Child of the Knight

by Matt Heppe

  A bolt buried itself in the dirt nearby and another flew overhead. Six Idorians approached on foot, still some seventy strides away, but two had stopped to shoot at her.

  “Calen!” she shouted. The two of them could outshoot six Idorians. She was certain of it. Their crossbows were just too slow. They could at least wound a few more Idorians before taking flight.

  Hadde loosed an arrow, but the crossbowman saw her take aim and dodged aside.

  Another crossbowman raised his bow to shoot, but a dark figure raced out from behind a tree and slammed into his leg. The man shouted in surprise as he toppled. At first Hadde thought the wolves had returned. But then the animal charged another crossbowman. A boar.

  The boar’s next target frantically back stepped as the animal raced at him. It was hopeless, and he, like the first man, was knocked to the ground. But unlike the other, the boar stayed to savage this man. The soldier raised his mailed arms to fend off the enraged animal, screaming for help all the while.

  Another soldier raised his crossbow to shoot the boar, but held his shot for fear of hitting his companion. Hadde’s arrow flew low and struck him through the calf. An Idorian struck the boar with his sword, but the animal fought on. The beast had thrown the enemy into disorder.

  “Hadde!” Calen called from behind her. He was mounted and held Quickstep’s reins for her. “Ride! Before we’re trapped.”

  She glanced back down the slope. Landomere sent the boar. She was certain of it. Hadde wanted to stay and fight alongside the beast.

  But then a crossbow bolt struck the boar, gravely wounding it. The chance to fight had passed. Cursing, she ran to her horse and mounted. She put her heels to Quickstep and they raced north into a shallow depression, and then up the opposite ridge. Hadde paused at the top of the ridge and looked back the way they had come, but there was no sign of pursuit.

  They fear another ambush. Let them fear. It will slow them.

  “We’ll find another place and do it again. Or maybe lay some traps,” Hadde said. Calen nodded. He glanced back at the ridge behind them before riding off. They rode on another ten arrowflights with no sign of the Idorians.

  “Do you think we’re clear?” Calen asked as they paused by a shallow stream. Hadde saw the Arewe River and the Kiremi plains through the trees to the west.

  “I think so.”

  “You don’t look good, Hadde. Your face is flushed. Helna’s grace! You’re bleeding. We have to take care of your wound.”

  “Let’s cross this stream and dismount over there.” She led them across the stream and up the opposite bank. They had just crossed a steep ridge. If the Idorians wished to reach the plains they would turn west before crossing the ridge.

  “I’ll water the horses,” Calen said. “They’ve had a hard day.”

  Hadde dismounted and walked the few strides to the stony stream bank. She took off her sword belt and let it fall. This quiver was full, but the saddle quiver was nearly empty. She should have brought her bow with her, she thought as she glanced at Calen as he led the two horses to the water.

  She could get to Quickstep in a few strides, but she was too tired to bother getting it. In any case, the Idorians had given up their pursuit. She hoped. She was too tired, and in too much pain to care.

  Grimacing, Hadde pulled her tunic over her head. Blood stained the lower part of it, although not as much as when she had first been wounded. Her linen shirt was soaked in blood and sweat. She pulled it off as well. Even the hot summer air felt cool against her skin.

  She gingerly removed her bandage. It was hard to see the full extent of her wound, but she could see enough to know that her mother’s stitches had partially ripped free.

  Hadde picked up her shirt and stepped into the stream. Kneeling in the cool water she rinsed her shirt. She didn’t care that her low boots and leggings were soaked. The cool water felt good. She used her sodden shirt to wash away the blood.

  A warm breeze blew across her, making her aware of her half-nakedness. Bathing naked by a shallow stream. A shudder of fear went over her as a vision of the leering Waltas appeared before her.

  “Calen,” she called, louder than she had meant to. “Would you bring my pack, it has medicines in it.”

  “Right away.”

  “And my bow.”

  He led the horses away from the streambed to a dense bed of everbloom. Hadde went back to scrubbing away at the dried blood.

