by Jon Kiln
The boy drew his mouth into a line. “Only one message. Captain Berengar is to take the Deep Pass if he ever wants a chance to see her alive again. Solag waits.”
Berengar swung his sword aside leaving a small gash along the boy’s cheek. As blood seeped out in two rivulets from the cut, Berengar grabbed the boy’s shirt in his fist and pulled him out of Nisero’s grasp. “Where is my daughter? Do you work for him?”
“Answer!” Nisero shouted.
“All I know is the message. I didn’t even know who he was talking about.”
Berengar backed him up past the horses into the doorpost of the shack behind. The wall shook with the impact and he heard voices and movement within. “If you were to deliver a message, why try to attack us and provoke us to murder before you could deliver it?”
“Not to kill you,” the boy said. “To kill anyone with you. That was part of the message.”
Berengar kicked the door of the shack inward to the sound of screams. The door tore loose of its leather hinges and fell to the stone floor. The captain dragged the boy inside over the felled door and threw him onto a table that threatened to give under the boy’s slight weight. Clay cups and bowls spilled across the surface and clattered to the floor. Three women and two men knocked over chairs and jostled items on shelves as they backed up toward the walls.
The captain pressed the point of his blade to the boy’s gut. “I know how and where to stick you dozens of times without letting you die. Do you want me to show you?”
“No.”
The captain tilted his head without looking away from the boy on the table. “We need to borrow your fine house for a talk. Will that be a problem?”
One of the women answered from the wall. “No, master.”
Nisero stepped inside. “Get out.”
The company, except for the soldiers and the boy, scampered out of the shack. Nisero lifted the door off the floor and propped it back over the opening.
Berengar leaned on the table next to the boy’s head, making the spindly legs underneath bend and creak. The sword point remained on the boy’s belly as the blade elevated its angle with the captain’s lean. “You are going to tell me everything I ask you about Solag, and any other subject I want to know. Or, you will experience unending pain at my hand, and then tell me everything I want to know.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“When did Solag give you this message?” Berengar asked. “When did you see him? Don’t try to lie or I will ask you again the other way.”
The boy laid his head back on the table. He lifted and thumped the back of his head against the surface three times. Tears erupted from his eyes. “Do what you need for as long as you need. Solag will kill my mother and sisters. He will burn them and make me watch for failing to follow his instructions. He has done it to others. Either I die at your hand, sending you through the pass to meet him, or he returns for them. No one is safe.”
Berengar lifted the sword and stepped away from the table. The boy remained on his back, staring at the shack’s ceiling. The captain looked at Nisero leaning against the door to hold it in place. The lieutenant made eye contact and shrugged. Nisero looked out of a small square opening that served as a window.
Berengar returned his attention to the boy. “You do not work for him?”
“I am just delivering his message, to save my family from him.”
“When did you see him exactly?”
The boy closed his eyes. “He’ll kill them worse than anything you can do to me.”
“We can protect you and them.”
The boy rolled his head from side to side on the table without opening his eyes. “Lies. Even if you believe it, it is still a lie.”
“Believe this,” Berengar said. “I will find him and his men. I will be more than he bargained for, whether he thinks he wants me to come or not. He has my daughter, the same way he is threatening your mother and sisters. When I kill him and anyone with him, it will be everything he deserves and your family will be safe. Throwing yourself on my sword will leave him to return as he pleases without you here to protect them. I am your freedom from him—you and all of Darkenhauls.”
“Another will rise from the mountains and the underworld to replace him.” The boy opened his eyes, but would not look at the captain. “At least the other bandits fear Solag and his killers. They fear him the way no one in this region fears the distant King and his men. If Solag is gone, we trade the dark protection of one great demon for the feeding frenzy of a thousand lesser ones. They will stick us dozens of times without letting us die, as you say.”
“So Solag claims this village?” The captain sheathed his sword and righted a chair next to the table. “This is his territory and the other bandits know it?”
“They will know I was the one that told you. They will rip me apart when you leave.”
Nisero spoke from the door. “We’ll beat you badly to make it look as if you resisted and refused to tell us anymore.”
Berengar held the back of the chair and looked at the lieutenant.
The boy said, “It won’t be enough. They will not tolerate anyone siding with the King’s men and risk upsetting Solag.”
“We’ll kill you then,” Nisero said, “like you wanted. You’ll fulfill your deal with Solag and we will use what you tell us to destroy him, and to protect your family from him. The village may be safer from other bandits, but Solag has taken a special interest in your mother and your sisters. We have seen what he does to people that interest him. Do you believe he will leave them alone forever, once they burn on his mind long enough?”
The boy hit his head against the table again.
Berengar sighed and sat down in the chair next to the boy. “We will do nothing to put your family in additional risk.” The young man turned his head away, but remained where the captain put him. Berengar continued, “Honor our grace to you. Help me protect my daughter the way you are protecting your women. You were willing to throw yourself on our swords to save them. I’m willing to follow him to do the same, but I have to bring him down to save my daughter. Tell me what I need to know.”
