The Path of the Sword

by Remi Michaud

  “Why?” Kurin croaked. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  Calen watched the spectacle in front of him, below him, as if it riveted him like a good play acted by master mummers. He did not bother to look away from the tragic scene as he answered.

  “He was unnecessary. And besides, you needed to be taught a valuable lesson,” Calen said and he waved his hand like a mosquito hummed about him. Hush, his demeanor said, I am trying to watch the show.

  Kurin was not a violent man by nature. He was a healer; he had always done everything in his power to provide aid and relief to whomever he could. But he was not a stranger to violence; at that moment, he would gladly have killed the fat bastard with his bare hands. Slowly. He watched as Jurel trembled with bowed head and closed eyes, and Kurin's heart went out to him.

  “So this is your precious God of War, is it? This mewling whelp is supposed to save your ridiculous order?” Calen said suddenly.

  “You have no idea, Calen, what that young man is capable of,” Mikal growled.

  Calen finally looked away from the grim scene and regarded Mikal with smug surprise. “Oh? Is that so? Well then it is a good thing that he is surrounded by nearly sixty soldiers. Not to mention his shackles.”

  He chuckled like a hyena, a high pitched sound that grated at Kurin. He leaned forward then, quicker than Kurin would have thought possible and his expression changed from mild smugness to stone.

  “Now then. We have escaped prisoners. We have a turncoat, we have a dead heretic and we-”

  Jurel lifted his head and opened his eyes, and Kurin gasped. The sound was echoed by the three score people in the audience hall and Calen half rose from his seat, his eyes wide with deepest shock. Jurel's eyes were blue. Not his regular blue, not blue as a handsome man has. Not blue as the sky, or blue as a stormy sea. But blue. They shone, radiated as though lightning had taken up residence in his head and the electric light poured out.

  “You killed my father,” Jurel rumbled in a voice that Kurin could only describe as...god-like.

  The misery was gone, the hollow anguish that had so torn at Kurin's heart was absent like it had never been. Instead, there was a depthless anger, a rage so all-encompassing that the hall itself seemed to feel it, seemed to quail from it. Gingerly, as gently as if he held the finest crystal, Jurel laid his father on the floor at his feet, laid a hand on his father's chest. Then he rose fluidly to his feet and...

  ...he smiled.

  It was a terrible thing, that smile, filled with teeth and rage and hunger, an insatiable lust for blood, and a promise that his desire would soon be fulfilled. As filaments of lightning, jagged threads of blue-white light, crackled up and down his body, he extended his hands and deliberately drew them apart. When the chain of his shackles reached its limit, his hands kept going. Iron squealed, shrieked like a tortured child. With a brittle snap, the chain exploded into links that sprayed the floor, clinking like the coins in Death's purse.

  “It is you,” Kurin whispered.

  He should have felt joy. He should have been elated that he had finally completed his lifelong mission. But all he felt was dread. He felt like he stood at the edge of a cliff and he could see jagged rocks at the bottom, rocks that promised to tear his flesh, to shred him even as they crushed his bones to powder and spilled his blood, while spears prodded him in the back, pushing...pushing...

  For it was he, Kurin Makentyr, who had unleashed the God of War on the world.

  Jurel lunged, a motion so inhumanly rapid that he was no more than a blurred smear of brown and lightning blue, and suddenly he held Calen by his robe. His hand swung like an executioner's ax. The force of his blow was so great that there was a wet crunching sound as Calen's head collapsed inward like a dropped melon. Jurel's hand continued its relentless journey; Calen's head tore from his shoulders with the sound of wet canvas ripping and a terrible fountain of blood spumed from the fat man's neck. It almost emptied Kurin's belly to watch a leg twitch like a dog with an itch. Jurel spun, still holding Calen's quivering, headless body, and flung it like it weighed no more than a small stone into the ranks of soldiers who gaped. All of this happened before Kurin's heart beat twice. No small feat: Kurin's heart was as a jack rabbit in his chest.

