The Wounded Guardian

by Duncan Lay

  ‘Ohhh, the bear she woke up angry, she didn’t like the shock, she wanted to be sleeping, not humped by a something with a giant— whooah!’

  Tomon had tossed his head angrily as Martil built up volume in preparation for the end of the line and nearly unseated Martil. But he refused to let that stop him and essayed another verse.

  ‘The something discovered a lion, sleeping in the rain, he sneaked up close behind it then grabbed it by the mane. Ohhh, the lion gave a roar, it knew that this was wrong, but there was no escaping the something’s enormous…’

  ‘Good day to you!’ a voice interrupted him cheerfully.

  Martil, who had his eyes closed to better remember the words, opened them in surprise. It took a moment to register that a burly man was standing on the road in front of him. He was heavily bearded and dressed in fine clothes that had seen better days. His green jerkin had unidentifiable stains down the front and his leather trousers and boots were scarred and patched. By his side was a single-bladed axe of the type favoured by woodsmen the world over. But he had a broad smile that was somehow infectious and Martil found himself smiling back.

  Martil hauled at Tomon’s reins and stopped perhaps five paces from the smiling man. As soon as he had done so, Martil cursed himself. Friendly woodsmen did not go hailing single travellers and offering them a guided tour of the most interesting trees in the forest. He should have kicked Tomon into a gallop. Still, he was on horseback and it was only one man, so he took a swig of wine and wondered if this would liven up his day a little.

  ‘Nice song. Didn’t recognise the tune. What was the “something”?’ the man asked. Martil had expected a gruff sort of voice but the man spoke well, albeit with a strong Norstaline accent.

  ‘Can’t bloody remember. Zorva’s balls, I wish I could. Only thing that’s clear is it has a staff a wizard would be proud of,’ Martil admitted.

  ‘Zorva’s balls?’ The woodsman looked amused. ‘That’s an expression I haven’t heard before. Most people believe just mentioning the name of the Dark God is bad enough, without insulting his balls.’

  Martil shrugged. ‘It’s an old habit of mine. If Zorva worried about it, he would have claimed me years ago.’ He took another mouthful of wine. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a song to sing.’

  The woodsman shifted position and took a subtle step further into the road. It looked innocent but it also helped block any move to ride past him. Martil registered that this stretch of road was lined with bushes that were both thick and close to the edge, making it difficult to ride around. It made the hair on the back of his neck itch and he had to force himself to listen to the woodsman’s words.

  ‘Well, I hope you’re not planning to take that act into the taverns,’ he was saying. ‘We may only be country folk but we do like our songs to have a tune.’

  ‘Singing was never my talent,’ Martil admitted. ‘But is it the custom in this part of Norstalos to waylay a man and criticise his singing ability?’

  The man chuckled. ‘No, but I have a young daughter and she’ll only be asking me what the last line of each verse means.’

  Martil nodded wisely. ‘There are things the young should not hear,’ he agreed.

  Unbidden, an image of screaming children watching their parents being hacked down by vengeful soldiers sprang into his mind. He shook his head, as if he could shake that away. ‘I promise to keep my voice down,’ he said hastily, then took another mouthful of wine.

  ‘Thirsty work, singing?’ the man said meaningfully, gesturing at the wineskin.

  Martil waved it at him. ‘You want some? Tell me your name.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I like to know who I am drinking with.’

  The man hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Edil,’ he replied.

  The way he said it indicated he expected Martil to know something about him but it meant nothing. Perhaps the man was a known sheep-shagger. Martil did not care. He threw the wineskin to Edil, who caught it deftly and took a mouthful.

  ‘Not bad—but I expected a rich man like yourself to be drinking something better,’ the woodsman announced. Martil found there was something about the man that kept him talking. He had a way about him, some sort of roguish charm that seemed to belie the rough clothes and unwashed look. I am a better man than this, it seemed to say, I have just fallen on hard times.

  Martil held out his hand for his wineskin. ‘I’m no rich man. All I have is on this horse. No wife, no children, no land, no friends, no home,’ he sighed, feeling the weight of those words.

