by T. A. Miles
No matter. Xu Liang would never return to Sheng Fan alive, let alone to the Imperial City. Whatever Swords he had discovered would be taken when this battle was won and brought back to Lord Han. Xiadao Lu and Ma Shou would only have to head back for the coast and be at the rendezvous to meet Zhen Yu within the allotted time.
Xiadao Lu, with the luck of a dragon and a geomancer’s enchantment, tasted victory. He knew how easily Xu Liang would go down if struck and this puny, pale specimen in league with him would pose little trouble once isolated. He swiped away Xu Liang’s next attack and swung to his other side to knock back the other’s blade, waiting for the moment when their timing would be just off, and someone’s neck or chest would be exposed. If Xu Liang went down first, he would have to die, else there would still be his wind attacks to be concerned with. The pale one, so far as Xiadao Lu could tell, was no sorcerer. He moved like a warrior and with a confidence that spoke of winning against terrible odds. It would be easiest to swat Xu Liang away with a lethal blow and move onto the entertainment of facing a better challenge in his pale, devil-eared companion.
An arrow flitted past Xiadao Lu’s ear, having come from the thinning mist further ahead. Xiadao Lu ignored it and kept fighting, though he thought about breaking out of their mounted dance long enough to charge at the archer—or archers—responsible. However, the mystic and the barbarian kept him too busy. A second arrow grazed his neck. He growled, striking harder at his opponents. The third struck his chest and fell away as the enchantment on his armor forbade harm to the wearer. It was effective against only one source at a time, unfortunately. Otherwise it would have been no trouble to cut through any number of barbarians Xu Liang wanted to send at him.
“You will fall!” Xiadao Lu promised the Imperial Mystic, just before a fourth arrow grazed his horse and reeled the animal into panic, dumping him from the saddle. The incident proved more convenient than his attackers intended, as Xiadao Lu was then able to rise to his feet and charge past the other two horses, planting himself as soon as he caught sight of the bowman. There were two enchantments cast upon his armor, the second a reserve spell cast by the geomancer, that could only be used once. He was certain he had come to the ideal moment to use it. He lifted his right foot, spoke a quick activation phrase, and stomped down on the cold, hard earth. His boot instantly became cast in a faint green glimmer. The light quickly drew toward the ground, starting an unnatural tremor. A wave of energy rushed forth, directly at the archer, and sent him flying.
The sound of hoof beats postponed any gloating. Xiadao Lu turned to see the pale barbarian coming. He readied his weapon and dared him on. A glint came to the white devil’s eyes and he smiled, lured Xiadao Lu’s weapon up, and then cut down.
“Fool!” Xiadao Lu laughed, following through with his own swing, feeling the shaft strike lower than he intended when he inexplicably lost his balance and fell onto his side, his body suddenly racked with pain. He lay on the ground and felt his life draining rapidly out of him, blood soaking his chest. Somehow the devil’s blade had penetrated his enchantment…and his armor. “Im-possible...!” he coughed as he tasted warm bitterness at the back of his throat.
He lay on the ground, unable to form another word, or soon even another breath.
XIADAO LU’S FINAL word went almost unheard as Xu Liang rushed to Alere. The elf slowed his mare and half climbed, half fell out of her saddle before she’d even come to a full stop. The crack of the warrior’s weapon across his back was enough to make Xu Liang believe the elf’s spine had been shattered, but he seemed to have full movement, even if it was uncoordinated at the moment. And in the distance, there was Gai Ping, victim of what was obviously a geomancer’s spell. Xu Liang knew the sorcerer with Xiadao Lu was a pyromancer and wondered if he’d grossly underestimated the larger of the two rogues, if he too had studied the mystic arts. He wondered also how Alere had managed to harm the very man who’d previously survived at least two wind attacks that should have killed if not severely injured him.
“His armor,” Alere said through his teeth, struggling to return to the battle he may not have realized was finished, even as Xu Liang helped him to stand. “The spell...is in his armor. Aerkiren...”
The elf collapsed into Xu Liang’s arms, collapsing Xu Liang as well. Xu Liang lowered to his knees, supporting his ally with what little strength Pearl Moon had left lingering in him. The loss of consciousness finally forced Alere to drop his sword and he lay still and silent, his back stained red across the shoulders.