  “Come here, Hadde. Let me look at it.” She gave a start when he spoke. Calen laid a wool blanket on the ground and placed her pack and bow next to it. “Lie down.”

  She did as he said. “Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked as she lay down on her side.

  “No, not really.” He took her shirt and dabbed at the wound. “The skin is red. It’s infected.”

  “There’s a pouch in my bag. My mother mixed herbs for a poultice. Dried everbloom root and willow bark. You’ll have to wrap them in a linen bandage and rebind the wound.”

  “Hadde, you can’t keep opening the wound. Even if I wrap it you’ll just tear it open and start bleeding again.”

  “Then you’ll have to kill more of them,” she said.

  Calen opened her pack and took out the medicine pouch and bandages. “You were too badly wounded to come. Someone else—your father—should have come.”

  “She’s my daughter. It would have killed me to stay back there.”

  “It is killing you being here.”

  “Just bind my wound, please. I can’t let them leave Landomere.”

  Calen placed a bandage on the blanket next to Hadde and poured the ground herbs atop it. “Is this enough?”

  “I think so. Now wrap it and bind it to my wound.”

  “Tight enough?” he asked as he finished.

  Hadde sat up and twisted her body. It hurt, but not as much as before. “Good.”

  “You want your shirt back?”

  “Yes. Hadde the Naked will not ride today.”

  Calen laughed. “I’ll wash it off.” He strode into the stream and rinsed the shirt, scrubbing at the bloody patch from where he had cleaned the wound.

  “You shouldn’t have run off.” Hadde said.

  His back stiffened. “You said three arrows and then run.”

  “Calen, I need you to be more aggressive. If Belor were here—”

  He turned on her. “Belor is dead. Dead because he ran off with you.”

  Hadde glared at him. “That’s not fair.”

  “I’m not you, Hadde. I’m not Belor either. I can’t stand in front of arrows and shoot as if they aren’t there. I can’t stop thinking that every arrow is aimed at me. And I don’t want to die with an arrow in my guts. I don’t want to die choking on the fletching of an arrow that’s gone through my throat.”

  “You… you get used to it.” The words rang hollow even as she said them. It wasn’t exactly true. She never got used to it. She remembered the hopeless feeling she had felt watching a javelin as it spiraled toward her chest. Time had slowed down and she had known her death was upon her.

  “No, that’s not right,” she said. “You accept it.”

  “You accept what?”

  “That you are already dead.” She remembered sitting by a campfire. It seemed ages ago. Nidon talking to her in the near darkness. “If you are already dead, fear cannot grab hold of you.”

  “I want to live.”

  “When you are faced with a choice, being brave and dying, or being a coward and living, well, it isn’t really a choice. How do you live with yourself afterward? I will save Enna or I will die trying. What choice do I have? Should I go back to Long Meadow and live out the rest of my life knowing that I did nothing to save my daughter?”

  Calen shook his head.

  “Calen, in my mind I am already dead. That is how I stand up to the arrows. And that is how I kill men.”

  “I don’t know if I can think that way.”

  Hadde motioned for Calen to throw her shirt to her. He squeez
ed the water out of it and handed it to her. Carefully, Hadde pulled it over her head. The coolness of the water felt wonderful.

  “If you can’t think that way, then be prepared to think the other way for the rest of your life. Can you live with that?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Nidon shot the bolt on the door to his room, and then, on second thought, took a chair from next to the table and jammed the backrest under the handle. It wouldn’t stop a determined assault, but it might give him time.

  And then, barefoot and dressed only in his nightshirt and trousers, he picked up his battle sword from where it rested on the table and leaned it against the wall next to his bed.

  What has Salador come to that I fear knives in the dark?

  Nidon lay back in bed. Sleeping in trousers wouldn’t be comfortable, but he wasn’t going to be caught without them. He stared up at the dark beams crossing the ceiling. Shadows flickered in the candlelight from the single candle burning on the nightstand beside him. Sleep would not come easily. He had spent at least a quarter day arguing with the queen’s steward. When Nidon had demanded information about his attackers, nothing had been forthcoming. We are investigating the incident. Nidon gave a derisive laugh. Now the inn is guarded by the Queen’s Guard. Except it was the Queen’s Guard who attacked me.

