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

by Jacob Peppers

  He expected to get a rise out of the man—at least, hoped to, knowing it was childish but hoping it just the same. Instead, the older man only smiled, walking toward him and, in a moment, he was wrapping Chall into a tight hug. “It is good to see you again, Challadius.”

  Chall hated being preached at, hated being called “Challadius,” also, a name far too pompous, too assuming for him. But to his surprise, he found that he did not hate the hug so much found that, in fact, he had missed the man. “It’s good to see you too,” he mumbled.

  Priest let him go, smiling widely, then turned to Maeve, taking her hand and giving it a gentle kiss that was in no way flirtatious or strange but which seemed completely natural even given that he was no nobleman but a priest in a dirty robe, and they stood not in a ballroom but in a back alley currently littered with the unconscious forms of three young men. “Maeve. I see that the years have stolen none of your beauty but have, instead, served only to enhance it.”

  Chall watched her smile widely and wondered how the old man always seemed able, even now, after so long, to so easily elicit such an expression from the woman who smiled so rarely while he himself generally only managed to get an angry scowl and a curse.

  “And I see that you have lost none of your talents,” she said, eyeing him then turning her gaze meaningfully to the three unconscious figures.

  Priest looked ashamed at that, wincing as he stared at the men. “Would that I had. Violence, after all, is the—”

  “Weapon of the unwise?” Chall guessed. “Tool of the asshole?”

  Priest smiled humoringly. “Not untrue, perhaps, though not how I would have said it. I would have said instead that violence is the last recourse of men who have failed to find wisdom.”

  “Damn,” Chall said, “so close.”

  “Still,” the old man went on in a musing tone, “the goddess teaches that exercise is good for the heart and the soul, and a wise man will not allow his body, the letter upon which his life is writ, to fall into…” He paused, turning to regard Chall, and Chall didn’t think he imagined the way the man’s mouth quirked up at one corner in the hint of a smile. “Shall we say, disrepair?”

  Chall thought then, as he had so many years ago, that beneath the pompous, arrogant and downright haughty exterior, the priest was also a bit of an asshole. “I like the robe,” he said. “What color is that—mud brown?”

  Priest grinned, not put off or angry at all, the bastard. “I believe so, though not so extravagant as your trousers, I’m afraid.”

  Maeve burst out a laugh at that, and Chall frowned. Maybe more than just a bit of an asshole after all.

  “Anyway, Valden,” the woman said, her voice growing somber, “to answer your question, Chall had the vision less than a week ago and—”

  “Wait,” Chall said, “Valden?”

  They turned to him, Priest with a smile, Maeve a frown. “Do you mean to tell me that after all the time we spent together you don’t even know his name?”

  “Of course I know his name!” Chall said, feeling a touch defensive. “Why, it’s Prie—” He cut off, frowning. “Oh. Right.”

  “Unbelievable,” Maeve said.

  Chall felt his face heat. “Look, it’s not my fault. I didn’t know the man actually had a name. For all I know, he gave it up with all the rest to join his cul—I mean church. You know, handed it over along with his dick and his joy—the two, in my experience, being closely linked.”

  “Chall,” she said wearily, “do you really have to be such a pri—”

  “Please, Maeve,” Priest said, holding up a hand, “there is no need. Yes, Chall, to answer your question I have a name, though it is true that most prefer simply to call me Priest. As for the rest…I respect your opinion, but I am curious—you, I believe, have given up nothing, have joined no ‘cult’ as I believe you meant to say. Would you say, then, that you are happy?”

  “Ask me once I’ve had a drink—assuming, of course, that this city of yours actually has any ale and has anybody to serve it, that is if they aren’t busy lecturing each other on how to take a shit virtuously or wipe their asses wisely.”

  Not his best jest, perhaps, but certainly not his worst. Priest, though, did not grow frustrated or annoyed or angry, only tilted his head back and roared with a hearty, warming laugh like that of a loving grandfather. “Ah, Challadius, but I have missed your wit.”