The boy clinched his fists. “You go into the Deep Pass.”
“Is that the way he went,” the captain asked, “or the way he wants me to go, and he went another?”
“It is the way he always goes, and the way he wants you to go.”
“So his permanent encampment is in that direction, over the kingdom’s border?”
“I don’t know what is beyond the Deep Pass, but that is the way he goes and comes, and no other bandits dare to tread. Foolish travelers that go that way seldom return, since it became Solag’s.”
“He kills anyone that follows?”
“I wouldn’t know, but I could guess as well as you.” The boy sat up on his elbows, but stared at the wall away from the captain. “The other bandit kings leave tribute and tax for him at the mouth of the Deep Pass. He leaves it when he passes through on his way to draw blood from the kingdom. He retrieves it on his way back through. Not a piece is missing when he does. In a place like Darkenhauls, that should tell you everything you need to know about him.”
The captain looked at Nisero, but he was staring out the window. Berengar noted that no one seemed to want to look him in the eye at the moment. He returned his attention to the back of the boy’s head. “When did he pass through last?”
“A day ago.”
“And that’s when he left the message for you to deliver?”
“Yes.” The boy’s voice broke on the single word.
“How many men were with him?”
“It is different every time. I think some stay in the mountains.”
Nisero asked from the door, “How many this time?”
“Many. More than usual. I was hiding in my family’s hovel. Solag himself burst in. He had my mother bent across our table. The other men held my sisters and threatened to do terrible things while I watched. Solag told me he would burn them
himself, if I failed. He smelled like smoke.”
Berengar felt a sting in his throat and rubbed his face. “Describe what he looks like.”
“Tall like you, but thinner. He wears a bear skin on his shoulders like a cloak. It has an attached helmet with metal, but covered with the bear’s dead face. It has ram horns attached to the sides. The fur is always matted with blood. He has a thick, black beard and wild eyes. Some of his teeth are missing.”
The captain narrowed his eyes and looked back through time outside the shack. The description struck a chord of memory. The cloak with the horned helmet was something he had seen before. Bandits and barbarians were not original. Veterans told stories about killing five men who fought with the same sword dropped on the battlefield over and over like they thought the outcome would be different for them. He had seen that cloak or one very much like it, but he could not place a time or location. He determined in that moment that once he slayed Solag, he would see that it was burned and never used again.
“Do you know Solag’s father? The one that commanded this group of bandits before him?” Nisero asked in the lull of the captain’s thoughts.
The boy sighed. “I don’t even know my own father.”
“What is your name, son?” Berengar asked.
“I’m called Holst.”
“The Deep Pass,” Berengar said. “That is the one called Faithcore Canyon. It leads to the northwest, right?”
“I’ve heard it called Faithcore by men like you, passing through on the King’s business. We call it the Deep Pass.”
“And your message before you died was to tell me to follow that way? Nothing more?”
“That was it.”
Nisero turned away from the window. “That’s not all. You said he told you to attack me. How did he know I would be here?”
“Not you.” The boy shook his head and sat up on the edge of the table. Nisero’s free hand dropped to his hilt. The table started to tilt, but the captain placed a hand on the other end to hold it level. “I was to attack anyone with him. Take out as many as I could.”
Berengar cleared his throat. “Solag thought you would be able to take out the Elite Guard with your dagger.”
“It’s not my dagger.” The boy looked between his knees at the floor. “He stabbed it into the table next to my mother’s head and said you would be through, maybe a week or so behind him, and I was to prey on your men as you slept. Not you, but any of them I could reach before I was slain. And to speak the message with my final breath.”
“He thought we would be a week or more behind him?” Nisero said.
“I was surprised,” the boy said. “When I saw there were only two of you, I thought I might surprise you. I wasn’t sure I would have the courage, if I waited until nightfall.”
Berengar looked up. “Is the dagger still out there?”
“I’ve been watching it and our horses,” Nisero said.
“Would you get it for me?”
Nisero slid the loose door along the wall and stepped out.
“I’m sorry for your daughter,” the boy said. “Solag is evil in ways that cannot be understood. She may wish to die once you find her.”
Berengar stood and leaned on the table. The boy flinched.
“When I catch him, Solag will wish for death.”
The boy swallowed. “I believe you.”
Nisero slipped back in and held the dagger up by its hilt. Berengar crossed the room to him. The table started to flip and the boy slid off to his feet. The table crashed back down level, shattering one of the cups. Berengar took the small blade and examined the designs in the hilt. There were no engraved words and he did not recognize the pattern. Another borrowed weapon, it seemed.
“It is like the sword. The same make,” Nisero said.
Berengar tilted his head. “What sword?”
“The one from the well.”
Berengar stared at the dagger’s hilt for a few seconds before he remembered. “Did we leave it behind?”