“Fu Ran!” Xu Liang called into the clearing mist. He lowered his voice when the large man came. “Fu Ran, tell me how Gai Ping is.”
“He lives,” Fu Ran answered. “What...”
Xu Liang didn’t let him finish. “Take Alere from me. I must assist the others. This is not their fight.”
“I’ll go,” Fu ran offered, but as soon as he crouched down, Xu Liang carefully shoved the elf at him and returned to Blue Crane. “Stay with them,” he instructed the larger man, who nodded resignedly.
AS SOON AS the barbarian knocked him out of his saddle, Ma Shou cast a quick flame spell into the air, signaling the handful of bowmen he’d left behind as support to begin firing. The arrows flew out of the nearby mist, and the tide of a losing battle turned. Almost at once, two of Xu Liang’s bodyguards went down, and it was shortly after that when the half-sized woman cried out.
Ma Shou had almost been enjoying batting away the overzealous attacks of the armored barbarian with his twin blades, until that tiny cry lit a fire in his opponent’s eyes. Three wild, powerful swings drove Ma Shou back and ultimately threw him to the ground. He was spared only by his hurried blocking and finally, a wall of fire that took the last of his energy from him. Still, he thought the crazed barbarian might have rushed through the fire and tried to do away with him anyway, but he was distracted by the melee nearby, and charged into it like a madman.
When an arm flew into the dissipating flame wall free of its body, Ma Shou decided the fight had gotten ugly enough. He found his horse and quickly rode off into the thicker mists, back toward the mountains. There were devils in the mountains, but they burned easily. He would wait for Xiadao Lu and any other survivors.
XU LIANG WAS horrified at the sight he came upon. No one was left standing.
How could that be? How could everyone be dead?
He sighed relief when someone stirred, and did so again when he saw that it was Tarfan. “How badly are you injured, my friend?” he asked while dismounting, wondering why the dwarf was waving his hand at him as if it had caught fire.
“I’m not hurt!” the dwarf barked. “But Taya is! I’ve got to protect her! Now get on your horse and get away from here!”
“I will do no such thing.” He crouched beside the dwarf. “Where are the others?”
“On the ground, keeping low and out of the way of that madman!”
Xu Liang heard something in the near distance, like a person cry out in pain, and looked around, finally seeing the arrows stuck in the ground and in the body of a guard nearby. He couldn’t tell if he was dead. He looked unconscious. “Where is Tristus and the sorcerer who rode with Xiadao Lu?”
“The fire-spitter’s gone!” Tarfan hissed. “Ran away more scared than the rest of us! Tristus went to take down the archers that the elf forgot to count! The rest is a long story, now get the hell out of here!”
“Tarfan,” Xu Liang started in disapproval and with a little uncertainty. His next words failed to sound when he heard footsteps coming. The individual was running.
Though the mist was thinning, the increasing sunlight glared off the moist air, creating a blinding effect. Xu Liang couldn’t see who was coming and so rose with a spell in mind, prepared to buffet the individual away with the winds. In truth, he didn’t have the energy for another physical confrontation.
The silhouette of an armed man formed in the shining mist. He was strangely quiet, except for the sound of his footsteps. Whether or not he saw Xu Liang,
he kept coming, his sword raised. Xu Liang uttered the necessary chant, one hand extended in front of him, and summoned the wind.
Out of the mist, the knight came. Xu Liang started to relax, seeing that it was an ally, hoping that the burst of wind wouldn’t do him too much harm.
The spell struck Tristus. He staggered back a half step, his sword arm pulling slightly back, then coming forward again as the knight continued his charge...deliberately.
Xu Liang found himself momentarily confused, facing an unexpected betrayer, or someone Tarfan had rightly suspected a madman. The knight’s features were a mockery of his once sympathetic fairness, twisted and contorted with a rage unlike any Xu Liang had witnessed before.
“He’s a berserker now!” Tarfan hollered from his position on the ground, hovering over his niece. “He doesn’t recognize you! He’s gone mad! Leave!”