  Despite the fact that most of the time he would have enjoyed strangling the man—or at least getting him shit-faced drunk and finding a scribe to record it—Chall found his face flushing with pleasure at that. He turned to Maeve, cocking an eyebrow. “You hear that? He says I have wit.”

  “Yes, well,” Maeve said dryly, “even priests aren’t perfect.”

  That elicited another hearty laugh from the man, but he sobered quickly. “Forgive me, but in my joy at seeing the two of you I find that I have neglected, most grossly, your reason for coming. The vision you spoke of—when will it occur?”

  They were both looking at him now, expecting him to have all the answers and wasn’t that the most damning thing? All they had to do was glance at him and the purple trousers he was wearing to see that he wasn’t a man with any answers at all, just a lot of questions, the answer to most of which, he suspected, was “and he died terribly, terribly alone, and terribly fat.”

  He sighed. “It’s not as if someone just sent me a message with all the details, is it? They didn’t bother marking it on a calendar, you know.”

  “Ah, but someone did send you a message, Challadius,” Priest disagreed. “I believe, in fact, that we may have had this discussion before. Your gift—your wonderful gift—is quite clearly a blessing from the gods themselves.”

  “Great, this again,” Chall muttered. “Honestly, Priest, if the gods were handing out gifts, do you think I’d be at the top of the list? Or anywhere on the damn thing for that matter? Why, you’ve said yourself that I’m nothing but a philandering, womanizing wastrel with a heart of coal and ale instead of blood pumping in my veins.”

  “I…do not recall ever having said that,” Priest said slowly.

  Chall grunted. “Well. You probably thought it. Anyway, that’s not the point! The point is that if the gods were handing out powers, they certainly wouldn’t be handing them out to me. I mean, look at me for gods’ sake,” he said, spreading his hands. “Do I look like some champion of the gods?”

  The Priest hesitated at that, opening his mouth several times only to close it again. Finally, he spoke. “The gods see far more clearly than mortal eyes, Challadius. And with that greater sight, they have seen something within you, something buried deep—”

  “Very deep,” Maeve interrupted in a voice that sounded on the verge of laughter.

  “Inside of you,” Priest went on, “a goodness, perhaps even a greatness of which even you yourself are not aware.”

  “Then the gods are fools,” Chall said. Something—anger perhaps, or when it was in a priest’s gaze was it called something else? Divine retribution, maybe—flashed in the man’s eyes then, and Chall thought he had finally found the man’s limit and that he would soon be decorating the alley cobbles along with the three would-be criminals who were still snoring away in blessed unconsciousness.

  “Enough,” Maeve said, drawing both of their attention—including the priest’s dangerous stare for which Chall could only be thankful—“we don’t have time for this. What Chall is trying—and, as usual, failing miserably—to say is that he does not know the exact time, only that it will be soon.”

  Priest nodded, rubbing at his chin thoughtfully, and Chall watched, surprised by how anxious he was to hear what the man would say, whether he would agree to come or not. On the one hand, the man was an absolute, pompous busy-body who, if he had his way, would have likely chosen to perch on Chall’s shoulder and spend his days remarking on all the many ways in which he failed. On the other, Chall knew that despite a promise he’d made to himself fifteen years ago when he’d left their ba
nd—or been forced to leave…fleeing might have been more accurate—a promise to never once again allow himself to be embroiled in conflicts that had nothing to do with him and risk his head over it, it looked as if that was exactly what was happening.

  Soon now, likely depressingly soon, he would be putting himself in danger, sticking his neck out for a man who had become famous—or infamous, more like—for chopping heads off. And if that was the case, there was no denying that he would like to have a man like Priest at his side. After all, whatever else the man was, he was a great fighter, a great scout, and perhaps the greatest archer of his generation, if not all generations. Sure, he was a pain in the ass, but he’d also managed to save Chall’s on far too many occasions for him to count, so if there was going to be blood—and he was not so optimistic to believe that there was anyway out of this without it—then Chall would want the man at his side.

