Hero of Fire

by P. E. Padilla

  She didn’t have time to gawk, though. More of the long, sinuous shapes were burrowing up from the ground and trying to climb up Benedict’s legs. Motion off to the side warned Kate that the things were coming up in other places, too. One was surfacing very close to her own feet.

  The creature was fast, but not nearly as fast as Kate’s sword. She thrust the point of her blade into it, pinning it to the ground much like Benedict’s throwing knife had with the other one. It flopped violently, tearing the hole her sword made even deeper, but finally settled down when its injuries overcame it.

  Kate took a closer look. The thing’s body was long and slender, probably about a foot and a half in length and a bit thinner than her wrist. It looked like a branch from one of misshapen trees they had seen scattered in a few places earlier that day. Its skin or hide even shared the same texture as the vegetation did, rough and striated.

  These creatures, though, had four legs that each ended in a single, long curved claw. They scuttled like insects on their four hard appendages, making a tck sound as they moved over hard dirt or rock.

  They also had spikes along their spines, and one end of their bodies split into a wide mouth full of sharp-looking teeth. There were no eyes visible. Perhaps most disturbing was that the creatures’ short tails ended in another long spike or stinger.

  The ugly thing made Kate shiver.

  “Szitrith,” Jurdan said, somehow appearing next to her. “Nasty creatures, though not nearly as deadly as some other of the denizens of Hell. I think that lump Ben was sitting on is a nest. Bad luck for us.”

  “What do we need to do?” Kate asked, feeling stupid for doing so.

  “Nothing else. We’ve already killed them all, or at least the ones that didn’t run away. We’ll need to move on from here, once we check and make sure Ben is not too injured. Every edge of the szitrith is sharp, but at long as none buried its stinger in him, he should be okay.”

  Kate replayed in her mind the sight and sound of Benedict tearing the thing from his arm and some of his flesh going with it. She had a bad feeling about it.

  “What if one did sting him?” she asked as they both walked toward the injured man. Her head continued on a swivel, making sure one of the beasts wouldn’t sneak up on them.

  “That would be…” Jurdan faltered as he reached Benedict and saw the condition of his arm, “very bad.” He looked Benedict in the eye and addressed him. “Damn, Ben, did it sink its stinger into you?”

  Benedict’s eyes were glazed. He turned his head sluggishly to look at Jurdan, blinked a few times, and made a real effort to focus his eyes on the other man. “Yeah. It punched its tail into me before I snatched it off my arm. Some of my flesh went with it when I ripped it off.”

  “Oh no,” Jurdan said. “What do you feel right now? Tell me exactly. How does your arm feel, your chest, your head?”

  Benedict blinked at him again and groaned softly. “Arm is on fire, chest feels like someone is squeezing it, have a headache that feels like someone tore the top of my skull off.”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Jurdan said. “Peiros! Peiros, get over here. The szitrith stung him. Deep.”

  Peiros came running over. He thumbed open Benedict’s lids and looked into his eyes. He shared a look with Jurdan. It made Kate hold her breath.

  “Koren told me about a time when the rookie he was with got stung,” Jurdan said. “He tested the venom and it was acidic. Eats the limb from the inside out.”

  “What are you talking about?” Benedict said. He seemed in his own little world of pain, not totally coherent.

  “He cut the man’s leg off to stop it from working its way up through the bones. He was able to bring the man back to Gateskeep, but he had to be discharged, obviously. A Black brother can’t do his job with one leg. He survived, though.”

  Both Jurdan and Peiros looked at Benedict. Kate did likewise. The man seemed to become a little more coherent when he heard what they said.

  “You’re not cutting my arm off,” Benedict said. “Kill me instead. If I don’t have the Black, I’d rather not live.”

  “There is…perhaps another way,” Peiros said haltingly. “The poison, it is acidic?”

  “That’s what Koren said,” Jurdan responded.

