Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle

by Malcolm McKenzie

  I shook my head. “The mission hasn’t changed.”

  “Minos, you can’t complete the mission.”

  “Sure I can. You two kept me alive, so the mission continues. Splint up my leg and find me a good stick I can use as a crutch.”

  “You try to walk on that leg, you’re gonna make it worse. You’ll cripple yourself for good.”

  “I don’t go see Roshel, we’re all going to die. The choice is actually pretty easy.”

  Railes snapped, “Cat, talk some sense into this idiot. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

  But the paleo just said, “Shadow warrior, him.” For the first time in a long while, she was looking at me with something like the respect she’d first had for me.

  “Thanks, Cat.” It felt good through the pain to have earned that respect myself, instead of with the Darkness.

  “Fine,” Railes growled. “Stay here with him a minute. I’ll go find the shadow warrior some branches.”

  The girl gathered up Erev’s carbine and sank into the tall grass. After a moment I ventured tentatively, “Are you happy with Railes?”

  She nodded and said quietly, “Good man, him.”

  Probably not by a lot of definitions. But her definition was what mattered.

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  It was almost fully dark by the time Railes returned with an armful of branches. Cat held my leg with the knee slightly bent while he bound the wound with strips of cloth, then splinted it in place.

  “Wouldn’t it be better straight?” I asked.

  “Yeah, until you put your weight on it and drive bone splinters into your leg. If you’re gonna be an idiot and limp around on it, this might keep you from hurting yourself more.”

  It was hard to argue with that logic. Once he was satisfied with his work, he had Cat help me up again and trimmed a longer branch to the right length for a crutch. It had a bend that fit under my armpit, and was only moderately uncomfortable.

  Supporting my own weight was another story, especially when I took my first clumsy step forward, nearly fell, and banged my makeshift crutch into my knee as I desperately tried to steady myself. I ground my teeth together and muttered, “Son of a -” under my breath.

  “Still think this is a good idea?”

  I am a shadow warrior. I could hardly back down now in front of Cat. “It’s just going to take some practice.” I took another step forward. This time I neither hurt myself nor almost landed on my face.

  “Okay. If you’re going to be that way about it, we’ll take you to their lines.” Railes didn’t sound convinced.

  “No, you won’t. I’m going alone. I appreciate that you just saved my life, trust me, but if all three of us show up I’m just going to get shot again. Once was enough.”

  Even in the gloom I could see the mulish look on Railes’ face. “Yeah, and if you show up all by yourself, you’ll get shot again, all by yourself.”

  “Then somebody had better tell Tess I’m off doing something stupid and make some contingency plans. Thanks, Railes. I’ve got it from here.”

  My adjutant shook his head. “You really are the dumbest son of a bitch on God’s green earth.”

  “So I’ve heard.” I started limping toward the enemy position, and Railes and Cat made no move to follow me. I looked back over my shoulder at Erev’s corpse cooling in the grass. “I feel like we should do something for him.”

  “That’s what vultures are for, boss.”

  Like my own troops, Roshel’s had set torches. It made sense. Between Seven and the Hidden Moon Clan, I’d shown myself willing and able to use the Darkness. She couldn’t know I had no such capabilities left. And even without them, I could still have theoretically launched a surprise attack at night.

  They knew what they were doing. The fires were bright and spaced at regular intervals, outside their picket lines. Inexperienced soldiers tended to set them too close, blinding themselves. The Darkness Radiant was not inexperienced in such matters.

  Still, I could see the surprise on the nearest sentry’s face as I limped into the firelight. The sun was long gone now - I’d moved so slowly I suspected a couple of snails and a tortoise had passed me. He raised a rifle, but didn’t seem to regard me as much of a threat. It wasn’t hard to see why.

  “Glory to God,” he declared. In a less friendly tone he demanded, “What’s your business here?”

  “Roshel sent for me.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t get orders to expect anyone.” He stared me up and down again. I didn’t look like anyone’s idea of an emissary. “I’m going to have to call this in. You wait here while I get it figured out.”

