Rise of the Champion (The Sword of Kirakath Omnibus #1)

by Billings, Ryne

  “Not if I destroy the Night Blades at their source,” Caleb said firmly as he prepared to fight the leader of the Night Blades.

  “Even if you could kill me, you’d fail in your goal,” Victor said, shaking his head. “The strongest assassins among the Night Blades do the most missions. The twenty men that are not here are the best in the guild outside of me. “

  “You’re right,” Caleb said with a grim look in his eyes. “We can’t end the Night Blades completely. They may rebuild their organization, but you won’t be leading them anymore. I’ll personally send you to the abyss.”

  “That’s touching,” Victor said as his muscles tensed. “But you better learn your place, Caleb of Kirakath. I am not like the rest of my men, and I am not like Cain Fell. It will take more than some basic swordsmanship to take me out.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, Katie began to hurl knives at him.

  Without missing a beat, Victor parried each of the knives away with his short swords. It was almost as if he acted on instinct. Regardless, it was a very impressive feat, especially seeing as how Katie’s skill with knives surpassed that of anyone Caleb had met thus far.

  “You’re good, but you’re out of knives now,” Victor said, his eyes leaving Katie as though she was not a threat. “If you run now, you can get out of the country before any of my men arrive and I can order them to go after you.”

  “I won’t turn my back on a friend,” Katie said with determination in her eyes.

  “Katie, stay back. I can handle this guy,” Caleb said as his eyes grew calculating. I hope I can handle him, at least. I can tell he’s good… better than Father was. It might be a fool’s way of thinking to think I can beat him without the magic of the sword, but I can’t rely on it.

  He dashed forward and brought the sword is a powerful arc downward, but Victor crossed his short swords and blocked the strike easily.

  “You wield a sword that can be wielded with two hands if need be, though the hilt is a little too short for it to be used comfortably. It’s good for powerful strikes, but short swords are better for speed,” Victor said as he spun around, pushing Caleb’s sword away. He immediately with for a thrust with his right sword, but Caleb parried it before it could get too close to him.

  “You’re not bad,” Victor remarked as he stepped back. “Your form is rough, but you have the instincts of a fighter. Who taught you?”

  “My father,” Caleb said as he swung his sword around in a horizontal arc at Victor’s right hip.

  “Good father,” Victor remarked as he flipped the short sword in his right hand into a reverse grip and blocked the attack with surprising ease. “You’re Michael Sullivan’s kid, aren’t you? I heard that he was offered the position of high general of the King’s Army, but he chose to retire instead. I’ve never understood how anyone could refuse so much power, but I’ve never had any aspirations to have a family.”

  “My father only cared about his family and friends. Power did not matter to him,” Caleb said as he jumped back. “He was a good man, unlike you.”

  Victor smirked at that. “I suppose so. After all, he used his old friendship with the current high general to get his apprentice a spot in the King’s Army in Zabryan. It’s a rare privilege to be granted a spot in the army stationed there. I find it strange that he did not do such a thing for his own son though.”

  Hearing those words fueled Caleb’s anger, causing him to step in with a powerful downward strike. As expected, Victor blocked it with his short swords, but Caleb was not done there. He delivered a sharp kick to Victor’s abdomen, knocking him back.

  “Speak of my father again, and I’ll kill you the most painful way possible,” Caleb said with rage in his eyes.

  “You’re easy to manipulate,” Victor said with a grin. “I guess you’re just too easily manipulated… too pathetic… to have been considered a son worth having.”

  It was immediately clear to Katie and Victor that Caleb lost it at hearing those words. He hoisted his sword over his head, took a step forward, and brought it down with all of his strength.

  In the time between Caleb stepping forward and bringing his sword down, Victor swung both of his swords in different directions and jumped back.

  As Caleb’s sword struck the ground, he collapsed to his knees. He had a shallow cut going down from his right shoulder to right below his arm pit. In addition to that, he had an even shallower cut across his stomach right above his belt. Blood started flowing out of the wounds immediately, though it was easy to see that neither of them would be fatal.

  “It’s easy to make you kneel, I see,” Victor said, laughing at his own joke. Suddenly, he turned to the side and deflected a knife that had been thrown at him.

  Seconds later, he had to sidestep out of the way of a sword thrust.

  Standing before him was Katie, and she had a short sword in each hand.

  “You’ve decided to interrupt after all, I see,” he remarked.

  The only response that he was given was a quick slash from the sword in Katie’s left hand as she spun around.

  From his spot, Caleb watched the two engage in a sword fight in awe. They moved faster than he could, and their swords always made contact with each others. He soon noted that Victor was defending with his left sword and attacking with his right sword only, whereas Katie would defend and attack with either sword.

