The False Martyr (96 page)

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“
What in the Order’s holy
name happened to you?” Commander Quindin gasped as Jaret stormed
through the door of the Camp’s command tent. He was covered in
blood, no small amount of it his own. It ran in pink streams down
his face with his sweat, stinging his eyes so that he could barely
see. It crusted his clothes so that they resisted his every step
and chaffed along every joint.

“
Get me some water,” Jaret
demanded as he tried to wipe the bloody sweat from his eyes. He
reached down and pulled his shirt up over his head and threw the
stinking thing into the corner. Streams of red ran down his chest,
weaving their way through the thick, dark hair that covered him,
past the hundreds of tiny, round scars that marked Thagas’kuila’s
teeth, a constant reminder of the time he’d spent with the
creature.

“
Theonious fucking
Valatarian, I asked what happened to you.” Joal came around the
table, flanked by two of his sons.

“
We were ambushed,” Jaret
finally responded. A young man carried a bowl of water through the
tent flap with trembling hands. He nearly sloshed it across the
table as he set it down. Jaret plunged his hands in and threw water
on his face, spraying it across the table and onto the plank floor
below. One of Joal’s sons had the foresight to hastily roll the
maps laid out on the table before Jaret ruined them. Jaret repeated
the movement then rubbed the water across his face and eyes.
Another handful was used to loosen the blood crusted across his
head and push back the sweat before it could find his eyes again.
Finally, he took a long drink straight from the bowl, ignoring how
the blood had turned it pink.

“
By Nabim’s men?” Joal
asked. He was at Jaret’s side now, eyes scanning him for injury
like a mother looking over a child after an accident. “Did the
cavalry catch you in the open? I told you it was too big a risk. I
. . . “

“
It was no cavalry. It was
. . . I don’t know . . . monsters, Order-cursed, fucking monsters.”
Jaret nearly shook as he remembered the things that had attacked
them, remembered what they had done to his men, remembered the
score of those men that they had left behind to suffer.

“
Monsters,” Joal scoffed,
looking for the joke.

“
Like no nightmare has
ever seen. Real . . . fucking . . . monsters.” Jaret felt like he
should be shaking, like he should be on the verge of a breakdown,
and somewhere he was, somewhere the real Jaret was losing his mind.
“We lost over twenty men. Almost all the others are injured in some
way. They won’t be fighting again for weeks if ever.”

“
You’re not making any
sense,” Joal said calmly. He watched Jaret with the look of a man
who comes home and finds his wife holding a knife to the children’s
throats. “Why don’t you back up and tell me what happened? Where’s
Yatier?”

“
He’s having his injuries
tended,” Jaret answered. The knight’s armor had protected him
enough that the spikes had not gone all the way through his hands
and feet. Unlike many of the men, he would walk again, but his arms
had been pulled out of joint and legs nearly broken as the creature
stretched him.

Once they learned how to
kill the things, they had freed most of the men who had been
captured, but there had been no saving those held by the flying
thing, and in trying to save their fellows almost every man had
taken an injury of some kind. Eventually, they had reclaimed the
horses, loaded the injured onto saddles, and ridden to the cover of
the trees. It had taken the remainder of the day moving as fast as
the horses and their injured riders could manage to make it back to
the camp, but the Knights Imperial and Legion of the Rising Sun
were decimated.

“
Fuck and fuck! What
happened to him?” Joal could not seem to accept any of
it.

“
He had his arms and legs
nearly fucking pulled off by a giant fucking . . . I don’t know,
spider . . . crab . . . fucking . . . monster,” Jaret answered with
as much emotion as he’d shown in weeks. “And he was one of the
lucky ones. I managed to get him away from the thing. A lot of our
men, of my men, are still out there, still being tortured by those
things, still screaming and crying and begging. And there wasn’t a
fuckin’ thing I could do about it. If they’d have shown any
interest in the horses, we’d have never gotten out of there. If
they’d have wanted to kill us, we’d all be dead. So stop asking
stupid fucking questions and find me the valati.” The monk was the
only one that would understand, the only one who could
help.

Joal, for all his size,
stumbled back. He motioned one of his sons away and turned his eyes
to the table.

“
What happened?” Corwin
started the dance all over again. “I just got back and saw a line
of men at the surgeon. They look like they’ve had their hands and
feet pierced with nails. I thought this mission was low risk. Were
you captured or . . . ?”

Jaret held up his hand to
stop the questions from starting all over. The man lolled as he
looked at his friend covered in blood.

“
They were attacked by
some kind of monsters,” Joal supplied. He pulled Corwin to the back
of the tent and whispered in his ear. They both watched Jaret
warily as they spoke.

Jaret let them be. He had
explained once. That was enough. At least, he had sent Ewon off to
plead their case to the Liandrins, so there was one fewer commander
to nag and worry over him.

“
They’re coming,” Lius
declared as he ran through the flap, panting and sweating. “I was
meditating and I . . . .” he trailed off as he saw the other men in
the room and seemingly realized what he was about to
say.

“
Leave us!” Jaret
commanded. “And close the flaps when you go.”

The commanders did not
protest as they slunk from the tent but neither did they hide their
concern. Joal, in particular, seemed to think his friend had
cracked. He had made his skepticism clear from Jaret’s first
mention of what had happened in the throne room – how Nabim’s pet
wizard had burnt a hundred men to ash then lifted Jaret magically
in the air and thrown him into a wall. And the very fact that he
had said nothing about them showed his belief that the creatures
who had tortured Jaret and chased Lius were a figment of the
commander’s torture-rattled mind.
Torture
changes people
, he had told Ewon in a
conversation that Jaret had overheard shortly after his
arrival,
their minds go to strange places
and sometimes they never come back
. He had
gone on to suggest that Jaret was not only delusional but different
in some fundamental way. The fact that it was true and said as a
man who is concerned for the health of his friend had saved Joal,
but not Ewon.

