The creature raised the sword it had been polishing while drawing a second one from its back, crossing the blades in front of itself. “Killer Mapta's been waiting for the one standing here, or the fiery one.” The demon circled around the fire, facing off against Hawke with a raised guard. “Scholar and Forge are known for killing grinel. Slaughtering enough humans seemed easiest to draw one out.”
“You did all this just to bring us here?” Hawke's voice was deadpan, disbelieving. The demon nodded and laughed, looking very pleased with itself. A convulsion pulsed through Hawke.
“ 'Killer,' you say. That's quite a name you chose,” said Hawke. “There really is no redeeming quality to you monsters. Come on, then.” He gripped the hilt of his blade with both hands, “I'm here. Do what you came here for.”
“Glad to,” replied the grinel naming itself Killer Mapta, twirling the blades in its grip. With an unearthly roar, it lunged at Hawke and attacked.
My experience with the grinel as a whole was very limited, but it was clear even to me that this foe was a magnitude more dangerous than the vermilion demon that had kidnapped me. Scab Kahlot was ready to kill, sure enough, but it was with an animalistic ferocity, clawing and biting recklessly. With this one, there was calculation and rhythm to its violence. Each swing of its swords cleaved graceful arcs that threatened to rend flesh and sever muscle, to spill blood and end lives. It was amply easy to see why the townsfolk of Nostromos feared this creature's wrath.
And yet for all of its ferocity, my companion seemed indifferent to the onslaught bearing down on him. When he faced Apollo before, Hawke had been able to barely avoid harm through careful steps and weaving, but now he practically danced between the demon's blades. Where any normal person would have been reduced to a pile of gore, Hawke instead made Killer Mapta look like a flailing child trying in vain to swat a fly, and the frustration on the grinel's face was growing visibly greater by the second.
“You seem to be having some trouble hitting me,” said Hawke, just barely audible over the grunts and curses of his attacker. “Allow me to help you out here.”
With that, he planted his feet and stood fully upright. A flash of depraved glee crossed the demon's face, and it accepted the invitation Hawke made without delay. Both its swords crashed into him simultaneously, and it was all I could do to keep from shouting in dismay.
Instead of watching my friend's body fall as so many bandits had, I was forced to clasp my hands over my ears as a painful ringing filled the air. Killer Mapta's excitement quickly bled from his face as the shattered remains of his swords tumbled through the air and disappeared into the night, leaving him holding but a pair of crumbling hilts. Hawke brushed off his robe with the air of someone who had been traveling a dusty road all day.
“You've grown lax with all the innocents you've been murdering.” Hawke's tone was like ice in my veins. “A body coated in essence is as strong as a suit of armor. That holds just as true for humans as it does for the grinel.” His eyes fell on his adversary, who was still staring blankly at its broken weapons in disbelief. “It's too bad; if you had fought me even a month ago, things might have gone much worse for me.” Hawke's sword rose as he spoke until it was poised high above his head. The demon turned his eyes upward, slits narrowing, and its mouth dropped open.
Hawke's own lips twitched. “Let's see how your essence matches against mine.”
The old sword blurred through the air, almost too fast to follow. The shriek followed so closely behind you might have sworn it was the blade that made it in its descent, but the noise quickly melted into a burbling grunt. Most of the demon's torso fell away from the body, each half of the creature hitting the ground at near the same time. Then silence ruled over the night once more, broken only by the occasional pop from the fire still burning away.
Hawke stood, engulfed in that eerie quiet, for what felt like hours without moving a muscle. His sword hung limp at his side in one hand, and his breathing had slowed until he could have been mistaken for a statue. Eventually, he did stir, bending over and grabbing the upper part of the body that had been cleaved away by the arm. He set off in the direction of the main pass, dragging the carcass behind him and leaving a ghastly dark trail in his wake.