  Edil snorted. ‘Well, it looks rich enough to me. Good horse, two swords—large saddlebags. Any of those would make me a rich man. All I have is children.’

  ‘Your daughter?’

  Edil laughed. ‘What good is a little girl? No, I have three sons, and they are valuable to me.’ He whistled and Martil turned to see three young men step out of the bushes to take up position—one behind him and one to either side. Like their father they had beards in various stages of growth and wore clothes that had seen better days—and quite possibly had been made for other men, judging by the ill-fitting way they hung. It had obviously been months since they had last been cleaned as well. One held a stout stick whose tip had been hardened in a fire, the other two had crude axes in their hands.

  Martil may have been part-drunk but he was not blind. He turned back to Edil and laughed.

  ‘You have a strange sense of humour, stranger. Have you remembered the animal for your song?’ Edil asked suspiciously.

  Martil rubbed his face. ‘I wish I had. No, I can’t believe I just sat here and let you box me into this ridiculously simple trap.’

  Edil nodded. ‘Fate is strange, is it not? Now, if you would kindly get down and let us have everything you own, you can be on your way. Or, you can go to meet Zorva, who may not be impressed that you’ve been insulting his balls.’

  Martil half-bowed at the man’s jest. Most bandits would not talk to potential victims like this. Even in this situation, he could appreciate the man’s charm. It almost had the hypnotic effect a snake uses to bewitch a rodent. He guessed Edil had used it to ensnare people for years. But he was not an ordinary person. ‘I have a better suggestion. You move out of my way and I will ride on, and we can both chalk this up to experience. I’ll even let you keep the rest of the wine and throw in a gold piece for some better clothes.’

  Edil roared with laughter. ‘I take what I said back. You have the act to impress in the taverns. I might let you keep that gold piece—if you promise not to sing!’ His sons all joined in the laughter; the eldest, a black-bearded young giant on Martil’s left, was particularly loud.

  Martil sighed and leaned forward a little. This was no longer funny. It was time to impress on this fool how much danger he was in. ‘Listen to me. I have spent the past sixteen years killing men on battlefields across the south. Now, you and I have drunk wine together, and you have children. Move on, and you may yet sire more.’ The last thing he wanted was to fight. Not because of the wine he had drunk, although it sat sourly in his belly. Drunk or sober, sick or healthy, there had never been a man to stand against him with a blade. And he was sick of killing.

  ‘Stranger, you are no longer amusing. Get down and give me all your money. I do not want to spend the time burying you,’ Edil snapped.

  Martil tried again, hoping to reach Edil with the force of his argument. It was all that would save the man’s life, and the lives of his sons.

  ‘Try to stop me and I will kill you. I have enough deaths on my hands. I have no wish to add four more.’ Not only was he unable to find any humour in this but the effects of the wine were gone. Slowly he eased his feet from the stirrups as he looked into Edil’s eyes, trying to show the man just how much he did not want to kill him.

  But Edil was not looking at Martil’s eyes. He was looking at the horse, and the bulging saddlebags it carried.

  ‘I don’t care what you came here for, or what you think you did
down south. You’re drunk and alone, and we are four. Get off your horse if you want to live.’

  ‘Don’t make me do this,’ Martil warned urgently. ‘Five gold pieces to let me pass!’

  Edil’s face tightened. ‘Take him! Take all his gold!’