  When the mass of fat and bone collided with the front ranks, it was like a game of Ball-and-Pins; bodies collided and stumbled, fell into each other and to the ground in tangled heaps. The guards that remained standing finally moved as though prodded by a branding iron, and they drew swords and leveled pikes. Orders were shouted; the sergeant bawled for battle formation and the men moved swiftly, jerkily to obey.

  But they only managed one step—some of the quicker, more battle-hardened veterans managed two—before Jurel reached them. Unarmed, he began battering soldiers and wherever his fists landed, bones shattered and blood flowed. Gripping a soldier by his breastplate, he threw him back over his shoulder as if he was a piece of detritus, a piece of rotting meat to be discarded.

  Pikes stabbed and swords slashed but it was like they battled smoke for all the effect they were having on the enraged young God before them. Jurel continued his grim work of pummeling them and Kurin saw the flex of muscle, the tautening of tendon with every mighty swing, and soldiers fell as wheat before the reaper. And those eyes...

  The last of the soldiers, the three that remained, threw down their weapons and fled, shrieking as they went, screaming for help, for mercy, gone insane by the horrors they witnessed. Kurin was not sure if any number of men would stop the raging storm that was Jurel. He was not sure there was anything in the world that could slow him.

  Searching the room for more opponents, Jurel swung his blazing gaze this way and that, and a terrified moment wrapped in the anxious pent of breath passed as Jurel's eyes locked with his. But only a moment, for he ignored Kurin and Mikal and Gaven, and he strode from the audience hall. The huge, heavy doors had swung shut behind the escaping guards but with one powerful swing, Jurel splintered them into kindling and strode through without pause.

  And then the room was silent. Only the three stood amidst the carnage. Broken bloody forms lay sprawled like so many shiny turtles basking in the sun and Kurin near wept at the sight with a sense of foreboding, of knowledge that this was only the beginning, the first of many, many battlefields.

  Mikal looked at Kurin. Kurin looked at Mikal. Both wore expressions of horror that bordered on madness. What have we done?

  “Should we follow him?” Mikal asked with the natural quietness that is reserved for temples. Or graveyards.

  When Kurin nodded—for he could manage no more than that, and even it was weak, unsure—Mikal moved to the fallen sergeant's side with efficient motions, and rifled through the dead man's pockets until he rose with a ring of keys jangling in his hand. Their shackles fell to the floor after several attempts.

  Shouts rose from the corridor beyond as they retrieved their equipment from the lake of blood. Angry at first, they quickly turned to terror and pain. The three men hurried from the room, Mikal and Gaven with swords drawn and Kurin with his hand glowing an unearthly yellow like the fires of the sun were trapped under his skin and yearned for release.

  The corridor was a shambles. More steel turtles, more blood (oh gods the blood!) stretched down the wide hallway. If they had not seen Jurel tearing through a squad of Soldiers at the far end as a tornado tears through corn fields, still they would have had no difficulty following him. They simply needed to follow the devastation. And the red spatter on the walls.

  As he watched Jurel disappear through a wide door, Kurin choked on a tearing sob, held it in his throat and savagely reveled in the lump that threatened to cut off his breath. Perhaps that would not be so bad, to choke on his own remorse. Then he would not have to witness the horrors that unfolded. Not so long ago, he had visited a farm. Not so long ago, he had met a boy who seemed so promising and Kurin had celebrated his find. Not so long ago, the boy had been gentle, timid, afraid of his own shadow. And now...an
d now...

  And now, that boy was a man, a God, and he cast his judgment, waged war upon mere mortals with an unpitying wrath that left Kurin empty to witness, as cored and hollow as a rain barrel in a drought.

  They hurried after Jurel, skirting ruined flesh and dented steel as they ran, following the clamor of war ahead.

  Chapter 64

  He was calm. So icy calm. Even as his body moved with fluid, deadly grace, tearing, battering, destroying, he was calm. He waded into the pitiful creatures in front of him and wherever his hands went, blood flowed and death followed. And he celebrated. A sword bounced off his shoulder as if he was made of granite, a pike shattered against his chest. He responded with terrible fists, fists made of iron, of lightning.

