Ruler, Rival, Exile

by Morgan Rice

  ***

  Irrien found himself lost in thought as he wandered back to the spot where his tent stood. He should have been coordinating the sacking of the castle, the division of those within into those worth keeping or killing.

  Instead, he found himself stepping through the residue of the violence as if it didn’t matter, thinking about Haylon, about the people gathering there, and about this girl who had the powers of a long dead people.

  Irrien had never fought one of the Ancient Ones. They had been gone from the world before his birth, but he had heard the stories of them. All in Felldust knew about the things that had blasted their landscape, and the power that the Ancient Ones had held. Maybe one of them would be a victory worth having. Certainly, he needed to find a way to kill one if he was going to make certain of his control over the former Empire.

  He stalked back across the battlefield, still thinking about it. He had wise men and priests with knowledge of the war. They would know the best way to kill someone with such power. If not, Irrien would find his own way. There was always a way, if he looked hard enough. For now, he stepped through the mud of the battlefield, ignoring the spots where his men were torturing prisoners or dividing up what they’d taken.

  Perhaps it was because he was so distracted that he didn’t notice how quiet it was around his tent at first. Only some faint, always present sense of danger made him look around as he got closer, checking around the tent, then off by the wagons nearest it.

  When he found guards there with their throats cut, Irrien drew his blade again.

  An arrow came, seemingly out of nowhere. Irrien cut it aside with his sword, but even so, it scraped along the flesh of his shoulder, drawing blood. He spun, ducking into the safety of the wagons as a second arrow thudded into the wood. A man dressed in rags that made him seem like just one more of the bodies on the battlefield stood up, firing a third arrow in Irrien’s direction. The First Stone dodged, snatched up one of his dead men’s daggers, and threw it overhand.

  He saw the blade lodge in the other man’s chest, but he was already moving. It was the thing that saved him as a small clay jar rolled under the wagon, smoking as it came.

  It exploded, and Irrien threw himself in the mud, feeling the heat and the flames wash over him as smoke billowed. He could feel his hair scorching away from his skull with it. He rolled to his feet in a world that seemed dominated by smoke.

  An armored figure came rushing out of that smoke, wielding a sword two-handed. He was better than any of the ones defending the castle had been, far better. He feinted low, cut high, and Irrien only avoided losing his head because he dropped to one knee. His opponent looked more than a little surprised as Irrien thrust upward through his abdomen.

  “The Dozen Deaths can never fall,” the man cried, trying to swing his sword down at Irrien. The First Stone parried it, but the blow still jarred his hands and scored a fresh line of blood across his shoulders. Irrien winced in pain and rolled aside, abandoning his weapon and running through the smoke around him, while behind him the armored man died.

  The Dozen Deaths. He had employed them, occasionally, and Irrien knew exactly how dangerous they were. Any one of them could kill the strongest and fastest of men; that was the point of them. They had killed his personal guard, men who had survived the worst the dust could throw at them. Worse, there were at least two here. So far, he’d been lucky, but there could be another ten of them out there among the wreckage of the camp. He couldn’t afford to stay in one spot. Couldn’t let them surround him.

  The next to come out of the expanding cloud of smoke was a huge man who swung an axe at him two-handed. Irrien didn’t try to dodge. Instead, he caught the weapon by the haft, pressing into the man, pushing him back through simple power. His foe punched at him, kicked at him, and Irrien could feel bruises blossoming under the blows. He ignored them, because to lose his grip on the axe even for a moment was to die. He forced the other man down, roaring with the effort. Irrien brought his knee up once, then again, hearing the snap of bone. He wrenched the axe clear just as pain bloomed in his side. He looked down to see a sword sticking through him, a woman behind him wrenching it clear.

