Talion Revenant Page 12

  I ran to a tree and stood with my back pressed against it. The rough bark felt smooth beneath my leather tunic. Few enough of the pines had sufficient girth to hide Brede, but I still could not see him. A breeze threaded its way through the grove to steal any sound that might have pointed me toward Brede's haven. I crouched low to make a smaller target and armed myself.

  Out of the pouch at my belt I drew my sling and a stone. I looped one leather thong around my hand, placed a stone in the pocket, grabbed the second thong, and whirled the sling. Prepared, I rose up and looked out around my tree. From behind a thick tree fifteen yards ahead and off to the left, Brede did the same thing.

  Simultaneously we let fly. His bolt thudded solidly into my tree and scattered splinters of sappy wood into the air. My stone tore bark from his tree and just nicked his right ear before he ducked back to safety. Without a second thought I cut around my tree and headed straight for him. I knew I was much better suited to unarmed combat than any Rian bowman, especially when he was trying to reload his crossbow.

  I advanced unopposed and that only struck me as peculiar when I rounded Brede's tree and stopped like a wagon with a broken wheel.

  Brede stood there grinning like the fool he felt I was. At his feet lay one crossbow and in his hands he cradled a second. The bolt in the second crossbow had a nasty looking head with twin razor edges spiraling around like ivy on a post. It was designed to drill into its target—usually large game like deer—and core a hole large enough to let the target leave a blood trail if it ran off. He aimed that bolt at my stomach but did not shoot.

  "Morai told me you'd fall for that trick. 'Keep a bow loaded at all times, Brede, and you'll have him.' He didn't think I could do it." His grin was mirthless, like the bolt, and a look of ecstasy flashed through his large brown eyes.

  I held my right hand out, moving it slowly and easily, and let the sling slide through my fingers to the ground. "Brede, give me the crossbow. Give me the crossbow and we can get this over with easily. You don't want to kill a Talion."

  He narrowed his eyes and flared his nostrils. He did his best to live up to the Rian stereotype of stupidity and bovine looks. "Why not? Think of the reputation I'd have."

  I shook my head gently and tried to swallow. "You'll have a hundred Talions after you, and you don't want to end up like the last man who killed a Talion. They say he, or most of him anyway, is still alive in a dungeon in Talianna. Even you don't want to endure that much torture."

  Brede grinned and his eyes went blank as he thought back to fond memories of times in the foul torture pits of Ria. His attention wavered for a second and that gave me all the time I needed. I concentrated.

  My tsincaat came to my hand just as Brede triggered the crossbow. I lunged at the bow and tipped it away from me. The bolt slammed into the tsincaat's blade with a loud ringing sound and raced up to the crossguard. It tore the tsincaat from my grasp—utterly numbing my right hand in the process—and sent the blade flying back over my right shoulder.

  Brede was stricken. He screamed in rage and charged forward with his crossbow raised like a club. I dodged to the right and side-kicked him in the stomach, though with considerably more force than I'd used on Selia. His quiver of bolts sailed off and rained quarrels all over the ground.

  Brede reeled backward and slammed into his tree. He dropped the crossbow, then fell to his knees. He reached down, grabbed a bolt, and clutched it like a knife. Scrambling to his feet, he rushed at me again. Anger masked his face and flushed his skin to a bright red shade.

  I sidestepped his clumsy low slashing attack and this time planted my right foot on his chest. I heard a crunch and sympathetic pains rippled through my chest, but Brede didn't even notice. He dropped back two steps and turned to charge me again.

  I fell back as the bolt slashed past my face. I planted my right foot in his ample stomach and grabbed his shirt with my left hand. Deliberately continuing my fall, I rolled onto my back and dragged him with me. As he came over the top of me, I kicked up and sent him flying over my head. He sailed into his tree, glanced off it, twisted, and fell to the ground. He tried to rise once, but a ribbon of blood trailed from his mouth and he lay back down, very still.

