The Warriors of the Gods

by Jacob Peppers

  Still, he consoled himself with the fact that his circumstances would change soon enough. When Tesharna sent her men to collect Alesh and the woman, when Shira’s enemies were destroyed, he would be rewarded greatly. No longer would he be exiled to Peralest. What reward might the goddess offer to the man who made it all possible? He did not believe it too ambitious to think he might find himself rising in power and influence within the ranks of Shira’s worshippers, perhaps even to rival or surpass Tesharna herself or Kale Leandrian, the new ruler of Ilrika.

  But all the thoughts of his promising future could do nothing to quell the headache pounding in Orren’s skull, and he winced, rubbing at his temples. It was always so, after speaking with his goddess, as if the power of her voice was so great it could not be properly heard, at least not without pain from he who heard it. But a terrible headache—one that, he knew from experience, no herb or medicine could alleviate—was a small price to pay for the blessings his goddess would soon give him. The blessings she had promised, as soon as Alesh and the woman were dealt with.

  There was a knock on his door, and Orren nearly cried out as it felt as if it were coming from inside his skull, rattling his brain. “Come in!” he shouted.

  A robed figure opened the door and bowed low before stepping inside. Vastel, one of his most trusted priests. This one, at least, was far above the dregs he was usually sent—young, ignorant priests unwanted by anyone else. As always, Orren noted a slight bulge in the front of Vastel’s tunic, one he wouldn’t have noticed, had he not known to look for it. He knew that, should he ask the veteran priest—and, more importantly, veteran of Shira’s service and one-time assassin—to remove his tunic, he would do so willingly and without hesitation. And, once he had, Orren was sure that what he would find would be two long, cruel knives in the use of which Vastel was an expert.

  “Yes, Vastel?”

  “The prisoners. They’re secure.”

  Unlike most of the other priests, Vastel did not use his title when addressing him and, unlike those others, Orren never made a point of reprimanding him for it. Vastel had proven his loyalty on too many occasions to count, after all, often with those blades he kept secreted. “How secure?”

  The other man shrugged, the motion wrinkling the long scar at his throat where, it was rumored—but Orren had never asked—he had once been hanged to no great effect. “Fairly. Chained. Hung in the altar.”

  Vastel had never been a man to waste words, and even those few he’d uttered were more than Orren often heard him speak in a single sitting. “The chains are quite thick?”

  “Fairly.”

  Orren nodded. “Double them, Vastel. This man and woman have both escaped the goddess’s clutches before—far too many times to count, as far as I’m concerned. I will not take any chances of it happening again, not on my watch.”

  “Sure.”

  The man turned to go, moving toward the door. “And Vastel?”

  The priest turned, glancing back, his face expressionless.

  “What of the other, the one who wasn’t at the inn? Any news?”

  “No.”

  Orren sighed. “And our brothers? Are they back yet from their…task?”

  “No.”

  Orren forced down the frustration he felt at that. It was troublesome that they had not found the other man, the one called Eriondrian, but Orren did not doubt they would, given time. After all, the man was in a city he did not know with no friends to count on and, what’s more, from what Orren had been told, he was a noble. Nobles had their uses which recommended them, but Orren had never met one that knew anything of subtlety. Yes, the man would be found soon enough and, if not, he would send Vastel. If anyone could find him, the once-assassin could.

  A thought struck him, and Orren smiled. “The prisoners, Vastel—lead me to them.”

  “This way.”

  Orren, of course, knew how to get to his own secret altar, but thought it would be wise to keep Vastel close, just in case. The altar had been excavated beneath the church years ago, the entrance hidden behind a bookshelf in the private sanctuary reserved in the back of the church for the priests. In fact, Orren himself had been the one who had commanded its creation, who had, by necessity, had the workers who had created it slain once it was finished. As he followed the priest through the church halls, Orren thought of what blessings awaited him, and a slow smile crept onto his face.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rion was panting heavily by the time the carriage finally stopped in front of a ramshackle house in the poor district. It had taken him a frantic, exhausting hour of sprinting through alleyways and sidestreets to find the carriage carrying Darl and the two girls. His legs burned and there was a painful stitch in his side. As he nearly collapsed against the side of a building, he promised himself, not for the first time that night, that he would start exercising regularly and drinking less. If, that was, he survived the night. Probably a promise he wouldn’t have to keep, then, so that was something to be thankful for.

