Chased By War

by Michael Wolff

  “What...what do you mean, my Grace?” There was something...something about the man that grabbed you and never let go. “There have been Companions every new generation.”

  “So they say. So they would have you believe. Tell me, my dear girl. Have you actually seen a Companion?”

  “There are scrolls, documents –”

  “I did not say scrolls or documents. I asked if you have ever seen a Companion. Have you?”

  Somewhere in the corners of her mind a slight resistance flared, but even that crumbled under the unflinching blue of Omeros’ eyes. “No. No I have not.”

  “I’ve always found it amusing, this hierarchy they cling to. Tell me. There was a saucy little number by the name of Keira in the kitchens.”

  “My Grace?”

  “No one is born to their calling, dear. Yes, Keira. She made some wonderful...biscuits. Does she still remain with the order?”

  It took a moment for Shayna to wrestle the memory to the ground. “They were...they were all killed. The Citadel is no more.”

  “An ill omen, in an ill world.” His tilted slightly, his eyes afire with the lantern’s glow. “Is this our hero of the day? Hm. Hard to believe victory coming from such frail a source.”

  “He’s not frail.” The frost in her words sent Omeros back a step. Good. Any foothold in a battle was a good one, small or no. “He risked his life in pursuing the assassin.” Stupid, stupid fool. “He hadn’t done so; more lives would be taken from that monster. I think it’s time for you to leave. The hero needs his rest.”

  “True. True.” His silence hinted at truths still vital and yet unknown. “Good night, Companion.” She blinked at the sight of Brother Daniel chasing after the Cardinal’s footsteps; with all that was going on, she damn well forgot he was there. Good riddance.

  Slowly Shayna pocketed the emblem and offered murmured thanks. If only she felt like she was not shaking hands with the devil. In measured silence Shayna kept her stance. Where one fool appeared, there were always a score goaded into action by the first failure. Not once during the whole night did the handmaiden let her staff waver.

  Mykel rose when the sun rose high enough to spit light into the weary chamber and immediately complained and cursed like a man slighted of his private possessions. Such a child. For some reason, it made her smile.

  It was a different acolyte that greeted them at the doors leading to the lands beyond. They were wrapped in ancient symbols that Shayna knew like the back of her own hand, but feigned ignorance for Mykel’s elaborate explanations. He was eating it up like clotted cream. She watched him now with hidden reluctance. Tell him now. He abandoned you to play a duel with a demonic knight. He hurt you without a second thought. Tell him, damn you! Tell him!

  “Shayna?” The Companion blinked as Mykel’s face filled her vision, soft brown eyes filled with genuine concern. “Shayna, are you all right? This can wait if you’re tired.” All the resentment melted away. Impulsively she kissed him and smiled at his confusion. “What was that for?”

  “Ask me when this is finished.” Side by side they marched into the lion’s den.

  “My Lord Cardinal? Is there something else you need?”

  Omeros chuckled at slim Lara shrouded in the blankets of his bed. White silk, they were, though red with sin if man possessed an elemental’s vision. He himself stood at the balcony, his muscled chest covered with a carpet of curled gray rolls. From the darkness Omeros watched the librarian and Companion walk out of sight and into the next leg of their journey. It burned him to leave them be. But at least there was some pleasure in rooting out motives and agendas.

  What is it that intrigues Lord Samaritan so? A simple Companion. The bearer of her Order’s secrets. Separating those secrets from her would be a pleasure; it maddened him that perhaps that activity would be granted to another. But there would be other, greater prizes to seek. Prizes that would render others to mere pittance. Despite himself he smiled.

  That smile, however, withered at the next subject of his analysis. The crippled librarian. The boy reminded him of the tale of John Handone, the silversmith who dared to work on the Lord’s Day and got his fingers fused together as punishment. At least Handone had a trade. Lazarus’ cripple was trailing on the old fool’s wake. The thought of Lazarus set his blood to broiling, as it always did. Perhaps the cripple could be of use after all.

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  What? Omeros whirled and found Lara smiling at him. Only it wasn’t really Lara. Her lips were as bright and full of the confidence of an independent woman, and her eyes were bits of jade glittering with sensual amusement. “You’re not Lara.”

