Ward of the Philosopher

by D. P. Prior

  He glanced back at the villagers, who were inching forward in a half-circle. There was fear in their eyes, but grim determination in the set of their jaws. They knew what was at stake if they fled or did nothing. Most of these folk had children in the schoolhouse, or elderly parents stowed away behind locked doors. They advanced only as far as Aristodeus and Deacon, then just stood there, as if they hoped the reavers would change their minds and leave them alone. Deacon knew they wouldn’t. That wasn’t the way of the world. He’d learnt as much from Aristodeus, and his experience with bullies like Brent Carvin only served to confirm it.

  But he did know his father would have charged before the undead had a chance to fully disembark. Deacon would have done the same himself, if only he’d been bigger.

  Aristodeus was watching him with narrowed eyes. The hint of a smile formed on his lips, and he nodded approvingly, as if Deacon had just voiced his thoughts out loud.

  “I see the lessons are paying off, young Shader. That look in your eyes is what I’ve been after: calculating, seeking the advantage, strategizing. I’d even go so far as to call it ‘predatory’. Not the usual hallmarks of a seven-year-old, which I’d say makes you somewhat exceptional. We’re off to a good start.”

  “Why don’t the people attack?” Deacon asked. “We could bottleneck them on the gangplank.”

  “For myself, I was just waiting for the command,” Aristodeus said. “Every army needs a commander, even one as fragile as ours.”

  The rush of blood pounded in Deacon’s ears. His hand on the sword hilt was slick with sweat. It was no good looking at the villagers for help; they were half-watching Aristodeus, half-watching the undead forming up in front of the carrack.

  “Timing is of the essence,” Aristodeus said, nodding toward the foe.

  “But…” Deacon said. Why don’t you do something? Why doesn’t anybody?

  If not for the slow, lumbering movements of the reavers, it would have all been over already. As more and more shambled down the gangplank, and the decks showed no signs of emptying, Deacon realized there was no need for the the undead to hurry; they would advance like the tide coming in. Either the villagers would be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, or they’d turn tail and flee, and to the Abyss with those locked up indoors.

  “Deacon!” his mother cried from across the square.

  He spun round to face the way he and Aristodeus had come. Gralia waved him toward her, eyes wide with horror. He knew what she was thinking, what she always thought: Something bad was going to happen to him. Well, for once, she was probably right.

  But it was a sin for an Elect knight to leave the field…

  Turning his back on her, he yelled, “Charge!”

  He started toward the undead massing in front of the ship, but Aristodeus yanked him back and ran forward himself.

  The villagers exchanged worried looks with each other, and then they charged.

  Tendrils of purplish mist streamed down from the deck of the carrack, splitting and dividing again until each connected to the head of a reaver. Deacon followed the tangle of threads upward, where they emanated from splayed, bony fingers.

  Leaning out from the forecastle was a skeleton swathed in mildewed tatters. A coronet of tarnished silver sat atop its cracked and crumbling skull. It waggled its fingers, sending ripples through the tendrils, and the eyes of the reavers blazed crimson. Jerky movements grew suddenly swift and sure. Rusted weapons swept down. Pitted blades shattered on impact with farm tools, but not all were blocked. Blood sprayed, and swords ripped through flesh, slinging gory arcs in their wake. Villagers screamed. A dozen or more went down.

  “Lich!” Aristodeus cried, pointing his sword at the skeleton on the forecastle. “Kill the lich, and the rest will crumple.”

  Deacon’s vision narrowed as the swell of battle pressed in around him. Every thud, clash, and cry blasted through his skull with the force of thunder. A corpse with livid flesh and burning eyes lumbered toward him. He stepped back, and his sword clattered to the ground.

  “Deacon!” his mother cried from somewhere behind.

  Aristodeus glanced round, but he was heavily engaged by a cluster of reavers. Shock and despair registered in his eyes.

  The corpse drew back its sword, and at the same time, Deacon raised his prayer cord. Garbled petitions fell from his lips of their own accord. The reaver stiffened, and Deacon’s plea for Nous’s aid swelled to a torrent. Fire fled the reaver’s eyes; they grew black and hollow. All over the square, the undead were faltering, and the villagers tore into them, bashing, hacking, stabbing. Bodies twice dead flopped to the flagstones.

  Aristodeus dispatched his assailants with precise, efficient blows. He turned back toward Deacon, even as a new tide of corpses lurched down the gangplank.

  Gralia forced her way through the villagers readying themselves for the second wave of attack. She grabbed Deacon by the arm, tugged him back.

  “Gralia, no!” Aristodeus said. “This is what we spoke about.”

  Her grip on Deacon’s arm tightened, until he felt her nails break his skin. He winced and pulled away.

