Warrior of the Ages (Warriors of the Ages) (7 page)

“That is the only occupation worthy of significance in his mind! Time will teach you, Warrior of ilu, not all battles are won at the point of a spear.”

Kahtar bristled, time had taught him much. Yet it was her unknowing use of the word spear that cut. He hadn’t touched one in over two thousand years. The Mother sensed his agitation and her heart reached to brush lovingly against his, soothing, calm and cool as the pools of water dotting the cave.

“Abigail and many of Cultuelle Khristos are willing to take their risks in the outside world. It is their choice,” she said.

Abigail grumbled, poking a dimpled elbow into the Priest at her side.

“As though we could shut down Cobbson Compound and retreat to the Arc like it was the flood!”

Father Wixen nodded in indignant agreement, though Kahtar knew for a fact that the old Priest had never stepped a foot outside the Arc and into the world of Seekers in his entire life.

“There is no sign of who shot Honor. He still remembers nothing and even with the evidence Consider and Squire have accumulated, we have found no trace of the assailants. It could happen again,” Kahtar warned.

Despite his chain mail and a sword dangling from each hip, The Mother slipped an arm around his waist, and hugged. Kahtar remained in position, legs firmly planted, arms slightly bent and hands open, Warrior of ilu. Yet he felt the touch of her heart, felt the touch of every heart in that chamber, even Abigail’s. Though he held himself apart from his clans, he loved them all.

ANOTHER LATE NIGHT storm had Wolves scratching at the front door of the cabin. Kahtar ignored him. Sitting on the steps to the main room he again tried to shake off the memory of when he had been called Longinus. For the third time this week the old shade had descended, hotter and more painful than death by fire. Kahtar’s hands were still shaking, thighs weak. He took deep, calming breaths, trying to distract himself by scanning through the dark.

Every Covenant Keeper endured shades. They all experienced the random dark memories from the lives of those who had gone on before them. When a Covenant Keeper died they left their pain behind, and that pain took the form of shades. Yet this shade came from his own past, this shade followed him through time, Kahtar’s own personal purgatory. Unlike most shades, it wasn’t someone else’s pain. He’d earned this.

Sitting on the stairs he’d fashioned with his own hands and sensing the hundreds of weapons lining the walls around him helped. He’d been injured or died at the wrong end of each and every weapon that covered those walls. Instead of those painful deaths stirring gruesome memories, somehow sitting there surrounded by his own painful mortality helped dissipate the hold of what he had done. Surely, somewhere in all that pain came some measure of penance, however miniscule.

A familiar light shimmered in the room downstairs, glinting off the hundreds of weapons hanging from floor to ceiling, illuminating wicked looking bits of metal in the glow. In a flash of soundless lightning, a man appeared solidly at the bottom of the stairs. Wolves yelped outside the door and scampered away. An Old Guard, glowing from his inner light, stood in the front room, shimmering and looking like what surely had been ilu’s prototype for man. Like all Old Guard, his ancient eyes were completely black. Kahtar hurried down the steps to face the man. The Old Guard’s face was wrinkled with age, his hair peppered with grey, but he stood as solid as a granite mountain and as impenetrable.

The Old Guard stood unnaturally still, not even moving his mouth when he spoke. His second voice flooded the Warrior Chief’s mind with what Kahtar always thought of as white hot ice.

“
Come
.”

Within minutes Kahtar was dressed in a fresh uniform and at the side of the Old Guard. Together they flickered away, an act Kahtar had engaged in so many times over millennia that the transportation gifting had almost become his own. Fast as light he blinked out and became nothing, and then he was back, standing in an unfamiliar doorway. The smell of must and vomit mixed with the oil and tar of the nearby railroad tracks. The narrow old house perched on a crumbling cliff over a trickle called the Chagrin River. The entire row of worn out houses was asleep, the only sound a far off train. A fellow clansman, Allis Drake, was kneeling in the tiny kitchen next to an unconscious woman. He looked up at Kahtar, one hand continually stroking her blood soaked hair, as though to offer comfort in lieu of the healing he was forbidden to give.

“If I’m not permitted to heal her, she will die,” he said quietly, distress and anger etched into his kind face.

Kahtar scanned within the young woman, she’d been beaten almost to death, but she might survive if they were quick enough. He turned his scan outward.

“There is an ambulance four minutes away, she could make it.” Her cell phone wasn’t far from where she’d fallen. He retrieved it and dialed 911. As soon as it was answered he sat it on the floor beside her. It was all he could do.

The only light in the room was from an open refrigerator and the flickering brilliance from the Old Guard. A quick scan of the premises revealed that no weapons had been used, other than the culprit’s own two hands. That husband or boyfriend was sprawled over a torn and stained recliner, drugged, drunk and incoherent. Vomit splattered down his out of shape torso, tattoos covered a good deal of his flesh. Kahtar wasn’t amused by the stupid marks. The symbols were a mixture of Japanese and Chinese—none of which were spelled correctly. The woman’s dried blood covered bruised knuckles. A collection of women’s names, scrawled in homemade tattoos, lined his wrist. All but one had a vulgarity tattooed over her name. If the list was accurate, the woman by the front door would be Denise. Kahtar wanted to kill him.

