A Quick Sun Rises (45 page)

Jack didn’t rise to the baiting but instead moved slowly forward with easy thrusts and jabs feeling out the boy’s strengths and weaknesses without committing himself too far or using up too much energy. He would not be drawn into an all out brawl knowing that their differences in age would then most certainly put the fight in Resdin’s favor.

Resdin moved forward and back with athletic ease as if taunting his opponent. Sometimes he left gapping holes in his defenses inviting Jack in so that he could quickly block and then score a hit, but Jack was not so easily baited or fooled. Resdin felt his ire grow at the insolence this old man dare show him in battle. Boring quickly to the juvenile clanging of swords that seemed to be his opponent’s only ability, Resdin began to press his advantage trading caution for a quick end so as to be free to satiate his lust for blood on the levels below.

Jack matched the increase in tempo and daring, turning away Resdin’s attacks while mounting an offensive of his own. As the battle became increasingly more intense, Jack could not shake the feeling that he knew his opponent from somewhere, that they had a connection some how. It did not thrill him to be fighting someone of his own race in such a battle as they had found themselves. It was one thing to kill off trolls and orcs and others of the evil races, but his heart was heavy thinking that he would be forced to end the life of a young man who might have a spark of good left in him.

Resdin feigned a jab to Jack’s chest and then crossed his arm around cutting for his midsection. Distracted, Jack barely corrected his defense in time so that Resdin’s blade sliced through his shirt barely nicking his skin. Resdin felt the slight pressure of connecting with flesh and smiled wickedly, feeling certain that the old man must be tiring and that his victory was sealed.

“You grow tired, aged one,” Resdin teased, blocking Jack’s over the top swing and flicking it back before turning to thrust with his own weapon. Jack was forced back a step to avoid being skewered while his mind still wrestled with Resdin’s face in a bout to gain recognition.

“Ah,” he retorted, “the foolishness of youth. They fight when they should talk and they talk when they should fight.” Pretending to stumble, he easily turned away Resdin’s thrust and then countered back with a slash of his own across the young man’s belly. Resdin gasped as he stepped back, placing a hand over the cut that was seeping blood into the tops of his trousers.

Glaring back at Jack, he stepped away, while swinging his sword in a complicated pattern and then steadied himself. “Enough of this child’s play,” he spat. “We end this now.”

Not waiting for Jack’s reply, Resdin pressed forward in a full frontal attack that quickly left both of them with nicks and cuts all along their chests, arms, and legs. Both were soon breathing hard, their attacks becoming slower as the battle continued to wage on without a victor. Sweat beaded and then flew off of their bodies as they continued to press and retreat in a dissonance of steel banging steel.

With each passing moment, Jack felt that the mystery that was Resdin was coming closer to being solved, but his mind still could not wrap around the feeling that cried out in recognition of the man. And he was tiring. Never in his years of battle in the Shadow Mountains had he ever tired in a fight against even three trolls but suddenly he felt his energy diminishing and he feared that soon he would not be quick enough to turn away Resdin’s attacks. With the skill the boy manifested, any little mistake would certainly prove to be his doom. He had to end this now.

Resdin shot forward with a thrust that he intended to turn back using Jack’s block and then slice him through the middle, but Jack didn’t block him as he’d expected. Stepping to his right, Jack allowed the blade to slice superficially across his left side while he brought his own blade around in a chopping motion into Resdin’s ribs cutting him deep.

It was at that very moment, as they faced each other and Resdin’s eyes widened in utter shock that Jack saw the strange little diamond shaped birthmark on Resdin’s exposed shoulder finally connecting the last puzzle piece. “Cole!” he shouted as he pulled away from his son, drawing out his blade with a sickening smack allowing gouts of blood to pour out from the wound. Both Resdin and Jack dropped their swords as Jack rushed forward to catch his boy as he toppled to the ground, his hand trying desperately to stem the tide of blood.

