Spirit of the King (12 page)

“Is this your first mission, son?”

Therrador took the scroll offered by the messenger and rolled it in his fingers. A spot of blue wax emblazoned with the royal seal held it closed.

From Braymon himself. He must be all right.

“No, Lord Therrador. Not my first.”

Therrador smiled. “Your first outside the city?” If he dragged out the reading of the scroll, perhaps whatever it contained would no longer be real. Maybe the words written upon it would disappear and whatever happened would go back to the way it had always been.

The messenger hung his head, embarrassed. “Yes, my Lord. It’s my first trip outside Achtindel.” He snickered to himself. “I’m lucky I found you.”

“I have a feeling I’m not so lucky you found me.” Therrador tapped the parchment scroll on his knee while the messenger watched. “You’re dismissed. Thank you for your efforts.”

The boy saluted again, this time with less zest, and turned abruptly. Therrador returned the salute
halfheartedly
and watched the messenger leave the tent. When the flap settled into place, he looked down at the scroll in his hand. Whatever news it contained was at least a week old—it would have taken that long or more for its carrier to reach the frontier, more if he didn’t locate the camp immediately.

Therrador moved to the chair by his cot and contemplated the message. He rubbed the wax seal with his thumb, felt the outline of the tiger’s head emblem signifying the message was written by Braymon’s hand; thoughts swirled through his mind. If the message was of a military nature, it would have been given to Sir Matte in Therrador’s absence. If it contained news of ill befalling the king, it would be someone else’s mark in the wax—Sir Alton Sienhin’s or perhaps the healer’s. Therrador shook his head and sighed. Nothing to do but open it and find out.

He slid his thumb under the wax, broke the seal and unrolled the parchment. Even before he began reading, one word jumped off the page, grabbing his attention and freezing his breath in his lungs.

Seerna.

He scanned the looping letters of Braymon’s hand, taking in the meaning without resting overlong on any one of them.

Regret to inform you...

...died in child birth.

The baby survived, physicians are attending him.

...her last wish was to name him Graymon.

It said more: expressions of regret, offers of assistance. At the end of the message, Braymon encouraged him to continue his duties at the foot of the mountains, ensured him the babe would be cared for until his return.

Therrador lowered the parchment, allowing it to dangle from his fingers, and stared straight ahead at the plain canvas tent wall. Numbness started in his fingers and toes; the lack of sensation crawled up his arms and legs. It spread through his chest, to his head, creating a swirling throb threatening to pop his skull like an over-filled wine skin. He let out a shuddering breath in an attempt to dispel the uncomfortable feeling along with the air from his lungs, but it didn’t leave him. Instead, it clamped his teeth tight and curled his fingers into fists, crumpling the parchment.

He stared at his boots, at the ground under his feet. His vision blurred as tears came to his eyes. One slid down his nose, hanging from the tip before plummeting to the dirt between his boots. He stared at it a second before anger exploded in him. Therrador stood suddenly and hurled the crumpled parchment against the wall of the tent.

“Braymon,” he whispered through clenched teeth.

This was the king’s fault. If he hadn’t sent him away to suppress the tribal uprising, he’d have been there for his wife. If he’d stayed in Achtindel, she might still be alive, or at least he’d have had another month to show her how much he loved her.

His thoughts turned to the baby. His son. Alive and well and taken care of.

And named after the king.

Therrador stared at the tent wall and the crumpled parchment lying on the ground for a long time, every muscle in his body taut and strained, the cords in his neck standing out. The world dimmed and brightened as waves of emotion broke over him like the ocean slamming against the rocky shore. Anger, sadness, longing, hatred. His breath came in short bursts through his nose. His fists quivered at his sides, his anger contained in them with no place to go. How long he stood in that spot fighting the urge to jump on a horse and ride for the capital, he didn’t know. The next thing he remembered was Sir Matte’s voice calling him. He might have been calling for an hour, for all Therrador knew.

“My Lord,” the old knight called, the canvas tent wall muting his voice. “My Lord?”

Therrador shook his head, re-focused his eyes.

“What is it?” he growled.

The last thing he wanted right now was to tell Matte what happened. The last thing he wanted was to face another human being.

