The six men moved into a triangular position with one man standing in the front, two men standing behind the first in a row, and three men standing behind them. It seemed to indicate that the man towards the front was the leader of the group.
Getting a good look at the leader, he noticed that he was the only one of the highwaymen that had facial hair and an identifying facial feature. The man’s black goatee and the long, diagonal scan on his left cheekbone made him stand out from his subordinates.
“Greetings traveler,” the leader said with a slight inclination of his head. “If you would be so kind as to empty your pockets, we will let you leave in one piece.”
He’s not even acting like he’s anything but a highwayman, Caleb thought in disbelief. Has he no shame?
Caleb knew better than to make his thoughts be known, though. He had seen the swords at the hips of the six highwaymen. Such were not odds that he would willingly go up against. In an effort not to start a fight, he said, “I don’t have pockets.”
“Duly noted,” the leader said with an exaggerated sigh. “Don’t be such a smartass. Hand over all of your possessions, including that sword.”
Caleb’s anger could be seen through his eyes at that point, becoming even more prominent as his right hand grasped the hilt of the longsword. “We seem to be at an impasse then. I can’t hand over my sword, and I can already tell that you won’t be willing to turn around and leave.”
“It never ceases to amaze me how fast a lowly peasant can go from evading a fight to provoking one,” the leader commented with a grin. His hand grasped the hilt of his longsword. “The question is this. Do you honestly believe that you can take us all on?”
“That’s the big question,” Caleb agreed with a forced smile. “I’m not worried though.”
Mistaking Caleb’s words for an insult in regards to a lack of fear or respect, the leader of the highwaymen drew his sword and swung it at Caleb with a quick dash.
Caleb, anticipating the attack, grabbed the scabbard by its middle with his left hand and raised it so that it was level. With a single motion, he drew his sword and parried the highwaymen’s blade with the flat of his sword. The mirror like blade glimmered as it knocked back the crudely made sword.
“Impressive,” the highwayman commented as he jumped back and went in for a quick thrust to Caleb’s torso, but Caleb easily parried the strike off to the right.
Using the gap in the highwayman’s defenses, Caleb threw a punch with his left hand and struck his jaw with it. The force of the punch, while not all that great, was enough to knock the highwayman down. It also made the bandit drop his sword, which Caleb kicked off to the side immediately.
As soon as their leader hit the ground, the other five highwaymen drew their swords and came in at him, charging as fast as they could.
No thoughts passed through Caleb’s head as he was attacked by a force that should have easily overwhelmed him. It was out of pure instinct that he did what he did.
With a quick spin of his body, Caleb brought the tip of the blade to the ground. The combination of the two actions sent a small cloud of dust towards the five highwaymen.
With the men distracted, Caleb stepped forward and thrust the blade towards the closest man. He felt the tip of the blade pierce the man’s wool tunic and punch through the skin. It was with only a small amount of resistance that the blade went through the man’s body completely.
Out of the corner of his eye, Caleb saw one of the highwaymen emerge from the cloud of dust and prepare to attack. He never made it though. Caleb drew his knife from his hip and threw it at the highwaymen. It was aimed for his chest, but it ended up embedded in the center of his forehead.
Weight on his sword brought Caleb’s attention to the man that he had impaled with it. He had collapsed and was in the process of sliding off of the finely made longsword. Tilting the sword a little farther down sped up that process.
With his sword half covered in blood, Caleb looked at the four living highwaymen. It seemed that their leader had picked up his sword and was prepared to take part in the fight.
Already, Caleb could feel himself growing exhausted. His father’s training had proved to be useful, but it had been years since he had used a sword.
“Don’t attack him all at one time,” their leader suddenly said. “You’ll trip over yourselves, and if you’re going to die, then it best profit the rest of us. Attack him one at a time, and feel free to step in if you see a gap in his defenses.”
He doesn’t talk like I thought a criminal would talk, Caleb thought idly. And why is he giving them orders loud enough for me to hear?
He had no time to think further on the matter as one of the highwaymen ducked down and took off running towards him. The thrust that he aimed towards Caleb’s abdomen would have succeeded had the young man not been able to jump back and slap the attacker’s blade with his outstretched sword.
The highwayman that had attempted to attack Caleb had been thrown off-balance by the way his attack was batted away, but that was not what did him in.
Caleb quickly slammed his elbow into the side of the off-balance highwayman’s neck. It took little effort to place his left hand on the back on the man’s head and turn it suddenly, snapping his neck.
Though Caleb had just taken out three men, the fight was over. The distinctive feel of metal slamming into the back of his head was the last sensation he experienced before unconsciousness took over.
Chapter 6
As he finally reentered the realm of consciousness, his first question was predictable. What happened? Groggily opening his eyes, he instantly became aware of a few things.