“Oh, my boy,” Jack cried out. “What have I done?” Smoothing back his dark hair he looked into the shocked face of his long lost son who so obviously favored his mother’s features and for whom he had given up his thrown to waste away his life as a hermit chasing down the memory of his boy. And now, in a twisted game played by the gods his boy was to die at his own hand; the hand that cradled him as a baby; the hand that would forever be stained with his blood.

Resdin stared up at him, the shock at having been beaten by an old man more disturbing to him than the sudden babbling he took on as he sobbed over him. But Resdin was not without life yet. It was not over until the last breath was released. Seeing that his killer was now over occupied with a sudden attempt to save his ebbing life, he didn’t notice as Resdin reached for the dagger at his waist. Drawing it slowly, he pressed it easily between the old man’s ribs as he leaned forward, bathing Resdin with his tears.

* * *

Jne, Tam and Soyak raced through the doorway out into an open courtyard high in the upper reaches of the castle. A fountain claimed the center of the area, dried and in disrepair as was most of the keep that had been abandoned many years before and had only kept a skeleton staff to maintain it. The garden that must have at once been a beautiful retreat was grown over with weeds that were quickly turning brown in the early summer heat. The dark sky cast long shadows that were suddenly exploded in rapid bursts of light thrown off by Thane’s lightning attack on Zadok’s army.

Caught by the fierce wonder of the scene, their attention was stolen away for a brief moment as they watched the whole valley light up in the powerful blasts of the electric storm followed by the drums of thunder that broke across the sky reverberating off the castles giant rock. Almost too late, Soyak turned to meet the onrushing gang of goblins newly planted on the courtyard’s far side by a large, black dragon. Meeting the first with the blunt end of her fist, she cried out to the others as her swords suddenly appeared in her hands and she jumped forward with a look of rapture as she met the enemy that far outnumbered them.

Tam joined the fight as well, swinging her two swords as best as she was able, meeting the enemy with a ferocity that fit well with her Tjal clothing.

Jne drew her swords in a flash, dispatching two overanxious goblins as they practically ran themselves through on the ends of her blades but then she hesitated, her eyes latching on the great dragon that eyed her evilly with its bright, blue eyes as if singling her out among the others. Suddenly, to her utter shock, the great leviathan began to diminish, reducing itself in size as its wings tucked back and then spread out, becoming garments that fit snuggly around what was now a dark haired Tjal woman.

Jne gasped, her recognition instant as the dragon-turned-woman strode easily toward her, two swords suddenly growing out of her black gloved hands. “Sireen!” she breathed as the woman came to stand in front of her, the goblins that had pressed about her, shying quickly away and turning their fight on Soyak and Tam. “How is this possible, my sister?”

Sireen laughed. “How is it possible that I am so much more than you? How is it possible that power flows through me like blood while you wallow in dishonor and weakness?”

Jne’s eyes narrowed. “I am no longer
Jinghar
,” she hissed. “I have reclaimed my place among the
Tja
.”

“Ha!” Sireen sneered. “You have no
Tja
.”

Jne felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach with a hammer. She remembered the search she had made for her
Tja
when they were threatened at Haykon, the memory of it coming back now in sickening detail with the revelation of what had happened. “It was you!” she breathed, still trying to understand; still trying to grasp at the strands of reality. “But why? How?”

Sireen laughed. “I think you can answer the how on your own. Though you are pitiful and weak, you at least can still conjure a logical outcome in your mind I would hope. As to why, well, let’s just say I serve a higher power now,” she spat.

Jne felt the rage building inside of her as it became clear what her sister had done. No, not her sister but something foul, unnatural and evil conjured by Zadok in his demented mind and using his twisted magic. “You are no Tjal,” she said, the venom dripping from her voice. “I denounce you as one without honor. You are less than the dog that feeds on its own bile!”

Sireen threw back her head and bark out a laugh. “Possibly so, my dear little sister, but the bile on which I will feed today will be you!” She finished her last words like an oath as her swords shot out meeting Jne’s in a loud ring as the two sisters became locked in battle.

