by Morgan Rice
Irrien knew that the man was right, but he still hated the weakness of it. Only a weak man would talk about which way his loyalty had to go to stay safe. Only a weak man would assume that he couldn’t keep his honor and protect himself. Right then, though, Irrien felt weaker than all of them there. He couldn’t stand. He barely had the strength to lift his head and look around.
What he saw made him snarl in anger, and that just made a slave girl come forward, offering him water as if he were an invalid. The fact that he was an invalid only made it worse. They were all standing around, waiting for him to die. Irrien could see it in them; in every line of their posture and veiled glance toward him.
The priests were looking on sanctimoniously, as if their gods had anything to do with this. The men were looking on with regret or worry or calculation, at least some of them probably trying to decide if they should strike for the leadership of his band early, or leave it until the first few had killed one another. Even the slaves were looking on fearfully, pressing closer to other men as though trying to secure a future where they wouldn’t be sacrificed on his pyre.
Just the sight of it made Irrien angry, and he fed that anger like a blacksmith at the bellows. He fed it with thoughts of how Ulren had looked as he’d attacked, with the image of Akila, who’d plunged a sword through his shoulder and made it so hard to parry. He fed it with every slight, every glance out of place.
Most of all, he fed it with the thought of Stephania.
Irrien rose from his bed with all the ponderous power of a spiny-bear. A slave tried to push him down, and Irrien sent her sprawling with a single shove. He roared with effort as he put one foot in front of the other, pushing past his men, brushing aside any attempt at help. He could see the priest’s brazier ahead, glowing hot with smoldering coals.
Irrien walked to it like a dead man, shuffling with step after step. Another man might have fallen, but he was not another man. He had suffered worse out in the dust lands, hadn’t he? He had felt the heat of days without water, had killed things that barely had names. He was strong. He was stronger than all of them.
With a bellow, he plunged the stump of his arm down into the brazier.
The pain was instant, and total. Irrien heard screaming, and it took him a moment to even realize it was his. In that moment, it seemed as though he was floating above his body, watching from afar as he pulled his cauterized wound from the flames.
He didn’t collapse, because to collapse then would have been to die—if not of his injuries, then certainly at the hands of one of his men.
Instead, Irrien forced himself to turn, stalking toward the man who’d talked of leaving for Ulren’s forces. Irrien grabbed him by the throat, pouring all of his strength into that grip as he lifted. The warrior’s feet came clear of the deck, and Irrien saw him scrabbling for a knife. Irrien ignored it. Knives didn’t matter.
Irrien threw him, launching the other man over the rail of the ship as easily as another man might have discarded a pail of fish guts. He hit the water with a splash, but right then, Irrien was too busy concentrating on the others gathered there.
“You think I’m dead?” he demanded. “You think I’m dying? I live!”
He stood, spreading his arms wide, his whole one and his ruined one open to invite anyone who wanted to try to challenge him.
“Do you think I am so easy to kill that Ulren can do it? Do you?”
He looked around at his men, meeting their eyes, with every look a challenge. Fight him, that look said, and he would kill them. It dared them to try their luck at becoming the First Stone, the leader, the strongest. It promised death for the slightest hint of defiance.
None of them dared to meet his eyes.
Irrien went back to the spot where his throne sat on the deck. He sat in it as slowly and deliberately as his remaining strength would allow.
“Someone bring me wine. Good wine. And none of your priestly concoctions. Someone fetch me meat. I will take back the strength I have lost. And then someone fetch a woman to my cabin. It has been a long day!”
That got a laugh from them.
“The three things a man needs in life!” one of his men joked.
Irrien shook his head. “There is another. A man needs victory, and I mean to take it. Today, Ulren struck at me with all the speed his aging body could give him. Did I die? No!”
A servant brought him wine, and Irrien drank it hungrily. Very deliberately, he crushed the goblet in the hand that was still whole.
“I did not die. I will not die, until all my enemies are long dead.” He glanced around them then, seeing who nodded, who was still frowning. “I will not stop. I will not weaken. I will not turn from my purpose! Let Ulren and his whore have a city we have stripped bare. We will take it back.”
He took meat from the second servant, chewing a chunk of it and tossing the rest aside.
“They will not distract me,” he said. “We will go to Haylon and do what we intended. We will crush all those who resist us there. We will slay this so-called child of the Ancient Ones. We will make their harbor run red with blood.”
He pushed himself to his feet, barely finding the strength as his hand latched onto the hair of one of his slave girls.
“And when we come back, we will kill Ulren, and make his so-called wife suffer as no one has suffered before. Are you with me?”
That got a cheer from his men.
“I said are you with me!” he bellowed, and now the answering cheer took in the rest of the ships around him. They had seen his strength, and it would carry him to his enemies.
Once he reached them, it would take more than a missing hand to stop him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Telum found a strange kind of peace in piloting his small boat across a sea that seemed far too large for it. The waves battered at its hull, the wind tearing at its sails and the banner Telum had made, showing a sword pointed straight at a human heart. Still, the whole thing seemed little more than a day on a flat lake might have been.
