“My apologies,” Daniel said dryly. “But this place is for my men to train every morning, and I cannot have you occupying them with speeches and sermons.”
“Does the soul not need training as well?” Luther asked as he led him toward the gate to the outside. “What good does it to teach men how to kill if they know not when or why to use those abilities?”
“That’s why we have a chain of command, why we teach them to follow orders.”
“Exactly,” Luther said, sounding pleased. It made Daniel feel like he was just another of the old priest’s students, and he didn’t like it. “Chain of command. Such a good term to describe what we do. Imagine the Blood Tower represents our world. You are to your men as I am to my flock, a teacher. Above you is Sir Robert, just as above me are the old masters in Mordeina and the Stronghold. And as the King is above Sir Robert, so is Karak above us all. We are in the same field of work, Daniel, and I would hope you appreciate my difficulties.”
“I’m training men to defend all the West from the bloodthirsty creatures in the Vile Wedge.”
“And I’m training men to defend their souls from the evils of the world. I dare say that my task is more important, wouldn’t you?”
They stepped out the gate. Across the lush field fed by the Gihon was Karak’s encampment, formed of several dozen tents. Over five hundred men were there, well armed and armored. Their very look made him uneasy. They were like private mercenaries, only worse. The Stronghold might pay them with gold or jewels, but they viewed their service as a religious duty. They served no king, only Karak. The very notion made Daniel nervous. Once a man invested his loyalty in something other than his own king, it made him unpredictable and dangerous.
“What is it you’re here for?” Daniel asked as Luther stopped to view his camp. He kept his voice low, as if they were discussing secrets. “You have what you wanted. We’ll take Darius alive, and deliver him to you. Why do you stay?”
“There is the matter of the two Hemman brothers.”
“Lord Arthur is trapped in his castle, and will starve in the next few months. You have nothing to fear there.”
“Do we not?” Luther turned to face him, and with those eyes staring into him, Daniel felt naked. He tried not to meet his gaze, but was powerless against it. “This is more than a mere squabble between brothers, more than a war between fellow lords. I have long heard of the North’s faith to Karak. We believed it, for the tithes were great, and Lord Sebastian was ever eager to please. But now that I walk these lands, I find myself doubting. So few of your soldiers practice any religion, let alone the truth of Karak. In the villages we stayed in during our journey here, many harbored hidden sympathy for Ashhur. When most spoke of Karak, I heard no love, no loyalty. A sickness grows in our most faithful of territories, and I must find out why.”
“Fascinating, but why should we give a damn?”
Luther smiled.
“You’re much like Sir Robert, and if you would trust me, we might get along well. You are a practical man, as am I. Perhaps I deal with spiritual matters, but I understand we will never achieve perfection, and there will always be men like you who, as you might say, don’t give a damn.”
Luther gestured to the three hundred. Daniel watched them closely, and realized they were preparing their things to move out.
“Where will you be heading?” he asked. “To the Castle of Caves?”
“You are correct,” Luther said. “Most of them will leave tomorrow. They’ll go to ensure victory for the lord that is most obedient to Karak, at least on the surface. I now wonder how faithful Sebastian is, but even if he is false, his actions and tithes are real enough. My student will stay here, for there is still much work to be done.”
Daniel didn’t like the sound of that, but he feared to say so. If the three hundred men were leaving, then at least he might walk about Robert’s tower without fear of an impending coup. But what work remained? Would he proselytize the rest of his soldiers? Or would they strike out for the nearby villagers in an attempt to root out the reason for the ‘sickness’, as Luther put it?
“For all your gracious gifts, we will try our best to accommodate your student,” he said, bowing slightly. “For now, I must go train my men.”
“Of course.”
Daniel started to hurry back, but Luther spoke his last parting words of wisdom.
“You are a good man, Daniel, but you must soon bring your mind to the things beyond this world. The hour comes when a war will bathe Dezrel with blood, fire, and death. I would hate to see you caught on the wrong side.”
Daniel couldn’t help himself.
