A Warrior's Burden: Book One of Saga of the Known Lands

by Jacob Peppers

  “And ale, dear Maeve,” the magician said, still smiling widely, apparently unwilling to be put off so easily. “Pray thee, do not forget the ale. Now,” he went on thoughtfully, looking around, “the real question is, which tavern would be the best for—”

  “We didn’t come here so that you could drink ale and ogle barmaids, Chall,” she growled. “You know that.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said, his voice whiny, “just a little ogle?” He must have seen some of her disapproval in her stare—hard not to as she was scowling just about as hard as she could—for he heaved a heavy sigh. “Fine, no ogling at all, though it’s a shame, if you ask me, to leave such beauty unappreciated.”

  “No one did ask you.”

  He shook his head sadly. “No, no I suppose they didn’t and that should serve as proof enough that the world is a cruel, ignorant place. Anyway, you shall have your way—we will only make a quick trip into a tavern, just a stop off, an opportunity to catch our breaths, you might say, and…perhaps to slake our thirsts.”

  “One more word from you about stopping by a tavern,” she warned, “and I’ll be slaking my thirst for blood, you understand?”

  “Oh, come now, Mae,” he said, smiling once more. “People change—you are no longer the cold-blooded, assassin-beauty which sent so many fantasizing men to bed in a mixture of fear and admiration. Why, I’m quite certain you do not even have a knife—” He cut off as she produced two knives from inside her dress, not quite as quick as she once might have, perhaps, but pretty quick just the same.

  “People don’t change that much, Chall,” she said.

  He moaned. “Very well, Maeve—you make a particularly…sharp point. Why, I certainly would not wish to feel the edge of your anger, for it is both sharp and cutting and—”

  “One more jibe, Chall,” she said, “and I’ll show you just how cutting it can be.”

  He sighed again. “You really do have a way of taking all the fun out of being hunted by the entire realm and throwing ourselves into even greater peril, you know that?”

  “The gods weep.”

  “Well,” he said dryly, “if they don’t, they most certainly should. Anyway, what’s your plan then? I suppose go hunting for our erstwhile companion, perhaps stop by some establishments—I said establishments, damn you, not taverns—and introduce ourselves, tell them who we are and who we search for?” He gave a humorless laugh. “Perhaps we could even lay odds on how long it will take someone to call the guard and how long after that it will take before our execution is scheduled. Not long, I’d wager. Not long at all.”

  “I’m not stupid, Chall,” she said.

  “Could have fooled—”

  “And while my mind isn’t the greatest—time, the bastard, has seen to that—I’m still not quite ready to part with it, and the rest of my head, quite yet. Anyway, he shouldn’t be so hard to find.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Maeve,” Chall said. “You’ve got a wonderful head. At least, parts of it. Why, there’s a spot just there, right above your hairline, where it hasn’t gone to gray yet and—”

  “I will stab you, Chall.”

  “Very well. All I mean is, I’m not entirely certain we should have come here in the first place. Why bother? There’s a good chance he isn’t even here anyway. What, you said you heard that how long ago? Five years? He could be anywhere. For all we know, they’ve set up a convent for all the world’s pompous assholes in some far away country—the gods can hope very far away—and put him at its head. Certainly I can think of no other person more deserving of the honor.”

  She sighed. “You never did like him. I think probably because he didn’t pat you on the back and buy you a beer every time you bragged about your latest conquest, as if bedding farmer’s daughters was so remarkable.”

  “There’s an art to it,” Chall said defensively. “Anyway, not just ‘not every time’ but not any time. The bastard never did give me my due.”

  “Listen,” she said, glancing around the street at those walking around them before leaning in, “there are more important things at stake here than your wounded pride.”

  “Yes,” he said, “dehydration comes to mind.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry overly much, Chall,” she said. “When you die, I don’t think it’ll be dehydration that causes it. Blood loss, likelier than not. Now come on—if I remember right, there’s a church near the center of town, one dedicated to Raveza.”

  “The Goddess of Temperance,” Chall said, rolling his eyes. “Might as well be the Goddess of Unicorns and Assorted Mythical Creatures.”

  “Not bad,” Maeve said, smiling despite herself, “though I’m not sure if it’d fit on the statue plaques.”

  “And wouldn’t that be a terrible shame?”

  Maeve stared at him for several seconds. “Are you done?”

  Chall frowned. “Yes, Mae. I’m done.”

  “You’re sure?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, “because, who knows, if we hang around talking much longer, we might end up making some of the guards suspicious. Why, we could even be recognized, though given your current…weight—sorry, I meant state, of course—that could be in some doubt. Still…” She shrugged. “It’s all the same to me. If you want to hang around, see if anyone calls the guards on us, we can. Then, I expect you’ll have some bigger things to bitch about than what appears to be, judging by the state of you, your personal quest to bring down the Goddess of Temperance.”

  He had a hurt look on his face. “You know, you should really leave the jokes to me—they’re not supposed to be cruel. Only funny.”

