A Warrior's Journey (4 page)

Again he couldn’t shake the feeling that
something wasn’t right. Instincts gained from a lifetime of
surviving against the odds started shouting loudly within him. What
was so different about this morning?

His mind searched through what was missing
or that had been added to the morning sounds beyond the still
bedchamber. It came to him suddenly.

The songbirds!

Where was the sound of the spotted Latchas
ushering in the dawning of a new day? The songbirds made their
nests in the cliffside nooks of the mountain all around his
chambers and normally by this time their morning songs should
already be sweetening the day.

Roric quickly moved to the door of the room
to the rest of the castle. It was securely barred fast and showed
no signs of having been tampered with. Going to his weapon cabinet
he pulled the doors wide and his instinct for alarm was answered by
the sight of his magnificent sword that was pulsing red and
lighting up the space of the cabinet.

Roric grabbed a hold of the sword and moved
towards the door, but then stopped. The sword was glowing less red.
Roric turned back to the expanse of windows that overlooked the
valley and the sword’s shimmering color turned crimson red.

Roric with a wary look toward the balcony
beyond the wall of windows made his way to the bed and his still
sleeping wife. Gently he slipped his hand over Krista’s mouth and
her eyes instantly flew open in alarm. Looking up and seeing Roric
she visibly relaxed.

He took his hand away and very quietly said,
“There is danger outside. I don’t know what it is and I’m not sure
the hall is safe. I need you to quietly go to our secret room. I
need you to stay there until I come for you. Stay there no matter
what you hear going on, understand?”

She nodded.

Roric drew back and let her slip out of the
bed. He watched her go over to the wall, where her mirror was and
push gently on a stone in the wall. There was a click and a section
of the stone wall pivoted away before her revealing a passageway.
Before she entered the dark passage she looked back and mouthed
three words back at him her lips moving silently.

Roric lifted his hand to his heart to say
the same to her in return and then she was gone, as the wall slid
back into place. Roric turned once more to the glass fronted
section of the view out upon the balcony and the valley beyond and
strode purposefully towards it his bare feet connecting solidly
with the cold floor.

He closed the glass doors behind him as he
stepped out onto the chilled balcony. He was as naked as the day he
was born save for the brightly pulsing sword in his hand.

He didn’t feel the chill of the morning, as
he stepped out into the center of his private balcony. The feeling
of imminent danger and the anger he felt at the invasion of his
private place created their own form of intense heat within him
that easily kept any chill at bay.

He saw nothing, but he felt everything. He
gripped the sword with both hands and waited resolutely for the
battle to survive the morning to come to him. There was a scrape of
metal against stone and the rustling of clothing as twelve masked
men pulled themselves up to stand atop the banister that ran the
length of the cliff’s edge. Their presence assailed him, as if an
empty darkness of despair had risen in place of the sun.

The men were dressed in black, with their
faces covered. As one they unsheathed their blades that had rested
against their backs for their impossible climb up the face of the
cliff. The sword clasped within Roric’s hands seemed to sense its
master’s awful fury and light particles began to snap off the blade
in vicious arcs of color that burned the eyes to look upon.

Suddenly and quite unexpectedly the figure
on Roric’s far right gasped and clutched at his throat, only to
then fall over the cliff backwards. The assassin directly in front
of Roric gave a start, as if jostled from behind by someone and
fell over forward onto the balcony.

An arrow was firmly lodged in the center of
his back. The assassins seeing the success of their mission fading
fast leaped from the balcony railing and closed in fast upon Roric.
He met them in a clash of blades. One of the assailants drew back
his sword to swing at the same moment that an arrow passed through
his upraised sword arm.

The moment of hesitation caused by the arrow
strike was costly, as Roric sliced him almost in half in the next
instance. Two more masked men fell to Roric’s brightly arcing
blade, even as a third man fell, after having been first struck in
the shoulder and then in the stomach by the unseen arrows that flew
about the scene.

