A Plague of Ruin: Book One: Son of Two Bloods

by Daniel Hylton

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Murlet heard this and stood. “No,” he told Brenyn. “No one goes alone – not even you.” He looked around. “Glora is just inside and she can see to these two. Jed – go with Brenyn.”

  Reluctantly, Jed released the old man, looked at Evonne, and then stepped away.

  As they returned northward along the track, Brenyn looked over at Jed. “What do you think of the girl?” He asked.

  “Evonne?” Jed went silent for a moment and then replied softly, hesitantly. “She is frightfully pretty, don’t you think? I am glad those monsters didn’t find her.”

  “Yes,” Brenyn agreed after a moment. “As am I.”

  23.

  The mines were searched the following morning but no more of the criminals were discovered and the band prepared to depart. The bodies of the enemy were counted, and they numbered ninety-two, including that of the sorcerer.

  “Do you suppose that’s all of ‘em, cap’n?” Kristo asked.

  Murlet shrugged. “They were reputed to number nearly a hundred, so if any escaped, they were but a few.”

  “Then do we go home now?”

  Murlet looked at the prince’s legate. “Are you satisfied, sir?”

  Though no expression found his gaunt features, Avransen inclined his head. “I am satisfied.” He glanced up at the second story of the building. “I only wish the prince had acted sooner.”

  Murlet sighed and Kristo grimaced. “What do we do about… the women that survived this… thing?” Kristo asked the captain, and he shook his head. “They are pretty badly… hurt.”

  “I know,” Murlet agreed and he glanced at Avransen. “Does your prince have means of helping these women?”

  Avransen scowled at this, though there was sorrow evident in his expression as well. “Can anything help them?” he wondered. But then he nodded. “They should come to Inverlin – it would be wrong to abandon them now.”

  “Right.” Murlet looked at Kristo. “Take some men and bring our horses and gather those we have captured here – and see if you can round up all the tack. It must be stored in one of these buildings here.” He looked again at Avransen. “As to the disposition of the captured animals?”

  Avransen nodded. “As was agreed,” he answered. “You will keep a third and the rest become the property of the prince.”

  While the sergeant gathered a few men and hurried away, Murlet looked over at Brenyn. “What about the old man and his daughter?” He asked. “What will they do?”

  Brenyn glanced through the door. “Jed is talking with them now.”

  “Right – go and see what they intend.”

  Brenyn entered the large main room of the building, which doubled as a public house and eating establishment – and which the invading mercenaries had turned into a place of torment for the local population of women. Brenyn glanced over at the women who were huddled in the corner with their eyes downcast. Fury mingled with profound sympathy in his soul as he looked at them. Another feeling – that of horror – followed upon the heels of those sentiments as the thought of Emi and uncertainty over what had happened to her flooded through him yet again.

  And in that moment, he determined to be an enemy of evil – and of those that perpetrated it upon others – for as long as he drew breath upon the earth.

  Jed turned to greet him as he came up.

  “Seygord and Evonne are coming with us,” he told Brenyn. “There is really nothing left for them here anymore.” His gaze went involuntarily to Evonne as he uttered this statement.

  Brenyn smiled slightly and nodded. “Then get them ready to go – find horses and tack for them. The captain wants to move right away.”

  “Alright, Bren.”

  By late morning, Murlet’s mercenary band, bearing their dead, which numbered five, and their badly wounded, numbering four, departed the town and headed west along the road. By that evening, they had reached the town where they had stayed on the journey north. The legate, as he had done before, stayed at the inn. Evonne and her father, along with the eight women that had been rescued, stayed in the inn as well while the band camped once more among the oaks alongside the stream.

  The next morning, they moved southward again, arriving at the walls of Inverlin just as the sun neared the top of the sky. Here, the band waited while Avransen and his guards, accompanied by the women, went into the city.

  Evonne and her father, however, did not accompany them.

  Murlet turned in the saddle and frowned back at the pair of them. “You are not entering the city?”

  Jed, who sat his horse next to Evonne, answered for them. “If you are agreeable, captain,” he replied, “Evonne and her father would like to come with us?”

  Murlet gazed at them for a long moment and then, while he studied Jed, an expression of comprehension brightened in his eye. “Alright,” he said simply, and he turned away.

  The legate brought out the prince’s payment of gold, borne in a small leather sack and gave it to Murlet, inclining his head as he did so. “I am sorry for your dead, captain,” he said.

  “Thank you for that, sir,” Murlet replied and he bowed his own head for a moment. Then, “farewell,” he said, and he turned his horse westward along the road. “Two abreast,” he told the column, “right side of the road. Let us go home.”

  Brenyn and Jed were side by side about two-thirds of the way back along the column, with Evonne and Sigurd right behind them in line. As they rode away from Inverlin, Brenyn looked over and smiled. “She is very pretty, Jed,” he said quietly.

  Jed flushed and glanced behind him before facing forward once more. “Yes,” he said, “she is.”

  Throughout that afternoon, they moved steadily westward along the hi-way, heading toward the junction with the secondary road that would take them north and then west into the wooded uplands and thence toward home.