  Nidon stared up at the ceiling, watching shadows flicker in the candle light. He had to get some sleep. Tomorrow he would investigate the attack. He had to know if the queen had put the men up to it. Or was it simply drunken bravado?

  Nidon pushed the thoughts out of his mind, and as it did on so many other occasions, his mind’s eye turned to Landomere. Would it be anything like he imagined? If the queen paid him the money he was due, he was certain he could purchase a goodly sized estate, or even a large farmstead.

  And what if she doesn’t pay me? What if I lose the contest and am no longer champion? My manor is an abandoned ruin I haven’t seen in ten years.

  He shook his head. Bah! I don’t need money, I’ve lived a soldier’s life for years.

  He yawned and blew out the candle. He lay back and closed his eyes. Muffled voices echoed down the hall from the inn’s great room, but otherwise the inn was quiet. The day’s storm had long passed.

  It wasn’t much of an assassination attempt, although it nearly succeeded. A group of drunk, half-armed men charging into an inn in the middle of the day. Two of them knights. What knight would do such a thing? Idorians might, but not a Saladoran. Where has the honor of Salador gone?

  Enough, enough. I want to be done with this business.

  Pushing the day’s events away, he turned his thoughts to Hadde. He pictured her sitting on her blanket by the babbling brook, a picnic basket beside her. She smiled up at him, and he at her.

  “Is this how you see her?” a man’s voice said from behind him.

  Fear surged through Nidon. The voice was right next to him. He tried to open his eyes and reach for his sword, but he couldn’t. He was frozen in place, frozen in the imaginary Landomere in his mind.

  “When I think of her, she is naked,” the voice said.

  Fear turned to panic. Nidon couldn’t move. Hadde sat, smiling up at him, her hand raised in greeting, but like everything else locked in a moment in time.

  And then Nidon caught movement out of the corner of his eye and a man appeared in front of him. A man all in black with the symbol of a silver sword stitched to his cloak. The man knelt by the frozen Hadde.

  “Funny how our imaginings are so different, and yet similar,” the man said.

  Morin.

  The prince turned to face him. “Yes, it is me.”

  But how? Nidon’s lips didn’t move, he was still bound in place. His words were thoughts.

  Morin, however, moved freely, and when he spoke his lips moved. He stood and faced Nidon.

  He’s not eternal. No silver skin.

  “But I am, Nidon. I just don’t choose to appear that way in your dream.”

  I’m dreaming?

  Morin laughed. “You are awake, but powerless. Didn’t Hadde ever tell you about the touch of an eternal?”

  Nidon felt his heart pounding in his chest. Touch?

  Morin leaned close. “That’s right, Nidon, touch. I am in your room, my hand on your forehead.”

  Does he mean to kill me? Nidon struggled against his invisible bonds.

  Morin laughed. “Kill you? No. I need you.”

  Why? Why does he need me?

  “I am going to wake you. Do not call out. Do not attempt to fight me.”

  And then Nidon was awake. Morin’s dark form loomed over him. His silver face and hands glimmered in the faint light coming through the open window. The rest of him was shrouded in black. Morin took a step back as Nidon sat up and put his feet on the floor. His sword was missing.

  “You came to my aid downstairs,” Nidon said.

  “You mean I saved you.”

  “It wasn’t an honorable fight.”

  Morin laughed. “I understand how it might be hard to say the words.”

  Nidon looked away, not wanting to look into the mocking silver face. He had never been a friend of Morin’s. Nidon’s biggest responsibility had always been to protect the king, and before Akinos had appeared, Morin had always been seen as a threat. Before Nidon had become Champion, Morin had once attacked his brother in an attempt to take the Godshield, Forsvar. The brothers had forgiven each other, but Nidon had not trusted Morin since.

  “I will give you your due. You saved me. But why? And how did you happen to be there when I was attacked?”

