by Jon Kiln
“Without question, Captain,” Nisero replied.
“I know there will be decisions about your career you will have to make once this business is completed, but I mean that I am asking you to consider staying on with my unit of the Elite Guard beyond this quest as my lieutenant.”
“I understood your meaning. I serve the Elite Guard, my captains, and the crown. I am your lieutenant in this, and in adventures to come, Captain Forseth.”
Forseth patted Nisero’s shoulder. “You are the best the Elite Guard has, Nisero. I knew when word of the Patron’s Hill Massacre reached the capital that you were by Berengar’s side, and we needed to hurry if there were going to be any bandits left for us.”
Nisero sighed. “We left you plenty, I’m afraid.”
“What of the rest of the villagers and Berengar’s family?” Forseth asked. “How many are in the castle with him that we must rescue?”
Arianne looked away, eyes downcast. “None.”
“What?” Forseth looked back at Nisero. “Word was that Captain Berengar rode after his family to rescue them from the hands of Solag. Is that not right?”
“Arianne was the only one taken alive. All others were burned at Patron’s Hill when we arrived. Captain Berengar is the only one left to save now.”
Forseth swallowed and bit at his lip. “Then, save him we shall.”
One of the men called, “We are ready, Captain.”
“Do we have horses to spare?” Forseth called back.
“One, sir.”
Forseth looked between Nisero and Arianne.
“She can ride behind me,” Nisero said. “I will see to her safety as we fight for her father.”
One of the men walked up two horses for them. As Forseth took the reins of his horse, Arianne put her hand on Nisero’s arm and he patted her fingers. “We will bring him out even as we drop all our enemies, I swear it, Arianne.”
“Show us the way.” Captain Forseth mounted.
Nisero climbed on his borrowed horse and pulled Arianne up behind him. “Show me how you came down from the trail and I will take it from there.”
They made their way up the slope and rode hard around the curves along the trail.
Arianne called into his ear over the wind of their gallop along the mountains. “Have you come this way before?”
“I have not.” He admitted.
“How are you going to find the castle this way?”
“There is not much else out here,” he said, “and not many other ways to go. I’m going to find the castle and your father because I have little other choice. I must find him.”
She gripped tighter around his ribs where she held him, and they rode on. Her arms sent pain through his body from dozens of bruises and scrapes he had earned along the way to find her, and now to find her father, his friend. He ignored the pain and kept riding.
They rounded a curve and the castle came into sight over an expanse. He could not see the lake of deadly salts and broken trees from there. They followed the wide curve around toward a stone bridge that crossed the expanse, and that led into the front of the castle through the broken drawbridge.
The dark dots of figures around the ruins scrambled. Nisero was sure they had been spotted and their enemies prepared. He could not see them all, but he could tell they were still outnumbered, and he knew the bandits had archers.
Victory was far from sure.
Captain Forseth and the other men rode ahead of Nisero to take the lead on the battle, as he had Arianne on the horse behind him. He decided in that moment that he would fight until the last man. Captain Berengar was coming out alive, or he was going to protect Arianne to his last breath.
It was in that moment of their final ride toward the stone bridge that Nisero began to question whether bringing her back here for this fight was the right move, no matter how much she might insist.
He considered pulling up and turning his horse about. He would face whatever rage that brought up in her, or whatever accusations of cowardice he might face.
But he continued riding on instead, with her behind him.
A company of horsemen rode out from the castle and advanced on the guardsmen. Captain Forseth and the men rode harder to cross the bridge before they could be met in the middle for a treacherous fight over the drop off. Nisero followed behind.
Arrows rained down from one surviving section of wall to the right of the broken drawbridge. Nisero sat higher in the saddle to block her body with his, but none landed close to him in this volley.
The two forces clashed outside the broken walls of the castle and battled on horseback. They dismounted and pressed a bloodier fight.
Nisero leapt from his horse and pulled Arianne down behind its body.
Another volley of arrows peppered around them. A few of the bandits screamed as they took bolts, being the unintended targets.
Nisero handed the reins to Arianne. “Take these. If the battle comes this far, mount and ride away.”
“I will not!” she shouted.
Nisero sighed. “Then hold them for me so I can flee with you and with Berengar, if needed.”
Arianne leaned in and kissed Nisero on the forehead. “We will be victorious, Nisero. I know it in my heart.”
Nisero nodded and stepped away. He drew his sword and thought, if the bandits do not take me, Berengar will find out about that kiss and he might finish me off.
Nisero cut through a bandit’s belly that stumbled into his path. The bandit raised his sword off balance and Nisero knocked it out of the man’s grasp. The bandit collapsed forward and Nisero ran him through the back on the ground, twice, even though the enemy lay still and did not react. He was not cruel or vengeful. He just did not want the man rising to threaten Arianne behind him.
The Elite Guard pressed the fight and drove the bandit forces back through the opening into the castle grounds. Nisero followed.
Arianne yelled, “Nisero!”