  Priest did not ask any more questions, did not argue that it was not his concern. He only nodded, glancing between them. “When do we leave?”

  Chall let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as a mixture of relief and annoyance rolled through him. He glanced at Maeve who shook her head at him, turning back to the older man. “You’re coming?”

  “Of course,” the man answered as if were obvious that he should risk his life, that they should all risk their lives, for a man they had not seen in fifteen years and could have only loosely called friend. But then, judging by the fact that the three of them were standing there, perhaps it was.

  Maeve grunted in clear surprise. “I am glad. Then, I suppose, we will leave just as soon as you gather your things.”

  Priest nodded thoughtfully, then looked around the street, walking over and bending down to pick up a small, dull copper chain that had apparently been ripped off his neck when the youths had accosted him. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if saying a silent prayer, then gently tucked the chain into his pocket before turning back to them. “I’m ready.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They came in the darkness, the mist rising up around them as if it was theirs to command.

  We did not know what they were at first, these giant beings who seemed to appear all at once, all over the kingdom.

  We did not know. But we learned. They were the creatures out of nightmare, creatures told of in our oldest stories.

  They were the Skaalden. And they were death.

  —Excerpt found scrawled on the desk of a priest in his chamber before he took his own life.

  Dalen had grown up in the woods, had spent practically his entire life there, back before he and his people—led by their two princes—had been forced to flee before the Skaalden. Creatures out of nightmare who healed from any wound, who did not require drink or sleep and who ate nothing save human flesh.

  He and his people had tried to fight, of course, but they had not been prepared, had lived long on the land and grown fat from it, spoiled and weak, and so they had been driven from their homes, across the great ocean to this gods forsaken place dubbed “The Known Lands.” Here, they had at first been offered peace by the Fey but then, when the war began, they had been forced to call on the bitter lessons of war, ones taught them at the hands of the unstoppable Skaalden, to defend themselves against the Fey.

  It had been over thirty years since they had abandoned their homeland to the Skaalden, over thirty years since Dalen had walked the lands of his father, and his father’s father before him, going back to time immemorable. Yet, he thought of those woods often, and it was only in such a place, in the forests that this new land offered, where he could ever find surcease from the nagging guilt and self-loathing which had plagued him since he and the rest of his people had abandoned their land, their birthright.

  But these woods, this forest, known as the Black Woods, were different. There was no peace to find here unless it was the peace of the dead rotting in their graves, and there was no contemplative silence in which a man might consider the world and his place in it. The silence, instead, was a brooding, living thing, as if some great beast regarded him as he made his way through the forest, following the near-imperceptible signs of the man and the youth’s passage. A beast which might, at any moment, rouse itself to action and swallow whole this interloper who dared set foot in its demesne.

  There was no love lost between his people and the Fey, that much Dalen knew. When they first arrived, fleeing the Skaalden invasion, the Fey had welcomed them with open arms, had even sympathized with their predicament so much as to offer them lands on which they might live and raise their children. At first, the princes had seemed to accept, and Dalen, along with the rest of his people, had been in a state of terrible relief and wonder. After having their homeland taken from them and seeing so many of their friends and loved ones killed—Dalen’s father among them—it had been almost too much to believe that they would now be given a chance to rebuild, to survive.

  The princes, though had seen it differently, and no sooner had they organized a parley, a peace talk with the Fey king, than they had betrayed the magical creatures. Accounts varied on what had actually happened during that feast, one meant to celebrate the new friendship and alliance between mortal and Fey, but what could not be argued was that, at its end, the Fey king was dead, his head forcefully separated from his body.

  What followed had been years of bloody struggle and, in the end, after heavy losses on both sides, the mortals had carved out a piece of land for themselves in this place, a piece, as it happened, that was smaller than the one they had originally been offered, pushing the Fey back to what came to be known as the Black Woods.