The perusal had taken only seconds. He moved towards the man. Despite Kahtar’s size and the paper-thin construction of the house, his footsteps were silent. Glancing to the Old Guard for approval, he reached for the man.

The Old Guard turned his head slightly to the right, request denied. Old Guard rarely permitted the killing of a non-Covenant Keeper, a Seeker, and apparently this man’s life had purpose. Kahtar hid his scowl.
What purpose this? Beating a woman to death?
But he had to obey. He waited, knowing the Old Guard had summoned him for a reason. The solid black eyes shone strangely in the glow from the refrigerator. The Old Guard was so big that the tip of his sword, barely jutting past his back, touched one counter and a studded leather strip of his skirting rested against the other. His ice hot second voice was brief.

“He need only be alive and aware.”

There was no satisfaction in destroying a man’s body, but neither did it bother Kahtar. It was his duty to obey Old Guard, and he did so without conscience, making certain the abuser would spend the rest of his life needing the help of a woman for even the simplest task. He scanned within the man, whispering his healing chant and using the healing skill he’d been gifted with to ruin instead of repair, methodically injuring nerves in the man’s back and neck.

Expert medical care might recognize something peculiar, but likely he wouldn’t receive that. Likely he’d be given debilitating drugs for a muscular disease he didn’t have. It took less than thirty seconds to satisfy the Old Guard.

On his way out the door Kahtar knelt beside the woman, knowing Allis Drake’s frustration at being forbidden from healing her with his gifting. Putting a large hand on her bloody skull he longed to fix it, the swelling in her brain could be reduced in seconds, but she was a Seeker and he was a Covenant Keeper and he was following the way and his feelings did not matter. Quickly he leaned forward and kissed her forehead, rising swiftly he went towards the Old Guard.

Allis went outside to his squad car, to wait for the 911 call to be traced. Kahtar regretfully flickered away at the side of the Old Guard, praying for the woman to survive, wondering when he’d started feeling that obeying the way could ever be wrong. It was strange, in all his time he never remembered feeling it before.

FLAGS FLEW ALONG Main Street after the Memorial Day parade, and groups of people headed home. Kahtar drove slowly around a corner and parked his vehicle in the spot reserved for the Police Chief. A group of his warriors, dressed in the pressed cotton slacks and polyester blend shirt of the police force, stood outside the station conversing with Seekers.

Kahtar opened the car door. A woman’s shrill laughter punctuated masculine voices. Unfolding his body from the squad car he noted the lone woman standing in the group chatting and laughing, her high-pitched shriek familiar. Kahtar ran a hand over his short hair.

A couple warriors glanced towards him and it took only one meaningful glare before all the men dispersed to their duties, including the Seekers. Only the waitress Kahtar recognized from the corner coffee shop remained, smoking a cigarette. She waved to him, laughing out her shrill greeting and Kahtar waved back. Avoiding eye contact he walked towards her. The woman had begun to take up post outside the station during her coffee breaks, flirting with the warriors. She exhaled a cloud of smoke from the side of her mouth.

“Morning, Chief. Cliff’s baking some of those strawberry pies you like.”

“Is he?” Kahtar stepped a bit too close, and she took a small step back. Her name was Brenda. Her husband had left her to raise two little girls on her own. As she lifted her cigarette to her lips, he noticed the homemade tattoo on her wrist for the first time, ‘Stan’ in indigo blue. Eyes sweeping over Brenda, Kahtar instantly took in chipped teeth, a telltale scar on her upper lip, the pert nose that had healed almost imperceptibly crooked, and the way she held her cigarette in her left hand because the right arm bent at an odd angle. The woman was lucky to be alive. Brenda had her troubles. Kahtar knew she could barely afford the flat she rented over someone’s garage on Second Street. Still, she risked his warriors’ lives by attempting to ingratiate herself with them. Seekers and Covenant Keepers did not belong together, and his duty was to ensure that never happened.

Kahtar edged closer, invading her personal space, and Brenda looked up at him, soft brown eyes widening in surprise. He’d always been distant but very polite to her. Meeting her eyes, her frightened gasp was audible. He was being mean, but forcing her out of the little town would be cruel. At her income level, she’d have to move to the city, and life would be rough there for her girls. He glared down at her, keeping a fake smile pasted on his face.

“I like pie.” The simple comment was filled with as much innuendo as Kahtar could manage, the remark made his own skin crawl. Brenda muttered something incoherent, dropped her cigarette then dashed back around the corner. He’d grossed himself out, but found consolation in the fact that Brenda never had to worry about being beaten again. Stan’s days of hurting women were over.