The Unforgiven
Page 49
His scream of agony not just alerted the others, they broke apart in panic. Cian yelled and seized steel, bellowing orders his men didn’t heed. Darkness hadn’t yet fallen completely, and the firelight glinted off our bared blades. Only the first stars twinkled from the heavens, and I half-wondered if Zeani watched from afar and hoped her lover would win this bout.
As Yestin and Tris reached Kado to succor his injury, Cian and I met. And clashed. Our swords rang against one another, slithering in a shiver of sparks as I fought to kill him and he fought not to die. His fear worked against him just as my rage worked for me. I parried his amateur stroke and feinted a blow to his left. When he swung to block it, I lunged in, under his blade, to his right. The tip of my sword cut his thigh near the groin. Not close to his femoral, but enough that his leg buckled under him. I feinted again, striking close to his head. He ducked, parried and responded with a quick cut to my belly.
I jumped back easily, avoiding his blade and slashed downward and sideways. His sword swung hard left, harmless, leaving his right shoulder exposed. I cut backward, slicing through tough muscle and tendon. If he lifted that sword again, I’d be impressed.
He didn’t. His sword clanged to the ground as he staggered, blood gushing from two wounds. As desperate as he was, I expected him to change, to shift into a new body. His favorite form was the fox: swift, clever, and nimble. As a quick predator, he might escape my blade and my wrath. Instead, Cian cried aloud, screaming names, calling for reinforcements. “Broc! Yestin! Help me! Help!”
Finish it.
I didn’t need to be told twice.
I swung my blade hard, from left to right, across his throat. Blood fountained high, spattering into the growing darkness. He stood still, his eyes wide and staring. What the hell? I know I killed him. Still he stood, gaping at me in astonishment. His mouth worked. His eyes bulged in his head. The scar across his cheek paled to a dim pink as the blood drained from his flesh. Damn it, why aren’t you dead? I tilted my head sideways, considering. A swift glance downward showed me a clean blade glinting in the bright firelight.
Uh, did I kill him or didn’t I?
Van, he tried to say, his lips moving. For –
For?
Forgive me.
Oh, bloody unlikely. I lowered my sword and watched in casual amusement as his head slowly, like a mountain collapsing, tilted sideways. Only a thin thread of flesh that my sword missed kept his head on his neck. Then it split, torn, as Cian’s head fell to the tundra and rolled, over and over, bumping his nose, to rest near my bare feet.
His body slumped to the stony soil, bleeding out from his empty neck, pooling in thick clots amid the thin grass and fallen pine needles. I spared a moment to grieve for the kinsman I killed. He was my kin, a Clansman, after all. But he sent my girl into the hands of a murdering prince with all the thought of ordering his next round of ale. For that, I kicked his head into the rushing river.
“You killed him,” Tris said, his tone low with awe and disbelief.
Broc, Yestin and Drust slowly rose from a still groaning Kado and stepped on light, cautious feet toward me. Zorn ran in, nocking an arrow to his bowstring, raising it, aiming. Their bared swords gleamed in the firelight as they circled me round, their eyes glowing redly. Spinning my sword in a tight circle, I raised my free hand toward them, grinning faintly.
I lowered my face and spat on Cian’s still twitching corpse. “I reckon you boys want to join your master, eh? C’mon, then. Let’s dance.”
Drust rushed me first, yelling for all he was worth, his sword raised. I lifted mine, braced to meet him head on. He never arrived. Something from the near darkness seized him by the shoulders and yanked him high. His despairing scream of agony and terror trailed down to me at the same instant his sword clanked to the ground at my feet.
What the –
Zorn’s arrow whistled past my head at the same moment Drust’s flayed body, his skull crushed beyond recognition, fell to the ground behind me. I whirled to defend my rear. I saw nothing to defend against, yet the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. Blood poured from the myriad cuts and slices to his body, his neck half severed. His slowly glazing eyes stared at me, accusing. You did this.
No, I swear, I didn’t.
Tris rushed me next, his eyes bugging with not just fear but outright terror. His sword swung so wild, all I need do to avoid it was step aside. I never bothered to raise my own. He staggered past me – and screamed. Something huge and darkly shadowed lifted him from the ground and hugged him close. I heard his bones snap as his ribs and spine gave in, his last breaths of life broken with bubbles of blood.