I broke from my stupor and realized that he would likely be heading back to the camp before long. I quickly scrambled from my hiding spot and made haste back towards the path to try and beat him to camp. For a few minutes, I was left skittering over rocks trying to retrace the steps we had taken to get to the location, fearing I had lost all sense of direction. Thankfully the main path was not too far off, and from there it was a simple matter of sprinting as fast as I could back down the mountain until I came upon a familiar pair of boulders.
My chest was heaving from all the running and I could feel the sweat running down my face, and once I had scurried back into the cave, I had to take several deep gulps of breath to try and calm myself. A few quick wipes of my blanket to hopefully clear away my perspiration later, I was huddled back where he had left me earlier in the night with eyes clenched tight.
I don't know how much time passed before I heard the sound of shifting rock coming from the entrance. Still more time passed when a soft orange light filtered through my eyelids and the air warmed.
“Micasa.”
Hawke's voice was so unexpected I opened my eyes instantly. He had lit a fire close by and was staring into the flames with a blank face, his eyes hidden behind the glare of his glasses.
“Why did you follow me?” he asked. I had no clue what had given away my shadowing, but I couldn't bring myself to deny his accusation. All I could do was stare at him.
“Did they all have to die?” I finally responded. It was the only thing I could think of. His head turned away from me so slightly that I wondered if he even realized it had moved.
“If I hadn't done what I did, even more people would have lost lives at their hands,” was his answer. It wasn't enough to convince me.
“Is it really that simple?”
“No,” he replied after some thought. “Nothing is ever that simple.”
“Then how do you figure out if you did the right thing?”
He turned and looked at me, the light of the fire still obscuring his eyes. “You do what I said back in Nostromos. You keep moving forward.”
Chapter 16: The Neglectful Man
To say things grew awkward between Hawke and myself after that bloody night would be a gross understatement. Our conversations were nothing more than one-word questions and nods or shakes of our heads. It took little time for us to fall into the same tired routine: wake, eat, ride, rest, ride again, eat, sleep. Days upon days passed with this monotony. Even the landscape echoed our feelings, with quiet stretches of dusty brushland only occasionally interrupted by a tree or boulder.
The only thing that I could find to take my mind off our predicament was the ready supply of books Hawke normally kept on hand. Most were full of words I couldn't decipher for the life of me, with titles like Astronomy of the Modern Era, Applied Mathematics, and The Lusty Sapirian Maid. In spite of my best efforts to make any sense of them, I quickly tired of trying. The remaining handful of books were the children's stories he had acquired for me, but I had already read those twice over long ago and had little desire to revisit them so soon.
All that was left was the map, which until now I had barely given more than a couple glances. At first, the dozens of tiny lines crisscrossing the outline of Astra seemed overwhelming, but it didn't take long to suss out which ones represented rivers and which were boundary lines for cities. Hawke even noticed my sudden interest in navigation and offered a couple tips, most helpfully teaching me how to tell our direction from the position of the sun.
Once those details were made clear, I started tracing out the path our journey had taken since the night we escaped from the false Hawke Morau's estate. It was incredibly strange to think of all the places we had been to, only to see them as tiny labeled dots on
that massive piece of parchment. For once I started understanding the scope of how far we had come, and all the things I had gotten to experience along the way, for better or worse.
We stopped one day by a little brook running through a thin grove of trees. Their red leaves were rapidly thinning, carpeting the sodden ground and crunching underfoot. Hawke was busy filling our canteens and waterskins while I sat with the map near Sir Brown Horse, who was enjoying his own fill of the deliciously clear water. I had just about caught up to our progress on the map, the line I had been tracing our path with just passing out of Nostromos and through the hills marked near it. It was only now that I started looking where that line was leading us.
“It looks like Val'Hala is next,” I mumbled to myself, wondering if I pronounced the town's name correctly.
“What was that?” Hawke asked, freezing with one of the canteens halfway towards the creek.
“Oh, sorry,” I apologized, “I just noticed we're almost to Val'Hala.”
Hawke capped the canteen and brusquely walked over to look over my shoulder. His eyes darted over the parchment for a second, then he clapped me on the shoulder.
