Authors: Usman Ijaz
Rubbing at his sore eyes he turned back to the
pair before him. The two looked at him with upturned faces and pleading eyes.
As he watched the woman began to weep. He wanted to sneer at them and the whole
situation. To be caught stealing porcelain and silver from the palace and selling
them in the streets was a crime punishable by time in jail or by the loss of
one hand. It was their unfortunate luck to have been apprehended on such a day.
The infernal headaches had put him in a foul mood.
“Take off their heads,” he said mildly to one of
the guards.
The woman looked at him a moment longer, eyes
wide, and then collapsed unconscious
. Good
, thought Jonas,
now the
executioner can do his damned job in peace
. The man was already weeping and
begging for forgiveness. Jonas stood up and turned away from the onlookers and
the condemned and strode back into the palace, massaging his forehead. Behind
him he could hear the wild cries of the man as the pair was dragged away and
the babble of the onlookers.
This world,
their
world, was beginning to
take its toll on him. This ruse was a cancer that was eating away at him. He
wanted to rip it apart and be done with the entire deception ... but knew he
must suffer it a while longer.
I need the boy!
he thought as the ache in his head suddenly became worse. He stopped in the
dark hallway and massaged his forehead with tented fingers. It worried him a
little, the headaches, they had been pestering him for the past several days,
with hardly a rest in between.
He heard the sound of footsteps behind him and turned
to see Logan coming towards him. He let the other man catch up before
continuing down the hall.
“Any progress?” Jonas asked, more harshly than
he intended to.
“No,” Logan answered in his cold-as-ice tone.
“What was the last you heard from your assassins?”
“They passed into Arcadia and are hunting the
Legionnaire and the boy’s trail.”
“Idiots!” Jonas hissed. “If they take much
longer I will take
their
heads off as well, no matter if they capture
the child or not!”
“If they fail,” Logan said, “I’ll kill them
myself.”
Jonas thought he spoke the truth. It irked him
to trust in others to do what he wanted done, but he knew that it was
necessary. He himself could not go chase the boy down. There was too much risk
of being discovered, too much risk of jeopardizing his plans when they were so
close to fruition. To send Logan might well result in disaster. When in a rage,
the man did not plan, he simply acted. Sending Logan might well have resulted
in a shootout on the Great Road, and despite the man’s reputation, there was no
telling if he could best three Legionnaires. And who did that leave? The low
for a low job.
The run of thoughts made him feel disgusted.
“Where is my son?”
Logan stared ahead as he answered. “Last I saw
him, he was with his usual comrades and forcing himself on a woman old enough
to be his mother.”
That feeling of disgust bloomed larger.
Mordred’s “usual comrades” were a few guardsmen that were as vile as him,
always hoping to earn favor by him.
Like attracts like
, the old saying
went. And if earning his favor might involve egging him into forcing himself
onto a woman or a girl, what for it to them? The boy would agree only too
quickly with any suggestions offered by those fools. In the past Jonas had
gotten rid of such men, but Mordred seemed to attract them like flies.
Like
attracts like
.
“Find him,” Jonas growled. “Get him away from
those fools and send him to me.”
One son I was given, and he is proving more
and more useless everyday!
Logan bowed his head acquiescently and marched
off. Jonas started up the stone steps leading to his chambers. There he would
stand on the balcony and stare out at the world and imagine how he would
shatter it, rebuild it, end it ... whatever he pleased. His whims changed on a
daily basis. Today, he could only think of destroying the hopes of men and
sitting back and watching them sink into madness.
It was the only comfort that was left to him; to
wait and dream.
3
“Your father wants you.”
Mordred regarded him coolly for a few moments.
“I’ll join him later.”
“He wants to see you now,” Logan told him. He
glanced behind the boy, saw the four guardsmen that he was with, and thought he
wouldn’t trust any of them to hold their ground in a battle. He dismissed them.
“What right do you have to order my companions
around?” Mordred demanded. The men lingered.
“While they are in uniform they aren’t your
companions, but under my command.” Logan faced the men again. “Go back to your
posts.” They slunk away with dark scowls as Mordred stared at him with
restrained anger.
“You are stepping above your position, Abarrai,”
Mordred said in a tight voice.
“Not nearly,” Logan told him as he turned away.
“I’m simply doing what my position states I must. Come, your father is
waiting.”
The sensation of having the boy at his back was
more than Logan could bear. He could feel the boy’s eyes like darts. Only his
guns at his sides allowed him to keep his composure. He wondered if he would be
able to use them if it came down to it. The boy was more than he seemed.
“My father will hear of this,” Mordred told him
sullenly.
Logan said nothing. As they neared the palace he
asked, “Where is the woman?”
Mordred laughed. “Don’t worry, Logan. I let her
go.”
After you were done with her
.
Logan kept his anger in check. The boy took full advantage of the fact that
Lapos was one of the few countries remaining where commoners could not
challenge their betters in court.
“You seem angry, Logan,” Mordred said with a
laugh.
Logan didn’t reply. He led the boy up the steps,
towards Jonas’s chambers. They passed dark, mute corridors with bleak hangings
covering the walls. Up and up they walked.
“Where do you spend all your time in town,
Logan? Could it be that the great, fabled Captain has a love for whores?”
Logan nearly tripped as the boy asked the
question, a sudden burst of panic flaring within him. He managed to keep his
composure as he led the boy up the stairs, refusing to give him any sort of
answer.
I have to be careful
, he thought as they approached Jonas’s
chambers.
