The Warriors of the Gods

by Jacob Peppers

  The man shouted in anger, meaning to rush the Ferinan, but he’d no sooner taken a step than Darl was on him, his blade moving in a blur, and in seconds the man fell, dead. It all happened so fast that Rion had a hard time processing it, as did the third priest whose grip on Marta must have loosened in his distraction, for she managed to knock his arm free and lunge away from him.

  He seemed to snap back to his senses, and he reached for her, perhaps meaning to kill her outright or to use her as a hostage, a means of escape. Whatever it had been, Rion would never know, for Darl was on him before he could catch her, his sword slicing a clean, if shallow, cut across the man’s reaching arm. The priest cried out, swinging his own blade in a wild blow which the Ferinan easily parried. “Darl,” Rion shouted, “maybe we should—” then cut off as the Ferinan stepped into the robed man’s guard and buried the blade in his chest.

  A savage glee seemed to dance on the Ferinan’s face, the first joy in violence Rion had ever seen from the man, and he pulled his blade free, letting the third and final priest collapse at his feet, before turning to Rion. Rion opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t seem to find words.

  “I’m sorry, you were saying something?” Darl asked, as if he’d been distracted by a hand of cards, maybe, instead of the swift and brutal murder of two men.

  “I…that is,” Rion managed. “I was going to say we should leave one alive…you know, to question.”

  “Ah,” Darl said, glancing at the two corpses and then wincing as if embarrassed. He turned back to Rion. “They were going to kill the girls,” he went on, as if that explained everything, and Rion thought that probably it did. The Ferinan moved to the weeping Sonya, scooping her from the floor and hugging her tightly to his chest, whispering soft words of reassurance, ones which Rion wished he could hear. He could have used a bit of reassurance just then.

  “Well, sure,” he said, his mouth dry. “I’d say they learned their lesson. But…if you don’t mind me saying so…I thought your people used spears, not swords.”

  The Ferinan glanced at the blade in his hand then back to Rion. “We use what tools the gods make available to us, friend Rion. And just because a man chooses not to use a thing does not mean he doesn’t know how.”

  “I’m sure they’d agree with you,” Rion muttered, glancing pointedly at the corpses.

  “Uncle Rion!” The little girl, Sonya, extricated herself from the grinning Ferinan’s arms, and ran toward Rion, her little feet scampering in the pooling blood of one of the dead men as she did. Rion was thinking that if there was ever any proof needed that the world was well and truly fucked, it could be seen in that simple thing—a child’s bloody footprints on wooden floorboards. Then she embraced him with such force, that he stumbled and nearly fell. “You saved us,” she said.

  Rion hesitated awkwardly, then finally returned the embrace. He thought, then, that it had been worth it, all the risk, all the danger, to have saved this little girl, to have saved them both. Of course, had he been one of the men lying dead on the floor, he might have thought differently, but he wasn’t, and he didn’t. He had saved them, his friends, Darl, and Marta, and Sonya—and he was glad.

  “Messed up, you showin’ up like you did,” Marta said. “I was just about to make my move.”

  Well, Rion thought, I’m mostly glad. Finally, the little girl let loose her tight embrace, and Rion was both relieved and disappointed it happened so soon. He glanced at Darl, and the Ferinan grinned as if reading his thoughts easily enough.

  “What now?” Rion growled, suddenly embarrassed.

  “Alesh and Katherine?” the dusky-skinned man asked in response.

  Rion winced, glancing at the little girl, Sonya and her hope-filled eyes, then shook his head slowly. “They were taken somewhere else; I don’t know where. I followed you.”

  “But what if they’re hurt?” Sonya asked in a scared voice as she glanced between Rion and Darl. “What if—”

  “They will be alright, little one,” Darl said, coming to kneel beside her and putting a handle on her shoulder. “We will find them.”

  “But how?” Rion said. “All I know is they went a different direction than you—the priests carried them somewhere else.”

  “That is good,” the Ferinan said, nodding.

  “Good? How in the name of the gods is that good?”

