by J P Corwyn
“As much as anyone else here, yes. Go get some sleep.” Kaith tried to smile. It felt alien on his face. It felt as if he’d fallen asleep in the middle of an open field with the sun blazing down. His skin was too tight somehow. He suspected it was fire-reddened, as when, as a small boy, he’d stood too close to his father’s forge. A good many of them seemed to have that cast to their skin. A gift from fighting so close to the pyres they’d made of Westsong.
After confirming that Kaith was certain; Raun took his leave. While Kaith waited for the man’s replacement; he once again found himself thinking back, hearing Lanian’s voice: far and wee in the back of his mind.
“Catch me!”
✽✽✽
TWO
Lit by Westsong's last autumn fires; the blood-kissed sky stole the moon: diffusing its ragged silver glow amidst the low-slung storm clouds as they spat endless, freezing rain upon the town's last defenders.
“Catch me!” Lanian shouted, voice gleeful.
Kaith's head snapped upward, he was helpless not to. He saw the boy leap from the second-story window: the one from which the girl had been thrown. Lanian's face wore an incongruously sunny grin as if he were jumping from the loft of a barn into a pile of new-mown hay. As he fell; the top of the manor house exploded in bright white fire.
Kaith didn’t think, he reacted. He drew the arm holding the girl back across his own body, twisting at the waist. She tried to grab his arm, then his shoulder, but there simply wasn’t time for her to get a strong grip. Shrieking inarticulately; he flung the girl directly at the falling form of Lanian in hopes to divert his suicidal jump.
Kaith’s aim had been true enough, but Lanian wasn’t struck by the girl. Instead; he caught her in midair, landing deftly on his feet a few yards away from where Lanwreigh was fighting.
For a moment it looked as if the boy were going to thrust the dead girl away from him, for he had stretched out his arms: distancing her from the center mass of his body. A heartbeat later, however, he twirled her around as small children had been twirled for years uncounted by parents and older siblings.
For three revolutions he spun her: slowing as he ended, bringing her to rest against his chest, arms under her bottom, laughing delightedly.
In that moment; Lanian almost sounded the way he looked: like a boy of ten. The girl, too, stopped her feral snarling and giggled as she rode in his arms: her hands now clasped behind his neck. Her laughter made it sound as if, at some signal, she’d stopped playing whatever game had previously taken her fancy, and now that it was over: was being taken away by the infectious amusement that seemed to be the sole purview of children.
As for Lanian; there was something unhinged and insane about his laughter. As it had been when the siege had begun before dawn; it was jagged and unnerving. It scratched at the secret places of the mind: scrabbling for purchase.
“What an excellent throw!” Lanian chided. He’d barely managed to get the taunt out amidst the peels of laughter that continued to erupt from his slight frame.
As Kaith’s hand found the hilt of his sword again, muscles working to remove it from the twice-dead thing he’d last used it on; his mind finally accepted what his ears had been hearing. The boy’s voice wasn’t the only one coming out of his mouth. There was a lower, deeper, more guttural voice underpinning his every word, and every sound.
Lanwreigh dispatched the last of Sir Cedric’s immediate retinue. Turning to look for a new foe; his eyes fell on the children. Lowering his sword; he walked toward them.
“You have to put a stop to this.” He said.
“No-I-don’t!” The boy delivered this well-reasoned response in a kind of singsong.
The dead girl in his arms giggled at Lanian’s snotty, mocking tone.
“Lanian; look what you've made me do!" Lanwreigh's voice was angry and increadulous. "I've had to kill all of fathers men, and see to father's own end!"
Absurdly; Lanwreigh sounded very much as if he were disciplining his younger brother, explaining to him firmly what he'd done wrong and why he was to be punished. Absurd or not; his voice was both firm and steady. All trace of the childish tears which had been swimming in his eyes for most of tonight's fighting was gone as if it had never been in the first place.
“So?” Lanian laughed. “He was too old and tired anyway. As for Hamian,” he looked past him to the body of Lamwreigh’s most recent sparring partner, “…whom you finally bested I see, and the rest of father’s old guard; they were all useless!”
Lanwreigh was horrified. He crossed most of the remaining distance between them, inverted his sword, and drove it to the ground point first. Dropping to one knee; he positioned himself so they were at eye level with one another: a mere yard between them.
“That’s simply not true!”
“It’s absolutely true,” Lanian said. His voice had lost most of its jocularity, and as he put the once-girl in his arms down beside him, still holding her hand; he regarded his brother with a gaze that spoke of a strained species of pity. “Half of them would have put a knife in your back or poison in your wine if they thought it would serve their purposes. Who will miss them? We’re finally free! Don’t you understand that? We were only waiting for father to die so you could take over as Lord of Eastshadow.”
“Lanian, you’re wrong.” Lanwreigh’s voice strove for calm, and to maintain the authority his additional five years of life should’ve granted him.
“I'm not. It was always meant to be that you sat in judgment over the people of Eastshadow, and I stood at your right-hand whispering in your ear. I've always been smarter than you, and you've always been a better warrior." Lanian paused for a moment to look in Kaith's direction. The body of Sir Cedric was only a few feet beyond. "Father was a fool. He was more concerned about petty, surface politics than real power. He learned only enough about battle and intimidation to impress those directly around him."
