Full-Blood Half-Breed

by Cleve Lamison

  “Witchery!” Don Spicebringer bellowed, struggling against his heavy armor to get to his feet. “Kill that damned Muumban witch! Kill him!”

  Urbano’s mother and sister scrambled for their mounts, but the narrow street was bedlam and chaos. Horses trampled their riders, hysterically fleeing the thunder and steel in Paladin’s fist. Urbano staggered about in the middle of it, his helmed head swiveling back and forth in confusion. The fool barely avoided getting his skull kicked in by his own horse. The panicked beast reared a few feet behind him.

  “Urbano!” Doña Moonhunter screamed, holding out her hand. “To me, niño! To me! To me!”

  Urbano ignored his mother and picked up his sword. His warriors closed around him protectively and they advanced on Paladin as a unit. Urbano screamed, “Get him!”

  Paladin grabbed one of the fallen shields and hurled himself at the closest man, slashing. Storm blasted through armor, flesh, and bone and the caballero fell to the ground howling beneath a gust of steel splinters and smoking blood.

  A long sword darted at Paladin from the right. He shield blocked and countered with a low, short thrust that exploded through the caballero’s hip and sent him crashing to the ground screaming, half his pelvis scorched away.

  Urbano and a caballera from his mamá’s House instigated a synchronized assault, Urbano slashing low, the caballera thrusting high. The caballera was well trained, her technique exquisite, but she was slow, Paladin thought, as slow as a three-legged turtle, and Urbano might as well have been standing still.

  Paladin beat back the caballera’s thrust. Mance-lightning decimated her weapon, blowing bits of steel back into her face. Before she could scream, he cut high, ending her pain and life with a concussive boom. Her headless body toppled backward, vomiting smoke from the scorched chasm between its shoulders.

  He sidestepped Urbano’s sword and slashed, blasting the weapon away, searing Urbano’s hand into a blackened, fingerless stump.

  Urbano gawked at his ruined paw, howling, “Please don’t kill m—”

  But it was too late.

  Paladin had committed to his thrust.

  His sword streaked toward Urbano and time seemed to slow to a snail’s crawl. An epiphany dawned in Urbano’s swampy green eyes, and Paladin bore witness to it.

  Urbano had understood little in his short life, but in that sliver of a moment he recognized the truth of his mortality. That minuscule bit of time was more than enough for Urbano Del Spicebringer of House Próspero to grasp the true preciousness of his life and grieve its loss. The regret in Urbano’s eyes seared itself into Paladin’s mind, a memory he would take to his grave, and then Storm exploded into Urbano’s chest. Urbano’s ravaged body soared through the ether and crashed to the ground, mere feet away from Don Spicebringer and Doña Moonhunter.

  The don and doña stared, popeyed and hang-jawed, at the ragged black hole scorched through their son’s middle and the expression of remorse frozen eternally on his slack face.

  In that silence Paladin was struck by a realization as profound in its way as Urbano’s epiphany had been.

  He was changed.

  He was not the boy he had been upon waking that morning, and the transformation was beyond revocation. In killing Urbano and his caballeros, he had slaughtered something within himself. Something pristine and precious was now lost to him. He yearned for that missing component of his soul as surely as the caballeros yearned for their severed limbs scattered across the ground. Or would have if they still lived.

  He was a killer now.

  And so he killed.

  His blended martial technique seemed blessed by Golanv the Death Raven itself. The caballeros attacked and died by twos and threes and mores. Paladin danced. Steel clashed. Lightning flashed. Thunder roared. Blood rained. At the height of the fighting, Doña Moonhunter directed two Lupina caballeras to collect Urbano’s remains. As they tossed Urbano’s body over his horse, the doña pointed at Paladin. Her voice rough with loathing, she hissed, “You god-damned híbrido witch. I will see you in hell.”

  “Come, cabróna,” Paladin growled. “Let’s dance, then.”

  Doña Moonhunter shook her head in disgust. “Your time will come, filth.” She signaled to the others. “Retreat! Now!”