He turned and ran back away from the guardsmen, ready to cut down any enemies that he saw near her. There were no men in sight. He looked up to the wall for threatening archers, but the firing positions were empty as the archers had themselves fallen back.
He looked back at Arianne. “Are you okay?”
She pointed up past the castle. “There. My father.”
Nisero turned his attention to where she pointed. A dark mountain near the castle rose at an angle to a sheer peak and cliff. Two figures charged up the slope in the distance.
Nisero narrowed his eyes.
One figure chased the other, but he could not make out either one.
“Are you sure, Arianne?”
“I’m certain,” she said. “Go help him.”
“Come with me. I don’t want to leave you here unattended.”
“Should I bring the horse?”
“It’s too steep,” Nisero said. “We’ll need to climb.”
“Nisero, look out!”
He turned to her, and then the opening. Bandit warriors charged with weapons out and teeth bared. Either they had gotten around the Elite Guard inside, or had cut their way through.
Nisero’s next thought was that he should have been with them.
He lifted his sword to face them and circled around to put his body between her and them. “Mount and ride. I’ll hold them off.”
“I’m not leaving you or my father.”
Nisero took a deep breath. He noted that he was apparently outranked by both Forseth and now Arianne too. After that, he had no time to think.
Nisero cut across the first bandit’s chest and swung back to meet the blade of the second, metal to metal.
Chapter 18: Down from Dark Mountains
Berengar charged out onto the ground floor, staring out at the daylight through the bodies of more bandits than he could count. They lifted their weapons and charged.
He turned and ran back up the stairs that switched back and forth all the way to Solag’s perch, where she had held Arianne.
He reached the first level as a group of men turned to see him. He ran up the next set of stairs before they could react.
On the next level, with the great hall, he saw more men coming down from the chambers above. More poured out from one of the corridors. He ran down another, away from the stairs, into a darker passage.
As he heaved for air, he thought he was going to end up circling back through every dark, wet corner of the castle all over again.
He saw light off to his right and he ran in that direction. As he ran through one last dark turn, he saw sunlight ahead. A single man stepped into the opening and turned to face Berengar. The man’s eyes went wide and he rushed to draw his sword. The captain plowed into him and pushed with both hands. The man flew backward and off the top of the castle wall to the grounds below, before the captain even realized he had exited onto the outer wall.
Berengar ran out along the wall beside the battlements. Down one side, he saw the outside. A landslide from a dark mountain near the castle had piled jagged rocks along the base of the cracked wall. Farther along, the rocks and sand were piled up high enough that he thought he could jump off without breaking his leg, and maybe escape up the mountain.
On the inside of the grounds, the bandits followed along below him. A couple of arrows whizzed by above him, and he dodged out to the outside edge of the wall for cover. He heard the bandits charging out of the corridor onto the wall behind him.
From one of the towers ahead, two swordsmen and a warrior with an axe emerged and advanced on him. Solag, in her father’s cloak and two bands of cloth, stepped out behind them with her dark sword drawn.
Berengar drew his blade.
The first swordsman swung and missed. Berengar kicked down on the man’s knee and ran past. The second man swung, but Berengar stabbed underneath. The man staggered, and Berengar shoved him to the edge. The swordsman flipped over, but held onto the wall to keep from falling.
Berengar ran on.
The final man hurled his axe in an arc over his head. Berengar jumped back. When the blade buried into the wall, the entire structure started to quake. Berengar ran past the man and the wall collapsed beyond the axe. The swordsman holding on to the edge fell with the collapsing stone. The army behind the new break stopped short of the gap and stared over to Berengar’s and Solag’s side.
Berengar kicked the man with the axe from behind, and he fell over the edge as well.
The captain saw the dark blade from the corner of his eye and backed away just in time. Solag struck the walkway where the captain had been, and he expected the rest of the wall to collapse, but it held for now. He punched out instead of taking the time to swing the blade around. His hilt caught Solag on the chin and she staggered back to the doorway of the tower.
Again, she and he faced off alone, and she blocked the exit.
He saw arrows out of the corner of his eye and prepared to duck, but saw the archers had turned their attention to the outside. That’s where he had seen the motion of the arrows flying.
Berengar craned his neck and saw the arrows fall around a stone bridge. Men were riding in hard on horseback. They wore the crests of the Elite Guard and his king.
The captain smiled. “Either you lied to me, Daughter Solag, or these are reinforcements from the ones you claimed to have defeated already.”
She looked over and back on him. “Not lied. Just predicted. It will still end the same. You will just get to watch this time as I hoped and promised.”
One of the bandits from across the gap shouted. “We are under attack. We are coming around for you, Master.”
“I can handle him,” she shouted back. “Defeat the attackers and bring me his daughter, if she is among them.”
“Yes, Master.”
Berengar ran and jumped over the side, landing in the sand of the rockslide on the outside of what remained of the wall. He trudged up toward the dark mountain away from the castle.
