The Sword and the Sorcerer (7 page)

Karak angrily pulled his hand away. “Come now, boy—dismount!”

It was a command and nobody had ever spoken to Talon in that tone of voice save his father. Talon seemed to grow taller in the saddle as he glared down at the increasingly fitful general. “Something is wrong!”

The queen automatically hugged her children close to her. Like his father, Talon had an uncanny nose for trouble and she trusted it.

“Nonsense!” Karak flared back. “Now get to the boat!”

He reached to pull Talon out of the saddle but he kicked him away. Karak rubbed the shoulder where the boy’s booted foot had landed, peering from side to side into the surrounding forest, as if hoping no one had witnessed his humiliation.

More than ever Talon was convinced danger lurked nearby.

Karak moved menacingly toward him once more. “I said, get off that horse now, or I’ll—”

With one swift jerk Talon flashed his tri-bladed sword to within inches of Karak’s face, frightening the general back a few feet.

“Or you’ll
what
!” Talon demanded, still brandishing the sword at him.

Panic seized the general. Without uttering another word, he tore from the clearing and began to frantically zigzag through the woods.

“Get to the boat, Mother!” Talon screamed, now certain that Karak had somehow betrayed them. “Quickly!”

Malia snatched Natalia into her arms and with Henry at her side began to run as fast as she could toward the ketch, Natalia crying fearfully.

Talon turned his steed around and took after Karak at breakneck speed. The general ran along the path they had broken with their horses.

The pounding of the hoofs and the driving obsession to get Karak at any price for the moment eclipsed Talon’s concern about his mother, baby sister, and brother. “Treachery must be punished with the sword,” he remembered his father once saying, and Talon welcomed being Karak’s executioner.

“Father! Father!” Henry cried for help, running to the boat well ahead of his mother and Natalia. He was only a few yards from the ketch when two hulking Klaws sprung up from lying low on deck. They leaped to the sand and proceeded to savage the boy into bloody quarters with razor-sharp scimtars. It happened so fast that Henry didn’t even have time to scream—but his mother did, for the whole grisly slaughter happened before her and Natalia’s eyes.

Now Natalia’s screams fused with her mothers, but Talon heard none of it. He was too engrossed in bearing down on Karak.

The general was running out of breath and he knew he’d certainly never outrun Talon’s stallion so he decided to stop running and fight the enraged boy.

But no sooner did Karak unsheath his gleaming sword and whirl around to take his stand against the prince than Talon galloped along side him and severed his head with one swoop of the tri-bladed sword, sending it rolling into the bushes. Karak’s body stood headless for a moment before falling to the forest floor.

Talon reined his horse to a halt. His lean, hard body pulsated with the excitement of his very first human kill. With Karak now dead, his mind instantly snapped back to the fate of his family. He hoped to God they were all safe with his father on the boat!

He turned his steed around and began galloping back toward the beach.

But Talon didn’t get beyond the clearing when two Klaws jumped from behind the trees not ten yards in front of him and aimed crossbow pistols at him. Talon’s quicksilver reflexes came to his rescue. With the first sign of movement from the trees, Talon yanked on the reins and the horse reared high on its hind legs. The action lifted Talon above the oncoming arrows but exposed his horse’s barreled flanks to them. The horse shrieked with pain as the metal-tipped arrows ripped through bone and entrails. As the horse crashed to the ground it tossed Talon out of the saddle. But even as he was flung through the air he held on tightly to his tri-bladed sword. And when he landed he somersaulted to his feet, ready to grapple with the attackers. But no sooner was he upright when the two Klaws fired their crossbow pistols again. Talon dodged one arrow but the second one pierced his left hand, the impact slamming him against a tree, where his hand was pinned by the arrow to the tree. “Ohhhhh God!” he groaned and wailed with pain, but still clutching his sword with his right hand. Every time he tried to wrench his hand from the tree he nearly passed out from the excruciating pain.

Since Talon was seemingly helpless, and not knowing the capabilities of the strange-looking sword in his hand, the Klaws smugly took their time reloading the crossbows.

“Did you ever see a prettier boy—or an easier target?” one of them taunted.

They both laughed, giving Talon the chance to aim his tri-bladed sword before they could fire. He pressed the release latch and fired one spring-loaded blade and then the other—both blades hitting their marks in the chests of the soldiers. It happened so unexpectedly that both Klaws fell dead on the ground before they knew they had been pierced.

The sight of their twisted features and shattered chests in no way alleviated Talon’s own pain—nor the horror that was unfolding before his eyes on the beach. Even at this distance he could perceive his mother and Natalia despairing over the prostrate body of his younger brother. “Oh, Father, where are you!” he grievously screamed, once more vainly trying to dislodge his bleeding hand from the tree.

Out of the forest’s edge by the beach, Talon saw at least a dozen Klaws emerge and, swords drawn, slowly encircle his mother and sister.

“No! No!” he agonizedly shouted, knowing that, even if they could hear him, his supplications would not dissolve those metal hearts. In another second the closing wall of Klaws totally hid the queen and Natalia from view. But when he saw the Klaws raise their flashing swords and begin to chop and thrust, he knew exactly what was happening to his mother and baby sister. For a few moments Talon went insane with frustration and rage, and he pulled wildly, frenziedly on freeing his hand, this time indifferent to the pain. But it still wouldn’t budge.

Then a brutish Klaw broke loose from the circle of soldiers, carrying his screaming and kicking sister. She had been spared the swords for an even more heinous fate. Once again Talon tugged and wrenched at his riveted hand, bellowing with pain and helplessness.
“You’ll pay for this, Cromwell—I swear by Almighty God you will!”

