Spirit of the King (2 page)

He was taller and broader than the others of his kind they’d encountered, his flat face looming fifteen feet above the ground. What little skin showed through the thick black hair carpeting his barrel chest was burned brown by the sun; his matted beard hung to his filth-filled navel. Blood seeped from a dozen cuts and scrapes scattered across his trunk and arms, likely inflicted by tree branches big enough to knock a normal man out, but his rage seemed to keep him from noticing them. He opened a mouth full of yellowed teeth and roared, a belching sound that sent birds fleeing from nearby trees; the beast brandished a club bigger than an average man.

Khirro stared. They’d come upon the creature foraging for food a half hour before and quickly decided not to risk confronting it, but the thing caught their scent and took up the chase. They hadn’t counted on him deciding to forage for humans instead of berries.

“You will have to distract it while I free the boat,” Athryn said slipping his cloak off his shoulders.

Khirro looked at the white cloth mask covering the magician’s face, at the smears of dirt angling across the cheek and nose, and almost laughed. Why Athryn chose to wear the mask now, after the Necromancer healed his scars, Khirro didn’t know, but even with the cloth hiding his expression, he saw the seriousness in the magician’s eyes. Khirro breathed deep, still recovering from the run.

“All right, but keep an eye on me.”

Khirro pulled his shield off his back, its edges charred by dragonfire, and drew the Mourning Sword. After another breath, he stalked across the sand toward the giant.

What am I doing?

The giant roared again—a challenge, a taunt to dissuade him—and even from a distance, Khirro smelled the beast’s foul breath. He gritted his teeth and kept moving. Over the past months, he’d helped slay one giant, faced a dragon, and killed a water serpent; certainly he could hold this fellow off while Athryn launched the boat.

A year ago, I was a farmer. I didn’t even own a sword.

The giant stooped and used one hand to pick up a boulder two men couldn't have lifted. Khirro stopped, waiting to see what the beast would do. It hefted the rock to shoulder height, cocked its arm and bent at the knees. Lips pulled back in a twisted, effort-filled sneer, the creature heaved the stone.

Khirro watched in awe for a second as the stone hurtled toward him, reminding him of the ball of hellfire that had taken his friend Jowyn’s life. At the last instant, Khirro forced his legs into action and jumped to his left. The stone landed close enough he felt the thump of it hitting the ground through the soles of his feet; the impact sent a spray of sand against his leg.

He looked at the stone for a moment, marveling at its size as he let a shuddering breath free of his lungs. The ground trembled again, again, and Khirro jerked his gaze away from the stone, thinking the giant was tossing more projectiles his way, but found the beast had intended only to distract him.

The huge creature was only ten yards away, rushing toward him, brandishing the huge club in both hands.

Khirro lurched away from the giant’s weapon as it arced down toward him. The tree trunk-sized club thumped into the sand, leaving behind a hole big enough to trip a horse; the beast lifted it again and aimed a blow at his head. Khirro dove right, the gust of air created by the club’s passing touching his cheek.

Khirro swung the Mourning Sword but the giant’s arms were too long and the blade missed by more than a foot. The sharp teeth of doubt bit hard at the back of Khirro’s mind; the club whistling through the air nearly knocked it free, along with his head. Khirro rolled across the sand, righted himself and darted inside the arc of the giant’s club, Mourning Sword cocked to strike, but the creature’s fingers grasped for his tunic and he abandoned the attack to keep out of its grip.

He’s too big. Too fast.

The beast smiled crookedly and laughed, a sound more threatening and danger-filled than its angry roar.

He’s toying with me
.

Khirro thought about how he’d become the flame tyger when he fought Ghaul in the Necromancer’s keep, using the fiery claws to defeat his one time friend. Could he do it again? He thought about fire, pictured flames melding into the shape of the tyger.

Nothing happened.

The giant kicked a sheet of sand at his face; Khirro averted his eyes and dove aside, concentration broken by the club thumping the sand where he’d just stood.

“I need help here, Athryn!”