  “Very perceptive.” Omeros gasped in horror as the imposter’s skin rippled like the pond disturbed by an errant pebble. Her buxom yellow curls flattened and unfurled into scarlet flames ending at the earlobe. The clothes were a final touch, changing from simple wool to the myriad shades of flame.

  “Aeon.”

  “You didn’t think we’d trust the fate of the world to you, now did you?”

  “You...” His back struck something hard and cold. The balcony, a voice whispered from sanity; the only sane part left. Everything else was terror and disbelief. “All this time...”

  “Yes milord.” A simple shrug and it was Lara pacing back and forth, her left shoulder sinfully bare. Then the illusion rippled again, and now it was Lara’s mother smiling at him. He still had the scars from her nails clawing his back the first time he fucked her. One by one Lara’s entire family, each one made a woman by his hands, appeared to smile or wink or laugh in that tingle of rustling chimes in the wind.

  “We have very, very special plans for you, Cardinal. I wouldn’t try to move your pawns. Lord Samaritan does not look kindly to usurpers.” Then she was gone, as though she’d never been in the first place.

  “No.” Omeros hands wrapped around the marble balcony. Twilight had caught up to him, but he saw none of it. He hunted the memories of years gone by, poisoning every victory or achievement. We have very, very special plans for you. How many successes could he call his own? How many times had the scales tipped by his usurpers? He had thought Providence had guided his stars, and now doubt robbed him that fantasy. It wasn’t every day the king found himself a pawn. His face gray and ashen, Cardinal Omeros wept like a newborn baby.

  LI

  Mykel paused. Earlier exploits had made him wary of silence, and everything around him spoke of the signs. The path ahead should have been filled with people. Physicians, merchants, mendicants and hawkers – none of them were around. The path was empty. He traded glances with Shayna, and she nodded in turn. She senses it too. Which more than likely meant trouble. Cautiously, but with a sickly feeling of walking into a trap, the pair advanced.

  A woman stood at the next turn. Her hair of fiery hue glowed, as did her robe, shimmering in such a way that it seemed like she wore flame itself. There was a sparkle of mischief in her eyes, and her lips pursued as though enjoying a private joke. Immediately Mykel thought of her as a courtesan, though why any kind of courtesan would want to be in the middle of this mess was beyond him, much less a courtesan standing guard. Given the history of his luck so far, it wasn’t entirely chivalrous that he put himself in-between the two women. “Hello. Who are you?”

  Again, she smiled. In any court, she’d been batting her eyelashes or cooling herself with a fan. “I’m here for you, Mykel LeKym.”

  The librarian blinked. “How do you know my name?”

  “I know all about you, Mykel LeKym of the Bloodline LeKym. But time is short. It would be a great convenience if you would come with me. Now.”

  A diplomat, she was not. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Stand aside.”r />
  The smile stayed where it was, but the eyes, oh how they blazed in anger. “Very well.”

  Mykel was never able to follow what happened next. The flame-haired courtesan hadn’t changed a step, but her body blurred and shivered...and then he was caught in her embrace, the knife in her hand glinting at the hollow of his throat. Caught unawares. Again.

  “I wouldn’t,” she said conversationally. Shayna was tense, her whole body coiled and ready to launch her attack. But the tension drained from her when the courtesan’s knife tightened closer to Mykel’s throat. “Brutish things, knives. I prefer other means, but sometimes the old ways are best.”

  Shayna did not find that funny. “What do you want?”

  “So forward. You have no care for this boy?”

  The Companion refused to raise to the bait. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  “My name is Aeon. I am...”

  “An assassin?”

  “A watcher of history.” The playful tone was gone now. There was no disguise hiding the harsh, flat cold in her voice. Don’t fuck with me, little girl. She would slaughter Mykel without a second thought. “Would you like to play a game?”

  “Get to your point,” she replied calmly.

  “This place is home to an especially deadly fiend called Logarth Shadam. Bring me its head, and I’ll set you both on your way.”