  Darl met his eyes. “Because, friend Rion, the carriage in which we rode led to death. It is likely the one which carries Katherine and Alesh, having taken a different path, leads somewhere else.”

  To a terrible death, maybe, Rion thought, but he didn’t bother saying so. “Alright, so what do we do?”

  “We go back to the inn,” Darl said, meeting Sonya’s eyes and giving her a small smile. “And then we will see what we will see.”

  Perfect, Rion thought. What better place to go than the place from which you were all just kidnapped by a bunch of murderous priests? Well. It had been an interesting night so far, and it didn’t look as if it was going to slow down anytime soon. Sighing, he followed Darl and the others as they walked from the house, leaving the dead to themselves.

  Chapter Twenty

  The first thing Alesh was aware of when he came awake was a deep, terrible throbbing in the back of his head, as if there were a man inside, hammering away at his skull to check for—or perhaps to create—flaws. The second thing was a stinging in his cheek, a pain far less than that in his head, but of a different, sharper kind.

  “Ah, the Son of the Morning stirs.” The words were said mockingly from someone in front of him.

  Alesh opened his eyes with an effort, his eyelids feeling as if they’d had lead weights tied to them and saw the old priest from before standing in front of him, a small grin on his face.

  “You.” The word came out in a dry, rasping croak, and Alesh lunged forward at the man. Or, at least, he meant to. He was abruptly brought up short by chains that bit painfully into his wrists and ankles.

  The older man’s grin widened. “Ah, yes. Sorry about the hospitality, but we have heard you are a bit of a…shall we say, troublemaker, and I thought it best to take precautions lest your stay here be more unpleasant than it need be.”

  Alesh ignored the man and his gloating for the moment, instead craning his neck as much as his bonds would allow to look around the room. Barely a room at all, really. Earthen walls and floor, more like a cellar than anything. His eyes fell on Katherine, and his heart skipped a beat. Her wrists and ankles had been manacled to the wall. Her head drooped, her chin resting against her chest, and Alesh had wild, frantic moment before he noted the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Alive then. But a prisoner.

  “What do you want?”

  The priest waggled a finger at him. “We’ll get to that soon enough. But first, I believe proper introductions are in order. You, of course, need no introduction as you are the savior of the world.” Again in the mocking tone, and he paused to wink, as if to make sure Alesh got the joke. “I, on the other hand, am Bishop Orren.”

  He said the last as if decreeing some life-changing pronouncement and watched Alesh steadily as if looking for some reaction. “What you are—or will be, soon enough—” Alesh said, “is a dead man, if you don’t let us go.”

  The old man’s grin faded, and he gave a look of annoyance before slapping Alesh across the face. “You may not know my name yet, but you will soon enough. That much, I can promise you. Now, if you behave, your stay here need not be any more painful than necessary. Soon enough, Tesharna will send men to collect you. Until then, you will behave.”

  “Where are my friends? What have you done with them?”

  “Ah,” Orren said, nodding, mock sadness on his face. “The two girls and the Ferinan. Well, I’m afraid they were expendable. The goddess and Tesharna did not insist on seeing to them personally as they did you. I’m sad to say that, by now, they are all quite, irrevocably dead.”

  Alesh snarled as rage bloomed inside of him, and that part of his mind—t
he animalistic part that hid, he’d discovered, much closer to the surface of a man than most believed—erupted into wakefulness. He lunged forward again and again, fighting against his chains with a strength borne of fury, a desperate hunger, the need to kill this man roiling through him like a storm. He was rewarded by feeling the slightest easing of the tension in the chain on his right arm as it began to work loose from the wall. He thought with another few tries, he could free his arm, but then the bishop spoke.

  “Vastel, if he continues to act so abominably, kill the girl. The goddess will not be too terribly upset, I’m sure, just as long as she is able to have this one to herself.”

  Alesh froze at that, his muscles tensed. He glanced over to the side of the room where the bishop was looking to see two men he hadn’t noticed at first standing in the shadows, just outside the illumination that the single lantern hanging from the opposite wall provided.

