Paladin's Oath

by M. H. Johnson

  Heart hammering with the hot fury of battle, drunk on the heady exhilaration of dancing a savage duet with death, Jess did what she had been conditioned to do after years of training under General Eloquin himself. Roaring so loud as to drown out her opponents screams, though armed with naught save mailed gloves and a broken blade, Jess charged into his mad rush as fast as she could. His wide-eyed surprise cost him a fraction of a second, his body having instinctively pivoted so as to execute his swing to connect with where Jess's body had been but a split second before, his sword coming around in a furious arc downward from just above horizontal.

  It was almost effortless for Jess’s mailed glove to snatch the man’s blade with her left hand, even as her right plowed into his gut with all her momentum and fury. Executed with such speed and finesse, it would have been a savage blow to the groin worthy of the approval of any veteran had her foe’s steel buckler not, by sheer luck, been just where it needed to be. Yet Jess’s broken blade still smashed into the buckler with such force that the screech of tortured steel cut through the air like nails on a chalk slate, and Jess could feel the sickening crunch of shield wrist and pelvic bone beneath, grinding and snapping as the force of her terrible blow and the guard’s own momentum toppled him completely over, even as Jess effortlessly caught the blade now swinging off kilter towards her, using the power of his own swing to help yank the blade free of his grasp with a single furious wrench of her mailed hand.

  Her foe's broken body stumbling to the ground with a terrible cry, Jess at that very moment spun around with inconceivable force, whipping the seized arming sword in her mailed gloves by the blade to slam the hilt of the captured sword thunderstrike style into the stumbling armsman’s helmet with the momentum of a war hammer. All in less time than it took her sister to gasp and start screaming with renewed horror.

  Eyes snapping about, all threats vanquished, time seemed to speed up once more and Jess found herself heaving, wild-eyed, and it was at that moment that Jess fully registered how the hilt of her claimed blade had slammed into her foe's helmet with such force that the massive dent had crushed the skull underneath. Yet the death was not instantaneous, as it would have been had she struck a bare headed man with such raw power.

  His body, for the moment, grimly clung to life, shaking with spasms so wild he rolled over on his back and for but a split second Jess found herself gazing into the wide-eyed face of the dying guard, an agonized half paralyzed rictus, one eye blood red, burst out of its socket from the force of her terrible blow, the other baby blue eye that of a young recruit, gazing at her beseechingly. Imploringly. It was then and only then that a cold shiver of horror, a silent keen of regret coursed through her.

  This was not a hardened jaded mercenary with the blood of innocents on his hands who was spasming away his last moments of life, but the face of a boy. Frightened and dying. Perhaps no older than her. Frozen, stunned, Jess to her horror could see the awful agony, the incomprehension flicker across the young man’s features, gazing at her with terrified confusion, when his body was seized by one final massive spasm, and he moved no more.

  She could sense it, then. Whereas the two scouts, so cold and sure had been willing accomplices to the young Lord Kipu’s horrors, her final opponent had been innocent of anything save the duties of a young guardsman who had just witnessed a savage viciously slaughter three of his companions. He had acted out of fury and panic. Not a drop of malice was in this young lad’s soul. And the faint trickle of blood from Jess’s cheek continued to drip upon the rich loamy ground like the gentlest of rains, her crimson essence having splashed upon all of those she had fought in that brief, desperate, exhilarating battle.

  And though the horror of taking that young man's life numbed her, she accepted it. She would not let it crush her. For no matter how bitter the regret, how much one could wish to go back in the past and change the hand played by fate, it mattered not, once steel was drawn in the heat of battle. For at that moment, even if she faced the closest of friends the day before, she knew she must always fight with full force, to lash out and destroy any foe who moved against her. For to do otherwise, to let guilt or regret freeze her, was all it took to die in an unmarked grave, body shattered under the pounding footsteps of raging battle all around her. Eloquin had ingrained upon all of his students the ruthless lessons of war far too deeply for it to ever be otherwise. None of his Squires of War would be that poor lost soul dead in an unmarked grave.

