A Warrior's Burden: Book One of Saga of the Known Lands

by Jacob Peppers

  He looked a bit flustered at that, as well he should, and Netty used the opportunity of him being distracted by the fact he was a complete fool to step forward. “That’d be just fine with us.”

  And then they were moving, the villagers, some of whom were crying with shock and relief that it appeared they were going to live after all, staggering out of the inn, coughing and waving hands at the smoke still gathering in the common room.

  Moments later, they were outside, panting and gasping as the flames in the inn continued to grow. “Thank you,” Netty said to the woman, “for saving us, Miss—”

  “Just Maeve,” the woman said. “And if you’re looking to thank someone…” She paused, nodding her head at the youth who was standing a few feet away, pointedly avoiding looking at them as if embarrassed. “Then that’d be Matt. He’s the reason we’re back here—him and Cutter, that is.”

  “Cutter?”

  “That’s right, though you’d know him by Prince Bernard or ‘The Crimson Prince’.”

  “By the gods, you’re the ones that were with the prince!”

  “Yes.”

  Netty grunted. “Almost didn’t recognize you, what with all the…” She paused, staring at the blood. “Anyway. I saw him, your prince. He spoke a bit with his brother before they went on about the business of trying to kill each other.” A thought struck her, and she blinked. “Wait a minute, are you sayin’, he sacrificed himself to save us?”

  “Yes.”

  Netty grunted. “Doesn’t seem like the same Prince Bernard I’ve heard so many stories about, the one known for his love of killin’.”

  The woman nodded slowly, a thoughtful expression on her face. “No, no it doesn’t. Anyway, the prince sent us to get you all out while he’s got the others distracted.”

  “I see. And where exactly does the prince want us to go?”

  “Toward the forest.”

  She nodded at that, opening her mouth to say something more, then she became aware of a crowd gathered at her back. Turning, she saw that it was nearly half the villagers, maybe more, men, mostly, but more than a few women. They didn’t look just scared, not now, not like they had when they’d been sure they were going to be burned alive. Now, they looked angry.

  “Mack?” she asked the man who stood at the front with his friend Will beside him. “What’s all this then?”

  “Don’t seem right,” he growled.

  “Oh?” she asked. “And what’s that?” Though, the truth was, she thought she knew exactly what it was, knew exactly how they were feeling, for she was feeling more than a little bit of it herself.

  “Runnin’ away,” he said. “After the prince savin’ us and all.”

  “Uh-huh,” Netty said, nodding thoughtfully. “There’s a lot about the last couple days don’t strike me as exactly right. Anyway, Maeve here says they’ve come to save us—says we’re to go into the forest, hide out for a while, maybe, until the mad prince is gone.”

  “Which prince do you mean, Netty?” Will asked.

  “Do you suppose it matters?”

  The man grunted. “No, no, I don’t suppose it does.”

  “Anyway,” she said, looking at the bigger of the two again. “You look troubled, Mack.” She glanced behind him at the crowd of men and women. “Matter of fact, you all do. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you look like some folks got violence on their mind.” Some of them fidgeted at that, and she grunted. “Oh, don’t look so ashamed. Truth is,” she said, glancing into the village in the direction Prince Bernard had run, “I do too.”

  She turned back to Maeve. “Some of us would like to accept your offer now, Marvelous Maeve,” she said, grinning as the woman grunted in surprise.

  The woman eyed her and the others. “And the rest?”

  “Oh, we’ll be goin’ too,” the woman said. “Only, there’s somethin’ we need to take care of first.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  A man came to our village once

  A Feyling in a cage

  A coin a look he said to us

  See its eyes, sparkle gold

  Its fur sleek and black

  But do not open up its cage

  Or the Feyling will attack

  —Rodarian Dalumis, Poet, excerpt taken from “The Ramblings of Life from a Rambling Life”

  The net was closing.