  Shayna’s face was a tight mask. “You expect me to trust your word?”

  “I expect you to realize you have no other options. Unless you want the boy dead, that is.”

  Shayna’s eyes flared. “If you touch him, there won’t be any stopping me.”

  “I believe you. Now, if you would...”

  The Companion took one last look at Mykel, then strode past the pair and disappeared into the night.

  Finding this Shadam was going to be hard.

  Thick mist laid a blanket of cold along the ground, swirling in the wailing wind. Shayna drew her cloak closer, for the winter chill was augmented here, eating through her clothes to the goosed flesh beneath. She shrugged the notion away and started down the path.

  The mist grew thicker, and the Companion’s patience was running short. There was no sound but the clack of her own footsteps. She could almost hear her Citadel teachers at her ear. Do not ever think you are safe. The hills and valleys can hide opponents that you cannot see. It was a message of paranoia, as Shayna protested in random flashes of youthful rebellion. You must trust yourself enough to know the difference.

  The mist reached up and brushed a hair from her ear. Her sword whipped into a defensive stance as she spun a full circle. Nothing. A man could hide in plain sight and still be invisible in this fog. Reluctantly Shayna slammed her blade back into the scabbard and continued onward.

  Sounds continued to tease her. A child’s giggle, the tromp of feet pounding the ground, and the thinning of mist, driving slivers of night into obscurity, mimicking movement. Shayna felt as though she had crossed into another realm, a secret place divided from the path ordinarily populated with people, yet parallel to it. Thus the ignorance of those mortals who called the path their workplace. Manna. Magic.

  She ignored it all. She knew the rules of paranoia far too well, and she was not going to play the game of a victim just because of the circumstances. Eventually the mist thinned completely, and Shayna groaned in disbelief.

  A graveyard of metal unfolded before her. Dragons writhed on necks of interlacing girders, jutting from the earth in a desperate, futile attempt to escape its fouled grave. Nor had its partial freedoms been generous. Bits and pieces were missing; an eye here, a jawbone there. The wind howled through the openings, curling back on itself, screaming its misery for the entire world to hear.

  From a thousand nooks and crannies they came, spinning off the shadows as though born to them. They were a thousand different shades and yet they shared the same build: a pair of arms and legs topped by a head, a pair of eyes glinting with the calm confidence of discipline. Demons they were not, but warriors hungry for battle.

  Some attacked with melee weapons. Shayna’s blade laughed at the ease in which they were cut down. Some attacked with projectiles. Her shiisaa giggled at the ease the projectiles were directed back upon their masters. Some attacked in groups, and her steel sang at the ease their faces lengthened in shock when their own tactics failed them.

  More of them filled the battlefield; two or three for each one slain. More of them meant less time to react. The graceful motion of the katas shortened to precise, fatal strikes. Desperately the Companion threw out every attack she could think of. Kicks and elbow strikes confused the enemy, kept them off balance. Grabbing hold on one warrior’s overextension so that the warrior from behind decapitated his comrade instead.

  More. More. And still more. Less time to react. Less time to think. Even more reliance of the deathblows. They were learning now. Every move read and analyzed. Counters came easily. Steel sliced lines of fire upon the skin. Shayna refused the pain for even one second, one heartbeat, one breath. Death was but a stone’s throw from closing in. Was there any hope of escape?

  “YIELD.” The word quickened through the battlefield with the heavy weight of authority. Swords rattled as they slammed home in their sheaths. No, not all of them. The warriors parted to either side like a stream splitting along a boulder to let their leader through. Shadows fell from his frame with every step, layer after layer of features, culminating finally under the moonlight.

  Ruthlessly Shayna lanced the intimidation from her mind. The face that greeted her was egg-white, adorned with cragged green veins, a sickness that fit the obsidian, carapace-like body armor fitting from head to toe. A great blue cape, ragged and chewed on the edges, completed the picture, flowing in the same unnatural way as Sutyr’s smoke-cloak. Sutyr. For a moment Shayna flashed back to the tournament at Wyndei Darteria, where Sutyr dominated the area with his cruelty. If this being was of the same mold as Sutyr...