“Father was content because he had already achieved greatness. He was well respected at court, well respected on the tournament field, well respected in times of war or strife against Goblins or Bandits. He was even successful at arranging betrothals for both you and I: expanding the power and influence of our household and securing our future… Lanian; where is this nonsense coming from? Who’s told you to speak so?”
Kaith could see a single but steady stream of arrows raining down from the upper floors into the crowd of dead things his brothers and sisters were fighting to the east of the manor. Either Arafad or Yaru had survived the explosion of the top floor, it seemed.
He heard Marcza’s clear voice barking commands, though he couldn’t make any of them out. There were still so damned many of them, though!
As if in answer; Kaith saw one of the once-men across the yard, backlit by the inferno of the moat, raise his left hand, palm out. He was suddenly flanked by two more shapes – men who hadn’t been there a moment before, he would have sworn.
Replacing that fresh horror with one closer at hand; he saw movement a few feet to his left, close to the manor house wall.
Slowly; Robis began to stand up. He cast about for a moment before his eyes fell upon Kaith. He tried a weak, tired species of that quicksand smile, nearly managing it before his face registered panic.
“Kaith?" Robis's tone was one of wheezing confusion. "Kaith, help …me-" No sooner had this desperate request escaped Robis's lips, then Kaith again witnessed the dreadful change: just as he had in the girl. Robis's young and handsome face grew pale and then was suffused with that moon-kissed, blue misery: twisting into a feral snarl.
Lanian’s tone grew bitter and disappointed. Kaith could hear it even as he turned to square off with Robis.
“Oh Lanwreigh,” He began. “You’re just like him. He made too much of his wine, practiced at powerlessness.”
“I am the heir,” Lanwreigh snapped. “I am the elder brother, the eldest son, and I will not suffer you to speak ill of our father.”
"I'm not speaking ill of him, Lanw
reigh, I'm speaking the truth of him."
From the corner of his eye; Kaith registered the boy shakes his head and brushes the hair back from his brow before continuing in a maddeningly reasonable tone.
“Our father confused a child's authority over his playmates with the real thing. He believed the respect of a few manorial knights when he should happen to come into contact with them was equal to ruling over them and commanding their loyalty." Though his voice still ran before him in a child's high tones; his words, his diction, even his obvious grasp of these insanely adult arguments was striking. He might have been thirteen or thirty, reading from some great political philosopher's text, rather than a boy of ten. Of course; the boy of ten had shown agility, endurance, and a control over undeniably dark magics that made questions of his age-irrelevant.
Kaith was doing his best to fend off Robis's attacks using just his shield. He knew it was foolish; that the true Robis had already passed beyond any fear of pain Kaith might bring him. Still, he found himself trying not to hurt the youth.
Through eyes that swam with misery and grief; he saw Samik over Robis’s shoulder, across the courtyard. A towering mass of muscle; Kaith could make him out easily as he picked up men and beasts alike, carried them several feet, and threw them bodily into the fires of the moat. As he turned around to go back to the fray from one such sojourn; he saw Kaith and raised a hand. Picking up his shield from the ground where it lay nearby; he sprinted across the thirty feet of intervening courtyard and opened his mouth to shout.
"K-k-k-kuh," Samik began. He growled, hitting himself in the head with his free hand, and tried again. "K-K-Kuh-Kuh-Kaith!" His face split in a wild, relieved smile before he pressed on. "Com-mand!" He both nodded his head and thumbed back over his shoulder to where the bulk of their forces were still engaged with the ambling, snarling dead. Unless his eyes were deceiving him; the number of foes his fellows were contending with had grown again and by no small amount.
As Kaith opened his mouth to protest, his eyes flitting toward Robis, Samik reverted to gesture. He shook his head at Kaith, pointed to Robis, and hefted his own shield as he picked around the corpses which were, blessedly, no longer moving.
Lanian watched this with mild interest, reached down to take the little dead girl’s other hand, and; taking a leaf from Kaith’s own book; he hurled her with inhuman strength directly onto Samik.
“No!” Lanwreigh’s shock and horror bloomed even as the little girl soared over his head.
Lamwreigh had done well to warn Samik, but had shouted the wrong word.
“Samik! Left!” Kaith bawled. The command was correct, but even as he’d issued it, he knew it’d come far too late.
Samik spun, surprised, and tried to bring his shield up to cover his left side, but seeing a child flying at him; he hesitated: half opening his arms to catch her.
She fell into his waiting, half-hearted embrace, uneven fangs first bared, then sinking into his throat by way of the shelf under his massive chin. He fell an instant later, gurgling.
Kaith wanted to move, wanted to run over, wanted to help him: to do something! He knew, however, that if he let go of Robis; he would be forced…Would be forced…To do what, exactly?
Robis was already dead. Kaith was no sorcerer. He'd held some vainglorious hope that he might be able to find a way to what: restore Robis to life? Had he truly thought he could somehow relight the spark that'd driven Robis to fight with such speed, ferocity, and heart? Surely he wasn’t that arrogant, was he?