  “Oh, Chall,” she said, “how can I ever be expected to leave the jokes to you? After all, the world has its own jokes and, if you ask me, they’re rarely funny and are always cruel. Now come on, damn you. Let’s find him so we can get out of here—so many people looking at us makes my skin crawl.”

  “You know what makes my skin crawl?” he began. “Men—or women, I’m an equal opportunity despiser—who thins they’re so damned holy that their shit smells like plum pudding…”

  He went on after that, but Maeve wasn’t listening. Instead, she turned and started down the street, confident that the magician would follow, confident, too, that he would bitch the entire way. People changed, sure, but in her experience, they didn’t change all that much.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  What to say of Valden Abereth, the man known simply as “Priest?”

  This historian has rarely met a wiser man, a kinder one.

  During our travels, we sometimes sat in council, the two of us, and, more often than not, the conversation turned to his goddess, to what a man might expect when moving beyond life’s veil.

  Valden seemed to know much on the subject, particularly about the world beyond this one.

  But then, I suppose that is no great surprise, for he sent many there himself.

  For Valden Abereth was a kind man, a wise one.

  And he was also, as it happened, one of the world’s most talented killers.

  —Exiled Historian to the Crown, Petran Quinn

  The boy stood before him dressed in filthy rags most people wouldn’t have allowed their dogs to lie on. Valden bowed his head to him, retrieving a hard piece of bread from the basket beside him and offering it to the youth. “The road to peace,” he said.

  “Is taken one step at a time,” the boy responded instantly. He, like those two dozen or so other street waifs standing in line behind him, knew what was expected of him, for he had said it often enough when Valden or one of his brothers or sisters came to the poor district to hand out food. Likely, the poor souls said it not out of some true belief but out of a simple wish not to anger the man on whose food they had come to rely, but Valden did not mind. Perhaps, in time, they would say the words enough that they might even come to believe them. And if they did not? Well, that was fine as well, for at least they would be fed. He could not give them a place to live, could not give them coin with which to buy the thi
ngs they needed—for he had no coin himself just as he had no personal possessions as none of those within his order did—but he could at least make sure they ate. Not every day, perhaps, but today.

  The boy did not thank him, did not even offer him a smile, only hurried away, clutching his chunk of hard bread against his chest as if it were some great prize he was in fear of losing or—more likely—having taken from him. Cradling it to his chest as if his life depended on it. Which, when one was a starving orphan living on the streets, it did. Valden wanted to help the boy, wanted to take him aside and tell him that Raveza loved him—which was true—and that everything would be okay—which may or may not have been. In the end, of course, he knew that Raveza would take all of those who passed from the tortured veil that was the mortal world into her loving embrace, but among the many promises she had made to mankind, there was not one that they would not suffer or feel pain before their day came.

  The path to peace, Valden told himself, is taken one step at a time. He could not save the boy—he could only do what he could. He took a moment to offer up a silent prayer for the boy then took a slow, deep breath, and turned to the next in line, this one a young girl. How many times, he wondered, can a man’s heart break? How many times can he witness the world’s suffering and not despair? But though he did not feel it, he forced a warm smile onto his face, reaching into the basket—the basket which, he could see at a glance, did not contain enough bread for those in line—and handed it over. “The path to peace,” he said.

  “Is walked a step at a time.”

  Valden smiled. “Taken, young one.”

  “Sure,” she said, then she snatched the bread and hurried away at a jog.

  Valden watched her go, gave a heavy sigh, and reached into the basket for a third time, withdrawing a piece of bread. “The path to peace—”

  “Fuck your peace, old man. Give me the food—now.”

  Valden frowned, looking up. He was surprised to find that, at some point during his distraction, the line of children had vanished, scattering like mice before a flood. In their place stood three men—boys, really, who looked to be in their late teens, perhaps early twenties. Boys, but ones at that most dangerous age, the age where they believed they were men grown. Old enough to think themselves capable of making their own decisions but not old enough to understand that so many of those decisions would inevitably turn out wrong. “I know that you are hungry,” Valden said, “but this is not the way, lads. Darkness, heed me, is an abyss, one which a man might easily fall into with but a single misplaced step. And should you fall, it is very hard to—”

  “Shut your damned mouth,” the second snapped. “Nobody’s got time for your lessons, Priest. Now, hand over the bread, or—” There was a pause of several seconds as he fumbled at his ratty trousers, finally producing a small, rusted knife of the kind fishermen used to shear their lines, “or I’ll cut you.”

  Valden glanced at the knife then back to the boy. “Of course you may each take a piece of bread and with my blessing. Only, I ask that you leave some for the little ones. It is not so easy for them to find food to eat as strong men like yourselves. Please, out of kindness—”

  The third jerked him up by the front of his robe—white once, but now stained with dust and dirt to a washed out brown—“We ain’t gonna just take one piece, you old fucker. We’re takin’ all of it, you hear me? Try to stop us, you’ll get hurt.”

  “Curses are the crutch of a man crippled within his own mind, young one, and violence not a pet to be tamed but a master to any man who seeks to claim it. Do you understa—” He cut off as one of the boy’s reached out and slapped him across the face. It was an awkward, ungainly blow, clearly with no training or skill behind it, and Valden ran a hand across his mouth where a trickle of blood was starting down his lip. “There is really no need for this, young men. I will help you any way I can, only leave enough for the children, I beg.”

