A Warrior's Journey

by Guy Stanton III

  Gently, not wanting to awaken his quietly snoring wife, he started to slip out of the bed, but it was difficult, as one of her arms lay across his chest. He stood beside the bed for a moment and smiled down adoringly at his wife, as he listened to her breath. She insisted rather vehemently that she didn’t snore, but she did. He loved to kid her about it.

  He got down on his knees beside the bed and started to open the troublesome new day with prayer. A sense of depression or was it oppression had been weighing on him for several hours, as he had lain awake.

  He had found it to be helpful at such times when the day’s battle already seemed lost, before it had even begun, to begin with prayer by thanking the Creator for everything that was going right and then start in on the stuff that wasn’t. It just seemed to help create the positive atmosphere that was lacking in the previous moments.

  “Dear Lord thank you for my many blessings. Thank you for waking me up beside my lovely wife, for yet one more day together. Thank you for my children. I know that Your going to use them all to accomplish great things for Your Kingdom. Lord in specific I just want to thank you for the new life that even now is growing within my daughter Zarsha. I pray that you would just continue to bless my daughter, her husband, and all her generations to come with the same blessing as You have blessed mine with. May they always know You Lord, fear You, and serve You faithfully. Thank you Lord for the impressive men that both of my younger sons are becoming. My heart is full, as I consider all they have already achieved meaningfully in their as yet short lives. I pray that you would guide them both through life’s journey, as well as their sisters. Lord help Talaric to confess his sins before You and seek Your mercy. Help him remember the training of his youth that I and his mother taught him before it’s too late. Lord help me lead my people. I am weary of the bad news that continues to come and I am powerless to stop this nameless dread that is overtaking the hearts of so many in this world. Lord show me the way I must go to save my people from the destruction that I feel is nigh, even now lurking in the shadows. Lord if it be in Your will, deliver my people the victory not only for their continued freedom, but also help us win the hearts and souls of the rest of this world for You. Thy will be done Lord. I wait for Your guidance and strength.”

  Roric lifted his head and wiped the tears from his eyes. He got up and sat back down on the bed willing himself to give rest a second chance, before he had to face the day. It must be roughly four in the morning he thought to himself.

  Again he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Instincts gained from a lifetime of surviving against the odds started shouting loudly within him. What was so different about this morning?

  His mind searched through what was missing or that had been added to the morning sounds beyond the still bedchamber. It came to him suddenly.

  The songbirds!

  Where was the sound of the spotted Latchas ushering in the dawning of a new day? The songbirds made their nests in the cliffside nooks of the mountain all around his chambers and normally by this time their morning songs should already be sweetening the day.

  Roric quickly moved to the door of the room to the rest of the castle. It was securely barred fast and showed no signs of having been tampered with. Going to his weapon cabinet he pulled the doors wide and his instinct for alarm was answered by the sight of his magnificent sword that was pulsing red and lighting up the space of the cabinet.

  Roric grabbed a hold of the sword and moved towards the door, but then stopped. The sword was glowing less red. Roric turned back to the expanse of windows that overlooked the valley and the sword’s shimmering color turned crimson red.

  Roric with a wary look toward the balcony beyond the wall of windows made his way to the bed and his still sleeping wife. Gently he slipped his hand over Krista’s mouth and her eyes instantly flew open in alarm. Looking up and seeing Roric she visibly relaxed.

  He took his hand away and very quietly said, “There is danger outside. I don’t know what it is and I’m not sure the hall is safe. I need you to quietly go to our secret room. I need you to stay there until I come for you. Stay there no matter what you hear going on, understand?”

  She nodded.

  Roric drew back and let her slip out of the bed. He watched her go over to the wall, where her mirror was and push gently on a stone in the wall. There was a click and a section of the stone wall pivoted away before her revealing a passageway. Before she entered the dark passage she looked back and mouthed three words back at him her lips moving silently.

  Roric lifted his hand to his heart to say the same to her in return and then she was gone, as the wall slid back into place. Roric turned once more to the glass fronted section of the view out upon the balcony and the valley beyond and strode purposefully towards it his bare feet connecting solidly with the cold floor.

  He closed the glass doors behind him as he stepped out onto the chilled balcony. He was as naked as the day he was born save for the brightly pulsing sword in his hand.

  He didn’t feel the chill of the morning, as he stepped out into the center of his private balcony. The feeling of imminent danger and the anger he felt at the invasion of his private place created their own form of intense heat within him that easily kept any chill at bay.

  He saw nothing, but he felt everything. He gripped the sword with both hands and waited resolutely for the battle to survive the morning to come to him. There was a scrape of metal against stone and the rustling of clothing as twelve masked men pulled themselves up to stand atop the banister that ran the length of the cliff’s edge. Their presence assailed him, as if an empty darkness of despair had risen in place of the sun.

  The men were dressed in black, with their faces covered. As one they unsheathed their blades that had rested against their backs for their impossible climb up the face of the cliff. The sword clasped within Roric’s hands seemed to sense its master’s awful fury and light particles began to snap off the blade in vicious arcs of color that burned the eyes to look upon.

