A Sellsword's Mercy

by Jacob Peppers

  Aaron looked away from the wretched grief on the apparition’s face, meeting the Akalian’s eyes. “Hope, Speaker, is in short supply.”

  The Akalian’s normally calm expression was troubled. “You believe you understand that Virtue which you carry within you, Aaron Envelar?”

  The sellsword shrugged, caught off guard by the change of topic. “I believe I know enough about her to understand that she’s a major pain in my ass, most of the time.”

  The Speaker nodded. “And with the power of your bond with her, you are able to discern the feelings of others, to in some ways, know their thoughts, are you not?”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said, thinking back to all those times when Co had allowed him to know how a conversation would go before it did, what a man or woman was thinking before they knew it themselves. “It’s come in handy a time or two.”

  “I imagine so,” the Speaker agreed. “And in all the years since the creation of the Virtues, none have wielded Compassion with such power and strength as you. Yet, for all that, you still have not understood the full extent of what it is you carry.”

  Aaron frowned. “How so?”

  “The greatest strength of compassion, Aaron Envelar, is not in the feeling it arouses within those who have it. Instead, it is in the power it has over others, for with compassion, true compassion, men might be made to become better, might be given hope. Or,” he said, turning to look at the misty form of Aaron Caltriss who stood gazing out at the world, tears gliding silently down his cheeks, “at its inverse, they might be made to despair.”

  “Wait a minute. Are you saying that I caused that?” he said, gesturing to the weeping king.

  The Speaker nodded. “Is it so hard to believe? You have done it before, have you not?”

  Aaron was just opening his mouth to tell the man he was wrong, when he remembered Belgarin’s attack upon Perennia, recalled leading the Ghosts out against that army, fueling their own rage and hunger for blood with the power of the bond. He swallowed. “Yes.”

  The Speaker sighed. “There are not many in the world who know the truth of the Virtues’ existence, Aaron Envelar. And very few among those who understand their dual natures—you, though, understand them well enough, I think.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said, remembering the feel of the rage burning inside him as he fought Kevlane’s creatures, remembering how he’d joyed at each life his blade had taken. It was the same as when he and the Ghosts had fought outside the gates of the city. The same rage. The same joy. “But I wish I didn’t.”

  “It need not be so,” the Speaker said. “Understand, Aaron Envelar, that you are the one who guides your bond with the Virtue, and it is you who controls what shape it will take.”

  “Wait a minute,” Aaron demanded. “Are you saying that I wanted that? That I wanted to take joy in killing those men, those creatures?”

  The Speaker shook his head slowly. “Want has nothing to do with it. You did, and that’s all that matters. You felt angry, betrayed, scared for yourself and those with you. You reacted and, through you, the Virtue reacted as well. You have great power within you, Aaron Envelar. Even without the Virtue, you are a man who can inspire thousands, one they will look to for guidance. With the Virtue, however, you have the power to save the world.” He turned to stare out at the miles and miles stretching out below them. “Or,” he said, “to destroy it.”

  Suddenly, the wind picked up, and Aaron thought he smelled a faint trace of smoke, as if a campfire burned not far away. He was just about to remark on this when the smell intensified a hundred fold, so powerful that he began to cough. There was another scent mixed in with the smell of smoke, one of burning, charred meat, and a third that he knew all too well—blood.

  Aaron frowned down at the world stretched out before them and gave a strangled gasp. Beneath him, the world burned. The cities had become great pillars of fire reaching toward the heavens, and by some trick of the dream, he could see each individual person as they burned or lay dead in the streets. He looked to Perennia and there, too, the flames raged. Hundreds, thousands of corpses, but the fire was not responsible for killing them all. Walking among them were cloaked figures, some matching the massive, brutish frames of those creatures of Kevlane’s he’d seen with impossible strength, others showing the too-slender frames that marked them as those possessing incredible speed.

