He urged the stallion forward and crossed the meadow, silently stopping in front of the Inn. They would both be here; Pierre, who'd raped him and the Innkeeper, who’d sold him. He pulled the horse up, swung his leg over the animal’s neck and slid to the ground.
Nicolette slid forward into the saddle and took up the reins. “I’ll wait for you here,” was all she said.
He only nodded and left her with a squeeze of her knee.
Walking up to the entry, his head cleared, as it always did before battle. But this was no battle, this was a gift. He stepped under the porch and rested his head against the cold and damp wood of the front door, quieting his memories and savoring the moment at hand.
In his head, the sounds of the night left and all he heard was the beating of his own heart. He listened to it, to the steady cadence of it. When it finally steadied to a very slow ka-thump, ka-thump, he instinctively withdrew into the temperament of what he knew best.
Throwing open the door, he walked into the Inn, right into the middle of the big room. It was a full night. Revelry, music, smoke, and laughter filled the space. He stood in the midst of it, terribly out of place, hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword. There were gasps as the crowd gradually silenced and moved instinctively away, backing into nooks, behind timbers and creeping up the stairs. A man had been hammering away on a dulcimer that missed nearly every other string, and the music stopped abruptly.
All who were present stared at the stranger in stunned silence. This one had not come for spirit, revelry or rest. There was only one thing one such as this would seek.
The fire crackled loudly as the Inn became so deathly quiet.
Studying the room, Ravan knew he was here—he could feel it.
Pierre was at the end of the bar, leaning heavily against it. His attentions were lost to a woman who sat next to him, portly and staggering, her bustier nearly falling from her as her breasts threatened to spill from it.
The ominous silence attracted both their attentions within seconds. The woman sobered enough to hitch her blouse and slink quickly away.
Pierre seemed at first confused and uneasy. He only looked dumbly around himself at the crowd.
Ravan remained where he stood, just steps inside the door. The prolonged quiet settled deafeningly upon the room, like volcanic ash, so hushed, so deadly.
No one seemed to recognize him.
“Leave, unless you have an appetite for death.” Ravan spoke to everyone, but looked only at Pierre. His voice was cold, carrying the weight of innocence lost and the futility of time spent trying to bury it.
The crowd dispersed rapidly. There was not one who wished to take this man on, or be caught in the collateral damage that might ensue.
Pierre started to move from the bar.
“Not you,” Ravan stated flatly.
Pierre squinted as he tried to make out the stranger who challenged him, and he snorted. “I’ve no quarrel with the likes of you.”
Ravan stared the man down with all the cold and vile hatred he’d stored for the past seven years. It coursed like a wonderful, burning acid in his veins and the sensation surged tremendous within him. He felt alive, on fire; his senses were so keen as he heard everything, felt the air on his skin, tasted revenge on his tongue.
* * *
Pierre stopped abruptly, swinging his girth to face the harbinger who confronted him.
“I have no business with—” he halted suddenly, squinting, poking his mangled nose out and forward. Recognition of this man vexed him. There was something very familiar about this man, but he just could not put his finger on it...
Then, all of a sudden it was apparent. Pierre’s mind struggled to grasp the images and memories that now flashed before him. He'd sprung this boy-child, half-naked over a bed at this very Inn. This was the very one who had defiled his face so horribly with that God-awful knife of his, the same boy he and Renoir had stuffed face first into the snow bank, before they'd sodomized him thoroughly!
That had been glorious to Pierre, one of his most memorable desecrations. It had seemed they’d left the boy crushed beyond repair that night. He'd lain in silent anguish, curled up and bleeding, naked in the snow with his pants about his ankles.
How wonderfully prevailing Pierre’s urges had been over the boy; how wickedly superb it had been to degrade and violate him. Now, however, Pierre was overwhelmed by the presence of the man altogether, an odd mixture of arousal and apprehension. He struggled to place a man from the memory of the child, and foolishly, his arrogance disallowed fear.