  The sun was yet three or four hours in the sky when there were signs of a disturbance up at the front of the column. Moments later, the command came back to; “Move off the road, everyone.”

  Obediently, the members of the troop turned their mounts off the road and onto the verge. At that same instant, Brenyn felt an odd tingling in his nerve endings, similar to that he had felt all those years ago when he had first encountered the darking upon the road that led into Pierum.

  The feeling of unease strengthened in his nerves and bones as the moments passed and the band cleared the roadway. Turning Noris’ head back toward the road, Brenyn peered along the asphalt toward the west. There was a mounted black figure in the distance, coming steadily onward.

  A darking.

  As he watched that dark and loathsome figure riding toward him, taking command of the roadway, forcing citizens in carts and upon horses and those who walked to clear the way before it, as if it were master of everything it surveyed, a terrible fury erupted in Brenyn. It had been one of these wicked servants of evil that had taken his beloved Emi and removed her beyond all hope of rescue. Hatred flooded through him, mingling with the fury, rendering a potent mixture.

  His mind and thoughts becoming suddenly as cold and hard as steel, Brenyn dismounted and retrieved his shield from the back of the saddle. Then, drawing his sword, he stepped into the road and began moving forward, toward the approaching darking.

  As if from a great distance, he heard Jed gasp out. “Brenyn – no. What are you doing? Get off the road.”

  Brenyn ignored this, just as he ignored the bells of warning that began clanging loudly and insistently at the back of his brain. The terrible fury that roiled within him served to negate any sense of danger and to focus his attention entirely upon the dark figure that came toward him along the road. He lifted his shield, held his sword at the ready, and moved determinedly forward.

  From ahead, Captain Murlet’s voice rang out, reverberating back toward him along the pavement. “Brenyn! – get off the road.”

  Brenyn ignored this as well.

  His attention – harde
ned with fury – was centered upon the darking.

  He was moving quickly now, charging, closing the distance.

  When he came within perhaps thirty paces of the darking, the creature pulled in the reins of its mount, halting in the center of the road, gazing at Brenyn from out of the holes in its mask. The eyes in that mask gleamed with anger.

  “What do you intend here, human?” The darking asked. The voice that sounded upon the afternoon air was harsh and strangely thin, as if it originated from a distance. “Do you mean to die?”

  The darking raised a small metallic cylinder that it held in its hand and pointed it at Brenyn. “It may be easily accomplished. Stand aside or die.”

  Brenyn halted, with his shield and sword ready for battle, and met the gleaming, cold gaze. “Have you ever been to the land of Vicundium?” He asked the creature.

  This seemed to surprise the darking. “You dare to question me?”

  Brenyn raised his voice. “Have you traveled to the land of Vicundium? Answer me or die.”

  “Brenyn!” This came from Murlet. “Move off the road – now – quickly.”

  Brenyn ignored that.

  Silence fell upon the roadway.

  The great eye of the sun stared downward.

  The wind seemed compelled to lie down and be still, as if nature held its breath at the scene playing out upon the road.

  From somewhere out over the fields and farms off to the right, the high, thin cry of a hawk was the only sound that broke the stillness while Brenyn and the darking regarded one another.

  Then, the darking spoke.

  The harsh, strangely thin voice came quietly, almost in a whisper.

  “You dare to threaten me? Then die.”

  Its hand moved slightly.

  Darkness erupted from the end of the cylinder that it held in that hand and blasted toward Brenyn like a thin, black bolt of lightning.

  Immediately, Brenyn dropped upon the roadway, ducking his head, crouching behind his raised shield, making himself small while the dark stream blasted against the front of that rune-carved metal.

  Rocked by the impact, he bunched his muscles and pushed back with all his might against the pressure of the darking’s assault. The metal of the shield grew cold against the skin of his arm as the black discharge from the darking’s weapon smashed against it.

  Then, as if its power possessed an accumulative effect, the darkness began to wash over and around the edges of his shield.

  That cold flood found his flesh.

  Hideous pain came with it.

  The terrible cold penetrated his flesh and seemed to find his very bones. It felt as if it would consume him.

  He sucked in a sharp, agonized breath against the pain that enveloped him, invaded him, and tried to make himself smaller yet.

  The pain grew, the cold intensified.

  Brenyn’s mind reeled.

  Darkness grew at the edges of his very being, threatening to overwhelm him and drive him across the threshold of death.

  The awful cold reached the very center of his being.

  Then;

  A brightness, as of fire, so hot, so terribly intense, as if it had born upon the surface of the sun itself, erupted inside him and blasted outward, flashing along his nerves and tendons and searing through his bloodstream.

  The brightness spread throughout his being, pushing back the terrible cold of the darking’s assault.

  The brightness reached his skin and exploded outward.

  The darking’s cold, black assault ceased and went away as the brightness blasted out from Brenyn.

  As it erupted beyond him, the brightness gradually faded, and the pain went with it.

  Brenyn came to himself once more and his mind cleared.

  He was yet crouched upon the stones of the pavement with his shield raised and his sword at the ready.

  The shield was warm against his skin.

  Pain and icy blackness no longer assailed him.

  The darking’s assault had apparently failed.

