Heart of the King (26 page)

But I have to.

He felled two men with a single stroke, and two more climbed out of the slurry of blood and flesh and dirt. Most of those attacking him now were the undead, their faces smeared with gore, some of them missing ears or limbs, and all of them with blank, staring eyes and an indefatigable desire to kill.

Trying to kill them is going to be the death of me.

He put his heels into his horse and the destrier surged forward, crashing through a wall of dead Kanosee and Erechanians alike. Fortified by the movement, the general urged his steed on; it trod a Kanosee soldier with a long wound across his face into the sod, then bowled over another. This man screamed.

A minute later, Sienhin found himself clear of the fighting. He reined his horse around and looked back at the ebb and flow of the battle. His insides ached at seeing it—he’d  never in his life deserted a fight, but what choice did he have? He looked at the staff in his hand, then looked around him, ready to toss it aside and find himself another weapon.

No, that’s not enough. I have to destroy it.

“Hmph.”

Sienhin tucked the staff under his arm and slid awkwardly out of the saddle. His feet sank through the thin layer of snow and half an inch deep in mud, the bloody earth squelching under the soles of his boots. Breathing deep to prepare for the coming pain, the cold tang of winter burned his nostrils as he swung his near-useless right arm around to grab the end of the staff. He intended to lift his knee and break the cursed stick, but quickly realized the grip of his injured arm was too weak; if he attempted it, he wouldn’t be able to hold on.

“Gods curse me,” he muttered and put the end of the staff to the ground instead.

The general stomped the butt end into the dirt, then readjusted his grip on the other end. Satisfied his hold was solid, he raised his right boot and slammed his foot down on the staff.

The impact vibrated up the staff and through his arm, across his chest and into his injured shoulder. Sienhin closed his eyes and cried out in pain.

“Perhaps you should not attempt to destroy that which is not yours.”

The woman’s voice sliced through both the din of battle and the general’s pain, startling him. His eyes snapped open to find her standing five paces in front of him, flakes of snow clinging to her hair sparkling green in the staff’s light. The Archon wore no armor to protect her from the fight, no cape or cloak to keep the cold from her shoulders. She titled her head to the side and smiled the way an adult might do to a child, or a pet; her expression lit a fuse in the general.

“It’s not really the staff I seek to destroy, is it?” His eyes narrowed as he forced the words through clenched teeth. “A staff is but a staff, only as dangerous as its wielder.”

She laughed, the sound rolling out of her mouth and across the space between them, touching him with the power of a slap to the face.

“And who has been wielding it, Sir Alton Sienhin, general of the king’s army of Erechania? Not I.”

Sir Alton growled in the back of his throat, felt rage and hatred bubble in his chest. He knew better than to let anger take him, but here stood the woman threatening the destruction of his home, the end of his people. His forehead furrowed, bushy brows nearly blocking his vision; the muscles in his arms and chest tensed shooting more pain through his body, but he ignored it.

“It ends here,” he said and whipped the staff above his head to strike a killing blow.

“No, it does not,” the woman said, pointing at him.

The general froze. He struggled to move, but to no avail. His eyes flickered to the nail at the end of her finger, painted the deep red of blood, and she strode closer until it was only an inch from his face. He watched the color run to form a drop that fell to the ground.

He grunted with strain, but for his effort got only a droplet of sweat that rolled between his eyes and down the bridge of his nose. It hung from the tip for a second, and the general watched with crossed eyes until he felt it plummet to splatter on the top of his boot. When he looked up again, the woman’s fingernail had changed.

Instead of the red of blood, a picture was painted on the nail. Sienhin squinted to better see the depiction. It was a man—not  just any man, Sienhin saw, but himself—his  body folded and broken, a look of death on his face as a horse dragged him amongst corpses.

The general’s breath caught in his throat at a touch on his right wrist.

He forced himself to look and glimpsed his horse’s reins snaking their way around his wrist, encircling his forearm. His eyes widened and flickered back to the woman.

“Damn your magic, witch. Fight me like a man.”

