by Jon Kiln
The boy cursed in the language the captain knew, and then said in a low voice. “Fine. You two fools pretend to be asleep. I have to relieve the northern trail guards. Keep your bands on your arms even as you sleep, and remember what father told us.”
The boy turned and walked away from the tent. Voices continued outside. Nisero leaned forward again to look through the gap. He glanced back at the captain and nodded. The men waited until the voices dropped off.
Nisero reached up and parted the flap further. Berengar saw fire light dance over the lieutenant’s palm. Nisero leaned out for a moment and then drew back into the tent. “More men have joined the fires. Maybe from the relieved guards. The ones that came to the tents are inside now, and I hear no other conversation from this side of the camp.”
“Did the overlord leave the command tent?”
Nisero looked out and back. “I wasn’t watching the entire time. I don’t know.”
The captain waved with the point of his sword. “Let’s away. Be ready for anything.”
Nisero exited first and the captain followed. They moved along the edge of the cliff past the leafy shelter and the bowl of broken rock, where they had climbed up the cliff face. The captain stole a look over to the fires. Men appeared to be eating. They wore dark clothes. Some wore pieces of armor that seemed to be from different makes and materials. Others wore none at all, looking more like the barbarian tribes. There was no discernible uniform or coat of arms that Berengar could see. He wondered how they identified friends from foe in battle. Maybe all their battles were against women and children in their homes. He thought perhaps they knew one another from smell.
Berengar turned his attention back to the larger canopy ahead of them. He was split in time between the present and the memory of the battle that gave this place its name. So many men fell on both sides, but he recalled thinking that the bandits had been cut down to numbers that eliminated their threat for generations. The job felt done. The blood-soaked memory overlaid his current army of himself and one lieutenant, creeping along the ridge in the dark like thieves in the night.
He thought about two bound brothers in a tent and one unwittingly on guard duty. He thought about a father returning to his cottage and his daughter pretending that she was sleeping and had not betrayed him. Berengar projected his mind a generation ahead and wondered which of these survivors would be the mad killer seeking vengeance across the towns of the kingdom. Maybe they would seek out Nisero’s family, once he was gray and finished with the Guard. They might track down his village and take children yet to be born—children marked with a dark target on this day again here on this Way of Blood.
Captain Berengar pictured the little girl wrapped in her fur blanket, but wearing a metal helmet with a bear’s face and curled horns like the monster under her bed. He shook the image away as they crouched and rounded the side of the large canopy tent.
A spear driven into the sand outside the entrance held the overlord’s helmet aloft and askew on the end of the spear’s handle. A dark fur dangled from the metal rim. Berengar reached out and touched the edge of the skin to find that it was goat, instead of bear. He frowned. A little less courage required in that kill, he thought. The horns attached to the helmet were twisted, common goat horns instead of those of a mountain ram. The captain imagined that a hundred or so overlords across this uneven land would happily take Solag’s place, just as the son rose to replace the fallen father.
He didn’t have time to think about that now. Arianne’s life was not a matter of philosophy or balance in the universe for him. He would cut down as many as it took to set her free from their dark clutches and darker intentions. He took only the smallest comfort in the possibility that she was remaining unharmed for the moment, in anticipation of Berengar himself being dragged into Solag’s presence, broken and ready to be tortured through what they intended to do to her.
He thought he might almost be willing to take the beating just so that he might see her once more. He narrowed his eyes and plunged through the tent. He was prepared to cut down anyone that stood, but only one figure rose on his elbow on a raised pallet covered in furs.
The figure spoke in the standard language of the kingdom, with an accent Berengar did not recognize, mingled with the slur of sleep. “Is he found? Why didn’t you announce yourself first?”
“Sorry,” Berengar said. “I’m here.”
He grabbed the overlord by his greasy hair and dragged him off the pallet onto his belly on the canvas floor of the tent. He drove one knee into the man’s spine and bent him up backward with the sword under his chin.
Nisero entered the tent with his sword drawn.
The overlord coughed and spewed out a string of syllables in the local language.
Berengar brought his lips to the man’s ear. “I am Captain Berengar of the Elite Guard. I painted this rock in blood and gave it its name. I am in your tent on your back. No one will save you except me. Do you understand?”
“You will not leave here alive.” The man coughed. Spittle leapt from his lips onto the blade underneath.
“If Solag wants me alive, then I will leave alive,” Berengar said. “I will paint this rock again until I find out what I want to know. This is how you leave alive. Do you have answers for me or do I cut you and ask one of the other overlords?”
Berengar heard the man take several deep breaths. Then, he said, “What do you want, Slayer of Zulag?”
Nisero turned and faced the flap of the tent with his sword ready.
“Where does Solag wait?”
“You will see.”
Berengar levered his sword against the canvas floor and pushed down on the back of the overlord’s head. Blood trickled down the metal and the man groaned.
Berengar snarled at him, “I will see the sunrise, dog. Will you?”
“He is in the Blue Mountains.”
“Where?”
“Within the walls of the Fallen Kingdom and the Halls of Death. He waits with her.”
A voice outside announced. “May I enter?”
The man on the ground under Berengar shouted. “They are here! Sound the attack!”