  Kate had something to add. “I read about it in the library, that many creatures in Hell had acidic poison.”

  Peiros ran ten feet to where his pack lay. He grabbed it and came back, digging through it as he went. Finding a small vial and an empty jar, he used a flat piece of metal to scoop some of the dirt at his feet into the jar and poured a few drops of the liquid in the vial into it. The previously colorless mixture immediately turned a royal blue color.

  “The soil, it is caustic,” Peiros said. “We could perhaps try to render the poison less harmful.”

  “Yes,” Benedict said, his eyes a little clearer. He was obviously focusing his entire attention on the conversation. “Whatever it takes. Just don’t cut off my arm.”

  “I can make a tincture from the soil and…” he bit his lower lip as he pondered it. “…and we can inject it into the wound. It will hurt. Very much. It may not save the arm. It may make things worse. I believe, too, that it will cause heat within you, possibly doing serious damage to your insides.”

  “Do it,” Benedict said. “Do it now. I can feel it moving up my arm, like molten lava under my skin.”

  Peiros looked at Kate. She was confused for a moment until it finally hit her. He was asking her permission. She was the leader of the team.

  “Are you sure, Benedict?” she asked.

  “Yes, absolutely sure. Do it.”

  Kate nodded, not trusting her voice.

  Peiros pulled out another vial and a flask. “The alcohol will help to make it a thinner solution,” he said as he scooped dirt into the empty jar, poured in the liquid from the vial with a practiced hand, added a bit of the alcohol from the flask, and then swirled in some water from his water skin. When it was mixed into a dark, muddy compound, he took out a piece of cloth, put it over the jar, and poured the liquid through the cloth and into another jar. The liquid was still dark, but it didn’t seem to have any large particles in it.

  Peiros reached into his pack one more time and took out a bone cylinder with a sharp, tapered end. He pulled out a small straight stick with a flat piece of bone at the end and poured the liquid into the cylinder, then carefully placed the stick back inside. Kate realized it was a small plunger. When she spied the tiny cap on the sharp end of the cylinder, she understood what would happen next.

  Benedict couldn’t look at what Peiros was doing. He paled, like he was about to pass out.

  “I am afraid this will hurt, my friend,” Peiros said.

  “Do it,” Benedict repeated.

  Peiros removed the cap, jabbed the sharp end of the bone cylinder into the open wound on Benedict’s arm, and pressed down on the plunger until it reached the end of the stick.

  Benedict screamed again, even more loudly and violently than before.

  Then he passed out.

  Jurdan caught the man before he fell and laid him gently on the ground. He and Peiros busied themselves with cleaning the wound and bandaging it up.

  “Now,” Jurdan said. “We wait until he wakes up. We’ll know within a day or so if what we did helps or if it will kill him. At this point, unless we were to cut the arm off now, it is up to fate. He will live or he won’t. There’s nothing I can think of to do but to keep him comfortable and make sure he eats and drinks. If it doesn’t get worse in the next day or two, I think he’ll make it.”

  The next day’s travel was slower than the previous days. Benedict stumbled along, stubbornly setting one foot in front of the other and shambling in the direction Peiros led them. He weaved and wobbled, but never did he utter a complaint.

  Kate wondered at the man. The pain he was in must be incredible. Two different foreign liquids were inside his arm, one trying to eat the bones and flesh from the inside out and one tr
ying to eat the other liquid. She couldn’t imagine what he was going through.

  He had insisted on putting his mask back on for the day’s travel, bluntly stating that if he was to die, he would do it with his death mask in place. When she was able to catch a glimpse of his eyes during the day, they were glassy with pain, but there was a look of concentration in there as well. He wasn’t incoherent, just fighting pain most men could not.

  Twice during their march, Kate caught Visimar glancing over at Benedict with what could only be concern and regret in his eyes. When he realized Kate had seen him, he looked away, the scowl he usually wore for his former friend in place once again. It gave her an idea.

