The Earth-stepper's Bargain: A Short Story Page 6

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  Creeping silently through the leaf mould, Cal tried to figure out exactly what he would do when he found Ashrad. The Rhaveren had some suggestions, flashing gruesome pictures through his mind that made him grimly smile.

  Hew knew the place fairly well, having been stationed there at one point during his training. He told them that the best route inside was by way of a dead tree truck that had wedged itself up against a picture window on the south side of the structure. It was difficult to guard, with its obstructed line of sight, and far away from the main entrance, where Ashrad and Baldulf, the Sepami chief, had concentrated their forces.

  Roland’s men had their own commanders and knew they objectives. Cal didn’t give much thought to them after they shimmied up the tree and slipped inside, silencing the few enemy warriors who had been on watch in the area. Instead, he beckoned to Hewryn, the two of them running as swiftly as sparrows through the corridors towards the grand hall where Ashrad was bound to be.

  “Wait,” Hew said, grabbing Cal’s shoulder and trying to push him into a doorway when footsteps rang out a few dozen feet away.

  Cal wasn’t listening. He could feel the nearness of the target of all his pent-up fury, all his thwarted ambition and vengeful intent. They both could. The sword yearned to bite deeply into the flesh of his enemy; longed to seal the pact they had made on the mountain all those months ago. The culmination of all their desires, so close to being fulfilled. He was almost there. Nothing was going to stand in their way, not a few soldiers, not even Hew. Not anything.

  “Damn you to hell, Cal,” he heard Hewryn swear at him as he escaped the bigger man’s grasp and launched himself towards the group of twenty soldiers who had rounded the bend. Simple, they thought together as Cal drew the blade, spinning into them with heedless, invincible joy. It was quick work, with the music flowing through him like ice water down a parched gullet, and he laughed as he wiped the sweat from his face, not even pausing to catch Hew’s worried, disappointed, wary look as he immediately ran on.

  The sound of battle being joined elsewhere in the fortress was muted by the thick stone walls of the grand hall, a spare, cavernous space with only a large smoke hole in the flat ceiling for light. Baldulf wasn’t there, but Roland’s house banner was, the huge swatch of embroidered fabric suspended from a rafter, the tassels brushing floor. Ashrad had his back to Cal, his hands clasped behind him and his head bowed as if in meditation or prayer. It would not avail him, Cal thought as he approached, but a little, liquid sound made him stop, even as the Rhaveren urged him on.

  The boy was there, sitting on the floor at his feet in a linen smock, playing with the fringe of his grandfather’s flag and burbling happily to himself. Geilya’s child, the one she had never been allowed to meet. Ashrad’s son. Cal stared at him. The toddler stared back, innocence and wonder in his comically large blue eyes. Cal realized he wasn’t breathing. He looked so much like her; it was almost like seeing her face again.

  “You’ve never met my son, have you?” Ashrad said in his raspy voice. There was an old, sunken scar on his throat – Cal wasn’t the first one who had failed to kill him. He leaned down and picked up the baby. The boy wrapped his arms around his father’s neck. The blade wavered in Cal’s hand.

  “A stolen child,” he said as Hew came running up behind him. “You would use him as a shield against me? You really are a coward.”

  Ashrad shrugged. “Will it work?”

  “No,” Cal replied automatically, but he didn’t think he meant it. Maybe he did. The child was a half-breed, and a product of unspeakably violent parentage. He might look like his mother, but if he was allowed to live, who could be sure which traits would take precedence? He would be raised as Cal’s enemy, and someday, when he was in his prime and Cal had passed his, the boy would come, and he would win.

  “Then what are you waiting for?” Ashrad asked. “I have no weapon drawn. I am at your mercy, though you have little of it.”

  Cal tightened his grip on the Rhaveren. The baby started to cry. It wanted him to – he wanted to. Why was he hesitating? This is what they had dreamed of.

  “Don’t do it,” Hew told him. “He’s her son.”