“It is on my saddle. We can compare once we settle in somewhere to plan our next move.”
“The next move is into the canyon, lieutenant.”
Nisero licked his lips and nodded. “We should discuss that once we are in private, sir?”
Berengar turned his head a few degrees toward the boy and nodded. “Right.”
“What of me?” said the boy.
Nisero sucked in air. “Learn to live with honor, and respect your King more than the bandit that threatened to rape and burn your mother.”
“No, I mean, you said you would take care of it, so that they would not know.”
“We will kill him when we find him,” Berengar said with his back to the boy.
“No, you said you would beat me so that it looked like I didn’t talk.”
Nisero shook his head. “You sure you don’t want us to go ahead and kill you?”
“You promised.”
“We are not beating you,” Berengar said.
“If you don’t, I will be torn to pieces as soon as you are out of sight.”
“I’ll do it,” Nisero said. “A promise is a promise.”
Berengar stepped outside. “I’m having no part of this.”
“I’ll be out shortly,” Nisero called.
Berengar stared at the hilt. He heard the impact of the first punch in the shack behind him. The boy grunted and crashed through the table. The captain swallowed and looked out across the other buildings. He was ready to run the boy through a dozen times to get him to talk, but now he recoiled at punching him. He wasn’t sure why it was different, but it was. Something about it pressed against his identity as a former member of the Elite Guard—even on a quest of vengeance.
One of them struck a wall of the shack inside, jarring the whole structure. Items spilled from the shelf and crashed to the floor.
Berengar looked up in time to see eyes vanish from windows and around corners. He took hold of the reins of the horses and held them to keep the animals still during the ruckus, as well as to support himself.
The door crashed and Holst tumbled out onto his hands and knees. The boards that formed the door shattered into four pieces and clattered out into the street. The horses pulled and bobbed their heads, but the captain held them. Blood mixed with drool and snot ran thick onto the stone from Holst’s mouth and nose.
Nisero followed, flexing his hands open and closed. The skin of the lieutenant’s knuckles was reddened, but not broken. He knew how to deliver blows without injuring himself—they all did. It wasn’t in the direct training, but it was taught by the veterans and learned by the new warriors. Berengar couldn’t recall if he had taught it to Nisero, but if not, he had taught many others over the years and delivered plenty of blows himself.
Berengar licked his lips and glanced down at the hilt of the dagger. He whispered. “I thought I was to wake up today with nothing to do.”
Holst brought one foot under him to stand. Nisero drew back and drove his shin in a sweeping kick into the boy’s ribs, drawing out a high, broken squeal of pain. Berengar saw Nisero had his toes turned down away from the impact to avoid breaking them, and he followed through the motion as if kicking something beyond the boy in order to maximize the pain. The captain taught those things as well. Holst lifted off the ground and flipped in the air off the end of Nisero’s leg. He landed on his face and stayed flat.
Berengar took a step toward Nisero, but the lieutenant shook his head slightly at the captain. Nisero pointed down at the boy and shouted loud enough to echo through the street. “This is the price for your silence, worthless dog. Stay on your belly or I will bloody you some more. If I see you again, I’ll cut out your tongue myself since you don’t care to use it.”
Berengar glanced around and saw the eyes watching and the ears listening from their hiding places. Nisero drew phlegm into his throat with a guttural growl and spat on the boy’s back. As he walked past Holst’s prone body, the boy flinched from Nisero’s boots.
“That was quite a performance.” Berengar kept his eyes forward. “I almost couldn’t tell the reality from the pantomime.”
Nisero nodded. “That was the intention. Others were watching, and the boy’s life was on the line.”
“So you did that to help him.”
“Is that not clear? Are you upset with what I did, sir?”
“No, I understand it. I suppose I had just prepared myself mentally to be done with all of this, and my mind is still trying to settle out of war and into domestic life. I was preparing for battle against household chores, and rabbits for dinner.”
“We can still defeat a rabbit for dinner.”
Berengar sighed. “You know my meaning, lieutenant.”
“I do, sir, but this quest is not without a goal. Once Solag is ended, you will have your daughter again. Your family will continue. We are fighting for more than mere vengeance.”
“Perhaps.”
“We will find her,” Nisero asserted. “It may be at first because Solag wants to be found, but the end of this will not be on his terms.”
They left the end of the town proper with its ramshackle buildings, and rode into the barren expanse beyond the valley. The trail led up another steep slope of stone and then down again so that they were looking out on the leaning roofs of the barns and broken silos. Berengar could not remember a time that Darkenhauls grew grain, nor could he conceive of where they would grow anything in the solid rock. The miniature valley perched in the steep hills could have provided great defense for a better people, but they had forfeited that to their bandit benefactors as well.
Berengar thought that perhaps the Elite Guard would have served the kingdom better if their barracks had been in Darkenhauls instead of in the central lowlands. He sighed and realized that they were assigned with defending land the King and nobles deemed worthy of defending.