This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Warriors of the Gods: Book Three of The Nightfall Wars
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To my wife, Andrea,
Because I don’t say it enough—
Thank you.
Chapter One
The Broken stood staring at the burning remnants of what had once been a castle. He had stood so for the last hour, unmoving. Thinking. Behind him, rank after rank of Redeemers waited, and though they said nothing, he could feel their impatience, could hear it in the rustling of cloth as they stretched and shifted from one foot to the other. They wanted him to act, to tell them what to do. To lead.
Yet still he waited.
There was a time for action, a time when any hesitation would bring death. But there was also a time when careful consideration was called for, a time when acting in haste would doom a man quicker than not acting at all. And so he waited, staring at the pieces of broken wood and crushed stone scattered about the clearing as if crushed beneath the fist of some furious god. Though he had seen it, the Broken could hardly believe a castle had once stood here.
The exiled Ekirani knew much of destruction, much of death. He understood the tools of such a trade the way a blacksmith knew the exact weight and feel of his hammer in his grip, or the woodcutter his axe. Yet, for all his knowledge, he had never seen anything capable of unleashing the degree of devastation he had witnessed here. If such a power could be harnessed, could be controlled by men with more drive than an old hermit looking for a place to die, it would be something for every man, woman, and child in the world to fear. It would be enough to make the gods themselves afraid.
Dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred Redeemers had died in the initial blast, and many who had survived the first wave of hurtling stone and splintered wood now lay on the ground among the destruction, groaning and crying out in pain. Most had succumbed to their wounds over the last hour, but he could still see a few scattered like broken dolls in the crater the explosion had left, could still hear their desperate, frightened pleas for help, for salvation from their agony. They would find none. At least, not in life. Life, after all, was pain. Babies were carried into the world on a river of their mother’s agony, and spent each moment thereafter receiving what wounds the world cared to give them—some visible, some not, but all cutting. And nothing he had seen of the world gave him any hope the land of the dead would be any different.
Still, the explosion had been impressive—there was no denying that. Like all Ekirani, the people to whom he had once belonged, the Broken had a deep respect for weapons, for tools of destruction. His people respected weapons not out of some desire to use them—for their art was the sword and their Dance one of what they believed to be peace. The Broken, however, did not search for peace—only for an ending. And should he manage to learn the secrets of what had caused the great explosion, he thought such an ending would come much sooner.
Even he, for all his training, for all his talent, had not been able to avoid the blast’s power, not entirely. He’d received scratches from flying stone or wood along his chest, as well as several minor wounds and abrasions along his arms and legs. Once, something had struck him in the side of the head, a glancing blow he had not entirely managed to avoid, and he had nearly lost consciousness, which, he suspected, would have proved fatal in those initial moments of devastation.
Since his family’s grim fate, the Broken had never felt joy or excitement, had not felt much of anything in truth. But he felt it now. Here was the tool, here was the answer to the question of how to end the world’s suffering. He stared down at his hand where the man’s blade had wounded him, watched as the skin there slowly began to reknit itself. A blessing, he supposed, proof of the God of Conflict’s favor. Staring at it, at that magically mending wound, he thought that he felt something else, some faint emotion stirring within him. Was it anger, that he felt? Anger at the man, the one called Alesh, who had opposed him? The one who stood in the way of him doing what must be done, what should have been done ages ago?
Perhaps. He closed his eyes, focusing on that feeling, one of the first emotions he had felt in a long time. He poked at the feeling, prodded it the way a freezing man might nudge the last dying ember of a fire, hoping to coax it into something grand. Something hot. For the Ekirani were masters of all weapons, and anger, he knew, could be used as well as any other.
The Redeemers regarded him silently. The light of the flames left by the explosion showed that most were covered in sand or stone dust. They looked unbalanced, afraid, and why not? They had witnessed the destructive force just as he had, and although the Broken, as an Ekirani, might see the potential of such a thing, the soldiers saw only the death it caused. They saw it but did not understand it, and as with all men, they feared what they did not understand.
“Come,” he said. “We will go after them.”
A few nods at that, but not many. Most were tired from days spent hunting the others. They were confused by what they had seen, and perhaps some even had friends among the corpses whom they now mourned. “Damn you, no we won’t.”
The man who’d spoken stepped out of the crowd. A big man, broad shoulders and a thick neck. The others made room for him, hurrying out of his way, and the anxious looks they cast in his direction were enough to show they respected and feared him. The man appeared to be in his early forties, with short salt-and-pepper hair, his hands and arms sporting multiple old scars, proof he had been in his fair share of scraps and had managed to walk away each time. Paren’s Brands, such scars were sometimes called among soldiers and old campaigners, and they wore them with pride. Some men collected gold, others women, and some, it was true, collected scars. The Broken did not know which was the most foolish, and he did not much care.
