Belial - Episode 1 of the Elder Bornshire Chronicles

by Ben Stivers

  Arthur nodded, but thoughts of Shanay and Adam crept back to the edge of his thoughts. What would they be doing now? Were they well? He had been gone only a hand full of days, but found himself uncharacteristically homesick.

  “What is it?” Scralz asked.

  “Nothing,” Arthur replied, not wishing to discuss it, but Scralz had never been one to not wheedle information from under someone’s skin when she wanted it.

  “So, how is Shanay?” she asked, clearly striking the target.

  “She is well,” Arthur replied, but his dream whispered something unintelligible into his mind, making him uneasy.

  “I heard you’ve gained a son since I saw you last?”

  Pausing to glare at Wolf, he nodded affirmatively while sipping his breakfast ale. “Your friends should keep their mouths shut, I heard once.”

  Wolf grinned wryly and became involved with the inside of his mug.

  “How is that going?” Scralz asked, keeping Arthur pinned and damned sure she would have this talk, or he would never hear the end. “Wolf told me the circumstance, but how about you?”

  “It was my idea,” he replied. “The boy needed a place to stay. He works hard. He studies harder. He is good with a sword. He got in a fight in Ploor when a crowd tried to shanghai him. They looked none the better for it when the fight was over. Shanay stayed angry for a few days. That is her right. As for Adam, I like him.”

  Scralz leaned in on the bar closer than he would have liked. “This is about you and Adam, not you and Jacob, right?”

  Arthur looked away for a moment and then met her gaze and held it steady. “This is not about Jacob.”

  Scralz nodded. “Well, then good on you and good luck to both of you. Wolf said he held himself well in that fight. Sounds like you are bringing him up just fine.”

  “Shanay might argue that point,” Arthur replied.

  Suddenly, Arthur heard his name shouted outside in the street.

  The call was not searching. The tone commanded his presence, a clear challenge. Tension of the dream backed away from him as the more familiar moment took its place.

  He looked at Wolf. “Shall we?”

  Wolf handed his half-empty mug of breakfast ale back to Scralz and asked, “Keep this hot until I get back will you?”

  Scralz’s frown gave way to a smile. “You boys want some help? This is Hellsgate, you know. I’ve put horses down younger than you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Arthur replied, as he and Wolf opened the door, stepped into the alley, and faced the road. In the distance, seven men sprinted toward the Downs.

  “What nonsense is this?” Wolf asked.

  “A trap, most likely,” Arthur replied, but he strolled purposely forward, his curiosity peaked. “Someone calls you out and runs away; it has to be a trap.”

  “Who runs away into the Downs—watch that puddle.”

  “Scralz said they don’t come out into the daylight. Let’s hope so.”

  Together they broke into a sprint as the men disappeared around the far side of the Dark Embrace.

  Aerilius pulled up short in the street as they passed the Dark Embrace and stepped across the invisible border to the Downs proper. The man and woman they chased had vanished. Vacancy populated the street stood vacant and the side-by-side buildings. Although in much improved condition than the buildings on Pagan’s Way, the Downs exuded abandonment. The group stopped. The street clutched the sound to its bosom, suckling it.

  “Where in the hell did they go?” he murmured, not to his men in particular, but all of them remained alert. He and they had fought in wars in the north against the Romans when they had their own empire. Proud soldiers, they had returned after the wars to find their homes burned, their villages withered, the women and children raped and beheaded by Rome, or hauled off as slaves. To have a chance to kill one of the main men responsible, despite that rumors said he threw down that same empire, had been too much for any of them to resist when Mrandor approached them months before.

  “They say he has magic,” his second whispered. “Perhaps they are here and we can’t see them.”

  Aerilius still considered that when the sound of running feet rushed in from behind. That did not concern him overly much. He had two men watching their flank, but that could mean Bornshire and his woman had more than just themselves. That did not trouble Aerilius either.

  “Watch the street,” he ordered to his second and moved quickly back to the rear of his squad, sword drawn.