  Martil reacted instantly. He jumped to his right, away from Blackbeard, as he recognised he was the only real threat. He landed lightly, only a couple of paces from the son to his right, a sandy-haired youth with a straggly, wispy beard and bulging eyes. He was the one with the club, and he rushed at Martil with the thick lump of wood raised high above his head. Martil’s hands went to the twin swords at his sides and he had them unsheathed as the youth aimed a roundhouse blow calculated to cave in his skull—but Martil had ducked underneath, and his left-hand sword lanced out, sinking deep into the youth’s belly and ripping up into his lungs. The youth dropped his club and screamed in agony, hands clutching towards the blade that had impaled him. But Martil had already finished with him. A twist of the wrist and a thrust of the arm and the dying youth was propelled off Martil’s sword and into the path of the young man who had been blocking the road behind. This one, who had no beard at all but dark stubble across his chin, stumbled past his dying brother and swung his axe from over his right shoulder, down in a wide arc. Martil kept advancing but pivoted to the left, getting inside the arc of the axe, which missed him and sank into the ground instead. Then it was a simple matter to use his right-hand sword in a reverse cut to open the young man’s throat with a vicious slash. Blood sprayed high and Martil kept spinning, so he was facing the last son, the black-bearded giant with the massive shoulders.

  He was roaring in rage at the sight of his two dead brothers, but it had taken him precious time to get past Tomon and Martil was waiting for him as he charged in, axe held high. He aimed a huge blow, which would have split Martil open from neck to hip if it had landed. But Martil had been fighting axemen for years and simply spun sideways. His swords flicked out almost as an afterthought, first one then the second opening the young giant’s belly like a purse as he slipped past the axe. The young man blundered on for a few more paces, before literally falling over his own intestines as they spilled out uncontrollably. His feet slipped out from beneath him and his head slammed into a hardened rut of earth as he collapsed into blood and gore.

  Martil swung around again, this time to face a bewildered Edil, who had started forward but had been stunned into immobility by the slaughter of his sons.

  ‘My, my boys,’ he gasped, mouth sagging open to show blackened and missing teeth.

  Martil glanced down at the three twitching bodies and felt an enormous rage building.

  ‘I warned you. I told you but you wouldn’t listen!’ he snarled.

  Edil just stared at him. ‘But the wine, and the singing! No-one could behave like that and then be able to do this,’ he babbled, seemingly oblivious to the fact Martil was advancing towards him. ‘How could I let you ride by like that? You would have fed our family for months!’

  Martil ignored what he was saying. ‘Look what you made me do! I swore I was finished with this, I gave you fair warning but still you attacked me!’ The ground seemed to be tilting and Martil could feel the blood pounding in his temples. He knew that feeling. That was how he had felt before the assault on Bellic and it had only been washed away in a tide of violence and blood.

  ‘Now what am I going to do? You killed my sons!’ Edil moaned. The charm, the verbal jousting and the roguish smile were all gone.

  ‘Do you know how much blood is on my hands?’ Martil glanced down at himself. ‘And not just on my hands, but on my face and clothes as well? Do you have any idea of how sick I am of the smell of blood? How I’ve tried to get it out of my mind?’

  ‘W—what are you saying?’ Edil realised Martil, his two swords dripping blood, was only a step away. But he made no move to raise the axe he held loosely by his side.

  ‘Blood has a stink. Like you have a stink. Like your whole filthy family. I did you a favour by killing them. Now if you are a man, you’d try to avenge them. You were brave enough before, when you thought I was at your mercy. Come on!’ Martil spat into Edil’s face, and the man recoiled as if he had been struck. ‘You could stand there and give the orders, now finish what you started. Try and do what those stupid, stinking goats you called your sons couldn’t. Or are you as gutless as that one back there?’

  Martil hurled the words at Edil, wanting the man to attack him, enjoying seeing the shock replaced by anger, and then by fear. Part of him could still recognise that he was goading the man until he had no choice but to attack and be killed, but he was just too angry to want to do anything but take it out on the man in front of him.

  ‘Yes, I’m going to kill you, too. Slaughter you like the pig you are. You couldn’t live like a man, come and see if you can die like one, you bastard!’

  But Edil still made no move to attack; he was obviously unable to follow what had happened, unable to comprehend how a drunken fool had massacred his family. Martil felt his anger bubble over at the way the man just stood there, unwilling to finish what he had started.

  ‘Come on! I’ll slice off your face if you won’t fight!’ he hissed, then spat again into Edil’s face.