  But the youths were not listening. One reached for the basket beside him, snatching it up so quickly that several of the pieces of bread fell out onto the street. A second began scooping them up, cursing his companion as he did, while the third continued to hold his robe, giving him a shake. “Now the money, you old bastard.”

  “I don’t have any coin, young man. We followers of Raveza forego our earthly possessions so that they might not hinder or weigh us down in the quest for peace.”

  “Save your bullshit for someone else, Priest,” the boy growled, pawing at his robe, “tell me where it is, where’s the money, or by the gods I’ll cut you and see if the shit you’re full of comes pourin’ out.”

  Just then, something caught Valden’s attention, and he glanced up to see two strangers standing in the street a short distance away, regarding him and the young men. A heavy-set man in purple trousers and a woman with dark hair, some of which had gone to gray. She was older, then, perhaps in her late forties or early fifties, but possessing a majestic beauty that shone past the few wrinkles she had. There was something regal about her bearing, while the heavy-set man’s mouth was turned up at one corner into a small, almost imperceptible smile as if he were about to laugh at some joke only he knew. And while his body might have been heavy and awkward, there was a sharp intelligence in his eyes, one shared in the eyes of the woman, and Valden realized that they were not strangers after all.

  “Maeve,” he said, smiling. “Challadius.”

  “Priest,” the woman said.

  “Who the fuck?” one of the boys growled. “Get out of here, old woman, and take your fat man with you before you both end up getting hurt.”

  “If you would like to wait at the church,” Valden offered, “I will finish my business here and meet you both there shortly.”

  Challadius made a sour face, snorting, and Maeve glanced at him before rolling her eyes and looking back to him. “We just came from there, actually. We asked them where we could find you.”

  “Very well,” Valden said, “then if you will only give me half an hour, no more—”

  “It’s important, Valden,” Maeve interrupted. “We would not be here otherwise. He’s in trouble.”

  Valden felt a surge of something go through him, some undefinable emotion. Was it panic, perhaps? Fear? Or something else? “You’re sure?”

  She grunted. “Chall dreamed it.”

  He glanced to the big man who still had a sour expression on his face, but he nodded to confirm the truth of it.

  “Enough,” the youth holding him growled. He turned to his two companions who had finally managed to scoop up the pieces of bread. “Go and get the fat man and the bitch—might be they got some coin on them.”

  Maeve’s eyes went wide at that, and Valden was moving before he realized it, his hand flashing out, the ridge of it catching the young man holding him in the throat. His attacker gasped, letting loose his hold, but Valden did not hesitate, following up with a knee to the man’s midsection and then he pivoted, sending two rapid blows into the boy’s face. The youth fell like a poleaxed ox, collapsing on the ground.

  The sound of his fall alerted his companions, and the two of them turned, their eyes widening as they realized what had happened. Then they cursed and attacked. The first one charged him, swinging an unpracticed punch which was easily avoided. Valden ducked the blow, placing three rapid strikes in the youth’s stomach, then spun, his leg sweeping out of his robe and striking the youth in the back of his knees, causing him to collapse in a wheezing heap on the ground. The third growled, reaching for him, but Valden swayed to the side, avoiding his hands and placed two punches in the man’s side. His attacker groaned, bending over, his hands going to his floating ribs, and Valden spun, bringing his own fist in a fast uppercut which caught the man under the chin and sent him sprawling.

  He took a moment, surveying the three men on the ground, unconscious or close enough as to make no difference. Then, he turned back to Chall and Maeve. “When did this vision occur?”

  ***

  Chal
l stared at the three unconscious men, blinking. Time had changed them in many ways. He’d grown fat—there, he’d said it. Maeve had grown older—still attractive, and still looking like she’d just as soon take a knife to him as talk to him most times. Even Priest looked older, and the man had already looked damned near ancient when Chall had met him twenty years ago. But whatever else time had robbed them all of—or added to them, in Chall’s case—it had clearly stolen none of the man’s skill in unarmed combat. A skill which was the main reason why he’d so often held his tongue when the old bastard started lecturing him on morality or simply giving him that disappointed gaze he so often did when Chall had arrived late at a meeting, usually with some farmer’s daughter—or farmer’s wife, depending on what was on offer—to blame.

  “Damn,” he said, the word coming out of his mouth without him meaning it to.

  And there was the disappointed look. “Curses,” Priest said, “are the crutch of a m—”

  “Man crippled within his own mind,” Chall interrupted, rolling his eyes. “Yes, I seem to remember that little nugget of wisdom.” Hard not to when he’d spent five years hearing it practically every day, along with a few hundred other empty platitudes that the man wielded arguably with even more skill than he did his fists.

  “Ah sarcasm,” the older man said, nodding as if he’d expected as much, “ever the shield of the unvirtuous against wisdom.”

  “Speaking of unvirtuous,” Chall said, glancing at Maeve, “now that we’ve found our conscience, do you think we could stop by a tavern? I’ve got a mighty thirst.”