  Arthur and Wolf reached the road head and stood away from the Dark Embrace on the Downs side. They had been in the Downs in their youth. They had survived and learned in a single day that people had their own code in the Downs. They had managed to keep their heads, but they had not ventured into the new Downs and had no knowledge of whom or what controlled that portion of Hellsgate. Still, here stood seven men, evidently from the Downs, who had called his name and then retreated to that quarter.

  “You had best turn around and go back the way you came,” the leader of the contubernium warned. His skin was deeply tanned and his eyes held Arthur’s as though a lion looked upon a sheep. Arthur knew that look, but found the moment vexing. The man’s voice matched the one he heard in the shout. Yet, things were not as Arthur had assumed. Making bad assumptions could get an innocent killed, if any such person resided in Hellsgate.

  “You called me,” he replied, putting an arm out to stop Wolf’s forward progress.

  “And why would you think that,” the man asked. His face said he was not asking them a question. Instead, the words brushed them off like chaff.

  Arthur thought about backing away. Surveying the situation more closely, then making a decision about what he actually saw might be best for all concerned, but a glint of the sun caught the reflection of silver around the man’s neck. An amulet whose symbol matched the brand of the men who had killed Adam’s father and mother.

  He decided quickly, “My name is Bornshire. You shouted my name. I answered.”

  The decanus’ looked confused, but determined.

  Aerilius did not mind beating two drunken bums to death in the middle of Hellsgate. He had killed hundreds. Cutting down two more who were definitely his elders would mean almost as little to him as bashing an unresponsive whore. Yet, the situation felt out of sorts. The situation had somehow twisted away from hunting down a bruised and battered whore to chasing Bornshire and his wife, only to lose them, and then twisting again to a man who said that he was Bornshire. If he was Bornshire, then where was his woman? Who was the man with him? Who were the other two people that he had been chasing?

  A series of heavy footsteps sounded on the porch of the Dark Embrace, taking Aerilius’ attention for just a moment. One of his men took point as the heavy woman turned the corner, put her hands on her hips and slashed all of them with her gaze. Arms like trunks and a face that could pause the moon, she regarded them with one beady eye.

  “She’s damned ugly,” his man remarked.

  Aerilius’ glance had told him the same thing, but such remarks were often best left unsaid. You did not tell someone you were going to hit them. You simply hit them.

  Since the whole town might claim to be Bornshire before all was said and done, he might as well return to his original mission, finding the whore.

  “We are looking for a whore,” he said.

  The stalwart woman on the porch shouted, “You’re standing in front of a whorehouse. That sounds a little weak. A few more steps back in the Downs and you might fight someone who will make you their whore.”

  The man with the man who claimed to be Bornshire, chuckled and dropped his hand to his sword.

  “Another time,” Aerilius said, feeling suddenly as though they had walked unsuspectingly into a trap.

  The dark bearded man removed the strap off his sword and placed his hand back on it.

  “I want to know why you shouted my name.”

  Aerilius felt the lust for blood run down through his v
eins, through his heart and back up to his head. The amulet around his neck throbbed, encouraging him. Drawing his sword, his men did the same. “How did you live so long by being so stupid?”

  With that, he sprang.

  Ptolomus and his decanus had been gone for half an hour. The sun had already taken a slice of the sky from the night. Thus, Elizabeth’s guard went up the moment she saw the three men enter the Lusty Wench.

  Each could have been cut from the same cloth as the killers that her father, Arthur and Shanay had braced a few months before. There had been a ferocious clash, one that her father had forbade her to participate in even before Arthur and Shanay had made their appearance in town with Adam in tow.

  Elizabeth knew her way around the inside of bar fights. On more than one occasion, she had disarmed a man, taken his weapon and then beat him to a pulp before tossing him into the street. The people of Ploor, despite its many thoroughfares, knew who Elizabeth was and who her father was. She navigated the streets unescorted and unaccosted, and that had been long before Ptolomus and his men had taken over policing Ploor.