  “He has to learn,” Aristodeus said. “If not, one day, all the worlds will—”

  Jagged bolts of blackness struck the philosopher between the shoulder blades, and he hit the ground hard.

  The lich rose into the air above the carrack and drifted down toward Aristodeus. A hundred threads of purple radiated from one hand; they snapped taut, and the new wave of reavers charged.

  The lich aimed its other hand at Deacon. Tongues of dirty flame danced across its fingers.

  Aristodeus rolled to his feet, as spritely as a man half his age. He pushed Deacon behind him. To Gralia, he said, “All right, get him out of here. This is more than I expected.”

  The cadavers smashed into the villagers, and the tumult of battle resumed, fiercer and louder than before. Deacon was dimly aware of the blur of bodies, the rise and fall of weapons.

  The lich’s shadow fell over him; it was like being plunged into icy water. He couldn’t look away from its scorching eyes. They drew him in, and sibilant whispers echoed around his skull, entreating him to despair, to abandon his childish beliefs in a make-believe god.

  Gralia’s strident voice rose in prayer to clash with the lich’s taunting.

  Aristodeus said something, but the words were lost in the clangor and cries of fighting.

  The lich’s eyes switched from Deacon to the philosopher. The flames wreathing its fingers burst forth in a cone of murky light. Aristodeus’s hand came up clutching a sliver of stone; it was black and veined with green. Where the fire struck, it sputtered and went out.

  The lich hissed, and flicked the streamers of purplish vapor that connected with the undead. In response, a group of reavers broke off from the villagers and slammed into the philosopher. Aristodeus was buried beneath thrashing bodies. His sword clattered across the ground, and the sliver of black rock skittered after it.

  The lich glided closer, tugging its minions away from the philosopher with sharp pulls on the threads.

  Aristodeus rolled to his back and tried to lever himself into a sitting position.

  The lich’s jaws clacked, and something like a laugh rattled up from the tattered lungs visible through its ribcage.

  Gralia screamed.

  Deacon glanced over his shoulder to see her surrounded by undead. Beyond her, villagers were fleeing toward the houses.

  As he turned back, dark fire burgeoned on the lich’s palm. The air thrummed, and waves of nausea struck Deacon in the guts. He stumbled forward, spotted the glint of metal on the ground. Flames of fuligin shot toward Aristodeus, and at the same time, Deacon swept up his sword and rammed it through brittle ribs into a heart so black and desiccated, it could have been made of coal.

  The lich shrieked and roared and howled. The sorcerous threads it held like a puppeteer shimmered and vanished. Dark flames dispersed into filthy smog before they could touch Aristodeus.

>   All around the square, undead dropped in heaps, and a cheer went up from the villagers who’d made it to the cover of the houses.

  The lich looked down at the sword poking through its ribs, then lifted its coal-fire eyes. Lightning crackled along the blade and flung Deacon back. Pain throbbed through every nerve, and his fingers were scalded.

  Aristodeus tried to reach his feet, but the lich raised both hands above its head, and a poisonous brume formed around them.

  “No!” the philosopher cried, scooting back on his rear.

  There was a rush of movement, the flash of a blade, and the lich’s head went spinning away across the square. Its body swayed in place for a moment, then crumbled into ash. The churning vapors it had summoned dispersed on the wind.

  There, standing over the lich’s remains, was Jarl Shader.

  As a dozen men of the Coastal Watch streamed into the square behind him, Jarl sheathed his sword. He ignored the philosopher and came to help Deacon to his feet. Gralia ran to him, and he embraced his wife and child as if there were no one else in all the world of Urddynoor.

  Villagers started to re-enter the square, poking through the bodies of the reavers to make sure they were fully dead this time.

  Deacon heard the scuff of feet approaching.

  “Your boy fought well, Jarl,” Aristodeus said.

  Gralia wrenched herself away from her family and punched him square on the jaw. Aristodeus fell on his rump, eyes wide with shock. But it was a shock that swiftly gave way to fury.

  He surged to his feet, but Jarl intercepted him, blade half-drawn.

  Aristodeus’s eyes flitted left and right. His sword was buried beneath a pile of corpses, and there was something about Jarl that told Deacon the philosopher would be dead in an instant, if he so much as breathed.

  “It wasn’t fighting that saved us,” Gralia said, “it was prayer. It was the Lord Nous himself.”

  Jarl snorted. “Could have done with his almighty help back on the beach. Just thank shog those things were so slow. Dozens we killed, but we still lost too many of our own.”

  With an effort of will, Aristodeus relaxed and drew himself up to his full height. He was half a head taller than Jarl, but slender, where Jarl was broad-shouldered and heavily muscled.

  “The other three ships were merely a diversion,” the philosopher said. “The focus of the attack was here, and believe me, in the proximity of the lich you just killed, the reavers we faced were anything but slow.”

