DarkFyre Ch. 22

"There! The girl!" Barked a voice, and another man was already down by then as Silmaria notched her second arrow.

Rael recognized Ricard's voice immediately, though he couldn't pick the man out of the crowd just then. The Brother's voice and tone was entirely different now, strangely so, twisted by anger and hysteria, high and cracking and quavering. He sounded like a broken thing, a man gleefully walking on the precipice of something dark and cavernous and unknowable, and delighting as the razors edge cut his feet to fleshy ribbons.

Ricard. Bloody fucking Ricard, with his constant delays and avowals of aid.

The betrayal laid bare, Rael's rage was fed, and intensified to a roaring blaze.

The men came, intent on reaching him or Silmaria, Rael neither knew nor cared. The Knight burst forward in an explosion of muscle and violence and his greatsword arced out, cleaving through the night with its tremendous reach and fierce power. The first Brother met his end, his arm half severed and his chest opened. Another step forward and a quick whirl of the huge blade brought Rael's sword around in an upward cut, reaching under the man's guard. A second body slumped to the ground, the dead man nearly cut in half. His third attacker came rushing out of the night to his left and Rael lunged back, his blade coming up to block and parry his attacker's assault, but the man never reached him, going down with an arrow through his belly.

Then the fighting grew too thick and frantic for Rael to keep track of, the men rushing him two and even three at a time. He spun and lunged, slashing and whipping his blade about wildly, keeping the assassins away with the reach of his sword and the potency of his rage. He fought like a man possessed, prodded to anger too great to be contained. His movements remained quick and agile, his blade moving faster than any lesser man could have managed, and one by one he cut the Brothers and the shadowy assassins with their flesh-burnt runes with the force of his skill and his rage, until his blade shone bloody red in the firelight.

The assassins proved as resilient and unyielding as their brothers in the inn had been. The first Rael caught across the middle with the tip of his greatsword, slashing the man's belly half open, but the killer did not succumb until Rael ran him fully through and his blade stuck many inches through his back. Silmaria's arrow caught another assassin in the chest and, after a momentary stumble from absorbing the force of the shot, the man came relentlessly on even as he bled out. Rael parried the man's persistent strikes before skipping back and bringing his greatsword in for a low arcing slash, severing the assassin's right leg just below the knee. The shadowy man still did not go still until Rael finally brought his sword down across the prone man's neck, severing his head before rolling out of the way as his next attacker waded in.

Silmaria soon had to abandon her perch on the eave. The fire spread rapidly through the inn, the flames consuming and twisting through timber and cloth in an ever widening path of crackling, feeding destruction. She fired off another arrow into the back of a Brother trying to circle in behind Rael, bringing the man down. He tried to reach back to grab at the arrow, screaming in agony, flecks of bloody pink froth dropping from purple lips stretched in a grimace of mortal agony. He was not like the others. Not like the assassins. He was like all the Brothers; he was very much a man, and he felt every agonizing moment of his death pains.

And he was trying to kill them.

Silmaria hardened her heart, and turned away.

With a creek and a crash the door behind her burst open. From the inn itself came streaming and screaming several brothers, their robes and mantels ablaze, their hair and faces wreathed in flames and quickly melting like the wax of the candle that started this whole fiery mess to begin with. Silmaria backpedaled as one of the men came right at her, screaming like he was in the hells already. He probably wasn't really after her; more than like he was crazed out of his mind with the pain of burning alive, and she just happened to be in his path. Either way, he was running for her, bearing down on her, a big mass of seething fire and the flames on him as greedy as any fire she'd ever seen, seeking wood and clothe and flesh and bone and anything in all of existence to fuel its fiery glory.

Silmaria put an arrow in the man's chest, cutting short his suffering and forward momentum all at once.

This is too much, Silmaria thought grimly as she looked around the clearing where Rael still raged and fought and killed. So many. How many can there be? The entire sect of Brothers? And how many of the cloaked ones that refuse to die? This is bad!

Before she could nock another arrow, one of the assassins managed to catch Rael with a grazing slash to his upper thigh. Her fierce dear one bared his teeth and let out a roar, and his greatsword arced through the air in great cleaving cuts. A quick flurry later and another of the black-shroud assassins lay at his feet with his skull rent down the middle. But Rael paid for it as he caught another cut in his right bicep from one of the traitorous Brother's while he tangled with the Assassins.