  I tried to paste a friendly smile onto my face. I doubt I succeeded, but I wasn’t trying that hard either. “Go ahead. I’m sure she’s in a really good mood right now and won’t mind the delay at all. As you might imagine,” I glanced down at my leg, “I’m running a little late as it is.”

  The soldier thought about that, but not for very long. “All right. Come on with me while I find the sergeant of the guard.”

  “Yep. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be limping along behind. This won’t take us out of our way at all, right?”

  “Oh, for - fine. We’ll go straight to her tent. The tribune can take care of herself.” He called out to the nearest man to his right, some fifty feet away. “Gustas, I’m taking this guy back to see the tribune. Can you get my post covered?”

  He set out at a brisk pace, only realizing after ten yards or so that I wasn’t keeping up. He stopped to wait. “What the hell happened to you, anyway, buddy?” As rare as Select were, he didn’t seem to have made the mental connection between me and the commander of the enemy forces. Maybe it was hard to imagine me as a general limping along in dirty, blood-stained rags with a tree branch as a crutch. I certainly didn’t feel much like a general.

  “You should see the other guy,” I said.

  “Rostan, you have got to be kidding me,” snapped the guard outside Roshel’s tent.

  “He said he had to see the tribune,” my escort whined. “I wasn’t going to keep her waiting.”

  “And if I tell you Yoshana promoted me to centurion, are you going to start saluting me just ’cause I said so? I’ve been outside this tent for three hours, and the tribune’s been inside, and she hasn’t sent for anyone.”

  “Do you really think she has no means to summon me that you can’t see? Who do you think you’re serving under?” I asked.

  The guard blanched.

  “Look, this is easy enough,” I said. “Open up the tent. If she wants to see me, she’s going to be happy. If she doesn’t want to see me, you’ve got a corpse to dispose of, but hey, this is war. Or you can send me away and find out the hard way if she wanted to see me or not when she starts wondering why I didn’t show up. Totally up to you.”

  Before the soldier could decide what to make of that, the tent flap opened and a small, angry figure peered out. “What’s going on out here?”

  I’d seen Roshel seductive, commanding, frightened, exhilarated - but never peevish. I hadn’t been wrong when I’d bluffed the sentry. The dark-haired Overlord was in a bad mood.

  She did a double-take and stared at me open-mouthed. “Minos? What are you doing here? You look like hell.”

  The tent guard shot me a dirty look. “I knew - sorry, ma’am -”

  “Get in here,” Roshel said to me. To the soldiers, she said, “Get back to your posts. He is not here. If your tongues start wagging, they just might fall out.”

  The two braced to attention and saluted.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, and hobbled into the tent.

  It was a lot like mine. There was a cot and a small table with a lamp on it. Apparently the tribunes of the Darkness Radiant didn’t get any better accommodations than the judge of Our Lady. I wasn’t surprised. Yoshana didn’t strike me as the type to travel weighed down with luxuries, or permit it for her subordinates.

  “What are you doing here, Minos?” Rosh
el repeated.

  I really wanted to sit on her cot but kept myself upright. “I wanted to see if you were ready to surrender.”

  Her eyes went wide. She looked like she wanted to laugh, but couldn’t quite get it out. “Did you hit your head when Yoshana did that to you?” She pointed at the livid wound on my face.

  I had, actually. But I replied, “You know you’re on the wrong side here, Roshel.”

  The Overlord scowled. “You don’t believe that girl’s stronger than Yoshana. Yoshana had just defeated a Hellguard in single combat, she was exhausted, trying to control the Darkness she’d taken from the demon. And yes, your little prophetess has a strong will. But that was a fluke, not a sign!”

  She said it too loudly, too angrily. It struck me that while Roshel was less prone to violence than Yoshana, she was no less lethal if provoked. And the Darkness seethed inside her, as it once had in me. I kept my voice quiet and level. “Is that how she’s explaining it? Maybe that’s true. But I’ve seen Prophetess cast the Darkness out of me. A lot of it, Roshel. I was dark, and strong. And I’ve seen her resist a woman who killed a Hellguard. So maybe it was a fluke. Or maybe it’s the hand of God. But that’s not even what I mean, Roshel. You might or might not be on the stronger side. But you’re not on the right one.”