  Then; to Brenyn’s front, from several yards along the road, a scream erupted, piercing the stillness of the afternoon. Thin, terrible, fearsome, it was a shriek filled with horrific agony.

  Brenyn peered around the edges of his shield.

  The first thing he saw was the darking’s horse, rider-less, bucking, kicking its heels as it bounded away from the pavement and into the fields next to the road.

  He lowered the shield further.

  Upon the roadway thirty paces from him, a figure, wreathed in black vapor, writhed in agony upon the ancient stones of the pavement. The darking’s body, twitching and jerking about upon the stonework of the road, was smoking, as if it burned.

  Brenyn stood and stared.

  The darking twitched and convulsed as the black vapor ate away at its body. Kicking, scrabbling at the surface of the road, shrieking, screaming in awful pain, it was being consumed.

  And then the shrieking slowly died away.

  The movement of the arms and legs ceased.

  The smoking shape grew still.

  The blackness, though, continued to work, slowly reducing the body of the darking to nothingness. When the black vapor at last began to dissipate, there was nothing left of the darking, its clothing, or even its weapon, only a gray stain upon the stonework of the roadway.

  Brenyn moved forward and gazed down upon the place where the darking had been.

  Nothing remained.

  After a moment, he felt someone move next to him. Lifting his gaze, he looked. Captain Murlet, his eyes wide with disbelief, stared down upon the road, where the last tendrils of black vapor were slowly dissipating. Then he looked at Brenyn.

  “How?” He blurted. “What did you do?”

  Brenyn shook his head. “I do not know.”

  The captain’s eyes narrowed as he considered this answer and he looked down once more upon the place where the darking had died. Then he lifted his head and turned that narrowed gaze upon Brenyn once more.

  “That answer doesn’t work with me anymore, Brenyn,” he stated quietly. “You can disappear from sight; you slew a sorcerer and blew a hole into him with your arrow – and now you destroy a darking? Its smoke enveloped you – and then suddenly redounded upon the foul creature, consuming it before our very eyes. How do you do these things?”

  Brenyn looked away and considered the dark stain upon the roadway that had once been a powerful creature of magic. As he considered the moments of the attack, he remembered the shield – how the metal of that object that had been created by his mother had grown so terrifically cold from the strange black vapor of the darking’s assault, and then abruptly grown hot with the brightness that had seemed to come from within him.

  Holding the shield out from him, he slowly turned it around and considered the front of it, where the strange runes, born of an unknown language, encircled its outer edges.

  “My mother made this shield for my father,” he told Murlet. He ran his fingers along the runes embossed at its edges. “And she placed these runes here.”

  He looked up, meeting the captain’s sharp gaze. “My mother came from a far distant land – and folks called her strange,” he went on. “Some even said that she was a witch.”

  He looked again at the writing upon the metal. “There are runes like these upon the bow also, and on the blades of the sword and the dagger. All these things were made by her. I think that she imparted something to these weapons – something… magical.”

  Murlet studied him for another long moment and then bent his gaze to the shield. Slowly, after a moment, he nodded. “That might explain it,” he admitted, and he held out his hand. “May I?”

  Brenyn handed him the shield.

  Murlet examined the shield for some time, turning it round and round. Then he looked up. “Do you believe your mother was a witch?”

  Brenyn shook his head. “A witch? – no. But she possessed certain… powers. My grandmother told me that she could heal sick
trees and make them produce better and sweeter fruit.” He looked down at the shield. “And she made this for my father – no doubt to help protect him in battle.”

  Murlet’s sharp eyes narrowed once more. “You are her son, Brenyn – are you certain that you do not possess these… powers, as well? – in your blood?”

  Brenyn shook his head in exasperation. “If I did – then why would I not know it? And I assure you, captain, I do not know it.”

  Murlet watched him for another long moment and then he nodded and handed back the shield. The captain glanced along the roadway, where citizens of Morilund were staring at him with wide and frightened eyes.

  “You are attracting attention, Brenyn,” Murlet said, “and we are yet in another’s land and not our own.” His eyes were grave as they studied Brenyn. “That darking saw you and where you were – which means that its lord likely saw you as well.”

  He moved his hand, indicating the numbers of wide-eyed citizens that lined the fringes of the road beyond where the darking had died. “They witnessed that which was done here as well and will doubtless spread the rumor of it far and wide. It would not do well for our band to be anywhere near this spot when the darking lord comes to see what happened to his servant.” He turned away.

  “Mount up,” he said, “and let us go home.”

  Nodding in agreement, Brenyn took the shield and turned back along the column toward where he had left Noris. As he went, he felt the eyes of his comrades upon him, but he did not look that way. When he got to where Noris waited, Jed silently handed him the reins.

  He mounted up, Murlet gave the order to move on, and the band gained the roadway once more and hastened westward.

  24.

  The troop camped that night among the trees of the forested hills that rose upon the west of the plains of Morilund. Brenyn sat by his fire in silence, gazing into the flames while Jed talked quietly with Evonne and her father upon the opposite side of the fire. No one else came near Brenyn or spoke with him, though every eye in the camp turned upon him, at one time or another, as the twilight faded, and night gathered among the trees.