  Six men lay dead somewhere in the village by his hands, but there were more, many more. Their footsteps were all around him, the sounds of their thudding like the distant thunder of a coming storm as they combed through the streets. But just now, he was not in the street, was instead lying prone on what remained of the roof of what had once been a stable. He was not known for his subtlety, he knew, had a reputation—well-earned—for being a ruthless killer like some mad barbarian.

  They did not expect him to hide, to sneak around when he could charge directly into battle. And that was exactly what he was counting on. He focused on controlling his breathing as the three men approached, creeping down the alleyway in front of the stables beneath him. They were careful, scanning the shadows around them, but in time they moved past his spot and then Cutter, his axe in one hand, leapt from the stables, bringing his weapon down in a two-handed grip.

  The Fey-crafted weapon cleaved deep into the space between the neck and shoulder of the soldier at the rear in a gout of blood. Cutter tried to pull the weapon free as the dead man collapsed, but the haft, slick with blood from his previous encounters, slipped from his hands, and he was left weaponless as the corpse took his axe with it.

  The two soldiers, alerted to his presence by the sound he’d made falling and, no doubt, by the blood of their comrade spattering their backs, spun. Cutter knew he did not have time to retrieve his axe, so he did not hesitate, rushing toward the nearest with a growl. The man raised his weapon, meaning to bring it down in a lethal arc, but Cutter caught his wrist and slammed his forehead into the man’s face, felt his nose crumple beneath the impact.

  His opponent made a gurgling, choking sound and staggered away, but Cutter was already turning to the last soldier. He caught a glint of metal as the man’s blade flashed at his face, and he spun to the side, struggling to get out of the way but knowing, as he did, that he would not be fast enough, a knowledge confirmed as he felt the steel slice through the sleeve of his shirt and cut a bloody line across his upper arm.

  Many people, then, having taken a wound, would have retreated, tried to put some space between them and their attacker, but though the wound pained him, Cutter had taken many such wounds before. So instead of retreating or leaping away, he pivoted on his right foot, throwing all his force back toward his opponent who, judging by the grunt of surprise he made, had clearly expected him to back away. Instead, Cutter brought his fist around, burying it in the man’s gut. The soldier collapsed over his fist, bending nearly double as the air exploded out of him in a whoosh.

  Before he could recover, Cutter turned around him, grabbing the back of the man’s head and burying his face in the stone wall of the nearest building. With all his not inconsiderable strength driving it, the soldier’s face crushed into the stone wall, and as he collapsed on his back, dead, his face was a mess of blood and bone, his features unrecognizable.

  His chest heaving with breath, Cutter took a moment to run the fingers of his right hand over his upper left arm where the sword had bit him, and his hand came away red with blood. A bad wound then, hard to tell just how bad in the darkness—not to mention the cold, which had begun to seep in his bones after so long outside, numbing him.

  He knew other soldiers were coming, that those nearest could not have missed the sounds of fighting, but he knew also that such a wound, ignored, would sap a man’s strength and kill him as surely as an axe to the throat. So he took a moment, ripping a strip of fabric from his sleeve and using it as a makeshift tourniquet, pulling it as tight as he could and holding one end with his teeth as he tied it into a knot. That done, he tried flexing his left hand into
a fist and couldn’t manage it.

  The arm was useless to him then. Still alive, perhaps, but it was a sign that his time—and therefore, the time for his friends—was running out. He was left with a decision then, try to flee the village—and inevitably get killed as those troops his brother would have posted outside of it surrounded him—or do the unexpected and work his way back toward the inn. In such a situation, anyone would expect him to flee, to try to make it to the village’s edge and so would position the majority of their troops around the village to make such an escape impossible, which meant that their numbers would be weaker toward the village center. Or so he hoped.

  At least if he went that way he might still be able to offer some help to the others or they might, in turn, be able to help him. Assuming, of course, that they were still alive. A big assumption considering the forces arrayed against them, perhaps a vain one, but he decided that he would rather believe in his companions than bet against them and so, taking a slow deep breath, he flexed his useless hand, trying and failing to work some feeling back into it, then he turned and started back toward the inn at a run.

