The Wounded Guardian (2 page)

Martil tried again, hoping to reach Edil with the force of his argument. It was all that would save the man’s life, and the lives of his sons.

‘Try to stop me and I will kill you. I have enough deaths on my hands. I have no wish to add four more.’ Not only was he unable to find any humour in this but the effects of the wine were gone. Slowly he eased his feet from the stirrups as he looked into Edil’s eyes, trying to show the man just how much he did not want to kill him.

But Edil was not looking at Martil’s eyes. He was looking at the horse, and the bulging saddlebags it carried.

‘I don’t care what you came here for, or what you think you did down south. You’re drunk and alone, and we are four. Get off your horse if you want to live.’

‘Don’t make me do this,’ Martil warned urgently. ‘Five gold pieces to let me pass!’

Edil’s face tightened. ‘Take him! Take all his gold!’

Martil reacted instantly. He jumped to his right, away from Blackbeard, as he recognised he was the only real threat. He landed lightly, only a couple of paces from the son to his right, a sandy-haired youth with a straggly, wispy beard and bulging eyes. He was the one with the club, and he rushed at Martil with the thick lump of wood raised high above his head. Martil’s hands went to the twin swords at his sides and he had them unsheathed as the youth aimed a roundhouse blow calculated to cave in his skull—but Martil had ducked underneath, and his left-hand sword lanced out, sinking deep into the youth’s belly and ripping up into his lungs. The youth dropped his club and screamed in agony, hands clutching towards the blade that had impaled him. But Martil had already finished with him. A twist of the wrist and a thrust of the arm and the dying youth was propelled off Martil’s sword and into the path of the young man who had been blocking the road behind. This one, who had no beard at all but dark stubble across his chin, stumbled past his dying brother and swung his axe from over his right shoulder, down in a wide arc. Martil kept advancing but pivoted to the left, getting inside the arc of the axe, which missed him and sank into the ground instead. Then it was a simple matter to use his right-hand sword in a reverse cut to open the young man’s throat with a vicious slash. Blood sprayed high and Martil kept spinning, so he was facing the last son, the black-bearded giant with the massive shoulders.

He was roaring in rage at the sight of his two dead brothers, but it had taken him precious time to get past Tomon and Martil was waiting for him as he charged in, axe held high. He aimed a huge blow,
which would have split Martil open from neck to hip if it had landed. But Martil had been fighting axemen for years and simply spun sideways. His swords flicked out almost as an afterthought, first one then the second opening the young giant’s belly like a purse as he slipped past the axe. The young man blundered on for a few more paces, before literally falling over his own intestines as they spilled out uncontrollably. His feet slipped out from beneath him and his head slammed into a hardened rut of earth as he collapsed into blood and gore.

Martil swung around again, this time to face a bewildered Edil, who had started forward but had been stunned into immobility by the slaughter of his sons.

‘My, my boys,’ he gasped, mouth sagging open to show blackened and missing teeth.

Martil glanced down at the three twitching bodies and felt an enormous rage building.

‘I warned you. I told you but you wouldn’t listen!’ he snarled.

Edil just stared at him. ‘But the wine, and the singing! No-one could behave like that and then be able to do this,’ he babbled, seemingly oblivious to the fact Martil was advancing towards him. ‘How could I let you ride by like that? You would have fed our family for months!’

Martil ignored what he was saying. ‘Look what you made me do! I swore I was finished with this, I gave you fair warning but still you attacked me!’ The ground seemed to be tilting and Martil could feel the blood pounding in his temples. He knew that feeling. That was how he had felt before the assault on Bellic and it had only been washed away in a tide of violence and blood.

‘Now what am I going to do? You killed my sons!’ Edil moaned. The charm, the verbal jousting and the roguish smile were all gone.

‘Do you know how much blood is on my hands?’ Martil glanced down at himself. ‘And not just on my hands, but on my face and clothes as well? Do you have any idea of how sick I am of the smell of blood? How I’ve tried to get it out of my mind?’

