by Ben Cassidy
“I think,” Tomas said with deliberate slowness, “that I need to know if I can trust you or not. Because right now, I don’t.”
Kendril stared hard at the other Ghostwalker for a long moment. “I killed Ravenbrook,” he said after a long moment. “I buried him in the ground along with his wife and his friend.” He looked at the opposite wall of his cell. “It wasn’t until recently that I had to bring him back to life. I honestly thought he was dead and gone forever.”
Tomas cocked his head. “I assume you mean that in the most symbolic way possible.”
Kendril shrugged. “I didn’t lie to you. I just...re-interpreted.”
“It’s the same difference,” Tomas said sharply.
Kendril gave the man a stiff glance. “I was never obligated to tell you the truth, Tomas. You say that you can’t trust me? Look at you. You’re ready to kill me right now. I knew you would do the same if you were ordered to the first day we landed in Redemption. How can I trust you?”
Tomas gave a slow nod. “You can’t. But right now I’m the only chance you have of getting out of this cell alive. So like it or not, I guess you have to decide what’s more important to you, your life or the truth.”
Kendril glared hard at Tomas. “What in the Void do you care? What does it matter to you who I was, or who I am now?”
“I lived in a world of lies for longer than I care to say,” said Tomas darkly. “The truth is the only thing I care about anymore.”
Kendril continued to stare at him, his jaw clenching as he considered his options.
“Better hurry,” Tomas said in a low voice. “My patience doesn’t extend the whole night.”
“Everything I told you before was true,” Kendril said after a long pause. “To a point.” He looked away, his gaze transferred once again to the wall of his cell. “Atherton was my childhood friend, the son of my estate’s stable master. We fought and bled together.” His voice softened. “He was my friend. And I trusted him.”
Tomas’ eyes were cold. “But he betrayed you?”
Kendril looked over at the other Ghostwalker. “I found him and Celeste together when I came home early from the front.” His hand unconsciously clenched into a fist at the memory. “I was so mad, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think straight. Celeste was screaming at me, throwing her arms around me, but I pushed her away.” Kendril looked down at his boots, his face an ashen color. “I went for my sword.”
“You were going to kill him?”
Kendril flashed a look of fire in Tomas’ direction. “Wouldn’t you have?”
Tomas didn’t answer.
Kendril turned his face back to the wall. “Atherton and I fought. It was crazy, chaotic.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t kill him from the start,” said Tomas. Another round of distant gunfire punctuated his words. “I’ve seen you with a blade.”
Kendril shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking. I was lashing out in fury, like a beast. Pure rage.” He looked over at Tomas, his face darkened by the shadows of the cell. “Do you have any idea what it’s like, Tomas? To be betrayed by the two people you thought you could trust more than anyone in the world?”
“I...know what it’s like to be betrayed,” said Tomas slowly.
Kendril rubbed his hand across the lower half of his face. “The fight got out of hand. We ended up battling our way across the upper balcony, then down the stairs to the main hall.” He looked straight ahead, as if seeing the scene before him again. “We tripped down the last flight of stairs, lost our balance.” He gave a quiet, dark laugh. “Atherton and I somehow both lost hold of our swords. We were just sprawled there at the bottom of the stairs in the middle of the hall, bruised and bleeding.” He looked down at his feet. “The servants fled out the doors. They thought we had lost our minds. They were probably right. I know I had lost mine.”
Tomas tilted his head slightly. “You both lost hold of your swords?”
“Yes,” said Kendril dully. “Figuring it out yet, Tomas?” He turned his head suddenly towards the other man, his eyes filled with sudden anger and life. “Got all the information you need to form your analysis and final conclusions? Have you pieced together all the little pieces of my life? What do you even care about all this, anyways?”
“I told you,” Tomas said with a peevish look, “I need to know if I can trust—”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Kendril shot. “If you really didn’t trust me by now you would have shot me the moment you stepped into the room.” He got up from the cot, and pushed his face between two of the iron bars of the cell. “I’m just another puzzle for you, aren’t I? Just another riddle to work out. And you hate a riddle, don’t you?”
