by Steven Drake
Jerris stood watching a few feet away, open mouthed, gawking boyishly at the lovely woman who had suddenly appeared before them. He admired her shapely form with the usual zeal of adolescence, and Darien shook his head. “Jerris,”
The older half-elf’s stern voice brought the lad out of his stupor. He jerked, nearly jumping into the air. “What is it, are we ready to go then?” the younger half-elf blurted out awkwardly.
“Let’s gather up that armor and pack it on the back of my horse. It will be a bit of an unwieldy burden, but if Avirosa does find us, two fighters are better than one.”
“You’re not even counting me?” Jerris said.
“No, and why should I? You got captured by a pair of idiots as I recall.” Jerris mumbled something under his breath, and gathered up the armor, while the Executioner turned to Rana. "All right then, what about you, Miss Rana? Are you going to cooperate or do I need to tie your hands?"
"No, that won't be necessary," Rana said. "I give you my word of honor that I will not attempt to escape nor will I attempt to kill you again."
"Hmph," The Executioner grumbled. "A simple 'no' would have sufficed. The rest of it is meaningless to me. Let's be on our way then."
They led the horses to the road, and then mounted up, ready to continue the journey. Darien had tethered Rana’s horse, named Squall, between Cloud and Terra. A thick morning fog slowed their progress at first, but as the sun rose over the land, the fog dissipated, revealing rocky terrain covered with scrubby bushes, scattered grasses, and scraggly trees, all brown and dormant for the winter months. The road ran along a high ridge that extended many miles into the Craglands from the south door of the underpass, until the ridge simply ended and the road dipped down into some unseen canyon.
The Craglands were a gray web of randomly placed ridges of high hills, canyons without any visible entrance or exit, steep gravelly slopes that appeared ready to slip away at the slightest touch, and massive boulders and piles of fallen rock to mark where other such slopes had crumbled in ages past. The road, where it was visible, was composed of regularly sized gray stones, square and worn smooth over centuries of wear. Unfortunately, the road disappeared in many places, buried by the remains of past rockslides, broken by boulders, or long worn away by torrents of water. More than once, the travelers had to pick their way slowly and carefully forward through distances where the road was worn away. It generally took several minutes of wandering to find the road once again, a frustrating delay, but not entirely unexpected. Slowing their pace was still preferable to becoming lost and then having to navigate the empty wilderness of the Craglands without a guide.
Rana rode silently between the two men, making no attempt at escape or conversation. After a while, Darien decided to see how cooperative his prisoner would be. There was only one question to ask that was of any importance. “So, Rana. Are you ready to tell me how you were able to track me down?”
“I still have nothing to say to you,” Rana turned up her nose and stared resolutely forward. “Just because you showed me mercy does not mean I’m going to think any better of you. You’re still a murderer and nothing more. Do you think that because you no longer serve the Demon King, that I will forget all your crimes?”
“Not at all, but in our present situation, it might benefit us all to be honest with one another.” The Executioner said. He waited a few minutes for a response, then continued. “As you please then, I suppose I’ll just have to guess. Your outfit marks you clearly as an apprentice in the Order of the Golden Shield. However, if they knew where I was, I presume they would not send an apprentice after me. Further, they have spies just as the Master does, and their leadership must know by now that I’ve left his service. If they don’t, then they’re far more incompetent than the Master believed them to be.”
“The Master?” Rana asked curiously. “Who is...”
“It’s what he calls the Demon King,” Jerris interrupted. “I know it’s rather creepy, but he can’t help it.”
“Are you sure?” Rana shot back., “How do you know he isn’t lying? How do you know anything he tells you is the truth? He might be trying to spy for the Demon King, and he just made up this story so you’d trust him.” Jerris laughed heartily in response. “What’s so funny?” Rana protested.
“I believe he’s laughing at the idea that all this is some sort of grand plot to spy for the Demon King by befriending a half-elf northerner and sparing the life of a Golden Shield apprentice,” Darien said. “I must admit, no one would expect that.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. Rana’s face turned red out of embarrassment and she fell silent again.