  The driver and the two priests climbed out of the carriage before pulling Rion’s companions out. The Ferinan had been blindfolded, but even from this distance and in the moonlight, Rion could see the side of his head was stained with blood.

  The two girls weren’t blindfolded. Marta looked at the house then, in a panic, tried to break free of her captors, managed to get one arm loose before the man holding her slapped her in the face, hard. The girl cried out as she was knocked to the ground only to be pulled roughly to her feet a moment later. Rion glanced at the house and couldn’t blame her for her fear.

  No lights were lit within—there wasn’t so much as a candle to fend off the darkness—but that wasn’t what bothered him. It wasn’t even that the house was ugly and crudely built—after all, houses in the poor quarter most always were, their owners unable to afford repairs.

  Instead, there was something else about the house that troubled him. While it was similar in appearance to those others around it, there was something about this one that gave off a feeling of menace, of despair. It seemed to squat, hunched in the darkness the way some beast might wait for its prey. It had a look about it that made Rion think it was plotting. That was dumb, of course. A house couldn’t plot, and it was no more than the materials from which it was constructed, boards and nails—far too few from Rion’s judgment—put together to create a place in which someone might live. Or in which someone might die. The other houses in the poor district were equally ugly, in equally pitiable states of disrepair, but they, at least, seemed like places for living. This house, though, felt like a place of death, and as he watched the priests lead Marta, Sonya, and Darl inside, Rion’s breath caught in his throat.

  He didn’t have to ask himself what they planned to do with them once they were safely hidden behind the house’s walls—he thought he knew all too well. Things acted according to their natures, always. Women lied, men cheated, dice rolled, and this house…this house killed. And if he didn’t go in soon, he was confident there would be no point in going in at all.

  The priests would no doubt want to get their business finished quickly, so they could go on with their lives and do whatever it was they did for fun. Maybe kicking puppies and growling at babies. There was no time to come up with an elaborate plan—which he probably wouldn’t have been able to manage at any rate—and no time to find help. No time to do anything at all except to go in and probably die with his friends.

  Then that’s what I’ll do, Rion told himself, and the passion in that inner voice surprised even him. He had never been a man with many friends. Those few people he’d hung around with, Armiel and Bastion chief among them, were nothing more than familiar faces with which to pass the time, bodies he recognized to sit across from him at a hand of cards or a game of dice. The only true friend he’d had—which he’d discovered only recently—was Odrick. Now though, he found himself completely willing to throw his life away for these two girls and Darl. Strange maybe, completely against his
character, but there was it, and there was no denying it.

  He waited until the priests were all inside and the door was closed, then he started down the street. He glanced both ways to see if anyone was watching him, but there was no one, and that was no great surprise. Rion the Gambler had spent enough time in the poor districts of Valeria to know its citizens developed a very specific condition. Call it “willful blindness.” They knew things happened, but they avoided talking about it, avoided seeing it, the same way a child might cover her eyes, thinking something wasn’t real, not really real, unless she saw it.

  And perhaps they were smart to do it. After all, Rion didn’t feel particularly clever just then, walking as he was toward a house in which lurked at least three murderous bastards. He reached his hands into his tunic and withdrew his knives, glad to feel the familiar weight in his hands and glad, also, that they hadn’t somehow managed to slip out in his flight through the city. That would have been just perfect, a knight showing up like some hero in a storybook, there to rescue the damsel—or in this case damsels—in distress only to realize he’d left his sword, his horse, and all his common sense in his other suit of armor.

