The other gorledon wasn’t deterred, even when a second arrow from Abigail’s bow found its mark. Anatoly came up on Alexander’s left and Isabel on his right. The beast leapt impossibly high into the air in an arc that would bring it down right on top of Alexander. He dove forward under the deadly clawed feet and the creature passed overhead. He tried to tuck and roll, but the thing’s heavy tail came down hard on his back and sent him sprawling face first onto the ground.
Anatoly leveled a mighty swing with his war axe but the gorledon saw it coming and turned its back to the blade, presenting its hard armored scales to take the brunt of the blow. The axe glanced off without so much as a scratch. Its turn brought it around to face Isabel. She darted in and stabbed into its softer, bright green underbelly. Her blade sank several inches before she withdrew and dodged the first swipe of the creature’s heavy clawed hand. She wasn’t able to avoid the back of its hand, though; it came around and knocked her flat.
Alexander scrambled to his feet to rejoin the battle. Anatoly spun his axe to use the long sharp spike on the back and swung again. This time the creature didn’t see the attack coming and the spike drove through the softer scales on the beast’s side. It flinched in shock and surprise, freeing the spike from its side in the process. At the same time, Abigail sank another arrow into its chest. It bellowed and lowered its head toward Abigail in preparation for a charge. Jack threw a knife with all his might. It flew true and buried itself into the side of the gorledon’s neck. The creature flinched again and turned to face Jack. Alexander took the opportunity to slip around its other side and slice deeply into the flesh of its thigh. It wheeled back toward Alexander with a wild but powerful swing that passed only inches over his head, then came around with its other hand and caught him full in the chest with its oversized claws.
Alexander sailed back a dozen feet and landed flat on his back. The world spun. Blackness threatened to close in on him and he couldn’t get his breath. He felt like a crushing weight was pressing down on his chest. As he struggled to breathe, he heard the beast roar again. He looked down at his chest and saw several deep gashes through his leather armor filling with bright red blood. He still couldn’t draw breath. In a flash of panic, he reached into the little potion pouch Lucky had given him and pulled out the healing draught. He fought with the stopper; his hands slick with blood. Blackness was closing in. Finally, after what seemed like an hour of struggling, he got the vial open and frantically drank the contents. He was suffocating and his vision was going dark, yet he managed to smear a large dollop of healing salve into the wounds on his chest before darkness closed in and took him completely. For a moment, he felt like he was drifting. There was pain and panic all around, then the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness claimed him.
He woke late in the day. Isabel was sitting next to him, holding his hand. The first thing he noticed after seeing her was that he was breathing again, but when he tried to take a full breath, he felt a stab of pain in his chest. He groaned softly.
“He’s awake,” she called out.
Lucky came up next to him and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Lie still, you took quite a hit. Your chest is still healing, so try to breathe shallowly.” Lucky smiled down at him with a look of relief. “I feared the worst when you went down. It’s good to see you on the mend.”
Alexander gingerly looked around to see how the battle had turned out. The second gorledon was dead with an arrow buried to the feathers into its throat and sticking out the top of its head. Anatoly was lying flat on his back, looking over at Alexander. He looked to be under Lucky’s care as well. Abigail was sitting next to him and gave Alexander a smile of relief and concern. Anatoly had dried blood on his lips and looked almost as badly beaten up as Alexander.
“Glad to see you awake. I was worried there for a few minutes, after I woke up, that is,” Anatoly said softly and somewhat weakly.
“Glad to be awake. What happened?” Alexander asked.
Isabel recounted the rest of the fight while Lucky looked at the wounds on Alexander’s chest.
“After you went down, Anatoly took out its other leg, which put the thing on its knees but not before it backhanded him in the chest again. I tried to stab it again but it just batted me out of the way like a rag doll. Since it couldn’t get up, Abigail stayed just out of range and picked her shot. When it tipped its head back to roar in anger, she put an arrow neatly through its brain. Lucky gave Anatoly a potion that put him out for a few hours and we’ve all been waiting and worrying about the two of you since.”