  It did not take him long to reach it, and his decision seemed to be confirmed as the correct one as, the closer toward the center of the village he got, the quieter and quieter were the sounds of soldiers until, paused on the edge of where, so recently, Ferrimore’s living had burned their dead in a great Sending, he could hear nothing but his own harsh breaths. And the wind, of course, a wind which seemed to cut through his clothes with ease and which carried the smoke from the dying pyre lazily into the sky. In fact, it was almost too quiet.

  He frowned, thinking. He could turn back around, could try to work his way toward the inn from another path, but to do so would cost him time—time he could ill afford, for if he didn’t see to the wound on his arm soon, blood loss would steal his brother’s chance at revenge. Already, crimson droplets were running down his arm, dripping off his fingertips and onto the cobbles of the street. And even assuming he somehow survived long enough to make it to the inn by a circuitous route, there was the other concern, namely that he would increase his chances of being discovered, and wounded as he was, dizzy from cold and blood loss as he was, he doubted he would survive another fight.

  Only a short distance separated him from the front of the inn, which he saw had no soldiers there, but several corpses, the arrows protruding from them marking them as Priest’s kills. A reassuring sight, at least, that they had taken out some of the soldiers, yet the bodies scattered at the front of the inn did not account for nearly all the soldiers he had seen or that he suspected his brother would have left to deal with the villagers. Where had the others gone, then? Were they even now fighting his companions? No, that didn’t sound right, for he heard no signs of fighting, heard nothing at all but his own labored breathing and the wind whistling through the burned out skeleton which was all that remained of the village of Ferrimore. That and the steady plop of blood from his fingers onto the ground. He frowned at the inn, wondering. Had the people been inside when it burned? Had they all died horribly despite his and the others’ efforts?

  There was no way of knowing for sure—none, of course, except the macabre task of checking the still blazing inn for corpses, and even if he was so inclined, he simply did not have the time. He had left the others at the back of the inn, and with any luck they would still be there. Less than a hundred feet separating him from his destination then, but a hundred feet which he would have to take in open ground with nothing to conceal him from any hidden watchers.

  Not that they would need to have tried very hard to hide, for there were a dozen alleys leading into the center of the village, any one of which could conceal soldiers waiting in ambush. But there was no time—he could only hope that Feledias would have spread his troops around the village.

  Stifling a grunt of pain as he rose from his crouch, Cutter started forward in a limping shuffle, his axe already drawn and held down at his side in his good hand. He reached the center of the square, near the still-smoldering pyre, when he heard a noise, a slight, almost imperceptible rustle. Another might have attributed such a sound to nothing, perhaps just his nerves, or the wind rustling fabric, but Cutter knew better, knew, in that moment, that he had made a mistake.

  He turned to look around him as at least twenty soldiers began to appear out of the alleyways and buildings surrounding the square, their blades drawn. They created a circle around him, penning him in near the pyre, and he grunted. At least they would not have to travel far to burn his corpse—not that he suspected his brother would grant him such an honor. No, it was more likely that his remains would be scattered throughout the kingdom, proof of what happened to any who thought to stand against Feledias.

  Feledias who, even as he had the thought, stepped through a gap the soldiers made, walking between it with Commander Malex beside him to stand two dozen feet away from Cutter, studying him with a grin on his face. “Ah, brother,” he said, giving his head a shake. “You are nothing if not predictable. You see, Commander Malex here, he thought that you would run, that I should reinforce the outside of the village, but I knew better. There is, for one, the fact that you have never run from a fight in your life, but that is not the only reason, is it? After all…” He paused, his grin widening. “You were alone when you ran. Which meant that you left those fools who follow you here.” He shrugged. “Perhaps you might have left the others—it wouldn’t be the first time. But I knew you would not leave the boy. Otherwise, you would have done so long before now. No, I knew you would come back and here you are. Here we are.”

  Cutter sighed. “Well. Let’s get it done.”

