Death's Paladin

by Christopher Donahue

  Ahead of the Temple troops, he met up with the Sacred Warband of Sivek. For all of the revulsion he felt at the sight of their vooregas and magic banners, he had to acknowledge their professional manner. The horsemen endured the heat in full battle gear and in good formation. The company of crossbow men, scattered throughout their wagons, kept a good watch on possible ambush sites.

  The Siveko met him at the front of the Warband. The gray-haired man looked more at home in well-oiled mail than in the robes he had worn in Chuvrek’s court. Only an intricately woven reed and feather vooreega protected his skull. Colored pin-feathers spelled out runes of power over his forehead and above each temple. He rode with his stone-headed mace across the bow of his saddle.

  “Good day to you, Knight of Auros. I see we have another crisp morning and can expect rapid progress.” The Siveko’s voice carried well. Several of the leading horsemen laughed or cursed, as their natures prompted. Sivek demanded his followers be brave and disciplined in battle. In exchange, each felt free to voice his opinion to any man, leader or king. But they had held their tongues well-enough before the Masters.

  Karro felt no need to separate his feelings for their ancestors from these men, so proud of their past. “If we’re delaying you, I’ll have Lokhaz turn over the van to your Warband. You could set your own pace and tell our people in Blue Harbor that the rest of us are on our way.”

  The Siveko paled at Karro’s offer. The Kulkas troopers at the head of the army worked furiously to clear the swamp road of fallen trees and other debris. Daily, Karro called on Auros for help in saving men bitten by poisonous spiders or reptiles.

  The Defender of Sivek shook his head. “We came to earn Sivek’s approval by sending the undead back into darkness. Chopping at brush and killing snakes is not fit work for us.” The men around him nodded vigorously.

  Your priestly ancestors were above any kind of sweaty work too.

  Karro couldn’t recall Sivek granting skills for any pursuit but battle. As a commander, it fell on Karro to know the strengths and weaknesses of all of his followers. It was his duty to get the best use of each company, Kestran depended on it.

  He spoke loudly enough for the nearest company to hear. “Rest your mounts here. Wait until the infantry arrives before moving on. There is no call become separated.”

  He brought Vision to a trot. The slight breeze felt good. Several twists in the road separated the Sacred Warband from Lokhaz and the Kulkas men at the van of the army.

  He heard splashing before he saw the men wearing the cougar-head tabards of Kulkas Hold. Three men leading a horse climbed onto the road. The scored mud showed where they had dragged a tree from the road and into the swamp.

  The rest of the company sat on their horses with arquebuses charged, surveying the swamp for ambush. The men on foot splashed water on the horse to remove the greenish slimy mud.

  One man, salt bag in hand, searched the animal for the inevitable leeches. The third man, Lokhaz, grabbed a towel and wiped his face.

  Lokhaz took many of the dirtiest jobs for himself. He led his men by example. His shriveled right arm was bound to his chest. He more than made up for the lacking limb with pure force of will.

  Auros, your ways still surprise me. That injury had made Lokhaz more of a man than he might have been otherwise.

  “May Auros strengthen your blows,” Lokhaz said in way of greeting. He continued to wipe as he walked toward his gear.

  “May he give you the wisdom to be Just,” Karro responded. “The Macmar have suffered more problems. You should set an easier pace for your men. I doubt the main body will make it any farther than here by late afternoon.”

  Opposite from the pile of brush Lokhaz had cleared from the road, the ground made a slight rise―not much, but it offered a better camp area than the previous night’s.

  Lokhaz hesitated, looking around. The land and trees were no different from those they’d passed for the last six days, but Karro suddenly sensed a wrongness about the place.

  “You feel it too.” Lokhaz tossed the towel aside and quickly went about the steps of getting into his mail. Karro stood ready to help, but Lokhaz was well-practiced at working his damaged arm through his armor unaided.

  Lokhaz settled the hauberk into place. “There’s something hidden here. We’ve been too long without some reaction from the sorcerer. Perhaps he has left some vile trap.”

