“You’re the coward, here,” Vykers snarled. “You can’t touch me, so you torch everyone else? You child!” He launched himself at the sorcerer, bashing the other man’s sword over and over with transcendent rage. He added several more cuts to the End’s growing list of injuries and succeeded in driving the madman to his knees. Still, the furor around both combatants grew.
Out of nowhere, Pellas appeared not five feet from Vykers. “I can stop this butchery,” he told the Reaper. “But it will be costly.”
“Will it save the Queen’s army?” Vykers asked, between blows.
“It will,” Pellas said grimly.
“Then stop it!”
Pellas nodded and started – there’s no other way to describe it – expanding, until he exploded in a cascade of shimmering white sparks that sailed in every direction. Vykers staggered back, and the End fell onto his backside. The sorcerer’s spell had been snuffed out.
Pellas…Arune whimpered into the silence that followed.
It began to snow harder.
“Now, you die!” Vykers said, closing in on the End.
The sorcerer scrambled to his feet, his expression a mixture of anxiety and exhaustion. Resolutely, he lifted his still-whining sword.
Vykers attacked.
And the End lifted blithely into the air, just out of reach, smiling smugly. “How does it feel, Reaper, being unable to strike your foe?”
Vykers flew up after him. The surprise he felt was surpassed only by the surprise evident on the End’s face.
You’re welcome, Arune said.
Incredibly, the End laughed. “Tricky bastard!” He pointed his sword at Vykers’ chest. “What are you?”
Vykers swung at the sorcerer’s weapon with a little too much force and went spiraling away.
“Not used to flying, I see.” The End smirked. “Good.” With that, he blinked out and reappeared behind the Reaper, intending to finish him with a quick stab between his shoulder blades.
But you can’t stab Tarmun Vykers in the back. It cannot be done. Anticipating the move in a way only Mahnus knew how, Vykers spun and smashed his fist into the sorcerer’s face. There are many arcane protections that are highly effective against arrows, swords and spells, but few that work well against the unexpected punch in the nose. The End dropped to the snow like a rock and sprawled out, dazed, on his back. Vykers swooped to his side as quickly – if awkwardly – as possible. When the sorcerer regained his feet, he was bleeding from both his nose and mouth, though Vykers suspected the blood from his mouth came from an internal injury sustained during the fall. On top of all the blood that dripped from the countless nicks and cuts the Reaper had already given him, the End looked in bad shape. Still, he laughed.
“Bravo! Bravo. I concede you’re the better fighter. And yet, I endure. I am the End-of-All…”
Both swords were now squealing and moaning uncontrollably. Frankly, both men were tired of the noise, but it was Vykers – of course! – who pressed the attack. In he came, unleashing a series of lightning fast combinations his enemy had no chance of deflecting. Except…the swords were getting…stickier and stickier, harder and harder to separate. At last, Vykers could not pull his sword apart from his rival’s, and in that moment of distraction, the End struck, triumph ablaze in his eyes.
The Reaper felt the most burning, blinding agony he’d ever experienced and looked down to see the sorcerer had stabbed him more or less right through the liver with something…invisible. Blood gushed from the wound in front and in back. Vykers felt his knees go weak and buckle from the sudden stress to his system. In the back of his mind, he heard Arune screaming. Enraged, he turned to lock eyes with his foe, who continued to smirk at him. Vykers abandoned his sword, extended his claws through the fingertips of his gloves and spoke:
“Rot in hell, you whoreson dog!” In one motion, he thrust his hand into the End’s throat and tore the man’s trachea right out of his neck.
The End stopped smirking, his mouth choosing to gape instead. Wider than his mouth, though, were his disbelieving eyes. This! This was something he’d never anticipated, something that could never have been anticipated. With shocking speed, strength and sensation fled his extremities. Still, the Reaper stared at him with evil intent. Still, the End struggled to find an escape, some means of salvation. His peripheral vision disappeared completely. He was dying. With the last of his conscious will, he glanced down at Vykers’ wound, a mysterious, taunting smile on his lips.
Vykers threw the man to the ground and stomped on his spine, reveling in the sound of grating, fracturing vertebrae. The End-of-All-Things had been a self-fulfilling prophecy. He was dead.
Vykers collapsed.
*****
And woke up in a dark, quiet tent, in terrible pain.
“We’re here,” a vaguely familiar voice assured him.
He tried to sit up, could not. Tried to speak, same result.
A nearby lamp was turned up, and into its soft glow floated the face of someone he…
“I’ll not lie, Tarmun Vykers. This is as ghastly, as perilous a wound as I’ve seen,” Aoife said. “But you also seem to possess…reserves…that defy understanding. You should be dead.”
With tremendous effort, Vykers blurted out, “But…?”
