Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle

by Malcolm McKenzie

  And crashed to the ground as I stumbled over a tripwire. I cursed and rolled to my feet. I could hear rustling somewhere beyond the range of the Darkness.

  An arrow flew out of the woods to my right, barely missing me. With a direction to target, I focused my senses and located the archer. The thread of Darkness thickened into a rope that blocked his windpipe. I loped in that direction, a sixty degree wedge of smoky particles going in front of me.

  It was luck or perhaps some movement of the air that made me twist and avoid the body hurtling from above. Rather than reach for my sword, I grabbed my attacker where arm met shoulder and heaved. My assailant flew into the underbrush with a squawk.

  I was just bringing up the sheathed katana when an arrow from behind caught me in the shoulder blade.

  “Ow! Dammit!”

  The Darkness boiled in my blood and I forced it down with difficulty. Even blunted, those things hurt.

  Cat popped up from the bushes where I’d thrown her, grinning like a fiend.

  “That was good,” I had to admit. “It didn’t occur to me to check up in the trees.”

  Which was stupid, since I’d used the same trick to hide when I fled into the Sorrows to escape Yoshana.

  Sesk came trotting up behind me. “You okay, sir?”

  “Yeah. I thought that was you I’d choked.”

  “Pretty sure that was Taba, sir. I’ll go check.”

  “He’s gotten a lot better with a bow, then. He didn’t miss by much.”

  “He has a good eye and a steady hand. Or did, if you killed him,” Sesk continued as he made his way past me deeper into the woods.

  I wasn’t worried. I knew how to throttle a man unconscious with the Darkness. Still, it was a relief when the hunter announced, “He’s fine.”

  More of my troops were emerging from behind trees. All wore our new camouflage uniforms. A few carried bows. Most wielded tree branches they would have used as clubs if they’d gotten close enough. Railes had found one with a particularly wicked cluster of knots at the end.

  “You look way too eager to use that, sergeant.”

  “Not me, sir.” But he whacked his palm suggestively.

  Cat had a stick sharpened to a sort of notional point. If she’d jabbed my throat or under my ribs, it would have counted as a kill.

  “That was good,” I repeated when most of the platoon was around me. “Very good. If you can take me, you can take anyone you’re going to meet this side of the Muddy.”

  It had been good. They’d only had the few minutes I’d spent talking to Herin to ready the ambush, though some elements, like the tripwire, they’d obviously arranged far earlier.

  “How many of those ropes are stretched across this forest, anyway?” I asked.

  “Only a couple, sir,” Sesk replied. “You took the most obvious path from where Sergeant Herin was sitting, like we’d hoped.”

  I winced. I’d been careless, too confident in the advantages the Darkness gave me.

  “Let’s hope the enemy tonight’s no smarter than I was this morning.”

  “We’re going in?” Railes asked.

  “We’re going in.”

  The cheer that rose up reminded me of the throaty growl of a wolf pack.

  I lurked in a pool of deep shadow along Riverside’s western wall, blurred into virtual invisibility by the Darkness. The wall was the patched ruin of a palisade in places, courses of stones in others, and a fill of garbage and debris in still more. The defenders had torches up at night, but not many. They hadn’t taken time to harvest the forest before retreating into the town, and they were conserving wood.

  Our forces hadn’t encircled Riverside. The cordon would have been too thin to prevent a sally, and a concentrated attack by the Monolith troops could have rolled up our lines. Instead we were drawn up facing what passed for the main gate, which wouldn’t have been impressive even before the place was sacked years ago. Because this must be the same Riverside that Grigg had helped capture on the ill-fated mission that ultimately made him Yoshana’s lieutenant.

  The opposing army wasn’t large. We estimated perhaps a thousand men, about half our size. It wasn’t enough to thoroughly man the walls. Sentries were posted every hundred feet or so, with supplemental two-man patrols making a regular circuit.

