“I see that same character in Keegan,” the old woman continued. “If what they say is true we cannot afford to ignore them. If they are wrong we will know in two nights and we can deal with them then. But if they are right we must begin our preparations tonight.”
Murmurs of assent greeted the old woman’s words.
“Very well,” Willan conceded as he took his seat, “we will make preparations. But if your son is wrong …”
“I truly hope that he is,” Gerrit somberly replied.
Keegan’s voice was calm and cold. “I’m not.”
Chapter 18
The rumble of horses’ hooves filled Herrod’s ears, making his heart race and his blood boil. The village was just ahead; in the moonlight he could see the outlines of the buildings. He raised his hand, his wicked scimitar glinting in the moonlight. Behind him a score of torches were lit and raised in answer as his band of followers—violent and depraved men like himself—prepared to burn out the unsuspecting citizens as they slept.
They charged into the silent village, mounts swooping and dashing among the homes and buildings as they threw their burning brands onto the dry, thatched roofs. Smoke curled up and the flames began to catch. Soon the fire would devour the buildings and the shrieking townspeople would pour out of their blazing homes. Confused and panicked, they would be cut down in the streets by his men. Only the young women would be taken alive, for their later use. After the slaughter, they would loot the charred remnants of the buildings. It would be as it had been in half a dozen villages in the past month: They would take what they could, destroy the rest, and gallop off into the night, leaving the patrol dispatched from the Seven Capitals to stumble onto the grisly scene days later.
Herrod wheeled his horse around, his long black cape billowing behind him like an inky cloud, and galloped to the open square in the center of the village. Bloodlust filled his head, but he could sense something wasn’t right. He could hear the shouts and cries of his own men—but where were the screams of the villagers?
He pulled his horse up short and surveyed the scene. The buildings smoldered but did not blaze up in flame. It was as if the roofs and walls had been drenched with water. And the town was empty; only his own men on their horses could be seen, rushing through the streets among the buildings.
Was the town deserted? Had something else driven the people away? Disease, maybe? Or famine? From his belt Herrod pulled a curled, twisted horn and blew three staccato blasts on it.
Within a minute his men had gathered with him in the central square, their horses standing impatiently, hooves stamping uneasily on the ground. Herrod quickly counted: sixteen riders. Four were unaccounted for.
“Who’s missing?” he demanded gruffly, already made uneasy by the ghost town they had stumbled into. “Who’s missing and where in the fires of Chaos have they gone?”
A single voice answered him from the far end of the square. “They are dead, killed by archers. As you will be if you do not throw down your weapons and dismount.”
The Raiders all turned to face the speaker. A lone man stood at the far end of the square, unmounted, and unarmed.
Gerrit had insisted he face the bandits alone; the rest of the townspeople either had been evacuated or were strategically placed about the village. Some had wanted to kill the Raiders with no warning, no offer of surrender. Just kill them all. But the mayor had vetoed the idea. He would bring these men to justice alive if he could.
The Raiders had as yet made no reply. “You are surrounded,” Gerrit told them. “Our archers will shoot you where you sit if you do not surrender immediately. This is your last warning.”
He doubted they would accept, but if he could Gerrit wanted to capture them without more bloodshed. Resistance by the Raiders could lead to one of the villagers getting hurt.
There was no reply from the Raiders, though he could tell the leader was studying the surrounding buildings intently, trying to locate the ambush.
Herrod couldn’t see the archers, but he didn’t doubt they were there. Yet he refused to be captured by a bunch of common villagers. The night was dark, his armor strong, and he could see they had not thought to barricade the roads leading from the square out of the town.
The Raider made his choice. Without a word he spurred his horse forward. The sound of arrows filled the air; he heard the cries of his men as they were plucked from their seats behind him. An arrow ricocheted off his mailed shoulder, deflecting harmlessly away. He could hear the battle cries of the villagers as they poured out from their hiding places, lining the four edges of the town square.
