The Wrath of Heroes (A Requiem for Heroes Book 2)

by David Benem

  He plunged into the night, stumbling over toe-stubbing rocks and clawing brush. Lorra moved swiftly beside and then ahead of him, seizing his hand as she passed. She ran with certainty, leading Bale along and away from obstacles that surely would have toppled him.

  After many strides he chanced a look back, but discerned no sign of the tall Necrist or the black wall of night. Yet a chill remained, an icy touch that prickled the skin.

  “Where do we go?” Lorra said.

  “Away! Just away!” He sniffled and wiped away a dribble of snot with a trembling hand.

  They hurtled through the dark. The effects of the spit-thistle waned and Bale had only a vague sense of direction—he’d rarely touched on the positions of the stars in his studies. He hoped they were moving southwest but all that mattered was that their bearing led them away from the Necrists and their horrors.

  They ran. Bale’s body screamed with pain, his feet loudest of all. He groaned as Lorra dragged him across the waste, fear the only fuel for his legs. They clambered up a hill, a clatter of loose stone falling behind them, then tumbled down its opposite slope.

  “Ah!” Bale shrieked. He fell, grasping an ankle that’d painfully turned. The joint burned like fire. He rolled into a heap against a thorny bush at the hill’s base.

  “Bale!” Lorra said, rushing to kneel at his side. The moon, nearly full, framed her face. Her sharp features caught the moonlight and silver highlighted her shoulder-length hair and glinted in her green eyes. “Are you hurt?”

  “My ankle,” he grunted through gritted teeth. He twisted his foot, testing the joint, and groaned again. “I’ll need time to work with my reagents before I can run again.”

  Lorra darted her eyes about. “I don’t see that shadow anymore. We may be safe.”

  Bale tested his ankle again and frowned, then sank back against the hard earth. He stared at the night sky and breathed deeply, realizing he sensed none of the earlier chill upon the air. “We are safe,” he heaved. “For now.”

  He sat and found his thoughts turning to the Abbey, to Prefect Gamghast. Should I turn back? Should I get a warning to him, somehow?

  He looked to the bleak night and thought on this. After a moment, though, he knew he needed to take the risk of continuing his journey, of continuing the mission of Lector Erlorn. He would just need to have faith that Gamghast and the others could deal with the threats descending upon them.

  Sweet Illienne, please spare your loyal servants…

  Lorra caressed his shoulder. She eased toward him, her hair drooping and brushing against his bow. “I’ll watch for anything unnatural,” she said. You tend to your wound, then get some rest. Just as I’ve said, Bale, I’ll be your courage.” She bent near and kissed his forehead.

  Bale shut his eyes. Lorra’s lips were the only ones to have touched his face other than his mother’s, many years before. He smiled, then winced as the pain in his ankle flared again.

  3

  A CURSE UPON THE WORLD

  Fencress Fallcrow glanced back nervously, emotions wavering somewhere between relief and revulsion. There, behind her, Drenj and Paddyn slogged along the rugged trail dug between the thin trees, pulling a rickety two-wheeled wagon. Within that wagon rested the source of Fencress’s unease: the killer Karnag Mak Ragg.

  The massive highlander sat upright, broad back turned to them with his gaze fixed upon the path stretching behind. He was draped in wool blankets despite the summer afternoon’s heat. Flies buzzed about the thick, black braids that fell from his head, but he made no effort to shoo them.

  Almost as though they buzz about a corpse, Fencress thought.

  She’d been relieved when Karnag awoke—if one could use such a word for his apparent return from near-death—two nights before. They’d been nearing Ironmoor’s North Gate when he’d started from his slumber and tossed about in a lather of sweat. His fits had helped Fencress sell her story of infectious disease to the guards, even as her friend’s state alarmed her.

  And then came the words. Those strange, broken-sounding things that fell from Karnag’s tongue in a chant that made her skin crawl. She’d heard them enough by now to realize he was repeating himself, gurgling out some kind of long, awful curse upon the world. He uttered them even now.

