The Way of Pain

by Gregory Mattix

  “Easy, watch that blade. Try to lay him down on his side.”

  Creel didn’t recognize the voice. Another dizzy spell washed over him, and this time, it was too much.

  Blackness claimed him.

  ***

  Creel stood with Rada at the bow of a ship as it crested the rolling swells, wind in their faces, their fingers intertwined. She was young again, her smooth, lovely face free of cares. Somewhere nearby, a green-faced Brom Stormbrew was emptying his guts over the rail between impressive streams of salty curses.

  A mile or so off the ship’s starboard side, the coastline slid by, emerald grass lined by a white sandy beach. The sleek gray shapes of a pod of dolphins leaped above the water to the port side, playfully pacing the ship as they sailed south. Rada’s face was filled with delight as she watched the animals.

  “I think I’ve about had enough of this life. I want to be with you again.” Creel traced his fingers down the smooth skin of Rada’s cheekbone, entranced by her youthful beauty.

  She looked over to meet his eye, and the corners of her mouth tilted slightly, a sad smile. “You cannot, Dak. Not yet. Follow your path to its end—you know the way now. Defeat this threat, and you can have your rest. It’s what you’ve been yearning to do your whole life, so see it done.”

  “The path the gods set out for me. Can this finally be it, after all these years?”

  Rada ran her own hand down his face slowly, feeling the rough stubble on his cheeks and the puckered scar beneath his eye. She nodded slowly, luminous green eyes filled with affection. “Aye, my love. Finish your work and come back to me.”

  Creel took a deep, shuddering breath and opened his eyes. The sky was dark overhead, the lambent glow of nearby firelight illuminating thinning branches of trees with a few dried leaves yet clinging stubbornly to them. A murmur of voices came from near the fire.

  “Creel?” Iris’s face appeared above him. She had a wet, bloody rag in her hand, one she was using to wipe off his face. “How are you feeling?”

  He knew better than to move, for he was in familiar territory—the recovery after sustaining grievous wounds that should’ve killed him twice over. But he waited a moment to take stock of his aches and pains, a practiced response to determine the extent of the damage. His torso was the worst, a deep blazing ache inside where muscles and organs were rent apart and damaged, from both the sword stroke and the quarrel. His head felt as though it had been on the receiving end of a hammer as well. And from all over came the itching sensation of mending flesh. The familiar deep-seated ache in his bones was as yet still subtle beneath all the other injuries, one which wouldn’t mend on its own and would only grow stronger.

  “Like trampled shite,” he finally replied, his voice a dry rasp.

  Rafe appeared at his other side. “It’s good to see you awake. You had us worried.” He offered Creel his water skin.

  Creel raised his head and drank sparingly at first, letting the water soothe the dryness and sour taste from his mouth. “Huh. What happened? Where are we?” He took another, longer drink, then laid his head back down on what felt like a rolled-up cloak.

  “We’ve made camp on the shore of Zoph Lake,” Iris answered. “Don’t do that ever again, you fool. Next time, we stay together.” She squeezed his shoulder affectionately.

  “To answer your other question, we stumbled across a scouting party sent out from Carran,” Rafe said. “They are part of the remnants of the army under Lord Lanthas’s command.”

  “Lanthas. That’s good.” From what he knew of Lord Lanthas, the man was reputed to be a competent and well-liked leader, a relative of the Atreus family, and the person Sianna most trusted to help them. “Have you told this group of our mission?”

  Rafe shook his head. “Just that we had an urgent message for Lord Lanthas. They’ve agreed to escort us back to the city.”

  Creel nodded then remembered something. “My sword. I think I dropped it.”

  “It’s right here.” Rafe held up Final Strike in its scabbard. “I cleaned it off for you, but it didn’t need any sharpening. That’s quite the blade you’ve got there.”

  “And he’s quite the warrior,” a new voice added. The tall barbarian woman’s face came into view as she stood over him.

  “Creel, meet Kavia,” Iris said.

  “I owe you my thanks. That was some impressive archery. Are you of the steppe clans?” Up close, he could see the colored beads woven through the woman’s long black hair.

