by Hal Emerson
“Well done!” Roared the giant. Raven spared a glance in his direction and saw that Tomaz had just performed the same maneuver on the second Watchman with his greatsword Malachi, a huge swath of steel nearly as long as Raven was tall. Both of the constructs lay decomposing at their feet.
They looked around wildly, breathing heavy, ready for the rest of the Death Watchman group to come at them, ready for the soldiers who followed the constructs.
But they were alone in the clearing. No sound came to them but their own heavy breathing as the bodies of the constructs dissolved into bits and pieces, their enchanted lives ended and the Bloodmagic dissipating.
A breeze picked up and blew heavily through the trees, and with it came the smell of … nothing. Trees. Clean air – that was all.
“Just two?” Raven asked, hands still gripping his sword tightly. The damn thing was too light – Valerium was the only metal that felt right in his hands anymore. But he’d rather use this than suffer the stares that came with wearing Aemon’s Blade. His eyes flicked over to his horse, where the fabled sword was sheathed on the creature’s back.
No stares here now.
“They travel in pairs,” Tomaz said, though he too was watching the surrounding clearing with heavy suspicion.
For a long moment they just stood there, both in the strange reactionary mode of living brought on by sudden battle. But as time passed and their breathing returned to normal, it became clear that they were again alone.
Except that the hairs on the back of Raven’s neck were standing on end, and the Raven Talisman was warm. Not the hot, tingling sensation that meant life was close and that he could reach out and touch it; this was more subtle. He could feel, moving off into the distance, the rest of the Kindred troop, all of whom were oblivious as to what had just happened – the wind was rushing the wrong way, carrying any sound off over the cliff. He could feel Tomaz – red and gold, lavender soap, masculine musk and the sound of a hammer pounding steel – but nothing more.
And yet …
Raven strode to his horse, sheathed the plain steel sword, and drew Aemon’s Blade. As soon as the wire-wrapped hilt touched his palm, his heart began to beat faster and his mind cleared. This was part of the reason he tried to leave the sword alone when he didn’t need it – the clarity it brought was an all too clear reminder that it was no normal weapon, and he, the Prince of Ravens, had had too much experience with Bloodmagic to be entirely comfortable with it. The Kindred insisted it was not the same as what the Imperial Bloodmages did in their rituals, but in his mind Bloodmagic was Bloodmagic, and he wanted nothing to do with it.
Raven reached out once more through the Talisman. He opened his eyes and allowed his mind to expand as well, taking in every detail as fast as he could, seeing it, hearing it, smelling it, judging whether it was useful, and filing it away or discarding it as unimportant. He reached out farther, looking for the wavering half-alive points of life that would be other Death Watchmen lying in wait nearby; they existed as half-men, beings that were reanimated by the dark magic of the Bloodmages and given malicious intent, tasked only with assassination. They were the bogeymen that made the citizens of the Empire fear displeasing the Children.
But the forest was clear. The wavering, half-points of light were absent. There was just the muted background haze of trees and forest, the lives of the rest of the Kindred troop, some few hundred yards or more distant.
Wait … there are too many.
“Tomaz!” He cried out. “There’s more!”
Six dark forms, half living half dead, unfolded themselves from the shadows and ran for him, ignoring the big man on the other side of the clearing.
“TOMAZ!” Yelled Raven again, sinking into a defensive stance and raising Aemon’s Blade, knowing he was doomed against such odds unless the other man made it in time to help.
And help he did: with a roar, Tomaz took a running leap and launched himself clean across the clearing, bowling over three of the Watchmen with his enormous bulk.
But the remaining three paid no mind. Two onyx swords and an onyx ax flashed at him in the light of a rising moon, and Raven met them with Aemon’s Blade.
They began a deadly whirling dance that courted death with every step. Green, sickly eyes, bored at him through the darkness of the night, so bright they left glowing trails across his field of vision. He began to collect minor wounds – a cut here, a scrape there – but with Aemon’s Blade in his hand he barely felt them. The Valerium sword, a shining white beacon, flashed and cut into the mortified flesh of the demons. Green ichor, bright in the darkness, flowed where the enchanted metal struck, and soon all three were hissing in pain as the metal bit and burned and pushed them back.
Raven stepped close, severed a foot from a dying leg, strode past a screeching, falling form, and thrust his Blade through another decaying chest. He tugged and the sword came free, pivoted and reversed the slice, decapitating the fallen form of the Watchman; he lunged forward, bent a knee and thrust the Blade through the second construct’s chin, pushing it up and through what was left of the brain and severing the Bloodmage spell that kept it anchored to life.
And then the third Watchman stepped forward, and brought his onyx sword slashing down in a flash of darkness.
Pain lanced through Raven’s shoulder, an icy cold bite, followed by fire that raced through his body. He screamed as the Blade fell from his grip, his hand now numb and useless, his muscles severed.
