The Path of the Sword

by Remi Michaud

“Kurin?”

  He did not stop his praying.

  “Kurin, where are we going?”

  Still nothing.

  “Kurin, damn it. Where are you taking me?”

  Finally, a reaction. The words quavered and stumbled to a halt. Then started again.

  “Leave him be,” Mikal advised quietly. “He'll be done soon and then you can ask him.”

  Frustration exploded in bright shades of red across Jurel's eyes. He trembled with pent up anger and turned his glare to Mikal.

  “No. I want to know. I have a right to know. I've been dragged halfway across the world, survived the bloody cold, I've been attacked, hurt so badly that I can't sleep for the pain, forced to stumble through the bloody night like a criminal, and I don't know why. I can leave the why for later. I just want to know where and how much longer until we get there. I've lost everything I care about. My father, my life, everything,” Pain slipped into his voice on stealthy feet, sidling its way between the fractures of his anger like a thief in the night. “All I have left are you two and this road. This journey to someplace unknown only to me.”

  He did not realize that he had started to shout as his rage began to break through the wall he had so carefully built, like flood waters break through a dam that was never meant to handle that much stress until, when he fell silent, his anger at least partially spent, he noticed Kurin eying him over the fire. The eye contact between the two was an uncomfortable one. It was a showdown of sorts, like a fractious teenager and his father: one angry and full of self-righteousness and the other, calm and full of love, but implacable.

  “Self-pity does not become you, Jurel. What have you gained?” Kurin, the mentor and the philosopher, asked.

  “What? What have I gained? The ability to kill. An ability that I was very happy to live without.” He had endured years of bullying at Valik's hands. The torments he had suffered all for the sake of a selfish fool had seemed to be the height of anguish. He would gladly go back to that harmless jostling.

  “Is that all?”

  The old man's eyes bored into his own, spreading open the layers of his soul until he peered into the ashen remains of Jurel's self, a cored out apple left to rot unnoticed under the tree that had carelessly dropped it.

  “What else is there?” Jurel muttered, turning away from eyes that knew too much.

  “There is you. You think to the future. The future is unknown and unknowable. You care so much about what might be that you ignore what is.” Gently spoken, the words still picked at Jurel, dug steel tipped claws into his mind and scraped as mercilessly as a predator at his soft underbelly. “There is now. There is you.”

  He threw his hands in the air “What about me? A simple farmer forced to face death—from the boredom of a million identical trees as much as swords—for reasons that no one seems to think he needs to know, going somewhere he doesn't want to go.” He faltered, trembling and breathing heavily, trying to hold on to the fury that covered new wounds like a field dressing.

  “Then you have much to learn.” Kurin bowed his head again as if to return to his prayers.

  “And when I ask the questions that will allow me to learn, you ignore me!”

  “You ask the wrong questions. You ask the wrong person.”

  “Really? Then tell me, O wise one, what questions should I be asking?”

  “I don't know. You will when you admit it to yourself.”

  Slamming his fist to the frozen ground, Jurel rose and strode beyond the light of the fire and into the woods. He did not hear Kurin's words to Mikal, “Leave him be,” for his thoughts were too untamed to allow for something as organized as listening. He stumbled further away from the camp, from the light, and dimly he felt his foot connect on a root. He fell, sprawling gracelessly on the ground. He lay there, not feeling the tearing of some of the careful stitching in his side, shivering as icy chill began to work its way through his cloak. He lay there, trying to rein in the stampede of his tattered life as it rumbled across the landscape of his mind.

  He could not. He tried but just like that bovine herd that had almost trampled him so many years ago during an innocent child's prank, all he could do was try to run ahead of it and keep it from crushing him to cold dirt. Carefully, he raised himself and propped himself against the bole of a tree, unconsciously adopting the same marionette position that he had assumed across from Kurin so short a time ago and gazed unseeing into the blackness that seemed to reflect back into him like a mirror that bared his own deepest hurts and showed them to him with a stark reality.