  She exhaled and turned her gaze back to the trail ahead. She worried over her friend’s state, over the dark struggle that seemed to rage within him. She’d never been one for prayers, and was loath to plead to the dead gods for Karnag’s sanity when it seemed those same dead gods had meddled with it in the first place.

  No, I place my hopes in turns of chance instead.

  She knew—she hoped—there had to be some chance her old friend could be saved from his madness, and wagered that without such a chance the man was good as dead.

  She knotted her hands into fists, black leather gloves creaking as she did. She had no idea how this would end, but she owed it to him to at least try the odds. Being at his side discomforted her, but she’d stay there so long as there was hope.

  So long as there’s a chance.

  They were a dozen or so leagues south of Ironmoor, and the rolling hills and brackish breezes near the sea had given way to sparse copses, tall grasses, and air thick with moisture and mosquitoes. She scolded herself for giving up their horses, realizing the deal had made an already troubling journey all the more arduous.

  Ahead of them, many days away to the south, crossed the Silverflow and the Drimrill rivers, a few days west of that crouched Raven’s Roost. From what they’d seen of the Arranese, Fencress reckoned the army was marching straight to Riverweave and then Ironmoor. She guessed Raven’s Roost was too wretched a place to warrant attention, and aside from that it was home. It seemed the best place to take Karnag, as perhaps some familiar things would help shake his head enough that he’d be back to being himself.

  After a time, she realized Karnag’s chant had ceased. She steeled herself, wondering whether the silence meant something more terrible than the chant. She turned, fearing what she’d find.

  Karnag remained seated in the wagon but faced her now. His face was haggard, cheeks sallow and sunken. His black braids formed a heavy mantle upon his head. And his eyes were just as she’d remembered, dark and lifeless.

  “Fencress Fallcrow,” he said, his voice the roll of thunder.

  Drenj and Paddyn dropped the handles of the wagon and dashed from its sides. The wagon pitched forward, tilting as the handles fell to the ground.

  But Karnag did not tumble. He moved smoothly forward, stepping from the wagon to stand. He’d snatched Gravemaker from the wagon and held it now. He stood tall and broad and fearsome, even absent some kind of demonic possession.

  “You recovered my sword,” he said, eying the massive blade. He sounded almost touched. “I thank you for that.”

  “You…” Fencress said, “are welcome, Karnag.”

  His dark brow knotted. “I had not foreseen a need for your help, but help me you did. I thank you for that, as well. You are my friend.”

  “Till the end, Karnag,” she said and she felt she meant it. The man she’d known as Karnag would ever be dear to her, though at times like this she wagered much of that man had died the night they killed the Lector. She swallowed hard. Is there a chance to get him back?

  “You intend to take me to Raven’s Roost.”

  Fencress nodded and forced a smile to her lips. “I figured since we’re finished with the Lector and you’re all hale and hearty again, we’d best head home.”

  Karnag’s face seemed a stone, unreadable. “We will head south, though Raven’s Roost is not my destination. My task has only begun.”

  His task. Fencress let the words hang, turning over the odds of whether now was a decent time to ask Karnag the many questions she had. For a moment she held his eyes—those eyes of the dead—and decided it was not.

  Karnag looked to Drenj and Paddyn. “You need pull me in the wagon no longer. The walk will strengthen me.”

&nbs
p; Fencress nodded to the boys and tried to quell the doubt in her voice. “Best get walking, boys. I don’t wager the road will come walking to us.”

  Karnag walked at the group’s lead, his stride tireless and inevitable. He uttered occasional nonsense, misplaced observations of things unseen interspersed with phrases in some strange tongue. Drenj and Paddyn spoke to him not at all, and Fencress only when necessary.

  She walked a dozen or so yards behind her old friend so she could just hear his words but would not be expected to respond. She’d held hope he’d be different—more human—after Merek and those spookers worked their tricks on him. But if anything, it seemed he was worse.

  “The dying will fill this place,” Karnag said, sweeping an arm across the landscape. “The plague of the Necrists will drive them here, from their cities and villages. The stink of it fills my nose even now, and their cries resound in my ears. Thaydorne will laugh at this. Though…” He paused, looking upward. “Though the atlas of fate shifts and shimmers even now, and will tremble all the more when I force my hand upon it. Behold! The futures I foretell can be changed according to my will, and Thaydorne’s laughter will squelch to silence in his throat. All these possibilities… Great change will come if my blade severs his head.”