  “Don’t give me the hand of God,” she spat. “Remember the Darkness was pulled out of me when I was a child. Unless you’re going to claim the Overlords’ surgeon sorcerers were holy men. God wasn’t on that hill.”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “Maybe Saul had an epileptic fit on the road to Damascus and Jesus’ message got spread through the Roman Empire because he fell off his horse, bumped his head, and hallucinated. But right is right and wrong is wrong, and we know the difference.”

  “Yoshana doesn’t think she’s wrong.”

  “Yoshana makes her own truth, her own law. The question is whether you believe in an eternal truth, a real truth, God’s truth - or Yoshana’s truth. You’re a good person. We both know that. But you’re on the side of evil here. You shouldn’t be.”

  “You said that before, at Our Lady. How dare you?” Her voice began to rise. “I’m on the side of evil because the Darkness is in me? Because we use it? Who are you to tell me that? Who are you to say you know God’s truth? You used the Darkness too! You brought a demon to fight for you!”

  There were angry tears in her eyes.

  I nodded. “And I was wrong. I went against Prophetess’ wishes - I went against God’s wishes - and I was wrong. I’m no prophet and God knows I’m no saint. But look what happened, Roshel. Seven, the Hellguard who helped me, is dead. Prophetess is alive. If you keep using the Darkness to fight the Darkness, you’ll lose, because there will always be an evil greater than you. Gurath, the huge wraiths in the sorrows, they’ll win a battle of the Darkness. You need to use the light.”

  Roshel turned away from me. “You come limping in here half dead and tell me I’m losing and I should surrender? You really did hit your head.”

  “I’m here so tomorrow doesn’t turn into good people killing each other while the Darkness watches and laughs. I'm here because I care about you. Prophetess was in tears because people died for her with the Darkness in them. She wouldn’t want that for you either.”

  When the Overlord turned back, her face was composed. “You keep talking like we’re going to lose, Minos. But that’s not what’s going to happen.”

  She stepped to me and touched my face. Heat rose through my body.

  “We can heal you. She can make you stronger than you were before. You can be a commander, but on the winning side.” Her hands ran over my chest. Her eyes were dark pools, beckoning me to dive in. “You are so much greater than the small people you serve. Taking orders from priests and prophets. Enduring injury that you could overcome with a thought. Enduring indignity you could end with a word.”

  And that was true, of course. From provocations like the disrespect of that useless bureaucrat Doreden to the humiliation of the wounds on my body, I could set all of that aside with the Darkness. But that wasn’t the side I’d chosen.

  “One of us chose the wrong side, but it wasn’t me,” Roshel continued, as if she could read my mind. This close to me, she could. This close to me… Her breath was warm on my face. I could feel the Darkness rise up around us.

  “Deliver your army to Yoshana, Minos, and you can be her third tribune. You can see to it she lets Prophetess go. And then you and I together…”

  Her hands brushed at my shirt, delicate, gently reaching to open buttons. My breath caught in my throat. And, just for a moment, her fingers pressed the Saint Benedict medal that hung around my neck into my skin.

  I let my crutch fall and gasped as I took weight on the injured knee. A stabbing bolt of pain shot up my leg and settled into a throbbing ache in my gut. I set both hands on Roshel’s shoulders and pushed her back.

  “Stop that,” I said. “It’s beneath you. I’m being honest with you. I expect you to return the favor.”

  Her eyes widened again and she put her hand to her mouth, biting her knuckle. It was a gesture so vulnerable that I wondered if it was another part of her manipulation. But the overpowering aura of desirability was gone.

  Not that Roshel wasn’t desirable without it.

  “Sit down before you fall down,” she said quietly.