“Raven!” Roared Tomaz, who had seen him from where he was fighting his own Watchmen, unable to come to his aid.
Somehow, through the raging pain, Raven made a lunging grab for Aemon’s Blade with his remaining hand – just as the Watchman struck with a heavy boot and kicked the sword across the clearing.
“No!” Raven gasped. The Blade was completely out of reach, almost all the way to Tomaz, and there was no way he’d be able to reach it in time.
The Death Watchman jerked the sword from Raven’s shoulder, and the pain was so intense he nearly blacked out. The world spun and tipped and he hardly knew which way was up.
“Die,” hissed the Death Watchman, its pale, unearthly eyes smiling in glee. It raised the onyx sword above its head –
“RAVEN!” Roared a voice.
Tomaz cut down his final attacker, his greatsword Malachi singing through the air, and as the construct fell, the giant bent and picked up Aemon’s Blade.
But it was too late – the onyx blade fell. Raven, unable to do anything else, pulled his knees up and kicked out, hitting the Death Watchman in the chest, trying to gain a moment of separation, hoping against hope it would send the thrust awry.
Sudden light flooded the clearing, a harsh, searing blaze; strength surged through his body and his booted feet connected with the skeletal form, lighting all of his muscles on fire and sending the construct flying across the clearing, to end up buried in the trunk of a tree.
There was a stunned moment of silence where incomprehension rang through all of them, and then the tree produced a cracking sound, and the whole thing began to fall – backwards over the cliff.
The look on the Watchman’s face was almost comical. Embedded in the tree it couldn’t move; it could only cry out with a shrieking, wordless shout of surprise and fury, and then it was gone, tumbling end over end, crashing down the mountain.
Raven rose, blood flowing freely from the hole in his shoulder. His whole body was flooded with strength – he felt as though he could leap to the top of the nearest mountain. His wound even felt better, felt like nothing at all. He turned to cross to the edge of the cliff to see where the Watchman had landed, but instead he pulled up short.
Tomaz was standing in the middle of the clearing, holding Aemon’s Blade. The sword was shining with a bright red light, as if the white metal had been dipped in blood and set on fire. Perhaps triggered by Raven’s gaze, the light flickered and dimmed, and Raven felt the sudden influx of strength he’d received falter and die. His head went fuzzy and
the world around him tilted violently; his legs gave out, and he found himself eye-level with the ground.
It took Tomaz the space of a second to cross the clearing and grab him, and only slightly longer to bind his wound with a torn piece of shirt, and launch them both down the mountain trail, running like a madman. Aemon’s Blade lit the way, held high in Tomaz’s hand as it painted the world in a weak, flickering red light.
Raven, still conscious but only just, saw flashes and glimpses of the world around them; oak and pine trees, foliage, the sound of a heavy bulk crashing through brush. He realized numbly that they weren’t riding their horses, and tried to tell Tomaz to go back for them, but his lips were numb and his tongue was heavy.
And then he realized something odd – that they were moving far too quickly. So quickly that the forest around them had become barely a blur of motion – and around him seemed to glow a strange, muted red light that came from the giant holding him.
Tomaz was running faster and harder than should have been possible. His bounding strides carried them farther than any man could have possibly run, and Raven felt the heat of something burning through the big man’s armor.
“You … you touched the Ox Talisman,” he managed to say to his friend.
“Hush,” Tomaz said, his rumbling voice strained with exertion and fear.
“But you haven’t been able to before,” Raven said thickly. “You haven’t been able to reach through the Ox Talisman – it’s good you …”
“Be quiet,” Tomaz said harshly, running faster.
But the Talisman was not meant for endurance, and soon the giant began to tire. His breath came heavy and his body was drenched in sweat, though he wouldn’t stop. Raven was glad of it – for with every second that passed, more blood seeped from his shoulder and down his arm in spite of the hasty bandaging.
And then light – orange, soft, glowing. Torches.
“Tomaz! You caught up – by the gods!”
“Where’s your horse – did you run this whole way?!”
“Shadows and fire, what happened?!”
This last was the voice of Leah – Raven raised a hand, but found himself too weak to do anything with it.
“Death Watchmen,” said Tomaz, gasping and sputtering. “Eight of them.”
“Eight?”
“Mother of –”
“Were there soldiers as well?”
“No, they were alone. It was a suicide mission – they were hunting him.”
“How?”
“Must have had orders to follow him until he was alone –”
“You have to get him to Roarke,” gasped Tomaz. He was stumbling forward, and suddenly Raven felt himself lifted off the giant’s shoulder and tied to the back of Davydd’s beautiful, dashing gray stallion.
“How much blood has he lost?” Someone asked. Raven, unable to focus properly, reached out and felt the man’s life – anger, burning dice, spinning flames the color of heated metal –
Davydd.
“Too much,” Tomaz panted. His legs buckled and the big man fell to his knees, exhaustion taking him over now that the red glow had faded – he had released the Ox Talisman, maybe even on accident.