He opened the doors and led the boy inside. He
immediately felt the wind blowing in through the open balcony doors. Jonas
stood out there. The old man was staring outward, with a fixation that Logan
had seen many times before. He left the boy and exited the rooms.
He spent his climb down the stairs with doubts
assaulting his mind.
He suspects something, or does he already know?
He
forced his mind away by reflecting on the news he had received from his
informant in Grandal. The two Legionnaires killed by the Blood Assassins had
been Hamar Ronan and Owain Lannit. It was being spread that they had died on
duty while investigating a smugglers den, but the timing fit with what Logan
knew. A part of him felt heavy by the news. He had known Hamar and Owain both,
had trained with them. And now they were dead by his command.
Accept it. Move on
,
he told himself as he reached the first floor and headed outside. One more
Legionnaire left, from what Amon had reported. Logan hadn’t been able to find
out who it was from his informant; the mission was a strict secret, it seemed.
He doubted one Legionnaire could escape the assassins, but didn’t reject the
possibility either. Logan knew that alone it might be possible to escape the
hunters, but with a child in tow it was made much harder.
And why does Jonas
want an Ascillian child anyway?
There was too much that was being kept from
him. He headed out under the afternoon sun, heading for the shooting ranges in
hopes of clearing his mind.
I’ll serve him as best I can until he
betrays me
, Logan thought.
Then I’ll put a bullet
through his head
.
1
The woods were dark. They made Connor wary. On
the other side of the river the Bramble Woods had been full of tall trees, but
those trees had been thin and allowed some sunshine to break through. On this
side of the river the woods were large and the canopy thick, shrouding
everything in shadows. The three headed into the dark embrace of the forest.
“How deep do you think these woods are?” Connor
asked the Legionnaire. “I mean, how long before we put them behind us?”
“I don’t know,” Alexis replied. “But I do know
that no woods run on forever.” He slipped the haversack over his shoulders and
led them into the woods.
“Why didn’t we simply travel down the river?”
Connor asked after several moments.
Alexis glanced back at him. “Would you want to
attempt a longer journey on that raft?”
“I suppose not,” Connor said as he pushed a
branch out of his way. He followed the Legionnaire with quiet reservation,
watching the forest around them. Shadows lay thick everywhere and there was a
silence to this place that he found greatly uncomforting. He glanced up towards
the canopy and saw small shafts of sunlight filtering through.
They’re just
dark, these woods
, he thought.
Other than that they’re not that
different from across the river. No different at all.
He glanced towards
Adrian to see if he felt the same way; his cousin watched the oppressive forest
with wary eyes, as though expecting an ambush to befall them any moment. Alexis
was much the same way, alert gaze always scanning the ground and the woods
around them.
Sometimes Connor’s thoughts drifted to the other
two Legionnaires that had left Port Hope with them. He hoped they were all
right, but worrying about them always reminded him of their own situation. If
this was an adventure, then it was nothing like what he had expected from all
the bards songs and tales.
But more often than not, he found himself
wondering what was going on back at the Golden Lilly. He wondered what his
father and sisters were doing at that moment. That place had begun to chafe at
him, but how quickly he had come to miss it now. He remembered the other night
when Adrian had found him weeping near the river, sobbing like a babe. He did
miss his family, more than he would have ever thought possible, but he was glad
that Adrian had not brought it up since then. He looked to his cousin, and felt
a jumble of emotions stir within him.
I have no reason to blame him
, he
thought, and felt a great weight lift off him. He realized then how much he had
held his cousin responsible for his mother’s death.
They rested in the early hours before noon and
ate a little of Rebecca’s hard bread and drank water from the skins. Then they
were on the move again. The trek through the forest was aimless and tiresome.
They passed tree after tree that Connor could have sworn were all the same and
it began to feel as though they were moving in place.
Rebecca had warned them that these woods were
dangerous, and if she spoke true then they had possible danger behind them and
before them. But at least they knew the danger to their backs, what might lie
ahead was a mystery. But nonetheless, Connor thought he would have chosen their
present course rather than risk encountering the assassins again. Assassins
that were capable of killing Legionnaires, men that were admired even outside
of Grandal, albeit grudgingly. He imagined there had to have been many
assassins to kill two well-trained Legionnaires, if indeed they had killed
Hamar and Owain.
Lost in his thoughts, and watching only the tops
of the trees in the distance and the darkening sky beyond them, Connor tripped
over a rock half-buried in the ground and fell.
“Are you all right?” Adrian asked.
“Yes,” Connor said, standing up and brushing
dirt off his trousers.
Alexis stopped and looked up at the sky.“It
might rain. Let’s pray that it doesn’t.”
Then they were on the move again.
2
The ground beneath their feet was hard, and the
sky above them dark, threatening to release rain. Alexis didn’t much care, it
was the waiting that irritated him. If it was going to rain, then let it rain,
and if there were people in these woods, then let them show themselves. He led
the boys deeper into the woods, worry gripping his head; worry for his lost
companions, whom he could only hope they would meet up with eventually, worry
for the safety of the boys, especially Adrian, and worry for the reception they
would receive in Gale, if ever they reached it.
Stop thinking so far ahead
,
he warned himself.
He wasn’t too worried about whether or not they
would ever come out of the woods; as he had told Connor, no woods ran on
forever. But he was concerned with just where they would come out. The Great
Road they had been following had led straight into Teihr, but God only knew
where they were now. For all Alexis knew, they might come out a great distance
from their destination.