  No, there was no love lost between Fey and mortal, not anymore, whatever bond had once been forming between the two peoples shattered irrevocably at that traitorous meeting, and even had he not known the history, even had he not lived it, still Dalen would know the hatred of the Fey. For he could feel it emanating from each branch and each leaf, could taste it in the air which was crisp with winter’s coming, yet somehow foul and unclean.

  And yet, he was here. Here at the behest of his prince, and if that was not terrible enough, then he was forced to confront the fact that he had been sent on the unenviable task of tracking down what was perhaps the world’s most accomplished killer. A man that was known for his brutality and viciousness in battle, for his complete lack of mercy or kindness or anything at all but a thirst for blood that could never be slaked.

  Once, in better times, his prince would have never sent him on such a mission, for Feledias had been known by all of his people as the exact opposite of his brother. Kind where his brother was cruel, merciful and warm where his brother was cold as winter’s coming. Wise and compassionate, and Dalen, along with all the rest of his people, had hated only that the man had been the younger of the two and therefore not the brother who would be granted power once their father, the king—who had been aged and sick with the fever that would eventually kill him—passed beyond the veil.

  Then, it had happened. In the span of a day or a week—certainly, it had seemed no more than the time it took to draw a breath—something had changed. What that something was Dalen, like the rest of his people, did not know. All he knew for sure was that Prince Bernard vanished, never to be seen again, and Feledias did take over rule of his people. Only, the peace and joy they had expected if such a lucky event ever transpired did not come, for the Feledias they had known, the prince they had loved, had changed.

  No longer was he the kind, loving prince who always had time for even the lowliest of his people, who spent his idle hours handing out food to the hungry and coin to the poor. Instead, he became a vicious tyrant, worse, perhaps, even than they had feared his brother might be, a tyrant who bent his entire will—and the entire energy of his people—toward finding his vanished brother and those who had been closest to him and making them suffer.

  Yet for all of his prince’s efforts in the last fifteen years, only one of the men he’d deemed traitor had been foun
d, a youth, really, one of no more than nineteen years, a boy who was said to have served as Prince Bernard’s squire, the youth given the unenviable task of cleaning the constant blood which coated it from his lord’s axe, of carrying his weapon when it was not in use. On that score, at least, he’d had an easy time of it, for it seemed that the prince had never been far from his weapon. It was, after all, the arbiter of his will, the one and only answer which he gave to any who dared to question him, gave even to those, like the Fey king, who had offered no question at all, only kindness.

  Dalen had been there when Prince Feledias, had extracted the price of what he’d deemed his treason from the youth. He had not wanted to be—would have given anything to have been anywhere else for even now, so many years later, the visions and sounds he had witnessed from the young man haunted his dreams—but had been forced to attend, his duty as one of his king’s honor guard. The youth had been made to suffer terribly before he had finally found what peace death offered, suffered not under the hand of a skilled torturer but at the hand of his very own prince, a man who the youth had loved deeply and to whom he had been forever loyal. And while it had been terrible, the worst event in a life that Dalen sometimes thought was full only of terrible events, even now he had to admit that whatever training he lacked in the ways of a torturer, Feledias had made up for with cruel vigor and an energy which he brought to bear using the many tools and implements of the torturer’s trade until the young man was no longer recognizable.

  Only a pile of bloody, mewling flesh that had, finally, been allowed to die. No, Dalen did not want to anger his prince. Whatever possible fate he might face at the hands of his prince’s brother—a fate which made his normally sure feet uncertain beneath him—even that paled in comparison to what he knew Feledias was capable of, should he fail him.

  So, with the forest looming close around him, and with memories of the boy’s screams and pleas and questions of what he had done—all of which went unanswered—echoing in his mind, Dalen stalked through the forest, following the tracks of the man and the youth. There were surprisingly few, and those he did find Dalen thought must have come from the boy while the big man, despite his size, seemed to move across the land like a ghost, leaving neither hint nor track of his passage.