  “Benedict,” she said, decreasing her previous pace a little to fall into step with him, “how are you doing?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, his voice hoarse from the previous night’s screams. “It hurts like all Hell, but I’ve been in worse pain.”

  She didn’t think so, but she didn’t challenge him on it. “Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need to stop to rest?”

  “No.”

  “Anything else?” she pressed. “Food, water, anything?”

  He stopped and turned his masked face to her. It really was a horrid thing. It looked like a desiccated corpse’s face, or an ugly demon imp, the skin wrinkled and withered, but twisted with a too-wide grin showing not only all its teeth, but much of its blood-red gums. With Benedict’s intense eyes visible through the holes, it made Kate shiver.

  “I mean no disrespect to your position as leader of this team,” he said, “but we of the Black are not used to, and do not desire, coddling. I appreciate you trying to help, but for now, what I need is distraction, not conversation about how much pain the damn creature’s poison is causing me.”

  Kate shifted her eyes to the ground. “I’m sorry, Benedict. I was just trying to help.”

  “I know you were,” he said raspily. “That’s why I told you so nicely instead of cursing you from here to the gate.”

  She couldn’t see his mouth under the mask, but the way his eyes changed, she had no doubt he was wearing that unnerving smile of his. At least the mask covered it.

  “If you would like to talk about anything else to help distract me from the pain, I would welcome it,” he told her. It almost sounded like an offer of truth.

  “Very well.” She paused, as if thinking of what to say. The first thing that came to mind went straight to her mouth and out before she could stop or call it back. “Visimar told me about your past. Why the two of you are so aggressive toward each other.”

  Benedict staggered a step as if she had struck him. “You don’t know anything about that situation. He knows nothing about that situation.” The way his neck tightened up and his head froze in position, she knew he was gritting his teeth.

  She had already opened the bottle. She might as well continue to pour out the medicine.

  “Can you tell me what happened, then?”

  He swiveled his head slightly, like he was checking around them, then his eyes settled back on her.

  “Yes. Yes, it would be good to finally tell someone what happened. If I die, it is probably something Visimar and his family should know.”

  He drew in a big breath, but grunted in the middle of it. He rotated his shoulder and flexed his left arm as much as the bandages would allow.

  “It’s not too long a tale,” he said, “so I’ll tell it complete, from start to end. That seems the easiest way.

  “No doubt he told you we were best friends and that I was to marry his sister Aleria. He probably also told you he took the trial to enter the Black and I stayed home because I was sick and that I would take the next set of trials.”

  He waited for her nod and then continued. “It wasn’t too long after Vis left that Aleria took a liking to Holan Drek. He was a goat’s ass if ever I saw one. Before she took a shine to him, I felt like breaking his jaw, but even more so after she began sneaking away to spend time with him.

  “I wasn’t sure what was going on, just that she seemed to not care for me anymore. When I found out that she had been sneaking out to meet him, all her strange actions became clear. Still, we had been friends for years before we became more intimate, and that friendship still mattered to me.

  “I kept her secret from everyone else. We acted as if we would still be married. I wished every day that Vis had been there so I could have talked to him. He would have known what to do. But he wasn’t. He was still training with the Order.

  “One day, Aleria came to me, bouncing with excitement, but also trembling with fear. She was with child, she said. It broke my heart because I knew who the father was.

  “She said she was going to go to Holan and tell him straight out. She thought he would be happy, though she worried what others would think. I told her not to go.

  “I knew his type. He occasionally treated her poorly, though the most he did was to push her or slap her once in a while. If he had done more, I would have killed him. But he was a volatile man, especially when he’d had drink. It was not the kind of news he would want to hear. It was the afternoon, a time when he usually had already drained a few ales and maybe a whiskey or two.

  “She argued with me, said he would be happy and then they would be together, a family. The more I tried to talk her out of it, the angrier and louder she got. She finally screamed at me and burst out of the room. She ran up the hall, shouting that I didn’t know what was best for her and that she never wanted to see me again. Her parents heard that part.