  She nodded. “Red Bison Clan. And my pleasure to be of aid. Any day I have the chance to kill more Nebaran dogs is a good day.” Kavia smiled. She wasn’t beautiful, her features slightly rugged from a lifetime of sun and wind on her deeply tanned skin, but was certainly handsome, especially when she smiled. “Jahn, he’s awake.”

  The burly veteran came over to stand beside Kavia. “I don’t know how you’re still alive, my good man, but your friends seem to think you’ll make a full recovery. I would’ve lost a sizable wager betting against that, but Nate confirmed you’re on the mend. Queen Sianna is fortunate to have warriors like you. Creel, is it? I’m Jahn, a sergeant of what was once the royal army, now attached to Lord Lanthas’s forces.” He reached down to clasp hands with Creel.

  “Well met. I thank you and your squad for your timely aid.”

  Jahn nodded. “Your friends were fortunate we spotted them, riding like the demons of the Abyss were hard on their heels. Right now, we’re farther afield than I’d like. The Nebarans have patrols crawling all over the plains within three days’ ride of Carran in every direction save north. But we can speak more on the morrow. For now, get your rest. I’d like to try to move out first thing in the morn. Fear not, we can rig up a litter for you, but we should be on the move before sunrise if possible. We have a bunch of extra horses now thanks to that little skirmish.”

  “I’ll be good to ride by dawn.”

  Jahn’s eyebrows shot up. “Truly? Well, I wouldn’t have believed you’d even be alive at this point, but I’ll take your word for it. Anything we can get you?”

  “Is that fish I smell frying?” The scent of roasting meat was making his mouth water.

  Jahn grinned. “Aye, that it is. Freshly caught and enough for all.”

  “I’ll fetch you some,” Rafe offered. He got up and went toward the fire.

  “Two days to Carran if you’re up for a couple long days in the saddle. Rest up.” Jahn nodded and walked off.

  Kavia regarded Creel a moment longer then followed her sergeant. She walked with a stiff, pained gait, as though she’d sustained a hip injury at some point.

  “Sol is watching out for us, that we found them just in time,” Iris said with a smile. “Anything else I can get you?”

  “Aye, just one. I’ve a flask around here somewhere.” He groped for the small pouch on his belt, but it had been removed.

  Iris rummaged around and held up his silver flask. “I doubt this will cure what ails you.” She frowned at it but handed it over just the same.

  Creel unstoppered it and took a long swig. The dwarven spirits burned pleasantly going down, and he felt the calming effects of the liquor steadying his nerves shortly after it hit his stomach. He let out a contented sigh. “You’d be surprised. Try it for yourself.” He offered it to her.

  Iris surprised him once again by taking a cautious sip. She wrinkled her nose and handed it back. “If that’s what fuels you, then Sianna should procure enough to sustain her whole army. There’s no way the enemy could stand up to thousands of your like.”

  Creel chuckled although doing so hurt. “Actually, there is one other thing, if you wouldn’t mind. See my satchel over there?” He directed her to prepare his elixir with a bit of added poppy milk to take the edge off his pain so that he would be able to sleep and mend.

  Rafe reappeared with a plate of seared fish and a chunk of hard trail bread. With their help, Creel managed to sit up enough to eat although his innards protested sharply. He scarfed down the food
and washed it down with his concoction. The fact that it stayed inside him seemed to be a good sign, rather than leaking out through rents in his belly, although the pain was exquisite. He took one last sip from his flask and dropped back into a deep healing sleep.

  Chapter 45

  “Ironshanks, you’re summoned to the manor.”

  Elyas looked over to find one of the guards beckoning him. He exchanged a glance with his sparring partner then shrugged and tossed his training blade aside. He jogged over, and the guard pointed toward the rear of the barracks.

  “Wash yourself first, then change your clothes. I’ll be waiting, so don’t take too long. If you keep them waiting, you’ll be sorry.” The guard walked back over to the gates separating the training yard from the manor, chatting with the other pair of guards posted there.

