“But couldn’t the Darkness or the natives cross anywhere?” I asked. “I thought it was a myth it couldn’t cross water.”
Yoshana answered. “The Darkness can cross water. So can anyone infected with it. But the Darkness and the natives will tend to follow the path of least resistance. That’s going to be across the bridge.”
“Easy enough for us to ford it upstream,” Grigg said.
“I hate getting wet. Besides, this will give us our first chance to question the Darklanders. And put a roof over our heads tonight.”
Because that had worked out so well the last couple of times.
“Those aren’t demons down there, are they?” I found that I was profoundly unready to meet an enemy stronger than Yoshana.
“I wouldn’t think so. There’s not so many of them that they’d waste their time guarding some border crossing in the middle of nowhere. Those are almost certainly slaves.”
“How do we get close enough to find out for sure?” We were at the edge of the tree line now. The land fell away in a grassy slope for half a mile before it reached the near edge of the town. There was no cover on that approach.
Yoshana showed me her wicked grin. “Maybe there are a few more things I haven’t showed you yet. You and Erev stay here. Grigg, Roshel, you’re with me.”
The Darkness oozed out of the three of them, spreading into a diffuse cloud, blurring their outlines. They stepped out of the woods shrouded in a kind of mist. By the time they were a hundred yards away, I could barely focus on them, even knowing where they were.
“That’s a neat trick,” I muttered.
“She’s full of them,” Erev grunted.
It was easy to see why the Overlord favored deception. It was still disconcerting enough to see her as a Select. Now she had nearly vanished altogether. She could approach in concealment or disguise, and by the time you knew what was coming, the Darkness would finish you off. If the demons truly were more dangerous, I really wasn’t looking forward to meeting them. Much less trying to kill one.
I could just barely catch glimpses of the three of them as they made their way into the town. Only the tiniest hint of movement betrayed them. Soon they were at the edge of the bridge, which stretched a couple of hundred yards across the river. The Muddy was wider even at its narrowest point, but this was no little stream. The riverbanks fell dozens of feet to the water below.
“Not even she can kill at that range,” Erev said. His voice was tense. “They’ll have to go out onto the bridge before she can take out the guards.”
“I still don’t see anyone. Just the fires.”
But even as I said it, the faintest shimmer revealed one of our three companions moving out onto the bridge. And in an instant, a figure stepped away from the left-most blaze and sent a flaming arrow arcing across the span. The guard had stood so still that I hadn’t seen him until he moved to loose the shaft.
The cracks of rifle shots floated up on the air. The guard and another like him fell. Three figures charged across the bridge, the camouflage of the Darkness gone. More fire arrows looped down from a building on the other side.
“We’d better get down there!” Erev barked, and took off in a lurching sprint down the slope. I followed, then passed him, longer legs and younger lungs pulling me ahead. But by the time we got there, it was all over.
Two men in dark leather armor lay dead at the feet of massive braziers, bows and unused arrows fallen around them.
Grigg and Yoshana emerged from the building that had been the source of the additional arrows. The Select manhandled another soldier in similar armor. The man’s wrists were bound behind his back, and Grigg’s big hand was at the base of his neck. The captive’s face was completely impassive.
The bridge turned into a road that disappeared around a bend to the east, and Roshel came trotting back toward us. She carried her carbine propped on her shoulder.
“Two of them were making a break for it on horses,” she announced. “I got them both.”
If Grigg’s prisoner was dismayed, his face gave no sign of it.
Yoshana nodded. “Let’s see what this one can tell us.”
Grigg gripped the man firmly by the shoulders, though he still offered no resistance. The senior Overlord’s hand went to his face, Darkness oozing from her palm into his flesh. After less than a minute, she stepped back.
“There were only six.” She jerked her chin toward the building. “With the other one we killed in there, that’s all of them. I can’t get an exact feeling for how long until they’re relieved, but it’s weeks at least. And no more troops for miles. We’re in.”