  Ptolomus had taken personal responsibility for cleaning up the muggings, the hijacking of people for ships, and even the occasional murders that occurred. He stood court twice a week for two hours, and her friends in the underground, who hoped to never stand before Ptolomus because that would mean they had been caught, judged Ptolomus a fair adjudicator. He never interfered with back alley commerce. He never exerted unfair authority to the residents. She had formed a particular opinion about him that was positive and the moment the three men entered, she wished he were still there. He had developed a habit of hanging around for no particular reason than to chat, and Elizabeth felt a growing bond between them, though what it was remained undefined. He had never mentioned it, but she could see in his eyes that he liked her.

  “Go get Ptolomus,” she said to her barmaid, who made a beeline directly for the front door. The men blocked her way, though they did not try to touch her. The barmaid backed away and then sprinted up the stairs.

  The men looked to be around two-hundred pounds each, their eyes were iron and their teeth were straight and present. All of them had cut their hair short, but it was blonde. They carried swords and only swords. If they had knives, they kept them hidden.

  They did not come closer to her. She did not back up. One man stepped away from the other two and blocked the way to the stairs after the barmaid fled.

  “Where is your father?” the taller of the two who stood together asked. “Tell us, and we will go. This is all we want to know. There is no need for you to get hurt, or anyone else, but since you sent a runner, we must conclude this business quickly.”

  “If my father were here, what would you ask him?”

  The man slid his gaze from her to the floor and back again. His eyes told her everything she wished to know, although she hoped that she had read the situation wrong.

  The man replied, “Nothing.”

  Arthur had barely cleared the sword from his scabbard before the man engaged him. Their swords met, but Arthur merely deflected the blade rather than truly meeting steel to steel. Still, that gave him time to set at least for that blow. As he faded right with the man’s downward thrust, the man took a step forward to catch his balance and Arthur’s left fist struck the man in his right ear. Given a choice, that would not have been the place Arthur would have chosen, but a clear view of the brand on the man’s neck let Arthur know the men were not in Hellsgate by chance.

  The moment of distraction took Arthur nearly out of the fight as the man’s footing gripped the road, and he slashed his sword crosswise at Arthur’s neck.

  Again, Arthur raised his blade in an almost too late fashion, and deflected the sword upward, but this time, no punch followed. For the first time in a long time, Arthur stepped backward, forced to retreat by a series of follow-up attacks.

  Aerilius pressed the advantage of his speed from the moment that he took his first step. He could kill this man. After his first repartee, he heard his inner self say, “This will be easy.”

  Fire surged through his veins. He stopped thinking about the movements themselves and let his intuition take command.

  Thus, he felt mildly surprised when he missed. Bornshire managed to hit him with his fist, but Aerilius shook off the blow almost before it happened. When his second thrust missed, he considered dismissing intuition and inserting anger, but he declined. Instead, he reached for his belt, and pulled his dagger, while circling his prey.

  His men were engaged. He heard the clanging of steel behind him. A body dropped to the ground. That likely meant the odds were now seven on two. The large woman most likely had found her end of days.

  Scralz came down off the porch like a boulder down the side of a steep slope. The two men charged toward her with delightful expectation in their eyes and their weapons still in their scabbards. The lead man was only one step ahead of the other, and evidently, he thought he would restrain her while his friend beat Scralz to death. At least that was his thought.

  Scralz grabbed his hand as he reached for her and squeezed with the strength that only trolls could know, crushing the thick bones of his hand and provoking a yowl that erased the smirk from his eyes.

  Instead of embracing him, she threw him down in front of his following friend. The man leapt over him. Scralz had hoped he would trip, but his maneuver suited her just as well. The back of her fist struck his previously unbroken jaw and sent him backward and onto his still whimpering friend, his concept of consciousness shattered.

  The rest of the misguided crew pressed against Wolf and Arthur, ignoring her for the same reason as their partners. With a single blow to the temple, she shut off the man’s irritating bleat and stepped over them to grab another.