Gently, insistently, she pushed him back down. “But…you’re not.”
Number 3 floated into the light, to join the A’Shea.
Vykers smiled, in spite of the pain. He raised his eyebrows, inquiringly.
“Dead,” Number 3 said sadly. Vykers had never seen his companion so diminished.
“Wh…wh…” He tried.
“What injured you?” Aoife asked.
Vykers bobbed his head slightly.
“A hellish thing, an invisible dagger of some sort, a powerful relic from before the Awakening, as near as we can tell.” Vykers noticed she held his left hand. For all the pain, wonderful sensations came from her touch.
“I need to make you sleep for a while. It’s the only way to keep you alive, until we figure out what’s happening to your wound.”
Another head bob. Vykers slept.
*****
They were thralls no longer. Upon the End’s death, the peasants he’d enslaved first became inert and then gradually came back to life as their memories returned to them. Many fell to the ground, suffering from malnutrition, dehydration or worse. Others sat intentionally, taking the time to sort through their muddled thoughts. A few took their own lives. Whatever their choices, confusion was their master now and might be for some time to come. Bodies littered the front and sides of the battlefield. Many were covered in snow – white, pink and, in some cases, bright red, depending upon the state of the corpse beneath. Other bodies had somehow defeated the freeze, remaining defiantly bare despite the weather. Children, adults, the old, mercenaries, Queen’s men, horses – all shared the ground with the gently falling snow.
If a man listened, he would hear weeping. Plenty o’ that. Some voices called out to others who would never respond. Some voices cried out in pain. A horse whinnied. A chill breeze wafted across everything.
Toomt’-La watched from the trees, ambivalent. Mother-sister had left him for the human camp. He suspected she’d gone for good. Perhaps it was time he and his left, as well. Nar had gotten its revenge, and the old gods were satisfied.
*****
Generals Branch and Darwent (Lescoray had fallen in battle) oversaw the organization and short-term rehabilitation of the End’s former thralls, commanding various officers of lower rank to ensure the bewildered peasants were fed and, as far as possible, given some sort of shelter from the on-going snowfall. No army carries triple supplies, but the Queen’s men found room in their tents for the most desperate cases. Nevertheless, it was an effort that would take days if not weeks to resolve. Yet, the Queen’s men were happy to assay it; it beat the hell out of the certain annihilation they’d faced only a short while earlier, praise be to Vykers. And Pellas.
&nbs
p; *****
Long Pete had one heavy burden he needed to address. As he poked his head into the near-empty mess tent, he found the young man right where he’d expected: mourning at Janks’ side. Long wanted to call out, to offer words of…what? Solace? But he could not speak, would never speak again. It was just as well. How in Mahnus’ name could he ever explain what had happened? What he’d done? Long shuffled over, so as not to catch the boy unawares and frighten him, but it was he who was frightened when Spirk finally looked up. The “lad” appeared to have aged ten years, at least. Gone was the boyish innocence, the naïveté. For better or worse, tragedy had made Spirk a man. His expression brightened slightly when he sighted Long, but grew even sadder again, as if he was afraid to tell his old sergeant that Janks had died. Fighting back tears of his own, Long joined the young man at Janks’ side, where the two men sat unmoving, until dawn of the next day.
*****
It was almost amusing, really. Whenever Vykers came to believe he understood pain, that he’d survived the worst it could throw at him, life handed him a larger dose. In his current straits, merely breathing was about the most heroic thing he’d ever done. The cool, energizing caress returned to his forehead, and Vykers opened his eyes. There she was, the radiant A’Shea he’d met in the forest. What was her name again…?
“Can you speak?” she asked quietly.
It was agony, but he could manage now. “Yes.”
If he thought this bit of progress would bring a smile to her face, he was wrong. She was as taciturn as ever. “It’s been about two and a half days since you fell,” she said. “You have a hole through your body a person can see through. It’s not gotten worse, but neither has it gotten any better. There’s a magic involved that none of us has been able to neutralize.”
“Pellas?”
The A’Shea looked mystified. “Pellas?” she repeated.
Ah. No Pellas, then. Arune? He called.
Tarmun? She sounded distant, preoccupied.
Still with me?
Still with you.
Good, Vykers relaxed. Good.
*****
He awoke some time later, to the sound of conversation just outside his field of vision. “Yes?” he said aloud.
“He lives!” came a sardonic reply. Her Majesty had arrived.
Vykers struggled to sit up, but Aoife leapt up and urged him back down. The Queen stepped into view. Behind her, a bald Shaper lingered in the shadows. “I suppose I must thank you for saving my realm – the whole world, really.”
The Reaper wanted to laugh, found he could not.
“And so,” Her Majesty continued, “I find myself in an awkward position: the second greatest threat to my throne has destroyed the first greatest threat to my throne, but lies near death, presenting me with an opportunity…”
“I’d kill me, if I were you,” Vykers managed through gritted teeth.