  Dust whirled. Cloaks and banners flapped and cracked. Horses snorted and squealed, fretful around the stink of burning flesh and the cries of dying men and women. The remnants of Houses Próspero and Lupina—fewer than ten caballeros—withdrew in a tumult of chaos, riding over the bodies of their fellows, some still living. The Próspero standard bearer rode at the rear of the evacuating Viles, waving the Próspero bumblebee in a stubborn show of defiance. The haughty insect seemed to taunt Paladin before the clouds of black smoke hanging over the streets swallowed it up. Paladin may have withstood the Viles, but the neighborhood had not been so lucky. Ciudad Vieja burned.

  For hours Paladin skulked toward Westgate. The hammers of Santuario del Guerrero’s smithies were as still as the hearts of the torn bodies clogging the gutters. Fire, both manced and natural, feasted on buildings all across the city with complete impunity, strangling the ether with dense black fumes. He ghosted out of Ciudad Vieja, as much a phantom as his babu. He hid in the doorways and alleys of Oeste Verdadero whenever he sensed anyone nearby, and all night long he kept his senses open, praying he would receive a Sending from his papá or babu. They were silent.

  At least one building on every block Paladin passed had been burned or vandalized, and usually several had been put to the torch. There had been one entire city block in Ciudad Vieja that had been burned to the ground. So it was odd that he should discover an entire section of Oeste Verdadero storehouses that had gone unmolested. It was only a few blocks from the West Gate, and these pristine warehouses stood like a brick and mortar island in the sea of smoldering rubble that was Santuario del Guerrero. It was only when he noticed the pennant flying above one of the storehouse doors that he understood. It was the Próspero bumblebee. He couldn’t see what pennants flew over the other warehouses, but he would have bet every penique of his Torneo winnings that they were Próspero properties. Fanaticism, Paladin thought bitterly, had its advantages.

  Somewhere deep in the smoke and murk a woman screamed. A baby squealed. Other children cried out from around the corner, one block over. He ran toward the noise, taking care to keep as much to the shadows as he could. Silently, he crept up to within a few feet of the scene, keeping close to the walls of another storehouse.

  He was too late.

  A young woman lay in a pool of blood. Her dead eyes were open wide, staring at her last moments now passed. She had not just been terrified at the instant of her death; she had been incredulous at the details of it. She clutched her dead children, a baby and two young boys. They were covered in deep, three-pronged stab wounds and loaded down with travel packs and gear, ready to flee the city.

  Their murderer knelt before them, leaning against the bloody pitchfork he had used to kill them. Oddly, he was weeping. His accomplices stood a few feet away, watching the killer grieve. They were all Oestean, but not from Santuario del Guerrero. They wore poorly made cloaks of Santosian white over rough homespun. Their weapons were simple farm implements. Their heads were close shaven. The woman and her children were clad in unrefined rustic wear as well, though none of it was white. Paladin circled closer to get a better look.

  The killer was a young man, not ten full years older than Paladin. His face was a crimson smear of pimples and pocks. He dropped his pitchfork and clutched the dead woman to his chest, braying miserably, “Oh, Jacinta. Why could you not have accepted the truth of The One God? The boys—mis hijos …”

  “What?” Paladin stepped into the street, startling Pock-Face and his companions. “You killed your own wife and children?”

  Pock-Face grabbed his pitchfork and rose. He and his three Vile companions surrounded Paladin. Paladin stood with his legs apart in perfect balance, his fingers resting on Storm’s hilt. />
  “Do not dare judge me, híbrido!” Pock-Face barked.

  “He does not wear the white,” one of the Vile rustics snarled, nodding at Paladin and his dark clothing.

  They circled, screwing up their courage now that they faced an opponent more threatening than an unarmed woman and her children.

  “They were like you, híbrido,” Pock-Face said. “Wicked. They would not accept the holy truth preached by the Prophet. They were judged and condemned.”

  Paladin growled through clenched teeth, “ ‘Judged and condemned’?”

  “Sí!” Pock-Face shouted. “Judged and condemned!”

  Paladin locked gazes with Pock-Face, his eyes promising death. “Now it’s your turn.”