“Wow, Micasa, I'm impressed. You learned how to read this much faster than I thought!” He smiled down at me, and just like that, I felt some of the tension that had been growing between us over the last several weeks melt away.
“You think I did okay with this?” I beamed. He gave me a nod and pointed down towards where my last mark had been made.
“Yeah, here's the woodland we're in right now. We just have another day and a half or so before we reach Val'Hala.” He turned an eye to me and raised an eyebrow. “Micasa, will you do me a favor and be our navigator for the last few stretches of our journey? It would help me out a lot.”
Having Hawke tell me that I could have responsibility over something important to our travels made me well up with gratitude. Finally, I could feel like I was contributing something, rather than just being a passive rider. I nodded my head enthusiastically to his request.
“Wonderful! Thank you, Micasa.” He gave me a brief hug and walked back to Sir Brown Horse to feed him, now with a slight jaunt to his step that hadn't been there before.
An hour later, after we had eaten and had a bit to relax, we were back on the road heading northwest towards the city. Hawke hummed a little tune to himself while I pored over the map with a newfound enthusiasm, looking for landmarks to mark the progress we were making.
“Hey, Micasa, it's been a while since the last time I saw you working with the locks,” said Hawke some hours later. “Why don't you put the map away for a while and do some of that?”
“Oh, the ones we have are too easy for me,” I told him.
“Eh? Really?”
“Sure, lemme show you.” I folded up the map and put it in a saddlebag, trading it out for three of the padlocks we kept on hand for me to play around with. Holding them forward so Hawke could see, I proceeded to snap them open and close with my bare hands.
“When did you learn to do that without your hairpin?” Hawke's voice was full of amazement. I shrugged and tossed the locks back in their bags.
“A while ago. I just kept fiddling with them until eventually I could do it. What I want to know is how you weren't hurt by those swords and arrows from the bandits. Was that the power you got back from Mr. Kamson?”
“No, actually it's something anyone who can use essence can do, though it's not easy.” Hawke pulled out an apple from his knapsack and held it in his hand. “Essence is your life energy, you remember? Well, it's possible to channel it through your body to reinforce it.” His grip tightened on the apple until the fruit splintered and exploded in his hand. “With enough practice, you can make yourself several times stronger or turn your flesh tough as steel.”
“So even I could learn that?” It was an exciting prospect to get to do something other than open and close locks with this power of mine.
“Maybe, someday. It's not the same thing as honing your power, though. Would probably take years, at least.”
“I don't care! I wanna learn!”
Hawke laughed at my insistence. “Okay, okay, when all this is over, I'll try and teach you.”
It was as if our discomfort over the last month had just evaporated, and I couldn't have been happier that things were starting to return to the way they were before. My companion seemed to be trying his hardest to keep the tone light, and even though I couldn't completely forget what had happened with the bandits, I also couldn't ignore the effort he was taking to make things right between us again. That alone made me feel that there was reason to put my trust Hawke once more.
The dirt path we had been traversing opened to a cobblestone road wide enough for two carriages to ride abreast. Other travelers started appearing on the way, carrying sacks full of belongings or driving carts packed with wares to peddle. Hawke tried to make some small talk with a few, but most were heading directions different from our own, and grew quiet or laughed when he mentioned we were heading towards Val'Hala. Eventually, they would take some turn at a crossroads and slowly shrink away while we forged onward down the main road.
Our own destination was already growing larger by the minute, though that was no great feat; the city easily dwarfed even the largest ones I had seen on our adventure to date, with gargantuan stone parapets creeping above a towering curtain wall of brick and mortar. The closer we drew, the more it seemed the blockade was bearing down on us until even the early afternoon sun disappeared prematurely behind its berth.
A mob of people was gathered near where the road met the wall, and it was only when we had ventured closer that I finally caught sight of a pair of bronzed gates set in the stone, just large enough to let a single cart in at a time.