He died, yet I had no idea what killed him.
Thudding hooves warned me in time.
Spinning, my sword high and my body low, my narrowed vision watched as a huge dark creature galloped into the firelight. The red-orange flames glistened off black hair, black hide, a rayed star high above with gold gleaming around his throat. Moon and fire licked off a raised sword, but the creature’s face dropped my sword’s tip to the dirt. Oh, no way, this isn’t right, this isn’t happening –
My oldest and best friend slammed between me and my enemy. Yestin charged in, his sword high, yelling his challenge. Malik spun, his own blade ready, his tail lifting away from his huge quarters. The Lord Captain Commander didn’t swing toward his charging enemy, but away. My breath caught in my chest as Malik’s huge rear hooves kicked Yestin’s head clean from his shoulders.
“Hiyaaaa!” Broc screamed, charging into the battle, his sword held high.
I spun to face him, my own sword ready, but I’d no need.
Malik wasn’t done. He charged, full out, dead on target. His nocked arrow took Broc through the left eye. Broc, dead before he hit the ground, fell backward, his body falling onto the rocky soil beside the Auryn. That bad boy’s sword was flung wild and free to land with a clang beside the rushing river’s edge. Malik leaped Broc’s corpse, his front hooves tucked beneath his shoulders, his heavy tail flagging the wind. Spinning around, he raised his bow, searching for his next target.
Zorn charged in, aiming to kill me where I stood. He saw me, alone, undefended by the dark spirits of the night, and sought to kill me. No doubt, in his mind, I commanded these foul demons. Should he kill me, he and Kado might yet survive this hell on earth. Before I raised a defense against his attack, a huge body with eagle’s wings, huge talons and fierce raptor’s eyes settled upon him from above.
Zorn screamed – once.
Slack-jawed and captivated by the sight, I stared. That can’t be, my mind gibbered. You’re dead. I know you’re dead.
Windy’s huge beak ripped into Zorn’s shoulder at the same time his raptor’s talons tore his heavy body in two. Zorn died almost instantly, his wailing scream echoing across the river and shivering into the gathering dark. True to his name, Wind Warrior reared back on his lion haunches, his talons raking the shadows, and screamed his challenge to the night.
“Windy,” I gasped. “What –”
Kado, wounded, the last officer of Cian’s detail, rose to fight. Blood gushing from my slash, his eyes wide in terror, he nevertheless fought for his life. Gauging me helpless and unable to fight back, he lunged in, hoping against hope that he’d at least take me with him. Sword in hand, he struck for my throat –
Until Sky Dancer dropped to the earth between me and him.
She screeched, a wordless warcry of death and hate. She needed no sword, no arrow, nor any magic to defeat her enemy. Her weapons were a part of her. Talons sharp enough to cut steel extended wide. A savage beak powerful enough to break a bull’s spine reached downward. Lion’s claws the length of a man’s hand gripped the earth as she lunged forward.
Her angel’s wings wide, I couldn’t see a damn thing from behind. I ducked around her, my sword up, prepared to fight alongside her, as I had countless times before. Together, we’d slay our kingdom’s enemies or die trying. As one, we’d die Weksan’Atan.
He also knew he was trapped. A dead man. There was only one death for him now.
With honor.
Atan to the core, he raised his sword to his face. In stiff accolade, his face bleeding from my cut, he saluted his death. He shut his eyes as Dancer raised her talons, slashing him through his throat. Choking, gasping for his last breath, he fell to the rocky tundra. His blade fell from his fingers as his life drained unto the grasping soil. Zorn died, the last of Cian’s loyal men, his sword in his hand as an Atan should.
Stunned, I stared at my dead enemies. I killed Cian, sure, but – the others? Did I yet flounder in the throes of injury and deprivation, dreaming in color where black and white suited best? What in the name of heaven just happened?
“Malik,” I gasped as he slid to a trampling halt before me, flanked by Padraig and red-maned Edara. “You’re alive.”