‘W—what are you saying?’ Edil realised Martil, his two swords dripping blood, was only a step away. But he made no move to raise the axe he held loosely by his side.

‘Blood has a stink. Like you have a stink. Like your whole filthy family. I did you a favour by killing them. Now if you are a man, you’d try to avenge them. You were brave enough before, when you thought I was at your mercy. Come on!’ Martil spat into Edil’s face, and the man recoiled as if he had been struck. ‘You could stand there and give the orders, now finish what you started. Try and do what those stupid, stinking goats you called your sons couldn’t. Or are you as gutless as that one back there?’

Martil hurled the words at Edil, wanting the man to attack him, enjoying seeing the shock replaced by anger, and then by fear. Part of him could still recognise that he was goading the man until he had no choice but to attack and be killed, but he was just too angry to want to do anything but take it out on the man in front of him.

‘Yes, I’m going to kill you, too. Slaughter you like the pig you are. You couldn’t live like a man, come and see if you can die like one, you bastard!’

But Edil still made no move to attack; he was obviously unable to follow what had happened,
unable to comprehend how a drunken fool had massacred his family. Martil felt his anger bubble over at the way the man just stood there, unwilling to finish what he had started.

‘Come on! I’ll slice off your face if you won’t fight!’ he hissed, then spat again into Edil’s face.

This seemed to break the spell the robber was under. He screamed a wordless challenge and swung his axe at Martil; wild, crazy swings that only cut the air, then Martil stepped inside the axe’s arc and swung both swords, putting all his anger, his frustration and his hatred into the double blow. His swords struck Edil’s neck from opposite sides and the man’s head spun off and hit the road, rolling into the bushes. The body stayed upright for a moment, pumping out blood, then collapsed onto itself.

Martil turned, to see if there was any threat from the sons. There was none. Their dead eyes seemed to stare up at him, accusing him, their faces frozen forever in a rictus of shock and agony. He looked from one to another but there was no life, no movement, just the hideous wounds he had ripped into them and the stink of blood and opened bowels. He spun back and slammed his swords deep into the ground, then he bent over and vomited, a seemingly endless stream of wine and the bread and cheese that he had eaten that morning.

He hurried over to where Tomon still waited patiently, ripping off his stained tunic and trousers as he went. He grabbed a waterskin and splashed it over his hands, using the clean parts of his clothing to scrub the blood off his face and hands. Then he rinsed out his mouth and spat.

He stopped and stared at his wineskin, lying next to Edil’s body, started walking towards it but decided
the red wine would look and taste too much like blood to him. He did not know what to do next, whether to just ride on or bury the bodies. He leaned against Tomon and buried his face in his hands. It had happened again. He had lost control and killed unnecessarily. He need not have killed the sons; he could have just wounded them. But once he drew his swords, all thought, all reason, was lost. As for Edil’s death…It was closer to murder.

‘He would have tried to avenge his sons,’ Martil told Tomon, but he could tell even the horse was not convinced. ‘He was given the choice to leave me alone!’
But not at the end, when he might have taken it
, a voice inside him said. Telling himself that the man was a robber, who had obviously killed before, that by wiping out his family he had in fact saved the lives of other travellers was scant comfort. It did not change the truth.

Martil shook with self-loathing. ‘He’s dead because I wanted to kill him. Because I wanted him to pay for making me angry,’ he told Tomon. ‘Because I lost control again. Like Bellic.’

It was one of the reasons he had left the army, left behind his homeland of Rallora, even though he was a hero down there, at least to some of the people.

‘One of the reasons? It was the only reason, you stupid bastard,’ he told himself. Everything else was only part of the truth.

Bellic. The one act of anger and revenge that had turned him from hero to villain. The town that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The years of war had robbed him of something, the ability to control himself—to control his temper. When he got angry, people died. Even here, in another country. And he did not know how to stop it.

I cannot take much more of this before I go completely mad
, he thought…he rubbed his face with a shaking hand.
It will be different from now on. I shall change
, he swore silently.

