WINDREAPER (4 page)

Torture, nor exile, nor imprisonment had brought Conar McGregor to his knees. For a short time he had risen again and the things that had happened to him, the pain he had suffered, strengthened him into a man fully capable of crushing anyone foolish enough to defy him. The years of abuse had shaped his willpower. It had toned down his arrogance, but the hot streak of sick fury coursing through his veins made him incautious at times, and his friends worried about his recklessness.

Yet danger held no concern for him. If anything, it seemed to excite the man he had become and he thrived on the rush of adrenaline that coursed through his body when danger confronted him.

His vengeance against the Domination had begun in Necroman with the arrival of a group of men trained to war without thought, to assassinate without conscience, to murder with little regard to the outcome.

In Necroman, the Shadow Warriors had arrived.

Misha Kharchenko had been sent to the Labyrinth at the same time as Sentian Heil, and Grice and Chand Wynth. The Outer Kingdom warrior from the Tzar's palace at St. Steffensberg had been among those who had accompanied Conar to freedom aboard the Boreas Queen. When he brought five men he called "his cousins" to the training camp outside Jhakar that day he had not bothered to introduce them to the Darkwind.

"They will guard your back, Milord, but no one will ever see them," the reticent man had told him. "Do not even look for them, for not even you will see them lurking behind you. They will be your Shadow."

These men from the Outer Kingdom taught the Darkwind how to kill. They taught him not to brook resistance from his men, not to tolerate excuses, not to accept half-measures, not to allow compromises where commitment was concerned or to give no quarter to those who had been unwise to cross him.

And he hadn't seen them, though he had felt their presence many times. They finished what he started, killed men he had left wounded, but he didn't care. Those killed were his enemies and he gloried in their deaths.

During times when he met the challenge of the Temple Guards he found in various towns, he shone in his men's eyes. It was then when he killed with abandon, leaving nothing behind for his Shadow Warriors to destroy, that made the people afraid of him. Ignoring his own welfare, though concerned with the lives of those around him, he would slice and stab, laying waste to every life his sword could drain, laughing in the face of death. He was his most cruel during those forays with the men who had been responsible for his torture in the bowels of the Tribunal Inquisition Hall, and he looked into the face of every guard, keeping watch for one in particular. No guard ever struck blades with him and lived to tell the tale.

"Do you know Tymothy Kullen?" he would ask them before they died.

It was not only his volume of bloodletting on the battlefields that he did to excess. Everything was beyond the normal: drinking, fighting, whoring. It seemed to his men as though he was trying to cram those seven years of hell into the one he was presently living. On occasion, his eyes would go dull, and he would cocoon himself even deeper in his self-inflicted web of silence, his manner even more forbidding, morose, and he would defy anyone to impugn on his withdrawal under penalty of pain.

It was during those times when he would turn toward the distant crenelated walls of his birthplace, to the sand-colored stone of Boreas Keep, and his hands would clench into fists by his rigid body as he stared for hours at the keep. When the mood broke, he would find the nearest female and release his pent-up, frustrated lust on her, often calling out a name that meant nothing to the woman, but that held a world of dark feeling for him.

His moods were not always somber and self-destructive. There was still a vestige of chivalry left in him, a holdover from his childish days as an untried youth, but it was as ethereal as a will-'o-the-wisp: coming and going as quickly as a rainbow after a storm. Children could still bring out that side of him, but his gaze would follow them hungrily and be unusually bright.

He was gallant, courteous to the common folk, and it was that quality in him they sensed which caused them to write ballads about him. It was the essence of him that fashioned legend, but none of his men ever saw that side of his nature. He viewed it as a weakness. The knights of legend of whom ballads and sonnets and plays were written, who could slay dragons for their damsels in distress, who fed the poor and righted every wrong, were only myths.

Darkwind was real.

His fury was real.

The core of the Brotherhood of the Wind, men like Roget and Shalu and Brelan and Grice Wynth, feared for him. They prayed for him. They carefully watched his back. But none of them could make the pain in his eyes go away. None could quench the fury in his face when a certain name was spoken in his hearing. None could give him back the peace of spirit he had lost.

Only one person could do that, and she, like his peace of mind, was lost to him forever.

* * *

"Holy shit!" the man shouted. "It's a ghost!"

The man ran as fast as his pigeon-toes could carry him down the alley, his hands in the air, his legs pumping furiously.

"You see?" Brelan screamed at Ward Summerall. "See what I've been trying to tell you numbskulls!"

