The old woman’s eyes, already beginning to glass over in her approaching death, still found enough energy to meet his, “After all he did for you, this—” she paused to hack up a gobbet of blood that stained her chin and the front of her shift, “this … how you repay him. No better than … your father. Still,” she said, her face twisting into a cruel parody of a grin, “The Church will see to you. It will … see to you both. It … always… does.”
And with that said, the old woman’s final breath whistled out of her and she was still. Cameron stared, shocked, unable to understand what had just happened. Brunhilda’s hair, always so neat and well-kept in life, lay about her in a tangled, disheveled mess, soaking up the pool of blood that was, even now, spreading beneath her. As he stood there, his eyes burning with tears of pain and confusion and sadness—yes, that most of all, for Brunhilda had been the closest thing to a mother he’d ever known—he thought of her words. The Church will see to you. Traitor. After all he did.
It was slow in coming to him, his addled brain fighting to understand but, finally, he did. The Church thought him a traitor. The ‘he’ she’d spoken of could only be Marek himself. Then the rest of the old woman’s words came to him, and a feeling of terror greater than he’d felt even when waking up surrounded by assassins ran through him.
The Church will see to you, she’d said. Will see to you both. She could only mean one person. Falen. Divines, no. Not him.
Cameron turned, his muscles suddenly renewed by an unhealthy, fae sort of wildness, and grabbed his own sword and dagger from the closet. There might be more of them outside, waiting, a part of his mind whispered, but he would not, could not, listen to this voice of caution. Not now, not with his friend in trouble. He didn’t hesitate, bursting through the doorway and outside into the yard of his manor. “Falen!” he roared, in his delirium and fear, as if somehow his friend might hear and be warned. The wound on his neck and chest had started to bleed again, but he didn’t notice as he raced into the night, raced to save his friend.
***
Nicks eased over the edge of the rooftop and crept forward, taking low, shallow breaths. He was still crawling across the roof’s tiled surface when the silence of the night was broken by the sound of a door banging open and a ravaged, raspy cry, more that of an animal than a man. “Falen!”
Nicks shot a quick glance at his target, the man lying prone on the edge of the roof, and heard the tell-tale snick of the crossbow being cocked. Nicks hissed a curse and rose, all stealth forgotten as he charged. The man was nearly invisible, dressed as he was in a black shirt and trousers, but Nicks could make out enough of him to see when he turned, alerted to his approach by the sound of his footsteps on the slate rooftop.
Nicks said a quick prayer—though to who, he didn’t know, he’d long since decided that the Divines, if real, did not grant prayers but curses—then dodged to the side as much as he could while not slowing his forward momentum, knowing that, at times, skill failed and a man had to rely on luck. The crossbow bolt missed his throat, cutting a bloody, blessedly thin furrow across his cheek, and he grunted, running on.
He was close enough now to see the assassin’s eyes go wide in surprise and fear. The man made a grab for the sword lying beside him, but he was only halfway to his feet when Nicks grabbed a handful of his hair, jerked his head back, and unceremoniously buried his knife in the man’s throat. “Bad luck, friend,” Nicks whispered as the man struggled and finally died.
He laid the corpse on the rooftop and turned, his eyes squinting in the darkness, his gaze studying the roof across from his own. In the pale light of the moon, he could just make out two shadowy forms, their arms locked, their feet moving in a deadly sort of dance as the combatants searched for advantage.
Suddenly, the bigger of the two lifted the smaller up and—with a strength that beggared the imagination—launched him through the air. The man screamed, a mass of flailing limbs, as he sailed over the rooftop, clipped the edge, and plummeted to the street, striking the cobbles with a sickening splat like an overripe fruit dropped by careless hands. Then only silence.
“Bloody Pit,” Nicks hissed across the rooftop, “I said do it quietly.”
Even in the darkness, he could make out the big man’s shrug, “Ain’t my fault, Nicks,” Blinks said, gesturing with a finger into the street, “He’s the one that screamed.”
