But if you say no here, you’re killing me, sure as the sunrise. You can’t beat her, you just can’t. Come with me, meet her. You’ll change your mind, you’ll see.”
The Old Man arched his back, which popped audibly, and said, “It’s been a pleasure, and I – rather, we – thank you for both the information and the help, but we’re going to do this on our own.”
“You have no idea who you’re up against.”
“Neither does she.”
The Old Man’s sword erupted from Mendoza’s back, coming out red. Mendoza gasped, twitching, his eyes to the ceiling, his mouth moving but emitting only the small sounds of the broken. As he lay dying, the Old Man walked up the stairs and wiped the blood on the curtains.
Atop the stage, he looked down at the rest of them, like a king without a crown. Slate turned his back before the Old Man could utter something high and mighty and then he walked out the entrance. “Come on, Teach is waiting on us.”
Angras
Pieces of glass lay shattered around the room, wine stains soaking into the walls at intervals.
It had to be done.
“Did it? So many innocents. So much blood . . . ”
Death comes to all, but great achievements erect monuments which endure until the sun grows cold.
I shook myself and poured another glass of wine; I would not stoop to chug from the bottle again. I swirled it, took a swallow, and let it slide down my throat as I tilted my head back, the mask off and on the floor next to me.
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough to finish.”
Let me out. I can help.
The glass shattered on the floor, and I put the bottle to my lips.
“Not yet.”
Alocar
Back on the King’s Road, where the dull burden of travel once again wore and deadened their senses, where night and day merged into one, and their chief complaint became the lurking but ever present boredom. After Alocar had spitted Mendoza on his blade, they’d collected Teacher from the inn, scraped together some supplies and food, and then gotten the hell out of Hammonfall before this new unknown could lay hands on them.
Alocar pulled at the waistline of his pants and tightened his belt. His belly had shrunk with the miles, and though the taut stomach of his youth still evaded him, it wasn’t the debilitating old man’s paunch that he’d left Dradenhurst with. Another two weeks or thereabouts, and they’d arrive in Fayne. Given Isaac’s powers, their plan needed updating and no less than a few tweaks, a situation Alocar planned on remedying tonight; otherwise, they’d be riding hampered, an option only slightly better than slitting their wrists on the road.
They made camp that night on a small knoll surrounded by open fields of grass. No more than a few miles away, Alocar saw wide swaths of farmland: Prolifia’s breadbasket. People cultivated simple fares of potatoes, corn, oats, and wheat, grown between the eastern banks of the Idranian and the western current of the Elefon River, and though there was scant protection for their little band in terms of geography, neither did the land provide much cover for anybody to waylay them.
His body groaned in protest, but Alocar made no sign that he felt anything other than superb as he lowered himself onto the blanketed grass that separated the fields from the King’s Road, accepting and savoring the taste of Teacher’s newest soup, a medley of wild vegetables picked from the roadside, flavored with spices kept in the mule’s supply kit and bolstered with the meat of a rabbit they’d snared.
Slate got up and moved downwind from the soup, where parts of the rabbit were still cooking. “Can’t take that smell anymore,” he said, looking sidelong at Isaac.
“Has anybody thought about who Mendoza’s boss might be?” Alocar asked.
Late night insects chirped. Something howled, and the campfire crackled.
“Guess that answers that. Regardless, it looks like we need to be watching for a war on two fronts: Angras on one side, and Mendoza’s boss on the other.”
“Personally,” Slate tossed a stick in the fire, “I don’t give much of a damn about this new character. Once we do this shit and I collect Teacher’s antidote, I’m going to string Angras up by his heels and shoot arrows into him until I get bored.”
“Be that as it many, we need him to stay alive until the end of this ordeal. Maybe past it. He could be of some use.” Crymson blew on her soup,