Heroes or Thieves (Steps of Power 2)

by Sherwood, J. J.

  Yes, they should fear him. They were not the only creatures that hunted in the night.

  Jerah leapt at the man, slamming him to the ground with his legs as his bare hands bent the blade away. Small stones bounced with the force of the man’s impact, and his body spasmed as breath was torn from his lungs.

  But Jerah vaulted immediately away, knowing that the column aimed another of the deadly shafts.

  No. Not this time!

  He lurched forward across the dark earth and slammed his fist into the column’s chest, hearing the sound of stone breaking beneath his fingers. He hurled her into the tree beside him, a crack ripping through the length of the wood, showering him with fragments of the branches.

  “HAZAMARETH!” the man screamed from directly behind him. He had moved fast.

  Jerah dodged, but too slowly. The power that swept with the blade was unlike that of any human—

  It swept clean through Jerah’s throat. A glitter of blood sprayed toward the void torch.

  Jerah jerked away, grabbing the blade as he went. But then he stumbled, his legs feeling suddenly weak. He fell to a knee, grasping a hand to his throat as he realized he could no longer breathe.

  The mercenary’s blade clattered from his hands.

  What was this…? An injury like this… Did it mean…?

  He felt spurts of blood and an abrupt surge of dizziness.

  The man did not hesitate: his own swords lay in a mangled heap, but he drew the metal of his fallen comrade and swung at Jerah’s neck again.

  “YOU DIE HERE!” the mercenary shouted.

  There was a sudden flare of heat before Jerah, rising in intensity with a roar of ferocious wind. Jerah fought through the pain, struggling to see the source…!

  Fire.

  Fire had engulfed the powerful human.

  With a scream, the brown-haired man reeled away, dropping the sword. He fell to the ground to roll desperately across the dirt. “Damn you!” he cried in agony.

  But the flames burned on.

  “Come, Jerah,” a voice behind him suddenly spoke in the elven tongue, smooth and lightly accented.

  Who…? “Wratherus?” Jerah mumbled his shock, and found that his blood had slowed. He could breathe once more.

  He looked back at the fierce eyes that watched the body rolling and burning in the dirt. The man was not yet dead. He could not leave.

  Jerah pushed off his feet. “Wait,” he commanded. “Now that you are with me, they might hurt you, too.”

  And before the brown-haired man had struggled fully to his feet, Jerah slammed his fist into the human’s skull, watching the body fly back against the walls of the abandoned house. The stones shattered with the force of the impact and in a terrible groan, the building collapsed, burying the crushed mercenary within.

  Then Jerah turned to the column still lying by the tree beyond. Her eyes had opened.

  And Jerah halted, perplexed. Wratherus was already beside her. It was crouched by her head, speaking too softly for Jerah to hear.

  What was it saying…?

  But by the time Jerah had moved close enough, it had finished. Its yellow eyes were narrowed and its sharp fingers clutched about her throat.

  When its hands came away, a scorch mark remained about her neck.

  Maybe the creature could not kill her. Jerah would do it instead.

  He reached out to rip his talons across her chest, but Wratherus hissed. “No,” it ordered.

  Jerah’s fingers flexed. “But—”

  “No.” There was quiet authority in Wratherus’ voice.

  The building beside Jerah burst suddenly into flames and his mind immediately cleared. Almost as quickly as the flames had sprung to life, the heart of the fire died to merely gnaw at the kindling across the roof—the only wood left on the building to burn.

  But his instincts were gone. He could think as himself again, and he knew danger still lurked. Someone may have heard the fight. And certainly someone from the town would see the fire! He couldn’t take his chances. His heart rate sped up, the wound at his throat aching painfully. “We have to go. Now. Someone may come looking for these mercenaries. Come!”

  He stumbled away from the black-haired column that had gone motionless beneath the tree, and Wratherus stepped behind him. There was a purposeful distance to its silent stance, but its eyes told Jerah it was listening.

  With a final glance at the destruction behind him and Wratherus at his heels, Jerah fled in search of another city.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “Tsuki. Up.”

