The Education of Brother Thaddius and other tales of DemonWars (The DemonWars Saga) (3 page)

He drew out his sword and used it to lead the way through the tangle of branch and snow, pushing out into the frigid air, trying to orient himself and determine the direction of Bradwarden’s howl. The wind was from the northwest still, and it had carried Bradwarden’s cry, so Mather set out that way, circumventing Dundalis, the smoke of the many chimneys thick in the air. Soon he found a path cut through the drifts—by goblins, he knew, though he could hardly see on this dark night. He didn’t dare light a torch, fearing to make himself a target, but he understood his disadvantage here. Goblins were creatures of caves and deep tunnels. They could see much better in the dark than even an elven-trained ranger.

Mather was not surprised when he came through one large drift and caught a flicker of movement to the side, a missile flying straight for him.

He sent his energy into
Tempest
, and the sword flared with angry light. He brought the blade whipping about, intercepting the hurled spear and knocking it harmlessly aside, and then slashed back, deflecting a second.

The third got through.

In the brutal cold, Mather hardly felt the impact, but he knew it was bad, for the spear had caught him in the side, under the ribs, its tip driving front to back. When he grasped at the bleeding wound, grabbing the shaft to steady it, for every twitch sent a wave of agony rolling through him, he felt the slick point of the weapon sticking out of his back.

He hardly realized he was lying down now, on his back in the snow, staring up at the descending flakes, and suddenly, so very, very cold.

Movement nearby, the goblins rushing in for the kill, brought him back to his senses, made him understand that death was imminent.

But not now, Mather determined. Not like this. With a growl, he snapped apart the spear shaft just above the wound entrance and fought away the surge of blackness that threatened to engulf him. Growling still, teeth clenched in sheer determination, he closed his hand upon
Tempest
and lay very still, waiting, waiting.

Three goblins came upon him, laughing and hooting, and then howling in surprise as Mather sprang up at them like a cornered wolverine. He whipped and stabbed
Tempest
in a furious flurry, hardly bothering to aim, and when his sword flew above the closest ducking creature, leaving it an opening on his left side, he simply punched out his free hand with all his strength, connecting solidly on the goblin’s jaw and launching it to the snow.

Mather let his rage take him, knowing that if he stopped and considered his movements, if he played out this fight with insight and thoughtfulness, his pain might overwhelm him. Thus, he was surprised mere seconds later, to find that all three goblins were down, two dead and the
third groaning. Mather moved for that one, thinking to make it tell him where he could find Bradwarden, but then he heard the centaur cry out again and marked the direction well.

He killed the goblin with a clean stroke.

And then he fell to his knees, the waves of pain buckling him, the dark and cold weakness creeping into his every joint. He looked down at the bloody spear stump. He wanted to pull it out, but understood that the barbs would take half of his belly with it. He wanted to push it through and knew that soon he would have to, but he understood that to extract that point now would be fatal, for he would likely bleed to death before he ever found help.

He looked back in the direction of Dundalis, peaceful, oblivious Dundalis. Not so far away, he thought, and he realized that he could make it there, and that someone there would tend to him, his brother, perhaps.

Bradwarden cried out again, and Mather took his first steps… away from Dundalis.

Half blind with pain, his limbs numb with cold, he plowed on. His blood came thick in his mouth, that sickly sweet taste promising death.

He spat it out.

Purely focused, beyond pain and weakness, he knew where he was and could guess easily enough from the direction of Bradwarden’s cry where the goblins would be. On he went, refusing to surrender to the pain and the cold, refusing to die. He tried to pick his path carefully but wound up having to burst right through snow drifts, the wet stuff only increasing the cold’s grip on him. But on he went, and some time later, he saw a campfire, and then, as he neared, saw the silhouettes of several goblins, and one large form, balled in a net and hanging above the camp, above the fire.

He could only pray that he was not too late.

The goblins had their eyes turned to Bradwarden, the centaur squirming in the heat and the smoke as flames licked at him.

