by Curtis, Greg
The High Priest was still alive though he discovered as he turned his attention back to him. He'd jumped off the wagon and was running around hysterically for some reason. Screaming and running around in circles like a crazed man, desperately trying to get his burning robes off, the battle forgotten. Harl ignored him. It was a bad way to die. But he was a High Priest of the Huntress – he had probably done worse to others. Much worse, and to too many others.
Harl focused on the battle, forgetting the screaming priest and the fleeing driver, as he continued beheading the last few enemies as they returned to the battle in their ones and twos. Deftly he finished off the last of the hounds and the minotaurs as they attacked. One thing about both the minotaurs and the cerberi; they didn't have it in them to leave a fight and run away. Not even when still half blind and with their packs in disarray. All the chimera were the same. In the end they were war beasts. A natural beast – a wolf or a lion – would retreat and look for easier prey. Chimera didn't do that. They could be made to back off a little way when things surprised them, but they would not flee. Once they knew their enemy they kept after him until the end.
Finally Harl was left only with the manticore – the most deadly of all the chimera.
Strangely though it wasn't doing much of anything. Despite all the noise and fire it was just standing there, still chained to the back of the wagon, perhaps wondering what was happening ahead, but not frightened by it. In fact if anything it looked calm – maybe a little bit hungry. Perhaps it was just thinking that soon some dinner would be sent its way. Harl didn't understand the beast's calm. Then again they were fearsome beasts but he knew they were almost blind. They couldn't see further than about ten or fifteen feet. About the distance their tail could strike. They didn't need to see much further than that because anything that came within that range of them died. Which was why they were normally killed with longbows and a lot of steel tipped arrows. Of course even that wasn't an easy thing to do. They might be Artemis' twisted beasts but it seemed that Atropos had also blessed them, choosing not to cut the threads of their lives unless she absolutely had to. To add to the already considerable danger they posed, their hides were incredibly thick, difficult to pierce deeply.
But at least he finally understood why the beast had been brought with them. And why it was chained to the back of the prisoner's cage. It was because the door to the cage opened from the back. Anyone who tried to open it would end up dead at the manticore's sting. Unless it died first. It was simply another way of making sure the prisoner couldn't escape.
The beast yielded quickly to one of his knives. It shrieked as it felt the sting of the blade – more in surprise than pain. But his knives needed to do no more than cut it to kill it, and soon that minor cut had set the manticore on fire. Shortly after that it was shrieking with that terrible noise that only manticores could make and by the time it had started that the High Priest had finally ceded his life. He was lying on the ground directly in front of the already skittish horses at the front of the wagon, a huge burning bonfire of black robes. For some reason he was burning furiously, creating a wall of fire in front of them. That could only mean that he wasn't just a priest. He had magic of some sort; powerful magic. Wizards as everyone knew, burnt when they died. The more powerful the wizard the bigger the fire. And the most powerful simply exploded. The high priest had been a powerful wizard.
The horses yoked to the front of the wagon meanwhile were panicking. They were terrified and wanting to bolt. But they couldn't. There was a wall of flame in front of them, a shrieking manticore behind them, trees on both sides and they were yoked to a very heavy wagon and each other. They wanted to run, but they simply didn't know which way to go. That just added to their fear.
“Easy!” Harl called to them as they whinnied and snorted in fear, trying to calm them, and then he went to them, standing between them and the flaming high priest, trying to calm them. Keeping them from bolting was vital. The dryad prisoner could wait safely in her cage until they were calm and the manticore had stopped shrieking.
But the horses weren't listening to him. And he knew they wouldn't start listening until the manticore stopped shrieking. Every living creature feared that sound almost from birth. The Huntress might have only started creating these twisted creatures five years before, but there was still something in them that spoke to the oldest and deepest of fears.
Still Harl kept calling to them, trying to let them hear his voice, to know that things were going to be all right, and when the manticore finally surrendered its life and stopped shrieking, that task became a little easier. Slowly, little by little he calmed them down.
Eventually, when the screams had stopped completely and the flames behind him had burnt low, Harl approached them. He let them hear his voice, smell his hand and then know its touch on their necks. It seemed to work. He was no horseman, but he still had some ability with them.
Still, it was a long time before he could leave them. Even after the manticore's shrieking had ended and the fire of the high priest was dying down they continued to whinny and snort with fear. They could smell blood and burning, neither of which they liked, and as the flames of the high priest burnt low in front of them, he knew they were still thinking about fleeing. It would only take something small to startle them. And then if they fled he would never catch them. He would never free the prisoner. And that would be something more than ironic. To come all this way, to battle so many and even to win the battle, only to have the woman he'd come to save stolen from him by a couple of panicking horses.
It was a good twenty minutes or more before he felt ready to leave the skittish animals long enough to go to the cage on the back of the wagon, and pull the cover free. But when he did, when he saw the prisoner, it came as a bitter blow.