  “Hear this, philosopher,” Jarl said. “I’ll honor our agreement, but put the boy in danger again, and I’ll—”

  Aristodeus crouched down and drove his hand through a heap of bodies. He whipped it out, clutching his sword. With staggering speed and grace, he slashed, thrust, and sliced the air, gliding in dancer’s streps as he fenced invisible foes. Jarl looked on open-mouthed, and nods of respect passed among the Coastal Watch.

  When he’d finished, Aristodeus leaned on his sword and said, “I never doubted you would adhere to our little agreement, Jarl. It may come as a surprise to you, but I’ve always considered you a man of honor. It’s part of the reason I chose you.”

  Deacon looked from the philosopher to his father. What did Aristodeus mean, “chose”?

  Gralia draped her arm around Deacon’s shoulders. “Come on, you’ve already seen more than any child should. Let’s get you home, leave the Watch to take care of things here.”

  “Good idea,” Aristodeus said. “Mind if I tag along. Jarl, you coming?”

  Jarl narrowed his eyes, then turned away. Deacon heard him ordering his men to search for survivors and pile up the bodies of the reavers for burning.

  “So,” Aristodeus said as he followed Deacon and Gralia from the square, “how about a glass of wine and a bite to eat? All that fighting’s got me famished.”

  Gralia stopped and looked the philosopher in the eye.

  “You were never really in danger, were you?”

  “What do you mean?” Aristodeus said.

  “You knew. You knew what was coming.”

  “I can assure you—”

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  Aristodeus steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. He drew in a long breath and let it out as a sigh.

  “I didn’t know there would be a lich. And no, I had nothing to do with the attack, if that’s what you’re thinking. I see patterns, read the signs; that is all. Just think where you’d all be if I hadn’t been here, and if I hadn’t put so much work into training young Shader.”

  “No,” Gralia said.

  “No?”

  “No wine, and no food, unless you make it yourself. I’m Nous’s servant, not yours. And besides, my son and I need to pray.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Gralia—”

  “Not just because we survived; not just for the souls of those who didn’t; and not just for lashing out like I did. For you, Aristodeus. We’re going to pray for you.”

  “Now you’re just being—”

  “What you’ve done is wrong, philosopher. I always said so from the start. You know what I’m talking about. This plan of yours is warped, unnatural, but I’ll speak no more of it in front of my boy. And I do mean that, just so we are clear. He is my boy; mine and Jarl’s. Is that understood? Because if not, I’ll put an end to our agreement, and to the Abyss with Jarl’s honor.”

  A war of emotions flashed across Aristodeus’s face. His eyes burned with suppressed rage, but then a mask of calm descended, and he spread his hands.

  “You are right, Gralia. Forgive me. I am the tutor, you are the parents. I sometimes get a bit carried away, but you know it’s only because I want what’s best for young Shader.”

  Gralia shook her head and tugged on Deacon’s hand, and together they headed home to pray, leaving Aristodeus stranded at the edge of the square. But no matter how much he might have wished otherwise, no matter how much he prayed, Deacon had the feeling his old life was irrevocably lost.

  Already, his thoughts were changing, falling into patterns that were not his own. He may have been only seven, but he was astute enough to realize every story he was told, now that Jarl had abandoned reading to him, was carefully chosen. Not only that, but the philosopher drilled him in the forms of sword play, taught him to ride, coached him at Strategos, and voiced an opinion about everything, persuading Deacon to adopt it as his own.

  But what choice was there? Since Aristodeus had arrived, Jarl had virtually stepped out of Deacon’s life, and Gralia might just as well have been a shadow. About the only thing the philosopher left to her was prayer. What hold Aristodeus had over his parents, Deacon could only guess at, but whatever it was, it paled beside the hold he now had over his young charge. No matter which way he turned, Deacon felt he would never shake off the philosopher’s influence. It was like the luminaries said of Nous, who would pursue them no matter how far and fast they ran to hide from the truth he confronted them with:

  Aristodeus was in his blood.

  Thank you for reading

  WARD OF THE PHILOSOPHER

  It would be a huge help and support if you could leave a brief review on Amazon. Reviews are critical to a book’s success and can help to ensure that the Shader story continues to reach a wider audience.

  This has been a short introduction to the world of the SHADER series and a glimpse at the childhood and origins of the Elect knight who leads the decisive charge against the hordes of the Lich Lord at the Battle of Trajinot. Shader goes on to slowly piece together the mysteries of his fragmented life as he comes face to face with a destiny that pits him against the end of all things. The story unfolds in:

  Book 1: Sword of the Archon

  Book 2: Best Laid Plans

  Book 3: The Unweaving

  Book 4: The Archon’s Assassin

  Please email me at ottoblightey@gmail.com with any comments or feedback.

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