  Wolf, like Arthur, found himself a bit off guard from the prompt and quick response from their challengers. The first man to come at him gashed the front of Wolf’s leather armor and would have killed someone who had not worn such. Wolf drew both swords and slashed at the first man who attacked him, and stalled a second that came not far behind him. A one-at-a-time moral code did not suit these men well, and if that was how they wanted it, he carried no particular qualms. Letting the part of him that had followed Arthur onto Roman battlefields instead of street encounters, he feinted a leap forward, then a slight retreat and caught the first man with a kick to the chest as the man slashed inward. He dropped his sword, the air gone from his lungs. Wolf parried the second man’s sword down as Scralz grabbed a third man from behind and hauled him backward with her thick arm around his neck. He, too, had released his sword, attempting to break her ironclad grapple.

  The man who had dropped his sword still wheezed from Wolf’s kick, but reached to regain his weapon. Wolf’s sword cleaved the man’s extended arm and then his head from his shoulders, causing the second man to hesitate.

  At that moment, Wolf saw that Arthur had already backed away two steps and that his opponent steadily pressed the advantage.

  Wolf released his engagement and took two steps before striking Aerilius across the cheek with the pommel of his sword. He did not go down, but the punch caused his attack to falter.

  A ripple disrupted the fabric. Arthur found his concentration fractured at the moment it was most needed. Something terrible—

  A sickness in the land—

  An old, yet youthful, enemy—

  A passing—

  He tried to shrug away the melancholy.

  What would Shanay and Adam do should he falter in this fight?

  That question incinerated in a flash of realization as Wolf struck Arthur’s opponent in the face, throwing Aerilius half a step off balance. From the corner of Arthur’s eye, he saw another man close behind Wolf, sword drawn. What was Wolf thinking?

  Then, even those thoughts left, he heard only the sound of hoofbeats, thundering, beating the earth to dirt, a calling.

  Arthur grabbed Aerilius’ blade by the steel and sent a white-hot
slash of magic through the weapon, blasting a deafening roar that toppled Aerilius from his feet as Arthur stepped between Wolf and the blade that descended toward Wolf’s back.

  The strike held no pain, but as the tip of the sword pierced Arthur’s armor and the chest underneath, he saw the look of complete shock in his attacker’s eyes. Arthur’s gaze met the man and the attack, unfazed. His sword severed the man’s stomach, clipped his spine and exited the back.

  With a gasp, the wounded man grasped Arthur’s sword, releasing his own, the hilt pressed firmly against Arthur’s chest, just below the collarbone. Behind the shock, Arthur saw distress, a fading of something else in the man’s eyes that left before the man actually died, a malevolence he had seen before.

  The man collapsed and Arthur’s sword came out with a slippery squish.

  He stood still and looked left. Two men had been knocked down by Arthur’s blast. Wolf also lay in the street, a victim of the thunder. Scralz still stood, a wicked grin on her face as she wrenched her victim’s head around three hundred degrees.

  He glanced down at the weapon protruding from his armor. The two men regained their feet and were in the midst of picking up their swords when a slight brush of something heavy pushed Arthur a step forward, triggering a surge of ache up his neck and down his left arm.

  As the men turned, they collided with Blade, the huge horse trampling over them, not killing them outright, but taking both to the ground. He reared and one man shouted, raising his hands to protect his face, but steel shoes dressed that protection in razors. When the second hoof struck, the shout ended. The second man had rolled away, but into the arms of Scralz who hammered him directly on top of his skull with her fist. He clawed at her, trying to climb up her bloodied apron, but a second blow turned his melon inside out.

  Still, Arthur stood, staring. He wanted to say that all of them had done a good job. He wanted to sheathe his sword, walk back to the Dead Whore, and have an ale with his friends. He wanted to tell Shanay that he loved her. Tell Adam that in this world, they all at last were safe. He wanted to rest.