DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (186 page)

Like a shark smelling blood, the man moved to grab Pagonel’s chin, to lift his head up that he could stare the sheepish mystic down. The commander’s hand never got close to connecting, though. Reacting purely on instinct, Pagonel’s own hand snapped across, slapping the commander’s hand back to back, and with a lightning fast twist and pull, Pagonel rolled his hand back, caught the commander’s thumb, and bent it back hard, throwing the commander off-balance, locking him low in pain.

Now the mystic did look up, into a face twisted with pain and outrage.

“I could have you killed for this!” the commander growled through teeth tightly clenched.

“I seek wisdom and enlightenment, not trouble,” Pagonel calmly replied. “But I am of the body, Jhesta Tu, and am sworn to protect that body.” He released the hand as he explained, and the commander retreated a step and stood straight, rubbing his sore thumb and glaring at the mystic.

“I am the voice of the Chezru Chieftain in this province,” the commander growled, and Pagonel noted that many of the soldiers were collecting their weapons at that point. He wasn’t afraid of them—not for his personal safety, at least—but he was very concerned at the implications of a confrontation here, before he had even really begun to explore To-gai and his vision.

“I question your authority not at all, Commander of the Square,” Pagonel said humbly.

The commander held up his hand, motioning for his soldiers to hold calm. “Yet you have committed a crime against the God-Voice,” he said.

Pagonel bit back the obvious response. He just sat calmly and listened.

“You are not to touch me, and I will treat you as I deem appropriate. Do you understand?”

Pagonel’s expression remained impassive. He suppressed his instincts then, as the commander reached out toward his face again. The man took Pagonel’s chin in his hand, a tight and strong grip, and forced the mystic to look at him directly.

Pagonel considered the thirty or so ways he could cripple the fool, but he only entertained those thoughts to distract him from his current revulsion.

“I will have all of your coins as a fine for your insolence,” the commander declared, and he pushed Pagonel’s face aside.

“I am Jhesta Tu, and without many funds,” the mystic replied.

The commander reached over and pulled the small purse from Pagonel’s belt, then dumped the silver coins into his open palm. “It is not enough to pay for your crimes,” he said. “But I will forgive your transgressions, this one time.”

As he finished, he turned and started back toward his soldiers, who were all
chuckling and nodding approvingly.

Pagonel let him go. For the price of a few easily replaced coins, he had defused the situation. That was his duty as a brother of Jhesta Tu. They were not a warlike order.

But, if pressed …

Pagonel took a long look at the Commander of the Square, imprinting the man’s image in his mind.

The soldiers, predictably, began to taunt the mystic then, with a couple tossing small items Pagonel’s way, and one even spitting at him.

“He’s a bully, that one,” the To-gai-ru innkeeper said quietly, bending low so that only Pagonel could hear. “Don’t pay him no heed.” As he finished, the innkeeper put a second glass of water before the mystic.

“I have no money,” Pagonel started to explain, but the innkeeper shook his head and held out his hand, showing that he wouldn’t have accepted any money even if it had been offered.

“Perhaps someday you’ll tell me tales of your order in payment.”

“That I cannot do,” said Pagonel.

The innkeeper shrugged and smiled, as if it did not matter.

Pagonel left the common room a short while later, to the jeers and spit of the Behrenese soldiers.

He accepted it.

He filed it away in a place in his mind where he would not forget.

Outside, the mystic brushed himself off and spent a moment in quiet meditation, finding his center.

“You gave him free drink!” he heard the commander shout, back within the common room.

The mystic turned a bit, craning his ear toward the door.

“And so free drinks will be the way of the night,” the commander declared.

“It was only water,” the innkeeper protested.

“And he was only a Jhesta Tu dog,” the commander shouted back. “If he is worth water, then my soldiers are worth all of the drink that you have, and all of the money as well!”

The innkeeper’s protest was cut short by a sharp slap.

The cries of the soldiers, calling for drink, and of the commander, demanding an apology and all the money within the common room were cut short, abruptly, as the door banged open.

All eyes turned to see the Jhesta Tu mystic standing in the open portal, expression calm and arms down by his side, seeming vulnerable.

Deceptively so, the first soldier to attack him realized. The Behrenese charged straight in, spear leading. He hardly saw Pagonel move, and so he was completely off-balance as he somehow missed with the thrust, sliding past, leaning forward.

A hand came up fast in front of his face, barely hitting, but perfectly aimed to snap the man’s nose straight up. Pagonel’s other hand grabbed at the back of his
belt as he stumbled past, heaving him along to tumble out into the street.

Two more soldiers charged in, side by side, the one on Pagonel’s right coming with another straight spear thrust, the other slashing a sword horizontally before him. A twitch of his toned muscles and a tight tuck had the mystic somersaulting over the swinging sword. He reversed his momentum immediately as he landed, half-turning and snapping a kick to the side of the soldier’s knee, caving in the leg.

Pagonel leaped and shoulder-rolled right over the soldier’s shoulders as the man slumped. He landed lightly on his feet next to the dropping man’s companion, within reach of the cumbersome spear.

His open-palmed thrust only moved about four inches, but with enough force into the center of the soldier’s chest to take his breath and his strength away. The soldier gave a great gasp, gulping air, and collapsed to his knees.

Pagonel reached with his right leg across the kneeling man, hooking him under the arm, then swung back out to the right, launching the man headlong at the feet of another charging soldier, tripping him up. The mystic ran along the back of the sprawling soldier, lifting off lightly into the air, right in the middle of three more startled soldiers.

He kicked left with his left foot, right with his right, then straight ahead with the left, before ever touching the ground, and three more Behrenese went flying away.