The Brothers were no warriors, not truly; their skill did not compare to the Assassins in their midst. But at the rate the men were emerging to bear down on them, it wouldn't matter. They seemed content to throw themselves into the fray and be cut down, relying on their greater number to eventually be too much for even Rael's might to contend with and the sheer number of his attackers became his undoing.

And at this rate, they'd succeed in exactly that soon enough.

Smoke billowed as thick and black and choking as the night itself. The fire was raging in full now, consuming the inn, blazing forth and bathing the surroundings in ever shifting, undulating oranges, flashes of brilliance, and deep reds to match the blood on the killing field Rael had turned the inn yard into. The smoke stung Silmaria's eyes and punished her lungs. She tasted soot and burnt out wood and heat. The hint of roasting meat rising from the inn made her gorge rise.

She pushed the sick feeling in the pit of her belly down along with all thoughts of death and carnage, from within the inn and without. She slung her bow back over her shoulders, pulled her short sword from her belt, and sprinted off around the inn yard and to the stables. There she crept along the stalls, as slow and cautious as she dared, half expecting someone to spring at her from the flickering shadows at any moment. It seemed all attention was on Rael just then however; the Stables were empty aside from a number of horses. Most of the beasts were clearly terrified, spooked by the carnage of battle, blades clanging and crashing in a sharp steel whine as they met. Men screaming and dying. The smell of smoke and blood on the air, and the fearsome fire tearing through the inn, far too close for comfort.

A few of the horses penned at the end of the stables were calm though, or as close to calm as she had any right to ask for. They were still saddled, and were likely the mounts of some of the men trying to kill them even now. The impressive beasts were not relaxed by any means, but neither were they driven to near madness like some of their brethren. A simple glance would tell anyone these were no common horses meant for plow or cart or bearing travelers along long, dusty trails. These were horses of action, and purpose, there was no questioning that. Between their capable, strong appearance and relative calm, they were her best chance.

Silmaria went to quick work unlocking all the horses pens, throwing the doors open wide and refusing to dwell on her mad plan. The panicked horses went fleeing out, crashing into one another, neighing shrill and desperate as they escaped the stables and went charging in all directions. Silmaria hoped they trampled a few of the Brothers on their way to freedom. She tried not to consider that she could possibly be freeing them to run down her Master instead.

The copper tang of blood was on Rael's tongue. He wasn't even sure if it was his own. It didn't matter, then; blood was blood, and it was flowing, on him and in him and, increasingly, out of him. He was deep in battle and bloodlust, caught in the hot rush of the moment, but Rael felt himself fatiguing and his strength began to ebb. He was wounded in several places and he'd already cut down a dozen men and more. Worse still, more Brothers and Assassins were coming from the shadows by the moment, fresh and ready. Rael soon found himself twisting and spinning, sidestepping and circling about, all offense forgotten as he focused his full effort on just keeping the men arrayed around him from ending him.

Soon it wouldn't be enough. Another sword stroke got through, a cut into his left forearm, and he nearly dropped his greatsword before recovering and cutting open the man who drew blood on him. Rael struggled through the pain, but he knew at any moment, despite all the strength of his body and power of his resolve and the steel of his will, he would be unable to fight them off any longer.

A high, piercing neighing split the smoky night sky, and the inn-yard turned battlefield erupted into even deeper chaos as horses came bursting into the clearing, panicked and frightened and aggressive in their terror. They bucked and reared, bolting along and sending the Brothers scurrying out the way of their mad dash while the slowest of them fell screaming into the dirt, the horses smashing into them to trample them underfoot without hesitation.

"Master!" Silmaria called. Rael looked up and caught sight of her riding astride a powerful, bold horse. The beast was all shifting, bunching, powerful muscle working in perfect harmony under a glossy midnight coat, its mane and tail darker and more lustrous than the night sky overhead. She held the reins to lead a second horse as remarkable as the first, this one a dappled gray with white spattered through its coat and a flaxen mane and tail.