  No. Shayna forced herself to breathe. She would not let panic lay its hooks into her. So, she spat out the name frightened souls blamed of troubles in tales of darkness. “Logarth Shadam.” Another name came up from the wells of memory. Myrrh. Shayna faced a Myrrh. Convenient how Aeon never mentioned that.

  The warrior versi was not surprised. “THAT WOMAN SENT YOU.”

  Shayna gaped. He talks. Moreover, he appeared to have all the faculties of a normal person. But he’s not a person, Shayna thought, and he’s not like Sutyr. The eyes that peered through her smoldered with arrogance, but it was far less than the eldritch power Sutyr radiated with such malice.

  “THAT WOMAN THOUGHT YOU CAPABLE ENOUGH TO DEFEAT ME?” The voice was enough to put shivers down spines, but Shayna steeled herself. Myrrh was not invincible. Her confidence rebuilt itself when Shadam drew a moonlight sword from a hidden sheath. The Citadel had trained her to deal with such odds.

  “YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHY SHE SENT YOU, DO YOU?” The sword hissed as in pain. “IT IS OUR MASTER. WE ARE FORBIDDEN TO HARM EACH OTHER DIRECTLY. SO, SHE SENDS A CAT’S PAW TO DO THE CHORE INSTEAD.” He chortled, as ugly a sound as there ever was. “COME AT ME IF YOU ARE THERE, CELSIUS. COME AND MEET YOUR DEATH.”

  The moonlight sword lashed out from the side, almost blurring with its speed. But not fast enough. Shayna halted the attack with a mere flick of her sword. The nameless warrior seethed with the ease that countered his technique. The rage that framed his face added to the fire overflowing the sword now.

  Had it been anyone other than the Companion, the sinuous motion of the blade would have taken the head off. Only the Citadel possessed the ancient scrolls of centuries long past. Shayna saw the weapon for what it was and acted accordingly. The moonlight sword howled as it missed the
target by a hairsbreadth.

  But something was happening. The sky grew heavy, foreboding. The electric charge of the air, flashes of eldritch power that growled and seethed across the battlefield. Shadam, obviously. As a servant of darkness, the versi had many an unnatural weapon at his disposal. But what kind?

  Shadows sped free from Shadam’s body in opposing directions, shade and shape resolving after a short distance. In the span of heartbeats there was a line of twelve Myrrh, each one a mirror to the next – and suddenly there was no air in Shayna’s lungs, and thunder cracked her ears. The world wouldn’t stop spinning. She didn’t realize she was on all fours until she tasted the blood in her mouth.

  Get up. That sound in the breeze...was that chuckling? Anger gave her the strength to see the line of shadows, to hear the laughter ripple through the imposters in cold, metallic precision. Shayna clutched the anger as a lifeline in the storm of her humiliation. She exulted at the stunned silence cutting through the arrogant laughter. Weren’t expecting that, eh? Thought you were facing a helpless girl? “Come on, if you’ve got any stones! Come on!”

  The threat was a mistake. Again the world shivered, again the thunder of snapping ribs, again the nausea that built and built at the back of her throat, razing tongue and teeth in a sickening spasm. Get. The hell. Up. The Myrrh and its shadows gaped at her as though she was the mouse attacking the cat. For how much longer, there was great doubt.

  No. A warrior’s true weapon is not his steel. It is his mind. Someone had told her that. Think, dammit. Think! Shayna looked up at Shadam and its shadows, and was again astounded at the similarity between them. It’s like they’re one person. The answer struck her like a sledgehammer.

  “Why does he lead you?” Confusion hollowed the copies’ faces. Shayna stabbed a finger at Shadam for emphasis. “You’re just as strong as him! You have the same abilities. Who decided that he gets to be your leader?” It took a titanic effort not to smile as the idea began to take root. “You? No. You? No. None of you? He just announced himself superior and hauls you about like chained dogs?” Anger began to furrow each brow. “You do realize what he’s doing? He’s holding you back. Look around you. You’re all holding each other back.” A moment of silence to enhance the ominous chill of his words. “You know what you have to do.”