How had he survived? How had Duval, or another, not killed him? Why had Renoir not finished him as he’d said he would, and why was he here? But, mostly—how had he become so...different? This was not that boy! No, not that boy at all!’
“I do not know you!” Pierre exclaimed, the first seed of trepidation planting itself.
* * *
Ravan delighted in this moment, savored it. He could see slow recognition spread across the mute and mangled face of Pierre. He delighted in Pierre’s slow-wittedness. He started to advance, very slowly, so that he could allow comprehension to settle over his foe completely, before he exacted his revenge. This was something he’d planned for a very long time and it would be unspeakably perfect by the time he was done.
“Ah, but you do, Monsieur Steele,” Ravan informed him. “We have much unfinished business. But, you are a busy man—I know this. Busy defiling and desecrating those who would be weak around you. Not to worry, this will not take long.”
The Innkeeper stepped forward from behind the bar. He made to reach for his sword, the one he kept beneath the bar ledge—the one Ravan already knew was there.
He started to object, as though this were just another disagreement at the Inn. “I will have none of this in my establishment—”
Ravan unsheathed his own sword with such vicious and lightening dispatch that there were gasps from those few who'd dared to remain and observe. “Silence!” Ravan’s voice wavered with his passion, but his hand did not. In just seconds, his sword was pointed level and mortal—and mere inches from the face of the Innkeeper.
The owner stepped back slowly, hands lifted and open, still not quite placing the stranger before him. “Easy there; I’ve no quarrel with you, sir.”
“Sir?” Ravan was momentarily dumbfounded. “You do not recognize me?” He poked the sword ever so slightly in the direction of the Innkeeper’s face. “It’s me, you contemptible bastard—Ravan!” For only a moment, his attention pulled from Pierre as he advanced a bit towards the Innkeeper, continuing his rant, “The boy you sold! You stole my childhood, you sick whore-son! You sold it!” Ravan blinked, rage barely held at bay. Everything was red now, a dark and lovely red.
Pierre was edging slowly towards the kitchen door but Ravan swiftly cut him off, stepping across his path. Well experienced in enfilade, or, ‘flanking fire,’ he easily corralled Pierre and the Innkeeper alone to one side of the room.
The crowd was pouring like flood water from the room, fearful and shaken at the abomination who'd appeared from nowhere to lay certain death over any who stayed. They sought cracks and crevices, spilling from the wretched hall. The mercenary who’d manifested before them was black from head to toe, his hair long and tangled, his armor blood stained. His weapons were terrible and his eyes the worst of all—there was no life to this one, only blackness. Surely he had come from Hell itself, and tonight would be doomed for them all!
Ravan turned his attention back to Pierre, but continued to point the sword to the Innkeeper as he spoke, “Move and I will kill you.”
The Innkeeper started to object, but Ravan cut him off brutally as he looked him in the eye, teeth clenched. “Make no mistake! You will suffer—eventually, but speak or move and I will kill you now, as surely as you stand.”
The Innkeeper froze, hands in the air. He did not doubt Ravan’s promise in the least and could do nothing but watch as Ravan exacted his revenge upon Pierre.
<
br /> Ravan sheathed his sword with one swift and skilled twist of his hand and pulled from his waist the knife, the very knife he'd set as a child, antler handle worn smooth from his own hand—Pig-Killer. The knife had come home to its destiny. It seemed almost small in the hands of the one who wielded it.
Pierre cowered at the end of the bar and the double edge of the blade glistened brightly as Ravan moved into him, arcing swift and brutal as he carved. Pierre fell to his knees as the blade sliced. It was a murder of calculated rage. It held years of venom in it and had been practiced in his mind, many times before.
Pierre was blinded as the blade crisscrossed his face. He staggered backwards, clutching his ruptured orbs and tripped, falling with a crash against the wall and sliding heavily to the ground. “Please! Oh dear God, please!” Pierre begged, hand up to his severed eyes, blood streaming down his face.