He heard her land behind him and pursue. She was gaining on him.
Solag called between huffs. “Your son begged for his life as he burned. He told us where your daughter was hiding to try to save himself. We did much to your wife before she was burned. Do you wish to hear, Berengar of the Way of Blood?”
Berengar turned. She thrust and he knocked her blade aside. They attacked and parried as they circled one another.
“Your daughter offered to burn in his place, but your son made no such offer. You failed to make him a man, so he did not die like one.”
“You lie every time you breathe, just like all worthless bandits.”
He swung up at her underhanded and she brought her blade up to block. He then dropped his attack and sliced along her rib. She stumbled back and grunted.
Solag grabbed her side. She stabbed out one-handed. Berengar slid his sword down the length of hers and rolled it around, cutting her on the other side.
She circled to the higher ground of the slope and swung with both hands as she bled. Berengar knocked her attack aside. She backed up a step higher and he advanced. Berengar swung high and then shifted low.
She gasped for breath. “Your son… your wife…”
When she dropped her blade, the captain sliced her chest between the dark ribbon tied on the band of cloth and her throat. A bit higher and she would have been finished.
Solag staggered back, but Berengar followed. “Anything else to say, Daughter of the Dead?”
He swung high and then dropped to attack low. She kept her blade high and he sliced along the backs of her calves.
She turned and ran. Berengar followed her up the mountain. She was fast despite her injuries and going uphill, but he stayed with her. She lost speed and he gained on her.
She turned and exchanged contact with his sword. He cut her bicep. She swung back and he cut her other arm.
Solag turned and ran again as Berengar followed. “What do you plan to do when you reach the top, Solag?”
“Throw you off.”
“If you are retreating, you should lay down your sword and surrender. You have been bested and we both know it. Show the honor you claim your victims lacked, Dark Queen.”
She turned and lifted her blade again. “Never to you. You are destined to fall to me. You deserve to die.”
Berengar drove into her for the attack without responding to her words.
Solag tried to mount a defense, but she was behind each strike by just a moment. Each slash of Berengar’s blade opened her exposed skin and soaked her bear skin cloak with blood. She heaved for breath and backed farther and farther up the slope of the mountain, toward the sharp edge of the dark peak.
Solag was quickly running out of ground on which to retreat, and energy with which to fight.
Berengar stole a glance back down the mountain between strikes. He could not spot his daughter nor Nisero, though he hoped they were there. They had come for him. The Elite Guard had come as well. He supposed that he should have expected both with what he knew about them.
The dark figures of the bandits fell before the warriors of the king, around the grounds of the bandits’ broken castle. Some of the enemy fled as they were prone to do. Berengar only wanted the one called Solag.
He turned his attention back on her. She had fallen to her back, but struggled to her feet. She retreated farther still.
Berengar thought about his wife and son as he stared at her bloody and nearly naked body inside her father’s cloak. He hated her for his village and his wife. He thought of his daughter’s head on his chest as he watched her bleed, and he pitied her despite her depth of evil. He did not want to feel such a thing for this monster, but he did anyway. He wanted her dead, but he was losing his taste for vengeance.
“Drop your weapon and surrender to the forces of the king for trial.”
“You drop in death, dog,” she breathed, raising her black blade in her shaky hands.
“You have no army. You have no cause. It is time to answer for your crimes that extend far beyond any hatr
ed you have for me, Daughter of Zulag.”
“Don’t call me that.” She backed away. Berengar thought she might just step off the edge, if she didn’t look back soon.
“Call yourself whatever you like. I’ll gladly cut you down here, if that is what your cowardice demands. I find no pleasure in taking life the way you do in killing.”
“You were pleased enough on the Way of Blood.” She coughed and thick blood spilled out over her lips.
“Your father was a murderer and a plunderer. He did terrible things to innocent people. That is why he died, and your brother also. They deserved it. My village did not. My family did not. Your family chose a way of killing, and that is why men like me were sent to end them. That is justice. You need to answer for following in their path. Put down your sword and surrender, Daughter of Zulag.”
“I am Solag, Son of Zulag!” she screamed with her voice breaking on every word. “I am vengeance. I am justice. I am fear and darkness. I am the shaper of bones and destroyer of kingdoms!”
“You are defeated,” Berengar whispered.
Her expression fell and she backed toward the edge. “I took your family just as you murdered mine. I brought you the endless pain you deserve.”
“And you will die for it now, and for every other terrible deed you committed.” Berengar took a step toward her.
“The gods curse you,” she said. “Someone else will take the horned crown and lead my father’s army against you and your unworthy king. And another after him.”
“I will lift it from your bloody head after you are dead. I will burn it, crush the horns, and melt the metal. You, your evil father, and your dead brother will be forgotten forever as you should be.”
Solag glared at Captain Berengar with her insane eyes as wide as saucers. Her face was painted in blood from dozens of cuts and splatters from wounds. She opened her mouth as if to speak again, but then closed it.
