Way of Gods

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “You have to pay for that piece, you Docksider rat!” the woman screamed. “He stole a golden locket. Guards, help me!”

  “Piece of sewer trash, get back here!” Lucas barked. Torsten heard him scramble to his feet, push someone out of the way and give chase.

  “Lucas, leave him!” Torsten called.

  “I’ll stop him, Sir!” Lucas shouted back, not listening. “Gives us all a bad name!”

  “Youths,” Torsten sighed. Chasing thieves was below the station of a Shieldsman, but Torsten couldn’t blame Lucas. How could he after all his dealings with Whitney? And the young recruit had only just served as a city guardsman in South Corner. Old habits were hard to break.

  Torsten extended his cane to walk on his own and tapped toward the shop’s direction. He actually found the crowds easier to traverse without a guide. People recognized him more readily, and bowed out of the way, offering blessings for how he’d stopped Redstar the Deceiver. He wished they’d all do the same for the others responsible, like Sir Mulliner and Oleander. But he knew—only he who drives the blade through the heart of evil ever winds up in bard’s tales.

  He found the walkway and had begun to follow his nose toward the shop when he heard a shriek. If he’d had any hair on his bald head, it would’ve stood on end. Torsten knew that sound. He’d heard it from Oleander’s mouth after Pi threw himself out of his window.

  “Lucas!” he shouted, but the young man’s chase had taken him out of earshot.

  Torsten couldn’t wait. He took off toward Oleander’s voice, using his size and armor to shove through citizens. He plowed through a vendor’s stand and apologized profusely as he sped by.

  “Ah, I see you changed your mind, Shieldsman!” the weapon’s trader said, forcing himself in front of Torsten again. “Even a blind man couldn’t lose with a weapon like th—”

  Torsten flung the man to the side and rushed ahead, ignoring all the curses at his back from those he’d hurt or pushed aside.

  “You ruined it!” Oleander screamed.

  “Queen Mother,” Lucas stammered. “I didn’t mean—“

  “You ruined everything!”

  “Oleander, what happened?” Torsten questioned as he neared her. He immediately regretted using her name so casually, but it wasn’t the time to worry.

  “My Queen, calm yourself, it was an accident,” Lord Kaviel said.

  “Calm myself?” Oleander bristled. “He broke my mask… You sniveling cur. Look at me! Look at this revolting face. I should have you hanged!”

  All around, citizens had begun to murmur about how she was at it again, and Torsten physically cringed.

  “I was chasing a thief. It was—” Lucas said.

  “Liar!” Oleander roared. “You wanted to see the face of your wicked, ‘whore queen.’ You wanted to look upon me and laugh!”

  Torsten heard the explicit sound of the back of a hand across Lucas’s face. He knew well how her rings stung, and how easily they broke the skin. Torsten’s cane crunched a piece of Oleander’s mask as he hurried closer, his foot another. He cringed. The glass and porcelain shards scraped stone, as terror-inducing a sound as a barrage of Shesaitju thorn-arrows.

  “Oleander, stop!” Torsten bellowed as he placed himself between Oleander and Lucas. The silence that ensued was like all the city had suddenly vanished, and with Torsten’s lack of sight, it may well have.

  “I swear, Sir Unger,” Lucas stammered. “I didn’t mean to knock into her.”

  “I know,” Torsten said. He extended his open hand and took an uncertain step toward Oleander. “My Queen, I think it’s time we returned home.”

  She didn’t answer. More whispering broke out around them as the attention of the market-goers found them. Torsten knew how the situation must have looked. The Queen Mother stooped over another servant of the Crown, tall and fierce as the land from whence she came.

  “So, it is true,” a citizen said.

  “Look at her face,” said another.

  “I heard, before he died, her heathen brother cursed her to be as ugly on the outside as within.”

  “Should have tossed him over the wall instead a long time ago.”

  The murmuring was relentless.

  “Oleander,” Torsten whispered, struggling to drown out all the chatter. He only hoped that it was his heightened senses which allowed him to hear the voices so clearly. “Please.”

  “Yes,” Lord Jolly said, finally growing stern. “Maybe it is time we cut our fun short.”

  Again, Torsten stepped closer. He hoped Oleander remained in front of him, but as the throng of spectators grew, and the Shieldsmen fanned out to keep them at bay, he couldn’t even perceive Oleander’s breathing anymore.