She smiled, letting out a long sigh. I was beginning to feel the tension draining from my own body when her sword whipped out and pierced the soldier’s heart.
He looked down for a moment, then crumpled to the ground as Grigg released him.
Yoshana met my eyes. “They’re not really human. Not after what the demons have done to them. Remember that.”
I looked at the corpse, blood puddling beneath it. Not really human.
Were we?
The building the bridge guards had occupied was sparsely furnished, but comfortable enough. They seemed to have shared one common room for sleeping and cooking, but the rest of the structure was sound and reasonably clean.
A sizable cache of bread, jerky, and dried fruit reinforced the idea that the squad had been provisioned for a long stay. There were also barrels of mildly alcoholic cider, which I preferred to small beer. A smaller brazier near the windows had served to light the fire arrows, and there were enough full quivers to hold off an army.
“No rifles?” I asked. “If the demons were soldiers from the Last Days, I’d expect better equipment.”
“Oh, they have them,” Yoshana replied. “But fire arrows are more effective against Darkness clouds, and the possessed are afraid of them. Plus the Hellguard don’t like to issue guns to their slaves unless they have to. Their will may have been cut away, but the demons don’t like to take chances.”
“They haven’t lived three hundred years by being reckless,” Grigg said waspishly.
“Clausewitz says you’re wrong.”
“Clausewitz is dead.”
I left them bickering and explored the other rooms.
“Wouldn’t mind a little privacy for once,” Roshel said at my shoulder. “Not having to listen to Grigg snore.”
My heart sped up. “When you say privacy…”
She smiled and shook her head. “Not now. Not here.”
I tried to keep my tone light. “You’re right, of course.”
She smiled again, and I don’t think it was just the aura of the Darkness that suggested “not now” didn’t mean “not ever.”
We had eaten, then dragged the soldiers’ straw-stuffed pallets into different rooms. Except for Yoshana and Grigg, who had taken a room together.
I sat and went through my pack. I had taken as much of the dead guards’ provender as I could carry, and filled my water skin with cider. My new knife was still secure in its strange, black sheath. Carefully, I withdrew the ancient katana the possessed had carried back in the ruined town.
The blade was spotted with rust, and the original fittings of the hilt had long since decayed and been replaced with a wrapping of uncured hide strips, clumsily secured with sinews passed through the peg holes. But it had once been a fine weapon, perhaps as fine as the one I’d sacrificed for Prophetess months ago. A lifetime ago. If I lived, I would restore this one.
I spent an hour working at the rust with my whetstone before I lay down to compose my mind for sleep. Finally free of the Sorrows, we would not need the cage to protect ourselves here. We would lay down warding circles, but those we could maintain in our sleep. For the first time since leaving Furat’s outpost, we would rest.
And so, of course, peace eluded me. Though I knew I shouldn’t, I sent a tendril of Darkness to Roshel’s room. Her presence was there, soft and warm, relaxed in sleep. The circle
of Darkness on the floor was no barrier at all. My senses hovered over her.
I shook my head and pulled away. I had spent nights with my arm around Prophetess and remained a gentleman. Despite her aura and the Darkness surging in me, I would do the same with Roshel. I told myself that, but my consciousness didn’t return to my body.
Some sound or movement tugged at my attention from Grigg and Yoshana’s room.
Even more wrong to pry there than to invade Roshel’s privacy. But still my consciousness reached out.
Yoshana had created a cage around the room. I was deterred, but not defeated. I had insinuated my senses through that protection before. I did it again.
They had shoved their two pallets together and were lying on them, talking softly.
“…but even if we do, I don’t see how we’ve solved the problem of Our Lady,” Grigg was saying.
“Don’t you?” Yoshana laughed musically.
The Select snorted in exasperation. “I understand we needed to teach him to use the Darkness, but Roshel’s totally wrong. He can never bridge the two sides now. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they realized who I was. They’ll never believe anything he says now that the Darkness is in him.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But you’re probably right. Still, that was never the idea.”
