Blood Warrior

CHAPTER THIRTY

Tallis’s surge down the crest toward the foot of the Mother followed a pattern woven into the fabric of his people’s memories. The high ground. Swooping in like raging locusts intent on feasting. How dare they invade our homes? Threaten our women? Disturb this sacred place?

The only way a Pendray knew how to cleanse sacred places was to wash them clean with the blood of strangers. Enemies.

He accessed his gift more quickly and with more certainty of purpose than he’d ever been able. Halfway down the slope, he was no longer Tallis. He was a Pendray warrior, content in the knowledge that his family roared behind him with equal rage.

The Guardsmen were fast. Tallis gave them that much. The Indranan weren’t known for being great physical warriors, but this lot was well trained in swordplay and had the advantage of telepathy. Tallis was already too far gone for their wizardry to reach him. What felt like mental bullets pinged off his thoughts. He’d wrapped Kevlar through the folds of his brain. The closer he got, the more quickly those bullets fired. He kept running, until he was a man without legs; he was a roiling storm cloud of anger so intense that his mind was wiped of all but two words.

Kill Pashkah.

Honnas was by Tallis’s side when they charged the nest of men dressed head to foot in black Indranan armor. Swords lifted, the Guardsmen seemed ready. The pitiful nature of their defense said they definitely were not. When Serre joined his brothers in the fray, he did so as a monster contained within the body of a young man in his prime.

Blood surged through Tallis’s body. Consumed him. Overwhelmed higher function. He was only turn, thrust, duck, spin, hack. They had taken on greater armies. They had taken on men with greater courage. And they had fought for the safety of their families. No opponent suffered more when stoking that enormity of purpose.

“They barely know how to wield a sword,” Honnas said on a laugh.

By Pendray standards, Tallis’s older brother was right. The Guardsmen had grace, yes, but their determination to see an attack through to its bloody conclusion was lacking. Had they relied on telepathy so much during their raid of Kavya’s followers? Did these men have any real substance when it came to physical fighting?

With a low swing of his seax, he struck a Guardsman’s foot from his leg. The man crumpled. His bravery was admirable in that he tried to keep fighting from his kneeling, crippled position. Tallis raised the Dragon-forged sword as a threat. The Guardsman’s face melted into white, streaking fear as he dropped his weapon and rolled onto his back, bare hands lifted in surrender.

Might as well be dead.

Perhaps something of Tallis’s higher thoughts remained, because he experienced a flash of pity. Any Pendray would have branded the man a coward. But what did this Indranan have worth fighting for? Without children to nurture and protect, very few Dragon Kings knew what sacrifice meant anymore.

Tallis knew. He’d seen Nynn and Leto rip open the world trying to find the people they loved, and to find each other. He was that lover now. He would die before he let anything happen to Kavya.

Then die.

Pashkah’s psychic strike lanced down Tallis’s vertebrae. His spine was a lightning rod that conducted pain through his entire body. He dropped to the rocky, sea-damp earth. His skull bounced off a mossy patch mere inches from a rugged upthrust of rock. Agony registered on all levels. Physically, his head throbbed as if it had been cleaved like a fresh melon. Mentally, he was a sizzle of fried nerve endings and thoughts mashed into a sickly soup. All of the layers that made him Tallis blended until they were screaming ghosts. Every victim. Every time he’d ever shed blood or taken a life. A lava flow of memories rolled over him.

He crawled to his knees. Around him the battle still raged. His sisters were fierce. Honnas’s wife, Olla, was particularly adept at a Pendray woman’s greatest strength: screams that had inspired tales of banshees. They fought as if their own loved ones were the potential victims, not Indranan strangers.

Another stab of anguish was beyond Tallis’s ability to describe. His consciousness fled down, down, using his berserker as a shield. The animal could not be harmed. He scanned the scene with the quickness of a predator that had momentarily lost its evening meal. He gained sharpness to his eyes and sensitivity to his hearing. Pure instinct.

Pashkah.

The man stood a hundred yards away, in the shadow of the Mother. He was dressed in colors Tallis recognized on some higher level, but his animal side jumped in the way of those analytical thoughts. All the beast knew was that those colors meant death. Death for Kavya.