  He barely slowed as he worked his way forward, barely heard the alarm bells that rang through the temple or the shouts of Soldiers called to arms, barely felt the attacks that would have left anyone else a liquid mass on the smooth marble. He sensed more soldiers approaching, felt them in his mind, heard the clattering of footsteps echoing, but they were of no real importance, they would run or they would fall—it did not matter to him. He sensed something else too: a strange energy rippled, pulsed in his thoughts, though it was not him. Whatever it was, it was a weak, tiny thing that did not cause him to even hesitate in his steps. If it threatened him, he would swat it.

  Through a chamber he strode, an audience chamber with tall pillars and marble floors, a chamber filled with row on row of lacquered pews facing a great altar draped with snow white linen, covered with golden candelabra and sundry artifacts. Stained glass windows spilled colored waterfalls of light. Up above in a magnificent dome (though he barely registered it) Gaorla gazed down from several wedge shaped panels.

  A ball of red light flew at him, screeching like a thousand bats and splattered against his chest. Where it struck, it stuck, caught fire and began to eat at his ragged shirt. But he simply brushed it away and when he looked to the source, followed the trail that seemed fire-etched in the air, he saw men and women, a dozen and some, in finely cut robes. Priests he assumed, waving their arms in throwing motions and more red balls screamed toward him.

  He batted at them like they were no more than gnats, brushed them away, and he altered his course, turning his steps toward these creatures that had caused his incarceration, that had caused his father's death, that had caused his grief.

  As more of those balls of liquid fire splattered against him, he paused and raised his hand, staring at it contemplatively. Several of the electric pulses that ran across his body rushed to his hand, running up his arm as though drawn like iron to a lodestone, coalescing in his palm, melding and merging until flickers of blue light danced and shimmered. He concentrated for a moment, letting the sensations of crackling and rippling like burning embers merge with him, become him, and with a flash, a sword erupted from him. As blue as his eyes it was, long and narrow, with a slight curve along what he supposed was the blade.

  With sword in hand, with fireballs bursting on his chest, he strode toward the priests, calmly. So calmly.

  * * *

  Major Reowynn Vash, second in command of the Threimes regiments of the Soldiers of God, raged at his soldiers. He struck the ones who moved too slowly, cuffing blows to their heads that sent them staggering and hurrying, and he cursed the rest.

  The temple was in an uproar and he rallied his men as best he could, but some of what was happening had reached their ears and they were frightened. Frightened! Hardened soldiers who had seen death in all its countless forms, who had dealt death without scruple, were frightened. And of what? One fool boy who had tapped into some priestly qualities, who had some minor natural talent in arcanum. Bunch of cowards.

  Disgusted, he urged them on, prodded them to move their sluggish feet. He would deal with this young upstart, this hooligan who had apparently managed to kill dozens of his soldiers single-handedly. He would see that boy's head on a pike before the day was out.

  He had twenty squads, two platoons worth of his best men right here, and he took the lead as they strode from their garrison compound and toward the temple proper, shouting orders to a sergeant to get as many of the rest prepared and to follow at his earliest convenience—“If you would please be so kind, sergeant, hurry the fuck up!” He would gut the whole lot of them as soon as this matter was settled with. They were supposed to be trained. They were supposed to be ready to go at a moment's notice and here they were, slacking.

  As they passed through the gated checkpoint, Major Reowynn promised himself that heads would roll when they got back.

  * * *

  Kurin stepped into the temple's nave, his hair standing on end, his flesh pebbled with the sheer force of energy that spilled from the mass of priests. He watched as Jurel batted away balls of fire, so hot that Kurin felt their heat from across the large hall, so potent that any one could have incinerated a large man with ease. They were nothing to Jurel as he strode forward with a blazing sword in his hand, his eyes full of lightning and rage and...detachment? That was the worst of all. Before he had left the confines of the Order so many years ago, he had seen that same distance in the face of his mentor when a bone had to be set; an unpleasant task but one which needed to be done. But Jurel's was different. It was worse. In his mentor, it had been a cold, calculating detachment devoid of all emotion, a necessary distancing to accomplish a distasteful task. In Jurel it was pure, empty rage.