  Feledias laughed. “Come now, brother mine. It has been so long since we have talked, and now you want to so quickly skip the pleasantries? No, no,” he said, shaking his head, “that I cannot allow. And besides, do you not wonder where your friends are, those companions who have so foolishly aligned their stars with your own?”

  Cutter said nothing. His brother would gloat, would make sure to enjoy this moment no matter what he did, but he found no reason to make it easier for him.

  “Escaped,” Feledias said. “Fled toward the forest.” He smiled at Cutter as if they were sharing a secret. “Was that your idea, I wonder? Yes, yes, I suspect it was.” He shrugged. “It makes no difference, of course. Once we are done here, my men will hunt them down where they have fled like dogs in the streets, and they, like you, will suffer for their crimes.”

  “And the villagers?” Cutter asked, shifting his shoulder and wincing as a fresh wave of pain ran through his arm. “They have committed no crime.”

  “Perhaps not,” Feledias admitted, “but we both know that makes no difference. They cannot be allowed to spread the truth of what happened here, can they? After all”—he grinned again—“I am the nice brother, the kind one, the one known for his compassion. It would not do for the kingdom at large to believe that I am as bad as you, would it? No, that would not do at all.”

  “And so you will kill a village of innocents to protect your own reputation.”

  “Oh, brother of mine,” Feledias said, snarling, “I would do far more than that. Far more.” He took a slow, deep breath as if to calm himself and the madness which had suddenly flashed in his eyes was hidden once more. “Now, then,” he said matter-of-factly, “best we be about it. I will make you suffer for taking her from me, brother, for spoiling a thing that was fine, and then I will make your friends suffer as well, your friends who have fled and left you alone.”

  “Sir, watch out!” Malex leapt forward, grabbing Feledias by the shoulder and jerking him back just as an arrow flew through the space where he had been standing only an instant before.

  “No,” a voice called, “Not quite as fled as you seem to think.”

  They all turned and Cutter was as surprised as Feledias and the rest to see Maeve standing at the opening of one of the alleyways, along with Priest and, he saw with heavy regret, the boy, Matt.
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  Feledias’s expression twisted with surprise, but it vanished a moment later as he calmed himself. “So the dogs have returned to their master after all.”

  “You know us dogs,” Maeve said dryly, “stupid, sure, but loyal.”

  “I see, and yet…” Feledias paused, glancing around them. “It seems that one of you is missing. Where is the mage, I wonder?” Cutter noticed the way Maeve’s expression hardened at that, and his brother could not have missed it either. He let out a laugh. “Ah, but it seems poor Chall did not make it out with the rest of you. Well, that is regretful, but I would not mourn for him. No doubt his death was a quick one. The rest of you, I’m afraid, will not be quite so fortunate.”

  “Ah shucks,” Maeve said, “and here I was hoping we could all sit around, have a good chat, talk our differences out over some tea, maybe.”

  Cutter knew Maeve was brave, few braver, yet he could not help wondering why she did not seem afraid in the face of nearly two dozen soldiers, and it seemed by the way his smile slowly faded that his brother was wondering much the same. “You are a good shot, old man,” Feledias said, looking at Priest, “but even you are not good enough to take out so many of us, and I doubt that quiver of yours carries enough arrows to get the job done even if you were. You were foolish to come back, for just the three of you can make no difference, no difference except to die, of course.”

  It was Maeve’s turn to grin at that. “Just the three of us?” she asked. “I don’t remember ever saying that.”

  And as if her words were a signal, people began to materialize out of the shadows behind her. Men and women of the village, wielding kitchen knives, broken-off chair legs, some holding no more than large rocks or burned beams that had once made up their homes.

  Feledias grunted, his soldiers glancing around uncertainly as more and more men and women appeared. They did not wear armor, did not have proper weapons, but the villagers did not look afraid. Instead, their expressions were grim, their jaws set. Hundreds of them, it appeared, nearly all of what was left of the village and, at their front, the old innkeeper, Netty, holding a firepoker of all things.