  Unless she knew she had absolute mastery over the situation, when a man drew steel in fury against her, that man was dead. However bitter her tears after the fact, the fact remained that she would be alive to shed those tears, and not the other way around. Just as Eloquin had taught them. Only for her kin would it ever be otherwise, as she was more than willing to die, should it spare her siblings or parents in her stead.

  She was free to sob any number of bitter tears after the storm of battle had passed, but now there was still one foe that must be taken down.

  Eyes filled with blackest fury, Jess slowly proceeded toward the now shaking Kipu, having stumbled to his rump even as he had gazed at the savage butchering of his loyal armsmen by a girl who had approached them equipped with naught but a belt knife, in but a handful of seconds. Apple, Jess found herself clinically noting, was gazing at her in equal horror, arms protectively about Kipu, screaming endless words at Jess that seemed to wash over her. Jess registered not a one.

  “Jess, focus!” Twilight reprimanded.

  Jess shuddered and nodded. Time to focus on the task at hand.

  She dropped the damaged blade she held, poorly balanced as it now was with its tang bent under the terrible force of her final blow, to say nothing of the hilt covered in blood and gore. Her hand reached out to scoop up the second scout's weapon, finding it to be perfectly balanced for an arming sword, as a practice series of flourishes assured her. Jess nodded in cold satisfaction as she proceeded to close in on Kipu, still circling him, cheek continuously oozing a shallow trickle of blood as she did so, the final dark truths to be revealed at last.

  “What was her name, Kipu? Come now. Time for the final chapter of the book written in blood that is your life to play out!”

  Kipu’s dark eyes flashed with unspeakable hatred for her. His hand clenched spasmodically upon his hilt, the sight of which filled Jess with a heady euphoria. The serpent would soon cast off his mask, and she would strike him down, just and true, in the heat of combat. Yet he must have caught a whiff of Jess’s intentions, and he was no fool.

  With panicked yanking gestures, Kipu tore off his sword belt, raising his hands up high before him. "I am unarmed, you mad, berserking creature! If you strike me down now, it is murder! Butchery brought on by your wild delusions!"

  Apple let out a low moaning cry, eyes wide with utter shock, having witnessed for the first time in her innocent life a savage battle in all its brutality and horror, forced to see her sister for the wild-eyed reaver that she ultimately was, scything down her foes like an avatar of death, crimson dress spattered with blood and her foe's dying vomit, reeking of gore.

  Apple shrieked, tears streaming down her face, hugging Kipu with shaking arms, utterly terrified that her mad sister was going to run him through. “Please, Jess!” she shrieked. “Please! Stop killing!” She broke down in harsh, wracking sobs. “Oh gods, Jess, what have you done?”

  Jess hissed and lurched, the connection she had somehow forged to her sister allowing her to feel, raw and unguarded, the waves of horror and revulsion her sister felt for Jess at that moment.

  Kipu’s expression of terror transformed instantly into a hateful sneer. “Do you like hurting women, Jessica? Do you like what you’ve done to your sister? And you accuse me of a blackened soul! You, who have just butchered four men before the eyes of your baby sibling!” His lips twisted into a contemptuous smirk, and if Apple’s terror hadn’t jarred Jess into indecision, she would have gladly run him through in that instant, armed or no.

  �
��Jess, focus!” Twilight’s words were a scathing rebuke and warning all at once, and Jess quickly snapped herself out the wave of uncertainty that had begun to wash through her. Her familiar hated self-pity and indecisiveness, and nothing was more contemptuous than losing one's will in the middle of battle.

  Immediately Jess focused on what mattered. The smirking man before her with his dark, knowing eyes. Underneath his terror, reveling in all the innocent young souls he had savaged. The lives he had taken his sweet, slow time strangling, drowning, or raping, until they expired in his arms or those of his closest servants, the two scouts now twisted in death’s embrace behind her.

  And in that instant, as if she had drawn it from his very eyes, she knew. Kipu shuddered, blinking, gasping in horror as if he could feel Jess all but pull the information from his soul while he gazed at her with such open contempt.

  “Get out of my mind, you witch!” he hissed, eyes black with hate, even as Jess’s grin turned savage.