  It was over in less than a handful of seconds. Pock-Face and the rustics were untrained, slow, and clumsy. Paladin felt guilty over the ease with which he had ended them until he gazed upon the dead woman and her children. Pock-Face had called her Jacinta.

  He signed Schöpfer’s Steinkreis symbol before his heart, a quartered circle. She was not just the goddess of justice. War, murder, and bloodshed were also Her domain. Invoking Her blessings now seemed appropriate. “I am sorry I could not save you and your niños, Señora Jacinta, but let Schöpfer, and all the gods, see that I have avenged your murders.”

  Even as he said it, he realized what a useless conceit vengeance was. It would not put life into the slain infant’s body. Avenged or not, they were all dead now. Vengeance, he reckoned, was a salve for the wounded souls of the living. It meant nothing to the dead. He thought of Lalo again. Did Lalo’s soul find any satisfaction that Paladin had avenged him? He doubted it. Yet Paladin would have done nothing different. Vengeance was a paltry recompense for the loss of a loved one, but what else was there?

  He had once heard Urbano speak of revenge as a sweet thing. That was a lie, and a contemptible one. It was bitter. It was poison. And he despised it.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  West Gate Road

  Paladin could not remember how to fight.

  He couldn’t remember a lot of things, it seemed, like digging the hole in the sandy floor of the arena, or how he had come to be on the game field in the first place. He cowered in the makeshift foxhole, turtle-like, under an old wooden round-shield while one of Creador’s Bastards hacked at it. Every bone-jarring blow sprayed chips of fuming embers into the air and triggered cheers from the fifty thousand white-clad Viles watching from the arena stands. Just one of the bane’s punishing swings would have blasted a normal shield to splinters, yet the simple wooden disc absorbed the blazing, sustained brutality. It was bizarre that Paladin couldn’t remember where he had acquired the remarkable item. Perhaps it was manced.

  “Get up,” Rebelde called from somewhere in the arena. “Get up, now!”

  Paladin peeked out from under the shield and spied his family in the stands. They too wore the white cloaks of Vile faithful. His father shook his fist at him and bellowed, “Get up, Paladin! Get up!”

  Rebelde ripped off his Vile vestment and leapt into the ether, his white cloak fluttering away on the wind. His body darkened and twisted unnaturally in metamorphosis. His torso stretched out snakelike and grew a covering of black scales. The serpentine creature’s head elongated and sprouted horns similar to those of a deer. It hovered above Creador’s Bastard Son, generating crackling thunderbolts in each of its two hawklike claws.

  The bane swung its hoz at the dark dragón, but the dragón was faster. It hurled both silver bolts at once, blasting Creador’s Bastard Son into nothingness. The dragón floated in the air in front of Paladin, staring at him. More thunderbolts ignited in its claws, and except for the crackle of their voltaic energy, the entire arena was silent.

  Paladin stared up into his father’s dark eyes housed within the reptilian head of the black dragón. “Am I asleep?”

  “Get up.”

  Paladin forced his eyes open and it hurt. The Grandfather threw spears of harsh morning at him. The world stank of brimstone and smoke and heaping mounds of death. He cringed, moaned, and coughed. The streets buzzed with the chatter of people at work and on the move, dousing the remains of fires, cleaning up debris and corpses. Leaving.

  His entire body was an unfortumante collision of cuts and bruises and aches collected from Torneo. He focused past them, allowing the events of last night to drift back into his memory. He had tried to leave Santuario del Guerrero, but the West Gate had been closed and too well guarded to sneak out. The night had grown unseasonably cold. He had taken a thick woolen cloak from the body of a dead Vile and crawled into a ditch to wait and watch until the road was open once more. He probably hadn’t waited long before sleep took him. He had been exhausted and still was. It would have been easy to lie back in the ditch and fall asleep for a few more days. But Rebelde’s dark dragón pneuma flung wide the doors to his mind and entered.

  “Get up, Paladin.” The Sending was so faint Paladin barely sensed it. “Flee to Pared de Hierro. Warn them. Viles spreading war. Viles—” The Sending flickered weakly and began to gutter like a candle flame caught in a draft. “We are trapped. Cannot get out. Will seek you at Pared de—”

  Paladin focused hard on maintaining the contact with his father, but it was no use. Rebelde was too hurt, too weak, or too far away to sustain the spiritual link.