Tomas raised his head. “You don’t have to finish.”
“Oh, but I do,” said Kendril with a malicious tone. “After all, we haven’t gotten to the best part.”
“I think I can guess it,” said Tomas lamely.
“I’m sure you can,” said Kendril. “You’re so deucedly clever, aren’t you? But you know what?” He jerked a thumb towards his own chest. “This is my life. Mine. My memories, my pain, my guilt. It’s a raw, open wound for me, not some blessed little intellectual problem that needs to be pondered and solved.” Kendril took a step back from the bars, his face curdled. “You opened this up. You did, not me. And you get to finish it now, whether you want to or not.” He glanced at the crossbow. “Unless you’re still planning to shoot me?”
Tomas looked taken aback for a moment at Kendril’s sudden outburst, but he blinked and set his face again. He shook his head.
Kendril snorted derisively. He stared down at where the floor met the wall for a moment, his hands clasped behind his back. “Celeste was—” He stopped.
Tomas watched him carefully for several long seconds.
“She had come downstairs after us,” Kendril said again. His voice was quiet, but he didn’t turn around. “She...was begging us to stop.”
“But you didn’t.” Tomas’ voice was neutral, neither overly cold nor flutteringly sympathetic.
Kendril glanced back. His face was almost white, as if he was shaken. “No, we didn’t.”
Another cannon blast sounded in the distance.
Tomas glanced nervously at the door of the guardhouse.
“You afraid of the Jombards now?” Kendril said with a bitter smile. “Too late, Tomas. You have to hear it to the end now.” He looked back at the wall of the cell. “The barbarians will kill us both soon enough.”
Tomas tightened his grip on the hand crossbow, but kept it raised. “So you and Atherton began fighting again.” He cocked his head, his mind working. “But something was different, wasn’t it? Something changed.”
“Very good,” Kendril said unenthusiastically. He looked up at Tomas with eyes that seemed to contain a well of sadness and simmering anger all at the same time. “In the confusion after we fell down the stairs, Tomas and I picked up the wrong swords.” He gave a sour grin. “I took his, and took mine.”
Tomas whistled softly.
“We started fighting again,” Kendril said. His voice was wooden, as if he were reciting a monologue. He continued to stare at the wall in front of him. “I was so angry, so filled with rage. I was determined to make him pay, to kill the man who had been my best friend.”
There was a moment of silence.
“So what happened?” Tomas prodded.
Kendril didn’t look around. “Celeste tried to stop me. She knew I was going to kill Atherton, she could see it in my eyes. So she threw herself right in front of me, right when I was going to run him through.”
Tomas lowered his hand crossbow. “You stabbed her instead. Your own wife.”
“I don’t know what happened to Atherton after that,” said Kendril in an emotionless tone. “I think he ran off.” He turned, as if physically tearing his gaze away from the wall, and sat heavily down on the cot again. “I held Celeste until she died. There was blood everywhere. Her blood. I begged her to forgive me, pleaded with h
er to live, but—”
Tomas tucked his crossbow away.
Kendril folded his hands together in front of him. “By the time the town guards found me, Atherton had fled. He had dropped his sword.” He gave a thin, mirthless smile. “My sword.”
“And the town guards saw you holding your dead wife in your arms,” Tomas said softly. “Then they found Atherton’s sword with her blood on it, the sword you killed her with.”
Kendril looked up at Tomas with dark, haunted eyes. “They assumed Atherton had killed her.” He looked down at the ground again. “And I let them think it. When they asked me what happened, I told them he had killed Celeste, not me.”
“And they hanged him.” Tomas flinched as another roar of cannon sounded.
