by Dan Avera
“Great Black, where are they?” one of the mercenaries muttered, ineffectually wrapping his sodden cloak more tightly about his shoulders. “It's been nigh on two tolls of the bell. I'll die of fever afore they get the damned gate open.”
“Quiet,” said Castor, and the man obediently fell silent. “I have faith in Will,” he continued, and clapped the man on the shoulder with a smile. “They'll pull through.”
He heard something on the wind then, something that made him tense—a sound that seemed to blend in with the thunder, tearing its way through the din as though trapped beneath a sea of deafening noise. It was a scream, long and bloody, and it ended far too abruptly. Castor felt his stomach twist with anxiety, and he feared the worst.
But then, with a screech of metal and a groan of wood, the iron portcullis began to rise into the air. Castor drew his sword, and with a wave of his hand he signaled his men forward. They left their places along the wall to make quickly for the new opening.
~
Will stepped under the growing arch with Hook and Katryna to either side of him. The wind, unfettered by the castle walls once more, tore at his clothing with icy fingers, bringing with it a hail of rain that lashed across his skin like freezing needles. He shivered, but grinned despite his discomfort as Castor strode up to meet him and clasped his arm in greeting. “I knew you'd do it,” Castor said with a grin of his own. He looked over Will's shoulder at the remnants of his group. “That's all that made it?”
Will nodded. “We lost three on the wall, and three more when we took the gatehouse.”
Castor waved a hand absently in the air. “They knew what they were getting into.” His troubled expression, however, belied his indifferent words. The Raven Knights were a small band, and the bonds between its men were like those of the closest family. Will knew that later, Castor would leave to mourn the deaths alone. It was the reason Will had stayed with the Ravens for so long; a commander who cared about his soldiers' welfare was difficult to find, and Castor was a singular man especially among mercenaries. At the moment, however, he was blocking the emotions from his mind with a veneer of indifference. But Will was one of the few people Castor confided in, the only other being Katryna. He knew what was going through the man's head, and he lowered his eyes shamefully. The deaths had been under his watch, and he felt suddenly guilty for having gambled on the soldiers' lives.
“Move out,” Castor said, hauling Will sharply back to the present, and his voice had all the authority of a king. “I want no more casualties today. If any of you die, I'll bring you back from the Void and kill you myself!”
The other mercenaries' laughter was drowned out by a vicious peal of thunder.
“Will!” cried a voice from the crowd. “Catch!”
Will's helm sailed through the air toward him, and he caught it and strapped it on. “A drink for you, my friend!” he shouted to the man, and the soldiers laughed again.
Castor's command worked; there were no more dead. The Ravens dispatched what remained of the balorn's men-at-arms to a symphony of lightning and thunder, and those that surrendered were rounded up and bound together. By the time the mercenaries had reached the inner sanctum dawn was just beginning to break in the east, driving the storm away in a rush of sunlight. It burned away the thunderheads and dried the rain to little more than a drizzle, calming the raging winds to a light breeze. Rays of pink and orange and purple and gold danced atop the horizon, painting what clouds remained in a dazzling menagerie of vibrant morning glow. When at last the doors to the balorn's home had been breached the sun was just beginning to peek its head above the treeline, and it bathed the countryside in its golden warmth.
The day was done for Will. His part of the bargain was finished, and he left the rounding up of the balorn and his family to Castor. Wishing to be alone, he ascended the ramps of the castle wall until he was at the top, looking out over the sparkling sea of emerald grass, the tips flecked with golden droplets of rainwater. The scene stirred something inside of him, bringing to life a sensation completely different from the one that accompanied killing. He felt his heart pound in his chest, felt his blood rush through his veins. The sun played across his sodden body, warming him with its fiery fingers, and he unbuckled his battered skullhelm to let the light touch his face. He let the fearsome armor clatter to the stones at his feet and breathed a deep sigh, smiling as the scents of something other than blood and burning oil reached his nose.
He could see now why they had called the castle Brightstone, for even darkened as they were by rain the walls, normally bright white, shone a beautiful shade of red and gold in the morning sun. In silent reverie, Will settled down with his legs hanging over the wall and watched the sunrise. The feeling in his chest intensified, seeming to purr contentedly like a cat. Beautiful, he thought, and a smile danced across his lips. Absolutely beautiful.
Two
Long ago, when the earth was still young and all its myriad denizens lived in harmony, two spirits descended from the heavens and traveled the world as wisps invisible to the eyes of living things. Their names were Koutoum and Keth, and they were brothers.
“Beautiful, is it not?” Koutoum stated, and knelt down to pluck a rose's petal. “Colorful and perfect.”
“You have all created something fantastic,” Keth agreed.
Koutoum turned to him. “And yet you do not wish to bestow your own gift upon this place. Why is that, I wonder?”
Keth shrugged. “I will give my gift eventually. But I want it to be a good one, and so I have to think about it.”
Koutoum dropped the flower petal, which tumbled gracefully to the ground. “I have no doubt that it will be,” he stated with a smile.
Keth smiled back. A bluebird lit on a branch of the rosebush then and began to preen itself. “Such a delightful little creature,” Keth mused. “And yet...I cannot help but feel sorry for it.”