“And what side would that be?” he asked, glancing back.
“There is safety in Karak’s arms,” said Luther, his smile kind but his eyes glinting with danger. “Good day, lieutenant.”
Daniel snorted and pulled at the collar of his shirt as he returned to the Blood Tower.
“Safety,” he muttered, thinking of those cold eyes. “Bullshit.”
Valessa had thought she knew pain. She thought she understood torment. But she’d never known this. In the light of the moon, she knelt on her hands and knees and prayed for death. It didn’t matter if it was a blasphemy. It didn’t matter if she cursed the gift her god had bestowed upon her. She wanted the agony to stop. That was all that mattered. To make it stop.
Her form shifted and twisted, and she felt every interminable inch. It throbbed, unending, with pain and failure. She felt knives twisting inside her, felt fire burning outside her, felt hatred within her non-existent veins. The light of Jerico’s shield had left her weak, and nearly broken whatever essence kept her together. It had taken all her focus to flee, and in the shadows of the forest she waited for her strength to return.
“Damn you,” she whispered. She felt her lungs solidify by her thoughts so that air might press through, felt her tongue gain form so that it might speak the curse. Each moment was torture. But she said it anyway. “Damn you, Jerico, damn you to the Abyss a thousand times.”
This was her failure, of course. She’d been given a second chance at taking down Darius, not Jerico, but she had ignored the wishes of her god. She’d thought to impress him, as if that were possible, using a life and form granted by his hands. She was nothing without her deity, and despite the hatred and agony, her confrontation with Jerico had helped her remember that. She tried to be thankful. It was better than crying out her fury against Karak. She worshipped him, loved him, accepted his authority over her, but never before had she hated him so. Not like this.
It was no longer a matter of pride, revenge, or faith. She needed to kill Darius for her freedom. The fires of the Abyss surely would not burn her so. She was a child of Karak.
Valessa focused her prayers, begging for forgiveness, begging for his touch. Day and night swirled over her, but she was aware of it only distantly. She did not sleep. She did not eat. She did not live. With each minute, each prayer, she felt herself growing whole. Her skin regained its color, and her naked form assumed the clothes she once wore. Her daggers, having never left her hands, started to glow once more. The pain in the center of her being faded, becoming only the constant ache she had learned to accept. Looking to the sky, she hoped Karak had not yet abandoned her, had forgiven her for her weaknesses.
Seeing the red star, she smiled. An even greater surprise, she felt liquid running down the sides of her face. Valessa touched her cheek, and when she pulled her fingers away, she saw them stained red. Tears of blood. Perhaps grief was not yet lost to her.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the night. “I will make you proud.”
It had been several days, though how many she did not know. But darkness was about her, the red star above her, and with a single-minded purpose she ran.
7
The days had not gotten any easier, despite Sandra’s hope otherwise. The flesh around the wound in her stomach had tightened and scarred. After mere minutes of walking it would start to ache. Teeth grinding together, she�
��d fought on, and it wasn’t until the second day that Jerico noticed how badly it hurt her.
“You should have told me,” he berated her as she lay down on a soft patch of grass. His hands pressed against her waist, and she shivered.
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Worry?” said Jerico as his hands began to shine white. “I could have helped you, Sandra. Besides, worry’s what I do.”
His healing prayers subdued the pain, but when he finished, she saw the look on his face, the trepidation. Something was wrong, but he wasn’t telling her what. Night after night he had to pray over her so she could sleep without sobbing from the pain. The scar continually flared red, as if trying to reopen. She’d seen Jerico close the most brutal of wounds. This shouldn’t have been beyond him, yet, somehow, she sensed it was.
She tried to not let him see her fingers brush the scar from time to time, each touch always more painful than the last.
“Enough,” she told him as the sun dipped beneath the horizon on the third day after leaving her brother’s hideout. “I can’t...my legs can’t take any more.”