  “Sure,” one said, and as he stepped into the light, withdrawing a long, cruel-looking knife from inside his tunic. He moved toward Katherine, his blade held casually, as if he were preparing to slice meat instead of commit murder, then glanced at Orren, an eyebrow raised as if in question.

  “Now,” the bishop said to Alesh, “are you going to behave?”

  “You killed them,” Alesh said. He couldn’t believe it. After all his fears, all his worries and all he had done—all the terrible, bloody things he had done—Sonya had died anyway, along with Darl and Marta.

  “Well,” Orren said as if already bored by the subject, “not personally. But, yes, I catch your point. I suppose I did.”

  “You’ll die for that,” Alesh said in a quiet voice. “I’ll kill you, for that.”

  Orren frowned as if considering that, then moved closer. Abruptly, he struck Alesh in the stomach. Pinned against the wall as he was, Alesh couldn’t curl around the blow or dodge, and the breath wheezed out of him at the punch.

  “No,” Orren said matter-of-factly, “you won’t. Now, how about you leave off your bravado, at least for the moment. It’ll be less painful for you.”

  Alesh gasped, struggling to get his breath back, his eyes locked on the bishop.

  “Such anger,” the bishop said, shaking his head and making a tsking sound. “Not what I’d expect from the world’s savior. Though, it seems I recall your father having a similar look.”

  Alesh’s eyes went wide, and the bishop smiled. “Oh, yes, I knew your father. Or, perhaps, it is fairer to say I met him, once upon a time. I suppose, if we’re being honest, it is equally fair to say I am the reason why he—and your dear, sweet mother—are dead.”

  “What are you talking about?” Alesh managed. “That isn’t…that’s not…my mother and father were killed by nightlings.”

  “So they were,” Orren agreed, clearly pleased by the reaction he’d caused. “I and some others were sent to kill them, you see, and your mother and father escaped, choosing to run into the night rather than stand and fight. Cowards, both of them.” He shrugged again, as if it made no difference. “But Shira’s will is not so easily balked, and the night took them just the same. Just as it will take you, when your time comes.”

  A thousand questions came to Alesh’s head, a thousand things he’d always wanted to know, concerns and thoughts saved up over a lifetime of being an orphan, of wondering why his mother and father had been out in the woods at night, but not just that. He wanted to know them, to know anything about them, needed it, in that moment, the way a drowning man needs air, or a dying man comfort. But he resisted the urge to ask, for he knew the bishop was nothing but some cruel cat, playing with its prey and seeing how much pain he could cause. Any answer he gave would be tainted if not an outright lie. To have the answers to so many of his questions right in front of him but still so far out of reach was maddening. “Damn you,” Alesh said.

  “Oh, it is not the damnation of the gods I seek,” Orren said, “but their blessing. And I will receive it soon enough, once you and your woman here are taken. Isn’t it amusing that, in the end, I’ll be the cause of not just the deaths of your mother and father, but yours as well?”

  “I will kill you,” Alesh said again, not a threat, only a promise, one spoken with absolute certainty. Whatever else happened, he would see this man dead—that, at least, he would do.

  A look of what might have been unease crossed the other man’s features, but he banished it quickly enough, was just opening his mouth—no doubt to utter some cruel rejoinder—when there was a shout from somewhere in the distance. He frowned glancing toward the other man still at the wall. “See what that is. I suspect it will be the others returning. Tell them to keep it down, would you? The last thing we need is for the city guard to come investigate because there was a complaint about the noise.”

  “Of course, Bishop, sir,” the man said, nodding his head and moving toward the exit. Alesh watched him go, paying close attention to where the door was, for in the gloom of the cellar it lay hidden in darkness. The man reached it, fumbled with a latch, and light spilled inside, causing Alesh to wince and turn away. Still, he noted the door was far closer than he’d thought, the room considerably smaller than it had at first appeared. Not that it mattered. The door could have been only a few feet away, and he wouldn’t have been able to reach it, not bound as he was.