“The second search party has returned.” Sir Matte paused and, when Therrador gave no response, he continued. “They have a prisoner.”

The knight’s words made Therrador’s eyes widen.

A prisoner. Someone who can help my time here end.

Therrador burst through the tent flap into a night he hadn’t realized had fallen. Cook fires lit the camp, but no soldiers sat by them. Everyone was gathered around the central fire where the prisoner stood, hands bound behind his back, a rope tethering him to the saddle of a horse.

“My Lord, the...”

Without a word, Therrador pushed past Sir Matte and headed for the man encircled by soldiers taunting him with threats of violence. His unkempt hair and matted beard identified him as a member of one of the mountain tribes.

The man stood steadfast, the bonfire’s flames reflected in his dark eyes as he stared into the night, refusing to meet the gaze of any of the soldiers. Had he been in a different state, Therrador might have admired the way he showed no fear. Unfortunately for the prisoner, he wasn’t.

Sir Matte called out words that Therrador didn’t hear and the circle of soldiers parted, allowing their leader to walk directly to the prisoner. A few of the soldiers saluted Therrador; he ignored them, his attention directed to the tribesman, his way home to his new child. The man’s eyes flickered to Therrador, but their gazes met for only a second before Therrador’s fist smashed into his face. Blood spurted from the man’s nose; he collapsed to his knees but didn’t cry out. Therrador stood over him, seething with anger and hatred.

“Untie him,” he said.

At first, no one moved. The group of soldiers stared, none of them jumping to do his bidding. Therrador’s anger increased.

“Release him from the horse,” he yelled and the three men closest to the steed all moved at once. The tribesman looked up at Therrador, blood streaming down his chin from his broken nose, but he didn’t speak.

Beg for mercy. Beg for your worthless life.

With the knots undone, Therrador grabbed the tribesman by the front of his grubby doeskin shirt and pulled him to his feet. The man stared, unflinching, seemingly fearless.

For now.

“Where’s your camp?” Therrador shook the man but received no response. “How many in your raiding party?”

Sir Matte appeared at Therrador’s shoulder. “My Lord, not all mountain men speak our language.”

“He speaks it,” Therrador barked at the knight and Sir Matte backed away. “You have to speak it so you can tell your victims to beg for mercy, don’t you?”

The man smiled, blood streaked on his yellowed teeth. Therrador slammed his forehead against the man’s face provoking a pained yelp.

“Where’s your camp?”

“You kill me before I tell,” the mountain man said and spat blood on Therrador’s leather breast piece.

The circle of soldiers pushed closer about them but their leader held them back with a gesture.

“You’ll tell,” Therrador whispered, “then you’ll beg me to kill you.”

Therrador rammed his knee into the prisoner’s groin and, as the man doubled over off balance, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him closer to the fire. The group of soldiers followed closely. Therrador threw the man face down in the dirt a foot from the flames and pressed his knee into the small of his back.

“Where’s the camp?”

“No tell.”

Therrador drove the man’s face into the dirt, grinding it against the ground. He came away sputtering, spitting a concoction of blood and soil from his lips.

“How many in your raiding party?”

The man shook his head. “No tell.”

Gathering fistfuls of the prisoner’s shirt, Therrador dragged him forward six inches and settled on his back again. When he struggled to pull his face away from the flames, the king’s advisor grabbed the man’s greasy hair and forced his nose closer. The heat scalded Therrador’s fingers; the smell of smoldering hair wafted to his nostrils.

“Where’s your camp?” Therrador growled through clenched teeth.

The man shook his head, his beard stirring up dust. Therrador grabbed his shirt again when Sir Matte put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. The king’s advisor looked at his long-time friend, barely recognizing him through a veil of hatred and anger.

“Therrador, my Lord, there are other ways,” he said low enough to keep the other men from hearing. “Don’t do this.”

Therrador glared at him. Fifteen years before, they fought side by side to win Braymon his crown—Matte had practically been a father to him. For a moment, he considered relenting, but the thought of Braymon stirred him.

Braymon the faithless.

“Get your hand off me.”

