The Witch's Eye (7 page)

Ronan surveyed the group
.  Their ashen and exhausted faces glowed in the flickering light.  Most of them were adults, but a few teenagers were in the mix, scraggly and lean, their eyes hollow from the horrors they’d witnessed.  Most of the men were able-bodied enough, but Ronan could tell just by looking at them that they weren’t fighters.

S
urvivors, maybe
, he thought. 
But not fighters.  They won’t last long out here. 
Ronan shook his head.

“So what do we do?” Greer asked. 
He was a wiry man with steely eyes and a face like a hawk.  Despite being a farmer he had a hard edge about him.  Several of the others – including Taara, a dark-skinned Southerner who possessed considerable skills as a healer – deferred to Greer’s lead when Ronan wasn’t telling everyone what to do.

They
’ve done this before
, Ronan thought. 
They’re used to being led.  That’s no way to live.

“Well,” Moone said from his vantage by the window, “the closest
and safest Southern Claw city-state from here is Thornn, but even that’s got to be a week’s walk.”

“At least,” Maur nodded in agreement.  “A ship would be best.”

“Do you
have
a ship?” Moone asked with a sarcastic growl.  He was a clean-cut and brown-haired man in his early thirties, with just a trace of stubble on his face and penetrating green eyes.  His grimy fatigues were covered in pale dust and blood, and he wore a Raven Legion tattoo prominently on each forearm.  Ronan didn’t think he had much of a personality, but he thought that about most soldiers. 

“No,” Jade said.  “We
don’t
have a ship, and I doubt we’re going to find one that’s in working order any time soon.  So you may want to come up with another suggestion, Maur.”             

“Maur made no suggestion,” the Gol said, looking put out.  “He was just thinking wishfully.”

“Out loud?” Moone asked.

“Maur does everything out loud,” Ronan said. 

“What about food?” Taara interrupted.  “Thank you for sharing your rations, Ronan, but this won’t carry us far.”

“No, it won
’t,” he nodded.  “And there isn’t much to be had here in Voth Ra’morg.  I’ll guarantee you that.”

“Can we hunt?” Kyleara asked. 

“There isn’t much out here aside from carrion birds and Firehorns,” Ronan said.  “We can try and scavenge remains from that Gorgoloth camp, but I doubt there’ll be much left.”

“Speaking of which,” Jade said, “should we be worried about those Gorgoloth?”  She sat hunched up in a wad of dirty blankets and cloth, looking
small and tired.  She was anything but.  A mercenary witch in the employ of Blacksand crime boss Klos Vago, Jade had been sent as a liaison when Ronan, Kane and Maur were sent to carry out a job for Vago in return for his sending the team home.  The job was never completed. Instead, Kane would up dead, and the rest of them had found themselves in the middle of a war at Voth Ra’Morg.

She
’d used her magic to start the fire, and occasionally Ronan felt a wave of heat from her spirit pass through his body.  He got the sense she was doing this only for him, and maybe Maur. 

You
’re not
with
me
, he wanted to tell her. 
The only reason I saved your skinny ass is because you helped us escape.  But you’re on my Shit List, honey…you
and
your boss.  If not for you, we wouldn’t be out here in the first place.  Kane would still be alive, and Dani wouldn’t have been captured. 

“No,” Ronan
said out loud.  Both Greer and Moone looked at him questioningly.  “The Gorgoloth lost at least half their numbers to the Firehorns,” he said.  “They’ll retreat back into the Reach and rebuild their band before they do any more raiding.  They’re brave en masse, but not in small groups.”

“And what if you
’re wrong?” Greer demanded. 

“Then
we’ll kill them,” he said with a shrug.  “Nothing too complicated there.”

“Well,” Greer said, obviously a bit uneasy at Ronan
’s response, “that still doesn’t solve the issue of what we need to do next.”

“You mean what
you
need to do,” Ronan said.  “Maur and I have our own problems.”

“Wait a second,” Moone said.  “What the hell are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Ronan said with a forced smile, “that I’m
thrilled
you all decided to eat my food and share my shelter, but my Gol friend and I need to get back to Thornn.  Babysitting an entire village’s worth of idiots isn’t exactly on my To-Do list.”

“We need your help,” Taara said.  Her accent was strong – she was probably from one of the fringe islands near Nezek
’duul – and her green eyes shone in the firelight.  Ronan just shook his head.

“Look…I got your asses out of Gorgoloth hands,” Ronan said.  “Instead of telling me what
I
need to be doing, you ought to be thanking me.”

“Thank you,” Taara said.  “But if you just leave us now…”

“Fine,” Moone said.  “Thanks for the assist, then.”  He walked over from the window.  “We don’t have time for this.  I know your type: you’re a mercenary, through and through.  Without a profit involved, you’re just not interested.”  He looked at the fire.  “Thanks for helping out.  If you need to go…then go.  Kyleara and I will take care of things from here.”

Ronan nodded. 

“Ronan…” Jade said, and he gave her a look. 

“Don
’t talk to me,” he said, and he stepped away.  The corners of the warehouse were buried in shadows.  He kicked an empty can and ran his fingers across layers of cold dust that had gathered on the walls. 

His mind went back to the training fields,
to the days of grass and blood.  He remembered skin bloodied from lashes and cudgels, remembered running through ankle-deep sand and dodging snakes the size of dogs.  The boys couldn’t stop running or they’d be overtaken. If another boy fell, you left him, or you died.

“Ronan?”

It was Maur.  He was just a short silhouette in the darkness.  The Gol’s grey flesh and milk-white eyes reflected the pale firelight, and his breath came out as steam.  Ronan could see him shivering in spite of the heavy wool blanket he wore over his shoulders. 