Jerico nodded, and as she sat, he began preparing a fire. She rubbed her calves and watched him. It hadn’t been a lie. The constant walking was murder on her body, something she was far from accustomed to. Again, she’d hoped it’d improve with time, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Jerico looked spry as ever as he gathered kindling for a fire, and that was with him wearing armor and carrying their supplies on his back. Whatever the paladin was, Sandra was starting to believe he wasn’t human. He unwrapped a small strip of dried, heavily salted meat he’d bought from a town they’d passed through. Stabbing it with a stick, he held it over the fire, and its smell awakened Sandra’s hunger.
“Kaide must not be tracking us if he hasn’t found us by now,” she said, staring into the fire. “We don’t need to use such haste, nor avoid every village we encounter.”
“The northern folk are loyal to your brother,” Jerico said, turning the meat. “I’d rather he not know our every move.”
She pulled her knees to her chest and curled her arms around them.
“You speak as if he were an enemy.”
“I pray he isn’t.”
She ate her portion of the meal, surprised as always by how hungry she felt come nightfall. Jerico finished before her and began removing his armor piece by piece.
“Why do you always wear it?” she asked him.
“Easier than carrying it. Besides, ever since the Citadel fell I never know when the next fight will be. I’d sleep in it, if it were at all comfortable.”
“And use your mace for a pillow?”
He chuckled.
“Help me with these straps, will you?”
With the rest of his armor piled to the side, she made a show of waving her hand before her nose. In truth, the smell of leather and sweat didn’t bother her much, but the gesture always earned a smile from Jerico. She removed her own worn shoes, stretched out before the fire, and closed her eyes. It felt so good to be still, and if not for the pain in her stomach, she might have drifted to sleep. Instead, her mind wandered. She thought of the Irons twins; her niece, Beth; and most of all, her brother. With each day of travel, the Castle of Caves neared, and her friends grew that much farther away.
Jerico sat beside her, and she shifted so she might rest against him. She felt his hand stroke her hair once, gently. His fingers were rough, calloused from his gauntlets and the constant training.
“Do you wish you had stayed?” he asked her softly.
A tear ran down her face, and she nodded.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I knew I would regret it when I left. Maybe when Kaide has finally won, and this whole damn fight is over...I just want my brother back, Jerico. I hope my leaving hurts him. I hope it eats at him, makes him realize just how much he’s lost because of it. Is it wrong for me to pray for his misery?”
“I think your heart’s in the right place,” he said. “Though I’d prefer you pray for his vengeance to leave him, instead of misery taking its place.”
“I just want to slap some sense into him,” she said, and she laughed to force away the rest of her tears. “Truth be told, this is the first time I’ve been on my own in years. We’ve always been so close...”
“Sandra,” Jerico said, his voice still soft, but now with a barely contained urgency. “Sit up, right now. Don’t ask why.”
He was looking beyond her, into the distance. His left arm was slowly reaching for his shield beside him. Suddenly afraid, she sat up, wincing at the pain in her stomach.
“Who is out there?” she asked, ignoring his instructions otherwise.
Before he could answer, Jerico shoved her hard with his right hand. His left clutched the handles of his shield and pulled it before him. As Sandra landed on her back, she let out a cry, and she heaved from the pain splitting across her stomach. Light flooded their campsite and illuminated the surrounding grasslands. An arrow pierced that light, struck the center of Jerico’s shield, and then ricocheted harmlessly into the dirt.
“Stay down,” Jerico told her as another arrow sailed in, this one missing the mark. He moved toward the fire, where his mace lay beside their rucksack of things, but a third arrow flew in, and its aim was far better than the last. Jerico dropped to one knee, the bottom of his shield clipping the arrow just in time. Without his armor, he had only his shield to protect him, and their conversation earlier didn’t seem quite so entertaining now.
“Where is he?” Sandra called out, still lying low. The grass was tall, but there weren’t any trees or large rocks for someone to hide behind. He had to be crouched down, standing only to fire.