  Like the strange illness that had fallen on Talodan and the others at the inn. Karro called out to the Kulkas troopers, “Do any of you feel sick, a sudden dizziness or weakness?”

  He hadn’t been touched by sickness in centuries. The other men shook their heads. He wished that he had asked Lokhaz to make the inquiry. The Kulkas troopers might not admit any kind of weakness to Karro the Avenger. They looked healthier than any of the other hill-bred men who were in this festering swamp.

  Karro thought back, trying to remember when he first felt the feeling of wrongness. Back by the second broken wagon, something had felt … off.

  A ripple of gunfire sounded well behind him. Tugging on final straps, Lokhaz ran for his horse. The rest of the Tuskarans fell into a loose formation. Flank guards trotted out to investigate the trees at the edge of the ground Karro had chosen for the army’s camp.

  He wheeled Vision around. The Kulkas men could secure this place, and he needed to see what was happening with the rest of the army.

  As Vision started back down the road, everything around them rippled. Instead of a dry rise of land, the flankers splashed in black muck. The full trees were now spindly things and the margins of the road faded away.

  Dark-skinned men stood in some of the nearer trees. Shouting a challenge, they shot reed arrows at Karro. From the stagnant water near the road, more swampmen swam forward. The swimmers stood up in the shallow water and drew long wooden tubes to their mouths.

  Karro jerked his head forward, and the visor slapped shut in time to stop a tufted dart. Vision hopped off the road, steel hooves slicing through soft skin. A swamp dweller fell away screaming. Karro’s sword cut a second swampman down, shattering the man’s collarbone and driving into his chest. The others dove into the shallow water and made their escape.

  An arrow punched painfully into Karro’s ribs. Across a treacherous pool, four Shushkachevans shot from their motionless ponies. As they readied another flight, an archer toppled backward, his shout cut short. The metallic sound of a steel-backed Tuskaran crossbow explained the arrow driven through the Shusk’s mail. The other skirmishers whipped their ponies around and waded behind a stand of vine covered trees. Stylized yellow feathers dyed along the ponies haunches identified these horse archers as members of the Golden Wind tribes. They were far, far from their Eastern homelands.

  The Kulkas horsemen were engaged with a dozen Shushkachevan lancers. The Shusk dragons fared better in the swamp than the Kulkas chargers, but numbers favored the Kulkas men. Karro saw no other Shusks nearby. Lokhaz did not need his help.

  Regaining the road, Karro urged Vision to a trot. In a few heartbeats, they cleared a spindly knot of trees. The Sacred Warband’s horsemen slogged through the soft ground truly flanking the road and closed with several long ranks of undead pikemen, their breastplates and long pike gear that of the Red faction of the Riverines. Even at a distance, Karro could not mistake them for living men.

  Bodies well-drilled in pike work made deadly tools in the hands of necromancers. The dead men were as listless as the fresh Macmar undead Karro fought in the hills, but their muscle memory reactions were precise and lethal.

  The Defender of Sivek led his horsemen through clinging mud to come to grips with the undead. Pikes three times as long as a tall man lunged out of the undead formation. Struggling horsemen and their mounts fell to the well-aimed thrusts, but continued into their enemies.

  While the horsemen rushed off the eastern side of the road, the company of Mist Tuskaran bowmen attempted to laager the Warband’s wagons on the road. Arrows tipped with flaming rags stre
aked out of the brush beyond the western side of the road.

  Bowmen and the wagon’s teamsters plucked out burning arrows until a dozen men fell to regular arrows. Karro shouted encouragement to the Warband and promised to bring help from the Temple troops. Hearing a well-timed arquebus volley followed by a ragged one, he hoped he could keep the promise.

  Karro cleared the Sacred Warband to find a burning bridge separating him from the ordered ranks of the Temple troops. Another bridge blazed behind the Temple troops, leaving them trapped on a long, narrow island.

  Temple spearmen pushed a line of undead Riverines off the island and into the watery mud along the western edge. On the eastern side, Arquebusiers fired on the naked undead wading through the open water. Torch-carrying undead chased Aruna’s floating wagons.

