Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  Taethan looked confused. “What a horrible way to think,” he said. “Lynwen was right about you.”

  “You killed Kavalen,” Heden concluded, ignoring him.

  Taethan turned in disgust and continued walking back to the priory as quickly as he could.

  Heden ran to keep up with him.

  “You killed Kavalen so the urq could sack Ollghum Keep,” he said.

  “I was wrong about you,” Taethan said. “You are a fool.”

  “What’s so damned important about the keep that it was worth murdering your commander? Why is your silence more important than those people? Why isn’t anyone trying to save them!”

  Taethan wheeled on him.

  “Why do you pretend to care for the people of the keep?” Taethan asked.

  “Have you met any of them?” Heden shot back. “When was the last time you met anyone who wasn’t another knight?”

  “You have met the people of Ollghum Keep, yet you are here.”

  “Yes!” Heden said. “I’m here, trying to get you lot to do your duty.”

  “But you do not need us!” Taethan said. He pointed to Heden’s backpack. “I saw what you did to the Illyndir. And I saw the sky go black when you fought the urq, though I was leagues away. Do not pretend impotence, you have power enough to stop an army!”

  This brought Heden up short. He put his hand on the pommel of his sword, though Starkiller was in his pack.

  He remembered his speech to Aderyn. ‘It takes men to hold the field,’ so said Duke Baede. But Heden had Starkiller. The ancient dwarven blade could turn the tide. Why had he brought it?

  He’d brought it to defend himself. That’s what Taethan forced him to see. He’d brought Starkiller because he needed something to rely on, so he wouldn’t have to rely on Cavall. Because he didn’t trust his relationship with Cavall. Because he was afraid that asking his god for help would mean…having to do the right thing.

  This was not a truth he was prepared to face. He evaded.

  “The people of Ollgham Keep,” he said slowly, “are your duty. You are mine.”

  “You are a bumbling knave,” Taethan said, containing his anger. “You deserve that harlot as a saint, and she deserves you.”

  Whatever else was true, Taethan was not acting like a man who was guilty of the crime Heden just accused him of. Heden could read his face and see truth and what he saw was frustration, which frustrated Heden.

  Heden nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I could have told you that. Maybe you didn’t kill Kavalen, okay, but you know who did and right now knowing and not telling me makes you a coward.” It was the strongest insult Heden could think of, designed to provoke the knight.

  “Draw your sword,” Taethan said mildly.

  Heden raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m not going to fight you, you idiot. I came up here to save you.”

  “Draw it,” Taethan said tensely, but quietly. “They don’t understand Tevas well enough and will think we’re really fighting. I’ll draw mine as well.”

  Heden spent no time absorbing what Taethan was telling him. He stepped back as though he were about to fight Taethan and wrenched open his pack, drawing Starkiller. Taethan drew his blade.

  Once they both had their weapons in hand, Taethan called out a name.

  “Pakadrask!” he shouted.

  “Green Man.”

  The voice was a growl, deep and resonant, like thunder coming from a cave.

  Heden spun around. There was a fallen and rotting tree a dozen yards away. It might as well have been a stone battlement so thick and high was it. Atop it squatted a large urman, wearing heavy armor. Several dozen urq also stood on the tree. The thing was fifteen feet high so there was no way to tell, but Heden guessed there were many more urmen hiding behind it.

  “I alone would be sufficient,” Taethan called out. “But you see we are two and therefore you are outnumbered,” Taethan said, his voice iron. “Your master has sent you on a fool’s errand; you must know you cannot defeat a knight of the Green.”

  The urq laughed. It sounded like someone striking stones together.

  Their leader, Pakadrask, stood on his small but powerful legs, and raised his massive arms. The urmen silenced.

  “Look about you, Green Man. Do you not see it? This is the end of Summer. The Green has faltered. We are the Knights of Autumn. You would have seen it, if you were not already lost.”

  Heden understood that Pakadrask meant the Green Order had lost its way. He saw Taethan recognize it too. They were standing in brown leaves, leaves that had fallen from the trees.

