Adina stared at the club owner as if seeing her for the first time, and she felt the woman’s words resonate within her, felt her back straighten once more as her resolve returned. “Lay down your arms, General. You soldiers as well. There are greater threats in the world than this, and there is little time to prepare. What you have seen today is nothing compared to what is out there.”
The soldiers glanced uncertainly at each other, but Ridell sneered. “To the Fields with this. Kill them, kill all of them!”
The men hesitated as if unsure, and Ridell’s face turned bright red. “Kill them damn you!” he screamed, but still the men did not attack. They all turned to look at Adina, and one soldier dropped to his knees, bowing his head to his queen, then another, and another until all of the soldiers were all kneeling.
“This, this is insane,” Ridell screamed, “this is treason!”
“No, Ridell,” Adina said, “this is not treason. This is setting things right.” She nodded to Bastion. “Take him.”
The giant youth started forward, and the general’s eyes widened. Then he turned and ran, sprinting down the street. Bastion set out after him but there was another blur of motion and suddenly Ridell was pitching forward, crashing to the ground, and finally rolling to a stop up against the side of a building. Beth, who now stood in the street, turned to them and shrugged, “Tried to catch ‘em, I swear.”
“Well,” May said, staring at the unconscious form of the general, “that’ll do pretty well for him, I think.”
“Yes,” Adina said, “but we’re not done yet. Rise, soldiers of Galia.” And slowly, they did, watching her expectantly. “I have one more task for you.”
“What do you have in mind, Princess?”
Adina glanced through the city to where she could see the castle in the distance, rising up over the buildings around it. “I think I’d like to visit my castle.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY
Aaron led the others through the city’s twisting alleyways, not knowing where he was going only looking to put some distance between them and any pursuers. The streets were deserted, though whether the denizens of the city had elected to stay indoors because of the fight at the tavern or because of the recent disappearances, he could not have said for sure, and it didn’t matter in any case.
What mattered were the men chasing them—and they were chasing them, of that he had no doubts. The only surprise for Aaron was that the entire city and all of its soldiers hadn’t descended upon them seeking blood and death. For if Boyce Kevlane really had taken over the city—which seemed apparent—the man would stop at nothing to see Aaron and his friends dead.
Aaron expected to find soldiers waiting on them around every corner but, so far at least, no one had tried to bar their path. He’d only just had the thought when he was struck by the same feeling of wrongness as before, of something that was not quite complete coming closer, and he held up a hand, signaling the others to stop.
“Thank the gods for that,” Wendell groaned, leaning over with his hands on his knees, “a belly full of ale doesn’t do a man any favors he ends up having to run for his life.”
“What is it, Aaron?” Darrell asked. “What do you feel?”
Aaron shook his head, closing his eyes, and concentrating on that feeling. It was similar to the other he’d had, but it was not the same. There was something different about this wrongness, yet he felt it coming closer all the same, felt it moving at an incredible speed and—“Down!” he shouted.
The men hit the ground almost before the word was out of his mouth but the youth, Caleb, seemed frozen with fear. Aaron dashed forward, knocking him aside and throwing his sword up by instinct as the power of his bond surged through him. There was a blur of motion in front of him, and a sword seemed to materialize out of the darkness, striking his own with enough momentum and force to send the blade back into Aaron’s shoulder. He grunted in pain as it cut him, though not too deep. At least, he hoped not, but there was no time to be sure as he felt it—whatever it was—turning and coming back at him.
He couldn’t see the blade coming—it was much too fast for that—but the power of his bond let him know what shape the attack would take. Instead of throwing his sword up this time, he ducked underneath the strike and even knowing that it was coming, he was almost too slow, and he felt the wind of its passage just over him. He spun, peering into the darkness of the street and could just make out a figure standing all the way at the mouth of the alley. How in the fuck did the bastard get there already? He’d never seen a man so fast.
This is no man, Aaron, no person at all. Not anymore.
