The Kingdoms of Evil (28 page)

Kendrick was walking ahead of them and couldn't see, but it sounded like the Paladin finally started walking.
No doubt Phinneas was behind him, gun pressed into his holy back.
Behind them, the lizard-man screamed wordlessly.

The lizard-man's noises continued as the four soldiers made their way through the forest back to their camp.
Kendrick picked his way over roots and between bushes, at once
disturbed by the sound and excited.
Excited of course at the destruction of a servant of the Storm, but disturbed, too, by what it represented.

Between and the Rationalist Union had always been inseparable allies against the Storm, Skrea. Now, though, it looked like that centuries-old alliance was breaking. Why? Both wanted to destroy Skrea and the Kingdoms of Evil. Didn't they?

The lizard-man cried again.
Kendrick fancied he could hear a word in its inarticulate shriek.
Liar.

"Kendrick, do you have your weapon with you?"

Kendrick looked up.
Levanick was facing away from him, apparently intent on the pathless wood ahead of them, but his voice had been distinct.

Kendrick hesitated, then said, "Yes."

"Good," Levanick glanced behind him, past Kendrick, at the Paladin and Phinneas, "you may be required to use it."

"What?" hissed Kendrick, "against
who
?"

Levanick turned back to the woods ahead and said nothing for a time.
Then he said, "Why is this war happening?"

So Levanick had guess Kendrick's thoughts. "To destroy Skrea."

"This war isn't about destroying the Storm," Levanick said, "it's about destroying Between."

Levanick pushed ahead through a thicket of madrone and by the time Kendrick could follow, the Ranger had gained fifteen feet on him.
Kendrick had to jog to catch up.

"Think about it." Levanick said, not slowing his stride. "With no Storm, what good are we?
What use our magic?
The Rationalists will finally have the excuse they need to snuff us out."

"Slow down, strike you out!"
Phinneas's voice cracked out from the other side of the thicket.
"You two stay where I can see you."

Kendrick stopped, "What are you talking about?"

Levanick, leaned close and whispered, "You've been to college there, you must know.
Unless you become like them, give up everything your ancestors fought to protect, they treat you like a savage."
He didn't give Kendrick the chance to respond.
"
Look
at us, look at our people.
Our reason for existence is being taken from us.
Aren't you going to fight the people who are trying to destroy our way of life?"

Kendrick gaped at him, then down at his hand, caressing the hilt of his military-issue dagger.

"I've already made my choice," said Levanick, "but it counts for nothing if you don't also make yours here, and now."

Kendrick swallowed against a sudden surge of anticipation.
Would he get a chance to use this weapon?
No!
That was the wrong thought to have.
It was wrong to harm human beings.

Levanick's eyes were narrow, all friendliness gone from his face. "Your choice is this, Kendrick.
There are four of us in the woods right now.
Are we two Betweeners and two Rationalists, or three Betweeners against him?" Levanick jerked his head backward to indicate Phinneas, cursing steadily as he forced his way through the twisted, papery madrones.

The Paladin leveled eyes at Kendrick as dark and furious as the clouds of the Storm before the
Professor-Colonel
prodded him in the back with his pistol.
"Good.
Forward."

The lizard-man cried out again, quieter with distance, but somehow more agonized.

"Well?"
Levanick hissed at Kendrick.

"I can't kill anyone," said Kendrick.

"You've killed before."

Kendrick tried to contain his anger. "
Monsters!"
He hissed, jogging behind Levanick as he started forward. "I have killed
monsters
!
It was right, it was all right to kill monsters."
Nothing wrong, he told himself, told Madene as her disapproving face rose in his memory, nothing to be ashamed of.
"But never people! It is Wrong to kill people."

Levanick pushed aside a low branch.
"And people who oppose the will of Naobel?
What about them?"

Levanick raised his voice under a rising shriek of pain from the lizard-man.

"I can't," Kendrick stated to Levanick's back, "I cannot. I
will
not."

"Will not? Why
is that?"
Levanick suddenly stopped walking, turned to face Kendrick,
"Because the thought attracts you?
Because you know that once you begin killing, you will not be able stop?"

