Exile's Challenge

by Angus Wells

  “That you’d have?” Akratil interrupted.

  Talle said, “Yes! Together we might …”

  His voice strangled off as Akratil reached down from his skull-hung saddle to clasp the frontage of Talle’s coat in a gauntleted hand and lift the Inquisitor from the ground.

  “Together?” Akratil spat the word into Talle’s face. “You’d join with us?”

  Talle struggled for breath. Found it and said, “Yes! Do you only ally with the Autarchy we might conquer worlds together.”

  “I already conquer worlds.” Akratil loosed his hold so that Talle fell sprawling on the ground. “I destroy worlds.”

  Jared Talle struggled to his feet. Jorge Kerik wondered if he should order his men to open fire, but Talle waved him back.

  “Listen, I beg you. Do you but ally with me, we can …”

  “You are a worm,” Akratil said. “You are a crawling thing that I crush under my feet. These”—he gestured at the Tachyn, at Chakthi and Hadduth—“are worms. But they summoned me, where you would only use me for your own sad purpose. You think to trick me, eh? To form me to your designs. You think those petty signs you paint on your body can protect you from me? No! You are the puppet, Jared Talle, not I.”

  Jorge Kerik motioned his men back. Damn the Inquisitor; he’d brought them to this crazed impasse, and could Kerik get his men out alive then he’d leave Talle to his fate. He paced backward, far enough that he could whisper to his sergeant: “On my order fall back to the ridge.”

  The sergeant nodded, eager to be gone from this weirdness, and together they eased away.

  “Barges.” Abram Jaymes grinned at Tomas Var. “We take barges. That way we might reach the valley in time. Anyway, we don’t have enough horses for everyone.”

  “Everyone?” Var set down his mug and stared at the lank-haired scout. “How many are you talking about?”

  “How many branded folk do you think there are in Grostheim?” Jaymes returned.

  Var shrugged. “I don’t know: I never …”

  He paused; he had never thought about it before. Branded exiles were commonplace, beneath consideration. They were simply there, to serve as bid. He sought to hide his embarrassment behind his mug.

  “Hundreds,” Jaymes said, his voice becoming earnest, “an’ all faceless. Servants who bring you ale in the taverns; servants to warm your food an’ shoe your horses. Maids to clean an’ change your sheets; grooms an’ farriers an’ stable-hands. Laborers an’ dockhands; oarsmen on the barges. You name it, there’s some branded man or woman doin’ it. An’ they have no say—only obedience to the masters. You think that’s right, Tomas?”

  Var shook his head. “No.” Then asked, “But shall they be with us?”

  “I reckon they will,” Jaymes said. “The word’s out—Rychard’s seen to that.”

  “And the garrison?” Var toyed nervously with his mug. “What of the Militiamen?”

  “That,” Jaymes answered, “is your problem. Either you convince them to let us loose, or we fight them.”

  Var said, “I’ll do my best to convince them.”

  “You’re with us then, all the way?”

  Var looked at the scout and lowered his head in acceptance. “Yes,” he said, “even to secession.”

  “Survival first,” Jaymes said, “then secession. But I’m glad you’re with us.”

  Var raised his mug in a toast. “To Salvation.”

  “To Salvation,” Jaymes echoed, “and to freedom.”

  Jared Talle loosened his collar that he might breathe better. He felt suddenly less confident: the hexes painted on his body should have protected him from such ignominy. He brushed at his coat and began to wonder if the magic of these strangelings was, perhaps, greater than his own. He began, for the first time, to feel somewhat afraid. But even so, he forced himself to confidence and said, indignantly, “I am not a worm. I am an Inquisitor of the Autarchy, and the Autarchy is the greatest power in this world. I am confident you cannot harm me.”

  Akratil rose up in his saddle, head thrown back as he roared laughter at the night sky. The strange sable horse pranced, and Talle moved farther away from the clawed hooves, the snapping mouth.

  “You are very proud, little man, but I have encountered prideful little men like you before and I have no time for them.” He brought the horse to rest, looking down at Talle, then drew his sword and brought it down in a sweeping arc at the Inquisitor’s skull.

  Jared Talle ducked, raising his hands as he voiced a hexing spell. For an instant the sword was slowed, halted in its descent as Talle flung himself aside. Akratil cursed and swung again, and again Talle blocked the cut.