The magician answered, but Khirro didn’t hear his words as the wooden club scraped across his breast piece. He ducked and dodged. Sweat ran down his face as he searched for an opening to get to the beast without forfeiting his life in the process. The Mourning Sword cut the air with no more success than the first time, but the giant hesitated, giving Khirro a second’s respite from attack. He struck a third time, blade glancing ineffectively off the giant’s weapon, but it gave him a moment’s satisfaction for his steel having touched
something.
 

The giant roared its ear-splitting war belch and renewed its attack, spinning Khirro about and forcing him back toward the edge of the forest. Beyond the creature and its swirling club, he glimpsed Athryn stripped to the waist, gesturing and chanting before the giant’s massive body blocked his view.

“Athryn!”

Another barely-avoided blow sent Khirro to the sand. He held the Mourning Sword up knowing he wouldn’t be able to deflect a blow, and that one direct hit would be enough to end the fight, likely his life. The giant was too strong. What a fool he’d been to think he could hold off the beast on his own.

Why isn’t Athryn helping?

The giant loomed beyond his sword’s reach, a string of saliva hanging from its lips like a dog left unfed for weeks. Khirro tensed, hoping to somehow survive the attack, but instead of raining another blow down on him, the giant stopped, listened.

Foreign words floated to Khirro on the sea breeze, words he didn’t recognize but he knew meant Athryn was casting a spell. The giant also seemed to realize what the words were for.

Khirro scrambled to stand, feet slipping in the loose sand, but the creature pushed him back with the tip of his club, knocking breath from his lungs in the process and leaving him no choice but to watch the giant set his club aside and pick up a boulder bigger than the first. It hoisted the stone above its head, bending its elbows like a living catapult.

“No,” Khirro wheezed. “Athryn.”

After all that had happened during their journey, and despite being a soldier in the King’s Army, Khirro still didn’t considered himself a warrior or think he possessed a killer’s instinct, but he realized this might be his last chance to prove to himself he could be.

As the giant heaved the boulder, Khirro leaped up, lungs desperate for air. The Mourning Sword glowed red in anticipation of the blood to come, the radiance brightening as Khirro sank the blade’s tip into the beast’s lower back. The giant howled and jerked away, sending Khirro tumbling back, but not before he’d embedded the sword to its hilt, skewering kidney and lung and heart.

Khirro dug his hands into the sand and pulled himself out of the thrashing beast’s path. The giant stumbled, reaching around in an attempt to grasp the sword’s hilt, its fingers brushing it without finding a hold. It spun a circle like a dog chasing its tail, but the damage proved too much, and the beast dropped to his knees. The ground shuddered under its weight when it pitched forward, face first into the sand, a trickle of blood seeping from the wound in its back.

So little blood.

Khirro watched the blood flow down the giant’s side for only a second before remembering his companion. He spun toward the beach, laboring for air and half-expecting to see the magician crushed beneath the boulder, his hopes of returning to the kingdom with the king’s blood flowing in his veins dead along with his companion.

Athryn knelt in the sand near the boat, dagger in hand, head hung. The black lines of his tattoos swept across his back, over his shoulders and down his arms, the letters foreign and unfamiliar, words to cast spells inscribed in his flesh by his brother, Maes, when he was no longer able to speak them himself. Khirro approached slowly, his breath returning in ragged gasps, relief that his companion appeared unhurt swirling with anger as he wondered why the magician hadn’t aided him.

“Are you all right?” Khirro asked closing the distance between them; he saw three fresh cuts on Athryn’s forearm oozing blood. The magician looked up, face bare, his cloth mask lying on the sand beside him. He looked so different with his face free of scars. “Are you hurt?”

Athryn shook his head and the despair and disappointment noticeable on his face told Khirro enough about what happened to force the anger out of him.

“I could not do it.” Athryn spoke quietly, his voice strained. “I do not know how to make my magic.”

Khirro kneeled beside him and noticed a dozen more cuts on the magician’s arms and torso, many of them camouflaged in the curved lines of the black letter tattoos. Khirro shook his head, guilt poking his gut for the anger he’d felt at Athryn. The magician had tried to do what he knew how to do and failed. He picked the mask out of the sand, turned it in his fingers.

How many times have I failed when I should have helped?

“I couldn’t, either,” Khirro said handing the mask back to Athryn. “I tried to become the tyger, but it didn’t work.”

“But what am I without magic?”

