The Path of the Sword

by Remi Michaud

  No. His only option—and it was not much of an option, really—was to let Calen have this victory. It was tainted. Maten was not happy with the losses to his men. Calen, though not fallen from grace, was only a small step away from complete unrecoverable humiliation. Perhaps when the remainder of the platoon arrived with their prisoners, an opportunity would present itself.

  “'From this day forth, you will be my voice among the people. You will tend to them and care for them. You will lead them to great things.' And Shoka wept. He wept tears of joy. He wept tears of love for his God. And he turned, weeping, to his people and he said...”

  That was all there was to it. Thalor had lost this round, but he would take home the prize. He would be wary. He would be observant. As soon as his opportunity arrived, he would take it in both hands and he would destroy Calen once and for all. And he would get his prelacy. He was not an ambitious man, not by any means, but he was not aiming too high, after all. He was simply striving for that which was rightfully his in the first place.

  “...My friends, Gaorla has spoken. I will lead you into a world of peace. I will tend to your needs and see to your prosperity. I will do this and I will pray to Gaorla, the one true God, and he will guide my steps. Follow me, for I will see it done as our God has commanded!”

  Once he had his prelacy, it would be a small step to Grand Prelate. No, he was not ambitious. But he would dutifully take that which was rightfully his.

  “Amen!”

  Chapter 49

  Thankfully, they had given him use of a small tent. The late season storm that raged outside would have made laying in the snow unbearable. There was not much of anything in his tent, which was little more than a piece of leaky canvas staked to the ground and supported in the center by a rotting pole, but the furnishings were irrelevant. He was out of the wind. Besides his cot—and the pathetic moth-eaten blanket on the rickety wooden frame could barely be called that—there was a brazier that provided just enough warmth to keep him from shivering.

  Jurel sat on his cot and stared at his hands. Nearly four weeks had passed since he and Kurin had been captured. Since Mikal had been run through and left for the vultures. Only four weeks and he was in remarkably good health. His ribs were only sore when he moved the wrong way, the gash on his arm was little more than a scar, and his head, well that was like night and day. Barring the occasional bout of abuse that he endured at the hands of one vengeful Soldier or another, he was almost completely back up to snuff. He could probably start training again—if he were not still shackled of course. And if he had his sword.

  The tent flap opened, letting in a gust of snow-laden wind that swirled around the cramped confines like a dervish, and Gaven, hunched over to clear the low hanging tent, smiled at Jurel.

  “Good afternoon, Jurel,” he said, stretching his hands out to the brazier. “Miserable day out there.” Fully armored as though he was waiting to ride into battle, and covered from head to toe in snow white trousers and cloak, he looked like one of the legendary snow beasts that reportedly roamed the eastern mountains. Rubbing his hands vigorously over the glowing embers, he sighed. “Much better.”

  “Hello Gaven,” Jurel said. “What brings you to my neck of paradise today?”

  Though he was his captor, Gaven had proven to be conscientious and kind. He was more like a host than a jailer and over the past few weeks, Jurel had found himself involuntarily liking the young Soldier. He had an easy going attitude that Jurel found quite disarming despite the less than ideal circumstances, and he was certain that if they had met under different conditions they would have been fast friends.

  “Oh, not much,” Gaven replied airily. “I just thought I'd pop by for some tea and biscuits.” He searched the tiny tent with disappointed eyes. “I see you weren't prepared for company. Well, I suppose if there's no tea or biscuits, a little chatter will have to suffice.”

  His face took on a dolorous expression and Jurel could not help but laugh at his friend's morbid humor. Gaven joined in, laughing quietly, then they settled into a comfortable silence.

  The third son of a minor earl in the south, Gaven had joined the Soldiers of God because there really was not a whole lot for him at home. His eldest brother, Morgan, hated him, slighted by the fact that Gaven had won the heart of a young lady that Morgan had wanted to marry, and he had been turned out almost as soon as their father had died of heart failure, some two years gone. Being a pious, idealistic young man with nowhere else to go, he had joined the Soldiers of God in the hope of being able to help bring peace.