“What do you mean?”
“Give yourself some credit for persuasiveness. And Roshel should have his blood boiling quite nicely. Nothing as easy to stir up as young lust. He’s ours now. He’ll convince Prophetess, or not. And if he doesn’t, he’ll kill her.”
The Select snorted incredulously. “You don’t believe that.”
“After all we’ve been through together? All we’ll go through together? Once the word ‘abomination’ passes that girl’s lips, there’ll be no containing his rage. He’s more than strong enough now. And Roshel has him well hooked.”
Grigg sighed. “I suppose I should have known. But be careful there. I think Roshel really cares for him. If he kills Prophetess and it breaks him, we might lose Roshel too.”
“If we have to, we have to. There’s not much hope left for the world. I’ll sacrifice whatever I need to so we can keep what little we have. I can’t have that self-important farm girl building an army to oppose me.”
“The cost -”
“I sacrificed Jylen. Don’t talk to me about cost.”
“That was before. Haven’t you changed at all?”
“What I’m fighting for has changed. How I fight - there’s only one way I know how to do that, and that’s with everything I have.” She heaved a deep breath. “I don’t want to hear about it from you, Grigg. If you hadn’t stopped me from killing her in Stephensburg, we wouldn’t be having this discussion now.”
“She would have been a martyr then. She still will be.”
“Less impressive when she’s murdered by her own lieutenant. That’s the point of the exercise. You think I make convoluted plans just for the sake of complexity?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
She chuckled. “Shut up and come to bed.”
I fled back to my body, which I found shaking and drenched in sweat and tears.
9. The Road Not Taken
I didn’t sleep at all.
I was Yoshana’s weapon, not against the demons, but against Prophetess.
I had known Yoshana was ruthless. And she’d never made a secret of her goals, or the threat she thought Prophetess posed to them. I had watched her use Erev, a man totally loyal to her, to sharpen my edge. The night I’d called Erev out, in that exchange of glances between the two of them by the firelight, I’d seen them both accept that I might kill the old soldier.
So why should I be surprised that she’d use me?
I had to laugh at myself through the pain. Roshel had said I’d elevated myself from being a piece in Yoshana’s game to being a player. I’d let myself believe it. I’d been proud to believe it. But all I’d really become was a more valuable piece.
I’d just seen more of the board. Did that make me a player, for the first time? Whether it did or not, Furat had been so very right. Player or piece, this was a game where I’d get hurt.
Or not survive. Even with the Darkness in me, there was no chance at all I could confront Yoshana and live. I didn’t even know if I wanted to confront her. Her methods were cold, heartless, calculating… but more and more, I believed her goal was right.
I’d seen the possessed in the Sorrows. Now I’d seen the demons’ slaves, emotion and will stripped from them. And I’d seen the bickering of the weak princelings who ruled the lands under human control. Would the petty tyrants in Rockwall and the Monolith who set mercenaries to burning and raping be able to stop the Darkness or the Hellguard? Would that wreck Stephen, who couldn’t stop a thief like Brom of Icefall from robbing his own citizens?
I wasn’t quite sure what Yoshana was - if she was a monster, or a fanatic whose flame burned so bright it singed everything around her. Maybe she had been one, and was becoming the other. Or maybe she was one and was pretending to be the other.
But, monster or fanatic, what if she was right?
I realized I still thought she was right.
So, what then? Could I allow myself to continue, swept along in her wake like a leaf in a stream? What happened when that stream flowed back to Our Lady?
Grigg wasn’t wrong, of course. Roshel had lied to me, or perhaps simply not understood. If I returned to Our Lady as Yoshana’s creature, I wouldn’t even make it past the gate. Dee might be intrigued. But to Tolf and the others, I was an outsider already, not fully trusted. They’d never accept me now. And neither would Prophetess.
And if she wouldn’t listen, what then?