  I was crouched at a spot on the west side of the town, a quarter of the way around from our position to the south. An opening in a stone section of wall had been blocked with a wagon bed lashed to spears with rawhide cords. A guard was stationed just on the other side, but the angle of the wall put him out of sight of his fellows if he stepped down from the stack of boxes he used to gain a higher vantage point. The Darkness had eaten most of the way through the rawhide lashings the night before. Finishing the job would be easy.

  Now the Darkness simultaneously tore at the bindings and clogged the sentry’s arteries. I’d developed a touch for asphyxiation. He lurched drowsily down from the crates, yawned hugely, and collapsed into unconsciousness.

  The only thing I hadn’t taken into account was that he’d slump over onto just the section of wall I was weakening. The rawhide snapped under the added weight, and the wagon bed came crashing down. I ducked under it and took the weight on my shoulders.

  “Get this guy off of here,” I hissed.

  Cat loomed up next to me, her pale face blackened with charcoal. Moments later, the burden on my back eased. I straightened and saw the paleo dragging the sentry outside.

  “No, inside,” I began. Then I saw she’d cut his throat. “You shouldn’t have done that. If we’d left him unconscious inside, a patrol could walk right by and just think he was asleep at his post.”

  She shrugged. “Less to kill later.”

  I started to say the point of the exercise was fear, not death. To force the enemy to retreat, not to heap the ruins with their corpses. But it would be a waste of breath. And the Darkness was pulsing in my temples. It was time for actions, not words. There would be more death tonight.

  The two of us slipped inside. Then the rest of my squad, who had crept up in the dark behind us. I would lead this group of ten myself. Railes and Groff would follow with their own units. I pointed southeast, deeper into the town, in the direction of the main gate. I assumed the enemy commanders would be there. The other squads would disperse and do some damage while we struck for the throat.

  We each carried a bundle of oil-soaked torches. I lit one from the fire burning at the dead sentry’s post. My men did the same. As we trotted down an alley, I lit a second brand and flung the first into the fallen remains of a wooden building. Flames immediately began to lick at the rotten beams. Arson was one of the easiest tricks in a guerilla’s arsenal.

  More torches flew and we left the alley ablaze behind us. We weren’t going to be able to retreat this way. On the other hand, we weren’t going to get hit from behind, either.

  The Darkness didn’t like this much fire. It swirled and eddied, skittish. Still, I sensed the patrol coming around the corner before it abruptly met us face to face.

  It was only four men. My katana finished one before he understood what was happening. I engaged the second, while the squad made short work of the last two. Five to one simply wasn’t winnable odds.

  I caught the survivor’s blade on mine, then seized his wrist with my left hand. The Darkness in me ruptured bones and sinews, and he dropped his weapon with a wordless cry.

  “Where are your masters? Where are the Paladins?” I demanded.

  “There,” he stuttered, jerking his head to the southeast. I had guessed right.

  “Run to them, little thing,” I hissed. “And tell them the Shadowed Hand has fallen on them.”

  I passed my sword to Cat and put my right hand on his face. The Darkness marked him as it had the Paladin in the woods. As soon as I released him, he fled, sobbing in terror.

  Every man - and the sole woman - in the platoon carried at their belts a sack full of charcoal dust. Three of my troopers used it to mark th
eir handprints on the dead men’s faces. Another gave the same treatment to a stone doorpost.

  “Let’s keep moving.”

  But the first Paladin found us before we found his friends.

  He was at the head of a group of a dozen men with torches and spears. The Monolith officer was easy enough to recognize. He wore a shirt of fine chainmail and carried a broadsword and a huge shield. He looked like some sort of medieval knight.

  Less primitive was the revolver one of his men pulled. Two of my troopers threw away swords and torches to bring up slung carbines.

  I took a step forward. I didn’t want a gunfight.

  “You think you can face me?” I spat contemptuously at the man in armor.

  He slapped his blade against his shield and charged.

  I had never fought a skilled swordsman with a shield. The metal rectangle was massive, and he used it both to block and push at me. The heavy broadsword darted out like lightning from behind it, stabbing or slashing.