The remaining assassins closed desperately
with Roric driven on by some deep well of darkness to new depths of
insanity. The figure of Roric before them was no longer
distinguishable to them, because a second image of Roric had
appeared, as a manifestation of the light coming off the sword.
They no sooner attacked the double image of Roric cast off by the
blade to find that they had swung at empty air, only to then feel
the real blade dealt unmercifully to them from another direction
that they hadn’t been prepared for.

As the last assassin fell before the now
three glowing figures of Roric the light from the sword faded. Only
Roric remained standing on the balcony as the two mirages of him
faded away into nothing. He began to count the bodies. One had
fallen back over the edge so that should leave eleven bodies on the
cliff top. Roric could only see ten shadowy outlines upon the
ground in the dimness of the early morning.

A frisson of awareness of the fact of the
missing assassin registered in the slight whisper of movement he
heard take place from behind him. Roric somehow knew that he
wouldn’t be in time to deflect the assassin’s blade, so he flung
himself to the side on a sudden whim of thought.

An arrow passed by so closely that he felt
the whisper touch of it against his skin, as he completed his
sudden lunge off to the side. There was a thud as the arrow
connected solidly with the chest of the man, who had almost had the
best of him. Roric got back up to his feet from where his sideways
lunge had taken him to the cold floor of the balcony.

Roric glanced over himself. As far as he
could tell the only injury he had sustained was the skinned knee he
had just gotten from sliding off the cold tiles in his fall. Roric
turned toward the railing and stared out past them, as the first
early rays of the sun began to make their presence known upon the
cold morning.

Roric’s eyes directed him to the only place
the well aimed arrows could have originated from, the western
tower. He saw Zevin standing there poised atop his own balcony
railing, as his son faced him bow in hand, with arrow at the
ready.

Roric raised his sword toward his son in a
silent salute, even as he marveled at how accurately the arrows had
been placed from such a sizeable distance away. God had surely been
fighting on behalf of him this night and Roric whispered a
heartfelt thank you in response to that surety of knowledge.

Roric used the point of his sword to move a
mask off the face of one of the fallen assassins. He stared in
horror at what was revealed. He ran to another body and ripped the
mask off.

No!

It couldn’t be! They were all his own
men!

Not just any men, but the men he trusted
most, his spies. What could have turned his own men against him so
for them to attempt this betrayal?

Roric looked upward into the heavens, as
grief overwhelmed him at the death of so many of his friends.

“Why Lord?”

Off to his left he heard a strangled gasp
for air and then a whisper, “Master.”

Roric rushed toward the voice, kneeling down
at the side of the fallen man. Pulling the mask aside he saw that
it was Quarta, the leader of the ban of twelve. He had been among
those sent by his grandfather in search for Krista, when she had
been on the run many years previous.

An arrow was lodged deeply into his stomach
and another in his chest. A lung must have been punctured because
there was a bloody froth upon his lips and he was struggling for
every breath.

“Master I’m so sorry!” Whimpered the dying
man, as tears ran down the sides of his face.

“Easy Quarta! How did you come to this?”

“They knew we were coming somehow. They
caught us one by one. They tortured us, but none of us broke
master! I swear it!” Quarta breathed out harshly, as he gripped the
front of Roric’s tunic tightly with a fist.

He was frantic for Roric to believe what he
said was true. “I believe you Quarta! You would never willingly
betray me or your country. None of you would.”

Quarta nodded, “When torture failed they
gave us some kind of potion. We tried to fight it, but it was too
strong. Like looking through a window at what your hands are doing,
but unable to stop them or make them listen to you, as they
accomplish another’s plans. I wasn’t sure of what reality was until
this moment.”

Roric grappled with the reality that there
was a potion that could turn his best men against him and
everything they stood for, as if acting foolishly under the
influence of strong drink.

“Do they have more of this potion?”

“No they used all that they had on us. I
heard one of their dark priests say to another that it came from a
far away land called Assoria, and that the potion was very
old.”