  Rion walked up to the door and raised his hand as if to knock—a habit ingrained in him since birth—then realized how stupid he was. Somehow, he didn’t think a polite knock would change the murderers into sweet old grandmas who would come out and offer him a cup of tea. Unless, maybe the tea was poisoned. Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he tried the door and was unsurprised to find it latched from the inside.

  Still, the door was poorly built, uneven in its frame, and it was an easy enough thing to slip the blade of one of his knives through the slit beside it. After a few seconds, he found the latch, wincing at the metallic scrape of the blade against it. He paused then, suddenly overcome with the worry—the near certainty—that someone sat on the other side of the door, maybe more than one someone, crossbow drawn, waiting to ruin the day of the fool stupid enough to try to break his way into a house that practically had the words Die Here painted across it.

  But the latch was thrown, and there was no going back now. Javen, he thought, if you’re listening, I imagine you’ve got a lot going on, what with your mother being crazy as shit and all. But here’s the thing: my friends are in this house, and I’d like to save them, if I could. Also, despite appearances, I’d rather not die. So if you’ve got some god blessings lying around, maybe burning a hole in your pocket, I think now’s the time to use them, eh? Perhaps the coin in his pocket grew cooler, as if in answer, but there was no way to know for sure. The night was cold, and there was a slight drizzle, so the rest of him was pretty well freezing anyway.

  Just let them all be asleep, he thought, as he stepped inside, and this thought, at least, was for himself. That’d be just fine by me. They weren’t though, and it seemed there were limits to even how much the God of Chance—if he had even been listening—might bend luck. Rion had no sooner thrown the door open than he heard the unmistakable—and under the circumstances, supremely terrifying—click of a crossbow release.

  This was followed directly by the sound of someone screaming in pain, and Rion froze for a brief instant in the doorway, quite sure he was the one who had been shot and that he was also, despite being unaware of it, the one screaming in pain. He wasn’t though. Instead, a quick look into the room showed him that two men had been waiting on the other side for anyone stupid enough to try to break into this particular house.

  One man sat at a table, a half-empty mug of ale in front of him. But this wasn’t what drew Rion’s attention. Instead, it was the fact that the man had slid his chair away from the table and was currently holding a crossbow he had clearly just fired. Rion traced the path of where he thought the bolt would likely have flown, and his task was made all the easier by the howls of pain coming from only a foot or two away. There was another man lying on the floor, writhing in agony, a crossbow bolt protruding from his gut, a sword—one he’d no doubt held moments before—lying beside him. It was clear the man had been waiting directly on the other side of the door, sword raised, ready to cut down Rion as soon as he’d made it into the room.

  Of course, he hadn’t—for which Rion was grateful. A crossbow bolt to the gut had a way of making a man forget his immediate plans. There was no questioning the coolness of the coin in his pocket now, and Rion forced his thoughts away from the numb surprise he felt and without hesitating any further, charged the seated man. The man, thankfully, was also in a state of surprise—shooting your friend on accident probably had such an effect—and was fumbling at the crossbow, doing, all-in-all, a piss poor job of getting the weapon reloaded and aimed.

  A good thing, that, since Rion struck a table in his haste and went sprawling across the ground, turning it into a roll the smoothness of which was slightly dampened by the way he fetched up against the thick, oak leg of a table halfway and found himself stuck, head down, back propped against the table. Cursing, he tried to right himself, managed it after several panicked moments. He was surprised then when he gained his feet with no extra holes in him than he’d started the day with. Rion looked frantically in the direction of the crossbowman a few feet away and went to throw his blade—in an effort to buy himself time more than anything else—only to realize it had slipped from his fingers.