A man in furs rushed into the tent and Nisero ran him through to the hilt before the bandit could draw his own sword. A second man in black charged in behind. He staggered into the wall of the canopy, shaking the entire structure. The man hurled the jagged head of his mace around at Nisero. The lieutenant turned the body on his sword and the dead bandit’s shoulder absorbed the blow. The body fell away from Nisero’s blade.
“Alarm!” The overlord shouted from under Berengar. “Alarm!”
Berengar sliced through the bandit’s throat without muffling his gurgled screams.
The surviving bandit swung his mace back, missing Nisero’s skull by a hand’s breadth. Nisero lunged and Berengar leapt up from the body of the overlord. The bandit took both points to the chest and dropped his mace. He fell backward off their blades into the wall and collapsed the tent on top of them. Nisero and Berengar fought the canvas and support poles.
They stepped out into the open to find shadowed figures running toward them from all directions, with weapons drawn. Berengar swung and chopped through the spear, dropping the overlord’s helmet to the sand. “Run.”
“Which way?”
“Along the cliff until a better option arises.”
They ran along the edge toward the west, where the Blue Mountains were shrouded in darkness. Many of the men crowded around the fallen tent and cut away at the canvas as Nisero and Berengar ran.
They approached the bowl in the rock and prepared to jump in for cover when a man charged into their path with a spear. Berengar chopped through the shaft, clipping off the metal head, but the bandit thrust with the sharp end of the pike created by the cut. The captain dodged the strike as Nisero ran past and sliced through the man’s throat.
Before he hit the ground, a second man arrived and swung wild with a sword as black as the night sky. Nisero slice
d through the man’s chest. He stumbled over the body of the spearman and tumbled into the bowl of rock.
Two more advanced on the captain. He struck one in the head staggering him away with his forehead open wide, but the other brought his blade up, ringing off the metal of Berengar’s backswing. The bandit wheeled back and squared himself for the fight.
Nisero ducked a battle axe which crashed into the ground by his feet. The axe man struggled a moment too long trying to withdraw his weapon, and the lieutenant sliced him open for his mistake.
Two men with daggers joined the fray. Berengar swung, but they backed out of reach. The sword man made a play at the captain and nearly caught him. Berengar made a desperate thrust instead of a parry. The broadsword was not designed for finesse in dueling and the captain did not waste the motion. He cut the sword man through the bicep, slicing open his sleeve to reveal the wound. The bandit backed away before Berengar could do more damage.
More men turned their attention to the scuffle and approached from the direction of the dead overlord’s tent. Berengar heard shouts all across the ridge.
He glanced back to mark their escape path through the bowl and down along the ledges. The bandit with the dark blade rose up with blood coating his open chest and pasted to the lower half of his face. Despite his wounds, he smiled.
He swung his sword along the ground from his position in the bowl. Berengar jumped forward just missing the slice that would have caught his ankles and hobbled him.
He saw the sword man in front of him drive in. The captain deflected the blow and staggered away. The bandit sword man caught Berengar in a shallow cut along the thigh, and the captain sliced the bandit’s cheek deep enough to see the man’s teeth through the cut. The sword man backed away holding his face, but he was behind the captain now.
The men with daggers made their attacks. Berengar cut one down, but missed the other who circled around wide.
Nisero caught a bandit behind his knees, bringing him to the ground. He then cut through the back of the sword man’s neck before the man could make another attack on the captain’s divided attention.
The bandit with the dark sword swung at their ankles again and laughed.
An arrow whizzed in front of the captain’s eyes. He ducked before two more soared through the space where his head had been.
He shouted, “Archers!”
The other bandits approaching dropped to their faces short of engaging Berengar and Nisero.
“Where do we go, Captain?”
“Run!”
They continued west along the cliff and passed the tent with the tied brothers inside. Berengar saw more bandits running parallel to them through the camp, angling to cut them off. More arrows whipped past them, closer than Berengar cared for.
The captain saw the ridge sloping down as they neared where the rock narrowed into a trail. He thought they might make it until he saw more men charging up the trail in a column. They might have been the guards waiting on Berengar himself, but whoever they were, their path was cut off from all sides—all sides, but down.
The captain slid to a stop and looked down the smooth slope off the rock face. He saw an angle too steep to climb, with jagged rocks all along the descent.
Nisero brought his blade up and turned to and fro at the bandits approaching from every direction. An arrow sliced through his shoulder and he hissed, but did not move to lower his sword to deal with the wound. “Captain? What now?”
Berengar sheathed his sword. “Jump.”
As Nisero stared, Berengar leapt off the side.
Chapter 9: Leaps and Bounds
Nisero felt the world drop away as he plummeted over the side with Berengar. The captain connected with the slope of the wall on his back, and kicked up a spray of dust and rock chips. Nisero flattened out as he sailed past the captain in the air.
Nisero only had a fragment of a thought as the mountain rushed by underneath him. He thought, if this were one of his mother’s stories, a dragon would sail under him and snatch him to safety at the last moment.
This thought was interrupted as Nisero’s light armor connected with the rock. Instead of sliding, he tumbled. He felt his cheek tear. His elbow struck a knob of rock and there was a burst of pain, then no feeling in his arm at all.