“Right here, girl,” a voice said, mere feet behind her. Sandra’s blood ran cold. She whirled, already kicking. A large man towered over her, his face unshaven and his left eye scarred over. He held a short sword in his left hand, raised to swing. Her kick caught him in the thigh, doing little. Down came the swing, but then Jerico was there, slamming in with his shield. The swing halted in midair. The man let out a cry, and then both continued out of the campsite and into the tall grass.
Sandra rolled to her knees and watched as Jerico crouched, his shield constantly shifting. He kept the thug with the sword occupied, but she realized others were out there, at least the one with the bow. She looked, saw a shorter man standing in the grass thirty yards out, barely visible in the flickers of their firelight.
“Jerico!” she cried as he nocked another arrow.
Jerico shoved away another thrust, then spun, his shield intercepting the arrow just in time. The other thug’s sword slashed in, and it cut across Jerico’s arm before he could turn. Furious, he struck the man’s jaw with his fist, then pressed in, punching and slamming with his shield. He was trying to take out the one opponent so he could deal with the archer, but the man with the sword knew they had numbers and remained on the defensive, always retreating.
“Shit,” muttered Sandra. She wouldn’t sit by and watch him die, nor let him protect her on his own. Kaide had raised her better than that. Near the fire was Jerico’s mace, and she ran for it. Another arrow flew, but it was for Jerico, not her. She heard a cry of pain and prayed it wasn’t the paladin. Clutching the mace, she lifted it, surprised by how light it felt. Holding the handle with both hands, she looked for the archer.
This time he had noticed her movement, and the bow swiveled toward her. She dropped to her knees, the sound of her heartbeat pounding in her ears. The arrow flew past her head, the wind of it tugging against her hair. And then she was up, sprinting as fast as her aching feet could manage. Gasping for air, she crossed the distance, feeling interminably slow despite all her efforts. The archer readied another arrow, and he pulled the string tight as she closed in for a swing. She saw his size, his long hair, and the slenderness of his body.
Not a man, Sandra realized. A woman.
The mace pushed the bow aside, the arrow releasing just above
her left shoulder. Then the flanged edges struck the flesh of the archer’s face, tearing holes. The weight of its center hit bone, and the woman’s jaw cracked. Sandra saw this in the span of a single breath, such a quick moment, but the sight burned into her, a memory that hung before her eyes like a brutal painting. The body collapsed and lay still. A smell hit her. The dead archer had shit herself.
Footsteps behind her. She swung again, but a strong hand caught the hilt. She pressed harder, then saw it was Jerico, his shield slung across his back. Blood covered the front of his clothes, but it wasn’t his blood. She released the handle, glad to be rid of the weapon. Her arms shook as she stood there, feeling dazed and confused.
“It’s all right,” he said, clipping his mace to his belt and then holding her against him. This smeared the blood from his shirt against her arms, and she pushed him away. “The shakes will go away in time,” he told her. He looked down at the body and shook his head. “Are they with Kaide?”
Sandra glanced at the woman, then shook her head.
“No. I don’t recognize her, nor the man.”
Jerico sighed, and he sounded relieved.
“Good.”
He knelt down and pulled the corpse into his arms.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, and instead walked back to their campfire. She followed, still trembling. It was as if her pulse refused to slow despite the battle ending. Back at the fire was the body of the man who had attacked her. She saw no outer wounds, but the way his throat was bruised and misshapen told her enough of how Jerico had killed him.
“I had to,” Jerico said, putting the woman’s body down next to the man’s. “I feared you might not reach the archer in time, might be...I had no time to be careful.”
“You won’t receive any judgment from me,” she told him.
“It’s not you who I fear judgment from.” He pointed to a distant cluster of trees several hundred yards out. “Grab a branch, biggest you can find.”
She did not ask, only obeyed. The walk there helped calm her down, and the last of her shakes faded. As they did, though, she felt the pain in her stomach flare. Reaching the trees, she stopped to press her hand against her abdomen. She felt blood. Was it from Jerico’s embrace, or herself? She didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. Finding a half-broken branch, she tore it free and carried it back. Jerico took it, lit it in their fire, and handed it back.
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