  As she listened Fencress thought over the chances posed by the days and weeks ahead. If whatever consumed Karnag remained so obsessed with death, he’d insist on dragging them right into the teeth of battle. She needed to sway him, somehow. He wouldn’t listen to reason—not if he was still the same creature who’d constructed that great pile of bones and bits on that hillside south of Riverweave. But perhaps whatever the Sanctum and that bastard Merek had done to him had changed him. Perhaps there was a chance they’d changed his course for the better.

  The trail widened as they trekked southwest. The earth became flat and the soil soft and dark. Tall foxtail grasses swayed in the summer breeze. Slatted farmhouses squatted in the distance and rag-clad farmers paused their plowing to eye them suspiciously as they passed.

  And for damned good reason.

  “Ahem,” came a soft sound from behind her. It was Drenj, his kohl-lined eyes narrow with meaning.

  Fencress slackened her pace, allowing the Khaldisian to pull even. “What?” she whispered, gaze remaining upon Karnag.

  He leaned close. “How long must we bear this?” he whispered.

  “As long as it takes.”

  Drenj shook his head. “I have no heart for this, Fencress. I have been too long from my family, too long in the presence of wickedness. We should go our own way. Walking in his wake invites only evil.”

  Fencress knew there was truth in the Khaldisian’s words, but she knew she couldn’t show it. She needed to bluff a play bolder than the dice in her cup suggested. Tugging her black cowl, she looked to Drenj with an icy glare. “I am in this to the very end. If you’d like to flee, friend, that is fine. I’ve no quarrel with it, but I’m not so sure about him,” she said, nodding toward Karnag.

  Paddyn pulled near. The youth looked shabby as ever, skin caked with dirt and limbs too lean for his clothes. “Drenj is right, Fencress,” he said, words whistling through the space left by his missing tooth. “We didn’t agree to this sort of thing. This has gone far beyond gutting some old holy man in the woods. We’re cursed, especially at his side.”

  “Cursed?” came Karnag’s resounding voice, followed by a deep chuckle.

  Fencress winced, worried they faced some awful retribution from Karnag. But the imposing man continued walking steadily forward, his gaze not upon them but upon the trail ahead.

  “You are not cursed,” Karnag said. “The only curse fate can conjure is my wrath. My blade is the father of fear, and woe to any man I find deserving of it.”

  They made camp on the road. Paddyn prodded the fire again though it blazed well enough. Fencress knew it was a rote exercise meant only to excuse his eyes from Karnag’s. Sitting about the evening campfire would normally have been a thing to invite bold talk and ribald comments, but Karnag’s presence chased the humor from the company.

  “A mad thing, that,” Fencress ventured, doing her best to distract the boys from the dead-eyed highlander seated at the fire’s edge. “Rune’s king, heirless at death for the first time in history. You sure one of you bastards isn’t really his bastard? There’d be some damned good coin coming to you, not to mention a castle filled with servants eager to lick your royal ass.”

  “No,” said Karnag, the joke obviously lost on him. “There are secrets yet to be revealed.”

  Drenj looked up from the fire, his gaze catching Fencress’s. He cocked a dark brow and in return Fencress narrowed her eyes as a warning.

  “Many secrets,” Karnag continued. “Secrets open to me. The High King sired a son, but the child’s birth remains an uncertainty. Many possible fates must converge for the child to arrive.”

  Drenj turned to Karnag. “And how is it you know such things?”

  “As I said, these secrets are open to me.”

  “And what other mystical secrets do you know?” Drenj persisted, his tone mocking and dangerous.

  “Drenj…” Fencress hissed, knowing it unwise for the young man to challenge Karnag.

  Drenj persisted. “What other secrets?”