“Do you remember me now?” Ravan knelt on one knee, in front of him, almost studying him, tilting his head sideways as he watched the man cower in blinded terror. “There is no God where you now go,” Ravan whispered, his voice hoarse and heralding with his deadly promise. The blade entered Pierre’s chest slowly, caressed him gently. Ravan held Pierre by the neck with his other hand, pushing hard so that Pierre gurgled and sputtered, unable to speak or pull away from the slow agony of the knife.
The rapist clawed feebly at the hand about his neck, and Ravan watched his face closely as he pushed the knife in slowly, penetrating him with agonizing leisure. He finally felt the handle throb as the tip of the blade engaged the beating heart. Ravan snarled, rejoicing in the thump, thump, beating that staggered and slowed, pulsing against his grip on the blade. He savored the copper, acrid bitterness of the blood-scent that sprang from around the blade as it sprayed, then flowed thick and hot down the chest of the man. It was a perfect moment—a consummate requiem. Ravan exhaled slowly.
Pierre gasped one more breath as life withdrew from him.
With a final shove, Ravan threw the corpse sideways so that it fell from his blade. It was vicious, savage, and seemed to be over in mere seconds. He stood up slowly, looking down at the man who lie twisted at his feet, obscene, bloodied, and ruined. Casually wiping the blood from his blade onto his pant leg, he returned Pig-Killer to his belt. He turned to see the Innkeeper edging towards the door and he unsheathed his sword. “Stop! You cannot escape me.”
“Please, Ravan...please have mercy,” he sputtered, “I did ill by you, I know, but I have lost her because of it. Please—please spare me!”
There was something about his appeal that made the mercenary hesitate; the Innkeeper spoke as a man who'd suffered, and he spoke of her.
Ravan leaned his head back, peering down his nose at the man he'd hunted for, cleaned stalls for, chopped wood for. This was one whom he'd trusted with all the hopes, dreams, and innocence of a child. This man had taken him from the orphanage, brought him in, allowed her to love him only to cast him away for coin. He’d foolishly thought he might become a son to this man.
Curiosity suddenly overcame him, for it was this man’s bride who'd treated Ravan with kindness and compassion. She'd left her husband on account of a child misused.
He approached the Innkeeper.
To the credit of the man, he did not cower at the fate that played out in all its apocalyptic reprisal before him. On the contrary, he almost seemed to search the eyes of the mercenary, looking with remorse for the child he’d betrayed.
Curious of the metal of this man; he remembered when the Innkeeper had stopped Pierre in the room up above. He surely would have been raped that night, but then again—he'd done so for his own sake, for his own gain.
Ravan recalled looking backwards as he was forced into the cage. He remembered seeing the bag of coin the Innkeeper had taken from Duval as she had been shoved to the ground.
Just then, Ravan lunged viciously, grasping the arm of the big man and dragging it almost effortlessly onto the bar. The Innkeeper was stunned at the strength of the man, being no slight man himself. He was easily overpowered.
Twisting about, Ravan locked the arm under his own, forced it palm down, flat upon the dense, worn surface of the bar.
The sword fell heavy, deadly accurate and with cruel finality as the bar top inherited another flaw this evening. Amongst the multitude of gouges and dents affected by steins falling and being smashed onto the bar in episodes of revelry, anger and drunken brawls, was another mark. The cut it sustained now was of the deepest and most deserved intent of all.
The Innkeeper's hand spun and fell to the floor with a thud. It was severed so swiftly that there was hardly pain.
He released the Innkeeper just as quickly and turned to watch the big man stagger backwards from him to lean heavily against the wall. His victim clutched at the stump, staring at the blood that spurted foreign from it, finally feeling the painful retraction of muscle and tendon.
Ravan casually released the catch on his vest armor, swinging it open, and reached beneath to pull from his shirt a lacing. He held it out, offering it loosely to the Innkeeper. “Bind the wound tightly to stop the blood loss and you may live.”
“Why? Why did you—?” the Innkeeper began.
“So, that you will never accept payment for such as you did to me, ever again—with that hand.” Ravan nodded towards the stump.