  Suddenly and quite unexpectedly the figure on Roric’s far right gasped and clutched at his throat, only to then fall over the cliff backwards. The assassin directly in front of Roric gave a start, as if jostled from behind by someone and fell over forward onto the balcony.

  An arrow was firmly lodged in the center of his back. The assassins seeing the success of their mission fading fast leaped from the balcony railing and closed in fast upon Roric. He met them in a clash of blades. One of the assailants drew back his sword to swing at the same moment that an arrow passed through his upraised sword arm.

  The moment of hesitation caused by the arrow strike was costly, as Roric sliced him almost in half in the next instance. Two more masked men fell to Roric’s brightly arcing blade, even as a third man fell, after having been first struck in the shoulder and then in the stomach by the unseen arrows that flew about the scene.

  The remaining assassins closed desperately with Roric driven on by some deep well of darkness to new depths of insanity. The figure of Roric before them was no longer distinguishable to them, because a second image of Roric had appeared, as a manifestation of the light coming off the sword. They no sooner attacked the double image of Roric cast off by the blade to find that they had swung at empty air, only to then feel the real blade dealt unmercifully to them from another direction that they hadn’t been prepared for.

  As the last assassin fell before the now three glowing figures of Roric the light from the sword faded. Only Roric remained standing on the balcony as the two mirages of him faded away into nothing. He began to count the bodies. One had fallen back over the edge so that should leave eleven bodies on the cliff top. Roric could only see ten shadowy outlines upon the ground in the dimness of the early morning.

  A frisson of awareness of the fact of the missing assassin registered in the slight whisper of movement he heard take place from behind him. Roric somehow knew that he wouldn’t be in time to deflect the assassin’s blade, so
he flung himself to the side on a sudden whim of thought.

  An arrow passed by so closely that he felt the whisper touch of it against his skin, as he completed his sudden lunge off to the side. There was a thud as the arrow connected solidly with the chest of the man, who had almost had the best of him. Roric got back up to his feet from where his sideways lunge had taken him to the cold floor of the balcony.

  Roric glanced over himself. As far as he could tell the only injury he had sustained was the skinned knee he had just gotten from sliding off the cold tiles in his fall. Roric turned toward the railing and stared out past them, as the first early rays of the sun began to make their presence known upon the cold morning.

  Roric’s eyes directed him to the only place the well aimed arrows could have originated from, the western tower. He saw Zevin standing there poised atop his own balcony railing, as his son faced him bow in hand, with arrow at the ready.

  Roric raised his sword toward his son in a silent salute, even as he marveled at how accurately the arrows had been placed from such a sizeable distance away. God had surely been fighting on behalf of him this night and Roric whispered a heartfelt thank you in response to that surety of knowledge.

  Roric used the point of his sword to move a mask off the face of one of the fallen assassins. He stared in horror at what was revealed. He ran to another body and ripped the mask off.

  No!

  It couldn’t be! They were all his own men!

  Not just any men, but the men he trusted most, his spies. What could have turned his own men against him so for them to attempt this betrayal?

  Roric looked upward into the heavens, as grief overwhelmed him at the death of so many of his friends.

  “Why Lord?”

  Off to his left he heard a strangled gasp for air and then a whisper, “Master.”

  Roric rushed toward the voice, kneeling down at the side of the fallen man. Pulling the mask aside he saw that it was Quarta, the leader of the ban of twelve. He had been among those sent by his grandfather in search for Krista, when she had been on the run many years previous.

  An arrow was lodged deeply into his stomach and another in his chest. A lung must have been punctured because there was a bloody froth upon his lips and he was struggling for every breath.

  “Master I’m so sorry!” Whimpered the dying man, as tears ran down the sides of his face.

  “Easy Quarta! How did you come to this?”

  “They knew we were coming somehow. They caught us one by one. They tortured us, but none of us broke master! I swear it!” Quarta breathed out harshly, as he gripped the front of Roric’s tunic tightly with a fist.

  He was frantic for Roric to believe what he said was true. “I believe you Quarta! You would never willingly betray me or your country. None of you would.”

  Quarta nodded, “When torture failed they gave us some kind of potion. We tried to fight it, but it was too strong. Like looking through a window at what your hands are doing, but unable to stop them or make them listen to you, as they accomplish another’s plans. I wasn’t sure of what reality was until this moment.”

  Roric grappled with the reality that there was a potion that could turn his best men against him and everything they stood for, as if acting foolishly under the influence of strong drink.

  “Do they have more of this potion?”

  “No they used all that they had on us. I heard one of their dark priests say to another that it came from a far away land called Assoria, and that the potion was very old.”

  Quarta suddenly reared up off the ground and gripped a hold of Roric tightly once more his expression panicked, “You didn’t get cut by any of our blades did you Master?”

  “No, why?”

  “They dipped our blades in some poison that comes from that land too.”