From a tree-sheltered perch on a bluff overlooking the river, Cromwell and Malcolm had been able to observe the massacre of the queen and the youngest boy, as well as see the abduction of the little girl. Cromwell smiled lewdly.

As for the fiery colt who had taken after that bungling fool Karak—he couldn’t possibly have slipped alive through the net of Klaws he had deployed throughout the forest. Like his father and the rest of Richard’s cursed family, the boy called Talon also had to be dead, his body either bristling with arrows or hacked to pieces by swords.

“Come,” Cromwell gestured to Malcolm, who looked badly in need of a drink. “I want to see for myself if the queens breasts are as lovely as rumor says they are!”

Malcolm nodded and obediently followed his king, but wished he didn’t have to. His stomach was still queasy from vomiting a full liter of wine and he was afraid that the sight of all that gore would make him retch once more.

The mutilation of the queen proved to be even too much for Cromwell. He and Malcolm were now on their way into the forest to ascertain the fate of Talon.

But when they arrived at the site where the boy should have been, instead of his savaged remains, nothing of him was in sight. In his place were two of Cromwell’s crack archers, their chests ripped open, with no sign of the sword or the terrible weapon that did the job.

From triumphant cockiness Cromwell’s mood changed to instant rage.

“Find the bastard boy!” he shouted to the Klaws’ who were emerging from their hiding places in the trees. “Find him or your lives are worth nothing! He has to be nearby! I want him!”

Malcolm noticed a broken arrow drenched in blood sticking out of a tree. He suppressed calling Cromwell’s attention to it. Anyone who distracted Cromwell from one of his tirades invariably became the object of that rage.

Red beads of blood dripped through the branches to the foot of the tree. Talon prayed that the Klaw walking directly under him did not see the blood, praying also that he could continue to throttle the scream of pain that was trying to escape from his throat. The loss of blood had left him only half conscious. His left hand was a mangled mass of raw meat with a jagged puncture through the middle of it. To stanch the flow of blood he had torn off his outer tunic, wrapped it around his hand and pressed the bundle between his thighs, closing them together. Later, when it was safe to come down from the tree—if he did not bleed to death first—he would staunch the wound with a compress of the dead horse’s dung and sodden leaves, as his father had taught him to do. And if he survived . . . he would devote . . . devote the rest of . . . of his life to avenging his . . . his—

The rest of consciousness drained suddenly out of him like water running into sand. He collapsed into the arms of a huge branch out of sight of anyone moving below.

SEVEN

he huge young man wore a dark gray woolen cloak and the chain mail of a warrior. The gusty breezes on the high bluff overlooking Elysium blew his shoulder-length, raven-black hair behind him. His eyes were bluer than the sky above him and were flecked with fierce pinpoints of gold. His dark, finely chiseled features and muscular form beneath his garb resembled the statue of Apollo his father had once brought back from a campaign in Hellas, and he knew it. The young man was aware that most women found him desirable and that men praised his statuesque figure.

Yet there was precious little conceit in Talon’s personality. He had been taught by Malia—long before the wandering mercenaries found him half-dead in the forest and nursed him back to health—that a man’s self-worth should come from performing noble deeds, not from the accident of comeliness and wealth.

If Talon had any conceit about his appearance at all it centered around not his Apollonian face and form but, ironically, a slight deformity. That deformity being the steel brace covering two of his fingers and a portion of his left hand, wrapping around his wrist like a gauntlet. For that once agonizingly maimed hand had become a proud symbol of his will and ability to survive. In addition this minor impediment had spurred him to work ten times harder than most warriors to become proficient at handling all kinds of weaponry.

The steel claw was also a constant reminder that he had a score to settle with Cromwell, face to face. No matter how many conquests he continued to make, on the battlefield and in bed, Talon would never live easy in his own skin until Cromwell was impaled on his three-bladed sword.

Talon continued contemplating the city of Elysium sprawled below him, waves of sadness going through him. It was more than eleven long, battle-weary years since he last saw the once dazzling and happy capital of Eh-Dan. As a boy he had stolen to this very site countless times to gaze enchanted at the seaport city’s splendor and bustling activity. But what a change! Whereas ivory turrets, bejeweled spires and gold domes once sparkled in the sun, the precious stones and metals had been stripped away, leaving bare wood and stone. Whereas Elysium’s colorfully dressed citizens once strode and sauntered proudly through immaculately kept streets, and vendors, strolling troubadours, puppet masters and lovers had filled the promenade along the bay, there were now more soldiers patroling the streets than citizens, and the promenade was deserted. Instead of small families going out to sea to fish and for pleasure in small brightly painted boats, Cromwell’s galleys lay at rest in the harbor like floating coffins. There was an air of neglect, poverty and oppression hanging over Elysium—a pall of misery so thick that Talon thought he could cut it with a sword.

Sadness gave way to anger and Talon spat on the earth at his feet. Cromwell’s reign had turned the richest city in the western world into a cesspool of poverty and gloom.

Talon pulled his broad shoulders back, wiped away the scalding tears from his eyes and marched down the hill to join his mercenaries—a group of nine seasoned warriors from ten to twenty years older than he.

The mercenaries were weary and unkempt from weeks of hard riding and they weren’t quite sure why their young leader had detoured to stop here but they obeyed him unquestioningly. He was the best all-round warrior of the lot and his judgment had proven impeccable in most instances. Besides there was an abiding love between the men and Talon. Had they not practically raised him since the day they found him writhing in pain at the foot of a tree, with that horribly mutilated hand of his? And Talon had made them proud to be mercenaries. Ever since the day they unanimously appointed him their leader they were only for hire to kings whose cause was just and noble.

With one agile bound Talon was astride his black mount.

Darius, a swarthy soldier who preferred using a spiked ball and chain in battle over the sword, turned to Talon.