  “Oh, Torsten,” she cried. Her arms wrapped around his broad frame and she collapsed against his chest. “How hideous did the monster make me? What did he do to me!” Her legs grew wobbly, and Torsten helped her to her knees.

  “It is a mark only of your bravery,” Torsten whispered. “You saved your son, our king.”

  “You promised never to lie to me,” Oleander said. “This reflects how they all see me. All of you!” She stood and screeched at the top of her lungs, saliva spattering Torsten’s face. “And they should! They deserve a better queen and my son a better mother. Liam should have wedded that Panpingese witch instead!”

  “Oleander, you’ve simply had too much to drink,” Torsten said. “Your son loves you, and all your people will learn to do the same when they glimpse you for who you truly are and not what Redstar’s treachery made you become.”

  “This is the real me.”

  “Torsten,” Lord Jolly said. “Let’s get her bac—”

  A crash sounded up a way by Southern Court. Horses whinnied, and their hooves clopped into the distance. Iam-knew-what bounced loudly along the road next, causing a few citizens to squeal in fright. Torsten squeezed Oleander close. With his other hand, he grabbed Lucas’s leg and dragged him over.

  “What in Iam’s name is going on!” Torsten asked.

  “A wagon wheel just gave out on a carriage coming up from South Corner,” Lucas said. “Looks like a food delivery from the docks for the castle.”

  “Someone, get up there and help them clear the way!” Torsten ordered. A few soldiers took the orders and started to jog up the hill, boots crunching as they passed.

  “Back off, filth!” the wagon driver shouted. “This food belongs to the Crown.”

  “What is it now?” Torsten asked.

  “Docksiders,” Lucas said. “They’re flooding out of the corner church. That same beggar from earlier and dozens of others. It’s like they planned—Torsten, we need to get the Queen Mother to safety!”

  “They got ’nuf, dun’t they!” the Docksider Murray replied to the wagon driver. “How ’bout some for us ye left to die.”

  “Should be ours!” another one yelled.

  “The rest of you, fall around your Queen Mother!” Lord Jolly ordered. “We must return to the castle; let’s move.”

  “Drop that, you ingrate!” one of the men Torsten sent up ahead barked. “Or Iam help you—” Something blunt smashed against his face. Nothing else could illicit that hair-raising sound of bone cracking.

  “Iam has forgotten us!” Murray screamed. Those words were echoed by a few more as the racket from their violence grew to deafening. More footsteps from the direction of South Corner pattered as more poor citizens mobbed the broken wagon.

  Torsten tore free of Lucas. “Lucas, get up there and help them break this up!” he demanded.

  “What a perfect time those ungrateful whelps picked to raid a food cart,” Lord Jolly said. “All right men, let’s push through—”

  Lord Jolly grunted, and warm blood splattered onto Torsten’s face, tasting like rusting bronzers. Oleander shrieked.

  “Watch out!” Lucas crashed into Torsten’s side, knocking him and Oleander to the ground. Arrows whizzed overhead, clacking against a shop wall.

  “We’
re under attack!” a Shieldsman shouted.

  “Where is that coming from?” said another.

  “Shield wall!” Torsten yelled. “Protect the Queen Mother.” Armor and shields rattled as they fell into formation around Oleander, Lucas, and Torsten himself. “Push toward the castle.”

  “Lucas, be my eyes,” Torsten said, barely able to hear anything over the burgeoning chaos. The growing mob of rioters from South Corner erupted into such a frenzy, they flipped the wagon onto its side. The crash sent all those near it into a panic.

  “The arrow came from the rooftop,” he panted. “Lord Kaviel is injured, maybe dead… I…”

  “Focus, Lucas.” Torsten shook his shoulders.

  “They’re throwing crates and supplies all over the street,” he said. “They’re—duck!”

  Lucas yanked on Torsten’s head, and the feather of an arrow fluttered by, burrowing itself in the flesh of one of the Shieldsmen.

  “Sir Hystad!” one of them shouted as the man collapsed against Oleander, earning a slew of curses like Torsten had never heard as he caused her to trip and snap her heel. She dragged Torsten down with her and his face smashed against the ground.

  “Torsten, what is happening!” Oleander shrieked.