The first thing was that his feet were cold. They were bare, his boots having been removed while he was unconscious.
The second thing that he noticed was that his belt had been removed. Naturally, his scabbard, the sheath his knife was normally kept in, and his quiver were all attached to it.
And the third thing that he noticed was that he had a pair of metal cuffs around his wrists with a long chain connecting them.
What in the world is going on? At that moment, he remembered his encounter with the highwaymen. A sense of revulsion filled him as he remembered killing three men during the encounter. That revulsion was quickly suppressed, however, by the reminder that the men had been criminals that freely robbed travelers and had been willing to kill him.
Why am I not dead? Confusion filled him as he tried to come to a conclusion in regards to what was going on. Surely they wouldn’t just leave me alive after I killed three of their men, would they?
“So, you’re finally awake.”
His eyes opened at the unexpected words, making him aware of the night sky. The feminine voice that spoke those words surprised Caleb. He had not expected to see or speak to a girl in the middle of nowhere.
Sitting up, Caleb looked to the speaker and saw that there was a girl sitting about six feet away from him to his left.
Not far from him, he saw a girl close to him in age. Tangled red hair fell to her shoulder blades and framed her oval shaped face. Though a thin coat of dirt seemed to cover her, she looked to have fair skin. She only wore a pair of black pants and a black tunic that looked to be a little big on her. Her emerald eyes seemed to be studying him curiously.
Caleb had little experience with girls, having only ever met a couple his age, but the situation at hand helped him to stay calm around her.
“I’m awake,” Caleb said quietly, looking around. A few yards in front of him, he saw a camp fire, and a total of six tents circled around the campfire.
“That’s good to hear. They were a bit worried that they damaged you. Most people don’t stay unconscious for that long,” the redhead said with a look of indifference upon her face. “I suspect that you were tired and actually regained consciousness just long enough to go to sleep.”
“I was tired,” Caleb agreed, but his thoughts were focused on her earlier words. “Who was worried about me?”
>
“You don’t know what kind of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, do you?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. When he looked even more confused, she sighed. “Those highwaymen that you encountered are not the type of criminals that you think they are. They rob anyone who has the coin to satisfy them. Anyone who doesn’t have the coin is beaten. If they don’t die, then those thugs normally take them prisoner. I heard the boss of these thugs tell the one who captured you that we were going to get moving soon. Apparently, we’re going to the Isle of Akabar to be sold.”
Caleb’s eyes grew cold as he heard that last part. “We are going to be sold as slaves?”
“Yeah, that’s correct,” she answered with a downtrodden look. “If you’ll look behind us, you’ll see a dozen others. They, like me, will be sold at one of the markets there. You, on the other hand, will probably be sold to the arena that was built there. The ones that captured you spoke highly of your fighting capabilities. It would make you a very valuable slave. After all, anyone can do physical labor.”
A momentary glance behind him showed Caleb that there were seven men and five women clothed like him and the girl that he was talking to. “We aren’t going to be sold as slaves,” Caleb stated with a fire in his eyes.
“That’s what I tell myself every day,” she said softly, her look of indifference slipping to reveal fear. “They captured me a few weeks ago, and I’ve tried to escape. They take our boots to stop us from running, and they whip anyone that tries to escape.”
“You misunderstand me,” Caleb said as his eyes focused on the only bandit that he could see. The man was facing away from them on the other side of the campfire. “I’m not going to run away.”
With that, Caleb jumped to his feet and began to run towards the fire. Using his training as a hunter, he was able to move swiftly and without making too much noise, though the metal chain of his irons rattled occasionally.
One of the things that Caleb had learned from an early age was that a person could move their hand through fire without injury if they did it quickly enough. It was that knowledge that made Caleb jump through the campfire as he neared it.
Though he felt warm for the brief moment that he was inside the fire, it did not burn him or set his clothing ablaze.
The bandit on the other side of the fire turned around just in time to see Caleb emerge from it with both hands raised into the air.
As he soon the bandit reach for his sword, Caleb landed on the ground and brought his hands down within a foot of the bandit. The metal chain that connected the iron cuffs around Caleb’s wrists whipped down and slammed into the top of the bandit’s skull.
The sound of bone cracking filled the area as the man before Caleb fell to the ground face first. The sound was so loud that it caused twelve bandits to emerge from the various tents, though a handful of them were still in their smallclothes.
“Who gave him that long of a chain?” the only bandit with a full beard asked, looking towards the man that had captured Caleb.
“I have no idea,” he answered.
The leader of the bandits sighed and looked towards Caleb carefully. “Boy, tell me your name.”
“I am Caleb of Kirakath,” the seventeen year old boy said with his eyes darting from the various foes.
“Do you know Michael Sullivan?” the man that had captured Caleb asked.
Caleb’s eyes narrowed in anger. “You could say that. He’s my father.”