“Well, yes, that’s about it.” Jerris said, “What a silly notion. Anyway, I have my own reasons for trusting Darien, one being that if he’d been working for the Demon King, I’m sure I’d have been dead almost the instant he met me.”
“Fine then, But you should know who it is you follow, and what he’s done. Have you any idea what crimes he’s committed against the civilized people of the world?”
“I know his name,” Jerris said. “I don’t know what crimes he’s committed and against whom, but he’s committed none against me, and that’s all I’m concerned about.”
“He’s Darien the Executioner,” Rana’s voice rose with anger and she waved her hands furiously. “He’s killed hundreds, maybe thousands of people. The Order of the Shade executes horrible tortures of the worst kind imaginable. He’s a monster and a murderer and a bloody scourge upon us all.”
“You may be right,” Jerris said flatly. “He’s told me as much, but he’s been kind enough to spare me the details. I’d appreciate it if you would do the same.”
“Then you’re no better than he is. He brutally murdered my entire family while I watched.”
“That’s interesting,” the Executioner shrewdly observed. “I was a soldier, not an assassin. There were only a few occasions where I was called upon to personally kill anyone aside from enemy soldiers. The Master occasionally ordered members of the Order to execute prisoners, just to be certain we would kill without hesitation, but it seems quite unlikely that you witnessed any of these, so I must guess you are a survivor of one of the purges.”
“Purges?” Jerris asked.
“Occasionally, the Master would decide to make an example of a rebellious city, and declare a purge,” Darien explained. “In that case, it was my task to purge the city. The purges were used to instill fear in the Demon King’s tributaries. He would send soldiers under the command of one of his generals, often myself, to utterly destroy a city, and make it seem as though everyone was killed, though that was rarely the case. In almost all of the purges, the nobility and any others who might be dangerous were killed, and the rest taken captive, an excellent way to replenish the Master’s slave work force. It was important that none escape and the city was left an empty ruin. The point was to remind every other city what could happen. Fear was the main objective.” Darien reasoned that he had not been a Shade long enough to command more than one or two purges. This actually narrowed this woman’s possible identities considerably, but, unfortunately, those memories were lost in the fog of his mind. There was no need to mention that to the woman, though. It will be just as well if she believes that I executed dozens of purges, he decided.
“Do you think that you’re innocent because you were following orders? You are utterly disgusting,” Rana snarled.
Darien ignored her insult, continuing to speak. “If you escaped from a purged city, then I’m impressed. That’s a task few have managed. I’d be curious to learn just how you accomplished that.”
“Damn you and your devious words!” The woman spat out the words, increasingly frustrated that her captor continued to wheedle information out of her despite her not wishing to cooperate. “I see the only way to keep you from learning anything is to stay silent.”
“Come on, Darien,” Jerris said. “She’s never going to trust us if you keep interrogating her like this. If you can’t at leas
t be somewhat nice, then why don’t you just use that spell you used on me and be done with it?”
“I only used that on you because you were young, naïve, and simple minded. For you, it was unpleasant, but otherwise quick and painless, and it didn’t work anyway, if you recall. Rana, on the other hand, is probably trained to resist that spell. All Golden Shield members are. That resistance can be broken if the caster is sufficiently stronger of mind than his target. However, the process of breaking this resistance is extraordinarily painful. If I used it on this woman, I’m quite sure she would never trust us at all. I’ve been on the receiving end of that spell as part of my own training, and it isn’t pleasant. It’s also tiring for the caster, and I would rather not waste my energy. I don’t want her information that badly.”
“See, even when he’s being rude, he’s not being cruel, not on purpose anyway,” Jerris said as he turned to Rana and smiled. “He’s like that. It’s like the only things he knows are between bad and horrible, so to him, bad is as good as it gets.”