  Torsten tried to focus through the clamor, but it was all too much. Things breaking, feet stomping, men and women yelling in both fear and rage—he felt like he was drowning in the Grand Canal of Winde Port again only this time, he wasn’t sure of the way out.

  “Out of our way, in the name of your king!” a Shieldsman demanded.

  “The king has forgotten us!” Murray yelled up ahead.

  “Torsten!” Lucas said. “Torsten, we have to get out of here!”

  Torsten dared not move from shielding Oleander, but, finally, he turned his head and focused in on the voice of his aide. The blade of an arrow glanced off a nearby shield, bounced beside Torsten’s hand, and made him wince. He couldn’t remember the last time battle had that effect on him.

  “The road is jammed!” Lucas said, hardly able to breathe. “We can run back through the markets while the Shieldsmen clear the protestors.”

  Torsten felt Oleander’s shaking body beneath him as he stretched out and grasped the stray arrow. He ran his thumb along the blade and over the bumps of an engraved pattern in the steel, then down toward the fletching, fashioned from the tail feathers of a waldrooth pharimon.

  “Torsten!” Lucas shouted.

  “The markets are too exposed,” Torsten answered. “Those arrows… angry Docksiders can’t afford anything like this.” He wasn’t sure who could; the craftsmanship was almost dwarven in quality, and the waldrooth were only found near the Pikeback Mountains in the Northeast. He went to lift it, but one of the Shieldsmen in formation was pushed back by the swelling mob and cracked it in two with his feet.

  “Watch it, you buffoon!” Oleander yelled as another stomped on her hair. Torsten gave her a tug free, and the Shieldsman’s legs went with them. The man stumbled back over them, and at the same time, Torsten heard the squish of a blade through flesh, and the gargle of a dying man.

  “Ass… assin…” the Shieldsman rasped before the end, voice so low and quavering that only Torsten likely heard it.

  “Get off of me!” Oleander squirmed, pushing away from Torsten and letting the heavy man fall between them with a thud.

  Torsten could think of a hundred groups which might’ve wanted Oleander dead, but it didn’t matter who. Perhaps whoever it was had purposely sparked this riot when the markets would be at their busiest, at dusk, after the craftsman stop working. Maybe they’d been lying in wait for months for Oleander to leave the castle. All Torsten knew was if they didn’t move fast, one of the arrows would eventually find purchase in her throat.

  “We have to get off the streets, now!” Torsten shouted. “Lucas, take her.”

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I’ll follow!” Torsten took Oleander by the shoulder and pushed her in the direction of Lucas’s voice without asking permission. “Go!” He shouted as he patted the street for the shield of one of his fallen comrades. When he found the edge, he lifted it and pushed through in the Queen’s direction. Her incessant complaining made it easy to follow them.

  “You expect me to go in there with him?” she scoffed. “The house smells ranci—” An arrow jammed into wood, and judging by how quickly Oleander was silenced, far too close for comfort.

  “Oleander, just listen to him for Iam’s sake!” Torsten shouted.

  “Come, Your Grace!” Lucas said as a door creaked open.

  Torsten rushed in after them, back first, feeling out every step. The rioters still chanted about how Iam and the Crown had forsaken them, even as Shieldsmen and guards pressed through the chaos and began arresting them. Torsten exhaled slowly, from his position in the doorway, focused on drowning the entire world out.

  Iam, let me hear true, he thought. Oleander may have done dreadful things, but she sees your light now.

  Torsten suddenly perceived the thrum of string, and a blade slicing through air. He raised his shield, and an arrow banged off the top. He staggered back, heard another arrow, and lowered his guard to block it.

  “Stay in the corner!” Lucas shouted.

  Young girls, likely the home’s occupants, cried and pushed furniture aside, the grinding, grating sound unmistakable.

  “Torsten, what is going on?” Oleander asked. “Whoever that is was aiming at me.”

  “There’s no way out the back, Torsten,” Lucas said nervously. “Just a wall.”

  Torsten raised a finger to his mouth and took a few, slow, deliberate steps across the squeaking floorboards.

  “Torsten, what are we doing in here!” Oleander barked.

  He ignored her and approached the townhome’s stairs. Then he heard it. The whoosh was subtle, but someone had entered through the upstairs window.

  “Run!” Torsten pointed to the front door.