  Through the smoke at the far bridge, Karro saw chaotic movements at the head of the Macmar formation. Dark smoke billowing behind the trees screened the rest of the Macmar file from his sight.

  In the open water, Aruna formed his wagons into a floating island. The company of spearmen and teamsters with the wagons lashed the bobbing wagons together and prepared for the onslaught.

  As the first of the hundred or so undead neared the floating island, Aruna and his teamsters began cutting his entrumas loose. At least the animals could save themselves.

  With their weird croaking, the entrumas surged away from the wagons. Most of the animals dove under the surface. The handful of arquebusiers with the wagons opened fire on the undead.

  Karro felt a sickening chill. Several Temple troopers on the floating island screamed and died. There were no arrows or signs of firearm wounds on the fallen men. Even at the distance of a short bowshot, Karro knew they were killed by some vile spell.

  A wild commotion drew his attention back to the open water near Aruna’s floating island. Powerful roars echoed across the swamp. Singly and in small groups, a score of undead were blasted out of the muddy water by bellowing entrumas, a deadly application of the animals’ water-play. Entrumas bore down on the dark-skinned undead, clamping massive jaws on the attacking ghouls. Human bones shattered under the force of the entruma bites. Within moments, half the undead were listlessly floating, twitching sacks of broken bones.

  After the entrumas dragged the last ghoul with a torch under the surface, the other undead drifted to a halt. When this company of ghouls could no longer burn the wagons, the necromancer must have lost interest. The entrumas mauled the motionless undead as readily as they did the moving ones.

  Karro wheeled Vision around to search for the sorcerers behind these attacks. The Temple troops continued firing into the brush facing the western edge of their island. Occasional arrows flew out in return. A line of re-killed Riverines and freshly dead Temple spearmen lay mingled along the island’s eastern edge.

  Catching the eye of the Temple troops commander, Karro shouted, “Douse the bridge and move up to support the Sacred Warband.”

  As the fire from the Temple arquebuses fell off, Karro heard the clash of weapons back with the Sacred Warband. He urged Vision into the light brush flanking the road. Cutting time off his return to help the Sacred Warband might save some lives.

  He pushed through some tight brush and into a patch of dry, open ground. Seven Shusks and swampmen scrambled away from a map and grabbed for weapons.

  One man stepped forward, confidence in every movement. The man’s white-streaked red hair and rich robes made him seem a likely sorcerer to Karro. The man pulled out a charm of glass and wire. Smirking, the man held the charm up toward Karro and snapped it.

  Karro’s heart raced in a way that had nothing to do with battle rage. Kestran’s face appeared before him. He shook his head as her caresses slipped through his armor. Her voice whispered shocking promises as she stroked him and pressed herself against him. She couldn’t be there, but her unexpected presence came with a clouding of all other awareness.

  His chest tightened. Blood pounding in his ears drowned every other sound.

  Trying to ignore the illusion of Kestran, Karro put his centuries of discipline into reigning in his racing pulse. The pressure grew; black spots appeared at the edges of his sight. His heart was tearing itself apart.

  Kestran remained in the center of his consciousness. She stroked him in ways that he remembered from his youth. He reached for her and then remembered his duty.

  He had endured the Rites of Devotion and lived their demands for most of his long life. He accepted the death pressing in upon him as he had accepted every other challenge placed before him. With his renewed calm, the wild pounding in his chest faded.

  As the sorcerously-induced grip on his heart passed, the Kestran in his mind ceased her frenzied attempts at seduction. Kestran would never behave that way. The spell had manipulated him by putting her features over some primal form of lust. As Karro reeled in the saddle, his chest and arms spasmed with pain.

  A sharp punch in his ribs nearly threw him from his high cantled saddle. Vision snorted and danced away from a spear-wielding Shushkachevan. Karro shook his head and saw a swampman on the ground, his forehead caved in by Vision’s hoof.

  The blow from an axe tore the shield from Karro’s arm. He tightened his grip on his sword and brought it across to slice into the forearm of the axeman. Vision spun to the left as a spear blade slid across Karro’s back.

  The sorcerer pawed frantically through a pouch at his side. Karro kicked Vision forward, knocking two Shusk mercenaries aside and bearing down on the sorcerer.