Nicks held a hand to the side of his face at the latest cut there, and his fingers came away smeared with blood. Painful, but he’d had worse shaving. Had worse just about every morning, as far as that went. He sighed then glanced down in the street for the Harvester. The man was gone. “Pit take it. Come on!” He yelled and then he was running.
***
Cameron dodged around a man and a woman as they exited a tavern, barreled into a drunken fat man who’d stopped to stare at the bloody, shirtless man half-limping, half-running up the street, and kept going.
The man shouted after him, but Cameron paid him no heed as he forced his exhausted body onward. After what felt like a lifetime, he found the alley he’d been looking for and turned down it, grunted as he nearly lost his footing and slammed heavily into the wooden wall of a building hard enough to make his teeth rattle, and kept going.
He was halfway down the alley when a figure stepped out from the shadows ten paces ahead of him. Instead of running past, as he had the man in the street, he came to an abrupt halt. There was something intent, something purposeful about the figure’s stance. And he knew, even before the figure spoke, that this was not some drunk on his way home, nor was it a beggar looking for coin.
“Well, well,” a familiar voice said, “if it isn’t Reaper. Like father like son, eh, Cameron?”
Cameron blinked, narrowing his eyes and staring at the shadowed figure. “Tashel? What are you do—”
“Oh, come now,” the man said. “Surely, you don’t think I’d let such an opportunity pass, do you? When I heard that the great Cameron Shale had turned traitor, I, of course, volunteered to come. The Church made a mistake with you—Marek made a mistake. They should’ve put a dagger in your heart when you were a child. But you know what? I’m glad they didn’t.”
Tashel took a step toward him, drawing his sword. “I’m gonna enjoy this. For all the times you and your little queer of a friend have tried to embarrass me, for all the times that I’ve had to sit and listen to Marek or one of the High Priests talk about you as if you were some kind of fucking saint. Oh yeah, I’m gonna enjoy it.” He grinned, “A shame you’re wounded—I would have liked to have beaten you at your best. But, hey, I guess this will have to do.”
Cameron watched the man stride closer, all too aware of the creeping numbness that was even now spreading its way down his left side from the wound in his shoulder. At least I have the sword and dagger, he thought. Maybe the extra blade would be enough to—he paused, looking dumbly down at his left hand. “Shit.” He must have dropped the knife when he’d crashed into the wall of the alleyway.
He shook his head in an effort to clear it and centered his stance, gripping the sword in both hands as Tashel circled him, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. Then, without warning, Tashel shot forward, slashing a shallow cut across Cameron’s arm before he could bring his own sword up to parry. Cameron countered with a strike of his own, but the other man danced away easily, a grin on his face.
“Oh, Cameron,” he said, shaking his head in mock disappointment, “You’re going to have to be faster than that. Much faster.”
Cameron watched him warily as he circled, forcing all thoughts of his friend or his wounds away. He could do nothing for Falen if he was dead. There was only him and the man in front of him, only the sword in his hand, its hilt sticky with his own blood. He readied his blade again, forcing himself to take slow, deep breaths.
Tashel darted forward again, his sword leading, as he aimed to hamstring Cameron, but it turned into a feint as his blade licked up toward Cameron’s chest. Cameron let his instincts
take over and was surprised when his blade flew up just in time, knocking the other man’s sword aside with a screech of metal. Tashel’s blade came back, lightning fast, this time a neck-high slash aimed to take off his head. Cameron ducked under it, spinning as he did and dragging his own sword across the other man’s side.
Tashel cried out, slashing wildly, but Cameron knocked the pursuing blade aside even as he finished his spin and drove two and a half feet of steel through the other man’s heart. Tashel stared with wide eyes at the blood-soaked blade protruding from his chest, then Cameron gave a jerk on the sword, and it came free with a spray of blood. The other man fell, dead before he hit the ground.
“You always did talk too much,” Cameron said, then he turned and ran on, the bloody blade hanging loosely from one crimson hand.