She lowered her finger and leaned forward, bringing her face close to his. Her breath caressed his face; it smelled of herbs and mint and another, more unpleasant odor beneath—the  stench of death.

“Why would I do that, Sir Alton?” She moved closer, pressed her body against his. “I am not a man.”

Her chest pressed against him hard enough he felt the shape of her breasts through his mail shirt. A vision of her naked and sprawled across a bed jumped to his mind; he blinked hard to clear the vision and spat in her face.

The woman took a step back, her expression hardening as she wiped his spittle off her cheek.

“Give me the staff.”

Her tone held no more hint of jest, no gentleness or playfulness. Instead, her words dripped hatred and threat. Sienhin stared at her, satisfied he’d gotten to her, no matter how little. He narrowed his eyes in defiance despite the feel of the lead tightening around his arm.

The woman grabbed the staff, yanked it, but Sienhin’s grip held firm. He chuckled at the back of his throat, a sound that brought a touch of red to the woman’s white cheeks. Her lips curled back from her teeth in a snarl; he smiled behind his mustache, defiant.

The woman tugged on the staff again, this time slowly exerting force to pull it out of his hand, but she stopped at the sound of a roar rolling across the battlefield. Her gaze shifted away from the general, her eyes grew wide. With his back to the fight, he didn’t know what made the sound, but it didn’t matter as long as the witch stood in front of him. He tried to jar the staff out of her hand, intending to crack her about the head with it, but the grip of her magic continued to hold him from moving.

“No,” she whispered and, with one solid yank, wrenched the staff out of the general’s grip and used it to slap his horse across its hind flank.

The horse bolted; the reins went tight immediately, pulling Sienhin off his feet. His injured shoulder pulled from its socket and he screamed in agony. As the horse fled, the general bounced over the ground, hitting corpses and bowling over men. Before he disappeared amongst the throng of fighting soldiers, he caught a glimpse of a red dragon rearing up to breathe a column of flame.

***

Khirro approached the rider cautiously, the Mourning Sword held at the ready. He clearly saw the man on the horse, recognized the white shirt, the black cloak, the silvered mask. A sense of excitement and relief roiled in his belly, but it was tempered by apprehension and fear—the  purpose of a mask is to hide a face, deceive people.

With five yards between them, Khirro reined his horse to a stop. The other rider did the same. A minute passed and neither moved. In the distance, Khirro heard the sounds of battle crossing the plains on snow-filled winds.

“Who are you?” Khirro asked turning his horse to make sure the rider saw the sword in his hand.

The man reached up, threw back the hood of his cloak and pulled the mask off his face. Khirro’s eyes went wide and he found himself unable to say anything for a few second, then he found his voice.

“Athryn!” He urged his horse forward, unable to keep a smile from is face despite the battle in front of him and Emeline’s revelation behind. The magician’s lips tilted in a reserved smile, his eyes remained serious.

“It is good to see you, my friend.”

“I thought you dead.”

“As did I,” Athryn said. “But there were yet other plans for me.”

“Plans? What do you mean?” He pulled up beside his friend.

“We do not have time now, Khirro. The battle does not go well. I have intervened, but you are needed.”

A shiver crawled up Khirro’s spine and his smile fled. “But I have Emeline with me, and Graymon, and...” He paused. “And my daughter.”

“I will see to them.”

“But I--”

“Khirro.” Athryn’s voice carried a commanding tone that brooked no argument. “This is your time. This is why you have come all this way.”

“I don’t think I can. Something has changed, Athryn.”

The magician leaned toward him, looked deep into his eyes. Khirro didn’t want to look back at him, but felt unable to move his gaze away.

“Yes, something has changed: now you have a child to fight for.”

He knows. Has he always known?

Khirro’s lips twitched with the question, but Athryn slapped his hand on his shoulder and spoke again.

“I have seen you defeat a dragon and a serpent, fell giants and save your friends from dire circumstances. The Khirro who last set foot on these plains exists no more. Your journey has not only been one of distance, but one of the soul.”

Khirro’s head nodded minutely, keeping his eyes on Athryn’s. In his hand, the hilt of the Mourning Sword grew warm; he felt its heat radiating, warming the winter air.