  In the depths of his mind, a pair of eyes, familiar and alien all at once, stared at him accusingly, asking the question that he wanted answered. Forget the questions, “What's going on?” and “Where are we going?” Important enough questions, but that's not what those eyes asked.

  The question that those eyes asked was, “Who are you?”

  That was a good question. Who was he? An orphan, a farmer's son, a vagrant, a killer. He was all of these things but there was something else. Something more. A farmer's son picks apples out of trees, not arrows out of mid air. A vagrant does not learn how to use a sword in two weeks. Well, not well enough to matter in a fight against battle-hardened soldiers sporting the latest fashion in armor anyway. These were things a killer learned.

  So, a killer then, first and foremost. But would not a killer enjoy turning his blade red with the guts of his victims? Did he not? Perhaps, but surely the pleasure would linger; surely he would not be consumed by guilt after the blood-letting was over. All right then. Not a killer. Not completely.

  But then, what? Who?

  Hints, clues within clues, mysteries wrapped within enigmas and served on a platter of shadows, and nothing told him anything useful. Frustration flared again battling with confusion, tussling with melancholy. It gnawed at him like a hundred cockroaches, leaving him an empty shell. No, not empty. Black. Black as the forest at night. Never more than an arm span away yet never visible. Never obvious.

  It was as he was nodding off into a frigid slumber that he realized those eyes were an amalgam of two sets of eyes, two disparate people in his life that had meant so much to him in entirely different ways: Kurin, the teacher and fatherly figure who tried to teach him something; and Shenk, the thug, would-be assassin, and his first victim.

  Chapter 43

  Dawn broke as dawns usually do. The sun was born of its earthen womb far to the east and began again its majestic trek across the firmament, gazing benevolently, innocently, across the land as if each day, it experienced all the wonders of life anew. The pristine snow answered, competing with the sun, arguing over who was the brighter. The end result, of course, was that no matter which way one looked, up or down, squinted eyes were necessary to keep away the blindness.

  If it were not so bright, they would see the river was flowing rapidly again, courtesy of a late winter thaw, carrying sheets of broken ice as smoothly and gently as if they were the finest of crystal, some small enough to pick up and throw, while others could have supported the weight of ten men and their horses. The forest carried on as always, as eternally predictable as the sun, standing alongside them and watching their progress.

  They were back on the road, the two horses plodding along side by side, Jurel on the roan's bare back and Kurin once again sharing a saddle with Mikal—for all the horses the Soldiers had ridden, there was not a one to be found after their flight—their thudding hooves drumming a dull counterpoint to the rolling cadence of their gait. It was hypnotizing, and since Jurel's eyes were half closed anyway to stave off the glare, it was easy for him to nod off every once in a while—which proved dangerous; he still had some difficulty maintaining his seat when he was alert, let alone when he was asleep. Kurin had already repaired torn stitches twice since setting out that day.

  Conversation was in short supply. Jurel still felt uneasy from the words spoken around the last night's fire. Kurin did not seem to mind; he held on to Mikal with one hand and read from
a book in the other. As always, Mikal's eagle eyes ran over the land ahead, watching for movement.

  Up ahead the road curved out of view behind the trees. It was difficult to tell how far ahead since there were no real landmarks to compare against—except for the infrequent villages scattered a day or so apart, but Jurel surmised that it was maybe a half mile. He began to imagine that around that bend, they would come across some fantastic sight: an ancient fortress raised by the legendary Aelephim thousands of years before man walked these lands, tall spindly spires reaching for the skies like alabaster fingers, for example; or perhaps the squat, beautifully carved entrance to an underground heaven carved by the Daelephim; or he would make do with a grand city to dwarf even Merris, with glass sided palaces glittering in the sun and temples spanning one end of the visible world to the other like the stories Daved had told him in front of a wood stove not so long ago. Which, after seeing Merris, Jurel found hard to imagine at all; Merris was pretty big, as he recalled. Anything would do. Anything to alleviate the gloom and boredom and the myriad little discomforts.

