He didn’t have time to look and see if the boy was listening as the creature was swinging an arm with enough power that it could knock Aaron’s head from his shoulders. He ducked under the blow, striking it on the pressure point on the inside of the under-arm, but it didn’t seem to notice. It swung again, and this time Aaron stepped to the side, bringing out his sword and ramming it into the creature’s stomach.
It let out a growl that sounded more like annoyance than pain, and back-handing Aaron in the shoulder. Aaron’s sword ripped free of the creature as he went flying through the air, his entire arm abruptly numb. He struck the city wall with a crash that made his bones ache and collapsed to one knee, hissing in agony. Pain, white-hot and terrible, lanced through his shoulder as he tried to rise, and he faltered. He risked a glance up, saw that the creature was moving toward him, saw that the sergeant had finally drawn his own blade and was moving in behind it. “No!” Aaron growled, remembering how useless his sword had been against the creature. “Help the boy get the horses, Sergeant!”
Wendell hesitated, as if unsure. “That’s an order, you ugly bastard!” Aaron yelled. Then he leaned back against the wall and used his good arm to lever himself up, grunting in pain as he did, his entire body feeling as if he’d been trampled by a horse. He’d only just made it to his feet when the creature was there, grabbing for him. Aaron stumbled away, barely avoiding the thing’s grasp. He saw his sword lying on the cobbles a few feet away and began limping toward it. A shout from down the street drew his attention, and he looked up to see at least two dozen soldiers rushing toward the gate from the other end of the street.
“Shit.” He spun and saw that Wendell was leading the horses out of the gate and that Darrell and Leomin were helping, the swordmaster apparently having finished his last man. “We’ve got to go!” Aaron yelled. “Where’s the kid?”
The three men looked around, obviously clueless themselves. “Damnit,” Aaron said, shuffling toward where his sword lay. He bent down and scooped it up with his good arm, turning back to see the creature walking slowly toward him, implacable and unafraid.
Aaron backed toward the gate’s entrance, but the creature took two long, lumbering steps and was on him. He tried to dodge its grab, but his injured body was slow to respond, and it caught the front of his tunic, lifting him up much as it had the Parnen. Aaron hissed and ran his sword through the creature’s chest, but it didn’t even flinch as the steel sank in. It wrapped its other, massive hand around his throat and began to squeeze. Aaron struggled and failed to draw a breath as he kicked his legs out in a vain effort to break the thing’s hold.
“Aaron, move!” He turned at the shout to see the kid, Caleb, sprinting out of the gatehouse toward Wendell and the others. Frowning, he followed the kid’s wide-eyed gaze up to see the gate falling down and realized that he and the giant creature were standing right in the path of the metal spikes underneath it.
Knowing he had only a moment, Aaron stopped struggling against the creature’s grip for long enough to rip his sword free of it and to swing it at the thing’s wrist, as hard as his awkward position would allow. Unbelievable strength and an incredible tolerance for pain were all well and good, but a man’s body was still connected by muscles and ligaments, tendon and bone, and the blade bit deep into a wrist as thick as most people’s thighs. The creature let out a roar so loud that it seemed to shake Aaron’s chest, but its grip loosened. Aaron planted both feet on the creature’s stomach and, with a shout, he kicked off as hard as he could, sailing through the air to land hard on his back, rolling end over end until he finally came to a stop in an exhausted, agonized heap.
A crash split the air, and Aaron lifted his weary head, blinking away the spots that had formed in his vision and gasping air into his starved lungs. The spikes of the bottom of the gate had impaled the creature through its back, but it still stood, its thick muscles straining against the heavy metal. Its hood had flown back at some point, and Aaron stared into the twisted, scarred face of a thing out of nightmare, a face that could express nothing but rage and hate. He watched as the gate slowly, inexorably, forced the creature further down until it fell onto one knee with enough force to shake the ground. Aaron glanced past the creature and saw that the soldiers were halfway to the gate, then he started to struggle to his feet.
He gasped from the pain of trying to move his battered body and, in a moment, Darrell and Leomin were on either side of him, helping him up. “Can you ride?” Darrell asked, eyeing Aaron with a troubled expression on his face.
Aaron hacked and coughed before he was able to speak. “I damned sure…better be able,” he panted. “Just help me to get on a horse.”
They led him to his horse, and lifted him into the saddle. Aaron swayed uncertainly for a moment, dark spots dancing in his vision, but he managed to keep his seat. His left arm was still numb and hung useless at his side. He glanced over, his head bobbing dangerously, to see that the kid had already mounted. “Won’t they just open the gate?”
The youth gave a vicious smile. “Eventually, but they won’t have an easy time of it. The gate operates with a two-part counterweight system neither of which, I’m afraid, is still connected.”
“How long?”
The youth’s smile faded, and he shrugged uncertainly. “There’s no way to know for sure. A few hours, perhaps a little longer.”
Aaron nodded. The men might ride around to one of the other gates, but they would lose time doing it just the same. “Alright, you heard the kid,” he said to the men, “let’s go.”