“So in one night I killed my wife and my best friend,” Kendril said. He gave a low, wretched chuckle. “The real ironic thing is that I deserved it. I was arrogant, stupid. Everything I told you about Lord Ravenbrook is true. I treated Celeste no better than one of my prized horses. I was never there for her, never valued her at all.” He put his head in his hands. “It wasn’t until after I lost her that I realized just how much I actually loved her.”
There was nothing but the sound of distant gunfire for about half a minute.
Tomas sat down in the guard’s chair with a sigh. “I trust you.”
Kendril took his hands off his face and clasped them under his chin. “Really?” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to pry into any of the rest of my back story? Find more skeletons in my closet? Because believe me, I could keep going all night.”
Tomas picked up the dragoon hat and pulled it back on his head. “I need to know I can trust you, because I’m about to risk my life for you,” he said.
Kendril raised his head, a quizzical look on his face.
“The way I figure it,” Tomas continued quietly, “there are ten thousand screaming Jombards coming over that Wall right now, and they’ll be on the beach by morning if someone doesn’t stop them.” He looked straight at Kendril. “It sounds like a job for the Demonbane of Vorten if ever there was one.”
“Or Lord Ravenbrook of Redemption,” Kendril said grimly.
“He’s dead, remember?” said Tomas with a sardonic grin. “Personally, I think Olan’s a twit, and the fact that you’ve directly disobeyed him just makes me like you more. We’re fighting a Despair after all, not playing parlor games.” He put one hand on the small table by the chair. “Whether or not you’ve found your redemption or fulfilled your penance is your own matter, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I thought I had,” Kendril said. “But now...I’m not so sure.”
Tomas gave a slow nod. “Dredging up the past can do that. It brings all that pain and guilt right back into focus again.” He leaned forward, looking directly at Kendril. “Look, I don’t care what weapons you use, or what color your cloak is. But I’ll stand with you against the Jombards and Regnuthu himself, if I have to. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
Kendril gave the bars of his cell an appraising glance. “You could start with getting me out of here.”
Tomas raised a large key in his hand and smiled. “Why didn’t you ask sooner?”
Chapter 12
Howls echoed out from the darkness. Fire burned along the top of the turf Wall, illuminating the piles of burnt and bloody bodies that lay around, in-between, and even on top of the sharpened wooden stakes. There were ghostly forms of more bodies down below in the trench.
Captain Lockhart sat with his back to a pile of smoldering lumber. He struggled to reload his pistol with shaking hands, ignoring the human howls and wails that echoed out from the black woods.
The Jombards were coming again. This would be the fourth time. The dragoons at Hangman’s Hill were exhausted, wounded, and stretched to the breaking point. Lockhart knew with the instinct of a commanding officer that his men wouldn’t stand another assault. In truth, he didn’t know how they had managed to hold out this long.
Two gun shots sounded far off to the south, one right after the other.
As Lockhart wound the firing mechanism in his pistol, he turned his head to look.
If the signal fires were still burning, it was impossible to distinguish them out anymore. Fire burned all along the Wall. Gun shots and cannon shots were going off irregularly, their flashes lighting the night sky.
To the north, however, was an increasingly prolonged silence. No shots had been fired from that direction in twenty minutes or more. Lockhart was developing the sinking feeling that the Jombards had already broken through. If the barbarians were coordinated enough, they could be circling around to cut off any retreat of the dragoons from the other mileforts. Or, more likely, the undisciplined horde could be pouring through to attack smaller farms and settlements on their way to Redemption.
The howls suddenly ceased.
The rain increased at the same moment, pounding down harder on the forlorn dragoons and sizzling as the drops struck the fire.
Lockhart removed the spanner from his pistol, then grabbed for the hilt of his sword.
“They’re coming again, sir,” Sergeant Dyke whispered. His face was a smeared mess of mud, ash, and blood.
“I know,” Lockhart said. His voice was throttled and hoarse. He wiped a hand across his face, and was surprised to see the dark smear of blood across his palm. “It’s been an honor to serve with you, Sergeant.”
The man raised his carbine. “And you, sir.”