  “I wanted to go after her. But if I chased her, her family would have gotten involved, and it would have become even worse. Instead, I slunk out of the house and went home.

  “When the family found her body, it was clear she had been beaten and strangled. Several bones were broken from the brutality of the attack. The local magistrate pieced together who had done it, but I didn’t need any time to figure it out. She had told the bastard she was going to have his child and he reacted badly. They probably argued, which enraged him, and he attacked her.

  “I went straight to him when I heard. He suffered under my blades, but not nearly as much as he deserved. I left his pieces out for the scavengers a dozen miles outside the village. No one ever found them.

  “The son of a bitch killed my Aleria, killed Visimar’s Aleria. If I had chased her, it still may have happened, but it wouldn’t have happened that day.

  “Her parents and other relatives blamed it on me. I chased her away, forced her to go into a situation she never would have been in had we not argued, they said. I never told them about the baby or that she had been flirting with that flame for months before she finally got burned.

  “By the time Visimar heard the news, it was too late for him to come for the passing ceremony. I’m not sure what he thought, but I had no doubt his parents wrote and told him what they thought happened. I sent two letters but they were returned, the seal still unbroken. I could only hope that when I saw him, I could explain.

  “I went ahead with my trials at the next testing and got accepted into the Order. Though I tried to talk to Vis, he would never allow me more than a few words before he became so angry I thought he would draw his swords. He actually did draw them once. I didn’t defend myself, and I got this to show for it.” He pulled up his mask and ran his finger along the scar on his face. “Rather than to aggravate him for nothing, I stopped trying to talk to him.

  “It’s a funny thing, dislike. As the years went by and he treated me like trash on the street, I began to resent him and his stupid belief that I was in the wrong. My own distaste for him started to grow. Now, it’s really all I know. I am innocent of causing Aleria’s death, but the way he treats me, I’ve become bitter and cruel. The only thing keeping me sane is my hatred for the demons. Every one of them wears the face of Holan Drek to my eyes, and I kill him anew with every demon I meet.

  “How is it fair that I was only guilty of loving Aleria, and one act that I didn’t com
mit has ruined my life?”

  He ducked his head as if he didn’t want Kate to look into his eyes. She walked silently beside him, not knowing what to say. So many years that these two former friends had been at odds, and all for a misunderstanding. At times, she thought life was cruel to her, but now she felt ashamed of herself. Benedict had said he had felt worse pain than his arm dissolving from the inside out. Now she knew he felt worse pain every single day.

  21

  The day dragged on, as the others had before, but Kate found herself lost in thought. Benedict’s story struck a nerve in her. She had been so disappointed that others didn’t welcome her into their lives with open arms. Sure, her squad had tried to kill her, but that was nothing compared to a childhood friend drawing his weapon on you.

  She had a lot of thinking to do.

  Should she tell Visimar what Benedict had told her? She wondered what the man would do, or if he would even believe her. She glanced over at him, marching ahead and to the right of her. Would news like that be good or make things worse?

  As she pondered, a flash of movement on the edge of her vision streaked by. If she hadn’t been looking at Visimar, she never would have noticed it. She shifted her gaze and her heart nearly stopped.

  Several creatures had surrounded them.

  “Incoming,” she said, drawing her sword and swinging her shield down from her back onto her arm.

  The men reacted as seasoned professionals. Their weapons leaped into their hands and they moved into position, backs to each other, facing outward toward the threat. Benedict held his sword in his right hand, though he couldn’t use his left to hold his shield. He was in the middle of the circle, the others protecting him.

  Kate had gotten into position as quickly as the others. Jurdan was to her left and Aurel to her right, with Peiros next to Jurdan and Visimar next to Aurel. As if by instinct, they had all put their death masks on their faces so quickly they seemed to magically appear.