  Here, in the wode, where winter’s sword had never pierced the shield of summer.

  “Where is the rest of your armor, Green Man?” Pakadrask asked, pointing down at Taethan with his brutal axe.

  To Heden’s shock and surprise and lasting admiration, Taethan tugged on his straps and removed his pauldrons, exposing his shoulders. He still had his greaves and bracers, and armor covering his pelvis and collarbone. But every piece was needed in a fight. Taethan was taking an impressive risk.

  “Think you I have need of armor to defeat you?” Taethan called out. The urq were as impressed as Heden. Taethan obviously spoke their language.

  “Do you remember the White Falls?” Taethan said. “The western ravine?”

  The assembled urmen riled at this, sniffing the air, many banging sword and axe against shield.

  “Think ye I need armor to defeat you!?” Taethan called out again, pointing his sword at the urq commander.

  Pakadrask howled once and the other urq settled down. He resumed his crouch and peered down at Taethan and Heden.

  “No,” Pakadrask said, with some measure of respect. “The Green Man needs no armor ‘gainst us,” he said. The other urq didn’t like the sound of that, but Pakadrask was their unquestioned leader and to gainsay him would be certain death.

  He wasn’t looking at Taethan, he was watching Heden.

  “What about you, little one,” Pakadrask said. “Are you strong and brave, like the Green Man?”

  Heden just sniffed and looked around the forest, ignoring the urq before answering.

  “Try me and see,” he said.

  The urq shouted at that. They liked it. They looked forward to fighting Heden.

  “They’re not alone,” Heden said to Taethan while the urq enjoyed rioting at his simple statement.

  “No, they are not,” Taethan said. Heden was surprised he knew this. “Or they would not be so bold. If they’d attacked when they found us…”

  “Be a different story,” Heden said.

  “If we get them boasting, they may show us what makes them stand before us without fear.”

  Heden nodded.

  “Where are your friends?” Heden called out to the urq leader.

  “Enh?” Pakadrask sneered, questioning.

  The other urmen looked worried and glanced behind the massive fallen tree.

  “Behind the tree,” Taethan yelled. “Don’t be shy, let us see your smiling face.”

  Pakadrask shook his thick, fat head back and forth. He knew he’d lost the element of surprise in order to indulge his sense of bravura. He was disappointed with himself.

  He snapped his fingers, and his urq began to stomp and shout with battle fever.

  Its footsteps made little sound, because the thing knew to move without announcing its presence. It stepped up onto the tree, and towered above them. Larger than the hills thyrs. It was a tall, hairless humanoid, perfectly formed. Almost no body fat. Its skin looked dull grey, but Heden recognized it and knew that close up, it was white with flecks of black, like granite. Exactly like granite.

  Heden turned to Taethan who was doing his best not to look surprised.

  “They have a stone giant,” Heden grinning beatifically.

  “No,” Taethan said. “Wait.”

  Heden turned back in time to see two more mountain thyrs step up onto the fallen tree.

  “Three of them,” H
eden said, his voice hollow.

  Taethan nodded. Pakadrask savored the moment.

  “That should not be,” Taethan said.

  “Sure,” Heden said.

  The urq were driving themselves into a fever.

  “If I die out here,” Heden said to Taethan. “I’m going to be really angry with you.”

  “The giants hate the urq!” Taethan objected.

  “Yeah well, we can talk about that later,” Heden said, and then spoke a prayer.

  The urmen didn’t seem to notice or mind. So Heden warded himself and Taethan.

  “This is my friend,” Pakadrask said, gesturing to the tallest of the three thyrs. “Hrannat,” he said. The stone giant’s massive, implacable face sneered.

  “What will you tell your master,” Taethan called out. “When we have sent your men to Grole? When you have wasted these powerful allies ‘gainst us?” he said, pointing to the stone giants, each almost twenty feet tall. The urq obviously didn’t like hearing the name of their god spoken without fear by a Terran. “When you come back alone, when you have failed, what will Kadakav say?”