A keening, almost supernatural wail came out of the darkness. Shadows began to move in front of the tree line.
One of the dragoons threw down his carbine and began to scream, covering his face and hands.
To Lockhart’s left, another dragoon began to edge down the turf wall. Two others started to follow.
The rout was beginning. It would devolve into madness and chaos if Lockhart allowed it. He had already failed once today, had let his command fall apart in the face of that monstrosity that came over the Wall in the pre-dawn light.
He wasn’t going to fail again.
Captain Lockhart stood up. He raised his rapier and pistol, then stepped up onto the pile of lumber and dirt in full view of the enemy. “Dragoons!” he shouted. “To arms! On me!
Howls erupted from the fire-lit shadows of the trench before him. A javelin whizzed past his ear, missing him by inches.
Lockhart didn’t flinch. He lowered his pistol, and caught sight of a Jombard as the painted warrior stepped into the firelight at the edge of the trench. He fired. The pistol roared and bucked in his hand. “To arms!”
An arrow glanced off Lockhart’s cuirass. He winced at the hit, but kept his rapier raised and his body rooted to the spot.
A keening cry came from the stretch of broken ground in front of the Wall. Jombards erupted forward, flinging themselves down into the body-filled trench.
“Fire!” Lockhart screamed.
Carbines and pistols flashed and banged almost as one, spitting death into the trench.
It was a good volley, better than Lockhart had any right to expect of men so ragged and worn after several hours of fighting.
But the Jombards kept coming.
Lockhart leapt to the edge of the trench. He swung his rapier down, catching a Jombard who was scrambling up the wall between two of the wooden stakes.
The blade caught the man in the face and nearly cut his head in two. He tumbled back down into the pit.
“Fight!” Lockhart shouted, his voice sore and scratched from smoke and gunpowder. “Drive the devils back!”
Dyke was suddenly beside him, shouting like a maniac and swinging a halberd as if he were chopping wood.
Lockhart felt himself grinning like a maniac. If he was going to die tonight, this was how he would die, fighting to the death with his men.
And then he saw it.
In the open ground between the trench and the woods a towering gray shape appeared, taller than any man had a right to be. A wailing chant came from so
mewhere in the woods, rising above the carnage and clamor of the battle.
Lockhart felt the hand of fear on his heart. Not again. It couldn’t be—
The gray shape threw back its long, lean head and howled. The sound was bestial, filled with rage and frenzy.
It was another werewolf.
No one even looked up as Kendril pushed across the crowded parade ground.
Dragoons were stumbling and running this way and that, shouting and lugging boxes and crates to the walls of the fort. The parade ground was already filled with sweating horses and fugitives from the Wall. Almost all the men were bleeding from fresh injuries and were streaked with mud and ash. Many were missing weapons, and had the wild eyes of men whose will had been broken.
Kendril scowled at the scene as he raced towards the central blockhouse. But what worried him more was what he didn’t see.
There was no sign of any of the militiamen, or even of any of their mounts, weapons, or equipment.
Kendril hurried his pace, and jumped up the steps of the blockhouse. He headed right inside.
The chaos within was no better than that outside on the parade ground. Dragoons hurried this way and that, bellowing orders and hurrying by with dispatches or crates of carbine cartridges.
Kendril dodged around a dragoon sergeant who crashed out the front door of the blockhouse, barely avoiding a collision with the man. He turned down the short hallway, moving around a stack of bottles that someone had left stacked against the wall.
More shouting came from up ahead in what had been Kendril’s office.
He swung around the corner, not even bothering to knock.
Lieutenant Colonel Yearling was hunched over the desk, his monocle clenched firmly in one eye. Several maps were spread out over the surface, labeled with various colored pins and markers. A handful of other officers were in the room. All seemed to be talking at the same time. One was pointing to the map on the wall, shouting something about evacuation. Two others were talking quietly together in the corner, their faces written with worry.
Kendril stood stock-still in the doorway, dumbfounded by the complete anarchy he was witnessing.
