1.5: The Fallen

1.5: The Fallen

I stumbled through the woods, every step an agony. I knew, subconsciously, that I wasn’t going to last. My wound — wounds — were bad.

The bolt was lodged in bone, which I discovered when I tried pulling it out the first time and nearly passed out. Not long after I started coughing up blood, possibly from whatever the Glorysworn with the hammer had done to me with her unfamiliar magic. The wound in my shoulder burned and I might have had a fractured rib or three.

I wouldn’t last. Yet still, stubbornly, implacably, I put one foot in front of the other. Again and again, each step celebrated by the crunching of leaves.

Step. Crunch.

Step. Crunch.

Step...

I stumbled and caught myself on the rotten trunk of an ivy-covered tree, gasping for breath. Sweat poured down my face to trickle onto the undergrowth below. I vomited, wiped my mouth, and continued on my way.

Step. Crunch.

“Look how the mighty have fallen.”

The voice whispered from the shadows, so faint I thought at first it was my own thought. But then more voices answered it, drifting from the gloom of the wild like whispering insects.

“He killed him! The old man. Cut off his head and left him there to rot on holy ground.”

“Almost killed the boy, too. Should have done it. Who’s he kidding?”

“Think’s he still on the side of the angels.”

“He is! That’s just the trouble, isn’t it?”

“Do his oaths warm him?”

I clenched my teeth against the tide of evil whispers. I shouldn’t have reacted. The trees filled with trilling laughter.

Damn elves.

Step. Crunch.

“This is not what you were meant for.”

It was several labored breaths before I could speak. “I know that.”

It was perhaps another fifty steps before another presence drifted into the forest. A shadow seemed to fall over the trees like a cloud moving overhead and the air grew noticeably cooler. The wind died. The birds ended their singing and even the distant song of the river died.

The ground beneath me began to reverberate with what felt like the beating of an enormous, subterranean heart, the sensation traveling up through my legs.

I steeled myself and felt a shudder of fear.

An iron-shod hoof stamped the grass within the sudden darkness of the deeper forest, so heavy I could feel the thud in my chest. A horse snorted, the sound somehow evoking a deep, guttural growl. Leather creaked and a towering shape seemed to form amid the shadowed trees. I took a deep breath, schooling my face and forcing my pounding heart to still. I didn’t stop walking, and it was the only thing that kept my legs from visibly trembling.

Still that great heart beat, warning me of danger.

Warning me that something not of this world had come.

The horse, a great destrier, emerged from the darkened woods at an unhurried walk. It was clad in the remnants of war barding, rotten chain-mail and scraps of rusted plates covering most of its leathery hide, its equine head crowned by a cruelly designed helm set with a long blade so the beast resembled a fiendish unicorn. Its hide sported rusted iron thorns and protruding hilts from blades sheathed into its flesh — a full arsenal — the wounds from these weeping blood with every movement of its ever-shifting muscles. It twitched and flexed, never for even a moment still. Its bloodshot eyes were disturbingly human and full of an insane malice as it regarded me.

The rider of the fell warhorse, on the other hand, could not have been more mismatched to the steed. She was beautiful, with a heart-shaped face and slender build, riding sidesaddle to accommodate a flowing gown seemingly spun from foam and starlight. Her hair was raven dark and so long it seemed a cloak. A gentle smile formed on her lips even as she looked down at me, letting her nightmare-steed match my unsteady pace.

I took all of this in with a sideways glance and kept walking. “Nath,” I greeted the rider.

Nath’s berry red lips curled into a frown. She leaned forward over her steed’s head to inspect me. Her eyes told the lie to her beauty. They were twin hollow pits, like the empty sockets of a porcelain mask. Nothing but shadow lay within. She lifted two artfully curved eyebrows, apparently seeing well enough. Her brow furrowed and her lips pursed. “Alken, my dear, what have you done to yourself? You’re covered in mud and bruises like a little boy.”

I chose to forgo laughter.

“Point is,” I continued, “my soul isn’t for sale, metaphorically or literally. I’ll help you about as soon as the stars freeze over. Now, are you going to move?” I tightened my grip on the Hithlen forged axe. “Or am I going to have to move you?”