  “Lord Kadakav!” Pakadrask barked. “King Kadakav!” he shouted.

  “King of nothing,” Taethan said. “Lord of fools! You cannot hope to stand against the order,” Taethan said.

  “Order? I see no other Green Men,” Pakadrask said. The urq cheered at this. “Just you and your squire,” he sneered.

  “Alright,” Heden said, wearily.

  He spoke a quick prayer and a strong gust of wind exploded directly in front of Pakadrask, throwing him backwards off the log. It was meant to make him look the fool and anger the urq, provoke them. It worked.

  Pakadrask had been enjoying gloating and tasting the moment. His urmen, on the other hand, were coiled like a spring and ready to fight in an instant. This was it.

  The urq shot off the log like a volley of arrows, some leaping and tumbling when they hit the ground, streaming toward them.

  Heden turned to Taethan and shrugged. He was tired of talking and knew they were going to fight as soon as he heard the urq speak. They didn’t come here to negotiate.

  Heden wasn’t worried about the urmen. He realized he maybe should be; he and Taethan were exhausted, recently wounded, lightly armored, but the real problem was the thyrs. One giant alone would be trouble for Heden or Taethan, though both together could probably handle one. But three? And three aided by a company of urmen?

  Heden watched the thyrs and Taethan spoke a prayer. The two smaller mountain thyrs were looking to the larger, their boss. He seemed content to watch how the urq fared.

  As a score of urq thundered forward, Taethan finished his prayer and a thin line of emerald green vines twisted and snaked their way out of the ground under the blanket of leaves. At first, they seemed meaningless, the urq would stomp them underfoot, but they were waist high by the time the line of urq hit them, like rolling fighting boulders. They snagged the urmen, growing as they did. They caught ankles and legs and arms and lifted two score urmen into the air.

  The urmen behind came up short and watched, bright yellow eyes wide as their compatriots fought and struggled trying to hack at the ropey vines. But soon they no longer had mastery of their arms, bound in green. Then they started screaming.

  The vines ripped the urq apart. Black blood like vitriol rained down on the urmen behind and Heden and Taethan before them. As the black droplets spattered over them, neither Heden nor Taethan moved. They waited.

  For the urmen, fear was at worst a momentary experience. Soon their drive to hunt and kill overcame it, and they attacked the line of snaking vines, hacking at them. It wasn’t clear if any tool, any strength, could overcome the power of the Green, the power of the wode made manifest, but then the tall stone giant gestured, and one of his lieutenants stepped lightly off the fallen tree.

  He strode forward, urq fighting to get out of his way, and waded into the vines, even at twenty feet tall, they only came up to his eyes. He collected fistfuls of them and though they wound around his wrists, they could gain no purchase. He pulled, and uprooted them, grabbed more and yanked and the vines died in his fists. Urmen ran forward, barking, shouting.

  Sir Taethan sighed and spoke another prayer. The light around them brightened. The sunlight piercing through the veil of leaves strengthened until each piercing shaft of light was solid white, too bright to look at directly.

  There were only a few dozen such shafts, Heden could see only the forest around them was affected. He wondered what the point was. Then the shafts of light started moving.

  They searched and strove, like living things, each seeking out an urq. They moved smoothly until one oriented on a single urq and then it suddenly flared even brighter, and the urq screamed and was cooked where he stood.

  Dozens fell thus. Heden was impressed.

  “You got anything else?” Heden asked, and cocked an eyebrow at the knight. He was trying not to show his admiration.

  Taethan shrugged, and the gesture looked natural now. “Sure,” he said, his mode of speech almost as modern as Heden’s. “But why waste it. I wish to see what the thyrs will do.”

  The searching shafts of light faded, another threescore urq cooked into smoking blackened husks. The acrid, oily smell of burning fat and flesh now stuck to the insides of Heden’s nostrils.

  But still more urmen came. Taethan stepped forward, taking the lead. Leaving Heden to watch the thyrs.