  It was an unfortunate choice. He had been disillusioned within weeks of joining. The corps was not at all what he had envisioned. There was no saving innocents from barbaric invaders, no repairing flood washed homes, no providing aid to the less fortunate. There was only the hunting down of men and women that some priest or other heard had broken one tenet or another. But, having signed a five year contract of service, he was bound for another three years. He had made it abundantly clear to Jurel that the moment his service was up, he would bow out gracefully and without hesitation. He had his inheritance to live on and he was certain he could find something more palatable than hunting and burning folk who were guilty of no more than being overly gifted healers who mentioned off-handedly that Valsa must have guided their ministrations, or of having the wrong book in their collection.

  If he chose to apply himself, Gaven's natural charisma and intelligence would have gotten him far in the Soldiers of God. Perhaps all the way to major or colonel. He was thankful then, that Gaven had no intention of staying on. Once Jurel and Kurin put their plan into effect, once they escaped, Gaven would probably be in for a tough time. He was sorry for it.

  “So how's Higgens working out?” Jurel asked more to fill the silence than to hear about the ill-tempered lieutenant.

  Gaven snorted and shook his head before responding. “Tight-ass? He's just as pleasant and engaging as ever. Any more engaging and he would have to shit through his teeth.”

  “Tight-ass. I like that,” Jurel laughed. It was a nice play on the man's first name: Titius. With a clink, his shackles shifted and his laughter stopped. “Damn it, but I hate these things.”

  Gaven fell silent as well and he picked at the black iron chain. “I wish we could just take them off.”

  Hope flared in Jurel, a hot dizzying flash, and it was all he could do to avoid pleading that Gaven do just that. Instead, schooling his voice, he said as jovially as he could manage, “You and me both.”

  Gaven's eyes remained glued to the shackles as he pondered. Finally, he nodded and Jurel felt his heart thudding in his chest. Would he? Would he?

  “Why not? You're my charge anyway, and you haven't tried to run away since we caught you. It seems unfair that you can't even stretch in the morning. And your wrists. By god, but they're chafed.”

  Producing a crude key, barely more than a twisted piece of iron, from one of the sundry pockets in his cloak, he inserted the end into the tiny hole and twisted. With a snick, the cuff fell open and dropped onto Jurel's lap. Another twist, another quiet snick and both his hands were free.

  When the leg irons had been removed, Jurel stood and stretched his arms wide, luxuriating in the feel of long unused muscles moving again for the first time. “Oh, that's good,” Jurel moaned.

  “Yeah, yeah. Try not to get too excited,” Gaven replied with a wry grin. “It may not be for long, depending on what the captain says.”

  Jurel sat, nodding and smiled. “Still, any chance to move as a human should is welcome in my books.”

  “I know. But you have to promise me something. You have to promise not to try anything foolish,” his tone had turned from warm to somber so quickly that Jurel had to look twice to make sure it was still Gaven that spoke to him.

  “Would I do that?” He was the epitome of innocence.

  “I heard about what you said to the captain the first day we got you, how you had to do anything you could to get out of here. I'm
placing a great deal of trust in you, Jurel. Please don't let me down.”

  Jurel nodded, trying to look contrite and honest all at the same time.

  “I'm going to regret this.” With a sigh, Gaven rubbed the back of his head.

  Of course he would. Kurin and he had worked out a plan. It was not much of a plan but it was what it was. In the end, the hardest part had been figuring out how to get Jurel out of his shackles. He liked Gaven. He did not want his friend to get in trouble but he had to get away. They were going to burn him alive. He smiled at Gaven and patted his arm reassuringly and Gaven returned his smile. It almost broke his heart.

  Chapter 50

  “God's what a shithole,” he thought to himself as he limped along one side of the narrow muddy street. “I can't believe he lived here for so blasted long.”

  Keeping his dark, tattered cloak wrapped tightly and the hood pulled up, he moved stiffly and with a slight hunch; the walk of an injured man. The people who dared look at him, gasped and quickly averted their eyes, and moved away from him. Some were so repulsed by the apparent vagabond, they crossed the street, muddying shoes and hems and trousers alike. Even those that did not look at him, still moved away as though he posed some sort of physical threat to them. The end result was that, as he limped, favoring his injured ankle, the crowds separated around him like a wave breaks over a boulder. At least he did not have to fight his way through the throngs that milled in the streets.