I wouldn’t kill Prophetess. I couldn’t. Not for Yoshana’s plans. Not to save the world.
So what exactly was my path forward?
Light was beginning to leak in through the dirty windows, and I had found only one option. I wouldn’t support Yoshana against Prophetess. So I had to support Prophetess against Yoshana. The Overlord had turned me into a weapon. It was one that could be turned back on her.
The Church, and Prophetess herself, would hardly embrace someone infected with the Darkness. It wasn’t a tool to them, but the physical manifestation of sin. But I had seen pragmatism from Prophetess before. Even the Metropolitan at Our Lady had been subtle enough to use our expedition to Stephensburg for his own ends. It would take some convincing - but they’d have to understand that no army without the Darkness could stand against one with it. Without my protection, Prophetess could be silently assassinated as she slept. Yoshana feared Our Lady was a force that could stand against her, and I’d help turn it into just that. And if to Prophetess’ way of thinking the cost was one Select’s soul, surely that would be a price she’d be more than willing to pay.
The betrayal of an Overlord with the ability to read your mind is not a project undertaken lightly.
Erev was rattling around in the common room, making breakfast. He gave me a long look as I walked in. “You look like hell.”
“Yeah.” I had my story prepared. “After Yoshana talked up how nasty the Hellguard are, for some reason I didn’t sleep so well in their outpost.”
The soldier shrugged. “Those guards went down easy enough. If one of the demons shows, that’s on Yoshana to take care of. Grigg and Roshel, too. You and me, not so much.”
He kept staring at me, as if doing some kind of mental calculus. “You’ve come up a long way, kid, and I guess you think you’re something now, with the Darkness in you. Comes to that, I guess you are something. A factor, or whatever Roshel calls it.”
He must have read my face, because he barked out a little laugh. “I may not be able to use the Darkness, but I’m not deaf or stupid. Maybe even more than the other two, Roshel acts like you all, you with the Darkness, you’re better than the rest of us. I guess maybe you are. And I guess she needs to think so, too. It’s a hard thing that happened to her mother. Yo
shana doesn’t have that kind of chip on her shoulder, but I guess all of us are just tools to her.”
Maybe my mouth was hanging open, because he laughed again. “Didn’t think I had that many words in me? I’ve been tough on you, ’cause you needed toughening. And ’cause she wanted me to be. And, hell, ’cause I didn’t like you very much. But you’ve come through it okay. You’ve done what you needed to do. And now what you need to do is rest. You want to be a soldier, you gotta learn to sleep whenever you can, wherever you can. That corner’s good.”
He jerked his thumb at an unused pallet.
I’d heard much the same thing from Tolf. Would the two of them have gotten along? Probably not. They were each too devoted to their respective causes. To their respective prophets.
Somehow, though, Erev’s words let me quiet my mind, and I began to drift off on the pallet.
His voice interrupted me. “And I guess with Joav gone, the chances don’t look so good for me. I’ve been through a lot with Yoshana. But maybe not this one. Guess I want somebody to remember me when it’s all done. Even if it’s just you.”
“I love you too.”
When you thought about it, the odds weren’t great that I was going to outlive Erev. He would have killed me himself, if he’d known what I planned. But still I fell asleep to the sound of him cooking.
There had been a horse for each of the dead guards. The two whose riders Roshel had killed had escaped but had returned soon enough, looking for food. We left one behind and took five, one for each of us. A big part of me wasn’t looking forward to rediscovering the joys of saddle sores, but on the whole it beat walking.
“I’ve never been this far north in the Darklands before,” Yoshana admitted. “I crossed the border with the Shield a couple of times when we were allies, but I didn’t get past their southernmost city. Still, it’s a big place, and the Hellguard are thin on the ground. I’m betting Yashuath is farther north, at Imperium, but we could spend a lot of time just looking for him.”
“As long as we find him before the rest of the Hellguard find us,” Grigg said.
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 32