  Irrien spun and planted the axe in her chest, ignoring her look of surprise as she fell. Irrien dropped the axe, keeping moving, ignoring the pain from his wounds. He didn’t have time to stop. He barely saw the tripwires that someone had laid out in time. One caught at his foot and he fell, but threw his hand down to stop himself from falling onto spikes. His arm jarred with the effort of that, but he pushed himself back to his feet. He backed into the shadows of another wagon, watching as a robed man rushed in after him. The tripwires caught, and a dozen small darts fired up. Irrien watched the man spasm as the poison there took its toll.

  “Who are we waiting for?” a woman’s voice asked beside him.

  Irrien turned his head, looking into strange, mad eyes. His hand came up automatically, wrapping around her wrist as she stabbed at him with a knife. He caught it within an inch of his eye, feeling it scrape along his cheek. She frowned as he held her, trying to push it forward. She kicked him hard at close range, the blows hard enough that another man would have crumpled under them. Irrien was not another man. He forced the knife slowly back, then thrust with it, hearing her gasp as it sank home.

  Irrien stood, taking a dagger in his left hand and snatching up a sword with his right. The smoke was starting to clear now, and that was probably a bad thing, since a slinger stood not far away, winding up a shot.

  Irrien dodged as he threw it, but even so, the stone crunched from his shoulder. Irrien didn’t fall, didn’t even hesitate. With killers like this, to slow down for a moment was to die. Instead, he kicked dust in the slinger’s face, charged in close, and stabbed him until he fell. When he rose, five figures stood nearby. A man and a woman held swords, while two other men held a spear and a pair of long knives. The only one who seemed to be unarmed was the older man who stood toward the back, and Irrien didn’t trust that. He’d met N’cho before.

  “All twelve?” he said, trying to hide the pain he felt from his collection of wounds. “I’m honored.”

  The four with drawn weapons stalked forward in silence, and Irrien leapt to meet them. He sprinted at the swordsman, then spun at the last moment, cutting across the hamstring of the knifeman as he tried to rush in close. It meant taking a cut from the spear, but Irrien ignored it, slipping around the next thrust, and all but beheaded the wielder with a backhanded blow. The knifeman’s weapon skittered from his armor, and Irrien moved back to finish him.

  The swordswoman and the man came at him in concert, cutting together as if they always fought that way. Irrien gave ground, his muscles aching with the effort. Cuts came at him, and he couldn’t hope to parry them all, only the worst of them. Fresh lines of fire cut across his skin as sword cuts opened on his arms, his side, his leg. With every attack, Irrien watched the pattern of their movements. He waited a moment longer, then flung his dagger at the man. He parried it, and the woman moved to cover the rush toward him that she clearly anticipated.

  It was all the opening Irrien needed to thrust his sword through her throat. Relying on another really was the greatest of weaknesses. He grabbed her sword as she fell, and advanced on the man, alternating strokes with both weapons until one got through. Blood sprayed, and the last of his enemies fell before him.

  Almost the last, at least. Irrien turned toward N’cho, glaring at the assassin and waiting. It was all he could do right then not to collapse. He had a dozen wounds and more, each seeming to leach at his strength. Still, he forced himself to stare down the other man.

  “Well,” he said. “Are you going to try to kill me, or are you going to wait until I die of old age?”

  “Blood loss, possibly.” N’cho shrugged, saying it as if it didn’t matter to him either way. “Poison. Some of us use it.”

  “Used it,” Irrien corrected, with a gesture that took in the carrion around him. “And I can probabl
y find antidotes on your corpses. A poisoner doesn’t travel without them, in case he cuts himself.”

  He hoped so, anyway. A truly deadly assassin might not bother.

  N’cho nodded. “You have killed many, this day. Still, our order will survive. I can find new members.”

  “Not if I cut your head off,” Irrien snapped back. “Ulren sent you?”

  The other man shrugged again. “He dislikes being thought of as just the Second Stone. He can take the seat, but apparently not the reputation.”

  Irrien kept his eyes on the other man, waiting for whatever his attack would be. Not a weapon, nothing direct. Maybe he just planned to talk until Irrien died from untreated wounds.