The thought slammed into Alexander like a lightning bolt. He felt the terrible dread flood into him again and almost lost the courage to ask. “What about Erik? Did Slyder see if he escaped?”
Isabel nodded with a mixture of relief, gratitude, and sadness. “He survived and made it through with over half his force. It looked like almost thirty Rangers fell in the fight, mostly from the liquid fire tossed into their midst by that wizard. I got the impression from the looks of things that Erik didn’t stop to engage but just pushed through like you told him to.” She stopped and looked down for a moment before continuing. Alexander knew the bad news was coming. “They captured two Rangers who were badly burned in the fight. Truss tortured them for a few minutes before he killed them.” She looked angry and sad at the same time.
“I knew them both. They were good men,” she whispered.
Alexander closed his eyes and gently squeezed her hand. “I wish I’d gone after Truss at Flat Top Rock. It was a mistake to let him go.”
It was Anatoly who answered him. “That may be, Alexander, but that doesn’t make you responsible for his actions. His free will is all his own and his choices are his to answer for. Don’t fall into the trap of taking on the burden of responsibility for the actions of others, particularly others who have no conscience.”
Alexander looked over at his old mentor. “Thirty men are dead on my order,” he whispered as if saying it aloud proved his guilt.
Anatoly fixed him with his stern eyes and nodded slowly and deliberately. “That is the burden of command in war and this is only the beginning. There will be many more that die by your command before this is over. Just know that the alternative is far worse. At least those men died in service to life and liberty. If Phane gets his way, countless more will suffer and die to please his ego and his lust for power.”
Alexander closed his eyes again and tried to push away the thought of thirty families grieving the loss of their sons, brothers, and husbands. He wanted to cry out. He wanted to shake the very maker of the world until he explained how he could permit such evil to even exist. The idea of wanton murder and premeditated war for the sake of power alone was so alien to Alexander that he wondered how Phane could even be of the same species.
Alexander’s childhood was so calm and peaceful, even blessedly boring. He had imagined being a great warrior fighting in the battles he read about in his studies. It always seemed so glorious. The pain of the wound in his chest wasn’t glorious and the heartache he felt at the loss of thirty good men mocked the entire idea of glory in war. This was just sad and ugly. It made him hurt at the very root of his soul.
“Anatoly’s right, Alexander,” Isabel said. “You didn’t send those men into harm’s way out of a selfish desire for power, and not one went against his will. Erik stood before a whole battalion and asked for volunteers. Every last one of those men knew the purpose of the mission and the risks before they stepped forward. And Erik turned away a hundred more than he needed.”
Isabel’s words were all very reasonable and they were true as far as they went, but they didn’t diminish the anguish of life lost for nothing but the lust for power. It was all so senseless. A part of Alexander simply couldn’t grasp the concept of destroying other people’s precious lives to further personal ambition. It just didn’t make sense to him that some people were so broken and twisted inside that they could do such a thing, and yet it was so terrifyingly real.
He’d read stories about such evil but they were all very safe and cozy, tucked away on the page where they couldn’t hurt anyone. In the past several weeks, he’d seen evil at work firsthand. Phane hunted him at a distance simply for being a potential threat to his ambitions. Truss abducted Isabel out of his desire to possess her and the value she represented as bait.
Alexander lay there holding Isabel’s hand and tried to understand the kind of totally self-absorbed, self-important narcissism that must poison the souls of such people in order to motivate them to sever all ties with civil existence and embrace the savage within. What a cold and lonely way to live. What an empty and hateful way to see the world. How they must fear everyone else in the blindly selfish belief that others surely must see the world in the same way.
He wondered about the voice of conscience. It spoke to him often, that little voice in the back of his mind offering guidance about the morality of his choices. He always tried to listen. He knew the consequences of ignoring it. Alexander had never done anything that he considered evil, but he’d been less than kind to Abigail a time or two when they were children. The consequences were always a nagging feeling of remorse and guilt for mistreating her.
