Risen (31 page)

All of them seemed unconcerned that
they might have been followed, pursued after their human theft, for
they lingered about the fire, content to ease into the misery of
the dreary day ahead. It was true—no farmer’s child would likely
have the familial resources to venture after a band of men such as
these, and none of them appeared to believe that their captives
were anything other than peasant children.

Critically, Risen believed none of
the men knew he was Ravan’s son…yet. If they had, they would have
run until their horses had fallen…and then run some more. This he
told himself just to ease the misery of his lot. He knew, in
reality, that these men were mercenaries. They would fight his
father to the death if it came to that. It was the way of
war.

Sneering at this last thought, he
struggled to conceal his anger. This proved most difficult, for
Risen had developed for the first time in his life the unfamiliar,
perilous emotion named hatred. It was strange to him, that visceral
pull to his gut, the thickness in his throat, and tunneling of his
vision. If he could draw his blade without recourse across the
throat of any of them, he knew without a doubt that he
would.

But he knew he must temper his
emotions. It would not do to have any of these men target him or
Sylvie because of his reckless anger. A predictable lot they
were—obvious seekers of ill-gotten gain. They all had about them
the swagger of an unprincipled life. It was common enough. One
needn’t look very far, even amongst ordinary people of a town, to
see it in a man. It stood out like a poorly fit coat, and several
of this clan wore it wretchedly.

The only exception, Risen thought
again, might be William. He studied him, watched the man as he
meticulously rolled his bed and tacked out his horse. The man was
precise, and frequently, precision was met with self-respect. This
is what Father told him, that sloth was the mark of a man without
pride. Yes, William appeared to have more self-respect than the
others.

On the other end of the spectrum
were two others. One of them was a different beast altogether.
Yeorathe was a one-eyed barbarian who, evidently, vied for position
as troop leader with another named Odgar. Other than when the brute
had struck him, Risen had noticed Yeorathe very little that first
day as his concern had been to stay on the horse and keep up with
Sylvie’s condition. Today, however, Yeorathe soon became the
undivided center of his attention. This man possessed a heart of
stone as evidenced by what happened next.

As the breaking light of day
illuminated even the darkness of the forest, Risen saw that Rowan
appeared dead or nearly dead. Evidently the long ride the day
before and the gravity of his injury along with the cold of the
night had been too much for him, and he was nearly un-rousable this
morning.

Risen’s heart broke as he watched
Yeorathe sever the almost dead boy’s bonds and, grasping him by the
heel of his boot, drag his friend to the fire.

Rowan stirred, but barely, as even
the fire was scarcely enough to rouse him from his impending death.
Even so, the act was barbarously cruel—the Englishman even seemed
thoroughly disgusted with the act. Risen believed William was about
to intervene, but saw him turn his head away instead.

Yeorathe only laughed as he pulled
Rowan across the coals. “We wouldn’t want him finding his way back
and sending a search party, now would we?”

Risen looked away, unable to observe
the imperfection of something that had only minutes before been his
dear friend. The smell of the burning hair was the most cruel, and
he struggled, unable to force from his mind what the final moments
for Tobias and Sylvie’s mother must have been like.

It was a horrid thing to do, and he
decided at that instant that Yeorathe was entirely the cruelest man
he’d ever known, a monster. And, he decided at that moment that, of
all of them, he hated him the most, that should the opportunity
present itself to either run or kill this man, he would risk his
own life to destroy him.

* * *

“The business of war,” Ravan
murmured in that deep, throaty voice that appealed to his son very
much, “is profit. The business of cruelty at war, however, is an
opportunity taken advantage of only by monsters.”

His father did not look up but, as
he often did, continued to busy his hands with a task, wrapping the
arrow fletchings, only occasionally glancing idly into the fire or
at his son as he spoke. They were camped together, just the two of
them, in the middle of winter, deep in the lovely forest to the
west of the Ravan Dynasty.

Risen pulled his jacket closer
around his shoulders and edged his boots nearer to the flames. “I’m
afraid of monsters,” he admitted.

This prompted a smile from Ravan.
“Monsters can be terrible, but they all have one thing in common.
They are all, when you dig deep enough, cowards—every last one of
them.”

“What can be done?” his son
wondered. “Even if they are cowards, monsters are the
strongest.”

Ravan was quite serious then. “All
cowards have a weakness, Risen. Of this you can be certain. There
is only one thing that can be done. You must find the weakness—use
it against them. Only then can they be destroyed.”

Risen picked up a stick and began to
idly poke at the fire to rouse sparks from it. He gazed sleepily at
them as they swirled up against the velvet blanket of the night
sky. Then, as if reporting on the weather, he murmured, “The man
who was here before you—his name was Adorno—I’ve heard people call
him a monster.”

This gained Ravan’s attention not a
small amount, and he glanced up from beneath his eyebrows. “Yes.”
He drew the word out. “It is true.”

“He’s gone now. Someone killed him
on his wedding day. He was married to Mother before you came
home.”

Ravan stopped his task and crossed
his arms over one knee, giving his son his full attention. “Yes,
that is true.”

“How dreadful it must have been,
that Mother had to marry him, and then for her to lose her husband
on their wedding day. But, if he was a monster, I’m glad it
happened—glad he’s gone. Besides, then you wouldn’t be with her,
and I wouldn’t be born.” He shrugged. “I think that is why she is
the way she is. So…well…anyway, because she had to marry a monster
and all. Don’t you?” He looked up from poking the fire when his
father was quiet for too long. “Father? Is everything all
right?”

Ravan looked his son square in the
eye. “Risen, if Adorno had not died on that day, I would have
killed him myself.” The statement was harsh and honest.

The boy appreciated it more than his
father would likely know and he replied, “He was a monster, Father.
It may have been an arranged wedding, but I would never have picked
a monster for Mother.”