***
They rode on through the forest for the rest of the day, stopping from time to time to walk the horses and give them a break. They spoke little, as it was all any of them could do to not fall out of their saddles in exhaustion. A thing Aaron thought was just as well since the quiet would give them a better chance of hearing any pursuers. Unless it’s one of those fast bastards, he thought, then we’ll all be dead before we hear anything at all.
It wasn’t a comforting thought, but then there wasn’t much to find comfort in given their current situation. They were being hunted by creatures that most people wouldn’t believe existed, they were battered and bruised, not broken but nearly so, and even if they somehow managed to make it to back to Perennia, they had no proof to offer the armies of Avarest, no evidence to show them. Only words, and after a life spent in the Downs, Aaron knew well the worth of words, had seen their uselessness in the empty promises of whores, and the vows of men hired to be bodyguards only to turn on their masters as soon as they saw an advantage in doing so.
They will believe you, Co said, they have to.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up, firefly. Aaron thought back as he dismounted his horse and starting leading it down the path, the others following his example in silence. Men have a tendency not to believe anything they don’t want to unless the undeniable proof is before their eyes—sometimes even then. And we’re going to go back and tell them that Belgarin isn’t really Belgarin at all but an ancient wizard from thousands of years ago who is creating an army of monsters to take over the world? He grunted. Might as well tell them that the dead have risen from their graves and are marching on the city. They still wouldn’t believe it, but at least it would get a laugh.
So what do you intend to do?
Aaron sighed, rubbing at his grainy eyes as he focused on putting one foot in front of the other, I intend to try, firefly. It’s the most that any of us can do.
They led the horses on in silence, the minutes stretching on and on. Several times, he or one of the others slipped and fell. The first few times, they helped each other up, asking if they were okay, but in the face of their overwhelming exhaustion, soon even those niceties vanished, and they would all merely wait, silent, as the one who had fallen dragged himself to his feet. They kept going until the sun set and darkness took over the world in full. Aaron intended to keep walking, but after the kid fell for the third time within no more than a fifteen minute span
, he decided that they had to stop. “We’ve got to make camp.” None of them had spoken in several hours, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears, an intruder in the darkness of the forest.
“You…sure, sir?” Wendell asked, his own voice raspy from disuse. “The soldiers…”
“I know,” Aaron said. “But either they’ll catch us or they won’t. At least this way, maybe we’ll have some rest when they do. Besides, they show up now, I don’t trust myself to fight very hard, as death is starting to seem more and more like an opportunity to rest.”
No one else objected, but Aaron expected that was more due to their own exhaustion than agreement. Still, they followed him as he led them off the path and into the cover of the forest. They tied their horses to a nearby tree and made camp, if it could be called that. They lit no fires, nor did they even take the time to take out their bedrolls or remove their boots. Instead, they all lay down in a ragged circle, the others asleep almost instantly. Aaron lay awake, gazing at the night’s sky and listening to the sound of his companions’ ragged snoring. For him, sleep was not so easy in coming. His wounds pained him, but at least he was beginning to get the feeling back in his arm from where the creature had struck him.
He lay there, staring between the boughs of the trees overhead at the moon hanging distant in the sky, his eyelids growing heavy. Should really set someone to watch, he thought, even went so far as opening his mouth to say so when sleep lunged forward, a beast that had been waiting for its chance to strike, and took him down, down, down into the darkness.
***
Aaron awoke to someone nudging him in the side with the toe of a boot. He opened one eye, glancing up to see that the moon was still high in the sky, and rolled over. “Not yet,” he grunted. “Get some rest.”
The offending boot prodded him once more, hard enough to hurt, and Aaron growled, lurching to a sitting position. “Look, we’ve got a long couple of weeks ahead of us and—” He went silent at the sight of the man standing over him, a drawn blade in his hand. Aaron didn’t waste time on words—he’d seen plenty of men do just that when he was the one with the naked steel, and they the ones roused from sleep. Most were dead now. Instead, he lunged from his seated position—his wounds crying out in protest as he did—and tackled the man at the knees. The stranger, whoever he was, cried out in surprise, and Aaron punched him twice in the face. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, a shadow gliding closer out of the darkness, and he rolled off of the man, toward where he’d left his sword lying on the ground.
He searched frantically for the blade, but the only thing beneath his questing fingers was dirt, grass, and the dead leaves that littered the forest floor.
“You won’t find it,” a feminine voice said from somewhere in the darkness, “and it wouldn’t matter if you did. Even you, Mr. Envelar, for all your skill, could not, I think, dodge two dozen crossbow bolts.”
Aaron searched for another moment then grunted with pain as he rose to his feet, peering into the darkness. He couldn’t make out much, but what little moonlight there was allowed him to see shadows surrounding him and the others, shadows that held what very well could have been crossbows. “What do you want?” he said, gazing in the direction from which the voice had come, a voice that struck him as vaguely familiar.
“It is not about what I want, Mr. Envelar. It is about what the world needs.”
Aaron grunted in recognition. “Damn but I knew I’d heard that voice before. You know, lady, you really need a new line. That shit about what the world needs is getting pretty old. Now, what are you doing out here? Little bit of a change from that cave you live in.”