  “And so you agreed to come to kill me,” he said.

  “When the ruler of Felldust asks, we must answer,” N’cho pointed out.

  That roused Irrien’s anger. “I am the ruler of Felldust!”

  It surprised even him that he said it. He’d given away the kingdom to take this one. But that didn’t mean that Ulren had won. Ulren would never be enough to take anything that was his.

  By rights, he should have attacked then. He should have cut down the assassin and left him for the crows with the others. Instead, he shook his head.

  “Do you want to live?” he asked.

  The other man spread his hands. “The gods of death do not care what I want.”

  “They are not what you have to worry about,” Irrien snapped. “Do you want to live?”

  The assassin took his time considering it. Long enough that Irrien almost cut him down just for the insult. He was used to death priests, and almost all of them cared about their lives more than this man seemed to.

  “What is it you require?” N’cho asked at last. “I assume there is something, and honor demands that I cannot go to kill Ulren for you.”

  That led to another flicker of anger for Irrien. “When he dies, it will be my hand that does it.” He forced himself to stay calm. “No, I have a different task for you. There is a woman who claims the blood of the Ancient Ones. She has become a threat. Find me a way to kill her.”

  The other man nodded. “That, I can do.”

  He stepped away, and there was another burst of smoke. Irrien wasn’t surprised to find him gone when it passed. He didn’t care. It meant that he could slump back against one of the carts, starting to bind his wounds. He had killed men before, and women, and more, but these dozen had pushed him almost to his limits. Any one of them might have killed him if their blows had fallen just a little differently.

  He looked back at the castle. It seemed like an empty triumph compared to the battle he had just fought, and certainly compared to the one that would soon follow. If the North had been easy to conquer, it was only because so many men had gone to Haylon. Irrien had a sense for battles, and he could see how great a fight awaited him there.

  He would kill his foes, would kill this Ancient One, and then… then perhaps he would return to kill the Second Stone as well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Thanos strained to look at the bow of the boat, as though he could pull it forward faster just by sight. Behind him, men strained at the oars, while the great sails above billowed with the force of the wind. Even so, Thanos didn’t know if it would be enough.

  Finally, he caught sight of Haylon, just a line of land on the horizon. It was a promise ahead, not of safety, because nothing could promise that right then, but at least of the chance of it. If they could make it in time, before the great sea walls closed, they might survive this.

  More than that, they might be able to help. Lord West’s former men might not be as numerous as they had been back in Delos, but the ones here had the look of men desperate to prove themselves. They’d been the ones left behind, or the ones who had chosen to stay. They were men who needed to show the world that they were not cowards, even if they knew the truth of what had happened for themselves. Now, they were the ones who might save Haylon.

  It grew on the horizon, but Thanos was more concerned about the dark speck growing behind them, resolving itself into a long line of ships even as he watched. Felldust was coming, and the boats kept ahead of them only through men pushing themselves as hard as they could.

  Thanos hoped that it would be enough.

  He hoped more than that. He hoped that he wasn’t leading the fleeing islanders with him to their deaths. He hoped that the men with him would be strong enough to hold back the tide of enemies. More than that, he hoped that this would finally be an end to it; that they would be able to finish this seemingly endless war once and for all. Since the beginning of the fight between the rebellion and the Empire, there had been no cease to this.

  Right then, looking back at the enemies chasing them, it was hard to believe that it could ever be over that simply. There was so much violence coming, and the best Thanos could hope for was that they might somehow come through it.

  The harbor gates were ahead now, open and inviting. Thanos just hoped that they could make it in time. Iakos had said that those gates would have to close when the enemy came. Well, they were coming racing quickly behind the fleet from the North.

  “Make sure that your flags are up,” Thanos called across the deck. He didn’t want them mistaken for enemies. Sir Justin nodded, and Thanos could see Lord West’s old colors going up on mast after mast.