The creature wore a long robe, the sleeves nearly twice as long as normal, and Aaron could see its thin, slender left hand coming out of its sleeve, hanging at its calf. The other hand held the sword it carried up at an angle behind it as it moved closer. Even though it walked and moved slowly, its whole body shifted and swayed with each step, as if it had difficulty moving at such a pace.
“Aaron!”
Aaron risked a glance back to see four city guardsmen at the other end of the alley. “Shit.” He looked at the creature coming toward him. Whatever danger the four guards posed, the others would have to deal with them. He didn’t dare turn his back on the creature for long. What was worse, he knew more soldiers would be coming. If he and the others didn’t make it out of this alley soon, they wouldn’t make it out at all. Well, say one good thing for it, he thought as he watched the freakish figure move closer, whatever happens, at least it’ll happen quickly.
He’d no sooner had the thought than the creature sped forward in a blur of movement bringing the long, slender sword up at an angle. Aaron’s bond warned him of the attack, and he lunged out of the way. He managed to avoid the blade, barely, but in his haste he hadn’t been thinking of the alley wall, and he grunted as he slammed into it. Not wasting any time, he spun back around, searching for his opponent.
It stood in the alley with the sword at an angle down and behind it now, watching him with its head cocked as if trying to figure out why he wasn’t dead already. The truth was, Aaron wasn’t sure himself. Feeling a sense of urgency building within him, knowing that they were wasting time they didn’t have, he followed some advice Darrell had given him once, long ago. “In fights for your life,” the swordmaster had said, “there can be no half measures. When you decide a battle must be fought, attack at once and without hesitation, for it is most often the man who strikes first who walks away in the end.” And so Aaron did. He was tired from his fight with the swordsman and their run through the city, but he forced his body forward with as much speed as he could muster, swinging his blade at the slender creature’s neck.
The creature did not change its stance, yet its arm flashed up, independent of the rest of its body, and Aaron’s sword met its blade with a ringing chime that filled the alley. Growling, Aaron pressed the attack, swinging as fast as he could as he waded forwarded, forcing the creature back, yet no matter how fast he was, the creature was faster, and he thought he saw something like amusement in its dark gaze, the only thing he could make out in the shadow of its hood.
Finally, he backed away, his breath coming hard in his lungs, and stared at the creature. It stood much as it had before, its head still cocked to the side, and while Aaron gasped for breath, the creature seemed unaffected by the exchange. Aaron reached out with his bond, trying to gain some understanding of the thing’s thoughts. If most people’s minds were as clear as a mountain lake, their thoughts there if a man only bent down and looked, then the mind of the thing before him was more like a bog of mud and mist. In that place of confusion and mystery, Aaron could make out no specifics, but could hear tortured screams coming from somewhere off in the distance. He jerked the power away, feeling tainted somehow.
“What are you?” he breathed, and the thing cocked its head the other way as if trying to understand. Aaron could hear the sounds of fighting further down the alley and wanted to turn and see if
the others were alright, but he didn’t dare. They either would be okay, or they wouldn’t be, and there was nothing he could do about it now. Handle the problem in front of you before borrowing troubles from tomorrow. His father’s words, spoken to him as a child, words that had stayed with him when so much else had faded and been lost from memory. He had always done his best to follow them—not that it was all that difficult. A life spent in the Downs around men and women that would just as soon stab you as look at you taught a man that today had plenty enough problems of its own. There was no need to go looking for them. Problems like the one staring him in the face now, with its not-quite-empty gaze, a thing worse than if it had been completely vacant, for Aaron thought he could see a sliver of the person the creature had been.
Suddenly, the thing burst into motion, lunging forward, its unnaturally long arm swinging the slender blade at Aaron’s throat. The thing didn’t have good technique—its footwork barely existed at all, and it swung the blade like a man out chopping wood. The problem, of course, was that being faster than a galloping horse with a reach twice as long as your opponent’s went a long way toward making up for any lack of technical knowledge.