Kaith found that he was, or at least that he had been. His heart sank. What was he doing? He was again reminded of his first thought upon the Countess calling him into service. He was a smith's son. He had a talent for melee combat and was accounted clever by even Greggor, which was high praise indeed, but a Knight?
✽✽✽
THREE
Kaith heard Lanwreigh’s voice. It pulled him out of the depressed futility that threatened to swallow him once again. His head snapped toward the sound, even as his body continued to strive to keep Robis at bay.
“Lanian,” Lanwreigh half cried, and half growled his brother’s name. “I am the elder brother. I am the heir to the house of Eastshadow! You will obey me! You will stop this madness, and you will do it now!”
Lanian had opened his mouth in another of those far-too-wide grins. The expression fell away as if Lanwreigh’s voice had been a slap. His face suddenly became serious. As he spoke; he bowed his head in contrition, his voice small and wee.
“Get up, Lanwreigh,” said he. “I can’t bear to see you on your knees.“
“Then stop this… Put an end to all of this, now.” Lanwreigh’s voice was soft, insistent, and pleading.
Kaith could see on his face that he'd heard the shuffling behind him. He'd registered the sound and knew that Samik was rising. He locked eyes with his brother, held his gaze for twin heartbeats, and spoke a final word, "…Please."
Lanian met his brother’s eyes for a moment, bowed his head, then nodded. “Am I your brother, still?”
“Always,” said he.
“I’m yours, and you’re mine?” Lanian’s voice grew softer still, choked and brittle. He sounded as if he were struggling to stave off sobs.
Lanwreigh nodded, his face wet with fear and hope in equal measure.
“You’re still my brother, even after all of this. Father’s gone. It’s my job to look after you now. Whatever dark thing is inside of you; banish it, let it out, send it away. It doesn’t own you. It’s like you said; I’m yours, and you’re mine.”
The roof of the manor house collapsed. The fire had burned away enough that the entire second story could no longer support its own weight.
As the upper floor fell in; Kaith was pelted by falling and flaming debris. He briefly lost his footing. As he stumbled backward, desperately trying to maintain his balance; Robis shoved forward, causing Kaith to fall on his back with enough force to snap his teeth together with an audible click.
He brought his shield up to bear, covering the majority of his prone form, and then smelled burning flesh.
Lanian spoke as if nothing had happened. He still sounded close to unmoored, but it was as if the destruction that surrounded them held no power over him.
“Very well. Embrace me then. If I’m really still your brother; embrace me. Promise you’ll keep me safe.”
Kaith rolled up into a kneeling position, his shield in front of him then stood. He saw Robis; face down in front of him and burning. He'd stopped moving. Samik was burning as well, though he still stood a few feet away from the sons of Eastshadow. The once-girl's piteous form lay smoldering at his feet, mewling a final, feral whimper before it too fled flesh.
Kaith looked at the brothers, then caught Lanwreigh’s eye as the youth laid his sword down at his side.
Voice hesitant; Kaith asked, “Lanwreigh? Is it over?”
Lanwreigh nodded. Standing; he strode the three or four feet that separated him from Lanian. He bent and scooped the boy into his arms, held him tightly, and cupped the back of his head with his right hand.
Lanian returned the embrace with a desperate abandon that suggested the boy was teetering on the edge of his mental and emotional limits. He laid his head on Lanwreigh's right shoulder, his arms and legs clinging tightly as if his life depended on it.
“I have you,” Lanwreigh soothed. “I have you. I promise.”
The Countess was suddenly there, stood framed in the manor’s main entrance. She had a loaded crossbow in her hand, Kaith noted, though it was pointed down. Bruised and bloody; her face, hands, and hair showed obvious signs of being burned.
“Thank you, Lanwreigh,” Lanian crooned. His cheeks were wet beneath his closed eyes: reflecting and softening the firelight. “I have to admit, I was wrong.”
Lanwreigh eased the boys head back so he could look him in the face again. He was smiling the sort of relieved smile that only comes when a child is finally out of danger, safe at home.
"Did
you really think I'd have abandoned you?" Lanwreigh asked this with a voice that was gentleness itself: with no hint of accusation.
Lanian shook his head, smiling. He leaned forward so their foreheads touched. Through a contented sigh; he demurred.
“Of course not. It just turns out that I prefer you on your knees, after all.”
As he said this; a muscular, guttural growl heralded an eruption of red vapor: as if it were being ripped from his mouth. It had small tines of violet lightning: little patches of bruising along its roiling red surface.
The boy's limbs still held him fast in his brother's arms, and Lanwreigh couldn't getaway.
It forced its way into his mouth and nose, driving him down to his knees as Kaith watched helplessly.
When all the vapor had left the tiny body; Lanian’s arms and legs released, and he fell backward onto the pavement as if he’d been thrown.
He instantly began to cry and wail. “Give him back! Give him back!” Then Kaith saw the terrible creeping change race across Lanian’s face. His color was draining away: being replaced by that miserable, pallid blue. His voice, too, seemed to be draining away: from cries of anguish and abandonment to high-pitched, growling, near-keening noises.