  The Darkness seethed restlessly, upset by the torches, frustrated and angered by the obstacle in front of me. I had lost all fine control over it. Instead it boiled and raged, lashing at the shield, scattering from it like a wave on a rock.

  “Monster! Demon!” the Paladin cried, but he didn’t back down - he came in harder and faster.

  “Yes,” I said. I threw the katana at his face and when he interposed the shield, I grabbed it with both hands and used it to fling him. His blade came out and scored a line of fire down my side, but he flew through the air like a toy.

  There was only rage. I leapt at him as he lay prone on his back. He batted me away with the shield, but I seized it again and held on, tearing it from his hands. He stumbled to his feet and I smashed the heavy sheet of metal into him. When he dropped his sword I launched myself at him again and bore him to the ground, raining blows into his face with all the mad strength of the Darkness in me. Bones cracked in his skull and my hands, but the Darkness healed me even as it tore at him.

  When I stood over his still body and roared, his men threw down their weapons and ran.

  We scattered caltrops behind us to cover our retreat, but no one pursued.

  I was only dimly aware of the rest of the platoon joining us back at the Rockwall camp, only vaguely conscious of the reports that we had taken minor wounds but no losses. With adrenaline and the Darkness still pulsing through my body, I dragged my blanket to the edge of the woods and fell asleep a hundred feet from the camp.

  A black fog oozed out from between the trees, fat tendrils of it questing like snakes. Roshel stepped out wrapped in layers of clinging mist and little else.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.” Her voice was as soft and seductive as I remembered. “For you to finish becoming what you are.”

  I stood as she closed the distance between us, and we embraced. The Darkness was all around us, hers, mine. As my lips found hers, the mist closed in, caressing, enfolding, smothering, clawing.

  As her Darkness tore at me and mine tore at her, she whispered, “This is how we become one.”

  I jerked awake with icy sweat soaking my body and the Darkness whirling around me. Two dozen yards away, Cat crouched in the grass, watching me with wide eyes. It took nearly an hour for meditation to ease me to a sleep untroubled by nightmares.

  “I want Pious.”

  “You’re insane,” Almet said. “I bet he wants you dead as much as the enemy does.”

  I let out a ragged breath. “Probably. But I need him. Those Paladins are hard to kill.”

  I wasn’t sure I could win a fight like the last one against more than one of the Monolith officers. I was even less sure I could make it through another night like that and keep my sanity.

  Almet shook his head. “If you want him, you can have him. I still think you’re crazy. Then again, everything you do is crazy. You’re lucky that didn’t hit you.”

  He pointed to my torn tunic, slashed by the Paladin’s blade.

  “What makes you think it didn’t?” I grinned, and the Darkness swirled into visibility around me.

  The captain shook his head again, more violently this time. “Yeah, take Pious. The only person scarier and crazier than him in this army is you.”

  Some of Pious’ squad was made up of his former platoon, but others had been reassigned from other elements of Almet’s company. The captain seemed to have given him the most vicious and brutal men in the battalion. Two were among those I’d previously rejected for the Shadowed Hand. They were what I needed for tonight, though.

  To say that Pious wasn’t pleased with his new assignment would have been a bit of an understatement. His face was set like stone, but anger blazed in his eyes. I didn’t need the Darkness to sense how he felt.

  “You understand the mission, Sergeant?” I put a little extra emphasis on the last word. Making the point. If you thought badly of me, you might say twisting the knife. You wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. I needed Pious, but seeing him face to face brought back a rush of loathing that twisted my guts and heated my face.

  “I understand. Sir.” That last with as much contempt as anyone could possibly put into a single syllable.

  “You might want to at least pretend to show some respect for a superior officer, Pious.”

  He barked out a laugh. “Superior? You? You’re not even human. You’re a black-eyed, gray-skinned demon that walks like a man and maybe thinks it is one. But you’re not. But now - now you want me to kill Paladins. And that I’ll do. So that better be enough. Sir.”