“Will he make it?” Davydd asked.
“Run,” Tomaz rumbled, not willing to answer the question. “Get him to Elder Keri. The Death Watchman sword hit an artery – we’re just lucky it wasn’t poisoned or he’d be gone already.”
Raven’s head felt light and fuzzy, and he found himself completely unable to focus on the rest of the conversation; all of it was just muted noise. He felt like he was about to be sick.
“Stop wasting time - run!” Shouted the voice of Leah, and then the earth was moving beneath him as the stallion took off down the beaten path, already halfway through the Branch back to the outskirts of Roarke.
Time passed quickly, since Raven now began to straddle the line between waking and sleeping with a dangerous, drunken tilt. Every so often he felt the cold fingers of Davydd press into the skin of his neck, checking his weakening pulse, but soon even that sensation faded, as he began to lose the fight for life.
The last thought he had was of his brother Geofred, the Prince of Eagles. The disappointed look he’d have on his face to know that after all he’d been through, Raven had succumbed to a Death Watch sword. Hardly befitting an epic adventure.
“How long has he been losing blood?” Asked a quick voice, high and fluttering. It was soothing, like honey on a sore throat; cautiously probing, like the wings of a butterfly against the skin of a flower.
“We were attacked by the Death Watch coming back from the –”
There was light around him now and he felt cold – but not the icy coldness of night. It was a deeper coldness, the chill of sickness and approaching death.
Sensation on his fingers and toes – pinpricks. Heat on the back of his neck, a ripping as his clothes were torn away, voices talking back and forth, the comforting voice and two lower, deeper ones – pressure on his arms, and then a knife was cutting into his skin, widening the wound that was already there, and finally the darkness overtook him and he fell silently into a deep abyss and knew no more.
Chapter Three: Elder Warryn
Raven woke on a small pallet in a large, airy tent he didn’t recognize.
He groaned and tried to roll over, but found such action prevented by large piles of blankets gathered up on either side of him. He lifted his head and looked around and realized that this tent contained more blankets than he’d ever really thought existed. The ground itself was invisible – everywhere he looked there were blankets; thick, thin, cotton, wool, bundled up, spread out. And among them all were people – most of whom looked to be well bandaged and recovering from wounds and –
Wounds.
He threw back the blanket covering him and looked down at his chest. He was bare from the waist up, though, thankfully, his pants were still in place. His upper chest and right shoulder were heavily bandaged, and he couldn’t see a thing beneath the wrappings. He was wrapped so tight he looked as if he were a mummy, like the kind Dysuna made to preserve human bodies. He pushed himself up on one elbow and, feeling no pain, came to a sitting position.
He looked down again and noticed that the bandages were clean and white, with no sign of blood. Perhaps the wound hadn’t been that serious?
Tomaz. The Talisman.
The memories of the attack came back to him then, and his mind reeled again at what had happened. How had he used the Ox Talisman? Tomaz had it. When Raven had killed his brother Ramael, he’d pulled the Ox Talisman from him and used it to bring Tomaz back to life using the giant man’s own memories. But during the transfer the Ox Talisman had gone into Tomaz along with his life, and now Raven couldn’t touch.
Except that he had. Somehow, when Tomaz had touched Aemon’s Blade, he’d been able to send the power of the Ox, the Talisman that granted inhuman strength, through the Blade to Raven.
However it happened, it saved my life.
But what had it done to Tomaz? He had fractured memories of the giant running him to the other Rangers and Rogues, running to the point of exhaustion.
I need to know that he’s all right.
He looked around quickly, scanning the tent for guards. There didn’t appear to be any – though he did notice two oddly shaped blankets out of the corner of his eye. He looked over – not blankets. His boots. He looked past them, glancing around the room, still seeing no tenders. It seemed as if, for the moment, the wounded had been left to sleep undisturbed.
For a fraction of a second, he hesitated, but then the need to see Tomaz overpowered his caution, and he seized the moment. He grabbed his boots, pulled them on, and sprang to his feet.
Springing was a bad idea. Pain shot up his side to his shoulder; it was so intense it felt like he had simultaneously been whipped and set on fire. He hissed and swore. He breathed in deeply, and as he did the pain subsided to a dull, persistent ache. Chances were he should spend more ti
me resting, but he didn’t care. If the Kindred thought he’d lie here helpless, they were thicker than he’d already thought. He was getting out into the open air where he could get an idea of where he was and what was going on.
He made his way to the tethered canvas tent flaps, wading through the sea of blankets, careful not to step on or disturb any of the other wounded, most of whom were sleeping fitfully. Why on earth were there so many blankets? What was the purpose of that? These Exiles had very strange ideas about proper medical practices.
He reached the opening flap of the tent, swept it aside, and stepped out –
- only to run directly into the slight form of a young Healer.
“Ah!”