The man came to stand a few feet away from him, his hand on the hilt of the sword at his waist. A promise and a threat in the way his fingers played along the hilt.
“No?” the Broken asked.
“That’s right,” the man said, hocking and spitting at the Broken’s feet. “I’ve had just about enough of followin’ you. Oh, sure, Shira mighta left you in charge, but I wonder if she’ll still have so much confidence in you after this latest failure. First, you let the bastards slip through our fingers at that little shit town of Celdara, and now you’ve gone and got nearly half of us killed and for what? We ain’t no closer to gettin’ ‘em now than we was when we set out.”
“You have seen much,” the Broken said softly, meeting the man’s eyes, those orbs a reflection of the suffering he had endured in his life, the pain he had received and the pain he had caused. Not all scars, he thought, made a man bleed. But they were visible just the same.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve seen,” the man said, “I’ve seen you throw dozens of our lives away for nothin’. I saw you leave the wounded in Celadra to die without so much as a ‘good luck’ before you marched away. There were some men I knew among those you left, some good men.”
The Broken raised an eyebrow. “Good men?” The words sounded ridiculous coming from his mouth, as if he had just uttered some nonsensical gibberish.
“That’s right,” the man said. “Now, let me tell you what’s going to happen. We’re gonna march back to the town—it’ll take us a while, no doubt, since you led us into the middle of fucking nowhere. But we’re gonna go to Valeria, and when we get there, we’re gonna ask Chosen Tesharna what she wants us to do now. As for you…” The man grunted in disgust, turning and motioning to two Redeemers—the Broken counted them among the men who had nodded along to the man’s speech—who started forward with obvious reluctance. “You’re our prisoner now, understand? We’re gonna bind you and bring you to Tesharna, tell her what you done and ask what she wants to do. I wouldn’t worry overly much, friend. Might be, the Chosen will show mercy. Though, I suppose it has to be said,” he went on, grinning, “she ain’t exactly got a reputation for such.” He turned to the other two Redeemers. “Take the bastard’s weapon and let’s get this over with—we hurry, might be we can reach Celadra before sand fleas have eaten our balls.”
There was laughter at that from the gathered Redeemers, and the Broken thought he understood. This man, gruff and as crude as he might be, was one of them, and what cruelty or meanness he had was one they knew, one they understood. Better he lead them, then, than this strange Ekirani with his body covered in tattoos, this Ekirani who wielded a weapon unlike anything they had ever seen before, who uttered none of the common words such men came to expect from their leaders.
One of the red-cloaked men reached for the Broken’s weapon, and he let him take it from his hands. A confused expression passed across the man’s face, lasting only a brief moment. Then, in another instant, his face twisted in pain, and he screamed, recoiling and dropping the weapon on the sand where it landed with an unearthly hiss. The man stumbled back, staring at his hands, at the blood there, and the Broken gave a single nod. “There is always a price,” he said, “for power.” He turned, looking at the older Redeemer, the one who meant to supplant him. “Always a price.”
The other man was still screaming, and the older Redeemer bared his teeth at the Broken in a snarl before stepping forward. “Stop that screamin’, damn you,” he growled. “Now, let me see what—” He had been grabbing the man’s hand, meaning to look at the wound, but he cut off with a grunt as he unfolded it, and the fingers fell away, dropping on the ground, little bloody nubs of flesh. “What the fu—” he began.
Then the Broken moved. The weapon, gifted to him by Paren, the God of Conflict, was a tool. A useful one, it was true, but the Broken had other tools, other weapons. He lunged forward, the ridge of his hand seeking the throat of the wounded man’s companion who stood staring at his counterpart with a dumbfounded expression on his face.
The strike found its mark, and the man’s windpipe crumpled. The Redeemer fell away, rasping in surprised pain, but the Broken was already sliding past, wrapping his hands around the wounded man’s head and slamming his knee into his face. The man’s nose broke beneath the blow, and blood fountained in a crimson spray.
“You son of a bitch.” Someone grabbed him from behind, spinning him around, and the big man’s fist blurred toward the Broken’s face, surprisingly fast for his bulk. But the Broken had trained with the best warriors in the world, had been blessed and claimed by the God of Conflict himself, and he tilted his neck to the side, avoiding the blow. Before the man could press the attack, he countered, and his hand lanced out, rigid, two of his fingers sinking deep into the man’s eye.