His chest heaved with each breath, his heart hammered, and his vision swam, his body begging, demanding that he stop to rest, but he would not. “Just hold on,” he hissed through gritted teeth, “I’m coming, F—” And, in that instant, the name vanished from his mind as if someone had reached down and pulled it out. His shuffling run faltered as he searched for the name of his partner, his friend. Then realization struck, and he came to an abrupt halt, his eyes going wide. “Nooo!” He yelled. He’d forgotten his friend’s name, and there was only one thing that would make that happen.
Something dark and hungry stirred in him, eager to awaken, and so he let it. He couldn’t save his friend; it was too late for that. But he could make them pay. He would make them pay.
He started on again, turning a corner. Something flashed at his head from the corner of his vision and at the impact light exploded in his vision, and his feet crumpled beneath him. He fell to the ground and the light faded, leaving only the darkness.
***
“What … in the … Pit,” Nicks panted, “is the fucker part antelope?” If the trail of blood they’d followed from the Harvester’s house was any indication of the man’s wounds, Nicks had no idea how he was able to stand let alone run. But he was, nonetheless, and fast enough that they hadn’t yet caught up with him.
“Part antelope?” Blinks asked beside him, his breath coming in loud gusts like some great bellows, “He doesn’t … seem much like an antelope to me. A wolf maybe, what with the eyes.”
Nicks decided he didn’t have the breath to spare to answer that and so they ran on, following the trail of blood into an alleyway and, soon, they came upon a corpse. Nicks studied the man’s face, “I know this one.”
Blinks came up beside him, his great chest heaving, “Sure, that’s the one puts all the grease in his hair. Say, Nicks, did I ever tell you about the time my uncle—”
“Come on,” Nicks interrupted, “let’s go.”
And they were running again, following the bloody trail out of the alley and turning a corner in time to see a wiry bald-headed man standing over a bare-chested, bandaged man who could only be Reaper. From the way the man lay motionless, he was unconscious or dead and, if the way the smaller man raised a hatchet over the man’s head was any indication, then they weren’t too late.
The bald man glanced up at them and opened his mouth wide, displaying teeth that had been filed to a point in a wicked snarl. The hatchet and the night’s work, coupled with the man’s cruel visage, caused Nicks to hesitate. Blinks, on the other hand, did not. The man was still snarling, still holding the hatchet high over his head when the big man barreled into him like a runaway carriage. The smaller man slammed against the wall with a bone-shattering crunch and the hatchet flew from his hands, clattering on the cobbled street some ten paces away.
To Nicks’s surprise, the man was on his feet in an instant, and he and Blinks wrestled briefly before the bigger man’s strength told and, soon, he had the man pinned on the ground, holding his arms down. “Now look here,” Blinks started, “just take it real easy there, fella. We got some questions—”
The smaller man didn’t let Blinks finish. Instead, he let out a hiss and bit down on Blinks’s forearm, sinking his filed teeth into the meat of it. The big man bellowed, jerking his bloody arm free. His large hands knotted into fists, and he began to pound them into the man’s face. The bald man’s head struck the stone of the street on the first hit, knocking him unconscious. “Alright, Blinks, leave off.” Nicks said, then he went to Cameron and rolled him over, grunting in surprise.
The man seemed to be leaking blood from a dozen places, his entire body coated in the stuff. He took the bandages he usually kept on hand for Blinks and began to wrap the more serious of the Harvester’s wounds. He re-bandaged the wound on the man’s neck—a bad one, that, not normally lethal but with all the running who could say?—as well as the one on the man’s chest. Soon his own bandages were used up, and he resorted to ripping pieces form his shirt to finish the job. “Bloody Pit, the man’s more cuts than skin,” he said.
Blinks didn’t answer him, and Nicks turned only now registering the periodic, meaty thwacks that filled the air. Blinks was still pounding away at the man, his fists bloody and cut, the man’s face—or what was left of it—completely unrecognizable. The man was quite obviously dead. “Shit, Blinks,” he said. Then, louder, “Blinks! Lay off will ya? What do you aim to do, make a pie?”