Sentian and Thom were supporting Conar's dead weight between them. The Raven had come to long enough to look into the man's face. He smirked. "Hello!"

The man's turned white under the light of the torch overhead. "A ghost!" he shrieked, backing away, his hands up to ward off the evil confronting him.

"A drunk ghost!" Conar agreed.

"
Help! Help!"
The man nearly slammed face first into a brick building, but swerved at the last moment. "
A ghost! A ghost!"

"I think they heard you!" Conar shouted after him, then his eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped in his men's hands again.

"Go after that fool and silence him!" Brelan snarled at Ward. "
Now, Summerall! Now!"

* * *

Storm and Thom smiled at one another as the balladeer sang. Now and again they would blush, look down at the table, or cock a surprised brow. Their feet tapped out the song's rhythm, their fingers beating a tattoo on their table.

"Sing it again!" a tavern patron shouted as the balladeer finished.

The tall Ionarian songwriter grinned and began to strum his guitar once more, nodding as men filed past his stool and plunked silver coins into the earthen jug at his feet.

Thom nodded in time to the beatas the balladeer began repeat the tale of the Dark Wind.

"He'll bust a gut laughing when he hears this!" Storm remarked.

Thom grinned. "Think the singer will let me copy down the words?"

Storm snorted. "You'd better not!"

The singer began his tale in a crisp, heavily-accented Ionarian blend of romance and excitement.

——

"On a steed as black as the darkest night,
He rides forth like the Wind.
His sword will flash and his arrows fly,
To death, his enemies he'll send, he'll send;
To death, his enemies he'll send.

His midnight eyes will pierce your soul,
His gaze can stop your heart,
With courage strong and honor bold,
His aim has never missed its mark, its mark;
His aim has never missed its mark.

Ride, Darkwind, ride, the Wind Force at your side,
Your whereabouts we will hide.
Ride on through the night, past the morning light,
We'll keep you safe from the bounty hunter's sight.

He robs from the rich and he gives to the poor,
Gold taken from the local treasury.
For those who betray us, he has a cure:
His blade will cut out the treachery, the treachery;
His blade will cut out the treachery.

By the wagon load, the ladies he does save,
The orphans he clothes and feeds.
He sees to the old and he frees the enslaved,
He knows what his countrymen need, what they need,
He knows what his countrymen need.

Ride, Darkwind, ride, the Wind Force at your side,
Your whereabouts, we will hide.
Ride on through the night, past the morning light,
We'll keep you safe from the bounty hunter's sight.

There are men at his side who guard his back,
Men as deadly as Darkwind's blade.
Their swords are sharp, their daggers black,
And many a corpse have they made, have they made;
And many a corpse have they made.

So when the night is dark and the wind, it does howl,
When the thunder of hooves shakes the ground.
You'll know Lord Darkwind's on the prowl,
Traitors' souls are being sent hellbound, hellbound;
Traitors' souls are being sent hellbound.

Ride, Darkwind, ride, the Wind Force at your side,
Your whereabouts, we will hide.
Ride on through the night, past the morning light,
We'll keep you safe from the bounty hunter's sight.
We'll keep you safe from the bounty hunter's sight."

Roget sat back in his chair, one booted ankle crossed over the other, and intently regarded his friend. Only an hour earlier, a messenger had come from Brelan, carrying a rolled parchment to be given directly to the Darkwind and no one else. Now, sitting in the common room of the nearly deserted Hound and Stag tavern, Conar had just finished reading it. There was a heavy frown on his face.

"I take it Brelan got into the keep all right," Roget commented. "Is an answer expected?"

Conar nodded, but didn't answer.

"Do you want me to have the messenger brought?"

Again the distracted nod.

"Put on your mask."

Roget waited until Conar was ready, then got up, opened the tavern door, and called for the outside guards to let the man in. Standing aside as one of Legion's personal men entered, Roget closed the door and placed his back against it.

"When is this to take place?" Conar asked, not bothering to look at the messenger.

"At the cresting of the moon, Lord Darkwind."

Conar's dark sapphire orbs shot up to impale the messenger. He was sitting by the fireplace, wearing his black tunic, black leather breeches and boots, and the wide gauntlets around his capable-looking wrists, which still revealed the tattoo on the back of his sword hand. But what seemed to intrigue the messenger the most was Conar's black criss-crossed silk mask that hid all but his eyes from view.