“Bah, now whose compliments sound like insults?” Darien scoffed, then added, “if she doesn’t want to speak to us, she doesn’t have to. If she somehow survived one of the purges, then she has good reason to seek vengeance. I am many things, but innocent is not one of them, orders or not. I won’t bother to ask for forgiveness, as if pretty words would make any difference. I probably am a monster, and a very dangerous one, but I am not the only one.”
Jerris said nothing in response, but started his now familiar fidgeting. They rode along in silence for the rest of the day, stopping only briefly. The gray, empty miles of the Craglands dragged by. By mid-afternoon, the ridge was left behind, and the road meandered through jagged rocks and fallen boulders, cutting a haphazard path through narrow ravines and sharp rocky hills. On the whole, however, the road was descending gradually, if irregularly, with each passing mile. At times, the road narrowed so that the horses had to pass single file, a somewhat difficult maneuver, tethered together as they were. Darien kept his ears open, but only heard the clicking and clattering of small stones dislodged by the travelers as they bounced around and finally came to rest in some crevice or tumbled down a nearby slope. The great Red Mountains of the north were at their backs. At that moment, Darien had high hopes that they would be able to escape without any difficulty.
As the sun sank low in the west, casting the long shadows of the Silver Mountains out over the Craglands, the elder half-elf got down from his horse, and led his companions off the road to camp. This time, the camping spot was beneath a rocky ledge at the intersection of two flat rock faces. This time there was enough space beneath for all three to stand comfortably. The Craglands provided little scenery, but did provide many ready campsites.
Darien rested, but once again, did not sleep, focusing on the prisoner. He had drawn no closer to solving the mystery of how she had found him, but at least he had an idea of how she had encountered him in the past. She escaped a purge and somehow found me hiding in the northlands, he mused. Either of these facts alone is interesting, but taken together, they raise the prospect that this woman is far more than she appears to be. Her magic is impressive for an apprentice. She appears to be just a few years older than Jerris. She was probably a child, but how would a child escape such a horror? Did she receive help from someone, and might that person still be helping her? No, if she expected anyone to come for her, it would have made more sense for her to stall for time. Ah well, hopefully I can learn more from her later, he sighed to himself.
He leaned against one of the rock faces, drifting on the edge of sleep, shutting his eyes and only opening them once every few minutes. Yet, even in this state, he stayed aware of everything around him. Sometime during the night, Rana began to stir, subtly shifting positions far too often. The wary shade relaxed his breathing as much as he could, and hung his head down and to the side, feigning sleep. Sure enough, the girl began to move, rising to her feet and starting to skulk off away from the camp.
Darien did not stir, nor make any move to stop her. She wouldn’t get far, he reckoned. He had brought all the food to the camp, and made sure that the horses would sleep well, and would only be wakened by a word from him. He wondered for a moment whether it would be wise to follow her, but decided against it. He could confront her about her secret anytime, but a tied, uncooperative prisoner would be a considerable delay. Once she realizes she has no way of rousing a horse, she’ll give up and come back, he reassured himself. On the other hand, if she’s actually foolhardy enough to set off into the Craglands in the late autumn without any supplies, then I’ll just let her go. If that’s the doom she chooses, then I will not stop her.
Sure enough, sometime later, Rana returned and laid down. Darien was sitting up, and looking straight at her, but she was taking such care to mind her steps and make no sound that she failed to notice. “Back already?” he smugly questioned.
Rana jumped at the sound, nearly hitting her head against the rock overhang. “When did you wake up?” Rana asked dejectedly.
“For me to wake up, I would have had to actually go to sleep in the first place.”
“You were awake the entire time, and you just let me walk off without a word?”
“Yes, your point?”
“What if I’d been trying to escape?”
“I assumed you were” The Executioner said flatly. “If you weren’t trying to escape, then what were you doing?” Rana made no response. Her face contorted oddly, obviously searching her mind for some plausible lie. After watching her squirm for a few seconds amusement, her interrogator finally intervened. “Don’t bother trying to come up with anything. You obviously were trying to escape, but when you realized you couldn’t wake any of the horses, you did the sensible thing, gave up, and came back.”