  Paladin had no way to locate his family. The last thing he wanted to do was abandon them, but he could think of no alternative. If he stayed in Santuario del Guerrero, he was as good as dead. He would just have to trust in the resourcefulness of his family to escape. Rebelde and Jambiax were two of the greatest mancers alive. Walküre was an archer without peer. She and Rebelde both were blade masters. They were all smart and capable. If anyone could survive the banes and escape the city, they could. Hopefully, they would soon meet him on the road to Pared de Hierro.

  He crawled out of the ditch and brushed himself off as he watched people leave the city. Throngs of folk, most clad in Vile white cloaks and mantles, poured through the West Gate under the watchful eyes of two banes and a cadre of Vile guards. There was such normality to the exodus, it was hard to appreciate that these people had just participated in the slaughter of hundreds—maybe even thousands—of innocent folk.

  Paladin covered himself in the white cloak. It was cold enough that he could don the hood without being conspicuous. He joined the procession of evacuees marching out the West Gate, though he had to choke back a sob of misery when he took in the totality of last night’s destruction. Half the city’s towering tenements, viviendas, pyramids, and pagodas that had scraped the underbelly of the sky were gone, reduced to smoldering rubble. He ached for the loss of grandeur.

  “Give your soul to the Prophet!” one of the guards called as he approached the gates.

  The two bane sentries watched from the top of the wall and the folk all responded, “My soul belongs to the Prophet.”

  Paladin just nodded. Bad enough he had to wear their stinking cloak, he would be damned if he would repeat their foul oath. No one seemed to notice. He passed through the gates without incident, but just being near the banes was terrifying. He barely managed to stop himself from trembling beneath their crimson-visored glare. One of them could have easily been the bane that had chased him beneath the arena. Their clothing was nearly identical, and besides height, there was no way to distinguish one from the other.

  Once he was out on the road, he avoided the other travelers for fear he might be recognized or forced into a conversation where his lack of religious zeal would betray him. But there were too many travelers on West Gate Road for him to be able to avoid them completely.

  “Buenos dias, chico,” a woman called to him when they were about seven miles outside of the city.

  “Sí,” Paladin answered. “Good morning, señora.”

  She signed the Santosian holy symbol before her heart. “My soul belongs to the Prophet.”

  “Sí,” Paladin said, keeping the scorn from his voice. “Sí,
sí. The Prophet.”

  Suspicion flashed in the woman’s dark green eyes. She was Oestean, about Walküre’s age, broad and tall, probably from Abundante, or maybe Malaroca. Folk grew pretty big and muscular in those country villages. The woman twisted her body to get a better look at him. She moved quickly, with the confidence of a trained fighter. But he kept his face hidden beneath his hood as best he could without it being obvious he was trying to hide.

  She flashed him a friendly but insincere smile. “I am eager to get back to Nueva Aldea. There are many good folk there who will embrace el Espectro Bendecido and the holy words of the Prophet. Where are you headed, chico?”

  “Pared de Hierro,” he said, exasperated. “But I have had a hard night, señora. Please, just let me—”

  “Hold, chico.” She grabbed his shoulder in an iron grip and turned him to face her, her eyes wide with angry recognition. “I knew it! You are the híbrido from Torneo. The blasphemer who—”

  She never finished her sentence. She damn sure never saw his fist fly into her face, shattering her jaw, knocking her cold. His hood flipped back, revealing his face. The people around them stopped. They stared and pointed with accusing eyes and fingers.

  “The híbrido!” someone shouted. “Half-breed!”

  “The Torneo cheat!” cried another.

  Shouts of “Profaner!” “Blasphemer!” and “Infidel!” sounded all around him as the Viles—twenty or thirty in total—converged slowly, warily.

  “Death to evil!” cried a soldier from Dulce Aire, drawing the sword at his hip.

  “Death to evil!” other Viles chanted, forming into a mob. They stalked closer, some brandishing fine Malarocan steel, some shaking rusty old hand axes, all driven by righteous zeal.