  She’s better than I am. In fact, she could probably beat Father if he was still around. He used a long sword, and it’s clear that she knows how to use short swords very well.

  Watching them, Caleb soon saw that neither one of them could gain an edge over the other, but he knew that it would not last long. He could see that Katie was getting exhausted, whereas Victor looked as though he could go for a while.

  I’m going to have to do it. I can only hope I don’t harm Katie in the process.

  Taking his sword in his left hand, he felt fire flow through his blood. The bloodlust consumed him, and he gave it a target.

  He dashed forward with all of his speed.

  As fate would have it, Victor had his back to Caleb.

  It was Victor’s back that met the end of the Sword of Kirakath. It went straight through the middle of his back and came out right below the sternum.

  “I bet you didn’t see that one coming,” Caleb said coldly as he began to twist his sword, making Victor grimace as blood poured out on both sides of the wound.

  “A sneak attack from behind… that’s a little poetic,” Victor said with a grim smile. “That’s not how an assassin is normally dealt with.”

  “Shut up and die,” Caleb said as he wrapped his right arm around Victor’s head and snapped his neck. Following that, he moved his arm back to his side with pain clearly written across his face. The injury at the right side of his chest made it painful to use his arm. He only felt it after he snapped the man’s neck and released the magic of his sword though.

  Breathing heavily, Caleb angled his sword downward, causing Victor to slide off of it and hit the ground unceremoniously.

  “Thanks, I needed that,” Katie said as she dropped her sword and looked around.

  “It’s not a problem,” Caleb said with a nod of his head.

  Her eyes suddenly narrowed as she looked at him. “I want you to sit down against the wall.”

  Though he was not sure why she wanted him to do that, he decided to play along regardless. It was easier than arguing. As soon as he did as he was told to, she was kneeling next to him with a knife.

  “I’m going to cut your tunic off, and I’m going to give you some strips of it so you can stop your injuries from bleeding too much while you’re gone. Meanwhile, I’ll go and find some bandages or something to wrap around them. The assassins live here, so they should have bandages on hand in case of training accidents.”

  “Right,” Caleb said, not all that interested in the specifics. “I’d appreciate if you found me another tunic though. It’s a little chilly down here.”

>   “Yeah, I’ll look for one,” Katie said with a nod as she went to work.

  Chapter 11

  About an hour had passed before Caleb was ready to awaken the two assassins that they had spared in order to ask some questions. He and Katie had both changed into new tunics since they dealt with Victor Abrams, and they had also moved the unconscious assassins into chairs that were in the middle of the room. Their hands and feet were bound together with some rope that Katie had found.

  Caleb picked up a short sword off of the ground with his left hand and walked up to the assassin with the broken knee. He pressed the tip of the blade against the assassin’s stomach and began to slowly push it in.

  The blade was only a quarter of an inch when he woke up screaming. Naturally, it woke the other one up to.

  Caleb immediately withdrew the sword and stepped back. Once the screaming stopped, he said, “Your leader is dead, as are all of your allies in this base. You will join them if you don’t tell me who hired the Night Blades to kill us.”

  “I won’t betray the Night Blades,” the injured assassin said with anger in his voice.

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” Caleb said with a sigh. He suddenly pulled the short sword back and stabbed it into the assassin’s stomach, going clean through it. “I don’t like bad news, and that’s definitely bad news.”

  “Caleb, what are you doing? They can’t tell us anything if they’re dead,” Katie said as she placed a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t want to make them suffer needlessly.”

  “There are two,” Caleb said as he looked at the other assassin. “If he tells me who is after us, I’ll end his friend’s pain and free him.”

  The assassin looked at his dying comrade, clearly seeing that he was in an incredible amount of pain and would not die for several more minutes at the soonest.

  “I’ll tell you who hired us,” he said as he looked down.

  “No, you can’t!” the other one said with pain clear in his voice. “Don’t betray Lord Abrams like that! We are his loyal followers!”

  “He’s dead, and so are you,” the uninjured assassin said before his head turned to look at Caleb. “End his pain now, and I’ll tell you.”

  Caleb took the short sword, removed it from the assassin’s stomach, and decapitated him with it in a single motion. He then looked at the other one and said, “I’m listening.”

  “Lord Abrams was contacted by a man three and a half months ago about a job, but he was not the type to let his clients hide in the shadows, so he told the man that he had to come here personally if he wanted us to do a job,” he said with a sigh. “The man in question was Clovis Averill, the Count of Caldreth. He wanted you two dead. He did not say why, but we don’t ask questions like that.”

  Caleb and Katie exchanged a look as they heard what they had just been told. The knowledge that they were wanted dead by the count shocked both of them.

  “Why would he want us dead?” Katie asked quietly.

  Realization dawned in Caleb’s eyes, and anger radiated from him.