“Why do you spare me?” The Innkeeper clutched his bloody stump to his chest. He was breathing hard, his will broken down to absolute and raw honesty.
Ravan was surprised, taken aback at the decency of the question. He thought for a moment before he answered. “She does not deserve to have you die by my hand. It would hurt her, and that is forbidden.” He paused, “You have her to thank for your life.” Tossing the lacing onto the bar, he turned and finally left the Inn, with all of its memories and ghosts now behind him.
Nicolette sat quiet and serene on the horse, her cape drawn close around her. She stared back at the meadow as Ravan walked down the cobbled walk across the small front yard of the Inn. She peered down at him, offered no questions, no verdict. There was no solace for what she knew must have occurred inside. She only slid back behind the cantle of the saddle to allow Ravan to swing onto the horse. Then she reached both arms around him, beneath his armor against his skin and hugged him tightly.
He breathed deeply as he felt the warmth of her skin against his. Spurring the horse, they made for the darkness of the woods, his woods, and they disappeared into the night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
†
From the nooks and crannies of their hiding places, the Old One, his daughters, and the orphans peeked and waited to see what their fate may be.
Duval’s scouts were approaching the orphanage. As the five mercenaries rode down the hill, they saw next to no movement from the small settlement below. It was early, with the sun barely up and the air was very still. Hardly disturbed by even a breeze, smoke ran straight up from the chimney of the small cottage below.
They approached slowly, with caution. If Ravan was here, he would not be caught by surprise. This they knew, because he'd been one of them. But, he had not just been one of them, he’d been better than them. And now he’d deserted them. He was the enemy, and they feared him.
Scanning the rough outbuildings, they spied the small lean-to barn occupied by a single cow. There was a pigsty and an aged horse that hardly seemed fit to work. A few sheep dotted the pasture behind the house. Nowhere was the magnificent black war-horse.
The five of them were no match for Ravan, all of them knew this. Their hopes were to find him, if he were here, and quickly retreat to report back to Duval. They could then return with an army.
They swept the forest’s edge looking for the horse. The stallion would not likely identify their presence; Ravan had taught the horse to be silent when others approached.
It wasn’t until they were much closer, near the flat of the grounds, that they saw the tree. It held the markings of the giant. They hesitated, appre
hensive and uncertain, and seemed to quarrel softly amongst themselves. Each one of them pointed in turn and nodded towards the marks on the tree.
The children watched the soldiers, knew what the mark meant, that it was ‘magic’ and would protect them. They'd stood on each another’s shoulders to rub their fingers across the deep cuts and recounted with amazement the one who'd marked the tree in such a way.
“If they come further, we stand no chance,” Avon worried in whispers.
“They won’t—Ravan and the giant promised,” the Old One replied assuredly. “We must trust them.”
“How can you be sure?” Avon sounded uncertain, unconvinced.
“Of little else do I believe, more than in the conviction of that child,” he spoke of Ravan as though he were still a boy. He tried to explain, “No ordinary man chooses death willingly. These men now face that notion. If they are ordinary, they will leave. If extraordinary, however, they will stay.” He looked at his daughter. “An extraordinary man is truly rare, my dear.”
As though they'd read the Old One’s thoughts, the five men turned, making their way slowly back from where they had come. They disappeared over the knoll just as the sun peeked over the ridge. Their report would be that Ravan was not there and that no one remained at the orphanage—never mind the smoke curling from the chimney.
The small and fragile reality that was daily life at the orphanage would stumble quietly along, noticed by few—and never again to have one taken from them.
* * *
The five next visited the Inn and it was a disturbing stop. The one-handed barkeep and only a few patrons were reluctant to speak of the devil who had visited them. Finally, they told of the dark and horrible events which had befallen Pierre Steele that night. They would tell of how the monster had spent only moments there, before vanishing, casting horror and fear on the entire village. Men no longer slept at the Inn for the savagery that they'd witnessed, and business had been very poor since the horrifying event.
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