  Still, it was something, a step in the right direction. Chosen Olliman, the man who had taken him in when he’d just been a stumbling, exhausted child who’d just witnessed his parents murders, had always taught him that in battle—as in life—it did a man no good to worry about things he couldn’t change. Instead, he must focus on those things he could, no matter how small. For enough such small things, though seemingly inconsequential at first, could make all the difference in the world, given time. The problem, of course, was that Alesh didn’t think he and Katherine had much time.

  And what of the others? It was his voice in his head but there was a hysteric note to it he did not like, as if at any moment it—he—would devolve into mindless, incoherent ramblings of rage and sadness. It might have felt good to give such a release, for Sonya and the others, but it would serve no purpose. Don’t worry about the things you cannot change. Worry only about those you can. It had been good advice then, and it still was. So instead of giving into despair as part of him desperately wanted, Alesh forced himself to remain calm, gathering the ragged remnants of his will and meeting Orren’s eyes. “You don’t honestly think Shira is going to bless you, do you?”

  The old man frowned, but for once said nothing. And that was fine—Alesh wasn’t going anywhere. The man had made sure of that. “You?” he prodded. “A failure? A man who, with the help of his friends, couldn’t even kill a light merchant, his wife, and their child? A man who she only deemed worthy of watching over this pathetic little backwater of a city?”

  “Shut up,” the bishop said, a warning note in his tone.

  But Alesh didn’t. It wasn’t as if the man could kill him twice. “You failed then, Orren,” he said. “Failed miserably. And you’ll fail now as well. Do you know why? It’s because you’re useless. Shira knows it, Tesharna knows it, gods even I know it, and I just met you.”

  “Shut up.” This time, the man’s voice was louder, angrier.

  “You’ll never amount to anything,” Alesh went on, “nothing but a dried-up bishop left to wither and die in the middle of nowhere, a man who Chosen Tesharna wouldn’t even trust to walk her dog, let alone allow into her inner council.”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” The bishop stalked to him and punched him in the ribs. Alesh groaned with pain, but the older man wasn’t finished, hitting him again, and again. But on the fourth strike—one meant for his stomach—Alesh finally managed to pull the manacle attached to his right arm free, and he caught the man’s fist.

  The bishop had time to let out a squawk of surprise before Alesh pulled him close and wrapped his arm around his throat. The bishop’s scream for help turned into a strangled gasp as Alesh flexed his arm t
ight against his neck. The older man began to thrash wildly, desperate to break free, but Alesh held on grimly, baring his teeth and refusing to let the man go no matter how much he kicked and squirmed. “I told you I’d kill you,” he hissed in the man’s ear.

  “Let him go.”

  Alesh looked toward the sound of the voice to see the scarred priest standing beside Katherine who was just beginning to rouse. He grabbed a handful of her hair and gave it a vicious jerk, pulling her head back, and she cried out in surprised pain. A moment later, he brought the knife he still held to her throat. He said nothing else but then, he didn’t need to.

  Alesh held onto the bishop for a moment longer, not wanting to let go, trying to find some means of turning the situation to his advantage, but there was none. If you’re going to fight a battle, make sure you stand a chance of winning it. Another one of Olliman’s bits of wisdom, this delivered after Alesh, as a child, had been picked on by a group of other young boys who served in the castle. Alesh had grown angry as they made fun of his parents, and he had fought them, but there had been too many, and in the end, he had been left bruised and bloody. He couldn’t win that battle, not then, just as he could not win this one now. So, finally, he released the bishop, pushing him away, and felt some satisfaction at seeing the wheezing old man stumble and collapse to his hands and knees, desperately sucking in air.

  “A failure,” Alesh said again. “It’s all you’ll ever be. And we’re not finished yet; I promise you that.”

  The bishop didn’t answer for several seconds, maybe couldn’t answer, was far too busy taking frantic, desperate breaths. Then, he finally clawed his way to his feet, and the fury on his face as he turned to Alesh promised murder.

  And would that really be such a bad thing? Alesh thought. After all, if Tesharna and Shira had their way, he would suffer much worse than just being killed, of that much he was certain.