  “Listen to your friend,” said Ashrad with a smirk. “He seems very wise.”

  “Put him down and fight me like a man,” Cal said.

  “Why?” Ashrad asked, knitting his brow.

  “He has no honor,” Hew said. “If he did, you wouldn’t be here. He doesn’t care about fighting fair. Let him go, and we will find him again. The child is blameless. You don’t want his blood on your hands.”

  “I won’t. I won’t let either of them go.”

  “And I won’t let that bloody thing murder another innocent. This isn’t you.”

  Cal turned to face him. “What are you going to do about it?” he challenged in a harsh voice that wasn’t entirely his own. “You’re going to fight us? You’ll lose and we will kill them anyway.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Please,” Cal scoffed. “If you had anywhere near my skill, you’d be holding this sword instead.” Ashrad just stood there, looking between them with amusement on his face.

  “There’s a reason I didn’t want it, brother,” Hew said. “This is why. I told you it would be. I told you this would come.”

  “Always the self-righteous one,” he said scornfully. His head was pounding and he wasn’t sure why he was talking at all. “Always thinking you know best. I will kill them. I will go to their city and kill them all. They will be punished for their crimes. I swear it,” he practically screamed, the madness growing in his eyes. There was no more fighting it. The Rhaveren would have what it desired.

  “If you make one move towards that child, I will take you up on your word. It will pain me forever, but I will not let this happen. That’s enough. This is the moment you choose your world, Aedstold.”

  Resentment and anger blazed up inside of him at the mention of the name, a torrent of the Rhaveren’s unstoppable rage overwhelming the confusion, sorrow, helplessness, and regret that would have stopped Cal from doing what he was about to. He spun around, raising the sword to lunge at the pair. He took a step, but he couldn’t take another one: something was stopping him. It hurt. Something was pulling at his middle, and it wasn’t until he looked down that he realized that it was the point of Hew’s sword, protruding crookedly from his stomach like an old gravestone.

  He gasped at the sharp tug of the steel leaving his body as Hewryn leaped in front of him, grabbing the child from a surprised Ashrad’s arms and splitting him down the middle in one fluid gesture. The sword howled in savage triumph, the cry reverberating through his veins; the boy cried out, too, as Cal sagged to the floor.

  Hew snatched the Rhaveren from his slackening grip and threw the blade across the room, silencing it immediately. He placed the bawling boy carefully on his other side where he couldn’t see Ashrad’s corpse, and knelt beside Cal, gently cradling him as he struggled for air, trying to staunch the wound he had made.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Cal, please. I’m sorry. It wasn’t you – I was just trying to stop it. I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s his name?” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “The child.”

  “I don’t – I don’t know.”

  “Give him a new one. Just don’t call him Percival,” he said, his laugh little more than a whistling wheeze.

  “I won’t. Trust me.”

  “I got what I wanted, didn’t I? Is this what I wanted? Is this what it wanted? Geilya will be there after all, won’t she? It got her for me after all.” His mind was fraying. “Maybe it knew the whole time. I don’t know. It wasn’t me. Forgive me,” he said, closing his eyes.

  “No, no, no,” Hew said urgently. “I mean, yes, of course I forgive you. Just don’t go anywhere.”

  “You’re a
better man that I was, Hew,” he said dreamily. “You always were. You were right to stop me. Don’t take the sword, all right? Do what you said: throw it away. But you knew that already.”

  “Cal, you can’t die, remember?” Hew said as his eyes began to unfocus. “You said you wouldn’t.”

  “I said a lot of things. Most of them were stupid. I’m sorry. I hope –” he started, but a shudder ran through him, a cold wind that stole his words. He was so tired. He turned his head slowly to look at the boy – he wanted to remember him, to tell Geilya how beautiful he was. He wondered if she knew. “I hope,” he tried again, barely a sound, as the life drained from his body and he turned his eyes towards the welcoming heavens, his lips parting in a smile around his last breath as the world he left went quiet and still.

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