I found no welcoming twitch of his facial muscles. His dark, hooded eyes held little I recognized. Padraig and Edara both stared down at me with twin bland expressions. Although I knew Padraig hated me, I also knew Edara did not. A shiver of icy cold ran down my spine. Although I shouldn’t expect warm embraces, I didn’t warrant the chilly regard those three Centaurs offered me. They just saved my life, but acted as though they prepared to take it themselves.
Though Malik opened his mouth, he’d no time to answer as Clan Chief Ba’al’amawer, Raga and Muljier at his left and right shoulders, arrived at a brisk military trot. “My Lord Commander,” Ba’al’amawer said, his right hand rising in salute. “My unit has surrounded the immediate vicinity. All enemies are dead, save this one.”
Malik raised his fist, commanding silence, his dark eyes on me. “My thanks, Clan Chief,” he said, his tone low. “We but await His Majesty.”
Padraig lifted a silver-chased horn to his lips and blew it. A signal. In the distance, horns answered, echoing across the river’s valley. From out of the pink and purple clouds flew three wings of Griffins. In perfect formation, wingtip to wingtip, they soared down from the mountains toward the river. Their dark shadows eclipsed the sunset, and what little light remained fell prey to their might. The air, the very ground beneath my feet, thrummed with the soft yet puissant sound of their feathers. Three more wings flew in from the south, while the skies to the east and north darkened under their massed bodies.
Heavy boots striking rock made a drumming noise as platoons of armed and armored Minotaurs closed in from all directions. In perfect lock-step, squared units marched in perfect cadence to the beat of drums. The evening darkness never shrouded the emblem of the Eastern Sun that graced the hundred plus banners whipping above their curved horns.
In loose formation and flanking the Minotaurs galloped the Centaurs units. The thunder of their hooves woke the slumbering Auryn valley as they bore down on us at a gallop. The grinning Death’s Head skull, the emblem of the Atan, snapped in the breeze. Without their normal Atani yips and yells, they, and the royal cavalry that galloped with them, splashed across the river, arriving from the north, the west and the south.
My own Clan, the Shape-Shifters, rode horses with the cavalry units, their cloaks bearing the Clan’s Tiger’s Eye at their throats. Still hundreds more closed in, guised as leopards, wolves, panthers, hawks, eagles, lions, stags. My own Aderyn, whom I thought dead, bounded out from under the trees in her deer-shape. Gaear loped in, a wolf, to halt not far behind Malik. He changed to stand at attention in his human body, at parade rest, his hands behind him.
Turning in a tight circle, I tried to take everything in at once, stunned. My friends, my brothers, weren’t, against all odds, dead. They rode to my rescue accompanied by the entire Atan army. The entire army. A Griffin platoon dropped to the ground and folded their wings, taking up positions surrounding the river bottom with their beaks high and raptor eyes watchful. While most of the Minotaurs stood at attention in a wide ring, Chief Ba’al’amawer’s personal unit took up stations at critical points. The Centaur and cavalry leaders trotted closer in, leaving their soldiers to guard the outer rings.
The horns blew again, closer. I turned toward the sound, upriver, just as Malik clapped the pewter manacles over my wrists. “What –”
“First Captain Vanyar,” he said, his tone neutral. “I am placing you under arrest by the order of His Majesty the King.”
“What the hell? Malik!”
“Silence him!”
The voice shouted, not from Malik’s jaws, but many hundred rods away near the Auryn River. Instantly, like a gag in my mouth, I couldn’t speak. I moved my jaws, my lips, I breathed, but no sound passed my tongue. Trembling with anger and fear, I glared at my friend, my brother, trying to ask with my eyes: why are you doing this?
Malik stared at me, his dark face impassive, as always. My brother, my best and oldest friend, backed slowly away from me. No welcoming jest at my expense crossed his aristocratic lips or his mind. Never before had I felt him distance himself from me, or fail to rise to my bait. He snapped his fingers. Padraig and Edara paced around him to flank me.
My guards.
A new commotion brought me around. From under the trees along the riverbank, riding a golden Centaur, cantered King Roidan. Royally escorted by his household guard of Centaurs and cavalry soldiers, Roidan raised his fist. In a special saddle built for his useless legs, he could ride and wield a sword as he had in his younger, healthier days. His attendant, Daragh, on a brown horse at his flank, accompanied him here as he did everywhere.