  “Listen to me!” he shouted. “Do you only listen to me, we can conquer worlds together. Join with me—with the Autarchy—and we can form such an alliance as shall own the heavens, all the worlds.”

  “I destroy worlds,” Akratil roared as the sword swung down again. “I’ve no need of alliance, and less of you.”

  “I’ve power,” Talle screamed, rolling across the grass. “The Autarchy has power. Join with me—join with the Autarchy—and together we shall own the universe. Join your magicks to mine and we can …”

  His plea choked off as Akratil’s blade touched his throat. He looked up into red eyes that held no more mercy than his own, and for the first time knew true fear. Death shone from those eyes, and he recognized that there was no bargaining with this creature, and that all his hopes were gone and doomed.

  So be it: he had endeavored to win the Autarchy such an alliance as should have made that god he served all-powerful. But if that was not to be, then let destruction reign. Even now, these Breakers should learn the might of the Autarchy.

  He shouted, “Fire!” But Jorge Kerik and his ten marines were gone, running now to the ridge and the fragile safety of the guns. Talle risked a backward glance and snarled as he saw himself deserted.

  “They’ve more wisdom than you,” Akratil said, and swung the sword again.

  Talle raised his hands. God knew, but his hexes were the strongest he could manufacture, yet even so he could feel the pressure of Akratil’s magic vying with his own. He screamed as two fingers were cut from his left hand, and for an instant stared in horror at the twin fountains of blood that sprouted into the night. Then he shouted a spell that should have torn Akratil from the saddle and sent him tumbling and bloody over the starlit grass, but Akratil only grimaced and heeled his horrid mount forward.

  Talle staggered back, avoiding the probing horns, the clashing teeth. He voiced another spell, and turned the sword aside.

  “You’ve surely magic.” Akratil’s voice was mocking. “Even stronger than I’d thought. But …”

  He drove the horned horse on, herding Talle like some frightened animal, and Jared Talle felt all his confidence slip away: an ebb title that left him stranded on a lonely beach, bereft of hope. He cowered, no longer the proud Inquisitor but only a frightened, mortal man.

  “Listen! Please!”

  Akratil said, “No,” and swung his blade down against Talle’s skull.

  From the ridge, Davyd and Arcole watched the drama. They saw the curved blade cleave through the Inquisitor’s pate, dividing his face so that he danced awhile like some mad puppet, the two halves of his visage flopping wild as blood gouted from his neck in a great spray that shone black under the moon. Then he fell down and they watched the golden-armored man urge his dread mount onward to trample the body, and laugh and sheathe his sword.

  Davyd felt chilled. His wounds ached and he felt an awful weariness. He wished Morrhyn were with him to advise him, or he in some other place; some haven, safe from the evil he felt emanating from the rainbow-armored Horde. But he was not and could not be: only here, where the Maker placed him to do … He could not say. He could not envisage defeating these slayers of worlds, only dying in the attempt.

  He heard Arcole ask, “What do we do?” And shook his head helplessly.

  “Do we fight?” Arcole gras
ped his shoulder. “Or do we run?”

  All Davyd could say, and that only with difficulty, was “I don’t know. I think we must wait.”

  “To be slain?” Arcole’s voice was urgent. “For God’s sake, Davyd—for the Maker’s sake!—what do we do?”

  Davyd shook his head.

  “There are cannon on the ridge—horse guns.” Arcole pointed to where the artillery was placed. “Var’s marines, I’d guess. Do they open fire …”

  “They’d not be enough.” Davyd spoke thickly through the pounding in his skull. It was as if the Breakers’ presence filled him with a numbing lassitude, as if their evil clouded his thinking. He rubbed at his temples and his eyes. “We must wait for the People to come. Them and Abram’s army. Without them …”

  “And if the battle begins before they come?” Arcole gestured at the men clambering up the slope toward the hidden guns. “Does that officer order his men to fire?”

  “He must not!” Suddenly conviction filled Davyd. Suddenly the dreams he’d known, in Ket-Ta-Thanne, in the oak wood and after, came flooding back. “We must fight together. All of us!”

  “All of us?” Arcole frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Them.” Davyd looked to where the marines waited. “Them and the People and the folk Abram and Tomas shall bring. We must fight together! Otherwise all shall be lost. Do you understand?”

  Arcole said, “No.”

  Davyd sighed and stared down into the valley. “We must fight together—all the people of this land—as one force against this evil. Separately, we shall be nothing. Separately, we shall all be conquered and destroyed. But do we fight together—everyone, the People and the branded folk, the masters and marines—then we can defeat them.”