Blinks glanced at him, frowning. He pointed an accusatory finger at the corpse. “He bit me.”
Nicks nodded, slowly, glancing at what was left of the man’s face. “Well. I’d say he’s sorry, and I’m fairly sure he won’t be doing it again.”
Blinks glanced sternly at his victim, “That so? No more bitin’?”
Nicks shook his head slowly, saying a little prayer for himself. “Come here, ya big bastard. Show me your hands.”
Blilnks walked to him and held his hands out guiltily, a child waiting to be scolded. Nicks stared at them, at the bloody furrows the man’s teeth—and skull for all he knew—had left in his friend’s hands. He started to tear off a piece of his shirt, studied what was left of it and, with a sigh, took it off. He ripped it into two pieces and wrapped his friend’s hands. “It’s a wonder the bastard didn’t bite his own tongue off.”
“I suspect he was careful, Nicks,” the big man said, and if the cuts in his hands pained him, he gave no sign.
Nicks grunted, tying off the last bandage. He jerked his head at Cameron, “Grab his legs, will ya? Subtlety went out the window a while back but that don’t mean we ought to hang around waitin’ to get caught.”
The big man did and, soon, they were working their way down the streets, the Harvester’s unconscious form swaying between them. “Nicks,” Blinks said.
“Yeah?” Nicks puffed.
“That fella back there, you know, the one with the teeth? The one you said as was sorry?”
“Yeah?”
“Well … thing is … I think he mighta been dead.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
At first, there was nothing but the darkness. A rough, tumbling sea of it upon which he floated but then, slowly, things began to appear within that void. It came in bits and pieces, the dream. The feel of his mother’s arms around him, squeezing so tight that he could barely breathe, the smell of sweat and fear, the sound of the wooden door shattering as it finally gave beneath the axe’s blade. Most of all, he heard the screams, his mother’s screams, desperate and breathless.
Divines, please no, he thought, trying to push the images away, to make his ears deaf to the terrible keening sounds, so unfamiliar, that came from his mother and from the boy she held. Some intangible part of him railed and fought, but to no avail, for he was being pulled into the scene, felt the essence of himself shrinking into that of the child even as his last coherent thoughts left him. If this is truth, I want none of it, He thought, please, no.... But if the Divines heard, they gave no sign and, in a moment, he was the child and nothing more, scared but not knowing why, only feeling and absorbing his mother’s fear in the empathetic transference of which only children are truly capable.
They were throug
h the door then, men with naked blades in their hands, their golden eyes glowing sullenly, like dying embers, the first of them swinging his sword wildly. His father’s blade, the fine Astrian steel which could only be given, never bought, flicked out, and the man screamed as his own sword, and the hand that held it, flew away in a crimson shower.
The second man through barreled in, meaning to take Cameron’s father while he was distracted, but his father slid to the side and thrust his own blade under the man’s armpit with an economy of motion that wasted no effort. This man made no noise, only slumping to the ground, a puppet with its strings cut.
Still, there were more of them, dozens more, pouring through into the entry way and even with the eyes of a child, Cameron could see that his father would be surrounded in moments. His mother, must have seen this too, for the feel of her arms around him vanished, and then she was screaming, not in fear now, but in anger, charging toward a man brandishing a blade at his father’s back.
A man appeared from the entryway, took a quick step, his blade leading, and Cameron’s mother jerked to a halt as the length of steel pushed its way through her, exploding out of her back in a shower of blood.
Cameron screamed, and in that scream, he could hear the terrible grief of the child, and the man both, as, in an instant, they became motherless. The child followed the hateful length of blade with his eyes to the face of the man that held it. It was a young face, not yet weathered with time and age as it would become, but it was one the man in him knew just the same. The face of his mother’s killer twisted in a vaguely disgusted expression, as if he’d taken a drink of water only to find a bug floating in his cup. He jerked the blade free, and Cameron’s mother fell to the ground, unmoving.
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