“Sound advice!” the Queen declared. “I think I’ll ignore it,” she added. “For now.”
“Why?”
“Because, Reaper – destroyer, monster-that you are – you are now also a hero, in spite of your worst intentions. My soldiers revere you, and that is good enough for me.”
“Then…what are…you…going to…do with me?” Vykers spat out.
The Queen cackled with genuine mirth. “I’m going to let you rest for another day and then I’m bringing you back to my castle, to convalesce.”
Clearly, Vykers didn’t get it.
“To get better, to heal,” the Queen clarified. “Won’t that be wonderful?” she asked, impishly. “I get to watch you in pain every day, for weeks and weeks, as long as it takes!”
But he could tell she wasn’t that hard. For some reason, the old bat cared about him. Days gone by, indeed. Vykers pretended to nod off. He spoke to Arune, instead.
Looks like this is your chance, he said.
For what?
To be free of me, to get your own body. Can’t be any shortage o’ good candidates in the field surgeon’s tent.
You don’t get it, do you? Arune complained, disappointment evident in her tone.
What now?
I’m all that’s keeping you alive, you big, selfish idiot!
Vykers was stunned.
I got a good taste of that dagger when it came in. It’s meant to cause wounds that never heal.
Never heal, Vykers asked, or can’t be healed?
Let me put it this way: it’s not healing.
But it’s not getting worse…
I’m working on that, Arune answered.
Thank you, Arune, Vykers said and passed out again.
The Reaper showing gratitude? Now, she was worried.
*****
Some time during the last hour or so, Spirk had deserted him. Maybe the boy – the man – had finally succumbed to hunger or decided to visit the jakes. In any case, Long was alone with his old friend at last. If not for the cold, he felt sure the odor of decay would have driven him off long since. But Janks was frozen, or nearly so. He was, in point of fact, the only meat of any kind, frozen or otherwise, to be found in the mess tent any more. Janks would have laughed at that, Long knew. He would have had a good, merry laugh.
Janks’ hands had been folded over his chest, over his wound. Looking more closely, Long noticed something peculiar: a small, round stone…Spirk’s magic stone. A worthy gift, Long reflected. And what had he to give, but words?
There were so many things Long would have liked to say, had he only been able, beginning of course with an apology. An apology for never taking his friend seriously, an apology for running off and getting captured, an apology for killing him, an apology for leaving him in the field to go fight thralls. Too many things to apologize, for, really. And then, what good’s an apology to a dead man? He’d tried that with Short and gotten nowhere – no forgiveness, no relief. Suddenly, Long pictured his two dead friends in the afterlife, sharing a pint or a keg of something marvelous and having a good laugh at their foolish, hopeless, stupid old pal, Long Pete. Strange, that no matter how he tried, he couldn’t envision Janks doing anything other than laughing right now.
Ah, my old friend, I hope Mahnus and Alheria treat you better than we did down here.
“Sarge?” Rem’s voice broke into the silence.
Long turned and his heart leapt. There in the doorway, right next to the expected actor, stood Mardine.
“He can’t talk any more,” Rem warned Mardine.
“He’s talking just fine,” she said, as she strode over and into Long’s arms. Their embrace went on and on, until Rem found it too awkward to remain. “I’ll…uh…see you both soon!” he said, and scuttled nervously out of the tent.
Long gazed up into Mardine’s eyes. Oh, he loved her. Alheria’s mercy, how he loved her, and who’d have thought that half a year ago?
In minutes, the couple was drenched in tears, both sad and happy. After some time, Mardine was able to speak again. “When the End-of-All-Things died, the mercenaries cut and ran. They looted whatever they could and left me chained to a wagon. Seemed like forever ‘til the Queen’s men found me, but I’m glad they did, Petey, I am so glad they did. I can’t even tell you how glad.” She paused, got a mischievous look in her eyes. “But I reckon I could show you…”
*****
Another day passed. Vykers had been seen by an endless array of A’Shea and Shapers, none of whom seemed particularly helpful or hopeful. Yet, Vykers found he was able to sit up a little, with help, to take broth whenever he liked, with help, and to speak for longer periods, without help. In the evening, he heard a man singing along with a stringed instrument of some kind. The Reaper knew the song, a sentimental old piece about his deeds in younger days. But then it veered off into new lyrics, a lengthy and quite satisfying passage about his triumph over the End-of-All-Things. Huh. Even if he died from his wound, that song was a reasonable epitaph.
When Aoife came in with the Queen and her Shaper, Vykers knew he was being moved.
“I. Meant to. Ask,” he said.
Steel, Blood & Fire (Immortal Treachery Book 1) Page 49