  The young man approached the first of the priests with his sword raised, and he swung with devastating effect. There seemed to be no resistance as his blade of light struck flesh, tore through bone with no more effort than if the priests were made of water. It simply continued to the next white-robed figure and the next, and it continued when there were no more priests in its path, continued in a graceful arc around and around, through the next layer of water. The fireballs diminished in intensity and ferocity, dwindling until they were no more, and the last rank of priests, realizing their inevitable ends, turned and fled, shrieking invocations to Gaorla, screaming for their god to step in, to rid the world of the demon that faced them.

  And when they were gone, Jurel strode on toward the huge doors, doors that were as tall as ten men, and just as wide, bound in steel strips the width of Jurel's own torso.

  More soldiers came, more insects to be quashed, but the ranks were diminishing, and even as Jurel strode, sweaty, ashen soldiers parted way without raising their weapons and Jurel did not even glance at them for they were as ants to him, beneath his notice.

  When he reached the doors, he extended his hand, not his sword hand for it was busy taming the wild forces that surged and writhed like a constrictor snake, but with his other. His fingers splayed and there was a surge, a pulse like a giant's heartbeat, and the doors vanished in smoke and razor sharp needles of wood that shot like a thousand arrows into the ranks of soldiers that waited on the other side under the steely sky for him. The front ranks melted away, pelted as they were by the remains of the doors. Men fell to the ground with finger thick shards of oak embedded in necks, eyes, and even hearts and lungs where the splinters hurled with enough force to puncture their breastplates.

  Jurel strode out the door and into the mid afternoon murk that was shattered by alarms gonging relentlessly. He descended steps while a soldier—a major by his insignia—bellowed to his men.

  “Move in! Take him!”

  But his men hesitated, rooted to the ground with their weapons drawn and they were like one of the tapestries that lined the corridors in the temple behind; they looked impressive, but they were only cloth and thread, still and silent.

  When they did not make way quickly enough, Jurel waded in with his blazing sword and soldiers fell, having not even budged as they regarded the terrible figure that approached, and that caused comrades and friends and fellow squad mates to react. They put up a token resistance but like all others before them, they could not slow the progress of this figure of light, this figure of death, and like
the others before them, they threw down their weapons and ran like rats deserting a sinking ship. Or they died.

  Jurel strode on until the major stepped in his path. Instead of destroying the man where he stood, Jurel caught the man's sword in his hand and crushed the blade like it was made of parchment. Tossing the twisted ruin of steel away, he gripped the major by his gorget and brought him close.

  “Where are our horses,” Jurel asked and his voice was colder than deepest winter, deeper than a lion's roar and louder than a roar of thunder.

  The major trembled. His eyes grew wide and he stared at the young man who stood before him, stared at the eyes that were made of lightning, and jerkily he raised his arm and pointed.

  “Thank you,” said Jurel and he tossed the major aside.

  And on he strode while Kurin, Mikal, and Gaven trailed after him, keeping their distance, uncertain if Jurel remembered enough of himself to stop from destroying them if they strayed too close. They crossed the finely landscaped temple grounds, through gardens of flowers and waist high hedges, past trees that stood tall in rows as straight as any platoon of soldiers, and Jurel dispatched any resistance that dared approach him with no feeling, until they reached a squat wooden structure that hid behind the temple as if the temple architects had been too ashamed to let this structure be seen alongside the grand splendor of the immense stone walls and colored-glass windows.

  When they entered the stable, Jurel saddled horses with all the efficiency of a farmer with years of experience, or perhaps a soldier long trained in the cavalry, and he extended the reins of three newly saddled horses to his followers. They froze, unsure of his intentions, but he gestured with his hand, and Kurin saw the first hint of human emotion, aside from the all consuming rage, in his face since Jurel had risen from his father's dead body: impatience. Come on. Take them, that expression said.

  They mounted and left the stables with Jurel's light sword leading the way, and they followed, huddled close together as chastised children do when they follow an angered parent. There was no more resistance. They passed through the open gates and down streets that were mostly deserted though if anyone had bothered to look more closely, they would have seen frightened eyes peeking out from behind curtains and through doors that were open a crack. They continued at a walk and if Kurin had not known better, he would have sworn they were out on a simple leisure trip, a nice, friendly ride to the market to do some shopping.