  Pious was a bully, and a thug, and a fool. But he was no coward. I nodded. “That’s enough. For now.”

  As I turned my back on him, I threw over my shoulder, “You’re wrong, you know. I’m no demon. I’ve met one. He’d break you like a twig.”

  “Bad,” Cat muttered at me. “Not trust.”

  “A little late for that now,” I said, and loped on through the torchlit town, Cat and Railes to either side of me. Pious and his squad pounded along just behind. The rest of my men were spreading into other parts of Riverside, burning, killing, leaving the mark of the Shadowed Hand in their wake.

  We’d come in from the east this time, and our main force was heading straight for the Paladins’ compound. At least, where we thought it was.

  We weren’t wrong. Snipers on top of a three story brick building opened up on us from fifty yards away.

  Within seconds they were screaming and clawing at their faces as the Darkness swarmed them. That made them easy targets for return fire from Pious’ troops. I didn’t really like having that man and his killers behind me with guns, but there are no perfect solutions in war.

  “Don’t fight fair, do you?” Pious gasped out as he broke into a sprint.

  “Not really the point, is it?” I matched his pace.

  “Nope.”

  A dozen men with swords and shields swarmed out of the building and charged us. Here was the core of the Monolith army’s officers - its leaders and deadliest warriors.

  Pious pushed past me and met the first with a monstrous sweep of his pick. It caught the Paladin’s shield and flung him into the air. The sergeant’s backswing hammered another enemy to his knees.

  I could deal with the Paladins in front of me or sweep the rooftops for more snipers. Yoshana might have been able to do both - I couldn’t. I concentrated on the more immediate problem.

  More gunfire opened up from above. Pious’ men answered, but were in an inferior tactical position.

  There was a reason I hadn’t brought my own troops to this battle.

  The Darkness was a storm around me. It clawed at eyes, throat, wrists, wherever it found exposed flesh. This time it didn’t batter at shields - it whipped around them like a malevolent whirlwind. Enemies fell back, even these hardened soldiers frightened by Pious’ savagery and the onslaught of the Darkness.

  A scarred, white-haired veteran stepped forward. “Stand and fight if you are a man, hellspawn!”

  From within the cloud
of Darkness, Cat leapt on him and plunged her gleaming knife into his throat. He flung her away, but it was too late. She rolled to her feet, grinning as he fell.

  “Not man, me.” She laughed.

  The other Paladins stared in horror. For a tense moment the four of us held them - Pious, Railes, Cat, and I staring down three times as many of the Monolith’s finest, as our troops exchanged gunfire with their snipers.

  Pious was a fool, but he knew how to seize a moment. “Fire and charge,” he bellowed.

  His men turned their guns on the Paladins. Most of their shots missed, or ricocheted off the heavy shields. But one of the enemy officers went down. When Pious’ squad roared and rushed forward, it was too much. The Paladins turned and ran.

  Pious and Railes each hacked one down from behind. Cat leapt at another, grappling and slashing with the ancient knife. At the same time, the enemy gunmen turned their weapons on us.

  Something stabbed at my right leg, hot and sharp and agonizing. My knee buckled and I went down.

  The Darkness roared back into me then shot up in a fountain of black rage. I wasn’t going to be used for target practice with victory in my grasp. Screaming in fury, I tore and bit at the snipers on the roof, the Darkness an extension of my clawed hands.

  In my blind fury, I didn’t know whether they died or fled. But no more shots came from the rooftop. I staggered to my feet and called my power back into myself, repairing broken blood vessels, forcing the invading bullet to the surface.

  More enemy troops were pouring out of nearby buildings, confused and leaderless.

  “Kill them all!” Pious shouted. His men skidded to a halt and unloaded another volley of gunfire.

  I clutched the bloody bullet and raised my fist in the air. “The Shadowed Hand is upon you!”

  Three days later I was sitting with Captain Almet, Colonel Royce, and Colonel Hake, watching the last fires in Riverside guttering out into lazy columns of smoke. A collection of adjutants milled around, chattering.