Risen (26 page)

Risen hated this—hated that she must
be held by this barbarian in such a way—but he also realized that
Sylvie would be very cold, and the man’s body heat would warm her
somewhat. His own hands were bound tightly behind him, and he was
placed behind his rider so that his only opportunity for stability
on the steed was with his legs. He was careful when the horse began
to crow hop to loosen the grip he had on the animal’s flanks, to
offer it respite, the moment it steadied out, from what annoyed
it.

In this fashion, Risen subtly
trained in very short time the beast beneath him to accept a gentle
grip of his legs. Had it been any other way, he would have hit the
forest floor several times over in short order. Risen decided
almost instantly that the clod who sat in front of him was an
average equestrian at best. It was exhausting to try to maintain
his balance as the soldier had a lazy habit of leaning backwards to
stabilize himself, thrusting his shoulder blades into his young
passenger and throwing him continually off balance and nearly off
the back of the horse.

It was miserable going, and within
the hour Risen’s legs ached. Even worse, the small of his back
burned. He was thirsty, having drunk nothing since waking this
morning. Was that just this morning? Why had he not drunk water
when he’d arisen? He made a mental note that, if he survived, he
would never again allow that to happen, allow himself to be so
careless.

His thirst intensified as the day
wore on, the backache becoming almost unbearable. He closed his
eyes and concentrated, sent his mind back to a time in the forest,
a few precious days with his father. It was a good memory, a strong
memory, and despite his anguish, the boy’s face softened as he
recalled what his father had taught him. Risen could still hear his
words…

* * *

They’d done tactical maneuvers for
two days straight without water.

At the outset, Ravan told him, “You
must know how important water is. Food you can survive without for
days, but without water, your will die. It feeds your heart.” He
thumped his fist against his chest. “Without it, your enemy will
have you, and it will strike you first here,” his father warned him
as he rested his hand on the small of his son’s back.

“I don’t know,” Risen admitted. “I
think hunger is so much worse. I would hate that even
more.”

Nodding, his father only said, “We
shall see.”

Six hours in, the hunger gnawed at
him in a terrible way. Risen wanted to stop, to make a fire and
roast some delicious grouse and be done with all of it.

“Father, I understand now, and I
believe you. Thirst is the worse. Now, can we please camp and build
a fire?”

Ravan only smiled, and onward they
pushed. By dusk the second day, it was exactly as his father had
said it would be. Almost unbearable, an awful pain throbbed in his
lower back, and his skin burned, unnaturally hot. Risen bit his lip
hard to prevent the tears from coming. He believed he would
sacrifice his own hand for just a sip of water.

At last, the test was done, and
father and son camped together in the woods. Beside the fire they
sipped cool water together. His father instructed him to close his
eyes, made his son feel the life of it trickle down his throat and
back into his heart. And, it was just that, a physical sensation of
well-being, of coming back to life when all was so unbearable, when
it seemed truly possible to die of thirst.

* * *

The horse stumbled, snatching Risen
back to his miserable present. He glanced at Sylvie, but her head
bobbed wearily, and she did not look up. He wondered how far they’d
gone, peered overhead at the darkening gray blotches between the
tree branches. It was hard to tell the time of day or the direction
in which they were headed. They’d not yet crossed a river, so they
were either headed north or perhaps east.

“Suffering can distort time,” his
father had once explained to him. “It can make minutes stretch into
hours, or make a single night seem like the solitary beat of a
heart.” Ravan’s eyes had gone to that faraway place that they
sometimes went.

“That night, the one you speak of.
It’s that night, isn’t it?” Risen asked. “You mean the one in the
prison with Uncle D’ata.” His curiosity could not be restrained.
“Was it like that—that night? Fleeting, like the beat of a
heart?”

This had prompted his father to turn
his gaze away, his lips grim and his jaw set. Ravan hadn’t
answered. Sometimes, Risen wondered if his own face was painful for
his father to look upon. He’d heard the rumors, knew that he
reminded his father of D’ata. His uncle had been the bravest man
Ravan had ever met—that was what his father told him. Risen wished
he’d known his uncle, wished he had the strength of heart to do
what this man had done—to love another human being enough to lay
his life down for him, after only knowing him for a single
night.

The sky looked blacker now, and as
the horse slid down a small embankment, Risen decided that this
particular suffering made time slow to a crawl. Never mind, though.
His father would figure out what had happened to him and find him.
Of this he had no question. He once watched his father track a fawn
across a dry pine-needle floor and pull the brush aside just enough
for his son to see the yearling deer grazing thoughtfully across a
small meadow.

“Here…see here,” Ravan whispered of
the trail. “Do you see? The needles are imperfect, misaligned,
bowed and scuffed.” He pointed at the trail but, try as he might,
Risen could not see a difference. “Don’t worry,” his father had
assured him. “Someday you will see as clearly as if it were a
road.”

They will pay. When my father
catches us, they will be sorry they’ve ever taken a breath, Risen
thought to himself, gaining some small satisfaction from it. But
his face remained blank, his outrage hidden, for he was
cautious—unwilling to spark any anger amongst the foreign band of
men.

As though on cue, the one-eyed
leader—Yeorathe they had called him—struck him hard on the back of
his head with his fist. It made Risen’s head spin and nearly sent
him flying from the horse. The headache that was already there
pounded mercilessly now.

Another—Odgar, Risen heard him
called—snarled at Yeorathe. “Have your fun, but cost me resources,
and I will take your other eye and eat it for my
breakfast.”

