Blood of War (29 page)

Those that were left were as pathetic a bunch as Thalor had ever seen. Hollow eyes, stared woodenly from gaunt, pale faces. None of them wore chains but most appeared rooted to the spot nonetheless, apparently too devoid of hope to care enough to bother with movement. A few shuffled slowly, raising puffs of dust, their eyes downcast, knowing what would happen if they dared look at Thalor.

All except for one man. This one glared with all the haughtiness of nobility, with all the indignant rage that Thalor would expect of him. Tall and lanky, this man should not have seemed so imperious even at the best of times. As disheveled as he was, and even with the nasty burn that disfigured the left half of his face, this man seemed to glare down at him from a throne. Thalor suppressed a shiver, chiding himself for a fool. He knew it was empty bravado. This man posed no threat. There were plenty of Thalor's priests keeping watch as well.

Heavy shackles clanked as the form moved to sit up. Thalor glanced up when he caught movement from the corner of his eye. Half the crossbowmen on guard were now taking a bead on this one man.

No, this man was no threat. Thalor allowed a small smile to curve his lips as he came to a stop two paces from the man who sat in the dirt with all the pomposity one might reserve for presiding at court.

“So have you considered my words?”

The spindly old man made a harsh barking noise that, after a moment, Thalor realized was a laugh. Glaring from bruised eyes, the man uttered a string of words interlaced with the vilest obscenities that seemed to question Thalor's parentage, sexual preferences, and genitalia. Even as Thalor thundered inside, he could not quell the small voice that congratulated the man's eloquence. Finally, the old man's tirade petered out. He drew in a deep breath.

“What do you want this time, Thalor?” His voice was still deep, resonant, too full of life and assurance. Thalor would have to order the acceleration of the man's education. He smiled coldly.

“I want you to give up your charade. I want you to finally understand that you cannot win. Your cause is lost.” He paused, rearranging his expression to display regret. “Your army is shattered and I did it with naught but a small fraction of the forces at my disposal. The rest of my forces are marching now; I expect they'll be here in a few weeks. There's nothing left for you. Why, I even have it on good authority that your pet has run off and abandoned your cause. He's thrown you to the wolves.”

He searched, carefully, for any reaction but this old man, beaten though he most certainly was—several times a day, in fact, by Thalor's order—maintained an impressive self-possession. His search was rewarded with nothing more than the same, unmoving steely glare.

Thalor shook his head slowly, sadly,
tsk
ing. “You make this difficult. You understand what will happen to you? You will be tried and executed for your crimes. If you speak, if you answer my questions, perhaps I can put in a good word for you and commute your sentence. Where is your headquarters? Where is this Abbey of yours. We will find it anyway. It will just take a little longer if you continue to resist. Who are your leaders? What are your numbers? It will go much easier if you tell me. I might even be convinced to send a healer to attend to your injuries.”

The same indecipherable glare. A statue had more expression than this man was showing. Their gazes locked, a battle of wills, but in the end, the old man once again proved stronger than he appeared.

“So be it then,” Thalor declared. “Let this be my final warning. You will burn. Your confederates will burn. I will see the Salosian Order destroyed and wiped from the pages of history. Remember my words, Kurin. You have made your last and most costly mistake.”

Angrily, Thalor spun on his heel and stalked several paces before the old man behind him uttered words that made Thalor unaccountably cold.

“No, Thalor. You have made yours.”

* * *

Gods,
but he was seething. Kurin sat where he had been sitting for the past week—except for when he was taken to the nondescript tent where the questioners plied their trade—his body hurt, his legs were cramped and his ass was sore. And he seethed. He knew he had to find a modicum of calm. Certainly, the seething rage had its advantages; it helped him ignore the thousand agonies that turned his body into a pillar of fire, and it kept the black feeling of helplessness that threatened to engulf him at bay. But he was reaching his breaking point. He had already considered, on more than one occasion, unleashing every bit of arcanum he possessed. Doing so would likely incinerate half the camp. Unfortunately, such an action would also incinerate him and the eighty-odd surviving Salosians he had sworn to see through this ghastly situation.