  The words drifted to him as though from a vast and hollow distance.

  The tunnel of a catacomb, perhaps?

  Yes. Gods damn it, he must finally be dead.

  “Tsuki.”

  Tsuki tilted his head against the ground, feeling an immense stiffness in his neck. It caused his breath to wheeze out from his throat. Ashes and fragments of stone and wood slid off his face as he shifted; they rolled away across his cheeks to the floor beneath. He coughed and gasped, exhaling a lungful of ash.

  Then his eyelids fluttered open in the darkness. “Uhhh…” he groaned. Pain seared his body, demanding his complete immobility.

  If he was not dead, he wanted to be.

  Still, his vision adjusted swiftly to the night. The light of the moon was generous through the canopy of trees, repelling the shadows to reveal the smoking landscape around him.

  Beside him, Hazamareth’s pale and dirty face was fixed in concern. Black hair clung to his companion’s cheek, plastered by blood, and her hazel eyes were tinted with mutual discomfort. There was a wound upon her that had not been present before he had been buried alive: a scorch mark of a hand gripped about her throat.

  “Damn it,” Tsuki heaved as the memories of the fight swept through his consciousness. Their first encounter with the creature had left him with some daft notion that they could actually best it. But they had been beaten horribly. So undeniably outmatched.

  Hazamareth heaved a stone off of his legs and extended a hand. “Judging by Noctem, I think we have been unconscious for a few hours. Gods, you look dreadful. You are fortunate that building had very little to sustain that fire or you’d be dead, my friend.”

  Tsuki heaved himself to his feet, noting the large stones that fell away beside him. The tingle from a recently shattered spine admonished his movement. “My head feels like someone took a boulder to it.” He paused, distracted by the moonlight that cascaded down his ash-smudged flesh. “…And I’m naked.”

  “Fire will do that,” Hazamareth tsked simply and reached around to the nape of his neck. A chill nipped at the base and as she drew her fingers away, a dark liquid glinted softly in the moonlight. “The damn beast is as sturdy as you are.” Her fingers danced idly before she raised them to her lips.

  “Gods, not that. You’re like an animal.”

  “Waste not,” she denied. As the blood touched her lips, the scorch mark began to fade.

  Tsuki’s body was tugged away through the remaining damage, following the soft drift of snow as it began to mask the remnants of battle. The beast and its pet were long gone, lost within the folds of winter. How in the Nine Realms were they going to contend with its strength a third time? They had nearly decapitated the damn creature, and yet it had snapped them like they were mere fragments of ice!

  He stumbled slightly as he extracted himself fully from the rubble, an old, stone sign cracking beneath his heel. “Used to be an inn. Lucky they abandoned this place before the beast arrived.”

  Hazamareth found his boot and her brow contorted briefly. “The Dead Wolf. Why, isn’t that fitting?”

  “It would be if that’s what was actually displayed,” he sighed. “The Feral Hound, Haz.” He bent down with a wince, ferrying his mangled sword from the smattering of the beast’s blood.

  A dead wolf was nearly what they had earned for their efforts. They needed a real plan—one not solely based upon their brute strength and expensive w
eaponry. His fingers drummed along the twisted silver. “Come, Haz. We need to scour the archives. If we have to rely on sheer decapitation to kill this creature, we are likely to be ripped to pieces before we can drive a blade that close. Especially with that Malraven at his side.” He assessed his scorched flesh. “As if the beast alone wasn’t already like a small army! I have half a mind to let this one go in hopes it turns around and teaches that arrogant warlord a well-deserved lesson.” He wobbled forward and snapped his fingers at his silent comrade. “Come.”

  For once, Hazamareth did not grin at his predicament. “Tsuki, I don’t believe this creature is like the others.”

  “Did you just realize that? I’m not even certain it’s a demon!” he retorted, slamming his boot into the sludge of blood and snow. It rebuked him with a jarring pain. “Talk while you walk, my friend.”