Quarta suddenly reared up off the ground and
gripped a hold of Roric tightly once more his expression panicked,
“You didn’t get cut by any of our blades did you Master?”

“No, why?”

“They dipped our blades in some poison that
comes from that land too.”

Quarta coughed up blood, as Roric held him
off the ground in his arms, as tears fell on his friends face.
“Where did they do this to you?”

“I’m not sure. We were near the sea. It was
Rauel! I remember hearing the priests talk about it now. You’ve got
to kill them master! Their evil all of them! There covered in the
dark signs of their cult.”

Quarta coughed up more blood; it was getting
harder for him to talk.

“Roric I’m afraid!”

“Of what Quarta?”

“God will never forgive me for what I tried
to do to you and to my country!”

Roric grasped Quarta’s head and brought it
close to his own, “Listen to me Quarta! God does not hate you for
this and neither do I! God knows this wasn’t in your heart to do!
He sees everything old friend and loves you.”

“Your sure of that master?”

“Yes I’m sure!”

Quarta’s eyes seemed to look past Roric for
a moment to something beyond him and then for a brief moment they
refocused on Roric.

His blood stained face split a little to
reveal a soft smile full of peace and his finger tapped against
Roric’s chest lightly, “You were right master.” And then he was
gone.

Roric reached up and closed his friend’s
eyes, but remained kneeling on the cold terrace holding his friend
until the suns first rays began to strengthen in power upon the
Valley Lands.

I relaxed the drawn back bowstring and
slowly lowered the bow. My fingers still shook from where they
grasped the arrow fletching. There was no way that I had shot those
arrows with such pinpoint accuracy, from such a distance,
especially the last arrow!

I had thought I was killing my father, as my
fingers had released their grip on the shaft, but I had obeyed the
deep urging that had bid me to do so. I saw my father wave at me
and I guessed that he now had the situation fully in control.

Numbly I became aware of the fact that I was
standing atop the balcony railing. In a panic I half fell backward
onto the balcony in blind need to get away from the edge of the
precipice. Numbly I turned back to the warm interior of my room, as
I hoped in vain that it would warm me up inside.

I had killed someone, make that several
someone’s. Whoever they had been they had been intent on killing my
parents and they deserved to die for that, but even with that
reasoning firmly in place I couldn’t help how hollow feeling inside
I felt at what I had done.

I was at the balcony door into my room, when
suddenly I stopped and looked around. Was the voice that spoke with
such authority into my very being done with me? I listened for a
moment, but heard nothing. I turned back to the door and entered my
loft.

Closing the door I took a step, when the
voice from before spoke once more, “Well done good and faithful
servant of the Lord most high.” At the sounding of the voice I
crumpled down onto the floor cowering face first in fear at what I
couldn’t see, but felt all around me. I couldn’t stop shaking.

“Zevin?”

“Yes?” I managed to croak out.

“Do you know how much I love you?”

Tears began to spill out of my eyes as I
shook my head no.

“Well said you do not know what the length
the breadth and the height of My love for you is. Zevin?”

“Yes Lord?”

“What do you know of Me?”

“You are God the Father, the Great Creator
of us all. A long time ago on a different world than ours You sent
Your Son to die for all mankind so that we might have a chance at
an eternal life through belief in Him to regain what we lost by our
own actions.”

“Well said, blessed are those, who taught
you the truth and have been faithful to keep it themselves.
Zevin?”

“Yes Lord?”

“I yearn to commune more deeply with you
Zevin. Won’t you let Me strengthen you for when you are weary, to
help you discern good from evil and teach you more perfectly all of
My ways so that you might accomplish My will.”

“Yes.” I said breathing the answer into the
floor in heartfelt acceptance of what I knew was the right thing to
do. I felt overwhelmed by what seemed like the current of a strong
river flowing into me that left no corner of my being untouched or
unchanged.