  When the urq, still pouring off the fallen tree, finally reached Sir Taethan, he burst into action. Even hurt, even without his full plate, he was devastating. His weapon sliced and stabbed about him, felling urq faster than they could come. It took no apparent effort on his part.

  Heden had not seen a Green Knight fight before, only Aderyn. He mistakenly thought Aderyn typical, but she was not. Taethan’s prayers and battle skill were among the best Heden had ever seen. Urmen lost their heads, their arms. Their pink guts rippled from their fat bellies. He tripped them, he knocked them down. One urq charged him and received Taethan’s boot in his chest, knocking him back and causing his axe to flip up in the air. Taethan caught it and smashed it into another urq head while slicing across the eyes of another with his sword.

  The urmen knew of no way to fight but to rush the knight. Their normal tactics were useless. They summoned the power of their god, they tried to turn the ground around the knight into quicksand, but all they did was sink themselves, Taethan’s devotion left a small platform of solid ground for him to stand on. Their godcallers cursed him, but his purity protected him.

  Heden heard minor prayers from Taethan that blinded, prayers that allowed him to leap up and over the urq when they were too dense. Halcyon granted him a great deal of power and there seemed no limit to it. Heden realized that this lone knight might be the last stand of the Green Order. Halcyon would give him whatever he asked for.

  Heden watched as for a brief period, Taethan’s sword was transformed into a long and snaking whip vine that could snap through a dozen urq, slicing them open in an instant. He liked that.

  Heden remembered being fifteen years old and fearing the urmen. Three of them once almost killed him and his friends, but none of them had any idea what they were doing back then. The path that led him here had cost him many friends and companions, but the result was someone like Taethan who could fight for hours without stopping and to whom an urq was no more dangerous than a squirrel. Through it all, Heden was aware that Taethan was not using all his guile and experience.

  A dozen urq stood atop the tree and pulled on massive bone bows. Heden nodded, he’d anticipated this.

  Their black arrows sped toward Heden and Taethan, and hammered into them, but apart from the heavy thuds, each enough to knock an unprepared man over, the tips of the arrows could not penetrate even their exposed flesh. Heden had warded them well.

  Seeing this, the lead thyrs gestured to creatures Heden couldn’t see behind the tree. They pushed up a great rock which the giant grab
bed easily.

  “Watch out!” Heden said, trying to get some distance

  The thyrswight threw the huge boulder at Taethan, who deftly ducked out of the way and then leapt into the air. When the rock hit the ground behind him, the impact threw dirt high in the air and knocked several urq off their feet, but Taethan was in the air when it happened and so remained unaffected.

  Heden was impressed. Taethan was minding the giant just as Heden was, and needed no warning.

  For his part, Heden was dealing with fewer urq. They seemed much more interested in Taethan, the known quantity. Heden slashed and stabbed about him with starkiller, the dwarven blade drinking the blood of the urmen greedily. Its eerie light sparked and flashed with each blow.

  The three thyrs remained otherwise disengaged. They were watching the knight and the arrogate, looking for weakness, judging strength.

  Heden heard an urq barking orders. He knew it was Pakadrask. The urq commander climbed back atop the tree and, seeing the giants doing nothing, shouted at them and pointed at the knight and the priest.

  The lead thyrs shouted to his companion who stood on the ground, dead vines at his feet. The shorter thyrs turned and the lead giant tossed him a heavy stone maul. The thyrs waded into battle with it. It was crudely shaped, but so large it needed no special craftsmanship to wreak its havoc.

  The giant swung about him trying to hit Taethan. Many urmen were killed in the process. Those remaining didn’t seem to notice. Taethan avoided one blow, two, but the giant surprised him by smashing the ground when Taethan expected another blow, and the knight was knocked into the air. The giant was ready for this, it was a tactic he’d tried before, and as the knight rose in the air, the thyrs swung his maul around again and smashed Taethan in his unarmored chest sending him flying.