As he touched down, the mystic skittered out to the left, toward the bar. As he approached another table, he made a move as if to leap it, then ducked fast and skittered under instead.

A soldier, falling for the ruse, swept his spear across above the tabletop, then tried to recover fast and stoop down to stab at the mystic.

Pagonel’s hand exploded through the wooden table, snapping a clean hole. He grabbed the bending soldier by the hair and snapped his arm back down, moving out as he did, so that when the soldier’s face smashed into the table with enough force to shatter the piece of furniture, Pagonel was already coming out the far side.

He looked more like a dancer than a warrior as he crossed the room, his feet touching the floor, the chairs, the tables or, impossibly, nothing at all. However the mystic did it, he was standing right before the stunned commander in a matter of moments.

The commander shoved the innkeeper back and turned fast, stabbing at Pagonel with a small serrated knife.

Pagonel’s right hand came across, lightning fast, to catch the inside of the commander’s wrist. The mystic’s left hand came across with equal speed, catching the back of the knife hand and bending it in forcefully and painfully, taking the knife away while hardly slowing.

Up went the knife, into the air, and Pagonel let go with his right and backhanded the commander with a stinging slap across the face, followed by a forehand, followed by a backhand from the returning left, and finishing with a fourth slap, an open forehand with the left.

Pagonel caught the knife as it dropped and snapped his hand across again, replacing the blade in the dazed commander’s hand.

“If you strike again, then do so with more precision,” Pagonel warned. “That was the one lesson I offer you for free.”

The commander’s face twisted in rage and he retracted his arm a bit, as if lining up a strike. He held there, though, and looked about at his soldiers, several on the ground and the others staring back with confusion and obvious fear. The leader collected himself and looked back to Pagonel. “I forgave you once,” he started, but he was interrupted almost immediately, the mystic whispering so that only he could hear.

“Be gone from this place and this village, and now,” Pagonel warned. “Do so immediately and save your pride and save your life.”

The commander looked around again, at the fallen and the stunned, then he looked down to his own hand, to the knife replaced, to the knife that had somehow been cleanly taken from his grasp.

“Gather your fellows!” he roared at his command, and he stormed past Pagonel, stomping right out of the common room.

The first man the mystic had felled had the misfortune of heading back into the tavern at that precise moment, and the commander smacked him aside and continued away. Appearing grudging, though all who had witnessed understood their profound relief, the other soldiers followed.

“Commander Aklai will not forgive you for this,” the innkeeper warned quietly. “He will see you dead.”

“Indeed,” Pagonel replied, and he accepted another glass of water and drained it quickly.

Then, after he heard the pounding hooves of Aklai’s departing forces, the mystic walked out of the common room for the second time, this time not stopping until he had put the village far behind him.

He continued to head north over the next few days, though the weather became colder and less hospitable. One day, with fine snow flying sidelong in the frigid wind, Pagonel found a comfortably sheltered perch beneath a rocky overhang. He sat cross-legged, hands on thighs, palms upward. He sent his consciousness through his body, one step at a time, inviting deep relaxation and also slowing the rhythms of his body, insulating it from the cold.

In that trancelike state, Pagonel’s mind replayed the events of the last weeks. Why had he come to To-gai? What role might he find there?

Also, in that trance, the Jhesta Tu mystic began honestly to examine his own feelings, toward his heritage, the To-gai-ru, and toward the Behrenese invaders. It wasn’t a matter of like or dislike—Pagonel understood well that such sweeping generalizations could not be leveled upon entire races of people—races comprised, ultimately, of individuals. But there was a matter of justice and implications. The Behrenese had attacked To-gai—unprovoked, by all accounts—and they were not acting the role of beneficent masters!

If the Chezru Chieftain, who continued the long line of his predecessors in declaring the Jhesta Tu heretics, could so simply conquer To-gai, then what of the Mountains of Fire? Everyone knew that the true motivation for the Behrenese invasion of To-gai was the lucrative trade in To-gai ponies, whatever front story concerning To-gai as a lost province of the Behrenese kingdom the Chezru and his cohorts had concocted. Given that willingness to conquer and murder for profit, might the Chezru Chieftain turn his sights to the region surrounding the Walk of Clouds, with all its riches in minerals?

“Is that the reason my vision has led me here?” Pagonel asked quietly, his voice drowned away by the howling wind. “Am I to view the precursor to the attack upon my order?”

He stayed in the sheltered nook throughout the rest of the day and the night, and when the next morning dawned clear, with but a dusting of snow on the tall grasses, the mystic set out again, walking north.

He passed through another town that day and managed to join up with a caravan of To-gai-ru, heading north. All through the journey, Pagonel sat quietly and listened to the tales of frustration, the anger, to tales of horror, where family members had been stolen away by Behrenese soldiers. In all that chatter, the only real measure of hope that the mystic heard came in the name of a rogue leader, Ashwarawu, who was apparently operating in the area.

Pagonel decided then and there that he would seek out this rogue leader.

Chapter 15
 

Y
ATOL
G
RYSH WELCOMED THE TWENTY-SQUARE OF
J
ACINTHA SOLDIERS TO
D
HARYAN
with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was glad that Yakim Douan had finally provided him with the strength he needed to restore complete control to the region. But on the other hand, the proud Yatol priest hated having to ask for the assistance. Especially at a time when Chezru Chieftain Douan had hinted that the Transcendence might be nearing, Grysh did not want to appear weak to his fellow priests.

And why had Yakim Douan sent a twenty-square, four hundred soldiers, when Grysh had asked for only an eight-square? Did that signal the Chezru Chieftain’s lack of confidence in him?