He snorted softly to himself. Situation. Good word. Very politic. 'Bloody mess,' he thought, described it much more accurately, or perhaps 'disaster'.

He had to admit that Thalor had played the game well. The blasted man had expertly maneuvered Jurel, fooling even Mikal, into the catastrophic ambush. The ambush where Kurin had lost half his face, and nearly his life. Tentatively, he touched the ruined flesh with the pads of his fingers, drawing in a hissing breath that sounded like boiling water when daggers of pain lanced into his skull. The rest of the injuries he had suffered since at the hands of the questioners—the bruising, the broken ribs, the torn flesh—were nothing compared to the agony in his head. Those smaller pains were in their own way, a relief of sorts. The freshness of those wounds allowed him, for short stretches of time at least, to forget the fire that burned his cheek, his jaw, his skull.

He had to admit too that Thalor continued to play the game well. Physically beaten, physically exhausted, Kurin found his mental guards being ground down, like a stone in a river. Strong and unyielding in the beginning, even the largest stone was eventually pounded to silt and taken where the tides would have it. Every day, he found it more and more difficult to rebuff the man's advances. Yet another advantage to the rage within. Possibly the only reason he held with such unreasoning tenacity to the hatred. To give up his hold on that would be to give up his hold on himself.

The man's words a few moments ago had a profound impact on Kurin. Jurel fled? Could it be possible? Or was it simply a lie, another ploy to weaken him further? He told himself over and over again that Jurel would never abandon them. He was made of sterner stuff than any man Kurin had ever met—of course; after all Jurel was far more than any man. It was hidden most of the time under the self-effacing, meek exterior but Kurin had glimpsed traces of Jurel's true strength on occasion. It was a strength that had caused Kurin to quail worshipfully, and—dare he think it?—fear.

Oh, but Thalor's words were far more insidious than he realized. There was a core of indomitable strength in Jurel but it was still paradoxically weak. The passion was there but it was overlaid with years of difficult lessons learned. The boy hated violence. Yet he had been forced to kill, to watch the people closest to him killed. The boy hated blood. Yet he had seen more of it flow in the past year and a half than most would see in a lifetime. He knew who he was, certainly. But despite Kurin's best efforts, he had yet to accept it, to incorporate it into his self. On his very first conscious effort to do so, he had watched a thousand men butchered because his decision. Jurel's instinct-driven steel core, Kurin knew, would have a hard time arguing its case against the more concrete forces of experience and memory.

Kurin knew something else as well. If Jurel had abandoned their cause, it would not be out of cowardice, but because of an honest desire to stop hurting people. He knew Jurel would argue that the bloodshed would stop if he was out of the picture. No God of War, no war. It was the naive view of an injured man cornered by consequence.

Kurin's heart went out to Jurel. He wished for nothing more than the chance to sit down and talk to the boy. But that was most definitely out of the question. Just as there were dozens of soldiers who guarded his body, ready to turn him into a pincushion the moment he tried something physical, there were others who guarded his mind and would gladly turn him to mush if he tried to Send.

Had Jurel persevered or had he fled? It was a question—
the
question—that he needed to answer. And there was no possibility of doing so for at least the foreseeable future. Resting his back against the coarse wood of a pointed eight foot stake, he sighed, wondering what, if anything, he could do from here. His answer, no matter how he turned the matter over in his head, was a wholly predictable and entirely unsatisfactory 'not much'.

Two guards arrived and while one was unlocking his chains from the heavy bolt driven into the ground, the other brusquely ordered him to his feet. Time for another question and answer period, Kurin supposed. The points of a dozen crossbows kept a bead on him as he walked while eighty-odd sets of eyes within the stockade watched him go. He straightened his back, walking as erect as his chains and injuries would allow. He kept a stern expression on his face. Pointless gesture or not, it did not hurt to try. Much.

As he was prodded by spear point toward the dark tent that he had begun to know so very well, Kurin found himself in the unenviable position of needing to continually stoke the furnace of his rage to keep from losing hope, while needing to douse the same furnace to keep from doing anything drastic and entirely too permanent.