Khirro shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. We have other problems to consider.”

He gestured toward the boat. The giant’s second boulder had struck the vessel’s hull, splintering it into hundreds of pieces and dashing any hope of returning across the Small Sea.

“At least we’re both alive,” he said.

Athryn nodded. “But with no way home.”

“Get dressed. Better to use sunlight for travel than sentiment,” Khirro said slapping the magician on the shoulder as he rose.

Athryn stood and shook sand from his shirt; Khirro went to the giant lying motionless at the forest’s edge, approaching cautiously. He looked down into the giant’s glassy, sightless eyes. The beast didn’t move when he prodded its ribs with his toe. Satisfied, Khirro grasped the hilt of the Mourning Sword and pulled the blade from the giant’s back. A gout of blood followed it out, the powdery sand absorbing it like a starving animal. The sword glowed and pulsed as the blood clinging to its steel disappeared, sucked into the runes twisted along its length before the blade returned to its normal black highlighted by red scrollwork.

“This is not the first time this sand has tasted blood.”

Athryn’s words startled Khirro. He spun to look at the magician.

“This is the same place the one-eyed man attacked us. The same place my brother opened his veins so I might live.”

Khirro glanced at the area and saw Athryn was right. To his left stood the copse of trees where they’d laid Maes’s body while Athryn recovered. Down the beach to the south, they would find the charred remains of the pyre where they sent the little man’s soul back to the Gods if they chose to look for them. Three times now, blood was spilled on this spot. He couldn’t help but think the fact held some significance. He stepped away from the giant’s corpse.

“You’re right,” he said, a chill creeping up his spine. “Let’s get out of here.”

They surveyed the damage to the boat and found no hope of repairing it. Neither of them knew enough about making a boat seaworthy for it to be safe, and it would take too much time.

If only Athryn had his magic.

“What should we do?” Khirro asked as they trudged north along the beach.

“We have little choice.” Athryn pulled the cloth mask into place over his face; Khirro wondered why he bothered. Did he think wearing it or not affected his magic? “There is only one place where we might acquire a boat.”

Khirro peered out at the Small Sea. Waves rolled across its surface, pushed shoreward by the autumn breeze. Across the water and to the north lay his homeland, where a war was being fought, a war the spirit Khirro carried within him could influence. But they couldn’t know how things progressed. The enemy might have been vanquished leaving Erechania standing triumphant despite the king’s death. Or the lack of a regent might have left the country disheartened, ripe for the kill.

Khirro looked away from the water and to the north, toward the one place they might find a way back in their quest to save the kingdom. They marched toward Kanos.

They marched toward the enemy.

The Archon urged her horse through the open gate and raised portcullis of the Isthmus fortress. As she passed under the rusted bars, she turned in the saddle to look at the men riding behind her, her blond hair caressing the purple velvet cape draped over her shoulders. She saw the tension etched in their faces and knew it to be only partially caused by readiness as they entered an enemy’s stronghold without knowing what to expect. Her generals knew her power, but didn’t suspect its full extent or know how she’d gotten them within the enemy’s walls. Both added to their wariness and a satisfied smile crept across her face. It was best no one knew all, not yet. That would come soon enough, then the entire world would know.

Regardless of how she got them there, the generals would be happy to be behind the wall. She wanted to get the other men in, too, but needed to be patient—moving the entire Kanosee army into the fortress immediately would strain the forced truce. Shortly, though. Except the walking dead—they didn’t feel the cold wind the way the living did and would frighten the fortress residents. The time for that would come later; with the exception of the undead members of her personal guard, they’d stay outside until she needed them.

As her horse carried her away from the salt flats and through the gatehouse passage, she willed the smile from her lips. The reception awaiting the leader of the invading army would not be an occasion for smiles, at least not in the minds of those who surrendered.

She emerged from the tunnel’s shadow into the courtyard dappled with autumn sun. Over centuries, war after war, battle after battle had ended at the impenetrable fortress wall, dashed against the weathered brown stone—no Kanosee had ever set foot here in the long and turbulent history between the two countries. It had taken a woman—a woman of extraordinary powers, but a woman nonetheless—to finally lead them beyond the storied barricade. She held her head high and stifled another smile.