Silmaria's eyes blazed green fire and determination, and she purposefully set the horse she straddled to ride down two of the Brothers closest to Rael, her curved short sword lashing out to cut one of the stunned men down while the other scrambled frantically away from the horse's driving hooves.

A surge of hope filled him, lending renewed strength to his arms. Rael lunged forward, cutting down one of the brothers in his way, and then striding to his love and the horses with an exhaustedly hurried stride.

"No! You cannot escape! My Master will have your head, I've sworn it!" Brother Ricard's voice howled in outrage, the tone of a wild thing gone unhinged. The man scurried from the right to interject himself between Rael and the horses. His burgundy eyes were red-rimmed and wide, bulging with desperation and denial.

"You. You traitorous bastard! This is your doing!" Rael snarled at Ricard.

"Why! Why couldn't you have just died! You were supposed to die!" Ricard accused. Rael's nostrils flared, his jaw set tight, and he was on the smaller man in an instant. To his credit, Ricard stood his ground and struck at the Knight with the dagger glinting in his clawing hand. But even with Rael weakened, the traitor Brother was overmatched. Rael sidestepped the stab and was on the man, grabbing a fistful of the Brother's robe and slamming his knee into his gut. Ricard doubled over, wheezing and choking on his own spittle, helpless. Rael slammed the pommel of his blade into Ricard's temple, and the vile man went down, blood seeping from his head.

"What the hell are you doing, Master?" Silmaria shouted, and she wheeled her horse around and struck at a nearby attacker with her sword. "Get your ass on the horse and let's get out of here!"

Rael was already moving as she spurred him on, jerking Ricard's limp body from the ground. He tossed the man across the withers of the riderless horse. The Nobleman then scrambled up into the saddle, taking the reins from his Gnari love. He laid about with his greatsword at the few men who hadn't dispersed when the crazed horses came rushing through and kicked his horse forward, crying, "Go! Go!"

They burst into the night, undulating blurs rushing through the dirt and dust and rocks of The Reach. The silver-tinted reds of the land sped by as Silmaria's horse surged out in the lead with Rael's lunging after its heels. Rael let the girl lead, as she could see their way much more clearly than he. His attention was at their backs, his eyes ever watchful for any sign of pursuit. His hand was cramped and numb where he gripped his greatsword, but he dare not sheath it yet. Even as the blood leaked from his wounded forearm, spilling down his fingers, dripping in little crimson droplets from the pommel of his blade, he would not let go.

For her part, Silmaria's heart beat so hard that she could feel the pressure of the blood hammering in her temples, threatening to drown out the beating of their horses' hooves. She felt certain that at any moment pursuit would be on them and they'd be ridden down. She honestly didn't know if they would manage to come out of such an encounter alive this time; Master Rael was as stubbornly defiant as ever, but she knew he was wounded and his strength was fading. She'd seen it when she came upon him with the horses, and saw it every time she glanced back at him riding now. He sagged visibly in the saddle like he was bearing some enormous burden, and though he refused to sheath his blade, she saw the toll it took on him just to keep the greatsword naked and gleaming in hand. If the Brothers and the strange, deadly Assassins came on them, Silmaria honestly didn't know how long her Lord love would be able to endure.

Or she herself for that matter. Silmaria felt near numb with fatigue and she hurt all over. She'd escaped any major injury, but she felt as if every inch of her body was bruised and bumped. The adrenaline of the fight and the flight was beginning to fade now, leaving her shaking with exhaustion. She was also made acutely aware with every bump and rise and fall the horse found over the frantic ride just how long it had been since she'd last ridden a horse.

After they'd put what must have been several miles between themselves and the burnt out inn of the Brothers of the Tower, Rael brought his horse up beside hers.

"This is far enough," he called. "Find us a good spot behind some rock formations, some trees, any kind of cover away from the road where we can settle in until dawn."

Silmaria nodded, and scanned the area for a moment, before returning her gaze to her Master worriedly. She nodded to the unconscious man still lying across Rael's horse. "What about him?"

"He's going to give us answers," Rael said shortly.

"I don't think he's going to be very free with his information," Silmaria returned.

"He'll talk," Rael replied. His voice was clearly weary, ragged and torn where the wind rushing past them snatched at the edges of his words. But there was determination, too. Determination, and the promise of danger.