  I stood, shook my numb right hand, and tucked it in my left armpit. I was puzzled, because my kick might have cracked some ribs, and the tree might have bruised his shoulder or arm, but that should not have stopped a man as big as he was. I cautiously walked over to the body, taking care to see he was not trying to trick me, and, with some effort, managed to roll him over with my right foot. Brede had fallen on his bolts. Two of them had twisted their way into his back, doing to him what he would have done to Selia and me.

  The Bastard of Ria was no more and I felt sorely tempted to record his death in my journal as involuntary suicide.

  I broke his neck to prevent any chance of revivification. Normally that was not a worry, but even the Talions did not know the full extent of Brede's crimes and who his friends were, or how powerful they might truly have been. I recovered my tsincaat and sling, then walked from the grove back to Selia.

  Wolf and the gelding grazed in the small clearing somewhat away from where Selia sat. She looked a bit pale and had torn her tunic away from the top of her right shoulder. She winced as she gently probed the gash on her shoulder with her bloodstained left hand.

  I dropped to one knee. "Let me take a look."

  "Why?" She smiled a bit and her lips trembled nervously. "I think my ribs hurt more than my shoulder."

  "Ah, I'm sorry for that, but I had no choice." The bolt, probably another one of the bleeders, had stitched three cuts across the top of her shoulder just above the collarbone. It looked worse than it was and I had no doubt her ribs did hurt more.

  "You don't think he poisoned the bolt, do you?" She asked the question hopefully, and a great deal more calmly than I would have if our roles were reversed. She was very brave and I smiled to reassure her.

  I stood and walked to Wolf. "No, I don't think it was poisoned. Brede would have prefered you to scream and suffer while he killed me. You know how some people hum or sing to themselves while they work? From what I understand of him, Brede liked a stranger accompaniment."

  "Ugh."

  "Yeah, not the sort of music you want to add to your repetoire, I imagine." I took a crusty green bottle and a rag from my saddlebags. "This will clean the wound up and prevent you from getting bloodfever."

  I knelt beside her again. "Tell me what happened to your father after the fight." I wanted her to concentrate on anything other than the wound so I could treat it without interruption.

  "My father immediately won the sympathy of all Trisus. No one who was anyone would order an instrument made if he did not offer the job to my father first. At least the first orders were sympathy orders, but after that—OUCH!—they came for his talent...."

  "Sorry, I forgot to tell you this stuff would sting." I poured more of the liniment on a cloth and wiped the wound clean. She cried out again and Wolf nickered in sympathy. The cut cleaned up nicely and closed easily enough that I didn't think she'd carry much of a scar away from the wound. I wrapped the shoulder in a clean bandage torn from the rag.

  "Your father knew his craft, then?" I helped her stand. The color returned to her face and she walked without any problem to her horse. She mounted easily. I placed the bottle back in the saddlebags, climbed into my saddle, and we set off.

  "Yes, he did know his work. It seemed that all the energy he put into his singing now went into his instruments. He created instruments to be his voice. I remember sitting spellbound as he told a story through song with each character performed by a different instrument. The performance was wonderful. He's wonderful."

  I smiled. "Good, I'm glad for him, and for you. I'd like to meet a man of such ability."

  "You cannot unless Jania lifts the interdiction." Selia laughed. "I find it hard to believe a nation would ban all Talions and call Talions of their own nationality home. The Talio
ns must have grossly insulted the Janian Royal House."

  I shook my head. "Nations do that from time to time. They kick us out for fifteen or twenty years, then call us back in. It's not common, but it's not unknown either."

  Selia rode with the reins in her right hand, her left hand probing the bandage.

  "Is it hurting?"

  She shook her head. "It really was Brede?"

  "In the flesh."

  She raised her eyebrows. "The wound doesn't seem to hurt enough to have been caused by him."

  I smiled and tried not to think about how much the bolt he had aimed at me would have hurt. "You're one of the lucky ones. He did not have you and a room full of tools at his disposal. The bolt was meant to cripple or kill slowly, though two worked quickly enough on him."