“Why is that?” Koutoum asked.
Keth shrugged. “It must be very dull to do the same thing forever and ever,” he said, and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “If only there were some way to make each and every day different and exciting for that little bluebird.”
~
“Apparently the taen wasn't very popular,” Will murmured as he bit into a piece of roast suckling pig. Hook raised an eyebrow and shrugged, just as dumbfounded as Will. The thin man seemed perfectly content, though, to take free food and drink when it was given, and he tore greedily into a golden-brown capon.
“You know...” Katryna said, sipping at a cup of wine, “I don't think I've ever had a party thrown in my honor for sacking a city before.” She shook her head. “No, I honestly cannot recall.”
Five months had passed since the Raven Knights had taken Brightstone, and the harsh Southland winter had given way to an even harsher summer. Where only months before storms had covered the land in bone-chilling rain, the skies were now dotted only with token clouds that refused to release their precious cargo. The grasses had long since shriveled away, leaving behind a barren landscape of brown fields and scattered copses of oak. Even shade did little to stay the heavy hand of a Southland summer, and the humid air was just as sweltering in darkness as it was beneath the unrelenting sun.
Five months had seen not only a change in season, however, but a change for the Raven Knights as well. Their success at Brightstone had catapulted them into the public eye, and their ranks had grown significantly as a result. Where before they had numbered barely over one hundred, they now had just short of five times that many. The fame Castor had been seeking, it seemed, was now finally within his reach. Will, for his part, found it odd to be known nearly everywhere he went; all he had to do was mention his name in a tavern, and the ale flowed like water.
Fame had brought them a newer clientele as well, and Will found sitting at the tables of balorns and taens even stranger than drowning in a sea of peasant adoration. But Lower Kingdom nobility were not the only buyers in the sellsword market, and Castor had taken commi
ssions from Eastlanders, Northlanders, Freelanders, and even a man who had seemed suspiciously Karkashian.
Such buyers often sought contracts of great difficulty, and their latest had been to capture alive a man in the city of Prado—the taen, in fact. Prado was the financial heart of the Southlands, and one of the three most powerful cities in the Lower Kingdoms, giving the taen riches to match even the holy city of Avalone. Naturally, Castor had been hesitant to attack such target.
But money, as always, had a way of convincing even the most reluctant of souls.
Will had gaped when he heard the sum—one hundred thousand gold crowns. As a mercenary who made at most fifty silver marks in a year, he could barely wrap his mind around the proffered number. Even the strangeness of the deal broker had done little to change their minds. He had been extraordinarily odd, though; with his dark skin Will had pegged him as a desert man, and his elaborate hooded robes gave weight to the idea. That in itself wasn't strange—the desert people were nomads by nature and, despite the longstanding enmity between the Eastlands and the Lower Kingdoms, they were known to travel to the farthest reaches of Pallamar. But there was something different about the man that Will couldn't quite put his finger on. In the end he had simply pushed it from his mind, deciding that one hundred thousand gold marks far outweighed the negative aspects of a strange client.
The actual job had been challenging, but certainly not difficult. Prado was, after all, known for the power of its coin and not of its military. The city's army consistently danced around one thousand men-at-arms, and though Castor could not afford a frontal assault the number was small enough that stealth became a perfectly viable option. Nor were the Raven Knights strangers to facing overwhelming numbers, leaving them on surprisingly even terms with the Pradian military. So they had descended under cover of darkness, much as they had in Brightstone, and by night's end there had been fifty living Pradian soldiers left.
Fifty. That thought made Will's good cheer evaporate like so much steam. Fifty men left living out of a thousand, and once more the men were cheering Will's name. Blackmane the Blade. Blackmane the Demon. Blackmane the Bloody. Willyem Blackmane. And the little Eastland girl had been with him every step of the way, whispering in his ear, her breath tickling his neck like a putrid wind from a rotting corpse. “Such a hero,” she had said, repeating the words again and again as Will's blade drank its fill and kept on drinking. “Such a magnificent hero.”
Unsurprisingly, the last of the Pradian guard had surrendered. From there it was a simple enough task to take the taen and his family captive.
The part that took the Ravens completely by surprise happened once the sun had risen, bringing with it innumerable masses of bleary-eyed and bemused Pradians. The mercenaries rounded up as many of them as they could and brought them to the town center where Castor, Will, and Katryna stood upon the gallows with the governor and his family. Upon hearing that the city was under Castor's command until further notice, the crowd had stood in stunned silence. That, of course, had been expected. What shocked Will and his comrades, however, was when the silence was inexplicably broken by a cry of “Look! See his helm? That's Castor the Lion!” The mercenaries had stood speechless as a deafening roar of cheers and applause erupted around them.
The taen was apparently not a popular one—evidenced by the copious amounts of rotten food that the townspeople were able to produce seemingly at will. By day's end the man had taken on the appearance of a walking garbage heap; Hook in particular seemed to find humor in the situation, and had taken to schooling the city's young children on proper throwing technique.