And then Mather was among them, and one, and then another fell dead to
Tempest’s
mighty cut.

The others did not flee, though, as goblins often did, for they outnumbered this obviously wounded man seven to one, and in this snow and in this cold, they had nowhere to run. On they came, howling and hooting.

A feinted slice, a turn of the wrist and a straight ahead stab, and
Tempest
took down another.

Mather backhanded away a club strike from the right, but a third goblin, running right over its dying companion, thrust with its spear, inside the ranger’s defenses. A quick retraction of the sword severed the spear shaft even as the point dug into Mather’s shoulder, but the goblin thrust took the strength from his arm.

Quick to improvise, Mather simply grabbed up the sword in his left hand and stabbed the goblin in the face, then brought it about powerfully to take a club from an attacker at his left. The ranger pivoted to square up with the creature. With a roar of defiance against the blackness that edged his faltering vision, he brought the sword up in an arc and then down diagonally atop the goblins shoulder, so powerfully that the enchanted silvered blade slashed through the creature’s collarbone, down through its spine, cracking ribs apart and tearing flesh. Another growl and Mather rolled about, the fine blade finishing the cut, exiting the goblin’s other side and dropping the two bloody pieces to the snow.

But four other goblins were about him in a frenzy, two whacking at him with clubs and the others stabbing him with spears.

He connected with one, or thought he had, but took a thump on the back of his head that sent his thoughts spinning, that brought the darkness closer… too close.

And then Mather knew. He could not win this time. Through blurry eyes, he saw the goblin before him slump into the snow, but took no comfort, for another spear found him, digging into his hip.

He knew that Bradwarden would die if he went down, reminded himself of that pointedly, and that thought alone kept him on his feet. He blocked a spear thrust but was hit again on the side of the head. He staggered away, somehow managing to hold his footing. But now one eye was closed, and darkness crept at the edges of his other eye, narrowing and blurring his vision to the point where he could not even see his enemies, could see nothing at all except the pinpoint of light that was the goblin’s fire.

Mather made for the light.

The goblins pursued, hooting and howling, stabbing and smacking the defenseless man through ever step.

But on he went, determinedly putting one foot in front of the other, stepping, stepping, feeling no pain, pushing it away, burying it under the mantle of responsibility, as a ranger and a friend. He hardly saw the light now, but heard the crackle of the fire and knew he was close.

He was hit again, on the back of the head; the blackness swallowed him.

He felt himself falling, falling, thoughts of Olwan and the times they would not share, and he thought of Bradwarden.

Mather roared one last defiant roar and forced himself to stand straight and tall. He swung about, the slicing
Tempest
forcing the goblins back and that buying him the time he needed to turn again to the fire, to look above it, and using more memory than vision, to aim his cut.

He felt the sword bite at the supporting rope, felt the rush of weight as Bradwarden dropped before him, brushing him and throwing him to the ground.

Then, from somewhere far away, he heard the centaur’s outraged roar, heard the goblin’s shrieks of fear, heard the trample of hooves, the cries of pain.

And then he knew… peace. A cool blackness.

It all came back to Mather in that last fleeting moment, memories of his childhood before the Touel’alfar, his times with Tuntun and the other elves, his days silently protecting Dundalis and Weedy Meadow, unappreciated, but hardly caring.

Doing as he had been trained to do, acting the role of ranger, and of friend.

And he had this night.

*****

Olwan Wyndon, his wife, and their infant son, Elbryan, slept peacefully that night in Dundalis, they and their companion family, the Aults, warmly welcomed by the folk. Listening to the wind howling futilely against the solid common house walls, the rhythmic breathing of his loved ones, Olwan knew he had found his home, a place where his child could grow strong and straight.

He didn’t know that he had lost a brother that night, didn’t know that any goblins had been about, didn’t know that any goblins even existed.

It would stay that way for Olwan, and for all the folk of Dundalis—save the very old, who remembered goblins—for more than a decade.

*****

Following the trail of carnage, Tuntun found a tearful Bradwarden piling stones on Mather’s cold body the next morning.