  “No,” he grated. “It can’t be.” He turned to the Speaker to tell him to make it stop, but the man was gone and so, too, was the long-dead king. “Why?” he demanded. “Why would you show me this?” But he realized even as he asked it that the Speaker was not responsible. The tragedy playing out beneath him was a creation of his own fears. His gaze was pulled to Perennia once more, and he wanted desperately to look away, but found that he could not. A moment later, his eyes were drawn to a figure walking in the streets.

  The figure wore a cloak, but the hood was thrown back and even though Aaron could not see his face, he recognized him. Several corpses were scattered around the figure, and Aaron felt a mixture of shame, terror, and revulsion as he saw that the bodies were people he knew. Leomin lay only a few feet to the cloaked man’s left, his throat a bloody ruin, his eyes staring sightlessly up at the sky. Gryle lay nearby, the youth Caleb’s form beneath him as if he had tried to shield him, but they were both as still as only the dead could be. “No,” Aaron breathed. “It can’t…I can’t…”

  And there were others there, too. So many others. Darrell, a bloody hole in his chest, Balen, his neck bent at an impossible angle, May sitting slumped against a nearby building, a look of astonishment on her face as if even in death she could not believe the doom that had come upon her.

  “Aaron!” The familiar voice made his blood run cold, and he looked ahead of the cloaked figure to see Adina lying in the street, propped up on one elbow. There was a deep gash in one of her legs, and she was trying to rise but seemed incapable of doing so.

  “I’m coming, Adina!” he yelled. “I’m coming!” But try as he might, Aaron could not move, his legs would not obey his commands.

  “Aaron, please!”

  “I’m trying, Adina!” He was desperate now, his breath ragged in his throat. “Gods, help me!” But the gods, if they heard, gave no answer, and his body continued to refuse his commands as he watched the cloaked figure stalk closer to her, a bared sword in his hand.

  The princess tried to crawl away, but her wound had stolen her strength, and it took but a moment for the figure to reach her. It raised its sword, the blade stained with the blood of Aaron’s closest friends, above its head. Then, as if sensing his presence, the figure froze, turning and looking up into the sky, directly at where Aaron stood on the mountain’s peak.

  The sellsword gazed upon those features, ones he knew well, and screamed, a terrible, tortured wail that echoed like thunder in the air. Adina had not been screaming for his help, had not been begging him to save her, for the face that stared back at him, a cruel, hungry smile on its lips, was his own. The eyes that studied him, full of malicious glee, were his eyes. She hadn’t been begging for him to help. She’d been begging for him to stop.

  “Noooo!” A last plea of his own, a last denial, but the figure’s sword descended and, as it did, the vision, and the world, vanished.

  ***

  Aaron’s eyes snapped open, and he realized he was screaming. An inarticulate sound of rage and terror, of pain and loss.

  “Aaron, it’s alright. It’s okay.”

  He managed—barely—to strangle the scream, as he felt hands on his shoulders. The Speaker was crouched before him, his normally calm features creased with worry, and Aaron realized that he’d somehow fallen to his knees away from the room’s table. His hands ached, and looking down, he saw they were knotted into fists. They opened reluctantly, and he noted that blood stained his palms where his fingernails had dug into the flesh. “What happened?” he asked the Speaker breathlessly.

  “I don’t know,” the man said, sounding unsure for th
e first time that Aaron had heard. “I have never been rebuffed so…completely before when using the Virtue of Will. I had not…I had not thought it possible.”

  “Where are the others?” Aaron asked, casting his eyes about desperately in search of some proof that his vision, his dream, had been no more than that.

  “They are all sleeping,” the Speaker said. “They finished their part in this many hours ago, and it is the early hours of the morning now.”

  Sleeping? Aaron thought wildly. How long had he been there, standing upon that mountain-top that didn’t exist, watching the deaths of his friends and everyone he loved? Still, as troubling as such thoughts were, he couldn’t help but notice that the Speaker sounded winded himself, and he looked old. Tired. Aaron understood well enough, for despite the fact that the vision had vanished, none of the emotion, the pain of it had left with it, haunting him more vividly than any dream upon waking.