  Karnag looked skyward, the firelight falling from his face so that his countenance was cloaked in darkness. He remained quiet for a long moment before speaking. “Your youngest daughter will not live to see the fullness of her second year. She will die of plague, her skin weeping blood from many lesions. She will shudder and at last fall still while your wife wails her name in agony. ‘Ryaza,’ your wife will cry, for days heaped upon days after your daughter dies.”

  A whimper fell from Drenj’s mouth and tears dripped from his kohl-stained eyes. He whimpered again, stood, then stormed into the waist-high grass lining the road. A moment later Paddyn followed the Khaldisian into the dark.

  Fencress sat in slack-jawed silence, finding the notion of a witty rejoinder terribly inappropriate, even from her sharp tongue.

  Karnag looked back to Fencress. “The man in green,” he said matter-of-factly.

  She rubbed her head, trying to get her thoughts past the prior comment. “Merek.”

  “He was the one who followed us from Raven’s Roost, yes? The one you saw on the road?”

  Fencress nodded.

  “Strange. I could not sense him, nor could I foresee his actions. He was concealed from me, somehow.”

  Fencress grabbed the stick Paddyn had used and stirred the campfire. “He was some kind of witch,” she said softly. “Said he belonged to some old order that dealt with things like the dead gods.”

  “Ah,” Karnag said, his tone one of genuine surprise. “A Variden. I see that now. Valis was a powerful Sentinel. His disciples have methods of hiding themselves, even from my divine inquisition.”

  She held his gaze, discomforting as it was, and readied herself to ask hard questions. “I don’t know what you mean, Karnag. Are you possessed, as Merek said?”

  “Possessed?” Karnag spat out the word like bad meat. “Possession implies I belong to another. No, I belong to no one. Rather, I have taken something. When I took the Lector’s life, I took something else from him as well. Something very old, eternal even. The Lector housed a spirit, a spirit that tried to bend me to its purpose,” he said, eyes not dead but piercing. “Lesser men have bent to that spirit’s will, but I do not bend.”

  “And what is it you’ve become?”

  Karnag looked to the fire. “I have become more than I was. Much more. I see things, not in your manner of seeing but in a manner in which time and purpose are aspects visible to me. I see past and present, but even more I see what is to come, or can be. Ripples stir from my hand and the hands of others as actions occur, and I see how these ripples shift the vast array of probable fates. I see all men, women, and children, their beginnings and their possible ends.”

  Fencress’s brow raised. “You�
��ve become a soothsayer?”

  Karnag laughed, a low rumble like a distant storm. “I am no fortune teller or circus freak.”

  Fencress’s mouth tilted with a slight smile despite her discomfort. The humor seemed a rare hint of humanity. She awaited more, but Karnag’s visage remained dark, his stare a black void.

  “Not a soothsayer,” he said. “An eternal force.”

  The words were uttered with disturbing certainty and Fencress looked askance. Now she found need to stoke the fire. She said nothing, setting about stirring the sticks and embers as though the task held profound importance.

  Karnag remained quiet for a long while. He studied the fire with a strange intensity, flames dancing upon his hard features. He did not blink. As she stared at him she grew increasingly uneasy, wondering when Drenj and Paddyn would return, if at all.

  “Fencress,” he said at last, “I am pleased you came for me at the Sanctum’s Abbey. You are my friend and you saved my life. I foresee you have a part to play in things, still. I did not perceive that when we last parted ways.”

  Fencress swallowed, weighing the sort of obligations her old friend seemed to be placing upon her. She tugged at her cowl. “And what is that, Karnag? What part do I play?”

  “There are many yet to die by my hand. Foes innumerable. And you, my friend, will accompany me.”

  Fencress felt a cold sinkhole form in her stomach and she thought of the ways in which she’d seen Karnag kill after the murder of the Lector. Of the horse trader in Raven’s Roost, split from cock to crown with guts slopping over his sides like an overfilled bowl of stew. Of Tream, begging for his life in that bloody creek and then beheaded by Karnag’s hands.

  She gave brief thought to joining Drenj and Paddyn far from the fire, but knew she could not. Then she thought of partnering with Karnag on his quest to slaughter countless victims. It sounded awful—beyond awful—but there remained within her the hope her old friend could be saved from this madness. Some hope he’d return to what he’d been.