“It’s the only place,” the centaur explained, referring to the thick and well-tended grove about them, a special place for Mather, where the trees had blocked much of the snow. “Riverhawk’s place for all time.”

“Blood of Alturias,” Tuntun spat, using the insult as a shield against emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. How many times had she said that to Mather over the years?

And how many times must she watch a friend, a ranger, die? There were never more than six rangers at one time, but Tuntun had lived for centuries, and had witnessed so many of them put into the cold ground. None had hurt more than this one, hurt more than Mather, the boy she had personally trained, whom she had cultivated into so fine and strong a man. She thought about her own mortality then, the long, long years in the life of an elf, and, ironically, a smile crept across her delicate features.

“A man might live but a day’s worth of life in an entire year,” she said to Bradwarden. “Or a year’s worth in a single day. Riverhawk had a long life.”

THE END

A S
ONG FOR
S
ADYE

O
ld Orrin Davii entered the smoky room with his face in his hands and his thin shoulders hunched. Across the way, sitting against the wall between a pair of large crates, the teenage girl watched his every movement, her eyes wary, her every muscle ready to propel her away if he moved threateningly toward her.

But he didn’t. He never did, and gradually, as he moved to the side of the doorway and sat down on another large box, Sadye relaxed. She scolded herself for her paranoia — Orrin had made no moves against her in the weeks of her indenture to him. When the court had ordered her so indentured, Sadye, more a young woman now than a girl, had thought his desire to take her from the court wrought of salacious intent. It usually was, after all, from everything the young street thief had heard. Many of her running mates had been caught and indentured to one or another influential Ursal landowner, and the stories of their subsequent existence after the indenture had rung out a similar, lewd note.

So far at least, Orrin Davii had thankfully not fit that mold.

Sadye regarded him now without the prism of her fear clouding her vision. He was much older than she — four times her fifteen years, she guessed — and obviously wracked by the decades of a difficult existence. His face was leathery and thin, with the stubble of a grizzled gray beard always visible, and his eyes glowed a dull gray. But while those eyes didn’t have the sparkle of excitement common to one of Sadye’s age, the woman did see some life yet within them.

“Your time here is almost finished,” Orrin remarked, drawing her from her contemplation. “Would that you had committed a more serious offense!”

“How touching that you will miss me,” Sadye said, and she didn’t completely fill her voice with sarcasm, at least.

“Indeed,” Orrin replied. “And a pity it is, too, that you were so headstrong and tight with your thoughts when first you came to me. I had big plans for you, young Sadye, but alas, by the time I came to trust in you, time had already run short.”

Sadye couldn’t help but tilt her head at that, though she knew that she was perhaps revealing too much of her intrigue. Never play your hand — that was the lesson she had learned on the streets.

“Did you move quickly enough to put it away this time?” Orrin asked, and he grinned at her and narrowed his gray eyes. “Or did you simply tuck it behind the crate again?”

“I know not of what you speak.”

A burst of laughter escaped Orrin, mocking her where she sat. Sadye instinctively glanced all around, seeking some escape route, should she need one.

“You know indeed,” said Orrin. “I have heard you play.”

“Play?”

“Sadye….”

She couldn’t resist his disapproving look. It made her feel little, like the look her father used to give her before the rosy plague had taken him. At the same time, though, and in a strange way, that look from Orrin now offered her some measure of comfort. For there was no maliciousness in it, and no promise of retribution. Orrin seemed almost amused.

Without any further hesitation, Sadye reached behind the crate on her right and produced the delicate lute, bringing it across her lap. She couldn’t help herself, and gently touched its strings, sending thin notes into the air.

“You like it?” Orrin asked.

Sadye smiled and nodded.

“It is very valuable, you know,” the old man remarked.

Sadye stopped touching the strings and looked up at him, suddenly fearful that she had overstepped her place here.

“You do not even understand its worth, do you?” asked Orrin.

“It is beautifully crafted.”