The only disturbance to it came in the form of his father’s instructions, which burned at the back of his mind, the target of his deadliness as clear as the memory of his father’s own face as Telum had stabbed him.
That had been necessary. He would not be controlled. Not by anyone, even Daskalos.
The power of the sorcerer’s life sat within him, gradually becoming a part of him. Telum wondered idly what effect it would have on him, and what effect the power of an Ancient One might have. Perhaps he would have to find out.
For now, though, he guided his small boat across the ocean, enjoying the darting of shearwaters as they dove for fish, the plunging of sharks as they hunted after larger game. All of life appeared to be a game of killing and being killed. At least the ocean had the honesty to admit it.
“I will find you,” Telum promised the man whose image Daskalos had burned into his mind. “I will kill you, I will kill the woman, and I will be free of this.”
How would he kill him, though? In his time in the sorcerer’s home, Telum had learned so many ways to kill, after all. Would he do it quickly or slowly, mercifully or painfully?
“I am not a torturer,” he decided, and that was a strange feeling, because it was almost the first thing about himself that he had decided. It felt like a good thing to decide, though, and Telum nodded to himself. He would kill this foe swiftly, looking him in the eye, if he could. Perhaps there would be some kind of meaning in that. Perhaps he would be braver than Daskalos had been when Telum had stabbed him.
Telum wondered if his father had died yet. His carefully hidden life was gone, but perhaps he had preserved some trickle of strength. Enough for another few years, perhaps, because who knew how much strength a sorcerer could hoard? Would he hold to that, or would he spend the power trying for some kind of recovery or vengeance? Telum found that he didn’t care. Another thing that he had decided.
He looked up to see that there were specks on the horizon, and Telum was good
enough at seeing things as they were to know that these would be ships. He saw the moment when one of them changed course to meet him and furled his sail, waiting.
He didn’t have to wait long. The ship was a large thing, with banks of oars on the side that made it look as though it was held up on a hundred feet. It pulled close to him, figures looking over the side.
“Ho there,” one called. “Where do you think you’re going in such a tiny craft?”
“Haylon,” Telum said. He saw no reason to lie. “There is a man there I’m meant to kill. Perhaps I will kill other people there too. I haven’t decided yet.”
“He hasn’t decided,” the man said with a laugh. “Hear that, boys? He hasn’t decided!”
There was more laughter, and Telum wasn’t sure that he entirely understood it. Wasn’t that what he had just said? Perhaps they were fools of some kind. He looked over at their boat. Would it get him to Haylon quicker? It didn’t have the spells woven into it that his did, but it did have many more oars.
“You shouldn’t be out on the ocean by yourself,” the man doing the talking said. “You should come with us.”
“And are you going to Haylon?” Telum asked.
He saw the other man shrug. “If that’s where you want to go. Come aboard.”
Telum considered this, and then nodded to himself. He pulled his boat alongside, and when they threw down a rope, he tied it to his small vessel. He clambered up it with the grace of an acrobat, moving in silence despite the crystal armor his father had made for him. He stood on the deck of the other men’s ship, looking around at them and trying to make sense of them. They wore an odd assortment of clothes, although the symbols on them seemed to be the ones his father had shown him were for Felldust. There were about twenty or thirty on the deck, presumably with more below.
“Right,” the man who’d been speaking said. “The idiot is aboard. Somebody take those weapons off him and strap him to an oar. We’ll sell him once we reach Delos.”
“I am not going to Delos,” Telum said evenly. “I am going to Haylon.”
“A slave goes where he’s told,” the other man snapped back, and moved to strike Telum with a whip of braided cord. Telum’s reflexes meant that he got to watch it moving slowly through the air, observing the elegance of its arc before he stepped inside the sweep, catching it in his gloved hand.
“I am no man’s slave,” he said. “You get one chance to live.”
Of course, the man did not take it. What else was to be expected of someone with such a strange sense of humor?
“Kill him!” the man said, drawing a dagger.
Telum didn’t waste time drawing a weapon of his own. Instead, he jerked the other man toward him, punching stiffened fingers into his throat with all of his enhanced strength. He heard cartilage breaking, then bone, and the man fell.
Telum turned to see the other men on the deck advancing on him. Now, he drew his sword, letting the runes carved on the meteorite iron gleam red in the sunlight. He considered them and made yet another among what seemed to be a growing stream of choices.
“You will die first,” he promised, pointing.
He leapt straight at the man he’d chosen, and it seemed as though these men had never seen someone jump higher than their heads before, because the man recoiled in shock. It made him a pitifully easy target for the thrust of Telum’s blade. It was strange, how quickly these people died.
More died as they came rushing in, with shouts and threats that Telum assumed were supposed to be intimidating. He stepped between them, letting his crystal armor absorb one blow, while he gave two in return, cutting down the men to the left and right of him. He spun low, cutting a man’s legs from under him, then grabbed a knife from another man’s belt and threw it, embedding it deep into a man’s throat.