A small sparkle appeared in the man’s eyes at that. “Let me introduce myself then. I am Correll Staerk, a former associate of your father’s. We served together in the King’s Army before my desertion.”
“I don’t care,” Caleb said, mentally vowing to kill the man. Deserters were betrayers. His father had always made that clear, and betrayal was the greatest crime in Arcadia. Betraying the kingdom of Arcadia was a death sentence. “My father is dead. The village of Kirakath was massacred.”
“I will allow you to walk away from here alive,” the leader of the group suddenly said.
“Jon, you can’t be serious,” Correll said lowly. He did not even try to hide the shock on his face.
The leader of the bandits, now known as Jon, did not seem to hear his subordinate. “In honor of your father’s memory, I will let you leave of your own accord. I served alongside your father as well.”
“You want to honor my father’s memory?” Caleb asked softly as he closed his eyes.
“I do,” Jon said with a nod of his head.
“Then you shouldn’t be surprised by this,” Caleb said as he dropped to a knee and drew the sword from the fallen bandit’s scabbard. With his eyes open, he grasped the hilt of the sword with both hands and held it in front of him, ready to fight.
“Are you mad?” Correll asked in surprise. “It took six of us to beat you earlier. You have no hope against twice as many.”
“I was tired earlier. Now, I’m not,” Caleb said simply as he suddenly dashed towards the closest bandit and buried the blade of the sword in the man’s stomach. The speed and unexpected nature of the actions surprised the bandit, preventing him from even trying to get his sword out of its scabbard.
Removing the sword from the dead bandit’s stomach, Caleb glanced to Jon and Correll.
“You have nerve… just like Michael,” Jon said as he raised a hand. “Kill the prisoner. He’ll cause us nothing but trouble.”
Fury consumed Caleb, fire coursing through his veins painfully. To him, it seemed as though the bandits were moving in slow motion. Still, he did not move at all until the first four bandits had surrounded him with their swords drawn.
With an arc of the blade, he decapitated two of the bandits. A thrust of the blade later, it was sticking through the chest of one of the others. And to finish the last of those four attackers off, Caleb let go of the sword, clapped his hands together, hit the final one across the temple with the heavy chain.
It seemed to everyone else that Caleb had just killed four men in the blink of an eye.
“Are you sure that you took him down with only five men other than yourself?” Jon asked skeptically. The man before them was not who he had expected. There was no doubt in Jon's mind that Caleb was indeed a man. Age was irrelevant to him. Even if someone who had seen as few summers as Caleb had could kill five men with such speed, despite the irons around his wrists, then there was no contesting that the boy was deserving of the title of man.
“Maybe he really was tired,” Correll said as he drew the sword at his hip. “I’ll end this real fast.”
Caleb froze as he saw the sword that Correll was holding. It was the sword that his father had told him to bring to Caldreth. The sight of it in a bandit’s hands stirred anger of greater intensity than anything Caleb had ever felt before. He knew that he wanted Correll dead.
It was to the young man’s satisfaction that Correll came running towards him and swung the sword in a horizontal arc towards him.
The motion had been so predictable that Caleb had been able to get out of the way. He had an idea as the sword began to start the arc though. Pulling the chain tight with his right arm high and his left arm low, Caleb blocked the blade of the sword.
The fast moving sword making contact with a single length of the chain of Caleb’s irons had an unexpected reaction. The chain length snapped and fell to the ground. That meant that the chain was in two pieces, each dangling from one of Caleb’s wrists.
With a snap of his wrist, Caleb struck Correll in the face with the chain from his left wrist. A snap of his right wrist caused a similar reaction.
Jon’s eyes widened as Correll dropped the sword and Caleb struck the man repeatedly in the face with a flurry of rapid movements. It only stopped when Correll’s face was covered in blood. At that point, Caleb slammed his fist into the man’s face, knocking him to the ground.
Taking a deep breath, Caleb picked up the longsword that was rightfully his and placed the blade’s tip over Correll’s heart.
“Help him!” Jon c
ommanded. His eyes suddenly widened as he saw that all of his subordinates were dead. He had originally had twelve subordinates total. Caleb had killed six of them, so five more should have been alive, excluding Correll. Instead, they all had six inch long wooden spikes protruding from their throats.
Looking towards the prisoners, Jon saw that only one of them was standing. It was the redheaded girl that his men had captured a few weeks ago. The first thing that he noticed about her was her smile. It was a smile that promised pain.
That was the last thing that he saw before Caleb’s sword removed his head from his shoulders.
With Jon dead, Caleb took a deep breath and looked around. After running Correll through, he had noticed that Jon had been the only one left alive. An observation after Jon was dead confirmed his earlier thoughts.
Rise of the Champion (The Sword of Kirakath Omnibus #1) Page 4