In spite of the dwarf’s urging, Xu Liang called to the winds again. Tristus was coming too fast and he had no intention of leaving the others, besides. Whatever had come over him, the knight had to be stopped.
A wall of air struck Tristus, this one stronger than the first and reinforced with Xu Liang’s continued prayer. The blast halted the crazed warrior in his tracks for an instant, but he remained on his feet, leaning into the wind, shouldering against what would have leveled another man with the first strike, including the mighty Xiadao Lu. The knight’s state enabled him to endure, his strength enhanced through madness. Xu Liang maintained the wind, hoping the break in the slaughter that must have perpetuated Tristus’ unexpected condition would calm him enough to be put down. Though it was not his desire, Xu Liang would kill the knight if he had to, before he would let him finish off the others.
“A dark fury’s got hold of him!” Tarfan shouted. “He’ll kill you! He can’t stop himself!”
Then I must stop him, Xu Liang thought, giving still more effort to the spell.
For a moment, Tristus began to lose his footing and slid backwards, but his eyes were lit with unnatural determination, and he pressed on, snarling with the strain. He inched forward, his sword held to strike when the distance between them was finally covered.
Xu Liang thrust both hands out in front of him, closed his eyes, and factored out everything but the wind. Ancestors…hear me!
TAYA WOKE UP to a storm. She looked around groggily, her neck and shoulder throbbing fiercely, making her head and stomach hurt as well. It wasn’t raining. There was no lightning. Only the sound of the fierce winds. Why couldn’t she feel them? Her uncle was her only shelter, not nearly enough to block what sounded like a hurricane.
And then she realized it was no storm, but a spell. She could see Xu Liang, strain attacking his calm features as he worked his magic against...Tristus! Taya sat up, choking on her own voice as her head spun and her stomach surged upward.
Tarfan steadied her.
“Stop,” she murmured. “Stop them!”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Tarfan snapped, his voice breaking slightly under the stress of watching two who were supposed to be allies pitted against each other.
She wondered if he’d finally discovered some respect for Tristus, who had used his own life to shield Taya’s. She felt like her uncle had, like the moment had granted power to his swing as a new sense of camaraderie formed. Taya had been handling herself just as her uncle had taught her to. The guards were as formidable as ever and just when the enemies’ numbers began to deplete, more suddenly arrived. Arrows had fired out of the mist. Guang Ci and another guard dropped like overripe apples from an overladen branch. And then something sliced Taya, and she cried out, overcome by a form of pain she’d never felt before. Tarfan finished off his own opponent and moved to assist, halted almost literally dead in his tracks when Tristus charged onto the scene.
The knight had swung his sword in a great arc, and sliced the man who’d attacked Taya almost clean through from shoulder to waist. When the bandit failed to drop at once, Tristus let him have it again, slicing off his sword arm and finally his head before he moved onto the next victim. Taya didn’t remember much beyond that. She’d never been witness to anything like that, or like this.
“Stop them!” Taya insisted.
“I can’t! If I attack the knight, we both go tumbling into the next countryside. Or else I get shot to the horizon and he still goes at the mage. If I interrupt Xu Liang, we all get cleaved like dead meat on the butcher’s block!”
“What’s he doing?” Taya cried. “Tristus, are you crazy? Stop it!”
Tarfan put his arms around her while they watched the knight gaining ground. “Close your eyes, girl.”
“Tristus, please stop,” Taya sobbed. “Please!”
The rage wouldn’t die. The knight pressed onward, eyes on his target. He brought his sword in front of him, as if deciding it would be good enough simply to impale the mage standing in his way. The gap between Xu Liang and death grew ever smaller.
“In Heaven’s name,” Tarfan said, holding Taya as tightly as he could without crushing her.
Tristus was shoving his blade forward, finding more ease in the task as the mage’s wind finally began to weaken. The point edged past Xu Liang’s hands, up toward his chest. Taya closed her eyes.
THE WIND DIED. It had left Xu Liang. He had no more strength. He could feel the heat of the life slain upon Tristus’ blade, the blade that would shortly claim him and in the process all of his dreams of a peaceful, unified Sheng Fan.
My Empress...
The clatter of steel interrupted his final message to his oath sister.