  Hazamareth’s sable bangs split, pasting on either side of her perspiring brow as she shook her pallid head. She made no attempt at pursuit. “That is not what I refer to. I think that he might be like us.”

  ‘Like us…’ Tsuki snorted, feeling his ribs crack against the force. “It’s murdering people,” he growled in disdain. “It is not like us.”

  “You saw it defend that Malraven, same as I,” she countered again, prying her hair back down. The “v” of her bangs pointed sharply down her nose, where a spatter of blood still caked from the internal hemorrhaging the massive fist had caused.

  Tsuki’s lips drew tight, noting that her chest had not yet corrected its cave. “So we let people die in exchange for its life lesson? Surely the beast would have shown no more hesitation if the inn had been filled with swaddled infants!”

  “And we were once no different! Yet look at us now. This is no unintelligent beast as Vale suggested. This creature is… human. We hunt beasts because they fall outside the law. This man falls within it. He is not our responsibility. And if we attempt to hunt him again, he will kill us.”

  Tsuki sucked in a breath, remnants of his rampages threatening to shake him with their haunting images. ‘Like us?’ “…What are you trying to tell me?”

  “What you very well know in your gut,” she replied, her voice steeling. “That we are no dogs of war—no servants of Saebellus. No pawns of the gods. We work by our own hand as we always have.”

  Tsuki felt all the pains in his body rallying at her words. Whether he was feeling defiance or rage, he was not yet sure. “We never break a contract!”

  “And we never hunt men.”

  Tsuki let out a venomous hiss, but he could see the fierce glint in her eye. ‘This creature is more than a beast,’ his mind whispered. True demons never failed to serve themselves first… Yet this… man had thrown the elf to safety before engaging in self-defense.

  “Once, I showed you the same mercy I suggest we now show him.” She extended a soft hand. In the bitterness of winter’s night, her fingers were as cold as ice, reminding him how inhuman they were. “Now I ask you to extend the same. We do not steal lives for coin.”

  “Then what, Haz?” he began, the tapping of his free fingers so rapid upon his bare thigh that his joints stung. “Do we simply forget Rel’s fury and how he’ll retaliate, or ignore the scourging of our good name? Are you telling me that we let this beast roam free to murder?!”

  “Man,” Hazamareth corrected. Then she offered a solution offensive in its simplicity, her hand growing tight. Yet centuries before, her compassion had been all that had stayed his destruction. “We will trail him. I need to make certain the truth of the Malraven’s words. He said that he has the beast within his control.”

  Tsuki eyed her neck where the elf had attempted to brand his warning. If that Malraven was the man’s reasoning… his “Hazamareth”…

  In the growing flurry of snow, the smoldering embers hissed in warning. “Nothing,” he growled firmly, “can subdue that beast.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The white torchlight was shining directly above Jerah in a brilliant sphere of light. He slunk out of the shelter of the forest and stepped into the small expanse of white, cold fluff beyond. The field stretched across the land between the trees and his target city, long blades of grass that crunched beneath his heavy boots barely poking free. The land was frozen from the cold that had spread across it from the ocean: Jerah could smell the salt hovering lightly in the air.

  Wratherus and he had traveled swiftly away from the mountains since the night before, hardly stopping to either eat or rest, and even when they had, Jerah did it only for Wratherus’ sake. It seemed that the creature was not as sturdy as himself and required a more delicate balance of care and travel. But he felt proud to care for it, as it had shown him protection and devotion when the mercenaries had come to kill him.

  Jerah marveled at the feeling that he had developed for it… It was a new feeling: a feeling of being closer than he had ever felt to Master. A devotion built not out of need, but out of trust.

  He did wonder what it had said to the column, but it would not tell him. In fact, the creature had not spoken to him in the human or elven tongue since they had fled, despite Jerah’s persistent attempts to converse with it.

  And now they had come to Jerah’s next target: another city. He could distinguish it clearly once freed from the obscurity of the forest line. This city was stretched across the length of the tree-studded field, not surrounded by the walls or guards Jerah was accustomed to. It was significantly smaller than the other cities he had encountered, with wooden towering buildings and soft, yellow light flickering from the occasional glass-paned window. The direct torchlight above made the shadows short and tucked tight against their sources.