Weapons clattered from Telum’s armor in a cacophony that was more irritating than dangerous. Such things couldn’t be avoided with so many men pressed into so small a space. Even so, Telum managed to keep the blows from striking the unarmored parts of him. He swayed back from strikes like a reed, parried like a snake, leapt and dodged like a dancer.
Around him, men died.
It was so easy to kill them; almost as easy as thinking it. They seemed to be so slow in comparison to Telum’s sword, so weak compared to his power. He struck at them in different ways then—with ferocity, with playful abandon, even with a kind of love that held them close only to release them gushing blood.
Telum killed, and killed. He released lives from their fragile shells one sword stroke at a time, and when he ran out of men to kill on the deck, he headed below, killing the overseers and the sailors there. He surveyed the slaves, chained to their oars, unable to do anything they were not commanded. Telum knew better than anyone what it was like not to be free, to have someone else deciding your fate. Pity welled up in him, and he did the only merciful thing, his sword rising and falling as he freed them from the pains of the world.
By the time he was done, his armor should have been covered in blood. Instead, the crystal seemed to absorb it, glowing with a faint white light. Cracked fragments of it became whole again, healing over like flesh. Telum stepped up onto the deck, wondering if perhaps he could still take this vessel to Haylon. No. If he’d wanted that, he would have needed to leave the oarsmen alive. He hadn’t considered that, and even if he had… wasn’t death a better thing, a more merciful thing?
He couldn’t be selfish like that. Who was he to keep men from their fates?
So Telum clambered back down into his small boat, cutting it free from the now drifting ghost ship. He turned it until it caught the wind, and set off toward Haylon once more. His task still lay ahead of him; this had been nothing more than a small diversion.
He hoped that this “Thanos” would provide more of a challenge.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ceres stood in Haylon’s square, watching people prepare for the next wave of the attack and trying to coordinate it all. Akila was off helping with the reconstruction of the beach defenses, which meant that people were turning to her as their leader.
Ceres had felt the pressure of that before, in Delos, but here, there were more people depending on her. There were people arriving every day, and they needed to be provided for, given things to do, and protected. Last time, Ceres had failed to do that.
“It will be all right,” Thanos said beside her. When he touched her arm, it felt as though that contact was grounding her, preventing her from spiraling off into despair. “This won’t be like Delos.”
How had he guessed what was worrying her? The answer to that was clear: Thanos knew her better than anyone. His presence made the whole situation feel better, too. Ceres found herself watching him even when she should have been trying to organize the distribution of weapons, or work out where to bottle up the enemies as they arrived.
“I’m here,” Thanos said. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep you safe.”
Ceres kissed him for that. Well, that, and because she wanted to.
She wished they’d been able to find more time together since she’d helped to defeat the attack. The truth was that there had been so much to do, and so little time, that it had been overwhelming. She wished that they’d been able to spend their time exploring the island together.
“Haylon is beautiful,” Ceres said. “I saw more of it when I was flying over. There are little hidden valleys, and some of them look so green and vibrant, it’s as though they’re completely untouched.”
Thanos smiled at that. “You make walking at the heart of a storm sound so… normal.”
“The strange thing is that it felt normal,” Ceres said. How could she explain the power that flowed inside her? “With the Ancient Ones, the difference… it’s not just having power. It’s like seeing the world in an entirely different way, Thanos. It’s as though I can look at it and just understand it all. Some part of me knows how it all fits together.”
“And then you can reshape it,” T
hanos said.
Ceres nodded. “Although only in some ways. It’s about fitting in with the world, and that means that some things take more power than others. They weren’t gods. They just… it was so natural for them, I think, that they didn’t understand what it was like to be anything else. It’s part of why some of the things they created hurt people.”
It was also why Ceres found herself grateful for having been brought up with no awareness of what she was. It felt as though she understood the consequences of her power better, now. She could feel what it would mean to other people if she reshaped the world on a whim. She knew about the pain that the powerful could cause without even trying. Even like that, though, there were still whole oceans of power within her, still swirling and trying to settle. Ceres could see how easily that could overwhelm her.
“You’re worried about whether you deserve this power, aren’t you?” Thanos asked. Again, it seemed as though he saw more of her than Ceres had thought. “If anyone does, you do, Ceres. You’re the best person I’ve ever met. You’re smart, and kind, and without you, a lot of people would be dead right now.”
“And what happens when I forget?” Ceres asked. “This kind of power… what if I don’t use it well?”
“Don’t worry,” Thanos said. “I’ll protect you. Even from yourself.”
That was good to hear, but even so, Ceres shrugged. “You don’t need to protect me. Just promise me that you’ll stay safe.”
“No one is safe,” Thanos said. “With a battle like this, anything could happen. But I’ll try.”
He sounded as though he’d been thinking about it a lot. Probably he had. There was something about this seemingly never-ending war that meant it was hard to promise anything about the future.
Perhaps Ceres should have guessed what would happen next, as Thanos took her hand.
“Ceres,” he said, “I know you turned me down before, and I know you had good reasons to do it, but I don’t want to just leave things as they are. We might both die tomorrow. If we do, I’d like it to be as husband and wife.”