“What?”

“Why won’t you help these people?”

Ronan coughed.  Cold air and dust had frozen
to the back of his throat.

“Because I don
’t do charity work.”

“Maur doesn
’t understand you,” the Gol said after a moment.  The group talked on in the distance, and Ronan heard Moone laying plans for how they’d reach Thornn.  Jade wrapped herself in a blanket and moved off on her own.

“What do you mean?”
Ronan asked.

“You risked your life to save Cross, and then Danica,”
the Gol said.  “And then Maur.”

“That
’s different,” he said.  “You’re not strangers.  You deserve saving.”  He nodded towards the group.  “They’ll slow us down, Maur.  You and me…we might be all that’s left of the team.  Kane is dead.  Ash.  Grissom.  Black is most likely dead, and even if she isn’t, there’s no telling what those bastards at Black Scar did to her.  And Cross…”

Ronan
was still trying to piece together what had happened to Cross.  His unconscious body had been with them in Blacksand, and then it had been stolen away by the Revengers.  During the battle at Voth Ra’morg Cross had been used as a hostage and a shield, and the Revengers had intended to use him as part of some elaborate ritual that would grant them control of an artifact. 

Maur
had told Ronan that he and Jade had secured Cross’s body, and they’d been making their way out of Voth Ra’morg when Cross had quite literally disappeared right out of their hands.  If Jade had told him that, Ronan would have assumed she was lying.  But Maur…Maur was the most practical creature Ronan had ever met.  If he said Cross had vanished, then Cross had vanished.

But
where the hell is he?

“These people deserve saving,” Maur said quietly. 

“Says who?”

“Says Maur.”

“You don’t even
know
them,” Ronan said angrily. 

“And that doesn
’t mean they’re bad people,” Maur said.  He kept a very patient and even tone.

“I didn
’t bail your ass out of the fire so you could tell me I need to lead a herd of stupid humans to safety,” Ronan said.  He knelt down so his and Maur’s faces were just inches apart.  “They knew the risks the moment they chose to leave the safety of the city-states.  It’s not my job to bail them out because they can’t handle what’s out here.”

Maur shook his head.  It was hard to read the Gol
’s expressions – the race was entirely made up of false bodies, mishappen dwarf-shaped vessels with trapped consciousnesses – and yet Ronan had always been amazed by the human-like quality of Maur’s eyes, which now held Ronan in their gaze.

“Explain to Maur…why you saved him,”
Maur said.

Ronan stood up, and ground his teeth.  He looked at the Gol, looked at Jade, looked at the crowd of survivors.

“I don’t have to explain myself,” he said.

“Maur wants to understand.”

“Maur
can’t
understand,” Ronan growled.  He turned and walked towards the sliding door.  A young man with a thin beard had taken Moone’s place by the entrance while the group discussed their options.  He looked at Ronan nervously as he approached.

“Move,”
Ronan said.

The boy looked at Moone, who nodded.  Ronan
slid the door open and walked into the fresh night, his cloak wrapped tight around his body and his blade in hand.

He was fifteen when he’d escaped, just steps away from his final test.  One-hundred steps away, to be precise. 

He was about to become
a full Blood Blade of the Order, an elite soldier-assassin for the Crimson Triangle and one of the most capable killers in all of the southern territories.  The mages would rent his services out for an inordinate fee, and he’d be given tasks even hardened soldiers feared to undertake.  His specialty would be hunting down and slaying mages. 

Ronan had
been raised since childhood to obey, to push his body past its limits and focus his mind so he could do things no normal person could or would do.  He could enter the Deadlands at will, and kill without hesitation.

His training had been brutal.  The mages pit
ted their pupils against one another in bloody trials meant to dehumanize them.  Ronan had strangled other boys and beaten them to death with his fists.  He’d survived for days on end in the glacial fields of the Reach with nothing more than a sword and the clothes on his back.  He’d killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents, had emerged as the lone victor from rooms filled with crazed gladiators pumped up on arcane narcotics, and had been forced to march across the western deserts carrying a corpse over his shoulders.  His flesh had been hardened, scarred, and scoured with lashes and blade wounds.  His heart had been made cold and dead. 

He
’d been taken to an abandoned temple in the southern wastes, an old shrine that sat atop a hill.  The only way to reach it was to climb a tall staircase made of crumbling sandstone.  Veins of red quartz permeated the rock – Ronan remembered thinking the steps bled – and the sun was setting.  The horizon was gold and crimson, and the trees glowed like they were on fire.  The hot dry wind carried dead leaves and dust, and the sounds of the Ebonsand Sea roared behind him. 

There were no other initiates there, which had been strange.  They
’d always been tested in groups before, or in pairs.  Originally there’d been a section of twenty initiates, but over the course of the years they’d slowly died off or been taken away by the mages because they were unfit. 

Looking back, Ronan wasn
’t sure why they’d been grouped that way.  They had no names, and no bonds.  They weren’t allowed to help one another.  So while the faces of the other initiates were familiar, the boys themselves had remained strangers.  Strangers he’d grown up with.

Maybe that was it. 
They were the only family I had, even if it wasn’t much of a family…even if we spent most of our time competing and battling each other. 

By the time Ronan was fifteen and prepared for his final test,
two of them were considered the top of their class.  The other boy was a tall blonde kid, lean and muscular and handsome.  He’d started growing a beard early on, and by the time he and Ronan were nearly full Blood Blades the blonde one looked more the man.  He was a cold and efficient swordsman, possibly the best among them. 

They
’d been raised to be emotionless, and they were punished for succumbing to attachment or sentiment…and yet Ronan remembered envying that boy.  He was the better between them, and always had been.  Ronan wanted that, wanted to
be
that.