  This seemed to break the spell the robber was under. He screamed a wordless challenge and swung his axe at Martil; wild, crazy swings that only cut the air, then Martil stepped inside the axe’s arc and swung both swords, putting all his anger, his frustration and his hatred into the double blow. His swords struck Edil’s neck from opposite sides and the man’s head spun off and hit the road, rolling into the bushes. The body stayed upright for a moment, pumping out blood, then collapsed onto itself.

  Martil turned, to see if there was any threat from the sons. There was none. Their dead eyes seemed to stare up at him, accusing him, their faces frozen forever in a rictus of shock and agony. He looked from one to another but there was no life, no movement, just the hideous wounds he had ripped into them and the stink of blood and opened bowels. He spun back and slammed his swords deep into the ground, then he bent over and vomited, a seemingly endless stream of wine and the bread and cheese that he had eaten that morning.

  He hurried over to where Tomon still waited patiently, ripping off his stained tunic and trousers as he went. He grabbed a waterskin and splashed it over his hands, using the clean parts of his clothing to scrub the blood off his face and hands. Then he rinsed out his mouth and spat.

  He stopped and stared at his wineskin, lying next to Edil’s body, started walking towards it but decided the red wine would look and taste too much like blood to him. He did not know what to do next, whether to just ride on or bury the bodies. He leaned against Tomon and buried his face in his hands. It had happened again. He had lost control and killed unnecessarily. He need not have killed the sons; he could have just wounded them. But once he drew his swords, all thought, all reason, was lost. As for Edil’s death…It was closer to murder.

  ‘He would have tried to avenge his sons,’ Martil told Tomon, but he could tell even the horse was not convinced. ‘He was given the choice to leave me alone!’ But not at the end, when he might have taken it, a voice inside him said. Telling himself that the man was a robber, who had obviously killed before, that by wiping out his family he had in fact saved the lives of other travellers was scant comfort. It did not change the truth.

  Martil shook with self-loathing. ‘He’s dead because I wanted to kill him. Because I wanted him to pay for making me angry,’ he told Tomon. ‘Because I lost control again. Like Bellic.’

  It was one of the reasons he had left the army, left behind his homeland of Rallora, even though he was a hero down there, at least to some of the people.

  ‘One of the reasons? It was the only reason, you stupid bastard,’ he told himself. Everything else was only part of the truth.

  Bellic. The one act of anger and revenge that had turned him from hero to villain. The town that would haunt him for the
rest of his life. The years of war had robbed him of something, the ability to control himself—to control his temper. When he got angry, people died. Even here, in another country. And he did not know how to stop it.

  I cannot take much more of this before I go completely mad, he thought…he rubbed his face with a shaking hand. It will be different from now on. I shall change, he swore silently.

  Slowly he dressed in fresh clothes. But when he sat down to pull on his boots, a loud groan made him leap to his feet, heart pounding. He started towards his swords, before he realised the noises were coming from the black-bearded son he had gutted. He was trying to pull himself out of his own entrails and turn himself onto his back.

  Martil used his old tunic to wipe the handle of his swords, before retrieving them and watching the youth’s struggles. When he was sure it was not a trick, he walked carefully over. A man could not fight well with half his insides around his knees, but in sixteen years of bloody warfare Martil had seen too many of his friends, and later the men he commanded, die in unusual ways to take chances now. Martil knew what he had to do. The young robber could linger for a turn of the hourglass or more, in agony. He stepped forward and raised his sword to end the man’s suffering.

  ‘Wait!’

  Martil checked his stroke and looked down into the brutal young face. Pain and blood had etched lines into the areas that were not covered by the thick, tangled beard, while the eyes showed cunning, and a touch of desperation.

  ‘I have a half-sister. Her name is Karia. She’s only six. Da remarried after Ma died having Leten over there.’ He jerked his head to indicate his brother with the cut throat.

  ‘Do you want me to take her and her mother somewhere?’ Martil found himself asking. The guilt over the way he had lost control came bubbling up and he found himself eager, more than eager, to make amends. Eager, also, to be away from this place. He could grab the woman and child, take them to a village and give them money. That could make up for this, he told himself.