His sword flew loose from his grasp and skipped along the surface of the ridge’s descent, like a flat stone over a lake. Nisero saw sparks jump off the blade as it traveled away from him. Sand blasted into his face from his slide and blinded him.
Nisero thought too late that he should have sheathed his sword before jumping.
He found his back, and with his eyes closed against the sandy pain, he raised his feet to deflect the hard protrusions of rock in his path. His knees and the soles of his feet ached with each grazed impact, but he saved his head and other bones from the effects of a direct hit.
The heat increased through the friction on the back of his leather armor, until his flesh felt as if it might ignite. Nisero felt himself shift sharply up into a curve of the rock, and he opened his eyes. He had slid down into a chute on the rock face, where the sheer wall curved. Nisero undulated from side to side as his momentum drove him down into the curve like a launched projectile. He shifted his arms and legs out painfully against the rock to avoid rolling to his face.
He glanced back to try to catch sight of the captain.
His right heel caught a shallow ledge, and Nisero tumbled again, feeling soft skin and cartilage connect with rock, and his body lost the fight.
The lieutenant lifted off the stone in the air. He reached behind to grab something solid, but found nothing until he slammed into the flat ground below the ridge, exploding the thick sand into the air from his impact. He was the one skipping across the ground like a stone, but he grunted and twisted with each bouncing impact.
Nisero landed one last time on his stomach, skidding to a halt with sand jammed up against his groin, and coating the inside of his mouth. He tried to gather saliva to spit the grit out, but he tasted blood instead. Nisero spat anyway. He felt more blood drain into his mouth from his nose, and he spat again.
The captain dropped to the sandy bed at the base of the Way of Blood. His boots impacted first, and then he rolled over one tucked shoulder and back to his feet. Berengar ran through the sand toward the lieutenant. His sword was sheathed, but Nisero couldn’t recall if the captain had done so before jumping or managed to somehow do it as he slid.
Nisero grunted, “Captain?”
The lieutenant’s sword speared into the ground next to his head and wobbled as half the blade drove into the dirt.
Berengar knelt beside Nisero. “Lieutenant, are you whole?”
Nisero spat out another mouthful of blood and rose up to his hands and knees. He felt the sand grind into cuts exposed through tears in his clothes, and breaks in the seams of his armor. He brought his right foot under him and felt the ankle throb from a painful jam, but he couldn’t remember when that injury occurred during his ungraceful journey down. The ankle still held his weight.
Nisero wrenched his sword free with an underhanded grip and slid it back into its sheath. “Whole enough.”
“What of your shoulder?”
“Sir?”
“You took an arrow in a graze across your shoulder. Is your arm still good?”
Nisero flexed his fingers and felt numbness in his sword hand, the opposite hand from the shoulder sliced by the arrow. The pain radiated down from the elbow. “After that fall, the nick of an arrow is well forgotten.”
More arrows impacted the ground around them.
“We need to move,” Berengar said.
They ran through the sand along the bottom edge of the trail, leading off the ridge. Voices echoed off the height above them. Hoof beats followed. Nisero limped, but kept pace. Soon his left knee was causing him more trouble than his right ankle, and his speed fell off.
Chunks of rock struck the ground ahead of them.
Berengar cursed a
nd took hold of Nisero’s shoulder. He angled the lieutenant away from the ridge. Nisero hissed as the captain’s thumb dug into an exposed cut. They ran out into the night. Nisero felt low grass swiping against his shins as they left the Way of Blood behind them.
“We’re not going to outrun their horses, sir.” Nisero heaved between breaths.
“I have no other plan at the moment.” Berengar sucked in air. “Give me time.”
They heard horses approaching, but from in front of them. Dark riders took shape on darker horses galloping along another trail to their left. Both men dropped to their bellies into the grass.
Berengar whispered, “And where do these bandits come from?”
Nisero swallowed sand from his mouth. “Maybe returning guards. They might have heard the alarm or are responding to another signal.”
Berengar crawled along the ground toward the trail ahead of the approaching bandits. Nisero did not understand, but followed along on his belly, feeling the blades of grass do their work on his cuts.
The riders passed even with the soldiers. One glanced down to the side of the path. He squinted and pulled his horse up to a trot.
Berengar drew his blade and lunged up into the chest of the rider. The captain hurled his weight back, and rolled the rider over the rump of the horse from the lever of the sword in his chest. The bandit twisted in the air and flew off the end of the blade to his side of the trail.
The riderless horse snorted and clopped sideways in surprise. The other rider pulled up and circled around. The captain took the vacated horse’s reins with the hand not holding a bloody sword, and positioned himself behind the horse’s body.
The other rider shouted out a syllable that Nisero did not recognize as a word. He assumed it might be the felled rider’s name. The bandit pulled up again and stood on the footholds of his saddle to look over. His eyes widened and he drew his sword. The bandit cursed in a syllable that Nisero did recognize. The bandit lifted the weapon over his head and positioned to stab down into the captain behind the horse. Berengar raised his own sword to defend, as the bandit was out of his reach for attack.