“Oh, Um, well…,” she trailed off, and after a few moments added, “I guess you have it all figured out, don’t you?”
Darien nodded and smiled wryly. “I’m not your enemy, at least not at the moment. Whether you like it or not, I’m not going to kill you and you can’t kill me, nor can you escape in any way that doesn’t end with you starving in this wasteland, so just stop being so obstinate and try to make the best of it. Pride will only get you killed. If you want to live a long life or be a passable warrior, or both, then you’d best lay it aside sooner rather than later.”
“There are things more important than just staying alive. Some things are worth dying for. I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand that.”
“Is your pride really one of those?” Darien cocked his head to the side and sighed. “If you’re willing to tell me how you found me, and convince me that you can evade Avirosa on your own, I’ll give you your horse and your armor and let you go now. Keep in mind it’s not as simple as just heading back to Vorog. Avirosa is nothing like me. From what I remember of him, I can tell you he kills and tortures out of enjoyment, not duty. He is cruel, vindictive, and petty. He could be in the underpass right now, on my trail, and if he met you there, you can rest assured it would end badly for you. You did see the corpse of that beast in the underpass. Well, that’s just one of the lovely things he’s able to command.”
“I saw it. I take it you killed it,” Rana grumbled at her captor, and he nodded quietly. “No, I gave my word. I said I wouldn’t try to escape and I won’t.”
“In that case, stop sneaking around and go to sleep.”
Darien continued to watch as Rana laid down and went back to sleep. He was confident that the woman would not attempt escape again, but was still troubled. Something about her reaction seemed off. The wary shade decided to take a look around, just to be certain she hadn’t laid some kind of trap. He carefully examined the gray stones for any sign of spells or traps, but found none. The horses continued sleeping undisturbed, as expected.
He was about to turn around and go back to camp, when he heard a familiar sound. “I see you’ve made another friend on your journey. Do you think it’s wise to ju
st let her wander about on her own?” It was, of course, the old man Ezra, bent over his gnarled staff, standing just a few yards behind him. As before, Darien had not seen or heard his approach.
“Ezra?” Darien said. “She tried to kill me, so she’s hardly a friend, but something tells me you already knew that.” Ezra smiled his now familiar all knowing smile as Darien continued speaking. “I’m not that worried about her. She’s only an amateur out for revenge. I don’t think she’s got the skill to outwit me or the power to fight me. I let her make her escape attempt without interfering because I thought maybe she’d see I’m not her enemy any longer.”
“I see. That’s interesting,” The old man stroked his wispy beard thoughtfully. “Do you really think that matters? After what she went through, you don’t really believe she’ll forgive you, do you?”
“Of course not, I don’t expect anyone would. I know I wouldn’t.”
“So why bother with this woman?” Ezra asked. “Why not just give her some supplies and send her back to Vorog?”
“There are things you don’t entirely understand, old man,” the Executioner said. “The man that pursues me is more ruthless and vicious than I ever thought to be when I served the Master. Avirosa kills, tortures, and maims simply to amuse himself. He is unlikely to let her go if he catches her, whether she gives him what he wants or not.”
“I see,” the wizened old man rocked back and forth leaning against his staff now, seemingly quite oblivious to the seriousness of the situation. “So killing and maiming are acceptable as long as one doesn’t enjoy them. An interesting concept.”
“That isn’t remotely what I meant and you know it. Do you hear nothing I say? I plainly told you that Avirosa will kill the girl. I am allowing her to accompany me for the same reason I allowed Jerris to accompany me. Didn’t you warn me not to take life needlessly? Is it somehow different if I send her to die by my enemy’s hand rather than kill her myself? You cast the spell on me, so you ought to know, but I have a feeling you won’t give me a straight answer.”