“Is the pull coming from anyone here?” I asked Hawke. He shook his head.
“No, it's definitely coming from inside the city. The real question is whether or not we'll even be able to make it in.”
“We can just follow everyone else in, right?” I asked.
“I doubt any of these people will make it in. Val'Hala has a strict policy on letting people enter the city without some business to conduct. You see the guards patrolling the crowd?” He pointed towards several heavily armored figures wielding simple but dangerous looking lances. “They're here to keep people from just stampeding inside. Only those with the right paperwork will actually be let through. This may be a problem.”
One of the guards turned and looked at us, his gaze lingering for a long moment. I could understand why: we were a couple of the only people who weren't on foot and stood out readily on horseback above the throng. He started to turn away, then suddenly snapped his head back and took a long stare. After a few seconds, he started pushing through the crowd, casually elbowing aside anyone who was even remotely in his way. Hawke noticed him by this time too and was watching his approach with mild curiosity.
When he was but a few paces from us, he froze, eyes narrowing like he was trying to make sure what he was seeing was real. “Oy!” he finally roared over his shoulder. “Bates, come take a look here!”
Somehow his voice carried over the din of the mob, as a second guard quickly appeared beside his comrade.
“What is it, Horace? Someone causing trouble?” asked the new guard.
“No, no, look you fool! The guy on the horse!”
Bates the guard turned his focus on us, scowling a bit as he made his own inspection. A moment later his expression turned to shock and he let out an audible gasp.
“Could it really be? 'Ey you!” He pointed to Hawke. “What's your name?”
“Er, I'm Hawke Morau,” Hawke said hesitantly. The two looked at each other and laughed.
“Well well well!” exclaimed Bates the guard. “Fancy that! The Lady wasn't off her head after all!”
“Who'd have thunk it?” cried the one named Horace. “Guess we weren't pokin' around here for nothin'!” The guard turned back to us and beckoned with a han
d. “Come on then, the Lady's been waitin' fer ya!”
Hawke and I looked at each other mutely and shrugged. So much for getting in being a problem.
The two guards immediately began jostling the crowd aside to make room for us to proceed. Anyone who tried to argue changed their mind quickly when the spears started pointing, and soon enough we were making way straight through to the bronze doors. Other guards noticed the commotion and came running, but a few muttered words from Horace or Bates and a quick glance at Hawke were all they needed to join the effort of moving the congregation aside. With their combined efforts, there was effectively a road that cut right down the middle of two masses of very confused people.
“Oy, who's the girl?” asked Bates as he and Horace fell in step next to Sir Brown Horse. They seemed to have taken no small pride in our discovery, shooing away other guards who tried to follow as if they were personally responsible for us.
“My ward. Anywhere I can go, she can go too.”
“Fair enough,” the guard acquiesced, “though if the Lady says for her to go, she has to go. No offense, Lord Hawke,” Bates quickly amended with a slight bow of his head.
“Who's this Lady you keep talking about?” I asked him. Horace let out a guffaw on the other side of us.
“Oy, th' lass needs a bit more time in school!” he snorted. His laugh turned into a cough at Hawke's icy glare, and he looked away. “Beg pardon, miss. What I meant ta say is, th' only Lady in all these 'ere lands is Lady Lheona. She rules 'ere with 'er husband, Lord Othenidus, in this prosperous land of ours Val'Hala.” He hazarded a peek at Hawke, who gave him a small nod of approval. The guard's shoulders relaxed.
“What has the Lady requested my presence for?” Hawke asked them. Both the guards shook their heads in unison.
“That's the thing. Our dear Lady won't tell a soul – not even her Lord husband,” explained Bates. He leaned in closer and dropped his voice to a hush. “And if I may say in your confidentialness, she's been in a right state about it for years. Not a day has gone by where she hasn't asked if you've been sighted and regularly punishes the city guard for damn near nothing! Practically in hysterics all hours of the day, hardly sleeps even.”
Broken Soul (The Scholar's Legacy Book 1) Page 20
