’t do. I want a blood oath. I’ll give you the words.”
Adar hesitated, concerned about the wording, but he was outnumbered and didn’t have time to deal with trifles. “Agreed.” He was surprised at the request for a blood oath, an oath was an oath, whether it was accompanied by blood or not.
Boulder moved until he stood before Adar. “You’re already bleeding, but you will make a new cut anyway, when you look at the scar, I want you to remember your words this day.” Adar bristled as Boulder produced a dagger and handed it over. “It doesn’t have to be more than an inch long, just on your chest at the base of your neck.”
After Adar made the cut, he handed the dagger back to Boulder who made a similar incision on his own chest as well.
“Take your blood, mix it with mine, and then mix it with yours again.”
Adar touched the blood dribbling down his neck and mixed it with Boulder’s blood and then moved the bloody finger back to his chest and touched the new wound. Once he was done, Boulder touched the blood on his chest, mixed it with Adar’s, and then mixed it with his own.
“Repeat after me.” Boulder paused and cleared his throat. “I swear upon pain of death, I will tell no one of what I have seen, heard, or experienced this day in regard to the Portal. By my oath today, I become as if I was one with the Redd Guard in spirit and in blood. From this time, now and forever, I am the blood of the Redd Guard. The Redd Guard is the hard choice made without remorse, the Hunwei’s bane, the foe of all that oppress and obscure truth, and the death of the uninitiated. I now take these burdens upon me as well as if one of them. Brothers in blood, brothers in life, brothers in death.”
Adar uttered the words, half-surprised at what he was saying and that he wasn’t stopping to argue with Boulder about the word choice. At the end, Boulder nodded. “You have two days to procure oaths from the other two women, after that I will take matters into my own hands.”
Adar nodded, unwilling to speak aloud, afraid that his voice would reveal what he was feeling. When Boulder turned away, Adar clenched his hands, there wasn’t anything in the oath that he couldn’t live with, but he still felt like he’d been manipulated into more than he’d bargained for. He’d been willing to make an oath to keep a secret, nothing more. The words of the oath rang in his mind. I am now the blood of the Redd Guard. He supposed that Boulder had worded it that way to emphasize the gravity of the situation. Well, he thought, perhaps the Redd Guard will open up to me a bit more now that I am technically sworn to be one of them.
He couldn’t help but feel like this was something that Boulder had wanted from the beginning when he’d found Adar and Helam dueling before the open Portal. There was something else going on here, but he was at a loss for what it was. Was Boulder going to approach Adar with things he wanted done now? The Redd Guard is the hard choice made without remorse, the Hunwei’s bane, the foe of all that oppress and obscure truth, and the death of the uninitiated. What would Adar do if Boulder showed up with a request to kill somebody? Other questions danced around the back of his mind but he couldn’t quite put them to words so he ignored them for now.
As he watched Boulder return to talk with the guards surrounding the Portal, Adar made another oath. I swear that I will do whatever is necessary to protect my people from the Hunwei. With time, he would try to think about what had happened here today as an advantage, but it would be awhile. He wasn’t certain he would ever get over seeing his men dead at the hands of the Redd Guard.
His oath meant he couldn’t talk about what had happened, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use what he had learned. If there were still metalmen in the Portal, there may still be others somewhere else as well. He may even be able to find some of the legendary metalmen fighters. He would do his own research into the black boxes but one thing was certain. The faster he could become Ghar and get into the Portal the better. It may be the black boxes were useless or the metalman the only one still in existence. The quicker he learned the truth, the sooner he would know where things stood and what he would need to do.
Chapter 29
The early afternoon sun felt good and Adar closed his eyes while he absorbed the heat. It helped him feel more alert but it was no replacement for the sleep that he needed. He wanted nothing more than to return to his quarters in the Inner Wall of Napael base and get some rest but he didn’t see that happening for hours yet. It had been a whirlwind of a morning and his afternoon would be just as busy.
A meeting of all the remaining Radim Generals and the Rarbon Council had been convened so that Adar could give a report on the evening’s activities. Boulder had attended as well. The big man’s presence hadn’t been requested as far as Adar knew. How he had learned about it, Adar didn’t know.
As Adar had described the events in the Rarbon Portal he could feel Boulder’s eyes boring into him. Adar wouldn’t have put it past Boulder to kill him immediately if it sounded like Adar was going to break his oath.
When he got to the part about the Redd Guard killing his men, Adar looked at Boulder. The man’s f
ace was impassive as ever. Given what he knew about the man he doubted that Boulder would care if he revealed that particular tidbit. The Redd Guard was above the law in many ways. Adar had never heard of any of their actions officially questioned. Behind closed doors when not as many ears were listening, it happened all the time.
After hesitating for several seconds, Adar skipped over that part and explained that Helam and his men were evenly matched and that if it hadn’t been for the arrival of the Redd Guard, he might not have survived. It galled him to cover for the Redd Guard but he had no other choice. If he had said what had really happened, there would have been uncomfortable questions about why his men had been killed. That might have led some to speculate about his men learning too much. It was best to avoid the issue altogether.
Nelion had been there as well. Before the meeting had started, Adar had been able to steal a private moment with her to fill her in on several key points about what had happened, though he had kept much of it from her as well. She didn’t need to know the truth about how his men had died. He hadn’t required an oath from her yet, but she had promised not to talk about what she had seen. Once she was done, she in turn had told him about Elaire’s death. He could tell by the haunted look in her eyes that there was more to it than she had said, but it would have to wait.
Once his report was complete, the questions had gone on for hours. During the course of the questioning, Tere had arrived with several members of the council in tow.
Adar had been wondering about their absence but Chairperson Marala Junicuy and Abel had been anxious to get going. Adar had hoped for a chance to speak to Tere first but Barrow Hobson—one of the council members Tere had with him—immediately called Tere before the council.
So Adar had learned along with everybody else how Tere and several of the Napael soldiers had snuck onto the Paroke base and stopped Helam’s men from finishing their executions.
Adar snorted as he stopped outside Helam’s home. Helam had done all of this for Molach. The tinge of jealousy he felt for the bond between the father and son was annoying. He pushed it away and looked at Helam’s home.