  “We must try again,” the Speaker was saying. “There is little time, and we must—”

  “No,” Aaron said, shaking his head. Even the thought of reliving such a tragedy as the one he’d seen was enough to send shivers of cold fear running through him. “No.” He rose on shaky legs, wiping his arm across his sweaty brow. “I’m done, Speaker.”

  “Done?” the man asked, as if the sellsword had spoken in a language he didn’t understand. “But, Aaron Envelar, we must continue. Time is against us and—”

  “No, I said!” Aaron yelled. “I won’t see that again, I won’t…” He shook his head desperately, trying and failing to banish the memory of the feel of the sword in his hands, a sword slick with the blood of his friends. He took a slow breath and met the Speaker’s eyes. “I’m nobody’s savior, Speaker. I’m no knight to vanquish the monsters. I am the monster.”

  The Speaker of the Akalians stared at him with a shocked expression, and Aaron turned, walking toward the door.

  “Aaron, please!” the Speaker called after him. “We must continue. We must—what did you see?” he yelled as the sellsword reached the door and threw it open. He rushed through it, slamming it shut behind him, but the Speaker’s words followed him down the hall.

  “What did you see?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Gods curse it, Thom, we’re not soldiers!” Festa’s frustrated bellow normally would have been enough to send terror into anyone unlucky enough to find themselves on the receiving end of it, but Balen saw that, today at least, it wouldn’t be enough.

  The overweight captain stormed back and forth on the deck of his ship, his thick jowls red with the cold, covered in so many mismatching furs and coats that it looked to Balen as if at least half a dozen animals had died for him to feel some semblance of warmth. The crew went busily about their tasks—ones they often made up on the spot when the captain’s temper showed, for, docked as they were, there were only so many things they needed to do. Yet still they managed, several men setting to mopping a deck that already looked clean enough to eat from, others—perhaps wiser than their companions—deciding to check on the ship’s stores below decks. Balen even saw one sailor purposefully spill something—out of the captain’s sight, of course—only so he might clean it up.

  Thom, though, would not be so easily moved, and he stared at Festa with a determination that seemed to be a surprise even to the captain. “Captain, how long have I served under you?

  Festa frowned. “If this is you lookin’ for a raise, Thom, you can forge—”

  “How long?” the older man persisted, and if he felt any fear at interrupting the captain—Balen knew that men had been thrown overboard for less—he didn’t show it.

  Festa sighed. “Seventeen years, Thom. Seventeen at least.”

  “Twenty-one, in fact,” Thom replied. “And during that time, have I ever asked for more than was my due?”

  “Well, no…” the captain began.

  “And have I ever balked at any duty asked of me? Have I ever caused you difficulty?”

  “Fine,” Festa snapped. “You want a raise? I’ll give you one if it’ll stop you stabbin’ me with words like a damned woman. You’re a good first mate, Thom, the best a captain could ask for. Is that what you want to hear? Now, how much is it goin’ to take, eh?”

  Thom shook his head, meeting the captain’s gaze. “I don’t need coin, Festa. I need your help.”

  The captain’s expression—normally so hard and foreboding—gave a twitch, and it seemed to Balen that it threatened to collapse altogether, but Festa took a slow breath as if to gather himself, then hocked and spat on the deck. A sailor who’d just finished whatever makeshift job he’d found for himself rushed forward with indecent haste to clean it up, but neither the captain nor the first mate seemed to notice. “Damnit, Thom, don’t you know what you’re askin’ me? It ain’t as if I don’t want to, but these lads,” he said, gesturing around at the crew, “they ain’t soldiers. Shit, most days it seems to me they ain’t even sailors.”

  “Neither is she,” Thom said, and Balen felt his heart go out to his friend at the sound of the older man’s voice breaking. “She’s in a dungeon now, Captain, and the gods alone know what they’re doing to her in there. She doesn’t belong there, not any more than a fish belongs on the shore, and her chances of making it out alive aren’t any better than the fish’s.”