Tianya, the leader of the Tenders, stepped out of the shadows so that he could vaguely make her out in the streaks of moonlight that found their way in through the branches of the trees. “I am doing what I must, Mr. Envelar. What you have forced me to do.”
Aaron didn’t like the sound of that, not at all. “Look, Tianya,” he said, moving toward her, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t have time for your games right now. We only stopped to get a few hours of sleep. There are people a—”
The woman motioned with her hand, and Aaron grunted in surprise as something struck him in the side of the head. He fell to his hands and knees from the force of the blow and looked up, his head spinning, to see a soldier standing over him holding a sword, the handle of it bloody in the moonlight.
“Yes, Mr. Envelar,” Tianya said, moving closer so that she stared down at him, “there are people. People who will all suffer and die terrible deaths if Kevlane gets his hands on the other Virtues. And yet you and the Parnen traipse across the countryside as if you’re on some sort of holiday while you carry the fate of the world with you.”
“Holiday?” Aaron rasped, pausing to spit out a mouthful of blood. “Damnit, you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Tianya, listen to me, there are things—” He had just started to look up at her when a boot connected solidly with his jaw, knocking him onto his back.
“No,” the woman said, her voice stern as if speaking to some wayward child, “the time for talking is past, Mr. Envelar. I tried to make you understand, to make you see reason, but if you will not flee, will not do what needs to be done to protect the world from this threat, then there are other ways.” She turned to one of the men beside her. “Rouse the others and bind them.”
Grunting, Aaron pushed himself to a sitting position, all too aware of the crossbows pointed at him as he rubbed at his jaw where she’d kicked him. “What do you think you’re going to do, Tianya? Throw us in a cage and ship us away to some far-off land? Wherever you put us, we’ll break out. Surely, you’re not so stupid you don’t realize that.”
In the shaft of moonlight, he saw the woman’s slow, sad smile. “The thought had come to my mind as well, Mr. Envelar,” she said, her tone regretful, “we would take precautions, of course, but a man of your talents and skills…well, I do not think it would be long before you managed to break out of whatever prison we put you in, even if it was for your own protection that you were placed there.”
Aaron shook his head in an effort to clear his blurry vision. “Then why the fuck are you out here?”
The leader of the Tenders sighed. “Unfortunately for you, Mr. Envelar, there is another way to ensure that the Virtue is kept well away from Kevlane and those who serve him. By giving it to someone who will listen, who will see reason and allow himself to be protected, we will ensure not just his safety, but the safety of the world itself.”
“Wait,” Aaron said, realization settling in him. “I didn’t think there was any way to take a Virtue from another person. What are you talking about?”
“There’s not,” the woman agreed, “at least, that is, while the Virtue’s bondmate is alive.”
Aaron opened his mouth to speak but several soldiers, their blades drawn, led Wendell, Leomin, and Caleb forward. The youth rubbed at his eyes, glancing around himself as if confused about what was happening. “I told you to bind them,” Tianya said.
“Of course, ma’am,” one of the soldiers said, bowing his head in acquiescence, “only, there’s something I thought you should know.”
“Well?”
“Darrell’s not here, ma’am. We found some of his things, but as for him…”
Tianya let out a hiss of frustration at that, and turned back to Aaron. “Where is Darrell?”
Aaron frowned, seeming to consider. “Darrell…I know that name seems familiar. Can you describe him?”
The woman’s face grew hard, and she motioned to the soldier standing beside Aaron. Something struck him a powerful blow in the head again, and the next thing he knew he was lying on his back staring up at the trees overhead, their branches like grasping hands in the darkness. The soldier who’d struck him stood over him, a small grin on his face. Aaron put his hand to his head and felt it come away wet with blood then stared up at the soldier. “You’ll pay for that.”
The man’s grin only widened further. “I have little patience for your mockery just now, Mr. Envelar.” Tianya said, looking down at him in disgust. “In order to protect the world and its people, I have no choice but to sacrifice you, to take back the gift which you have been given so that it might be safeguarded from Kevlane and those like him. You must die, either way, but if you tell me where Darrell is, you need not suffer.”
“Lady,” Aaron said, spitting out another mouthful of blood, “I grew up as an orphan in one of the meanest places a man can find. Suffering is how I know I’m alive.”
“Wait,” the woman said, holding up a hand, her head tilted to the side as if she could hear something. Suddenly, her eyes went wide. “Behi—” She hadn’t got the word out before a sword was suddenly at her throat.
“Hello, Tianya,” Darrell said, grabbing her and moving her so that she stood in front of him, his blade within inches of her neck.
Several of the soldiers started forward, and Darrell brought his blade closer, “Tell them to drop their crossbows. They might take me but not before I kill you.”
“Darrell, Darrell,” Tianya said, “do you really not know me better than that after all this time? Kill them all,” she said to her soldiers, “and take the Virtues away from here.”
The men hesitated as if unsure, and Aaron rose laboriously to his feet. He glanced around him, reaching out to the soldiers with his bond, and felt the uncertainty in them. She was their leader, after all, and they dared not risk her life, yet the Virtues had to be protected. Aaron smiled, turning back to Tianya. “Well shit, lady. It seems to me that maybe not everybody is as willing to kill to get what they want as you are.”
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