Xu Liang opened his eyes, just as the knight—having let go his sword—dropped to his hands and knees before him, shaking in the aftermath of his unnatural rage. Tristus gasped for air until he finally had enough to keep and then he sat still, holding that breath until his weary body shuddered once more and sobs escaped.
Xu Liang was drained, dangerously near to fainting, and left with only one choice. That was to kneel in front of the very man who’d nearly killed him and perhaps in that event, everything he’d lived for as well. Xu Liang sank before the weeping knight, unable to feel anything while he concentrated on regaining his strength. Behind him, the dwarves seemed too afraid to move, and so the four of them huddled among the dead or dying, silent except for Tristus, who sobbed brokenly over his gore-stained sword.
TWO MORE GUARDS had been lost of the seven that remained before the day’s battle. Their wounds were simply too much for the combined knowledge and skills of the group, which included no healing spells. They were wounds that could have been inflicted by the enemy, or they could have been inflicted by Tristus, who in his berserker rage, had declared everyone his enemy. No one knew. No one had seen, except the dead guards, Hu Zhong and Yuan Lan. Tristus couldn’t remember himself and no one dared to press him at the moment, uncertain as to whether or not the ‘dark fury’—as Tarfan had called it—had actually left him. He’d been left alone outside the tent, lying still—the last anyone dared to look—right where Fu Ran had left him after dragging him back from the battlefield. The knight had been barely conscious in his state of exhaustion.
Tarfan had fared the best of all of them; he was angrier than he was hurt. He’d acquired a few bruises and scrapes altogether. Xu Liang was physically uninjured, but he felt as if his mind were about to collapse in on itself, and he’d barely managed to carry himself back to the camp. He sat among the others now, unable to concentrate in the way that he needed to while they bickered and fumed.
Guang Ci, who had taken an arrow to the shoulder and been easily patched up, sat in front of Xu Liang, reaching for his sword every time a frustrated voice or arm raised too loudly or too near his master. In the young guard’s eyes, Xu Liang could do no wrong and his battle plan had been perfect, thwarted by the ineptitude of the others, including their scout, who lay unconscious on the other side of the tent.
Alere had been struck hard enough by Xiadao Lu to have the wind knocked out of him, for his skin to brea
k, and possibly for his left shoulder blade to have cracked. It was difficult for Taya to tell beneath all the swelling and bruising. Taya herself had been sliced deep across the shoulder and required stitches. Gai Ping suffered from a dislocated shoulder, which fortunately Fu Ran was able to assist in putting back into place. Oddly enough, it was the giant who’d done the damage to the elder guard pulling him out of the way of Xiadao Lu’s magic assault. Fu Ran himself caught the edge of the spell and twisted his knee trying to escape it. The last three guards had been grazed by arrows, sliced by sword, and bruised by whatever else had been raised against them.
Bastien was simply missing. Whether he’d crawled into the mist with his wounds and died, or been burnt to ash by the pyromancer, or—though no one wanted to consider it—hacked beyond recognition by a certain berserker, no one could say at the moment. Daylight was fading and everyone was too confused or aching to search for the man. If he was alive and well enough, he would likely find his way back to camp. If not, his body would be easier to find during the day.
“This isn’t what I meant by excitement,” Taya sniffled, checking on Alere’s bandages, resisting the urge to go to Tristus, who she was evidently ashamed to admit scared her more than a little after his secret unleashed itself on everyone.
“So now it’s out,” Tarfan blurted for at least the tenth time. “The boy’s a berserker! That’s why he was booted out of the Order. He probably had a similar fit in the middle of a previous battle and started striking down his own comrades! He might have considered sharing something like that with the rest of us before he—”
“Would you?” Taya demanded, wiping at her eyes, as if the incessant tears were beginning to annoy her. “Would you want anyone to know something like that? And how exactly would you drop it into a conversation. ‘Oh, by the way, I killed the last company I was with in a horrible demonic rage, but don’t worry I think it’s passed!’? Of course he wouldn’t tell us!” She turned back to Alere. “Anyway he saved my life, and probably the rest of our lives as well. That sorcerer had us. He had us right where he wanted us! We almost burned!”