  “Don’t you think I know that, Thom?” Festa roared. “And just because you been the one slippin’ below decks and dippin’ your wick every chance you get, that don’t mean you’re the only one likes that red-headed she-devil. If it was in my power, I’d have her out of that dungeon even quicker than your—no doubt disappointing—tussles in the bedroom. But it ain’t is all. I’m no knight with a white horse, and even if I had such a horse, I’d probably break my neck trying to climb my fat ass up on it. And what of these lads here? How you reckon they’d do in a scrap against armed soldiers, trained in fightin’? I’ve seen such a match before—I won’t call it a fight, for the gods know massacre’d be more fittin’. It didn’t end pretty for the sailors, you can take my word. And why would it?”

  His voice softened some, and he stepped forward, placing an arm gently on the first mate’s shoulders. At another time, under different circumstances, Balen would have been shocked at such an uncommon display of compassion from the gruff captain, but just then he was too busy staring at Thom’s face, seeing the fear and hurt there and wishing there was something he could do to take it away. “Men like us, Thom, we ain’t made for armor and longswords, not built to go chargin’ through castle hallways to slay our enemies. Our only enemy is the sea and the goddess that rules over it—friend and enemy both, mind, and she can be a big enough bitch that I don’t reckon I’m too keen on searchin’ for another.”

  “So you won’t help,” Thom said. His voice was little more than a whisper, but Balen could hear the desperation, the despair in it. He stepped forward and put a hand on Thom’s other shoulder.

  “It ain’t that he won’t help, Thom. It’s that he can’t. Surely, you see that.”

  The older man turned to look at Balen, and there was such pain in his eyes that it was all Balen could do to keep from bawling like a baby. He held it in, but only barely, and that was just as well. Being known as Balen Blunderfoot was bad enough, but even he had to admit that Blubbering Balen had a certain ring to it.

  “I love her, Balen,” the first mate said simply. “I don’t know why that’s been so hard for me to say, even to myself, but it’s the truth. And the gods alone know why, but I think she loves me too. Truth to tell, I thought this sort of thing was long behind me, and I didn’t feel the lack much, figured love was a young man’s game and one that he always lost. Now, though…” He snorted, rubbing an arm roughly across his eyes. “Well. Maybe I was right about that last bit.” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to her, Balen. I really don’t.”

  “Nothing is going to happen to her, Thom.” Balen said. “At least not yet—she’s in a dungeon, sure
, but that’s all. Shit,” he said, trying for a smile that withered almost as quickly as it grew, “I reckon there’s been times on the sea I wished I had such fine accommodations as a prison cell. You too, I imagine.”

  Thom nodded slowly, but Balen could see his mind working the problem over anyway, not willing to give up the idea of charging in and rescuing her. “We might not be soldiers,” he said, a glimmer of hope in his eyes, “but that big fella, Bastion, is. Maybe…if he could show us how to fight or…” He trailed off, no doubt coming to the same conclusion that Balen had himself, but Balen thought the older man needed to hear it anyway.

  “He’s one man, Thom, and a wounded one at that. Shit, he can barely stand, let alone fight, and even if he could, so what? Oh, I don’t doubt he’d make a show of it like he did with those five fellas in the inn the chamberlain was stayin’ at, but remember he was near dead when I found him. Besides, those were outlaws, sneakthieves, and men as do their killin’ when their opponents are sleepin’, if I was to wager. Not trained soldiers in armor. And if we decide to storm the castle there’ll be a lot more than five of those fuckers in our way, I can guarantee you that.”

  “But we’ve got sailors enough,” Thom said, desperate now. “If he were to train us…”

  “Then maybe we’d at least die on our enemies’ swords as much as on our own,” Balen finished, hating himself but knowing that he had to dissuade the first mate from such a reckless course of action. “It’d be suicide, Thom. Even with a year to train, these boys here wouldn’t be any more ready to fight trained soldiers than they’d be ready to take off and fly.”

  “So what, then?” Thom said, glancing between the two men. “We just leave her there in that cell? Just let that son of a bitch Grinner do whatever he wants?”

  “Yes,” Balen said. “For now. You and I both know that’s what May would tell you, if she were here.”