The lizard-man's scream rose to a furious shriek, and then went on, and on.

A chill ran down Kendrick's body as a Levanick smiled a narrow smile.
"You truly are Betweener."

"What the
struck-out hell
?"

Kendrick nearly jumped at the voice of Phinneas.
The Rationalist
Professor-Colonel
stood behind the Paladin, not ten feet from them.
But he was not looking at Kendrick or Levanick.

Slowly, Kendrick twisted his head around.
They had come through the last stand of brush to stand on a small rise of ground overlooking their camp.
What was left of their camp.

The campsite below them was a ring of chaos.
Monsters of the Storm, more than twice the number of the previous ambush, swarmed over the ordered ranks of Rationalist tents, all ripping claws and howling mouths.
Blue and tan coated men tried to run or wield their bayonets at their attackers, but the goblins and lizard-men overran, surrounded, and cut them down.
Already a pile of bodies was growing in one corner of the clearing.

"You want to kill?"
Murmured Levanick. "Good.
There are always those who need to die."

"You."
All the blood was gone from Phinneas's face, his skin the color and texture of under-cured leather.
"You did this."

Neither Levanick nor the Paladin said anything.

"You had them attack the camp," Phinneas's shocked whisper became a furious snarl, "while I was
tramping through the woods
!"

"No
!" Said
Kendrick, "those are monsters down there, sir!
It must be the servants of
the necromancer the lizard-man called 'Liar,' whomever that may be
.
They must have come back again and overwhelmed the Rangers…"

The expression on Levanick's face dried the words out of Kendrick's throat.

"Look down there, boy," spat Phinneas, "do you see any brown buckskins on that pile of corpses?
Do you hear any Naobelite blessings going off?
Or muskets.
Ha."
He looked down at the back of the Paladin's head. "Your people must have sabotaged our weapons.
Ha
." The Paladin winced as the
Professor-Colonel
prodded him with the gun,
"no wonder that lizard-man called you a liar."

As if in answer, the wounded lizard-man howled in the woods, a drawn-out wail of almost human despair.
And Kendrick's mind whirled. Of course the creature didn't serve anyone called "the Liar." It had been calling
the Paladin
a liar. Because he had made a deal with the monster, a deal he broke by using the Blessing against it.

"And you very efficiently weeded out half of my men in that little raid, too," Phinneas shook his head.
"Oh,
wonderful
." He said, "I spend my career rooting out Betweener secessionists and Skrean collaborators, and it turns out they're the same striking people, and their leader is my striking
native guide
."

"Between will never let herself become the dog of The Rationalist Union," snarled the Paladin.

"Shut up," said Phinneas.
"Or I'll shoot you."

"No!" Kendrick cried.
"Uh," he said as Phinneas directed his glare at him, "s-sir, if you kill your hostage…"

"…what's to stop your friend there from killing me?
Or if not him than the legions of monsters and bent Rangers arrayed before us?
Hm."
The
Professor-Colonel
gritted his teeth in an expression totally unlike a smile, "do you play chess, Ranger?"

Levanick shook his head, eyes narrowed.

"Ah, well, then I suppose you won't understand me when I say the Union would be sacrificing a rook to capture the enemy's queen.
I trust Mr. Fairheart will translate, though."

"He means he's less important than the Paladin is," mumbled Kendrick.
"Even if you kill him" If
you
kill him.
Not me!
Never me! "you'll suffer a greater loss than the Rationalist Union."

"Exactly so." Phinneas nodded.
"So, now, here is the situation. Private-Instructor Fairheart.
Either you are loyal to your government, in which case you are bound to obey my orders, or you have thrown in your lot with these traitors, in which case I hold your leader hostage.
In either case, you will both throw down your weapons.
Then, all four of us will walk
quietly
and
quickly away from my camp—" a muscle twitched under his eye "avoid the monsters you've called down on us, and head back down the mountain."

Levanick's eyes narrowed, his hand went to the hilt of his sword.

"
Slowly
, Ranger."

The Paladin spoke: "Be you not a fool, Phinneas."

"Shut up."

The Paladin winced as if the barrel of the gun had just been jammed into his spine again. "You would never make it down the mountain with three enemies in tow."