  Even if you kill me… you gain nothing. I am naught but the sword.

  “Cain Fell led the Massacre of Kirakath, but he wasn’t the mastermind behind it. Clovis was,” Caleb said, surprising Katie and the assassin. “On his dying breath, Cain Fell told me that he was naught but the sword. I just now figured out what he meant. He was the sword that massacred Kirakath, not the wielder.”

  “Caleb… I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say,” Katie said quietly. “I can’t imagine what it must feel like to discover that the man you killed in your quest for revenge wasn’t the man truly behind it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Caleb said as he walked behind the assassin. “Clovis needs to die though. I can live with the knowledge that he orchestrated the massacre, but I will not allow someone to live who sought to kill a friend.”

  With that, Caleb lifted the short sword and brought it in an arc, decapitating the last assassin from behind.

  “You are free from the confines of this world,” Caleb said as he looked at the body of the man he just killed. “It’s a better fate than you would have found if I had let you walk away. You’d be hunted down by the remnants of the Night Blades for betraying them.”

  “Caleb, you didn’t have to do that,” Katie said quietly.

  “I know,” Caleb said with a nod. “That doesn’t mean I regret it though. He deserved death for trying to kill you.”

  To that, it seemed, Katie had no response.

  “Let’s head to the surface. I’d like to get to Caldreth within the next few days,” Caleb said as he tossed the short sword to the ground. “We should leave their weapons here though. Walking around with weapons that have their insignia on them isn’t a good idea.”

  After he said that, he dumped the sheathed knives out of his quiver and onto the ground.

  “Okay,” Katie said quietly as she discarded the empty sheathes that were on her belt.

  With that, Katie grabbed a torch from the wall and they made their way back towards the tunnels that led to the surface.

  * * * * *

  “So do you have a horse?” Caleb asked as he walked alongside Katie through the market. From the looks of the pair, no one would have guessed that they had been in a battle just recently. The only indicator of it was the empty quiver at Caleb’s belt.

  “No,” Katie said with a sigh. “I sold my horse so I could pay for a ride here by wagon. I didn’t want them finding out I showed up, so I was as discreet as possible about how I did it.”

  “We’ll just have to go at a slower pace then,” Caleb said with a nod of his head. He had no doubts that his mare could make the trip with both of them, but it would take at least four days instead of the three that he could normally manage.

  “Caleb, we need to talk,” Katie said seriously. “You’re not acting like yourself all the time anymore.”

  “Let’s talk tonight,” Caleb said, looking her in the eyes with a small smile. “I’d like to talk with you, but now’s not the time to talk about that. Let’s wait until no one is around to hear what we talk about.” He gestured to the people around them as an example of why it would not have been a good idea to talk about the subject at hand right then.

  “You won’t try to hide it from me when the subject comes up?” Katie asked, sounding a little skeptical.

  I can’t blame her for being wary. We weren’t exactly open with each other last time we traveled together. This time, it’s going to be different though.

  “I have no reason to hide it from you. Wait until tonight. I’ll answer any question you have for me at that time. I need some time to think before then though,” Caleb said with a frown.

  It was easy to see that Katie understood what he was talking about. Even in whispers, it was not safe to speak of Count Clovis wanting them dead in public. It was even more dangerous to speak of Caleb’s intentions to kill the Count of Caldreth.

  Within moments, they arrived at the stables, and Caleb walked up to one of the stable hands with a smile. “I’m here to get my mare.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said as he hurried over to the stall that Caleb’s pain horse.

  Caleb watched as the boy saddled his horse before bringing it over.

  “None of the guards thought you’d be able to get her out,” the boy said as he handed the reins to Caleb. “They say the Night Blades were after you.”

  “They were,” Caleb said as he stepped into the stirrup and sat down in his saddle. “But now they’re dead.”

  He offered his hand out to Katie, and she swung up to the back of the horse using his arm as support. Once she was seated behind the saddle, he kicked the mare into a canter and made his way out of the city.

  I’ll be known for killing the Night Blades off within a week. I’ll have to act quickly if I want to take down Clovis before he learns of what I did here. I don’t need him preparing for it, after all.

  All thoughts soon faded away as the sound of hooves beating
against the road grew too loud to ignore.

  * * * * *

  As sunset was nearing, Caleb stopped in a small clearing. It had taken longer than anticipated to find one, but they had both agreed that clearings were safer for the two of them. It was always easier when no one could easily sneak up on them.

  Katie slipped off of the horse first, and then Caleb slid off of it.

  “I’ll tie her up,” Katie said with a small smile. “We can talk afterwards.”

  It was clear by the look on Caleb’s face that he was not too anxious to talk, but he did not voice any objections to it either.

  She took the paint by the reins and walked her over to a tree, tying it up.