Aaron pivoted, bringing his sword up to parry and caught the blade only inches from his throat. Their blades locked only for a moment, but it was enough for him to realize that he could push the creature’s sword away easily enough. Not strong then, weaker than pretty much any man he’d fought, but fast enough to make up for it. Even as he thought it, the creature demonstrated its speed as it spun in a full circle, too fast for his eye to follow, and brought the blade back around at throat-level on Aaron’s other side. Turning your back on your opponent was never a wise choice in a swordfight, and so Aaron had not been expecting the move and nearly lost his head because of it, only just managing to bring his blade around to knock the attack away.
What followed from the creature was a flurry of frantic, blurring attacks that Aaron did his best to parry, calling on years spent training with the sword and fighting for his life—but in the end, it was only the power of the bond that kept him alive in those panicked moments. It could have went on for a minute or an hour, Aaron’s mind had no time to consider, as he desperately tried to keep the blurring sword at bay, then finally managed to retreat a step. The creature did not follow and push the attack, and Aaron stood there gasping for air.
Despite his best efforts, Aaron noted idly that he was bleeding from a shallow cut on his forearm and another on his side, where the thing’s blade had scored him before he’d gotten his own sword around to parry. Neither of the cuts were deep, but they were distractions, ones he could ill-afford. Can’t keep this up, he thought.
He knew it, and the creature seemed to know it, too. It stepped forward slowly, almost casually, and Aaron retreated a step as it did, continuing to do so as the creature walked at him in its confident, leisurely pace. Suddenly, it burst forward again, but this time Aaron was waiting on it, calling on all the power his bond afforded him to know where the strike was coming. He gripped his sword in both hands, swinging it against the incoming blade not to parry but to hit it as hard as he could. A loud ringing filled the air as the two blades met, and Aaron knocked the creature’s attack wide. He took the brief opportunity this afforded him and lunged forward, his sword leading.
He half-expected the creature to somehow dodge out of the way, but all the speed in the world couldn’t help you if you were-off balance, and thanks to his strike, the creature was. It tried to move, but stumbled as its feet twisted beneath it, and in another moment Aaron’s blade plunged into its chest, ripping out of the other side. The creature tried to bring its long blade down, but Aaron was inside its reach now, and he felt only the dull thud of the handle of its sword as it struck his back.
The creature did not scream or cry out at the mortal wound, not even when Aaron turned the blade and ripped it free, taking a hurried step back from it. The cloaked figure seemed to regard him from beneath the hood it wore for several seconds, before it crumpled to the ground without a sound. Aaron stared at it, his blade at the ready, his breath wheezing in his throat. When it still did not move, he eased forward, crouching and pulling the hood back to reveal the creature’s face. Aaron grunted in surprise and disgust as he took in the thing’s features, shame and repulsion welling up in him.
Oh gods, Aaron, Co said into his mind, oh gods be good.
Aaron only knelt and stared at the creature’s face, his own expression hard while, inside of him, a storm of emotions raged. There were deep, fresh scars covering the creature’s face and shaved head, and its expression was twisted in one of agony. It was as if whatever horrors it had endured to be made into a monster had been so terrible as to stamp themselves permanently onto its features. All of this was bad, but the worst thing about the face was that, judging by what was left of the delicate features, the creature had once been a woman. No, he thought, not a woman at all but a girl. No more than seventeen years old if she was a day. A child.
Not a child anymore, Aaron, Co said. You have to remember that. Whatever it was, whatever she was, she was not what she had once been. You had no choice.
“I’ve heard that a lot lately,” Aaron said, his voice dry and without emotion as he stared down at the corpse. “Tell me, firefly, if a man never has a choice in the things he does, then how is he a man at all? What good can such a one as that do for anyone?”
Aaron…the Virtue began, but then she grew silent and it seemed that she had nothing to say. Nothing she could say.