  What in the Abyss can this be about? Elyas was submerging himself in the bath when a possible reason came to him. Did they find out about the poison and knife? Oh gods, I hope Edara hasn’t come to harm. But then he realized that was foolish—they wouldn’t require him to bathe first. They’d just punish him immediately. Could it be Nesnys? The thought filled him with a mix of simultaneous fear and excitement.

  He hurriedly toweled off and returned swiftly to his cell, donning a fresh tunic and breeches. From beneath his sleeping pallet he removed the poisoned knife Edara had slipped him the past day during an inspection of one of his injuries from the fight three nights prior. The blade was wrapped in a thick bit of hide so the poison wouldn’t touch his skin. Casting the cover aside to strike would be a simple matter. He slipped the knife inside the waistband of his breeches.

  When he returned, the guard gave him a quick once-over and nodded curtly. “Good, let’s go.”

  Three other guards joined them on the other side of the gate. They shackled his hands together at the wrists in front of him and marched him past the infirmary, then he found himself the farthest he’d ever been on the villa grounds. The guards led him up a winding path, skirted the edge of the main building, then headed down a sloping trail and into a sheltered grove with a fountain surrounded by olive trees and neatly trimmed shrubs. A couple birds scattered at their approach, disturbed from their meal of red berries growing on one of the shrubs.

  One of the guards called for a servant. After a couple moments, a young boy approached then took off at a run with the guard’s message.

  Elyas took in his surroundings as they waited in the warm afternoon sun. The day felt like late summer in Ketania although he knew winter was settling in back home. Water burbled out of a lion statue’s maw and splashed into the fountain’s basin below. Past the shrubs was a nice view of the rolling vineyard-covered hills of the surrounding countryside. On the terraced slope nearby, Pasikos slaves tended to the grapevines.

  Nice enough place if you aren’t a slave.

  “You may leave us.” The familiar voice was curt.

  Elyas slowly turned, gut tightening with anticipation, to find Nesnys sauntering down the pathway. The guards bowed and scurried past her, leaving the two of them alone.

  “The way of pain agrees with you,” Nesnys remarked, sizing him up frankly as she approached, her eyes roving over his body. She was attired similarly to the last time he’d seen her, features passable as human again. The sunlight gleamed on her mane of pale hair. She wore her sword and dagger as was customary.

  His heart raced faster at the sight of her, but whatever else he felt was buried beneath a simmering anger as the pain of loss came surging back. Harlan’s pyre had barely cooled. He’d been slain for sport, dragged off the dirt by his heels, entrails hanging from his torn belly. Elyas’s own father had been butchered, buying him and Taren time to escape from Nesnys’s soldiers, their house burned to the ground. Taren might very well be dead—of that he had no idea. His king, Glin, and other friends and acquaintances in the army were all dead. And all because of this monster before him, concealed behind a fair guise.

  “You don’t look pleased to see me. I’ll admit perhaps I’ve neglected you a bit. Yet the tales of your brilliant fight but a few nights past is on many lips.” She approached, stopping about an arm’s length away, a pleasant smile on her face, and for a moment, he could almost believe she wasn’t the fiend he knew her to be.

  “I’ve thought about your offer,” he said at last, refraining from an angry outburst with some difficulty. He shifted his hands slightly downward toward his waist.

  “Have you now? And?” She arched an eyebrow.

  Anhur, please guide my hand.

  “And I’d rather see you sent back to the Abyss.” He slipped the hidden knife free of his waistband, casting the hide covering aside, and was on her in an instant. His wrists were shackled together with less than a foot of slack, but that was no hindrance to plunging the knife into her breast.

  Nesnys didn’t even flinch, and the small blade buried itself in her chest just above her left breast, piercing her burgundy leather jerkin and sinking several inches into her flesh. Black ichor leaked free, staining the white tunic she wore beneath the jerkin. He yanked the blade free to stab her again, perhaps through the throat this time, but she seized his wrists.

  “My, such a diminutive little rabbit-skinner. I’d have expected something more impressive from you, my plaything.” Mirth filled her eyes, her sensual lips turned into a smirk.

  Elyas was shocked by her casual reaction. The poison was fast acting and quite lethal, according to Edara. Within seconds, she’d be feeling the effects. He fought to tear his wrists free of her grasp, but she held on, her lean body tensing up against his at the strain.