  Around the bend, of course, there was more of the same: trees and river and snow glare, and Jurel was unaccountably disappointed.

  Another village consisting of a few rough wooden hovels, a tiny general store, and an inn that would perhaps house three or four weary travelers, came and went but beyond that, their journey remained as boring as ever.

  “Are we almost there yet?” Jurel asked, rousing himself from his reveries.

  “No Jurel.”

  To him, it was as if they wandered aimlessly. Perhaps Kurin did not have a destination in mind after all. Perhaps he was just playing the vagrant, looking for just the right village to hole up in. Then he and Jurel would settle down and Jurel would learn about healing and history from the old man. He turned in on himself, letting those images soothe him. After the blood and the killing, it was like cold stream of fresh water on a hot day. The images of setting a broken leg and tending to a case of ague let him forget for a little while that just a few hours ago, he had been fighting for his life.

  In the forest, fifty paces past the first trees, an unnoticed shadow passed silently.

  * * *

  High Priest Calen sat, eyes fixed on the depths of his scrying bowl. He was sweating though his office was quite cool. His left hand drummed a nervous staccato on his desk as he watched the progress of two horses carrying three men and he breathed too heavily, his ruddy cheeks puffing in and out slightly with each breath, for a man who had spent the last forty-five minutes sitting at his desk, staring into a porcelain bowl, even if that man was corpulent.

  He was having a very bad day.

  A few minutes earlier, a young acolyte had timidly knocked at his door and entered before Calen could answer. Calen had berated the young lady but his tongue froze when the acolyte interrupted him, weakly informing him that it was Grand Prelate Maten who ordered her to deliver a message and that she had leave to do whatever it took to see that Calen received it. Immediately.

  The message was a summons. Calen was ordered to attend the Grand Prelate as soon as possible and Calen heard the underlying tone: 'as soon as possible' meant 'right now'. It did not take much imagination to know what it was that Maten wanted. Fifty men dead. Damn those inept fools!

  The plan had been a simple one: exceeding expectations, Kerwal had provided two platoons, one northbound, one south, to converge on the heretic and his allies and trap them in a pincer. It should have been an easy thing. But the Threimes platoon had smelled victory when they detected their prey. Like starved wolves smelling blood, they had rushed in to attack at first sight. Unfortunately, the wolves found their prey were lions. And now they were dead. Damn them!

  Maten was not happy. This was supposed to have been an easy mission. Three men against a hundred would have ensured triumph. Fifty should have been enough, but that blasted Kurin was as wily as a fox. There was only one hope left. The platoon from Grayson City were set up, prepared to ambush the renegades and Calen prayed to Gaorla that they would be successful.

  It would happen soon. They were nearly there. Just a few more minutes and then he would answer the summons in all haste and humility as anyone should when the Grand Prelate demanded their attention. Right now.

  He wiped hot sweat from his brow, blinked salt from his eyes, and he watched.

  * * *

  “Can't you just give me a hint?” Jurel begged. He had a plan. Pester the old man enough and he would tell Jurel their destination out of sheer desire to shut him up.

  “Soon, Jurel. We will be there soon. Less than a week,” Kurin replied with exasperation.

  “A week? You call that soon?” Jurel scoffed. His plan was sound, based on years of observation. It had been used by countless children for countless ages and, ultimately, the children always managed to wheedle what they wanted from their frustrated parents. Kurin was not a parent. Or maybe he was just an exceptionally stubborn man, because for all of Jurel's efforts, Kurin's defenses remained in place. “Come on Kurin. What does it matter if you tell me where we're going?”

  “It matters.”

  “But-”

  “Silence,” Mikal ordered. “Listen.”

  He was grim, intent on something, but when Jurel strained his ears, he heard nothing but what he always heard. The river grumbled as usual, trees whispered in the wind, the odd crack-thump that announced snow overburdening a branch. Through it all, the dull thud of hooves. That was all.

  It took a moment for Jurel to register what it was that bothered Mikal. There was no bird song. There was no shuffling in the underbrush, like every animal had embarked on a mass exodus from the area. There was only one reason for that. Jurel tensed, unconsciously checked his sword and squinted his eyes to see better in the glare.