The next day, Jaret sent
Ewon to Liandria. Joal was not a schemer, but if Ewon sensed
weakness, he would seek to exploit it. He’d spend his every waking
moment wheedling away at the other commanders, convincing them that
Jaret was not fit to lead, that they needed to remove him for his
own good. Watching Joal and Corwin go, seeing their wary
expressions, Jaret guessed that not much convincing would be
required.

“
They’re coming,” Lius
repeated at a near whisper when the room was clear and the tent
flaps were down. “I can see them in the Tapestry. They do not know
the forest, but they’re coming almost straight at us.”

“
Why didn’t you warn me
that those things were out there?” Jaret asked, but the question
lacked the edge it should have carried.
Because you should have known
, Jaret
chastised himself for falling so completely into Nabim’s trap.
Still, he was not sure how he could have anticipated the things
they fought today. Thagas’kuila and his type were one thing. They
were horrible, cruel, unbelievable, but they were nothing compared
to creatures that struck from the sky, that had impenetrable skin,
that could best legionnaires and armored knights in
seconds.

“
I didn’t see them in the
Tapestry until it was too late.” The monk kneaded his hands and
stared at his feet. “They are not like the regular soldiers. People
are almost always aligned with the Order. They almost always do
what the patterns dictate. The creatures, the destroyers, as
Valatarian calls them, are almost entirely outside the Order. I can
see them in the Tapestry for the disruptions they create, but it is
almost impossible to predict what they will do.”

“
What does your book say
about them? How do we defeat them?”

Lius gulped. “The book
isn’t specific, but it says they are Hilaal’s contributions to our
world, that he created them to counter the animals that his brother
had made. Valatarian describes some of them, but he also says that
they are as varied as the animals of the land and air and sea. What
we do know is, as Valatarian says, ‘The world was created first
though the Order. Nothing that exists can escape Its laws.’ These
creatures are bound by the basic laws of nature, but they do not
serve those laws. Rather they exist to oppose the Order, to
destroy, to create pain and suffering and fear.”

“
That much I know. But how
do we defeat them? What are their weaknesses? How did Valatarian do
it?”

Lius gulped. “I don’t
know. The book is very hard to understand. I have been doing almost
nothing for the two weeks but reading and meditating, but I still
understand very little. Valatarian speaks of patterns, of finding
them, creating them, preserving them. But, by his own admission, it
took him years to learn to weave those patterns. And even then, he
only had enough power to overthrow the Lawbreakers when he had
gathered hundreds of thousands of followers, only when those
followers would do anything he said, would kill themselves or their
neighbors or their children, at his mere suggestion. This book is
very different from the one we have always known. The Valatarian in
this book is a brutal pragmatist. He admits that weaving the Order
is a series of choices and sometimes those choices are difficult –
killing a hundred today to save a thousand tomorrow; allowing those
around you to die so that those far away might live. In some cases,
he made choices that are appalling. In some places, I can hardly
bear to read the words, can hardly bear to think that our savior
did the things he admits to doing. And I wonder how harrowing it
must have been for him to know that doing those things was the only
way to save millions from chaos. I wonder how he kept his sanity,
how any man could be strong enough to do it. I know I am not. I
know that I could never do what is required. Even if I knew that it
was the right thing, even if I knew it was the only way, I could
not makes the choices that he made.” Lius looked up at Jaret, face
filled with shame.

He’s right, Jaret
realized. This boy is not nearly strong enough to do what must be
done. Then an even harder revelation hit him. “But I am.”
Any part of me that might pause or protest is
locked away. No normal man can do what needs to be done, so the
Order has taken control of me.
The thought
left Jaret’s trapped consciousness stunned to silence, curled and
whimpering in a corner of his mind, wondering what cruel legacy the
all-powerful Order had planned for him now that it had stripped him
of his freewill.

“
I do not think the
Emperor has many of the creatures at his command,” Lius was saying.
He stared at Jaret with concern – or was it fear – as he tried to
cover the shortcoming he’d just revealed. “I can sense them in the
Order. I don’t know exactly, but there can’t be that many of them.
I . . . I might be able to help. With the men we have here, we
might even be able to defeat them without . . . .”

“
We cannot afford might.”
the power that controlled Jaret said. “We must have certainty. And
you know how.”

Lius looked truly
horrified now, but he nodded. “I do, but I could not . . .
.”

“
You won’t,” Jaret cut him
off. “I will. Now, tell me.”

Chapter 52

The 41 –
42
^nd
Day of Summer

“
Ha! Did you hear that,
Denard? It’s not even about us. It’s all Morg politics. They’ve
already decided to join us. The gold just lets them cover their
asses. If we were still in Liandria, I’d leave half of it behind.
Never pay for something you’ll get anyway, I always say.” The
prince and his advisors laughed. Cary barely noticed.

It’s not about us.
The words hit him like a wave, washed away the
confusion, and showed how all the pieces fit together. He placed
them faster and faster until the picture finally became clear.
“It’s not about us,” he whispered to himself. “By the Order, it has
nothing to do with us.”

“
Ah, too late now, I
suppose,” the prince continued with honest regret. He scanned the
plains around him as if searching for a suitable place to bury a
ton of gold for later reclamation. “But I suppose there are other
ways to get the gold. Jamison, let’s discuss the trade terms as we
ride today. I think the cost of grain just increased rather
sharply.”

Cary looked up, eyes going
to the sky, as fear flooded him. It was all a lie. It was all going
to come crashing down. They were going to fail and the very
foundation of the Fells would fall with them.