Yeorathe laughed cruelly, evidently
unafraid, and Risen watched in silence as the man jogged his horse
up to the other. They were a calculating pair, the two of them, and
they gave Risen a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, a very bad
feeling. Still, Risen could hazard no good explanation for why he
and Sylvie had been taken or why they were spared. What he told
these warriors was true, they were only children. But their captors
could not know how special these two really were.

Risen readjusted himself on the
quarters of the horse as the soft drizzle died, replacing itself
instead with driving sheets of rain. He frowned knowing that a
downpour such as this could obliterate almost all of their trail.
He prayed to any god who would listen, and to the universe, that
his father had figured out where he’d gone, would discover that
he’d escaped to find Sylvie, and that they were taken.

Why hadn’t he told Niveus? At least
told her? Father would eventually ask her what she knew, might have
figured it out that way. In retrospect, he would have done things
differently; he regretted his mistakes as the ache in his flanks
worsened.

But, ironically, the miserable
change in weather would offer respite. As the rain continued, it
ran down his loose locks of hair in rivulets, dripping steadily in
small streams off the ends. Tilting his head to one side, he
gathered several of the locks between his lips and held them
carefully there. Then…he drank.

Some time later, when he neared
Sylvie and caught her gaze, saw the misery in her eyes, he
wordlessly showed her what to do. She knew straightaway, and
gathered a stray strand of her own hair between her lips. In that
way, they continued to survive.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

†

Ravan slid from his horse for the
sixth time and knelt, scanning the forest floor, passing his hand
over the long dead leaf beds. He picked up a barely broken twig to
inspect it closely. It infuriated him that the burden of tracking
the children was so slow, so tedious. It’d been nearly two hours,
and he was just realizing that the children’s footprints had been
overcome by men on horses, and the children’s trail had disappeared
altogether.

For the longest stretch he tried to
abandon this notion. What would strangers want with children? And
one of them a crippled girl? But this was a question of insanity,
for he knew better than most the capacity of men to hurt a child.
He’d been one of them, one of the broken ones exploited for
profit.

His heart fell. Risen and Sylvie
were taken. They were on horseback—of this he was certain. It was
not the earthen stretches or the forest floor that would become
most difficult to track. Those would be easier. It would be rock
that would confound him. If these strangers crossed rocky ground,
rain would remove the subtle signs that he depended on to follow
them. Then, he would be left to circling the entire expanse,
struggling to see where they came off the rocks on the other
side.

He raised his head and studied the
fading dense stand of trees that stretched off into blackness in
front of him. Please let them stay on soft ground, he thought to
himself.

It was daunting, not just for the
task at hand but because it was his son that he chased. Never had
he felt this kind of fear before. Never had he hated someone
unknown to him so completely as he did these men, and his heart
swelled uncomfortably in his chest. The red veil threatened to wash
across his eyes, begged to take his vision from him, to make an
animal of the man.

He swallowed and squinted so hard,
focused so intently on the darkening light of the fading forest,
that his vision blurred. It didn’t help that the rain was falling
so heavily now. The only encouraging sign was the absence of one
thing…blood.

Velecent scanned the dense
undergrowth as well, but his eyes were not nearly so keen as his
friend’s. “Do you see any sign of them?” he asked outright. “I
don’t, not a mark of them. Just the horses.” The warrior tossed his
light brown locks from his eyes and prepared to remount his
warhorse.

“They were here,” Ravan indicated
the small thicket, “and here.” He pointed at apparent nothingness
on the ground in front of him. When Velecent eyed him as though
he’d gone mad, Ravan explained, “This is where Risen and Sylvie
last walked. They were taken from this spot and are headed,” he
pointed toward the Northeast, “this direction, on
horseback.”

“How do you know that it is
Sylvie?” his friend wondered. “I understand the heavier child’s
print is your son’s, but how do you know they have the girl?”
Velecent was perplexed.

“The prints—the gait of the lighter
child—is uneven.” He glanced up from his assessment of the ground.
“Sylvie is unsound.”

His first in command nodded. “Ah, I
think I knew that. But why?” he wondered, “Why children? What would
they want with them, and one of them lame?” He pointed into the
blackness of the thick forest. “Why waste their time when they
could just…just…” He appeared suddenly sheepish for the thought he
almost put into words, and let the question remain unasked as Ravan
shot him a scathing glance.

“Say that aloud and you will regret
that you did,” his leader cautioned.

Velecent and Ravan were friends, had
developed a slow burning kinship over the last ten years. The
younger man had a keen sense of humor, laughed easily, and fought
viciously. They were oddly opposite in many ways but were drawn to
each other in a rare fashion. Ravan required beside him men whom he
could trust. He knew, from many years of experience, that this was
not easy to find and even more difficult to return.

This man, however, had demonstrated
his allegiance repeatedly, on and off the battlefield, and their
friendship had deepened. Risen seemed entirely enamored of this
first knight as well, engaging him when he least expected it in
ambush. Velecent nearly always feigned surprise, most often fell as
though he was undone by the boy. Once, he laughed heartily as he
gently defended himself with his sword, surprised to see how adept
the boy really was!

Through the years, Ravan had become
very comfortable with his younger friend, and Velecent was nearly
always at his Lord’s side, for Ravan had grown to trust him
implicitly. One day, Velecent asked without warning, “Do you
consider me your friend? Like a brother, perhaps? Or maybe a close
cousin?”

He said it with some humor to his
voice. This had prompted the opposite expression of what he
obviously expected, sparked a darkened countenance on the face of
his master and friend as though he’d pinched a nerve.

“Friend? Yes, of course. I have
none closer. You should know that, but I have only one brother, and
his soul is risen in my son.”