  “Save they kill us first,” Arcole said.

  “We must speak with the marines,” Davyd said urgently. “They must hold the Breakers until the People and Abram’s folk come.”

  “Then I think,” Arcole returned, “that we had best tell them that.”

  Jorge Kerik was glad to reach the ridgetop: he felt safer amongst his men, amongst the guns. He was about to order that they open fire—flay the valley with canister and grape—when two wild figures appeared. Both were clad in buckskins, like savages, their hair tied in braids such as the hostiles accompanying the weirdlings wore, and carried muskets. One was tall and handsome, the other smaller, his hair a startling white that emphasized the ugly scar scoring his cheek. And both, on their tanned skin, carried the brand of exile. Kerik drew his pistols; his men leveled their muskets.

  “Friends!”

  By God, the man spoke Evanderan: Kerik hesitated.

  “Hear us out, eh?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Arcole Blayke; this is Davyd Furth. May we approach?”

  The accent was that of the Levan, cultured. Kerik wondered what new strangeness was delivered him and held his pistols leveled as he said, “Slowly, eh? And with your hands in sight.”

  They came forward with their muskets raised high above their heads, to be snatched from them on Kerik’s order. He stared at them: a strange pair.

  “Runaways?”

  Arcole nodded. “But not your enemies. Your enemy is down there.” He gestured at the valley.

  Kerik said, “There are folk like you down there.”

  “The Tachyn,” Arcole said. “They are led by a warrior called Chakthi; the others are known as the Breakers. God, but there’s so much to explain.”

  “And you are not with them?” Kerik set a pistol hard against Arcole’s belly. “Why should I not execute you now?”

  “Because”—it was Davyd who spoke—“you would then be slain. You and all your men. If you listen to us, you’ve a chance.”

  There was something in those ageless eyes that persuaded Kerik to trust the ragged figure. “Ach, what chance?” He shook his head. “I can run or I can fight.” He glanced down the slope. “There are too many of them to fight, and do I run, I suspect those creatures can outpace me. What chance there?”

  “You can wait,” Davyd said.

  Kerik studied him curiously. There was an aura about him; not visible, but palpable—as if some undefined power resided in him. It sat in his eyes. Kerik felt it and ducked his head. “Explain.”

  “They are called the Breakers,” Davyd said, and told Jorge Kerik all he knew of the Horde, and of the People and Ket-Ta-Witko and Ket-Ta-Thanne, and of Abram Jaymes and Tomas Var.

  “You’ve been with Major Var?” Kerik asked when he was done. It was all he could think of to say: the enormity of the account left him benumbed and frightened.

  Davyd nodded. “He goes to Grostheim with Abram Jaymes. They’d raise an army. And the Matawaye are coming, also. Do you only wait …”

  “Why should I believe you?” Kerik demanded.

  “Why should you not?” Davyd shrugged.

  “Listen,” Arcole said, “we wear the brand on our faces, no? Would branded exiles come willingly to soldiers of the God’s Militia?”

  “There’s that,” Kerik allowed. But what convinced him was the look in Davyd’s eyes. “And you know Major Var, it would seem. So—what do we do?”

  Davyd said, “Hold them. Wait for the People and the others, and fight together. We must hold the Breakers here in this valley, and destroy them if we can.”

  Kerik stared at him and lowered his pistols and his head. “All right—yes, I shall. And God grant I’m right.”

  “You are,” Davyd said.

  Akratil said, “We camp here. I like this place.” His mount lowered its horned head to gnaw on the corpse of Jared Talle. “We shall rest awhile and then go on.”

  “And the warriors we saw?” Bemnida asked. “What of them?”

  “What of them?” Akratil returned. “They ran like frightened rabbits, no? They’ll be long gone, nor able to harm us if they remain.”

  “Even so.”

  “Even so.” Akratil fixed the woman with a cold glare. “I’d rest awhile. Do you disagree?”

  She shook her head, thinking it might well be loosed from her shoulders did she argue.

  “Do I take my warriors and scout the ridges?”

  Chakthi thought to curry favor.

  “No.” Akratil chuckled. “None can harm us. They fear us, no? Did you not see them run? They’ll be off, and I’ve decided—we rest here awhile.” He raised himself from the saddle and shouted to the Horde, “We make camp here.”