Slowly he dressed in fresh clothes. But when he sat down to pull on his boots, a loud groan made him leap to his feet, heart pounding. He started towards his swords, before he realised the noises were coming from the black-bearded son he had gutted. He was trying to pull himself out of his own entrails and turn himself onto his back.

Martil used his old tunic to wipe the handle of his swords, before retrieving them and watching the youth’s struggles. When he was sure it was not a trick, he walked carefully over. A man could not fight well with half his insides around his knees, but in sixteen years of bloody warfare Martil had seen too many of his friends, and later the men he commanded, die in unusual ways to take chances now. Martil knew what he had to do. The young robber could linger for a turn of the hourglass or more, in agony. He stepped forward and raised his sword to end the man’s suffering.

‘Wait!’

Martil checked his stroke and looked down into the brutal young face. Pain and blood had etched lines into the areas that were not covered by the thick, tangled beard, while the eyes showed cunning, and a touch of desperation.

‘I have a half-sister. Her name is Karia. She’s only six. Da remarried after Ma died having Leten over there.’ He jerked his head to indicate his brother with the cut throat.

‘Do you want me to take her and her mother somewhere?’ Martil found himself asking. The guilt
over the way he had lost control came bubbling up and he found himself eager, more than eager, to make amends. Eager, also, to be away from this place. He could grab the woman and child, take them to a village and give them money.
That could make up for this
, he told himself.

Blackbeard shook his head and then bit his lip at the effort it cost him.

‘No. Her mother died giving birth to her. We left Karia at our camp, about two hundred paces west.’

‘Then what do you want me to do?’

‘Take her across the border into Tetril, to the village of Thest. We have kin there. My uncle Danir. He’ll take care of her.’

Martil had only a sketchy idea of the border around here but knew it was a ride of a week or more. His guilt was strong and fresh, but it could only go so far.

‘I’ll take her to the next village and then pay for her to travel there,’ he offered.

‘I beg you! She must go to Danir!’ The giant paused for breath and some of the desperation in his voice was replaced by pleading. ‘He will reward you when you arrive and you cannot leave her to die here! She’s the only remaining part of our family.’

Martil wanted to refuse. Anyone could see taking a small girl to a village days away was going to be a nightmare. Let alone a small girl whose father and brothers you had just slaughtered.

But his guilt was choking him. He could not add the death of a small child to that. The blood on his hands was literally too fresh. Besides, this was peaceful Norstalos. What could happen? And she was only six! How much trouble could a small girl be?

‘All right,’ he said heavily.

‘Swear to Aroaril!’ the giant gasped, his face growing paler.

Martil hesitated. An oath to a God was never made lightly. You never knew when they might decide to hold you to it.

‘Swear!’

Martil’s guilt got the better of his common sense. Even though the young robber was dying, he wanted to show the man he was not just another mad sword-killer. ‘I swear by Aroaril to take Karia to her uncle Danir, in the village of Thest,’ he intoned.

The giant relaxed, and lay back struggling for air.

‘Now there is one last thing you must do for me,’ he grunted.

Martil nodded and closed his eyes, so he did not see the flare of triumph on the young man’s face before his sword struck home. Grimly he wrapped his hands in the bloodstained clothing and dragged the bodies of Edil and his sons off the road, grimacing at the stench of open bowels and blood. Then he washed his hands and his mouth out once more before walking Tomon up the road. That way, when he returned with the girl, she would not have to see the bodies of her father and brothers.

It was only when he was ready to start walking into the trees to get her that he started to realise the true enormity of the promise he had just made. Why would a small girl want to go anywhere with a strange man? What would he tell her about her family? How would she travel, what would she eat, where would she sleep?

He almost jumped onto Tomon and rode away at that point. There had to be a village nearby where he could report the attack and the missing girl. Then
he paused. What if the girl wandered off and died in the forest? Whatever the sins of her family, she had not tried to rob and kill him. He was finding it hard enough to look in the mirror as it was. Could his conscience stand another child’s death?

‘And you’re talking to yourself more and more,’ he muttered.

‘Aye, but it’s only a problem when you start answering yourself,’ he decided.