  Even so, as they got closer, Thanos could see the great sea gates starting to shift. Not knowing what else to do, he ran down into the rowing benches, grabbing an oar. He heaved, adding his strength to that of the other men there, and the ship shot forward.

  If they were caught outside Haylon, they would be trapped there between the island and the advancing fleet. They would fight, but without the room to maneuver, they would also die. They had to make it.

  Thanos rowed until his muscles ached with the effort. His hands chafed with the wood of the oar. Above him, he could see blue sky, which meant that his view of the great stone doors only came as they passed through them, towering above the ship as it scraped through the ever closing gap. Thanos thought that he could feel the oars scrape against the stone, but the ship came through. He just hoped that the others would too, and he rushed up to the deck to make sure.

  They made it. One by one they made it, the smallest boats at the rear barely squeezing through the gap. The last boat got stuck there, and the few inhabitants looked at one another before throwing themselves into the harbor to swim for it. Their boat collapsed inward with the sound of splintering wood.

  Thanos could see the defenders gathering in towers and on roofs. He could see Akila waving his sword-crutch, and Thanos put a hand on Sir Justin’s shoulder.

  “Come with me,” he said. “They’re waiting for us.”

  “They could have waited a fraction longer,” Justin said, with a glance back at the wreckage of the boat that had been destroyed.

  Still, he followed, going with Thanos up to the tower. Akila was there, and Iakos, both staring out at the approaching sight of the enemy fleet. Thanos had seen the great invasion fleet that had attacked Delos, and this wasn’t on the same scale, but even so, it was impressive.

  “They’re coming,” Iakos said. Thanos could hear the stony edge to it as he tried to keep from showing any fear.

  Akila nodded. “But we’re ready. This time, the First Stone will be the one with a sword put through him.”

  Thanos could hear the confidence there. Confidence in his island’s strength. In the people who defended it. The truth was that they had made every preparation that could be made.

  “I have brought more men,” Justin said. “We will win this war here, or lose it.”

  “Let’s hope it’s the first,” Akila said. “Iakos will show you the best places to put them.”

  They went off, leaving Thanos and Akila staring at the onslaught to come. The enemy ships were growing closer now, so many of them that they seemed to blot out the water.

  “Are you ready?” Akila asked him.


  “No, are you?”

  “Who could be ready for such a thing?” He drew the blade that Irrien had used on him. “Still, we will fight, and we will win. We must win.”

  He signaled with the sword, the light catching on the blade, and with the ponderous strength that only truly massive things could manage, the catapults around the harbor started to swing forward.

  They traveled through their arcs with a kind of grace as they launched rocks and flame pots, bundles of stones and whatever else the islanders had been able to find. Most of the first shots missed, some falling short to hit the sea outside the harbor, throwing up gouts of water, others barely scraping enemy oars or masts. Some struck home though. Thanos saw one ship start to list as a stone punched through its hull, while on another, men fought to put out the growing flames that licked at their mast.

  The barrage continued, and the enemy fleet started to break up now, splitting to try to surround the island and swarm it. Haylon’s own ships plunged into the gaps that created, coming around the headland like a dart, their archers firing as they flashed past.

  Still, the main bulk of the fleet closed in on the island like a blanket. A blanket with holes punched through it, but still more than enough to smother and enfold. Thanos saw lines of ships break away, heading for either side of the island, while the main bulk came forward for the harbor.

  They crashed against it, and the battle began in earnest. Arrows rained down on the ships there. Rocks and flaming oil followed, turning the water itself into a sea of flames as it spread. Ships and men burned, climbers fell, and the warriors of Haylon fought hard to push them back. The enemy ships pulled away, firing catapults from their decks so that stones slammed into Haylon’s defenses.

  A messenger came running up. “Akila, they’ve landed further up the beach. The Empire soldiers are trying to hold them back, but they’re establishing a beach head.”

  “I’ll go,” Thanos said. “They need you here.”

  Akila nodded. “Take some of the new men. There will be less tension with the Empire soldiers.”