"He'll talk."

***

"You're going to talk."

Ricard looked up with baleful burgundy eyes. He was sprawled rather uncomfortably at the base of one of the many emaciated, tough trees in a small cluster that could hardly rightly be called a grove. He'd woken here securely bound with his arms behind his back and his feet hobbled together. The gnarled roots of the tree were digging into his spine where they rose all around him at the tree's base. Spindly limbs stretched out overhead, clawing and ripping their way upward, intermingling with the reaching branches of the other trees around them to form a net spreading out to the sky in a vain effort to hold snatches of starlight captive.

Ricard spat into the dust.

Rael was undeterred. The big Nobleman sat before the bound Brother, legs crossed, with his short sword resting across his knees.

"What will you do with your sword, Lordling?" Ricard challenged. His voice was mocking, his tone a gleeful sneer "Kill me?"

"If I must," was Rael's simple reply.

"I think not," Ricard grinned. "You'll never have your answers then."

Rael ran his thumb slowly along the edge of his blade. His intense, ethereal silver eyes never left Ricard. "I will kill you if I must," he repeated, "But I'll have my answers first."

Ricard let out a bark of laughter and it was harsh and ugly. His expression was made all the more macabre by the dried blood caked thickly to the side of his face and matting his hair so it stuck up in stiff clumps. "Answers will gain you nothing, Lordling! It won't matter if you have every last one that you seek. You'll be dead ere long."

"Who do you serve? Who wants me dead?" Rael asked.

"Why, Sren, of course," Ricard replied, his lips twisting into a madman's grin. "Haven't you been paying attention?"

Rael stared into the man's unnerving burgundy eyes, so very different from the utterly mundane, ordinary brown they'd been every other time they spoke. He cuffed the Brother, a vicious open-handed slap that left Ricard's ears ringing and the taste of rust from his split lip.

"Who do you serve?" Rael repeated. "Who wants me dead?"

The mad grin didn't falter. "You know, Lord-Dead-Man, this is all quite pointless if you won't listen to me when I speak truth. May as well kill me now and have done with if you don't want to hear what I've to say, hmm? My Master, all Tower Brothers' Master, is his holiness Sren."

Rael pressed his lips into a thin line and decided to try a different question. "Why do the Tower Brothers want me dead?"

"Oh, not all the Tower Brothers do," Ricard explained blithely. "Only the ones who Sren has chosen. The ones Sren allows to hear his true voice. More of us join his inner circle every day, but not near enough. More's the pity! If more of Sren's inner circle had been at the compound, we would have had you, without need of The Empty!"

Rael cuffed him again. "You're speaking in riddles."

Ricard spat blood at Rael's feet, and gave a bark of laughter, grim and cruelly taunting. "I speak in truths! Small wonder it smacks of riddles, then!"

"You're insane," Rael said, and for that brief moment his mask of cold, deadly control slipped, and his words came out in a disgusted growl.

"Sane, insane, god touched..." Ricard gibbered. "Does it truly matter? I've the only answers you've any hope of getting, Lord Corpse, so you'd better hope I'm more sane than not!"

Rael took a deep breath. He found the small, hard knot of cold wrath inside him, and used it to be calculating and controlled once more.

"The runes burnt into your arm," he nodded to where the Brother's forearm was exposed and bound tightly to his side. "What are they?"

"My pretties...my beautiful promises? Ah, they burn so, even now, no sweeter burn there ever was," Ricard sighed, dreamily almost. "They are the mark of claiming. That which makes us Sren's chosen, those who hear his true voice and serve his will directly. It is the tongue of the gods', which no man may speak. It is our salvation, and your doom!"

Rael half wondered for a moment if the blow he'd struck Ricard had ruined his mind. Clearly the man was demented. He seethed with frustration as this precious answer, so close it was within his grasp, seeped through his fingers. Those were the same runes. He knew they were! The same runes on the arrow, and on the assassins. Ricard knew what they meant, somehow, somewhere. He only had to make the man tell him.

Rael asked the Brother about the marks again. And again. Both times, he made a very convincing case for why Ricard should tell him the truth. But though Ricard howled and struggled and cursed him, he also laughed in Rael's face as he bled, and his story did not change.