  The sorcerer screamed, threw up his hands and fell into a peasant bow. In a surprisingly youthful voice, the sorcerer wailed “Master, no!”

  Karro hesitated for an instant, then split his skull with his sword, silencing the cries.

  Vision spun to the right, kicking out at the injured axeman.

  With a looping cut, Karro deflected a spear thrust and removed the Shushkachevan’s hand. The wounded men fell away and the others crashed through the brush.

  The struggle had carried Karro to the map. He stabbed down, bringing the painted skin up and stuffed it under his belt. He made for a path that should take him toward the Sacred Warband when something tickled at the back of his head. Like an insect buzzing near his ear, it irritated without real contact, dragging his attention back to the sorcerer’s body. Karro dismounted and approached the body. The one-handed Shusk moaned and crawled out of Karro’s path.

  Karro cut the strap of the pouch at the sorcerer’s side. The buzzing grew more intense. With a feeling of dread, he opened the pouch and four items. Each was very different in form, but all radiated trapped misery.

  The sense of wrongness was overwhelming. Even with the metallic sounds of battle reaching him, Karro’s greater duty lay here. He pulled out the bits of colored glass and knotted wire―a simple, milky blue bead that looked a bit like an eye with a cataract, an intact form of the passion amulet Scribe Minateva had shown him in Mist.

  Karro didn’t need to know the details to imagine how much suffering had gone into these trinkets. It outraged his sense of Justice. But even more he felt the pain bottled inside. In his inability to help them, he could only grieve for them.

  Karro bent his head and closed his eyes. He hadn’t cried since burying Ystret centuries ago, but now felt as he had after his first battle. They had destroyed their enemies but at a terrible cost in family and friends. Karro had shed tears for the dead and dying then.

  Kestran had made him feel so many of the good things of life. The bitter parts had come back with them. He let his tears flow freely.

  After a while, he wiped his eyes. The feeling of hopelessness had drained away. Perhaps his offering had helped those trapped souls. He opened his hand for a last look before returning the charms to their pouch. He hoped a Student of Carranos might have some remedy.

  The colored glass had melted like sugar. Stains of vivid colors marked his gauntlet. The wires slid apart and the mess in his hands gave off no hint of pain.

  Karro remo
unted. The battle sounds still invaded the clearing. The disciplined pace of Temple gunfire and the brassy tones of Sivek’s Horns told of his army’s success against the ambush.

  His brush with death at the sorcerer’s hands and the even more draining release of the victims of the trinkets left Karro listless. He leaned down to dispatch the one-handed Shusk mercenary. The axeman was already dead and the others long-fled.

  The heavy smell of smoke filled the swamp. The ambush had accomplished its likely goal―most of the army’s supplies were lost. Karro would have to send the Macmar and possibly the Sacred Warband back to the Plains.

  He removed his helmet and ran a hand through his sweat plastered hair. Whether he went to Blue Harbor with ten thousand men at his back or went in alone, he would go. He owed it to Kestran and to Auros. If his invasion had no value beyond the release of those souls that he had felt trapped in the trinkets, it was worth the cost.

  ~~~~~

  “By the True God, I thought we were plagued by politics!” Zamkrik spat over the channel wall as the huge Unogovpi ship drifted away from the pier. Hundreds of shouting Greens packed the shaky wooden pier, threatening to topple it into the single deep channel into Blue Harbor.

  Kestran nodded slowly in agreement, though she understood the fear behind all of the Riverines’ actions. The shipmaster already had more passengers than he could feed for the journey back across the sea. If any of his new passengers carried plague, no one would survive the trip.

  Supplies in the Tuskaran Ward were stretched thin with the other refugees. After the shipmaster refused to take any passengers but high born members of the Red aristocracy, none of the Tuskaran Houses would sell food to him.

  Beyond rumors of a Tuskaran force chopping its way through the swamp and this first ship of the late summer trading season, there was precious little hope to buoy the people. Kestran could only repeat the same story she had told before Voskov beat the Blue Harbor army—“Karro is coming.”