The sword’s glow cast on the ground in front of them was difficult to see in the falling snow, but became more apparent as it took shape, gained color. It swirled at first, a whirlpool of red and green and blue in the air, then a building spread out before them.

Khirro recognized it instantly as his parents' farm.

The vision changed perspectives, as though Khirro walked up to the door. It swung open. Inside, the dinner table lay overturned, shards of clay from broken dishes littered the floor, and he saw his father’s axe on the hearth, its handle snapped in two.

His parents lay amongst the debris, dead eyes staring at the ceiling above.

His father’s one arm was pinned beneath his torso, his waist wrenched so far the other way, his legs faced the opposite direction like he might rise and walk away from himself. Blood splashed his mother’s apron, each drop blossoming on the white material like tiny, morbid roses. Khirro stared, mouth agape, wanting to ask Athryn the truthfulness of the vision.

Does he see it, too? Does he already know?

The vision moved forward, approached his parents. He leaned back in his saddle instinctively, unsuccessfully trying to stop it as the scene moved closer to his father.

His eyelids fluttered open and Khirro’s heart jumped with hope. Maybe he wasn’t dead, maybe a chance existed that he would live through this the way he lived through the accident that took his arm.

The accident I caused.

The father in his hallucination turned his head, sat up. Glazed, blank eyes stared at Khirro. A trail of blood ran from the man’s nose into his mouth, another streak of it ran from his ear. His father climbed to his feet, his body still cranked at the absurd angle, teeth clunking together as his mouth opened and closed forcefully. He took a shuffling, awkward step toward his son, and Khirro saw his mother sit up, too, her head swiveling to look at him with the same dead-but-not-dead eyes.

“No,” Khirro whispered and the scene disappeared, the glow receding back into the sword. The warmth waned along with it, leaving him with a shiver rattling his bones.

He faced the magician, looking at him for a long moment. Every shred of happiness he’d felt at seeing his friend again, every ounce of confusion he’d felt at Emeline’s words left him like chaff blown before a stiff wind. Athryn didn’t speak.

“Has this happened?”

The magician shook his head. “You know what this vision is, my friend.”

Khirro inhaled a deep breath through his nose and scented an odor on the wind he hadn’t smelled before or since their visit to the Necromancer’s keep: brimstone.

“This is what will happen if I don’t take action,” Khirro said moving his gaze away from the magician to the spot on the ground the vision had occupied. There was nothing now, only a crust of snow collected on grass beaten flat by the passing of an army.

An army that would destroy his home and kill his family if he didn’t act.

“Nothing is certain, Khirro, but it is likely this or some version of it will come to pass if the Archon is victorious. And not just to your parents.” Athryn looked past Khirro at Emeline and Iana. “The witch will not stop until the world is hers.”

Khirro nodded and prompted his horse to a walk.

“Say goodbye to Graymon and Emeline for me,” he said over his shoulder. “Give my daughter a kiss from her father.”

He coaxed his horse into a trot, a large part of him hoping the magician would call out to stop him. He didn’t. Khirro breathed deep, filling his lungs in the hope of calming the apprehension and dread churning his insides. They didn’t help.

“Khirro!”

Graymon’s voice. He fought the urge to turn the horse around, return to the boy to protect him, to take Iana from Emeline and hold his daughter just one time. Athryn would take care of them, probably better than he could. He set his jaw and urged his horse faster.

“Khirro!” Emeline called. “I’m sorry, Khirro. I did love you in my way.”

He urged his steed to a gallop and didn’t look back.

The dragon reared back on its haunches, filling its lungs with the fuel its fire needed. The living men before it scattered, leaving the unknowing dead to stand before the beast.

The dragon came down on its front feet, neck extended and mouth open, and spat a column of fire thirty feet long. Dead men burst into flame like dry kindling in a fire pit, burning with no more sound than inanimate lumber. The living didn’t exhibit the same silence.

Therrador gritted his teeth and hewed through the neck of another dead man come back to life. He hated the sound of men suffering in the breath of the dragon; no man deserved such agony on the battlefield, enemy or not.