Aaron felt guilt settling on him, felt his shoulders slump under the weight of it. No, a part of him said. Rage—the mirror of the compassion the bond granted him—began to well up inside him. You won’t take credit for this. You can’t. You can bury your head in your hands and weep later if you have to, but for now there are people who are counting on you. Not just Leomin and the others but thousands of people back in Perennia. Now. Get. Up.
At first, his body didn’t want to obey his commands, and it seemed impossible to pull his eyes away from the dead girl lying in the street, but finally he was standing and turning to check on his friends. Two of the soldiers still faced off against Darrell. Wendell was crouched on top of another that was obviously unconscious or dead, beating him in the head—with a boot of all things, and Aaron had a moment of confusion, wondering where the sergeant had gotten it, until he noticed that one of Wendell’s feet was bare. Leomin was standing back with Caleb, the two of them watching the swordmaster. A deep cut on the Parnen’s arm bled blood that looked black in the moonlight.
Aaron turned back to look at Darrell and saw that his breathing was labored, and he was trying to keep both of the men in sight as they attempted to get on either side of him. Watching it, Aaron felt the rage that was always so close to the surface blaze to life, slipping loose the chains with which he had bound it. At that moment, he did not feel his own exhaustion or his own wounds, and even his remorse about killing the child was a distant, unimportant thing.
In that moment, he forgot about everything else, everyone else. It was only him and the soldiers—even Boyce Kevlane didn’t reckon into it. These men. These men were the ones responsible. If they had their way, more children would be taken, more lives would end in torture and agony. There would be no guilt, no shame in the killing of them, not these. The rage was a blazing fire inside of him now. Some men were better off dead, that was all, and the world a better place when it had moved on and forgotten them.
He was running before he knew it. The night was suddenly filled with a bestial roar of rage but that, too, was beyond his thoughts. For him there was nothing but the men and the sword in his hand, slick with a child’s blood. He was on them in an instant, knocking the weary swordmaster aside and parrying a strike that had been aimed at Darrell’s neck. He waded into the two men with a flurry of vicious blows, giving no thought for his own safety or even the safety of his companions. His only thought was for blood and his need for it. They were well-tra
ined and fought in unison, watching each other’s backs, and that was good. That was alright, for the blood would come—he knew that as certainly as he knew anything—and, when it did, it would be all the better for the wait.
They tried to counter attack, and Aaron stepped out of the way of the blades only enough to ensure they were not fatal, that they would not keep him from fulfilling the demand of the song roaring in his head, a song of pain and death whose promise had to be kept. Their blades scored him glancing blows on his arm, his shoulder, his chest, but he did not concern himself with them, was glad in fact, for the song cared little from whence the blood came, only so long as it did come. He beat at their swords, a mad grin etched into his face, a low, steady growl issuing from his throat. He watched their faces, their eyes, and saw the moment when they realized he would not stop, would not be stopped.
He struck at one of them with his blade, hissing with his need, but the man retreated, throwing up a clumsy parry that managed to keep the questing steel at bay. Aaron felt the next man’s attack coming, a lunging stab that would skewer him. He shifted to the side enough to keep the strike from penetrating, but not enough to keep it from slicing a ragged tear in his side. The soldier shouted in what might have been triumph or fear, but Aaron had used the opportunity to step past the man’s blade and swing his sword in a wide, two-handed arc. The steel tore a jagged, bloody swath into the man’s neck but got stuck halfway through.
Aaron laughed as the man collapsed to the ground in a crimson shower. He gave his blade a jerk, trying to loosen it, but it was stuck fast. He was still trying to pull it free when the man’s companion rushed into him from behind. Aaron stumbled forward then took a few more purposeful steps, just enough to get out of reach of the man’s follow-up attack, and he spun, grinning as the blade cut the air in front of his throat, missing it by inches. Aaron went to raise his own sword and realized to his surprise that he’d dropped it when the man struck him.
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