“You're not a dryad!”
And she wasn't. She was pure human, which meant that the dryad who'd come for his aide had been lying. She wasn't the dryad's sister. And why he wondered as he stared at her, should that surprise him? Everyone lied. Why should it even bother him when the truth was that he should have expected it? But it did bother him. Maybe most of all because he had believed the dryad's tears. In all the world he had wanted only one thing – though he hadn't realised it until just then. That there was someone somewhere that he could trust. He had hoped that he could trust the dryad. Apparently he was wrong.
But it wasn't even the fact that she was human that shocked him most. He could handle that. It was the fact that she was dressed as a priestess. Actually a High Priestess. And from the colours of her robes – forest green with black and gold trim – a High Priestess of Artemis. That was unfair. For a while he had been rescuing a prisoner from the clutches of his enemy. A sister. So killing all those priests and soldiers had been a good thing. The right thing to do. Seeing the prisoner though, he discovered he hadn't been rescuing anyone. There had been no righteous cause. No innocent to be saved. He had been cheated of his triumph by a dryad's lies.
It seemed that the priests were imprisoning their own for whatever reason. And all he'd managed to do was get himself involved in some sort of temple dispute.
But it must be something more than a minor dispute. Something more than even a major one. The followers of Artemis were obviously very frightened of their own for some reason. Heavy iron chains around her neck and wrists bound her to the floor of the iron cage, something that wouldn't be needed for any normal prisoner. So who or what was she that she should need such restraints?
Was it, as the dryad had said, that there was a new temple and an old one? Was Artemis' own flock going to war with itself? He didn't know and he wasn't even sure that it mattered. It was enough that they were fighting among themselves. He supported that. At least someone was fighting them.
“I never said I was.”
She nodded at him politely, her eyes never leaving him. She was studying him. No doubt looking for some clue as to who he was and why he had done what he had done. Good luck finding anyt
hing he thought. Because he had absolutely no idea himself. No clue save that he'd been deceived by a lying dryad's tears.
“And who may I ask are you and why have you rescued me?”
“My name is my own Priestess. Names have power. And given what you are I don't think I will be rescuing you.”
And while he didn't yet know what to do with her, he knew that letting her go was not an option. She might be an enemy of the temple but she was also of the temple. The enemy of his enemy was still his enemy.
“What I am?” She seemed offended.
“A priestess of that filthy, traitor goddess!”
There was silence for a bit after that as she stared at him, no doubt angered by his words. As if she had any right to be angry after what she and her ilk had done. Then she drew herself up to her full height – as best she could when still held down by the chains – and took a deep breath.
“I am Erislee Moonsong, High Priestess to Artemis, the most wondrous Goddess of the Hunt. She who brings fortune to hunters and food to tables.”
The expression on her face was one of serenity and joy. As if her mistress hadn't done all the terrible things she had. Or more likely as if it didn't matter.
“And monsters to peaceful cities,” Harl added angrily. “To slaughter enough innocents to create a river of blood! To ravage Lion's Crest and the five kingdoms! To enslave the survivors and steal everything from them leaving them to starve!”
The bitterness was beyond his ability to contain. But he didn't want to contain it. He wanted to kill this woman! More truly he wanted to kill her mistress. But he couldn't kill a goddess. That was beyond something a mere mortal could do. Even if the Goddess had, as was said by her priests, descended to the world and now called Lion's Crest her palace, she was beyond mortal justice.
“She did not do that!”
The High Priestess snapped out her denial instantly, and with anger on her lips. A lot of anger. He wondered why. Artemis had done it. She'd killed hundreds of thousands in some sort of divine display of her might. For a goddess that was proof to her worshippers of her power – surely she would be proud of what she'd done? Her servants too. Lying about it though, trying to pretend it wasn't her – that was an entirely mortal sort of thing to do. Gods didn't lie. They had no need to.
“I was there. I saw.”
“You saw lies! Whatever visions you saw they were false!”
Once more she was quick to deny him the truth, and it jarred. It was such an obvious lie when the beasts came from the temple itself. When they were led around by the priests and the temple soldiers. When they themselves sent them out to kill. Even if there was some sort of civil war going on between the priests, that could not be doubted. In fact Harl didn't know what to think. None of it made any sense. He also didn't know what to do either. Should he kill her and be done with it? She surely deserved to die. But if he did and she was somehow rebelling against her mistress he could be making a mistake. Leaving her alive to cause trouble for her fellow priests might be better. But of course he had no idea what was happening. So he turned his mind to the more obvious questions. “Why were your fellow priests locking you away?”
“Because they're not my fellow priests of course. They follow the demons. These ones mostly follow Est.”