  Her smirk turned vicious with barely an instant’s warning. She lunged forward, her forehead butting him hard across the cheek, cracking his nose and rocking his head back. Her knee shot up to strike his groin, but his instincts were honed well enough that he shrugged off the initial surprise and took the blow on his raised thigh instead.

  “You should’ve gone for Bedlam Judge as you desired the last time we met, fool.” Nesnys’s fingers caressed the hilt of the bone dagger at her hip, but she didn’t draw it or press the attack.

  Elyas lunged at her again, slashing at her throat. Nesnys ducked and punched him in the stomach. She grasped the chain between his wrists and heaved him forward into the fountain. His knees barked the stone rim painfully, and he toppled into the water. The cold shocked him as his head and chest splashed into the fountain. Nesnys’s weight fell upon his back, and she forced his head deeper into the water, his jaw smacking the slimy stone at the bottom of the basin. She pressed tight up against him, one hand intertwined in his short hair, the other gripping his throat as she held his face underwater. He had enough presence of mind to hold his breath and bucked upward, throwing his weight in a sideways roll. Nesnys’s nails gouged his neck, and a clump of hair tore free in her grasp. She struck the fountain’s stone lip, and Elyas was atop her in an instant, knife raised and stabbing down once more. She blocked, catching his wrist again and rolled sideways, dropping them to the ground. Elyas scrambled to his feet. Nesnys was slow to rise, and he charged but realized a moment later he was doing exactly as expected, blinded by fury. Her boot slammed into his stomach, and he was launched overhead, going heels over head and crunching down into a shrub, branches snapping and gouging at him before he slammed to the ground. The knife flew from his grasp, but with a bellow he was scrambling back to his feet and charging her once more.

  “That’s enough.” Nesnys barked a few words in a foreign tongue, and he jerked to a halt as if striking a brick wall, caught in an invisible grip of force.

  “As much as I enjoy these tussles, I’m afraid now is not the time.” She stared at him a long moment then sighed, disappointment plain on her face. “You aren’t ready for what I’m offering yet. Perhaps soon, though.”

  “I want nothing you are offering,” he growled.

  Harlan’s death had changed his earlier plan to accept her offer. He was sick of being her pawn in whatever game she w
as playing.

  Yet her disappointment in him stung, to his shame. She was right—like a fool, he’d let his rage consume and blind him.

  Footsteps pounded the path, and the quartet of guards came racing into the grove. They halted, swords and cudgels in hand, uncertain about intervening since the situation appeared to be well in hand.

  “You’ll come to me willingly soon enough,” Nesnys said dismissively, ignoring the guards a few paces behind her. She peeled her jerkin away from the ichor-stained tunic and peered at the hole in her flesh, which already looked as if it had stopped bleeding. She closed her eyes and held up a hand. A moment later, the bushes rustled, and the knife shot through the air, past Elyas’s ear and into her hand. The blade, stained with her black ichor, glinted dully as she examined it. “Such poisons are ineffective against my kind, in case you’re curious. You’ve enjoyed a certain privilege being under my protection, yet if you think to test my largesse again, I shall make inquiries as to how you acquired this blade and the poison. Do I make myself clear?” Her pale eyes bored into his, and no trace remained of the congenial manner she had displayed toward him of late. The unnerving magnitude of her gaze could have pinned him in place as effectively as any magic she employed against him.

  He glared at her, but the last thing he wanted was for Edara to come to harm, or any other innocent she might wrongly suspect of being involved.

  “I hear you,” he growled.

  Her lips curled in a half smile, and her frightening intensity faded. “I’ll have Pasikos arrange for you to fight in the next prime match. Perhaps that shall prove your worth, after which you shall either be ready… or simply dead.” She turned on her heel and strode up the path, passing between the guards, who hurriedly stepped aside.

  “My lady, did this… animal attack you?” the lead guard asked hesitantly.

  “My animal.” Nesnys laughed as though the thought had only occurred to her. “Yes, this beast requires a firm hand to remember who its master is.” She continued up the path and was gone.