  To hell with dignity. I didn’t need to be told twice. My leg was killing me. I collapsed gracelessly onto her cot.

  “I can heal it, you know,” she said, but there was no seduction in her tone anymore. The Darkness had receded. “Yoshana said she’d marked you and then you fell down the hill. Did you break your leg rolling down?”

  “No, that was Erev shooting me on the way here.”

  “Oh my God. What happened?”

  “That. He tracked me down and shot me in the knee. I gather he’s been holding a grudge.”

  “How did you get away?”

  I put on a severe look. “Get away? I killed him. I’m a factor, remember?”

  “Uh huh. How did you get away?”

  “A couple of my soldiers tailed me. They figured I couldn’t take care of myself and apparently they were right. They ambushed Erev after he ambushed me. He didn’t survive.”

  “And then you limped over here to demand my surrender after being gunned down by one half-crippled Knight of the Resurrection?”

  “I said I was right. I didn’t say I was smart.”

  Roshel sighed. “I should just kill you now. Or give you to Yoshana so she can torture you to death.” The Overlord looked at the ground, then back at me. “How about I heal your face and your leg and you go back to your camp?”

  I shook my head. “No. No more of the Darkness. My face will remind me that I got Seven killed. My leg will remind me of what I did to Erev in the Darklands. I deserve both and more.”

  “If you deserve that then there’s not much hope for me, is there?”

  “They tell me that Christ forgives. I know Prophetess does. You know the liturgy. Lord, I’m not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed. It’s never too late to pick the right side.”

  She turned away. “You’ve changed again. You’re… more than you were before. But I won’t fight Yoshana.”

  “Then don’t. Take your army and sit this one out. Help Yoshana against the Darkness and the Hellguard. But not against Prophetess.”

  “She’d never accept that. You’re with her or you’re against her.”

  “If she won’t let you follow your conscience, that might be another sign that you’re on the wrong side.”

  Roshel dropped into a crouch face to face with me. “Your timing sucks, Minos.”

  “Why? Planning a big surprise attack tonight? Then I’d say it’s just about perfect.”

  “God damn you,” she hissed. She handed me my crutch. “I’ll arrange an escort to get you back to your lines.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to
do the right thing?”

  “That means you’re not my favorite person anymore,” the Overlord growled.

  10. The Serpent’s Tooth

  Roshel bundled me into a hooded cloak that concealed my face and assigned two soldiers to pass me through the front lines. Every step was its own little torture. Physically, because my knee jabbed a lance of pain up my thigh and into my gut every time it took the slightest bit of weight. And mentally as I dreaded Yoshana’s attack beginning before I rejoined my troops.

  If Roshel’s men on the front thought it was odd to see a limping, cowled figure escorted past them, they didn’t say so. They were probably used to strange things in the service of an Overlord, and it might be unhealthy to comment on them. If the men guarding me had an opinion, they kept it to themselves as well. They didn’t say a word.

  A hundred yards of no man’s land between the lines was sunk into deep shadow, the flickering light of hundreds of torches on either side doing nothing to illuminate the middle. My escorts each carried a burning brand, partly so we wouldn’t look like infiltrators and partly so I wouldn’t trip in a gully or gopher hole and break my other leg. I suppose it worked - we reached Our Lady’s defenses without falling or being shot.

  Not without challenge, thankfully. Wounded and exhausted as I was, I still would have been outraged if we’d been able to simply pass through. At least, that’s what I told myself as I hopped unsteadily in place with my crutch digging into my armpit.

  “Who goes there?”

  We were perhaps fifty feet from the sentry. The light of his torches didn’t illuminate us, but our own did. One of my guards held his brand high while the other pulled my cloak back.

  “We’re returning this to you,” he announced.

  The sentry peered at me.

  “It’s Minos,” I said. “I’m coming forward.”

  I began hobbling toward him. Roshel’s men decided their work was done and turned back. I guess if my own guys shot me, that wasn’t their problem.

  “Judge Minos?” the sentry gasped. “What are you doing out there?”