As a boulder parts a stream, Griffins, Minotaurs, Shifters and human Atani split aside. As the King and his escort passed them, they bent the knee, crossed fist over chest and bowed low. Malik’s front hoof buckled and he swept downward, his fist thumping his bare shoulder. I saluted as best I could, awkward, with both hands bound. My cracked ribs screamed in protest, but I rose with Malik as the Centaur arrived at a gentle halt a rod from where Malik and I stood. I lifted my head, fearless and undaunted, to find Roidan glaring down at me. His usually mild eyes burned with derision and hate. My fear rose as I swallowed hard, reining in my panic. When Roidan was angry, people died.
“Put him where he belongs,” Roidan grated. “On his knees.”
Padraig’s hands pushed me downward hard, sending me hurtling to the rocky soil. The new agony from my knees was nothing compared to the raw burning that flamed across my chest. I gasped, unable to make a sound, sweat trickling down my cheek and sliding down my back. Clenching my jaw tight kept the worst of my pain from showing on my face.
“I don’t want to hear a word from this traitor’s mouth,” Roidan snapped. His finger pointed like a sword. “You got my daughter killed, boy. You were supposed to protect her, bring her back safely. Why was that so difficult? Now she, and the gods’ messenger, are in the hands of that filthy Raithin Mawrn. Because of you, everything we are and will ever be are dead and dust.”
Cian gave her to him, I tried to say. Of course, nothing came out. I couldn’t speak in my own defense, not utter a single word of explanation or protest. Had I conquered Cian’s pewter collar before he gave her to Flynn – had I not liked and helped Flynn in the first place – had I died honorably at Dalziel – the recriminations endlessly paraded through my crazed mind. All my mistakes and well-meanings were as the dust beneath my boots.
“First you kill my soldiers,” Roidan grated, his mouth a tight white slash in his face. “But I trusted you to save my daughter, to save your country. I believed you still had honor, still owed allegiance to the Atan code. I thought you were smart, had talent. My mistake, obviously. I should have executed you when you first turne
d up in my castle.”
I bent my head and shut my eyes. I love your daughter. I will continue to love her when I am ashes.
“Tomorrow at dawn, I’ll rectify that mistake.”
I didn’t look up. I’ve stared death in the face many times, but this time, I couldn’t. He’s right. I am as guilty as he said I was. I will die for my dishonor. At Dalziel, my death would not have been in vain. Here I die as the criminal I have become.
“You will die tomorrow, First Captain Vanyar,” Roidan went on, his tone deathly cold. “But no easy execution for you. As you are tortured, you’ll be permitted to scream and beg, and confess all the evil you’ve committed. But tonight – you have tonight to make your peace with the gods. They perhaps may have mercy on you. I have none.”
I lifted my face to meet his hot, angry eyes, and dipped it once, in a nod. I accept.
Roidan jerked his head to his left. “Chain him to that tree over there,” he commanded. “Let him breathe the stench of death all night. We’ll set up camp upriver. And upwind.”
Padraig’s heavy hand dragged me up from my knees. I tried to catch Malik’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at me. As I was pushed past him, I once again turned my head, willing him to – what? Say he’s sorry, wished he could help, best of luck? I don’t know. I just wanted to see in his eyes that he didn’t want me to die.
“Oh, and strip him of that sword,” Roidan called. “I want it back.”
Edara’s firm hands unbuckled my belt, and handed my sword to Malik. He accepted it with a nod, and without a glance back, walked downriver, the dying firelight flashing off his black rump. The King’s escort unwound like broken spring as his gold Centaur turned and loped upstream, away from my funeral pyre and the dead soldiers. Chief Ba’al’amawer and his attendant Minotaurs stalked behind the King’s escort, ignoring me like the worm I was. Sky Dancer leaped into the air and circled high into the darkness. Flames licked the new evening as men and Centaurs lit torches, trotting in the King’s wake. Most of the army melted away to set up smaller camps around the King’s perimeter, passing me by as silent as ghosts. Gaear returned to his wolf form and loped after the torches. Aderyn bounded into the woods, her tail flashing like a star.