  He paused behind the shadow of a tree, peering out at the city cautiously. He could hear Wratherus come to a distant halt behind him, still ever wary of their proximity.

  “This city is very quiet,” Jerah spoke after a moment, using the elven tongue in hopes that the creature would be swayed to converse. His eyes dilated against the darkness, ears straining in the silence. There was no music, no bolstering ruckus from some bustling building, no merchants or guards. He watched a few frost-speckled leaves roll slowly across the dirt street and vanish beneath the wooden overhang of the nearest building.

  Jerah slowly pushed away from the tree. “It shall be easy to make a kill in this place!” he spoke, his voice rising in cheerfulness. It had been a long time since he had been able to kill without having to fight for it. Even the last city had become gradually more difficult to enter and leave.

  He glanced back at Wratherus. “Come, Wratherus. I must make a kill here. Then, we can finally sleep.”

  Wratherus’ composure was ever straight and unruffled. Half of its face had remained hidden beneath the torn, red fabric, but its voice was clear as it offered a single, firm word. “No.”

  Jerah began to smile at its first word spoken to him since the mercenaries, but then blinked as its meaning reached him. He cocked his head slightly. No? No, what? “You can stay here if you like. I will return when I have made my kill,” he finally responded.

  Poor Wratherus, he determined—it must be exhausted.

  “No,” Wratherus replied steadily.

  Jerah pursed his lips, but held his patience. “Wratherus, I make a kill every night. I must make one now. You can either come with me or stay here, but I must make my kill. Will you come with me or will you stay?”

  “No,” Wratherus’ voice rose more forcefully.

  Jerah heaved a sigh, much like his master had done when Jerah asked too many questions. His patience was now thinning. What did it not understand? He paid for his life every night. Did the creature not understand that his actions must continue, even freed from the mountains?

  “Wratherus—”

  “You do not kill,” Wratherus cut him off, eyes hard. Jerah could almost see a fire burning behind them, fierce and dangerous.

  Jerah swung his legs about, turning his back to it even as instinct warned him against doing so. “Wratheru
s, I must go. I will return soon.” He stepped forward.

  A sudden explosion of flames engulfed the frozen grass before him with a ferocious hiss, and Jerah leapt away. He watched as the flames twisted and licked the dark air in an attempt to threaten him further.

  Jerah turned his head, narrowing his yellow eyes into dangerous slits. “Wratherus, you cannot stop me from this. If you try…” he trailed off, stomach knotting tightly.

  Wratherus said nothing, but lifted its chin in calm defiance.

  Jerah watched the creature closely as he raised a heavy boot, pressing it slowly into the charred earth. Flames instantly ignited the ground, blasting his leg with heat and sending him reeling in pain.

  Jerah snarled, turning sharply. “Wratherus, I must kill!” Then he pushed off the frozen earth and darted toward the city.

  A fierce sound split the air, like that of the void when water fell, and he was tossed like the frost-covered leaves of the city, tumbling across the grass and landing on his chest. He pushed himself off the ground slowly, body aching, head spinning from the tremendous force. “Wratherus,” he growled, “I have to—” But his words were cut off again as another explosion of fire knocked him toward the tree where the creature stood. “Wratherus—” The next explosion tossed him several feet to the side to land with a thud and jingle of chainmail into the earth.

  Jerah felt his heart pounding as instinct began to rise. He raised a hand defensively. “Wait. Listen,” he began desperately. “If I do not kill one person a day, I will turn into stone like a woman column, and I will cease to be.” He lowered his hand to the frozen ground. “So… I must go.”

  Wratherus advanced to stop a short distance from him. It looked down at him for a moment, its eyes expressionless, its chin raised. Then it crouched, letting its head fall slowly to the side. Its black and red hair slipped over its shoulder as a strand of orange passed in front of its right eye. It studied him stoically for a long moment, then spoke in a gentle voice, as though it understood him entirely. “You do not need to kill.”