The big Redeemer howled, and his grip on the Broken’s tunic came loose as he stumbled backward. Another strike in the other eye, the feel of the orb popping beneath the pressure, and the man screamed louder, collapsing, blood leaking from his eye sockets. The Broken stood regarding the veteran Redeemer for a moment. Then he knelt behind him, wrapped his arms about the man’s neck, and gave a single, savage twist. There was a crack like the sound of a frost-laden limb breaking, and the man’s cries ceased.
The Broken let the corpse fall. He rose, staring around the dark clearing at the other faces watching him. It had all happened in seconds, and a few had just managed to free their swords from their scabbards and start forward. They froze when his gaze fell on them. The Broken waited silently, saying nothing, letting the dead speak for him in their own voices, letting them tell their own truths. He waited, but no more came forward, and finally he sighed, feeling an odd disappointment.
“Very well,” he said in a whisper. He knelt, retrieving his weapon from where it had fallen, before rising once more. “I will find them, this Alesh and those others who stand in our way. Will you follow me?” he asked, then he turned to look at the corpses. “Or will you follow them?”
The remaining Redeemers did not answer, not aloud at least, and he had not expected them to. Sometimes—most times, in his experience—the silence gave clearer answer than any voice could. “Very well,” he said again, then he gave a single nod and started into the darkness, back toward the town of Celadra, back toward where, he believed, the others must have gone. He walked, a shadow in the darkness, and behind him, the Redeemers followed.
Chapter Two
“He hunts them.”
“Yes.”
“He will find them, given time enough. We should stop him. Before it is too late.”
“You know we cannot.”
Javen sighed and turned to Deitra. They stood atop a towering sand dune. Beneath them, far in the distance, were the remnants of Larin’s castle, and marching through those remnants, with grim purpose, were the Broken and those Redeemers who followed him. “Do you not find it strange, sister, that we, being gods, can do nothing to alter the course of events? Strange that we must stand by and watch while those who fight in our names are slaughtered?”
He saw the pain his words caused her in her eyes, and Javen looked away. “Not nothing, brother,” she said softly, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “We have given them what help we may. To do anymore…”
“Would alert Mother to our presence, I know,” Javen answered bitterly. For a long time, for many, many years, he had cared little for the mortals on whom his father doted, had thought them nothing more than animals themselves, beasts whose stupidity was matched only by their unpredictability. Now, though, he had come to understand, to see some small bit of what his father saw. Mortals were cruel, yes, often glorying in meanness just for meanness’s sake. They could be perverse and evil, were capable of unspeakable crimes. But they could also be kind, could, at their best, be…divine. The thought brought a small grin to his face.
Even Rion who he had Chosen on what he’d thought no more than a whim, had shown himself to be better, truer, than he at first appeared. Oh, he was a liar and a cheat, a scoundrel and a rogue, it was true, but Javen had been called by such names, too. After all, there was nothing more fickle than chance, and he was its god.
“Paren will not be turned from his course,” he said. “He is as he has ever been, a being of singular will, one who will not deviate from his chosen path even to avoid the walls erected before him, but will only charge through them until he can charge no longer. We will receive no help from that quarter, and this creature of his, this man he has forged, is of the same kind.”
“Yes,” she said, “but our brother, for all his strength, for all his…will, is only one, Javen. He has sided with mother, and that is no great surprise, for she is the Goddess of the Wilds, and he the God of Conflict, and the two have ever been close. Yet, the danger they pose is not insurmountable.”
“Isn’t it?” Javen said, rounding on her. “What victory do they require that they have not already gained? Those we seek to protect, those we hope will do what must be done are weak now. They travel through the earth as we speak, tunneling through it, burrowing like moles into the darkness, and there is no knowing when—or if—they will surface again. And as for the one our father has Chosen, you saw what he did…what he became.”
“Yes,” she said, “I saw it, brother, perhaps clearer than you. Still, the shadow has not consumed him—he fought it back. You know this.”
“Fought it back,” Javen said, chuckling without humor. “For now. But for how long? There is doubt in him, sister, great doubt. And more…there is…hate. Even Paren’s servant, for all his coldness, cannot match such as I feel in our father’s favored. And while they creep through the earth these, these things,” he said, gesturing widely at the nightlings, the Bane, who crept through the darkness, swarming through it like ants from a disturbed hill, “run rampant on the face of the land. They are possessed of a hunger that might never be sated.”
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