  Shivers wracked him as he walked; he needed a healer. He was sweating and he was cold in turns, in nasty little cycles that left him all the more spent as the fever played its insidious games with him. He had seen strange things the last few days. He had seen his mother smiling at him, lovingly calling to him that dinner was ready. She was dead these past fifteen years but he had seen her. He had seen Lofren, his old teacher, berating him for getting another stance wrong. Another living dead. There had been a creature, a snake with eight legs or perhaps it was a spider with a snake's sinuous body, that had reared up and glared malevolently down at him from unimaginable heights. He had nearly wet himself with that one.

  This time, he saw colors. A strange rainbow that intermingled, weaved in and out, dancing with the grace of a water nymph. The colors glinted and gleamed and sparkled in the weak, steely light and he stopped, stared, mesmerized by the sight. This hallucination was different from the others. The others had all come when he was so exhausted he collapsed. The others had happened directly in front of him and then disappeared within moments—the only reason he had been able to hold his water when the snakespiderthing appeared was that it was gone before he completely lost control. He was tired, certainly, but he was still moving. The shimmering lights were not far at maybe a hundred paces, but they approached with their graceful dance. Eighty paces. Seventy.

  As they approached, the colors bled away, until all he saw was a dull gray gleam. Instead of dancing, the hazy gleam bobbed up and down rhythmically, and continued to approach.

  “Aw damn,” he muttered.

  This fever would get him killed. It dulled his senses. Hid the obvious. Those weren't fey rainbow lights conjured by his imagination. Well, they were, but the pretty colors hid the truth as pretty colors often do. That was armor.

  He spun on his heel and stumbled, hissing in pain. Wrong foot. Pushing open the closest door to him, hoping it was a shop and not a home, he walked as normally as he could manage and took in his new surroundings. More colors. What in bloody blazes? He squeezed his eyes shut and wiped away the icy sweat and when he reopened his eyes, the world resolved itself.

  The colors remained but this time, they were the mundane colors of cloth. Racks stood in neat rows, draped with shirts and trousers. The walls were lined with shelves that held rolls of linen and cotton. Here and there, a bolt of brightly colored silk or satin shimmered like errant diamonds scattered amidst coal, in the faint light of the torches that hung on the walls. A seamstress's shop? Maybe a tailor's.

  “What do you want?” a surly, prissy voice asked from somewhere off to his right.

  Turning in that direction, he searched the dimness for the owner. For a moment, he saw nothing until movement caught his attention. He was about to dismiss it as another vision when a man, presumably the tailor, stepped out from behind his counter and stopped a few paces from where he stood.

  He was a thin stick of a man. Even through clothes, bony elbows and knobby knees were visible. He guessed the tailor was about fifty years or so: a band of graying hair wrapped around the back of his head like a basket handle while the top was so bald it shone more brightly than the silk, tiny wire-frame glasses perched on the end of the beak he was certain the tailor called a nose, and eyes squinted disapprovingly from a face that was worn and lined but had not yet graduated to wrinkled and decrepit.

  “Well?” the tailor asked. “What do you want?”

  “I-” He paused, not quite sure what to say. I'm hiding from the guards. I'm sick as a dog, feverish, and I'm seeing my dead mother and snakespiderthings. I'm looking for a man that I've never met or even seen so that we can...what? So that we can... “I need a healer.”

  The tailor snorted. Gesturing to his ragged, tattered, and altogether filthy cloak, he smirked scornfully. “I think you need more than that.”

  “You're right,” he replied. Lifting an edge, if it could even be called an edge anymore, he smiled weakly. “I need a cloak too.”

  The smirk dropped away and the tailor glared at him. “No charity. Get out,” he said and turned away.

  “I can pay of course.” Desperate, he lifted his purse and shook it, filling the air with the tinkling of coins.