He wondered if evil people were haunted by the voice of their conscience or if they’d taught themselves to ignore it because it was an obstacle to their ambitions. Or worse yet, what if they simply didn’t have that quiet, gentle voice of moral clarity at all? How could you reason with a person who didn’t have a conscience? How could you ever trust him? How could you even turn your back on such a person?
What a cruel prank to play on the world to make a place where life and liberty were so immeasurably precious and then allow evil to exist. The very presence of which places an untenable moral burden on the innocent. They have a duty to themselves to protect their lives, liberty, and property, yet they have an obligation to their conscience to withhold violence against evil except in defense.
Alexander struggled with the question for a time before settling on his answer. He decided that evil had a right to exist until it acted to harm others. Once evil took life, liberty, or property from an innocent person, it forfeited the right to expect its life, liberty, or property to be respected.
He almost laughed when the words of the Old Reishi Law sprang into his mind: You have a right to your life because you are alive. You have a right to your liberty because you have free will. You have a right to your property because it is the product of your labor. In violating the natural rights of another, you forfeit your own.
Clearly, he was not the first to struggle with this question. Others had come to the same rational conclusion that he had, and they’d used it to build the greatest civilization ever seen on the Seven Isles. And that civilization had fallen only when it violated its own law. Perhaps the Old Law truly was a natural law, like gravity, with its own built-in enforcement mechanism that governed the fate of human society. Perhaps that was the balance to evil built into the world by its maker. Societies that respected the life, liberty, and property of all citizens would thrive and prosper, while those that allowed a tyrant or ruling class to abuse life, liberty, or property would fail to the detriment of all.
When he opened his eyes again it was nearing dusk. He realized that he’d dozed off again. Anatoly was sitting up and eating some camp stew Lucky had made over a little fire. Alexander slowly and gently took a breath. His chest was a bit tight but he could breathe deeply again. Lucky’s healing potion was powerful magic. It had taken the better part of the afternoon but Alexander’s chest was just about mended. Isabel noticed that he was awake and brought his pack over for him to lean against and helped him sit up. Abigail brought him a bowl of steaming hot stew, which he took gratefully. He ate slowly, even though his stomach was growling with hunger. After dinner he simply sat for a few minutes, looking out over the Pink Forest while the light of day faded. It was a beautiful place even with the two dead gorledons sprawled out not far from their fire.
Once his stomach was full, his nerves calmed, and his wounds mended, Alexander’s mind began to wander back to the tasks that lay before him.
“I suspect they know we weren’t with Erik,” he said to no one in particular.
Anatoly nodded without a word.
Jack spoke softly, “Those Rangers were probably tortured for information about our plans.”
Isabel nodded and looked down sadly. “It’s a good bet they know we’re coming through the forest on foot, but they won’t know where or when. We still have a good chance of slipping past them, especially with Slyder keeping watch for us.”
“It looks to me like the road is another day away at best. We might be able to slip across at night if we’re careful,” Jack suggested.
Alexander nodded in agreement but his mind was still processing the events of the afternoon. His wound was healed enough that he would be able to move tomorrow. Anatoly was mending even more quickly. Alexander was still playing out the basic struggle between good and evil in the back of his mind while trying to recall the details of his clairvoyance, both the specifics of what he’d seen as well as the state of mind he’d been in when it happened.
He was troubled by the colors of the man in black, which brought him back to the question of Phane and his aura. Alexander tried to replay his first clairvoyant experience. He didn’t recall seeing anyone’s aura, but then it was the first time it had happened, so maybe it was still a developing ability. When his second sight first started, it had taken a year or so before he was able to discern much of anything from the colors he saw. With time, practice, and experience, he’d come to understand how to read the aura of another person in a way that provided useful information and insight. He hoped his clairvoyance would also become more reliable and useful with time.