It was an idle threat, and we both knew it. Even at the top of my form, taking on a being of Nath’s caliber would be tantamount to suicide. In my experience, however, it never paid to let the world’s monsters see you sweat.

Well, I was plastered in sweat then. But you take my point.

Nath snorted in disdainful amusement. “Oh, knightling. If vapid bravado wasn’t part and parcel of your ilk, I might weep for you. But hear me; you will die. Soon. There is no one else who can save you, no one else who cares to. Your old allies have long since dismissed you from their thoughts. My brethren think of you as a disposable tool. Many of the lords of Urn would happily see you dead as a murderer and a renegade.”

A touch of genuine emotion laced her next two words. “Be reasonable. You need help, Alder Knight. You and I are not so different, after all. We were both outcast. We both long for a home we can never return to.”

I opened my mouth for an angry retort, and then closed it as her words settled on me. Perhaps there was a touch of aura in the Fallen’s voice, but...

But she was right, damn it. For the rest of Urn, the violence of the Fall of Seydis was years gone now. The Accord had instituted something like peace across the land, though its authority varied from region to region. But for me, the fighting had never truly ended. Vinhithe had just been the most recent in a long parade of bloody, terrifying tasks.

I had served. I had bled. Would it be so wrong to accept an offer of aid, even from a being so untrustworthy as Bloody Nath?

I didn’t know. Doubt gnawed at me, as it often did. The Church of Urn taught that those who lived outside the light of the Heir were not to be trusted or heeded under any circumstances. But I had just killed a bishop. I lived outside that light as an excommunicate. I had refused to heed the words of another such, long ago, and a kingdom had burned.

It was several minutes before I spoke. When I did, it was in a quiet, tired voice. There was no anger, no righteous fire. Just hard-earned weariness and bitter resignation. “The difference,” I said, “is that I didn’t spend the last four centuries trying to conquer the subcontinent, or make friends with the Briar. You’ve left mountains of corpses in your wake.” I took a steadying breath and spoke as calmly as I could, making certain my words left no room for doubt. “The answer is no, Nath. I don’t want your help. Get thee behind me.”

“Fool,” Nath said with no particular emotion. “You will die.”

I began to walk, not caring that the enormous fiend-horse blocked my path. “So be it. But I’ll die me, not as one of your monsters.”

Nath did not move her steed. “They already see you as one of the monsters.”

I stopped and stared pointedly forward, standing nearly underneath her now. Her feet and the hem of her white gown were coated in blood, I noted.

I began to gather my will, focusing my aura until it thrummed within my chest. I didn’t have much left, and definitely not enough to hurt her, but I could kill her nightmare horse. It was petty, but it was all I had in me then.

“I don’t care how they see me,” I said. “I swore oaths to protect the realms from things like you. I fight monsters.”

Nath lifted her narrow chin. “And yet you kill your fellow men.”

“I fight monsters,” I repeated. “Even human ones. Now are you going to move, or am I going to have to axe your pet?”

We stood there a while, in that still forest where even the wind held its breath. I counted each breath, wondering which would be my last. After what seemed an eternity, Nath inclined her head and tightened her grip on the horse’s reins, spurring it to move aside. I moved past her.

Step. Crunch. Step. Crunch.

Step—

My vision went blurry, and at a remove I realized I’d lost too much blood. The world began to spin.

Damn it. Not now. Not in front of her.

I fell. I didn’t really feel myself hitting the ground. I lost my grip on my weapon and my fingers stretched for it.

I have an old nightmare, of dark things catching me before my hand can grasp a weapon.

The nightmare came true. A monstrous hoof slammed into the ground near my head. I could feel the world shudder beneath me with that impact. Nath’s voice was a low, soothing murmur above.

“Such a shame. You had potential, Goldeye, but your stubborn pride has proved your bane. As it has so often been for the True Knights. Farewell. I would wish you peace in death, but I assure you there will be none.”

I expected that hellborn creature to bring an iron-shod hoof down and flatten my skull.

It did not. Instead, cruelly, it began to move away. Nath left me there to die slowly.Updated chapters at novelhall.com