  Quarta coughed up blood, as Roric held him off the ground in his arms, as tears fell on his friends face. “Where did they do this to you?”

  “I’m not sure. We were near the sea. It was Rauel! I remember hearing the priests talk about it now. You’ve got to kill them master! Their evil all of them! There covered in the dark signs of their cult.”

  Quarta coughed up more blood; it was getting harder for him to talk.

  “Roric I’m afraid!”

  “Of what Quarta?”

  “God will never forgive me for what I tried to do to you and to my country!”

  Roric grasped Quarta’s head and brought it close to his own, “Listen to me Quarta! God does not hate you for this and neither do I! God knows this wasn’t in your heart to do! He sees everything old friend and loves you.”

  “Your sure of that master?”

  “Yes I’m sure!”

  Quarta’s eyes seemed to look past Roric for a moment to something beyond him and then for a brief moment they refocused on Roric.

  His blood stained face split a little to reveal a soft smile full of peace and his finger tapped against Roric’s chest lightly, “You were right master.” And then he was gone.

  Roric reached up and closed his friend’s eyes, but remained kneeling on the cold terrace holding his friend until the suns first rays began to strengthen in power upon the Valley Lands.

  I relaxed the drawn back bowstring and slowly lowered the bow. My fingers still shook from where they grasped the arrow fletching. There was no way that I had shot those arrows with such pinpoint accuracy, from such a distance, especially the last arrow!

  I had thought I was killing my father, as my fingers had released their grip on the shaft, but I had obeyed the deep urging that had bid me to do so. I saw my father wave at me and I guessed that he now had the situation fully in control.

  Numbly I became aware of the fact that I was standing atop the balcony railing. In a panic I half fell backward onto the balcony in blind need to get away from the edge of the precipice. Numbly I turned back to the warm interior of my room, as I hoped in vain that it would warm me up inside.

  I had killed someone, make that several someone’s. Whoever they had been they had been intent on killing my parents and they deserved to die for that, but even with that reasoning firmly in place I couldn’t help how hollow feeling inside I felt at what I had done.

  I was at the balcony door into my room, when suddenly I stopped and looked around. Was the voice that spoke with such authority into my very being done with me? I listened for a moment, but heard nothing. I turned back to the door and entered my loft.

  Closing the door I took a step, when the voice from before spoke once more, “Well done good and faithful servant of the Lord most high.” At the sounding of the voice I crumpled down onto the floor cowering face first in fear at what I couldn’t see, but felt all around me. I couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Zevin?”

  “Yes?” I managed to croak out.

  “Do you know how much I love you?”

  Tears began to spill out of my eyes as I shook my head no.

  “Well said you do not know what the length the breadth and the height of My love for you is. Zevin?”

  “Yes Lord?”

  “What do you know of Me?”

  “You are God the Father, the Great Creator of us all. A long time ago on a different world than ours You sent Your Son to die for all mankind so that we might have a chance at an eternal life through belief in Him to regain what we lost by our own actions.”

  “Well said, blessed are those, who taught you the truth and have been faithful to keep it themselves. Zevin?”

  “Yes Lord?”

  “I yearn to commune more deeply with you Zevin. Won’t you let Me strengthen you for when you are weary, to help you discern good from evil and teach you more perfectly all of My ways so that you might accomplish My will.”

  “Yes.” I said breathing the answer into the floor in heartfelt acceptance of what I knew was the right thing to do. I felt overwhelmed by what seemed like the current of a strong river flowing into me that left no corner of my being untouched or unchanged.


  “You shall have an even fuller portion of My grace and blessing than even your father before you has been given.”

  “Why?” I breathed out in genuine shock at the promised blessing so undeserved by me.

  “Because I will it so and am more than willing to grant a righteous father’s prayer to come to pass.”

  I felt the river I was in intensify suddenly, as it pulled me in deeper and then I was falling deeper.

  My eyes opened slowly. It must be late morning judging by how high the sun was in the sky outside. Memories came back to me of my ordeal in the early hours of the day. I was already forgetting so much of my time spent within the presence of the river of the Creator.

  The feeling of what it had been like washed all over me again. I closed my eyes as I relished the closeness that I felt with my Creator in this moment. I didn’t know how exactly life would be different from here on out, but I knew that it could only be for the better, if I remained true to the Creator.

  I felt the Spirit of my Creator residing within me even now like a comforting force of surety. I got up slowly from off the floor. Despite the extra rest I felt drained of all energy and yet I was oddly elated in a way. I needed to tell mother about this.

  Mother!

  Father!

  Now I remembered what had happened before my spiritual awakening.

  I was a killer!

  Chapter Three

  A Divided House

  Roric thoughtfully studied the faces of those in attendance in the council chamber. It was a mixed crowd made up of council men, castle lords, and city governors. Most of the Valley Lander realm was represented in some way or another in this room.

  They talked among themselves now. He had just told them of the attempt on his life and how it related to the disturbing events that had been transpiring over the past two years. He scanned through the faces of those gathered not liking what he saw, as they talked quietly among themselves.