  “I can do it myself,” Oleander snapped as Lucas attempted to grab her.

  Torsten felt the air as they ran by, then heard another squeak of wood.

  “No!” He raised the shield high and deflected a projectile. He expected an arrow, but judging by the weight and the way it sank into the floor, it was a throwing knife. The assassin reached into his jacket and flung another. This time, Torsten was too slow. The grip just barely brushed his leg on its way by.

  “My ankle!” Lucas yelped as he slammed down hard on the front porch.

  Torsten screamed and with all his considerable strength, flung the shield up the stairs at the assassin. Then he turned for the exit. His hands groped frantically for the wall but found a table instead, which he purposefully knocked over, and then fell through the entry. The air had grown noticeably chiller in just the short time indoors. That meant the sun had dropped below the rooftops.

  “Torsten, he shoved me out of the way,” Oleander said from on the ground beside Lucas. “He did—”

  “What any Shieldsman should’ve done,” Torsten finished for her. They were certainly not the words Oleander was going to use.

  “I’ll hold them off,” Lucas groaned. “Get her out of here!”

  Torsten grabbed Oleander and yanked her free of Lucas. “We have to get you back to the castle.”

  He didn’t wait for a response to move. He found the steps down and nearly tripped on the lip before his boot met the street. South Corner rioters continued to cause a mess under Murray’s lead while hysterical citizens fled for their lives.

  “Oleander, you need to lead me,” Torsten said.

  “If you didn’t weigh so much I could,” she snapped, tugging on his arm.

  Glass shattered. Someone dropped onto their feet behind them, and Torsten knew by how soft the landing was that it had to be the assassin. Lucas screamed and pushed himself off the porch to tackle the assassin. A throwing knife shredded the side of Oleander’s dress.

  “Oleander!” Torsten exclaimed. He patted at her leg
s but found only ripped cloth and smooth flesh.

  “Assassin!” Lucas yelled, this time enough outside of the chaos that others heard him. Lucas released a primal scream as he, presumably, tackled the assassin because the next moment, Torsten heard them wrestling on the ground. He also thought he heard teeth rend flesh, followed by another scream and then a fist crashed across one of their faces. Torsten hoped it wasn’t Lucas’s.

  “Feel me up another time, Shieldsman,” Oleander said to Torsten. She pushed off him and said, “Seize that man!” to a soldier who could see.

  “Halt, Breklian!” a Shieldsman who’d heard Lucas’s cry demanded. “Drop your knife!”

  The man answered in Breklian, accent thick as soup. Torsten didn’t understand a word of it, but the assassin did as requested. More Shieldsmen approached, having dispelled many of the rioters by then who weren’t scared off by news of an assassin.

  “Now discard all of your weapons,” the Shieldsman ordered. “That’s right.”

  Torsten positioned himself in front of Oleander and turned his head to listen for the man. He also heard Lucas’s breathing. It rattled in his chest, but the boy was alive.

  I can’t believe even Valin would stoop low enough to send Codar. He knew of only one Breklian in Yarrington who could fight like this.

  “Codar, do as they ask, and we won’t blame you for your master’s bidding,” Torsten said.

  Metal struck stone as the assassin dropped more weaponry. Then the man’s knees hit the street.

  “Take him!” Oleander hissed. “This one deserves to hang.”

  Torsten kept his arms spread wide in her defense as the Shieldsman marched toward the killer. “Get off the recruit,” one said. “Hands where we can see them.”

  “The blood pact is written,” the Breklian said. The moment Torsten heard him speak common, his heart skipped a beat. He knew what Codar sounded like, and this man had an accent so thick it was like he’d never stepped foot in the West before.

  Torsten recalled his time back in Winde Port when Whitney was on the run from a blood pact Bartholomew Darkings made with the Dom Nohzi. That was the only time he’d heard that phrase before.

  The mysterious assassin’s guild in the northeast reaches, which the Breklian Oligarchs refused to condemn, rarely targeted kings and royalty. But stories of ancient times, before Liam united so much of the land, spoke of times when their order was forgotten and no longer haunted the dreams of children… that they returned in unforgettable ways. Liam’s own Great Grandfather Tarvin the Terrible was said to have died at their hands, though there wasn’t a soul in Pantego who didn’t want him dead. His cruelty made Oleander’s spell of hangings seem tame.