Demon thralls? It was a serious charge to level against someone. Especially against a priest. Those who were found to belong to the various denizens of Hades and the rest of the demonic realms were put to death. It was the only way. After all, demons had only one purpose in life – to eat. And what they ate were people. Sometimes it was the flesh, the blood and the bones. But sometimes, particularly with the more powerful demons, it was the life force itself that they consumed. And no matter what they did, when a demon took a thrall, it was always with the intention of getting him to provide him with food. A thrall was a bonded servant, little more than a slave. But a demon thrall was something less than that. Their service was bonded with their blood and their souls. Whatever their master wanted they did. They had absolutely no choice.
And then there was Est. The demoness assassin. He knew her name of course. Most people did, if only as a name spoken around a hearth at night to frighten children. And yet what the woman was saying was insane. The demoness was no goddess. She would not interfere in divine matters. She would know better. And she had no thralls as far as he knew. There were a few wizards who summoned her from time to time. Who used her to kill their enemies. After all, she was a nearly unstoppable assassin. And she could also train others in the assassin's art. But that was it. There were a few who bonded themselves to certain demons, but not to Est. She simply wasn't powerful enough to have thralls. And if she did they wouldn't wear the robes of a goddess' followers. They wouldn't dare.
“That makes no sense.”
And it still left him with the basic problem of what to do with the priestess. Kill her? Free her? Leave her there? He didn't know.
“Check their wrists.”
The priestess had a point he realised. Thralls of demons, those who were powerful enough to have thralls, were branded on the insides of their wrists with the sigils of their masters. But given that he had set all three of them alight that was going to be difficult to check. However there was an alternative. Their personal weapons would also carry the markings.
Reluctantly – it felt as if he was giving in to the priestess' lies or madness – Harl decided to do as she said. So he left her still safely trapped within her cage, and went to examine the piles of ashes to see if he could find some evidence.
There wasn't much though. The crossbows of the two priests were simply normal weapons with no markings of any sort. But then he hadn't expected them to carry any markings. They weren't personal weapons they would carry all the time. Using a stick to push and prod at the piles of charred remains, Harl quickly found the priests' knives. The knives clearly had markings on their hilts. Unfortunately the markings were nearly burnt off. They could be the markings of the demoness. But they could equally be the markings of Artemis. He had no way of knowing which if either. Still, he retrieved his own knives from the priests' remains. They had worked well after all and he didn't want to have to craft too many more if he didn't have to. A quick wipe down with some long grass and they were back in their scabbards.
The High Priest's body was in even worse shape than the others. It had burnt much hotter than the rest, presumably because he was a wizard as well as a priest, and what remained even after only twenty minutes of fire was little more than ash. As for his knife, if it had been a knife, it was barely even a blob of melted metal. He would learn nothing from it. Harl's knife had been luckier and he quickly found it lying in a patch of tall grass where it had been knocked aside. It quickly joined the others in his belt.
Shortly he was standing there, re-armed and ready for another battle, but no wiser than before. He had a High Priestess of Artemis who had been locked in a cage by others including another High Priest of Artemis. A riddle that would make a fine bard's tale. He had no way of knowing if she was an enemy or perhaps even somehow an ally. Or something else. It was a problem that required answers he had no way of obtaining. Then there was a dryad who had lied to him. But that was no riddle and no surprise. And he knew he had little time to decide. Sooner or later other riders would come down the track, and some of them he had no doubt would be either more priests of Artemis, or more thralls of the demoness. Neither was good.
Which left him back at the start. He had rescued someone he hadn't intended to save. And now he had to work out what to do with her. The right thing he thought was to kill her. For whatever reason Artemis' priests were chaining and killing one another, in the end they were all her priests. And his sword was ready for more blood.
Harl walked back to the High Priestess' cage, thinking to end this quickly. He didn't know what was happening. Why some priests of Artemis should be caging others. Or alternatively whether demon thralls were caging priests. But it didn't matter. Priests of A
rtemis or demon's thralls – they all had to die.
When he reached her though it was to find that things weren't quite as they had been. Five minutes before she had been locked in her cage, unable to do anything. Now she was still locked in her cage, still chained, but she wasn't alone. Standing almost on top of the smoking remains of the manticore was a unicorn, and the creature looked fierce.
Harl stood there and stared at it – shocked.
He'd never seen a unicorn close up before. Only in the distance as they raced across the grasslands of Lion's Crest, celebrating their freedom as no other creature could. And he had to admit that it was a wondrous beast. It was white and beautiful. More delicate than a horse but that belied its impossible speed and power. And the spiral horn on its head shone with magic. But as wondrous as it was he knew it was dangerous. Unicorns were deadly foes. Undeniably beautiful and graceful beyond understanding but deadly. Their horns were weapons far more dangerous than any sword, and they had the speed and grace to wield them with deadly accuracy. And as he belatedly remembered, they were also the traditional companion of the Huntress. In her faith it was claimed that she rode a great white unicorn on the hunt while griffins flew by her side. It seemed that her High Priestess could call them too.