A second later a dozen flaming arrows struck the ground around the horses. The earth, which had been soaked with oil, erupted into a wall of flame. Herrod’s horse reared and he was thrown to the ground amid the flames.
Gerrit watched wordlessly as the Raiders were consumed by the inferno. A few were lucky enough to escape the burning trap, spurring their horses through the wall of flames. But as they emerged from the conflagration they were met by the men of the village wielding homemade pikes. Just as Adrax had shown them they braced their ten-foot spears into the ground while they met the charge of the panicked horses. The beasts were impaled on the pikes, the riders thrown from their mounts. Even as the Raiders struck the ground they were set upon by the villagers, now brandishing picks and scythes, shovels and axes. Kill or be killed—the men of the village knew it had come to that. They fought for themselves, for their homes, for their families, using their weapons with a grim determination on a merciless foe.
Gerrit turned his attention back to the flames. So far the trap had been perfect—not a single Raider had escaped. He could hear their screams, the shrieks of men and horses as they were consumed by the fire. The perfect trap, perfectly executed, but it brought him no pleasure.
Deep within the blaze Herrod rose to his feet. All around him his men were dying: choking on the smoke; cooking in the fires; being hacked down by the makeshift weapons of the townsmen. But the Raiders’ leader was not so easily beaten.
As the strongest of the band, he had his choice of treasures. On one of their raids he had claimed a cape of magnificent properties: a cape woven from the hair of a giant; a cape that now protected him from the flames. The fire licked at the garment, but it did not catch. Yet he knew the protection was not absolute. Even now he could feel his armor searing his skin, could feel his breath being choked from his lungs.
Wrapping the saving cloth tightly around his body, Herrod marched directly through the blazing wall of flame and into the cool night beyond. He emerged singed but unharmed, and found himself facing two startled young men brandishing long spears.
The townsmen hesitated, unsure how to attack. They had been trained only to meet a charging horse, yet now they faced an armored opponent on foot. Herrod had no such hesitation. Two strides and he was too close for them to effectively use their spears. The first man was dead even before he could drop his now useless pike, his head nearly severed by a single chop of Herrod’s deadly scimitar.
The second dropped his pike and fumbled for the axe at his belt, too surprised even to scream as his companion dropped lifeless beside him. He managed a single off-balance swipe at his foe, which Herrod easily parried. A forward slash across the chest and a back slash across the stomach and the melee was over. The man slumped beside his friend; his warning cries to his fellows a silent bubbling of blood in his throat.
The Raider moved quickly now, heading toward the shadows of a nearby building. No one else had noticed his escape; they were too concerned with finishing off his followers. He slipped into the darkness and crept along the edge of the building, heading for the outskirts of town. Now that he had left the battle scene undetected he could sneak into the surrounding farmlands, steal a horse, and ride off into the night. But even as he planned his escape Herrod vowed he would return to seek vengeance.
Gerrit had seen Herrod emerge from the fire, had watched in horror as the Raider had cut down the t
wo young men—men with families, one with a newborn child not a year old. He had screamed a warning, but his voice could not be heard above the roaring flames and the screams of the dying bandits. He watched the butcher vanish into the shadows, and he knew what he had to do. None of the Raiders could escape alive, not if the town was to be safe again. Moving quickly but silently he followed his enemy into the darkness of the fields beyond the town, armed only with the half-sized ceremonial mace the town mayor always wore at his belt.
The nightmare woke Keegan with a scream; his scream woke many of the other sleepers in the evacuation camp. Elimee was at his side almost instantly, cradling him in her frail arms.
“Hush, my young Seer,” she whispered in his ear.
Since the town meeting only Elimee had spoken to him. Everyone else at the evacuation camp—all the women and old men who had known him since he had arrived in the town, the girls and boys he had grown up with, all the young children he had looked after and played with during festivals and feasts—kept their distance, shunning him because of his dream.