Chapter 25

He had no idea how long he sat motionless while the wind howled viciously. He spent a little while thinking about that before deciding he did not care. The windstorms blew endlessly, the sands scoured him painfully, and that was just fine. Perhaps he could stay there for a while longer. Perhaps he could live his life there, grow old and die there. That was just fine. And if he grew too hungry, or too thirsty, if he expired from lack of nourishment, or withered and collapsed into a dry husk, well, that was just fine too. Anything to stem the mad flow of memories and recriminations that bit painfully, that tore and gored, as they sped past. Like a sandstorm.

He sat numbed in the way that a hammer struck thumb is numb, feeling the burning of his abused flesh, wondering where his tears were, when he felt an alteration in the air. A shift in the winds both subtle and profound. He looked up and saw a figure approaching through the clouds of sand, strolling at a leisurely pace. He did not need to see the face to know who it was. He rose to his feet stiffly, hissing as chafed skin rubbed against sandpaper-like rags.

“Nice place you have here,” called his father as he emerged from the clouds. “I admit it's not quite what I was expecting.”

Jurel's face twisted and he looked away. “No.”

Gaorla approached surrounded by tranquility, smiling calmly, gently. The sands did not scour him, the winds did not scorch him. “How are you, son?”

Jurel snorted. “Wonderful. Just great. Couldn't be better.”

Gaorla chuckled. “Now, now. Is that any way to speak to your father?”

“I'm sorry. I don't feel like myself right now.”

“Who do you feel like then, if not yourself?”

He raised his eyes inquisitively to his father. “I don't understand.”

“You said you don't feel like yourself. Who do you feel like?”

“Well...like...I don't know. I just don't feel like I used to.”

“Ah, I see. Like before. When things were easy. When things were cut and dried in manageable little chunks. When you were just a simple farmboy whose most difficult decision was whether to do your chores now or later.”

A flash of outrage at his father's words. “There's nothing wrong with that,” he growled.

“No, there isn't,” Gaorla said mildly. “But that's not who you are. You know that.”

“And why can't it be who I am?”

“My boy, some people were made for farming. Some were made for trading, some for sailing the seas, and some to rule. Everyone has talents that come naturally to them. You could no more be a farmer than a fox could soar through the sky with the eagles.”

“But I used to be.”

“Too much has happened since. Now, you would not last a week on a farm.”

“My father—Daved—did it. He was a soldier, a cavalryman, and he retired to Galbin's farm with me.”

“Your father did what he needed to at the right times in his life. He knew when he was a soldier that it was right for him. And he was good at it. His men respected him, his superiors trusted him. He also knew when he could no longer be a soldier anymore. He realized that time in his life was over and he accepted it. Much to your benefit, I think. It made him a happy man.”

Valsa'a words came back to him, whispering through his thoughts:
To grow toward what it needs to survive even as it remains a flower.

“But why me?”

A deep resonant laugh bubbled up from his father, so rich, so purely, serenely clean that it was contagious. Jurel could not help his own chuckle as Gaorla turned to face the storm and stared into the distance.

“There was a young lady once, many, many
years ago, it was. She was pretty but not outstandingly beautiful. She was the daughter of a minor clan chieftain and her life was a violent one as the lives of clansfolk often were in those days. She was a warrior maiden in her clan, and a good one too. She could wield a dagger in ways that left many of her opponents dumbstruck, wondering where her next attack would come from. Many of them never realized that the attack had already come and they were leaking their heart's blood all over their feet.

“Yet for all of the death she caused, the pain, the suffering, this young lady had a beautiful heart and she mourned every time her blade struck home. I spoke to this young lady, chose her to be one of mine. The duties I imposed on her went against all she knew, all she had been taught. It was not long before she asked the very same question.”

“You're talking about Valsa.”

Gaorla turned to him, with a twinkle in his eye, and tapped the tip of his nose with his finger. “Of course. Can you imagine? A warrior maiden who suddenly found she turned everyone she met to lust filled jelly? A killer who became the very embodiment of life? It was the same thing with the other two. Shomra had to endure the worst of it. No surprise considering his duties. But all of them asked the same question.”