Their swords became a blur of metal meeting metal as each wove a tapestry of death about her opponent with such skill as to have invited applause from any who might have watched. If death were not the ultimate outcome, it could have been labeled as a beautiful dance as their bodies moved with the motion of their weapons, cutting in and moving out while twisting and gyrating to an unspoken melody.

Tam pulled her sword out of the goblins neck letting it fall to the ground as she turned her attention back to Jne. She’d seen the dragon turn into the Tjal woman that now swung her swords with deadly precision at her friend and was anxious to be free of the fighting so she could take aim with her bow, but there were still too many goblins and only she and Soyak to deal with them. The old Tjal woman laughed as she met another goblin swinging its club for her head. A quick duck and then twist and both her blades pulled across the unlucky creature’s center spilling its intestines onto the ground. The bodies seemed to pile up around her, as more and more goblins appeared, joining in the melee that was quickly becoming too large for even someone of her skill to outlast.

Tam ducked instinctively as the club whooshed past her head drawing her attention away again as she was forced to deal with yet another enemy. Twisting around to the side, she dropped one of her swords, drawing the goblin’s attention away as she reached out and ripped the air from its body. A small boom accompanied the rush of wind that pressed her hand away as her enemy dropped onto the stony ground. Retrieving her sword, she threw herself back into the fray determined to eliminate her threats so she could take down Jne’s dragon.

Jne threw back her head barely escaping a scissor cut that would have decapitated her and then threw up her swords to block Sireen’s follow through as she sliced for Jne’s midsection with her left while coming down with an overhand swing with her right. Jne was frustrated that she’d received multiple cuts while not yet having landed a single hit on her sister. She was not fatigued in the least, but her sister seemed just a fraction quicker to the point that she was starting to feel that maybe she was the rodent in a cat’s cruel game. The pieces of what must have happened to her sister were forming in Jne’s mind as her body seemed to move on its own as it deflected the constant attacks leaving her no chance to mount an offensive.

Her sister must have been taken by Zadok and then twisted to his will and changed in some unnatural way to create the creature that had turned on her people. Had she not been blood sworn to Thane, she too would have met the awful death that had been dealt out to her
Tja
by Sireen’s…no, not Sireen’s but the dragon’s decimating breath. It made her sick to think of her friends and family cut down in such a cowardly fashion as was the lethal breath created by one she’d once loved and admired.

Jumping back she took another cut to her midsection though, like the many others, it was nothing more than a scratch. Crossing her blades in a defensive move designed to push her opponent’s swords down Jne pressed in whipping her head forward and connecting with Sireen’s sending the woman back. A trickle of blood formed and then dripped from the woman’s eyebrow where Jne hit her, bringing at first a look of surprise and then one of condescending laughter.

“Well done, little one,” Sireen mocked. “Finally you draw blood, though apparently your skill is more suited to your head than your swords.”

Jne didn’t answer but instead let her blades speak for her as she rushed forward throwing herself with abandon into the battle. Sireen met her rage with cool calculation, scoring multiple hits but this time sustaining some as well. She paid them no mind though knowing that when she returned to her natural dragon form that her powers of quick healing would turn them to distant memories. Blocking a wild swing she easily flicked it away and then brought her sword back down, slicing deeply into Jne’s left arm rendering it useless.

Disengaging from the battle, Jne stared with wonder at her arm and then looked back at Sireen who merely smiled, dropping one of her swords in a show of dishonor to make the fight “fair” once again. Such an action was the lowest form of humiliation that a Tjal-Dihn could show to another. Fueling her body with her rage, Jne pressed in again sweeping her sword around, desperately trying to break through Sireen’s defenses and score a deadly hit while blood rushed down her injured arm, dripping great drops to the ground. She screamed in anger and pain as Sireen’s blade cut across her chest opening a large gash that quickly soaked her shirt with red.