Only Elimee, wise old woman of the village, still treated him the same. Only she could meet his gaze, only she looked at him without fear.
Keegan gently worked himself free of her protecting arms. “Something is wrong,” he told her in hushed but urgent tones.
“Have you had another dream?” she asked.
Keegan nodded. “This one wasn’t clear. I can’t remember it. But I know something is wrong. I have to go back to the town.”
He thought she would object, but instead Elimee was silent for several seconds, lost in her own thoughts. Then she gently stroked his cheek.
“My young prophet, you have done so much for these people, though they know it not. You have risked much by revealing your secret; you have sacrificed more for the people of this town than they can possibly know.”
“I … I did what I had to. Father said it was the right thing to do. We had to warn you.”
The old woman smiled at him. “You are a fine young man, Keegan. You truly are your father’s son. But your dream has taxed your power. You are tired. I can see the weariness in your eyes.
“I do not know much about the Sight, but I know it comes from the power of Chaos that flows within your veins. Every vision, every dream saps your strength. You need time to rest before you will dream clearly again. Right now you are exhausted. Your talent is drained. I do not know if you can trust your dreams as you normally would.”
“Something is wrong,” Keegan repeated. “I know it. I have to go.”
Elimee cast a quick glance around the makeshift camp. Everyone was either sleeping or pointedly ignoring her conversation with Keegan.
“I believe in your power, Keegan. I believe in you. Now you must believe in me.”
She pulled him close, her gnarled hands clenching his shoulders as she stared deep into his eyes.
“You are not the only one is this town who dreams, Keegan” she whispered, “though my Sight was weak to begin, and has weakened further with age and neglect.” The old woman smiled gently. “Like your father, my parents also feared the Order would come to take me away.”
Keegan did not react to the confession. He had long suspected the old woman of having Chaos in her veins—sometimes he could feel it calling to him from within her, like calling to like. His father had forbidden him from ever mentioning it. Now she merely confirmed his suspicions.
The old woman released his shoulders and reached down inside her blouse to withdraw a small pendant of gleaming white. It was carved in the shape of an eye.
“Unicorn horn, a gift from my aunt. She was a witch-woman. I suppose the Chaos in my veins came from her.”
Elimee took his hand in her own and wrapped his fingers around the charm.
“There is power in this,” she whispered. “The Chaos Spawn are gone, but their magic lingers. Draw strength from it, feel its power fill your mind and heart. We will know the truth of your nightmare.”
Keegan hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. Gently he reached out with his mind. Reached out with his spirit. Reached out to the charm carved from the horn of a beast that had been extinct for centuries, and to the frail old woman before him.
At first there was nothing. And then he felt it. A faint ember of flickering power. Instinctively, without even knowing how, Keegan began to fan the flame.
The ember he saw with his mind’s eye flared to life, bursting into a blazing blue fire. Keegan drew the fire into himself, his starving talent devouring the power of the old woman’s charm.
The dream exploded in his mind; the image dim and faint, but discernible. It lasted the briefest of moments, the images crystallizing in Keegan’s mind almost instantaneously. His father in a field, leaping onto the back of a man in a black cape. They fall to the ground and wrestle briefly. The man breaks free, and draws his scimitar. Gerrit tries to protect himself with the pitiful little mace on his belt but the scimitar slashes down …
“No!” he screamed, tearing the charm from its cord around Elimee’s neck.
The carved eye slipped from Keegan’s fist and clattered on the floor as he leapt to his feet. The old woman stiffened, her fingers clenching Keegan’s own. Then she slumped weakly onto the floor, her withered hand sliding from his grasp. Others nearby turned to look, their faces a mix of confusion and fear. None dared to interfere.
Keegan hesitated, torn between the vision of his father and the plight of Elimee on the ground at his feet. The old woman raised her head.
“Go, Keegan,” she whispered, “I will be fine. Go to your father.”
Keegan sprinted across the moonlit fields, stumbling over the furrows in the near darkness. Guided by the memory of his vision he raced to where he knew his father faced certain death.