  The tailor froze in his steps. With a broad smile, he approached. “Well then, that's different,” he beamed. “Why didn't you say so in the first place? Let's take a look and see what we have, shall we?”

  The magic of silver never failed. The tailor, his demeanor completely reversed, started puttering around his shop, fingering one fabric then another, all the while keeping up a litany of friendly chatter: the weather, “cold isn't it?” And why not? It was still winter after all; the lack of custom, “Something's afoot. Causing my trade to dry up.” If he only knew the half of it.

  “As I take a better look, I can see that your cloak was of a fine cut, hmmm? How about this one?” He lifted a bright yellow thing off of a rack.

  “No. Something a little more...conservative I think.”

  “Of course. I should have guessed. My apologies sir.” The flood of words continued (inane gossip, “Javon was mighty put out with Niklas for letting them out of his sight. I heard Niklas is scrubbing pots at the barracks now.” Better men than this Niklas had lost that particular quarry) and he searched the racks for what he thought would be appropriate. “I take it from milord's condition that the roads are dangerous to travel, hmmm?”

  “Something like that.”

  The tailor lifted another cloak, this one so red it made his eyes hurt. “This one? No. More conservative, you said.” He laughed and shook his head. “This one doesn't exactly scream conservative, now does it?” He continued, from one rack to the next, expertly flipping clothes out of the way to expose others to his scrutiny. “I hear that strange things are happening in the east—did you come from that way?—soldiers are roaming the caravan routes. They say—this one? No. Too blue. I can see that you are a man of distinguished tastes—they say that strange lights appear in the skies at night and that an entire platoon of God's Soldiers were found slaughtered.”

  “You don't say.”

  “Hmmm? Well, no matter. Here! I think this should do.” He pulled a length of dark fabric. It was hard to tell if it was blue or green, but it looked well made, about the right size, and warm.

  “Fine. How much?”

  “For this? It's a fine piece. Beautiful craftsmanship. I made it myself, you know. Look at the thickness of the wool-”

  “How much?”

  The tailor's oily smile faltered and he stared wordlessl
y at him for a moment before remembering himself. The smile returned, though it was a little more sickly.

  “Five silvers.”

  He guffawed, certain he had misheard. “Five? Five silvers? Are you insane? That would buy half your inventory. No. Do better than that.”

  “I'm sorry, milord, but times are hard. The roads are dangerous and I don't know when I'll get my next shipment in. A man's got to feed his family, after all.”

  “His family and half the neighborhood apparently,” he growled. The bloody swindler!

  “I can see that you have encountered difficult times so I will be generous. Say four, and ten.”

  “Two.”

  Sweat popped out on the tailor's brow and he began to tremble. “The quality is unmatched anywhere between here and Threimes itself. Four,” he countered.

  “I will make one final offer. Two and five and even that's easily more than double the value. I'll throw in my cloak also. Perhaps you can salvage some of the material. For a handkerchief or something. Take it or leave it.”

  The tailor slumped his shoulders and held out the cloak. It was green. When he counted out the appropriate coins—and saw his purse heavily diminished for it—he shrugged off his old cloak and donned the new one, tying the lace at his neck.

  “Now, as to my other request?” he asked.

  Since the transaction was complete, the tailor resumed his surly expression and gestured beyond the door. “There is one down the street.”

  He was not a tall man, but he had never needed height to be intimidating. He let his glare pin the tailor to the spot and in the most grating voice he could muster, he asked, “Where?”

  The color drained from the tailor's face and wide-eyed, he began to tremble again. “Four doors down. A woman by name of Magan.”

  “Thank you.” With a toothy grin, he turned away and stepped out the front door. Certainly, enough time had passed by now that the guards should be a long way down the road.

  He looked left, then right and when he saw no steel and no rainbows, he sighed with relief. Four doors down, the tailor said. All right then. Four doors. He limped on, reading the signs that hung over the doors until, just as the tailor promised, he saw the one he needed. Putting his hand on the latch, he paused when a strange sight caught his attention. There, across the street, was a small shop with boards nailed across the door and a sign painted red that warned 'NO ENTRY'.