  The tall, forest trees kept the trail moist enough to retain hoofprints, and those we followed were very fresh—less than six hours old. Tafano's big horse—the only creature capable of hauling him and his armor around—made the deepest hoofprints. A lighter horse, probably faster than any horse I'd ever ridden, was Morai's mount and, because the larger prints sometimes obliterated the smaller ones, I knew it led the way along the trail.

  We covered another mile of the forested trail as it wove in and around hills. Finally we topped one hill flecked with granite fangs and fingers, as if some huge stone monster were digging itself out of a grave. A hundred yards down the shadowed trail, the tunnel opened up into a brilliantly lit meadow. The very bright sunlight initially burned all color and detail out of the meadow, but bees and butterflies swam into view quickly enough and lent an air of tranquility to what I was uneasily certain had to be another trap.

  Unfortunately, I was not wrong.

  We cautiously rode into the meadow and stopped in the warm sunlight. Off to my right, leaning against a maple tree, stood the stripped trunk of a small pine. Tafano had chopped all the branches off and sharpened the narrow end. Despite its crude manufacture, it was clearly meant to be a lance.

  Across the meadow, riding from a darkling copse, came Tafano. Bright silvery armor encased him, and green peacock plumes garnished his full helm. He carried a real lance with finely shaped shaft of oak and a brightly polished steel claw on the end. The claw, a three-pronged lance head designed to look like a metal eagle talon, existed solely to shear through my chest and tear my heart out. The sight of it set my stomach roiling.

  "Selia, listen carefully to what I'm about to say. Tafano will charge me when I pick the lance up. If he wins, and he's much better at this than I am, ride fast in the other, any other, direction."

  Selia nodded and reined her horse off to the left. I pulled a pair of leather gloves from my left saddlebag, then leaned down and picked up the pine lance. Tafano raised his lance above his head and pumped it upward three times. I imitated his gesture, found the proper balance point for my lance, and hugged the butt end of it to my ribs. We spurred our horses forward and galloped at each other.

  As I thundered through the meadow at Tafano, a thousand lessons echoed through my head. We'd pass each other on the left and target the other's shield or chest. Tafano, with a glittering triangular shield on his left arm, gave me a choice of targets—a choice I denied him rather reluctantly. I noticed he cocked his head to the right, so much so that he could only see me with his left eye, so I hunkered down even lower in the saddle to make myself a difficult target to hit without full depth perception. Even with that added advantage, though, I did not honestly think the battle would last beyond the initial pass.

  Imperianan warriors, as a class, are simply the best heavy cavalry in the world. Most of them learn to ride before they can walk, and some of the nobles wear mail once they start walking. An Imperianan is a demon on horseback, riding only the best-bred and best-trained warhorses in the Shattered Empire outside Talianna. Their warriors are even well versed in infantry battling with their massive greatswords. In fact, if most of them were not so arrogant because their nation had once been the capital province of the Empire, their customs and abilities might well have been widely admired.

  Wolf raced forward with his ears flat back against his head. Sunlight slithered across Tafano's armor and leaped away flashing from the curves and joints of his silver carapace. The plume rising from his helm—far too brilliant a green to be lost in the dark woods behind him—danced and bounced like a cat's paw striking at a dangling piece of string. I would have laughed, but the extended claw tore all possible humor from the situation.

  I twisted in the saddle and eluded the lance's tempered grasp while I stabbed out with my own lance. It struck home on Tafano's shield, then exploded into a cloud of splinters with a loud, wet crack. Tafano rocked slightly in his saddle but sped past, fully recovered before the tip of my broken lance even hit the ground. Disgusted, I threw aside the butt end of my lance and rode to the end of the field where Tafano had begun his charge.

  I reigned up short. Morai blocked my path.

  I nearly smiled at him, because, standing there so boldly, he looked very much the roguish hero Selia's song made him out to be. He wore a blue silk tunic and red silk breeches tucked into the tops of high riding boots. A red silk headband circled his brow and got lost in the tangle of dark hair, though the ends emerged to float gently in the light breeze coursing through the meadow. He wore a neatly trimmed and fashionable moustache that combined with his clothing to make him appear more a noble out riding than a criminal pursued by a Talion. His eyes, a brown so light it appeared gold, sparkled as he smiled.