For Will, the crowning moment had come when the city had thrown an extravagant festival in honor of the mercenaries to celebrate its newly found freedom. Prado's legendary wealth had proved itself once more, though the festivities had been helped along in no small part by the liberation of the taen's personal treasury.
Now Will was sitting with Hook and Katryna toward the end of a long wooden table laden with a handsome menagerie of food and drink. Castor sat in a high-backed chair at the table's head, the place of honor for the city's hero, and he looked just as humbled and bemused as his compatriots. What appeared to be the city's next most powerful people were clustered at his end, all speaking and gesticulating excitedly. Castor shot Will a look for the hundredth time that evening, slowly shaking his head in confusion. None of them were used to this sort of treatment.
“Southland hospitality,” Will laughed, turning back to Katryna and Hook. “I wonder if our Westland Ravens have ever experienced such a thing.”
“Unlikely,” Katryna said around a mouthful of food. “Though, to be fair, we haven't either. Castor seems to be enjoying himself.”
Will flicked his gaze back to his commander, only to find him now buried beneath the crowd of nobles. “Really?” Will said. “Because 'enjoying' isn't exactly the word I'd use.”
He almost got up to clear the colorful elite away from Castor, but at that moment two girls—two very pretty girls—flounced over to the commander, batting their eyes and smiling coquettishly. The men around Castor quickly parted for the new arrivals, chuckling behind their hands.
“Hey,” Will murmured, nudging Katryna in the arm with his elbow and indicating Castor with his chin. “Looks like you've got some competition.” Her response was a much sharper elbow to his ribs, and he doubled over in a fit of coughing.
“No, I think not,” said Katryna, casually stretching her arms out to the sides. “Castor knows what he wants, and what he wants is me.” She smiled down at Will, who grimaced up at her. “I've got nothing to worry about.” She turned away and then, almost as an after thought, said, “Oh, and if you ever say that again, I'll cut your balls off in your sleep.”
Hook laughed so hard he choked on his food.
The party progressed splendidly, Will had to admit. The locals had converted the city center, a large open area dotted with planted trees and an enormous fountain of the god Gefan at its heart, into one massive dining area. There were dozens of other long tables like their own, and the mercenaries and villagers sat side by side at them, laughing and eating and drinking like old friends. Countless others formed a seething crowd that seemed to fill every space not taken by a table, and dancers and tumblers expertly weaved their way through the press of people. Musicians roamed the area and set the gathering to a lively tune, lacing the din of thousands of voices with the songs of their hornpipes and fiddles. At one point a fireblower leaped up on the tabletop in front of Will and loosed a billowing jet of flame straight into the air. The performance was greeted by applause and cries of delight, and Will laughed and pounded the table. “Wonderful! Do it again!” he cried, and the man winked and obliged him. Something tingled, as it always seemed to, deep inside Will's chest at the sight of the orange glow, the churning ball of yellow that seemed to take on a life of its own. It dissipated once the performer moved on, leaving Will with a strange sense of loss.
Afternoon melded quickly into evening, and soon the burning Southland sun sank below the city's man-made horizon, leaving behind a purple sky lined with the fiery glow of sunset. Pink and orange melded with gold and crimson, bathing the revelers below in a wash of color that seemed to spur the festivities to new heights. Will lost count of how many people came to thank him and his comrades. “I remember you—you were great,” said one little girl, and Will left his seat to kneel down next to her. She was a cute thing, with curly golden locks that were completely out of place among the dark hair that was synonymous with the Southlands. She could not have been much more than seven or eight years old.
“You saw me?” he asked with a smile, and she nodded shyly. “Really? When? You should have been safe and sound in bed.”
“I know,” the girl mumbled. “But I was looking out my window and I saw you jump on one of the mean men.” She looked down at her toes. “You made blood come out of him. I saw it.”
The image of the Eastland girl, tears mingling with the blood on
her face, flashed through Will's mind. His smile fell. He looked up at Katryna for help, but she gave him a look that clearly said, Talk your way out of this one. “Uh...listen, that was a bad thing,” he said, and reached up haltingly, debating whether to pat her on the head. He decided against it and let his hand fall. “You should try to forget that, alright?”
The girl looked up at him, and her eyes held none of the usual naivete of youth. “But why?” she asked. Before Will could answer, she said quickly, “The mean men hit Father the other day. Now he's sick. But you hurt the mean men back.”
“Ah...I...I didn't hurt them...” he stammered. The girl waited patiently for his explanation. “I...killed them. They aren't going to come back anymore. They can't come back.”
The girl smiled. “Good.”
And with that word, Will was suddenly disgusted with himself. Never had to explain myself to anyone, he thought, the image of the Eastland girl darting through his mind once more. He pushed it fiercely away, angrily gritting his teeth. Stop mocking me. “Listen,” he said aloud, tentatively reaching out to take the blonde girl's hands, “it isn't good. You should never do that to people, alright? Make blood come out of them, I mean.”
“But...why not? You did it.”
Will opened his mouth to speak but could not find the words. Why, indeed? the little Eastland child in his mind seemed to ask, her frightened stare at once both accusatory and pleading. Tell her why you should not kill people, Will. “Well...” he stammered, swallowing with a mouth that was suddenly very dry, “well, because...”