He crested a hill on the outskirts of the town and saw his dream unfolding less than a hundred yards away. Two dark figures grappled on the ground, silhouettes wrestling in the silver moonlight.
Engrossed by the scene before him, Keegan tripped on the uneven ground and tumbled down the hill. He flipped and bounced down the steep mound, the fall knocking the wind from him. For several seconds he lay on his back at the bottom gasping for air, trying to regain his breath and clear his head.
When he rose unsteadily to his feet he saw only one figure standing; the other lay writhing on the ground at its feet. Keegan staggered toward the pair, his warning cries lost in his still-gasping lungs.
The standing figure raised his arm; the sickle curve of a scimitar blade sliced through the darkness, slashing at the figure on the ground. Once, twice, a third time as Keegan could only sob and cry, stumbling toward the massacre.
Herrod brought his sword down for a fourth time, certain his enemy was dead yet wanting to disfigure and mutilate the corpse out of pure malice. Above the grisly sounds of his butchering his ears picked up another familiar noise: grief-stricken sobs.
He turned from his bloody work to see another figure reeling toward him through the night’s gloom. His eyes searched the shadowy form for a weapon, but this one was unarmed. As his newest foe drew closer Herrod could see he was too small and thin to be a grown man; he was nothing more than a youth.
The young boy charged forward, blind with exhaustion and grief and rage. Herrod let him approach then struck the young man across the face with the hilt of his scimitar. His foe crumpled to the earth, barely conscious. Herrod reached down, grabbing his opponent by the hair and pulling him to his knees. The boy’s face was drenched in blood, his broken nose jutting out at an obscene angle.
Herrod placed his lips against the lad’s ear.
“Boy,” he hissed, his fist still clutching his young victim’s hair, “know before you die that I will return with more men and kill everyone in this village. Those that flee I will hunt down like dogs. They will die in bloody, screaming agony, tortured for days before being slaughtered like pigs. The women will be raped until they beg for death, and only then will we grant it.”
&nbs
p; What happened next Keegan could not later explain, could not even remember. His head was still swimming from the blow Herrod had given him, his mind covered in a blanket of pain and terror and wrath. He grabbed the Raider’s wrist and a blazing blue light engulfed them both.
The Raider screamed in pain, releasing his grip on Keegan’s hair. His scimitar’s blade shattered into a thousand pieces. Keegan grabbed the front of the brigand’s armor, his fingers ripping through the mail shirt like paper, digging into the flesh beneath like claws. The young lad rose to his feet, lifting Herrod from the ground, and began to shake the Raider violently back and forth like a child’s rag doll.
The sound of snapping bones and ripping cartilage was drowned out by Herrod’s shrieks and wails. A vicious crack ended the howls as his neck was broken. And still Keegan shook the body with a primal fury, the elemental power of Chaos surrounding the young wizard and his dead enemy with raging blue flames.
The townspeople found them the next morning: Gerrit’s body, mercilessly hacked by the Raider’s cruel sword; Keegan collapsed upon his father’s corpse, shivering and sobbing and nearly comatose with shock, grief, and exhaustion. A short distance away lay the body of the Raider, his face twisted in a gruesome mask of agony, his limbs projecting from his body at grotesque, unnatural angles, dislocated and broken.
The Raiders had been defeated, not a single one had escaped the well-laid trap. Five of the townsfolk had died in the battle, including their beloved mayor, but the hundred-odd other men, women, and children knew they owed their lives to the young man who now lay recovering in the home of Elimee.
Within the confines of the Smiling Drake Tavern, Willan Coburd spoke in a voice so low the other members of the council had to strain to hear him. “What do we do about Keegan?”
Elimee snorted loudly. “You speak as if he means to harm us, Willan. He saved us all and he lost his father in the process. He sacrificed everything so that the rest of this town could live.”
Children of Fire Page 18