  He searched the trees, carefully picking out every detail. Knotted oak, tufts of brush like badly cut hair, brown and yellow leaves, a bright glint of sun reflecting from ice; all seemed normal. Consciously, he forced his shoulders to relax, and he took his hand off the hilt of his sword.

  Then the piece of shiny ice moved. A roar erupted from within the trees, the sound of men charging into battle, and the treeline exploded with steel and dark tabards.

  “Move!” Mikal cried out and spurred his horse to a gallop.

  Wasting no time, Jurel did likewise and held on as his roan surged forward, trying to keep pace with Mikal's charger. Men appeared in front of them, three, four, five, and bows were raised but Mikal did not slow down. Instead he ducked his head and Kurin let loose with another blast. Two of the men erupted into flames, and loosed their arrows simultaneously. The arrows, lit by Kurin's arcane fire, flew wide over their heads like glowing kestrels, and Mikal bore down with his sword drawn, passing through the remaining three like death's reaper. His blade swung scythelike, and a head tumbled to the ground.

  Jurel, right behind, was reminded of Valik's most prized possession: the ball that they kicked in the field. He mimicked Mikal's attack, and a second head flew through the air and tumbled to the ground. He scores!

  They did not slow. They did not look back. They kicked their horses to ever greater speed and hunched their heads as low to equine necks as they could, feeling the tickle of mane on their noses, feeling tickles between their shoulder blades as though arrows were already embedded there. Arrows appeared in the road ahead, seemingly growing from the ground as they landed, quivering as if in frustration at having missed their targets. At his side, Kurin responded. The sound of fire crackled to life and whistled backward.

  Then the fires stopped. There was a yelp of surprised pain and when Jurel glanced over, he saw Mikal was alone on his horse.

  A glance over his shoulder provided a dismaying sight. Kurin was rolling on the ground, end over end like a cart wheel that had broken from its axle. Jurel pulled the roan's mane with all his might and the horse screamed, rearing up onto its hind legs. Even before the horse settled, Jurel jumped off, flailed frantically for purchase
in the air and landed heavily.

  Rolling to his feet, he ran to Kurin's inert body and knelt. It took only a glance to see the arrow that protruded from the old man's thigh. It took another glance to see that he was breathing though only the gods knew how.

  Metal men thundered down the road with drawn swords, crying savagely for blood, closing the distance between themselves and the young man standing over his hurt friend.

  They clashed. Jurel swung, a mighty blow that cut the air with a hum, and he was rewarded with a screech of metal and a sickening liquid crunch. He dove, rolled between hooves, pulling his sword free in the process and spun, delivering a vicious backhand swipe, cutting into a leg that spouted hot red like a belching volcano.

  Before he could get a third attack off, a shield battered into his side and sent him reeling. He responded with a wild swing that missed its mark. It was enough to hold his attacker back but not enough to slow the others.

  As he lunged back through the line, his sword bounced awkwardly off a shield and his arm went numb. It was only by sheer force of will that he kept his fingers wrapped around the hilt. It was his lifeline. Standing over Kurin, he was joined by Mikal whose arrival was announced with the fall of two Soldiers in quick succession.

  As if in a nightmare, Jurel pressed himself to ever greater speed but each attack seemed to fly in slow motion. It felt as though he were underwater, surreal and ponderous. Every time his sword struck home, felling a man, two more jumped into the gap and pressed the attack.

  The world blurred into a haze of blades and blood and bodies, and no matter their efforts, the soldiers came on. His chest heaved great wagonloads of air that entered his mouth cold but somehow burned when it reached his lungs and the wound in his side ached savagely, pulsing at the same break-neck tempo as his tripping heart. His arm grew leaden as he fought. Each strike came a little slower, a little less powerfully. He heard a grunt of pain that nearly paralyzed him with fear. Beside him, the swordmaster stumbled and with legs that turned to water, Mikal fell, clutching at his belly.