  "Greetings, Talion, it has been some time." He bent down and brought up another pine lance from it hiding place in the long grass. "I assume you can use this?"

  I couldn't help it, I had to smile. "If you have no immediate need for it, I would like to borrow that lance." I looked back over my shoulder at the mountain of man and horse on the field. "I can't promise I'll return it in good shape."

  Morai shrugged. "No matter." He waved a hand and encompassed the whole forest with the gesture. "I can always make another."

  It wasn't until he held the lance up to me that I remembered how small he was. I was easily a head taller than he was, and Tafano was at least that much taller than me. Still I knew, from people like Morai and Lord Isas, that judging a man by physical size alone was a bad mistake.

  I turned Wolf so we faced Tafano again. "You realize I will be back for you."

  Morai nodded. "I expect it. Bring your compatriot with you when you finish Tafano. Oh, did you notice how he held his head?"

  I smiled. "Is he half blind?"

  Morai shrugged and rubbed the knuckles of his right fist. "Temporarily. We had a disagreement this morning. His right eye is swollen shut."

  A low laugh rumbled in my chest and Morai joined me. "Thank you for your assistance."

  "Could I do less?" Morai's smile brimmed over with memories, and I blushed.

  Turning from Morai, I raised my new lance and pumped it three times in the air. Tafano returned the signal and again we started our horses hurtling toward each other. Grass and trees flashed past in a blurred wave. Each hoofbeat pounded up into me and started a sympathetic rhythm pulsing in my temples. I ground my teeth together and stinging sweat seeped into my eyes.

  I waited until we were close enough that Tafano set himself for impact and, with pressure from my knees, I cut Wolf to the left. For the barest of seconds we sped directly at Tafano and his mount and I envisioned the tangled, broken, screaming mass of horseflesh and man we'd become if I allowed us to collide. More pressure and Wolf moved left again. We would pass on the right.

  Tafano twisted his neck even further in a futile attempt to spot us. At the last second he tried to bring his lance up over his horse's head and strike out blindly at us, but his attempt was too late and far off target. Sweeping past on his right I stood in the stirrups and, wrapping two hands around the lance's butt, I swung it like a massive club.

  The blow caught Tafano square in the chest, dented his breastplate, and snapped
the lance cleanly in two. His lance arced up into the air and sailed from his slackened grip as the Imperianan reeled in the saddle and tipped to the right. Somehow he kicked free of his stirrups and avoided being dragged by his horse. Even so his fall from the saddle was heavy and hard. Accompanied by a loud, metallic din, he rolled up into a silver ball.

  I vaulted from Wolfs saddle as soon as the horse had slowed enough for it to be safe, summoned my tsincaat, and slapped Wolf on the rump. He headed off, wary of Tafano's horse, and nervously watched while I circled toward Tafano. The warhorse moved at me and effectively cut me off from his fallen master.

  "Tafano ra Imperiana," I shouted. The armor stirred and straightened itself. It looked for all the world like a metal warrior arising from a steel egg. "Tafano, send the horse away. Let this be between us."

  The Imperianan shucked his gloves and pulled off his helmet. Blood ran from his nose and ears to streak his brown moustache and beard with scarlet. His right eye was swollen and blackened but his left one burned with an intensity that cut at my spine like a cold grave wind. He spat blood. He tried to rise, stumbled, and caught himself on one hand and one knee.

  He spat again. "Rasha, kill him." He stabbed a finger at me, coughed and sat down abruptly.

  The horse charged at me to ride me down, but I dodged out of the way. I circled back across the path he had taken, forcing him to turn even more for another pass, but he stopped in midturn and watched me. The stallion had been ordered to kill me and he would do so unless I killed him first.

  "Tafano, call the animal off."

  The warrior laughed. "He is as much a weapon to me as my sword. You are dead, Talion." His laughter continued, then dissolved into a racking cough.

  The horse started forward again. This time he was cautious and herded me gently. He played with me and for a second lost all sign of being anything more than a high-spirited horse. Then he charged quickly and I barely dove from beneath steel-shod hooves.