"I assume Brelan Saur trusts you or you wouldn't have known the password to get by my men or how to find me. Are you one with us?" He held up one hand. "Be careful how you answer. I will know whether you lie." His rasping voice came huskily from behind the mask.

"My heart is open for you to see, Milord. I am as loyal as a man can be to you and the cause. You have no reason to doubt me. My cousin is one of your own. Storm Jale. I saw him outside. I would have recognized him even without that ratty beard." The man smiled, but the smile wavered, died as the midnight blue gaze regarded him steadily. He looked away from that keen probe. "I am Marsh Edan, Master-at-Arms at Boreas."

"I know who you are," came the grating reply.

"Then you know I can be trusted."

"It would appear so. If I find you false, Storm will be minus one family member." Conar turned the parchment in his hands and began to re-roll it.

"Is there an answer, Milord?"

"I will think on it. Stay the night with Storm and get reacquainted. I'll let you know by morning what my answer will be." It was a dismissal and Marsh took it as such, leaving the room with haste.

"What's in the note?" Roget asked as he locked the door behind Marsh.

"A royal summons."

"From Legion?" Roget du Mer was shocked. "Does Brelan really think you'd actually come?"

"He knows I will." Getting up from his chair, Conar stood in front of the warm fireplace and unraveled the mask.

"You can't go to the keep!"

"I have to." He flung the mask to the chair and ran his hands over his face, plowed one hand through the fall of long flaxen waves, then shook back his hair. "I'm not being given a chance to decline, Hawk," he said in a strange voice.

"What the hell's so important that Brelan would let you risk your life to return to Boreas?" A sick feeling formed in the pit of Roget's stomach.

There was a long moment of silence, then Conar made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan. His voice was devoid of life or expression. "There's to be an initiation at the Abbey of the Domination. Her eldest son is to be accepted into the Brotherhood. He undergoes the Rites of Passage at the cresting of the moon." The voice lowered. "Brelan wants it stopped. He says A'Lex wants us to abduct the child from the Abbey and return him to his mother." A hot look of speculation crossed Conar's tired face. "Without the child, Tohre will lose what hold he has on the throne. Once the boy is safe within Boreas Keep, A'Lex can give us all the help we want."

"So that's why Legion hasn't been able to do anything before now! He feared for Liza's son!" Roget nodded. "It all makes sense now, doesn't it?"

Conar returned to his seat and sat down heavily. His long legs shot out before him and he laid his head along the chair back. He gazed steadily at the blazing logs, his pupils taking on the reflected light from the flames hissing in the hearth. His hard, callused hands lay idle in his lap, but his fingers flexed as though he itched to have something within them to strangle. The only signs of any emotional upheaval was the vein throbbing heavily in the column of his bronzed throat and a faint movement of his lean jaw, obviously silently grinding his teeth.

Roget made a temple with his fingers and, with his elbows propped on the arms of his chair, he lowered his chin to the apex of his fingertips. "You're going to go after the boy yourself, aren't you?" he asked in a calm tone he didn't feel.

"Do I have a choice? I couldn't live with myself if I let that evil bastard claim another innocent McGregor male child. Although being a child of Galen's couldn't make the boy all that innocent, especially not after having been with Tohre all this time."

"How old is he?"

Conar shrugged. "Eight, nine. What does it matter?"

"What if you're caught, Coni?"

There was a derisive snort. "I can get into and out of that keep better than any man alive. Have no fear."

"But what about the Abbey?"

Conar shuddered, although Roget could have sworn he didn't realize it. "I've been there, as well. I know the way out, so I know the way in!"

"I'm going with you. I'll be at your back."

Conar's lips stretched into a thin smile. "You've been there, too, haven't you, Hawk?"

Roget nodded. "And Chase. And Jah-Ma-El. And Shalu. How many of us will you need?"

"Three. Belvoir knows the way and I'd rather not pull Shalu and Jah-Ma-El away from Fealst right now." He took a deep breath. "I'm not sure Chase could handle going back."

Roget understood.

"It'll be risky, Hawk."

Roget lifted a broad shoulder. "Since when does risk ever matter to us?"

"It's not something I truly want to do." His voice was soft, more gentle than Roget had heard in a long time. "Saving the boy from consecration I can handle. It's the rest that troubles me. I'll have to see him, speak to him."

Roget du Mer nodded, knowing his friend was speaking of Legion A'Lex.

But it wasn't Legion that Conar feared seeing. Roget knew that.

And he knew Conar did, too.