“Your mother is…different, not
because of Adorno. You mother has been who she is long before the
arrangement, perhaps since before she was even born.” He glanced
away, to the black backdrop of darkness beyond the fire. “It is one
of the many things I love about her.”

They sat silently for some time
before Risen asked, “But, Father?”

“Yes?”

“What was his
weakness…Adorno’s?”

Ravan took the stick from his son’s
hand and began to do just the same thing, swirling the coals so the
sparks danced before their eyes. The faintest smile pulled at his
lips.

“He loved your mother.”

* * *

Positioning himself so that if
Sylvie awakened she would not see, Risen peeked from over his
shoulder. As he observed Yeorathe kick the corpse of the dead boy
farther into the fire; there appeared nothing that was weak about
this monster. Father is right. War is either about profit or
hatred. This monster doesn’t know me…yet. So he cannot hate me. For
now, it must be profitable for him to keep me alive. Risen decided
at that moment that he would keep his lineage hidden from these
men. And he surmised something else. If it was profit these men
expected from the capture of children, it could be gained in only
one way—slavery.

This was a sickening thought.
Slavery for him could mean many things. He could be forced to
work—labor of some sort, a mine perhaps. He could be made to
fight—a medieval gladiator he imagined. Possibly he would be
apprenticed, made a sailor, maybe placed in a legion’s ranks.
Risen’s mind then refused to go where next it sensibly might, for
he knew there were only two paths that slavery of a girl could
follow. She would be either a domestic laborer, or…

He swallowed thickly and found her
hand with his own. “Sylvie, wake up, move your legs. We must get
ready to leave, mustn’t show weakness.”

Risen suspected the trek the men
were undertaking was nothing that would be slowed for the benefit
of the few children they captured. For their tender age, if they
could not endure, if they died during the journey, it would only
serve these men to weed out the weak and unprofitable. On some
level, Risen was becoming increasingly aware of this, and he
worried greatly for the girl he loved.

Suddenly, Risen’s chest was
intensely uncomfortable, his breath hard to catch, and he briefly
wondered if he was simply fatigued from the past day and night.
This made no sense, though, for his father had insisted that he
always be in the best condition at all times. Realistically, he
could likely go on like this, as their captive, for some time
before succumbing to true exhaustion.

Analyzing it further, he decided
this was not what afflicted him now. It was Sylvie. It was she who
caused his heart to fret. She was so fragile, so frail, so…perfect.
And these men could not see this, would not see this.

For them to see Sylvie as he did,
they would have had to spend the lifetime with her that he
had—magic, endless days lost in the mysterious brilliance that
youthful camaraderie and adolescent love allowed. No, they would
never see the way she smiled when something amused her, the way her
eyes narrowed when she laughed, and how beautiful it was when she
hummed a tune when they were walking together. All they would ever
perceive was weakness and a lack of usefulness, and they would
crush her as easily as they would a rare, wounded bird.

If such a thing really existed,
Risen decided that it was men like these who went to Hell. He
resolved at that moment that he would not allow Sylvie to become
their casualty along the way. No matter what, he would save
her.

“Sylvie,” he was harsher this time.
“Get up. Move your legs and stand.” He began to force himself to
his feet, to drag her up with him, and she whimpered.

“Stop, Risen. I don’t want to go
on. I want to stay here. I…I…”

“No! Sylvie, no. Your mother, your
father…Tobias, they wouldn’t want you to do this, to have it end
like this.” He pulled at her again, finally forcing her, limping,
to her feet and hissed under his breath. “They’d want you to
survive, to live.”

“Live for what, Risen?” It wasn’t
cruel the way she said it, only sincere. “What is there
now?”

Lowering his voice, for he did not
want the others to hear the intimacy of his words, he whispered to
her, “Your life, Sylvie. Friends, a warm house,
children…love.”

“No one can love me now, Risen. No
one.”

He bit his lip. It broke his heart
that she might believe this, and he almost shared with her how he
truly felt, almost blurted the words he long meant to say, but
instead he said, “Then revenge. We must avenge them. They deserve
at least that.”

With this she came just a bit more
to life. “How?”

He helped Sylvie, steadied her as
she pulled her feet up beneath herself.

“Find their weakness. That’s what
you do to a monster. You find its weakness. I don’t know how, but
we will, I promise. We will avenge them, Sylvie. I swear
it.”

William came to them just then,
unbound them, and passed them each a morsel of bread almost
sneakily, Risen thought. Then, as he pretended to disassemble their
bindings even more and roll the rope up, he gave them enough time
to each drink liberally of his water flask. So, it was possible
after all, Risen thought. The Englishman might be capable of
greater compassion.

Dropping his head, he edged closer
to the soldier as he returned the flask and murmured beneath his
breath. “Thank you.” When William appeared to have not heard, Risen
added, “Perhaps if you were to help us—”

“Silence!” William hissed. “If I
wish to hear your bleating, I’ll ask for it.” Yanking the two by
the wrists, one in either hand, he dragged them to their
prospective mounts, tossed Risen up first, then took Sylvie onto
his.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

†

The forest seemed different to
Moira; there was something quite out of the ordinary about it.
Perhaps it was the way the fog swirled in and out of the trees;
perhaps it was how silent the birds became as they approached them.
And perhaps…it was the woman she followed.

Moira peered ahead, watched
Nicolette and the mare as they picked their way along in no obvious
hurry. Risen’s mother appeared so thin from behind, the heavy
woolen riding cape and hood obscuring her so that it almost looked
as though she was simply a young girl out for a misty day’s ride.
All the while, the sparrow—the last bird Nicolette had
resurrected—flew along with her, sometimes leading, sometimes
following.