  “I was here in your room, waiting for you. I did not know that you would be attacked, but I came to your aid when I heard the fighting begin.”

  “It was good for me that you were here. But why were you here?”

  “The world is in peril. Cragor holds the Orb of Creation. He doesn’t yet know how to control it. But when he does, the eternals—and all the minions of the Orb will be at his command. And while Akinos lost, Cragor might win.”

  Nidon’s mind went to the Dragon’s Gate. He had seen many varcolac there, and giant urias as well. But never eternals. And never the Orb-wielder himself. “We cannot hold the Dragon’s Gate if he brings the eternals into the battle.”

  “It could be far worse. The Orb is like a river with many branches downstream. But instead of water, this stream flows with life. Many of these branches feed the eternals, giving them life. When Akinos lived, the biggest branch went to him, keeping him alive for centuries.

  “But then he created so many eternals that the river went dry. And when that happened he tapped into the earth itself and drew life from it. He would… dig a well, drawing life into it and away from all other living things.”

  The Wasting. Life being drawn from the earth to sustain Akinos and his eternals. Nidon rubbed his face with his hands. “It could happen again. The Wasting could return. Does Cragor understand this? Does he know the danger?”

  “Akinos didn’t know the danger when he held the Orb. And he held it for five hundred years. Cragor is a varcolac. Do you think he has the restraint to hold back the power at his hands? I fear not.”

  Not liking sitting on the bed while Morin loomed over him, Nidon stood. Morin took a step back, crossing his arms across his chest. Nidon strode to the open window. It looked out over a narrow alley and then an enclosed private garden. He glanced back at the door, still jammed shut with a chair.

  “This is how you came in?” Nidon asked. “You climbed?”

  “I jumped.”

  Nidon shook his head. It was an impossible leap for any normal man. But Morin was both an elementar and an eternal. No man could hope to stop him. “Why? Why come to me at all? Whose help could you need?”

  “We are all in danger. The world is in danger as long as Cragor holds the Orb of Creation. But I cannot defeat him alone. I need help. And who else could I go to? My friends and allies are dead or have no power. The queen would kill me as a threat as soon as speak
to me. I must find out what has become of my brother. Only the wielder of the Godshield, Forsvar, can defeat the bearer of the Orb.”

  “You can’t take it yourself?” Nidon asked. “You are both an elementar and an eternal.” He knew Morin thought himself rightful king. That if he had the Orb he would make himself king.

  “An eternal take the Orb from its possessor? It would be death. The Orb sustains all eternals. It can also destroy them.”

  “So what’s my role?” Nidon asked, not sure he wanted to know.

  “You are the King’s Champion. You must go to Boradin and find out what has happened.”

  “You don’t believe he is ill?”

  “I don’t. The queen never loved him. In truth she despises him. I think she holds him captive.”

  Nidon believed him. The queen’s story of illness didn’t ring true. But to hold an elementar captive would be no easy task.

  “They won’t let me see him,” Nidon said.

  “You are Champion of Salador,” Morin said, his tone mocking. “When have you ever let anything stand in your way?”

  Nidon stared out the open window into the darkness. Lightning flashed in the distance from a storm that would never touch them. Morin was right. Nidon wouldn’t accept the queen’s decree. He wouldn’t let her stop him.

  “No.” Morin said, his voice low.

  “What?” Nidon asked, still looking out the window.

  “No....” It was more a moan. And then Nidon heard something strike the floor. When he glanced across the bed, Morin had disappeared. Nidon strode closer, only to find Morin lying prostrate on the floor.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Nidon asked, crouching close to Morin.

  The eternal lay face down. He tried to push himself up, but failed. “I am cut off from the Orb,” Morin said. He rolled to his back, his hand outstretched toward Nidon.

  Even in the darkness, Nidon saw that Morin’s skin had lost the silver sheen of an eternal and had faded to black. “I saw this happen at King’s Crossing,” Nidon said. “Eternals fell lifeless from their horses when Forsvar was brought close to the Orb. But the Orb is far from here, and the queen still holds Forsvar.”