  “Her name was Elebry, wasn’t it, Kipu?” Jess taunted, exulting in his surprised gasp. “Elebry…Elebry e’Cantu. She had resisted your charms, at first, did she not? Raised so properly; leery, able to sense on some level the dark stain upon your soul. But you persisted, didn’t you? Won her mother over with the sweet charm that had done nothing to move your own mother as a child. You delighted, in fact, in being able to make her mother smile. You took such pride in the act. Reclaiming, you thought, an echo of the approval you had so ached for, conveniently forgetting in those moments what you planned for her child! It had motivated you to be so sweet to Elebry's family, to win the approval of both her mother and father. And why not? They were nobles of a very old and very impoverished family, only slightly wealthier than prosperous farmers, barely having retainers worth mentioning. And your father, so very rich. And no siblings to share an inheritance with. How could her family resist?”

  Jess’s eyes blazed once more, her voice chilling in its condemnation. “You thought yourself so brilliant, didn’t you, you murdering bastard? You had studied her so well. Knew of the rich merchant’s son who had been your only competition. But a commoner, if one whose father had pretensions of nobility. An upstart poaching on your game, who you would make pay. Your plan was set, and your henchmen ready to act. Sweetly you seduced and charmed her with your words and letters, entreating her to ensconce with you, your carriage rolling quietly outside her family's grounds. She looked up at you breathlessly when she rushed to meet you, such pristine, beautiful features, enveloping you with her hopeful gaze.”

  “Jess, oh gods Jess, stop it! She never met up with Kipu! She left him for her first love, they fled together! That merchant’s son even had the gall to rob his father. He killed the house steward, making off with the family gold. The pair never dared to surface again!”

  “That’s a lie!” Jess's fist shook with fury, the whole horrid affair blazing in all its foulness upon her mind's eye. It was all she could do to hold herself back from sinking her blade into Kipu's shocked face, with her sister quailing before her. “It was Kipu’s doing. His men broke into the young man’s house, demanding to know where the family gold was at knife point! They killed the steward and one of the family guards. They would have killed the father too, had the son not had a key of his own, and so they forced him to write that recriminating note at sword's point, if he didn’t want his entire family butchered! Think about it, sister. If the son was so trusted by his father so as to have a key to the family fortunes, why would the steward interfere? What reason could the lad possibly have had for killing the poor man?”

  Jess locked gazes with her sister, imploring her to understand. “Don’t you see, Apple? The boy was innocent. It was Kipu’s doing. All of it!”

  Her sister’s eyes flashed. “You are insane, Jessica. Paranoid! Look around you! At all the people you've killed. Oh by the gods, your Delving has driven you mad! They’re right, the nobles who whisper such dark things about the Guild. It's changed you, Jessica.”

  Her sister broke down into fresh sobs. Overwhelmed, exhausted, eyes haunted by pain it tore Jess's heart to see. "It's not right for humans to physically enter the Dreamrealms! It's playing with dark forces. It warps and kills everyone. By Heaven's light, Jess, it's warped and changed you! Can't you see that?"

  For but a moment Jess felt herself hesitating, the slightest arrow of doubt striving to borrow through her ironclad self-assurance, even as she squeezed the hilt of her blade, feather light in her hands, so strong she had become. Warped, by the very forces her sister was horrified of, claimed by one of the bodies she had ruthlessly sundered but seconds ago.

  Jess shivered, suddenly chilled.

  “It was Kipu, Apple,” Jess said softly, her righteous outrage suddenly drained. “He took away Elebry, enticing her with forbidden romance and hopes of marriage to follow. Her former beau his men took by force, leaving a trail of blood and theft behind to explain why the two would never be heard from again, an incriminating note to further assure that the constable and his family were misled.”

  Jess took a deep, shuddering breath. “He butchered that boy, screaming, in front of Elebry. His guards had him chained in the cellar under the old logging cabin that Kipu had claimed on the edge of the estates as his own.”

  Jess locked gazes with her sister, imploring her to understand. To listen. To believe. “He practiced running him through! Delighting in having a living target to thrust his sword into. He would gaze into Elebry’s eyes, tied up on the same bed he strapped all his victims to, delighting in it, Apple! He delighted in the emotional torment he caused her, just as much as he delighted in the terror of that boy as he screamed and begged to be freed, unable to understand how truly hopeless his situation was.”