Matte must have seen the degree of Therrador’s rage, heard it in his tone. He removed his hand from his friend’s shoulder and backed away, head shaking. When he reached the circle of soldiers, he turned and left. Therrador returned his attention to the prisoner, bunching the doeskin shirt in his hands.

“Tell me.”

“Never.”

Therrador jerked the man forward a foot-and-a-half and the screaming started immediately. His hair and beard melted with a sickly smell, his flesh sizzled. Behind Therrador, the soldiers cheered. The man yowled. Through the tumult, Therrador almost missed the tribesman begging for mercy. He pulled him out of the flames and stared into the man’s smoking, ruined face.

“I tell,” he whispered before the pain caused him to lose consciousness.

***

Therrador stood in the middle of the encampment, blood dripping from the tip of his sword, the autumn breeze swirling smoke over his head. Flames engulfed the shelters of branches and makeshift tents, and Erechanian soldiers heaved bodies of tribesmen—some of them still groaning—onto the fires. Screams filled the air, silenced a moment later by sword or spear. The twenty-five tribesmen were no match for the forty trained fighting men with which Therrador surprised them. All of them lay dead or dying. Two soldiers strode past Therrador, a dead mountain man dangling by arms and legs between them.

“Wait,” he said and the men stopped, looking expectantly at their leader. “Behead the rest. Put their heads on spikes. I want them to be a warning: this is the fate awaiting any who defy the might of Erechania.”

Therrador spent the rest of the morning watching his troops carry out his orders. The prisoner, face oozing blood and pus, watched from his knees at Therrador’s side, the occasional whimper squeezing through his pain-tightened throat. When they were done, seventeen six-foot-tall wooden stakes adorned with bearded, long-haired heads decorated the ruined camp. Therrador stepped before the last remaining Estycian and looked into the man’s burned features. He rested his bloody sword on the man’s shoulder.

“Should I let you live to return to your tribe and warn them what will happen if they defy King Braymon again?” The name was a bitter taste in his mouth. He wanted to spit after he said it.
How could he have done this to me?
“Or should I relieve you of your misery?”

The prisoner looked up. Tears might have flowed from his eyes, or it may have been fluid weeping from his open wounds. His charred lips moved, but no sound emerged.

“You’re right,” Therrador said calmly despite the anger the name ‘Braymon’ bubbled up inside him. He looked around the camp. “There’s plenty of warning here for the rest of your tribe.”

The man’s eyes widened as Therrador drew back his sword. He hesitated a second to imagine it was the king kneeling before him, then swung his blade, severing the arteries in the man’s throat. Blood pulsed from the gash and his body fell sideways.

“Should we stake him, too, my Lord?” a soldier standing behind Therrador asked.

“No. Leave him for the animals.”

Therrador handed his sword to the soldier to clean and made his way to his horse, visions of his late wife swirling through his mind.

***

The night after the slaughter, the black-cloaked figure he now knew as Sheyndust first appeared to him. He thought himself delirious with grief, but it was the first of many visits which set in motion the events leading to Braymon’s death.

And Graymon’s abduction.

Therrador looked across the salt flats at the curls of smoke rising from the Kanosee camp. If he’d known then his rash decisions and betrayal of his friend would lead to this, he’d have chosen a different path. He might not have saved Seerna, but he didn’t have to blame Braymon for her death. He could have asked him about his wife’s choice of the name ‘Graymon’ instead of jumping to conclusions about the nature of the king’s relationship with her. Different decisions and his son would likely be safe; Erechania wouldn’t rest in the hands of a mad-woman who fashioned herself a Necromancer.

The breeze gusting in off the Sea of Linghala cut through Therrador’s thin cloak, but he didn’t pull it tight around his shoulders. Instead, he stared at the sun sparkling on the sea and at the tents strewn across the salt flats. Somewhere out there, a Kanosee wagon rattled down a bumpy track, taking his son away from him.

“Happy birthday,” he whispered and wiped a tear from his cheek.

Athryn crouched over the motionless figure lying in the middle of the cell, his hand resting on the man's chest. A dim light seeping in through the tightly woven latticework door reflected dully in the magician's eyes.