  He didn’t have to look for it though, and that was something. He could see it clearly enough, sticking from the crossbowman’s throat as it was. The man was slumped back in his chair, his head lolling over the edge of it, blood sluicing out onto the front of his leather tunic as if from a punctured wine skin. The crossbow had slipped to the ground, and the man was pawing at his throat, a confused look in his eyes as if he wasn’t really sure what had happened. Rion understood the feeling as he wasn’t quite sure himself. All he knew for certain was that Javen’s coin had become a small chunk of ice in his pocket, numbing his leg. “Well,” he said finally as he started forward to withdraw his blade from the man’s throat, “that’s lucky.”

  By now, the screams of the man struck by the crossbow bolt—now dwindling to low, incomprehensible moans of gibberish—had drawn the attention of the others inside the house. A door at the side of the room opened, and Rion, guided more by instinct than conscious decision, gave the table he stood beside a heave, spilling the mug of ale in the process, and the heavy oak landed heavily on its side.

  He ducked behind it and was rewarded less than a second later with the thud of a crossbow bolt striking the table. He blinked at the steel point which had appeared, as if by magic, only inches away from his face, cool terror urging him onward. He scrabbled across the ground for the dead man’s crossbow, grasped it in a sweaty grip and was relieved to see that the man had managed to get it loaded, after all. He rose high enough to see the man—dressed in leather similar to the two dead ones—standing in the doorway he’d entered from, reloading his own weapon.

  Rion didn’t give him the chance, rising and firing. The bolt took his opponent in the chest, and the man grunted as he was thrown back through the doorway by the force of it to collapse half inside the room and half in the other. There were shouts from inside, but Rion barely heard them. He was busy crawling toward the first crossbowman, keeping the table between him and the open door in case any others decided to come out in the next few seconds. He reached the dead man and saw what he was looking for peeking out from behind his back. Grunting with the effort, he rolled the corpse over and retrieved the quiver upon which he’d been lying.

  He loaded the crossbow, then holding it in one hand, his knife in the other, he rose enough to look at the doorway. No one else had yet dared to venture out, presumably not wanting to find a similar fate as their recently-alive but now inarguably-dead friend. It would have been easier had they come at him one by one, as the man had, but Rion had enough experience with dealing with blood-thirsty murderers—far, far more than he would have liked—to know the bastards rarely made killing them easy.

  He eas
ed his way around the table, keeping to the side of the door, so he wouldn’t be seen by anyone peering out of it. He moved as quietly as he could, his heart beating a frantic rhythm in his chest and soon he reached the side of the doorway. Rion hesitated, listening for any sounds, anything that might give away the number or position of the men waiting inside.

  “We’re in he—” a scream began, then there was a grunt of frustration, and the sound was quickly muffled, but Rion recognized the voice as Marta’s.

  He hesitated, unsure of what to do. It would be a damned foolish thing, he thought, to step through that doorway. Sure, you may just be walking into a room, but more likely you’ll be stepping directly into the Keeper’s Fields. You know that, don’t you? And he did know that, knew that what waited on the other side of the door was most likely only his own death. But he knew, also, that he was going to go through it, had always been going to go through. So he sighed, checked the crossbow again to make sure it was loaded, and stepped inside.

  He did not feel the expected impact of a crossbow bolt. A lantern hanging on the wall showed three priests and no one else save their captives. That was a relief. Less so that each of them had an arm around one of his three friends, a knife or sword held against their throats. A stand-off, then, a waiting game to see whose will would crack first. “Not another move there, bastard,” the priest holding Darl spat, “or I’ll slice this savage’s throat and see what—”

  He never finished the sentence. Rion’s crossbow bolt took him high in the face, driving through the area where his nose had been, through cartilage and flesh. The priest screamed, and Darl knocked the sword away from his throat, snatching it from the priest’s hands even as the man staggered away, hands going to his ruined face. The Ferinan moved in one smooth motion, spinning and dragging the sword across the wounded man’s stomach. Blood and worse fell from the deep gash, but Darl barely hesitated, moving to the second priest who, in his panic at the unexpected bloodshed, had let go of Sonya who fell to the ground in a sobbing heap.