  It was close. Morrhyn felt it like a pressure on his soul, as if the Maker urged him on, pushing him toward the fining of destiny.

  Hard as he’d driven them before, he urged them harder now. They rode down the days and half the nights, halting only to rest horses too weary to go farther. He urged them on when any sensible man would halt and rest and sleep, but there existed in his mind—in the flowing of his blood and the aching of his tired bones—the knowledge that they rode to such conclusion as must shape the future forever. Not only of this land called Salvation, or that of Ket-Ta-Thanne, but all the worlds he’d dreamt of on the Maker’s Mountain—all the worlds down all the roads of time and space—and he knew that did they fail, then the Breakers must prevail and deliver their foulness to children unborn, to worlds not yet shaped.

  He could not accept that, and so he acted the role of Prophet and took the warriors of the People hard and swift to where he sensed Davyd waited for the final battle.

  He could see the valley now, as if Davyd spoke inside his head as once he had spoken into Davyd’s. It stood clear in his dreams, and in his waking mind: a wide, broad place, wood-ringed and centered on a stream. And there, he knew, the future should be won or lost.

  38

  The Last Chance

  Captain Francys Emmit stared at the outlawed marine over the barrel of his pistol and regretted his quandary. “I’ve my orders,” he said carefully. “And you’re proscribed.”

  “You’re outnumbered.” Tomas Var faced the garrison commander. “The Inquisitor is gone, and
likely dead. A force such as you cannot imagine comes against Grostheim, and if it arrives, the city shall be lost. Salvation shall be lost! Open the gates and let us go. Dammit, come with us!”

  “I’ve my orders,” Emmit repeated.

  “From Jared Talle,” Var returned. “Do you bear such love for him?”

  “He’s the Inquisitor,” Emmit said doggedly. “He speaks for the Autarchy.”

  “And I speak for Salvation,” Var said. “For Salvation and all the folk who live here.”

  “Branded folk,” Emmit said, glancing across Var’s shoulder at the crowd filling the streets.

  “No.” Var turned, ignoring the leveled gun, to indicate the mass behind him. “See? There are freemen there! Owners alongside their servants; servants marching with their masters.”

  “You’d overturn the world,” Emmit said.

  “I’d see Salvation saved,” Var replied. “Listen! You’ve seen the ghosts, no? You’ve seen them ride the streets?”

  Emmit nodded reluctantly: that was a memory he’d sooner forget.

  “Well,” Var continued, “they’re fleshed now, and coming here—save we halt them.”

  “Let them,” Emmit declared, firmer than he felt. “We’ve walls hexed by the Inquisitor, and cannon to use against them. They’ll not take Grostheim.”

  “They’ll take it and burn it down and eat your flesh,” Var said. “And are they to be halted, then it must be soon, and in the right place. God, man! My marines are there and I’d go join them.”

  “I’ve my orders.”

  Var shrugged. “You’ve what? A hundred or so men left?” He again indicated the crowd at his back, restless now, even under the muskets of Emmit’s soldiery. “Not enough to prevent us leaving, do we wish. You can shoot me, but what then? Do you want a bloodbath?”

  Emmit frowned. Then: “No. But still …”

  “There’s no time to waste,” Var said, and raised his arms so that he stood totally exposed to the Militiaman’s pistol. “Either shoot me and have done with it, or open the gates. Better, come with us.”

  Emmit hesitated. Before him stood Major Tomas Var, clad in buckskins like some frontiersman—like the draggle-haired fellow holding a long Hawkins rifle across his chest that Emmit did not doubt but he’d use—and behind him all the branded folk in Grostheim and half the masters. He knew Var’s reputation: a hero of the War of Restitution, the Inquisitor’s dog, an officer elevated by the Autarchy for his knowledge of Salvation. Francys Emmit was young and inexperienced, and none too happy with his command. He’d thought the Inquisitor crazed to take Var’s marines out and leave Grostheim stripped of defenses, and wondered what drove the man to go out hunting the ghosts. He’d heard the rumors—all had—that Jared Talle would form an alliance with the ghosts, and wondered if such communion was right. Now Var told him they were fleshed and come looking to conquer, and it appeared that most of the city agreed and was prepared to fight. Emmit thought that if he shot Var and ordered his men to open fire on the crowd, as duty dictated, then he and all his command must be overwhelmed and Grostheim left empty. Var stared at him, and slowly he lowered his pistol.