  Apple was shaking her head violently from side to side, even as Kipu held her close, gently, gazing at Jess with mocking eyes. “There there, Apple. Your sister has gone mad. Forgive her. I am sure there is an asylum that will… help her.”

  Jess snarled at her foe’s mocking grin. She forced herself to continue, to convey the vision that had struck her, whether her sister believed her or no.

  “Elebry's former beau died with Kipu's third thrust. Kipu tore through a lung, and it surprised him as much as it did the poor boy to see the pink frothy blood spurt from his mouth, as he coughed, and choked, gasping from the horrific sucking wound.” Jess’s voice was cold with fury, and her prey couldn’t resist meeting her gaze and shuddering, those windows to his soul unable to deny the horror of what he had done.

  “Elebry started screaming then. She would not stop screaming. And it drove Kipu mad. He had so wanted to savor seeing her dreams burning to ash deep inside her heart, to know her own doom, to gaze at him with the same helpless despair his mother had before finally killing herself. Yet all those dark fantasies were over in but minutes, Kipu smothering poor Elebry with pillows in a furious effort to silence her, only realizing after her final spasmodic thrashing that he had killed her, and far too soon for his tastes.”

  All of it. All those scenes of horror and pain washed through Jess, her skin tingling with the dark potency of it, memories of those terrible acts resonating through the very ether, Jess unable to escape the horrific flashes of knowing, even if she wanted to. It was as if a barrier between the past and present had been opened by the savage bloodshed of but moments ago, truths of darkness and depravity blazing forth in her mind’s eye with a terrible clarity she had never experienced before, and hoped never to have to experience again.

  Kipu shuddered. A violent spasm that wracked through him, causing Apple to glance up through her sobbing tears, now gazing at Kipu in sudden alarm. “You lie, you demonic witch!” Kipu hissed with such dark hate Jess hoped her sister could at least sense it. “I loved that girl. I loved her! She betrayed me, and left with that man!”

  "It is you who lie!" Jess snapped. "I can taste it, I can taste your Malice, rippling through the ether. I feel you, Kipu. I feel the sick satisfaction you took, having your men d
ump the boy's body in the river outside the city slums! The story of his betrayal and theft from his own family neatly tied together when rumor got out he came to a bad end flashing gold in the fleshpots of South End. Poor Elebry was also assumed to have come to a poor end, betrayed and used low by her thief of a beau, too ashamed to come home, no doubt a slattern in some decrepit brothel. Fitting dark rumors to stain and mar the memory of a girl you had taken such delight in seducing, destroying, and murdering."

  "But it's all a lie, all of it!" Jess shook with fury. "Her body, along with the bodies of all the girls you butchered over the years are still where they have always been, are they not, Kipu? In the end, no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn't bear to let them go!”

  Kipu shuddered, flinging Apple to the ground, she gazing back up at him in stunned incomprehension, even as he backed away from a grimly approaching Jess, step by step.

  “Get away from me, witch woman! I have had enough of your sickness, your lies! You and your family, so cavalier, so vainglorious, feeling you all are above anyone and everyone, simply because you are Named? Your father thinking himself a patron saint with his sympathetic words and charity to his underlings, forcing them to come calling to him for aid like favored dogs? That elitist bastard! Rumors and stories of his oldest daughter being a revered adventurer or a hero, some figure out of legend, beyond our reach. Filthy lies! All of it! All a cover so your family could shield from the world the hideous truth! How their daughter Delved in dark forces she couldn't hope to understand and was…changed. Warped. Made a killer! A butcher! A murderer!”

  Kipu snarled, dark eyes flaring with terror and hate, backing away. “Even your vain little sister can see what a monster you are now, Jessica de Calenbry. Go ahead! I am unarmed! Run me through, here and now, like you did my guardsmen! Show your sister and the world the renowned Jessica de Calenbry, ‘savior’ of the Turnsby Estates, is nothing but a mad, raving killer!”