Pashkah held a sword that gleamed gold in the fresh rays of dawn. Dragon-forged. They would finally meet each other as equals in armaments.

Tallis jumped to his feet and ran. His boots gripped with sure traction, even on the slippery coastal rocks. A Guardsman put himself between Tallis and his enemy, which made that Guardsman another enemy—one simpler to dispatch. Tallis lifted the Dragon-forged sword without thought. And sliced.

The Guardsman’s head spun away from the lifeless body that collapsed sideways in a sickly arc.

The animal was satisfied, although Pashkah was still his target. The rest were mosquitoes to be swatted away.

Pashkah was laughing, and he was attacking again. The warmth in Tallis’s brain turned to hot steam, then burst into an inferno so hot and deadly that he crumpled. And he understood a new, terrible truth: Pashkah could kill his family with a single sweep of his crazy mind. If they emerged from their fury long enough to become thinking creatures again, they would be paralyzed from the inside out.

Pushing up to his knees—forcing his body to cooperate—Tallis staggered toward Kavya’s brother. Pashkah’s amber eyes glowed with manic energy and a nauseating twist of madness. At his feet was Chandrani, hog-tied and gagged and bloody. Her armor had been stabbed, leaving red-stained holes. None of the wounds would be fatal. That hadn’t been the purpose.

“I couldn’t find Kavya,” Pashkah said with a snake’s smile, “I needed a compass.”

The man’s features were a mystery. He shimmered and altered with every few syllables. He was fragments sewn together in an ever-morphing skin. Nothing genuine remained except that he was shorter and thinner than Tallis. “Kick a beloved puppy. Listen for where the puppy screamed. Keep traveling in that direction. Until . . . here? A wasteland.”

“My home.”

“Keep thinking, Reaper. I’ll make you suffer for it.”

Tallis stabbed his seax into the ground and attacked. Dragon-forged energy snapped with sparks when their swords collided. In strength alone, Tallis had the advantage. He hacked and thrust, welcoming the return of every fighting, spitting impulse to guide his weapon. Pashkah staggered until his back hit the boulder, then he retaliated with his mental prowess—just enough to slip inside Tallis’s mind and wrench. Pain was a wash of red paint.

Pashkah grunted, then spun away. The quick maneuver gave him a few seconds to recover, but Tallis pressed the advantage.

“She took so long to find,” Pashkah said, adjusting his grip on his sword’s hilt. “Maybe that had something to do with the Reaper animal she’d taken as her lover. You’re quite the beast. Have you made her into a dog, too? Rolling in the grass and howling to the moon?”

Had he been able to shut out spoken words, Tallis would have done so. Just fight. He parried, braced with a low squat, and thrust up toward Pashkah’s sternum. The man barely jumped away in time.

“I’d never hoped anything for Kavya. That she sank so low as to crawl into your bed—that was a gift I’d never expected. To know she’d been so debased before I saw her again. Just precious.”

He stabbed the sword into a swath of earth softened in the shadow of the boulder. From behind them both, Chandrani screamed. Kavya’s scream followed, as if her heart were being torn from her chest—or her brain from her skull.

“Do you think I want you dead, Reaper?” Pashkah held his hands wide, inviting attack. “I couldn’t care less. You’re that mosquito you pictured. You’ve done so much killing. Your life is dripping with blood. Now listen to those women scream, your beloved Sun—your Kavya—and I’ll tell you exactly who you’ve been killing for.”

Tallis’s hesitation was enough—that moment that wasn’t a moment, when his decades-old need to know won out over every other consideration.

To be free of it, at last? To know?

Two Guardsmen stripped his Dragon-forged sword and felled him with three sharp blows.

—

Kavya saw Tallis fall. Slow motion. Nightmares.

She screamed her husband’s name.

Her barely imagined future lay in an unconscious heap.

Across a battlefield where berserkers clashed with Guardsmen, she met Pashkah’s eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in as many months, years, decades as her.

As if without fear—although she feared the next few seconds more than any in her life—she walked through the melee. She wasn’t there. She was only with Pashkah. This was the duel they’d postponed for most of their lives.

“Let them go,” she said with spoken words.

His eyes widened, apparently taken by surprise. When the first manifestation of their gifts had been more amazing than fearful, they hadn’t used tongues, mouths, or lips to vocalize thoughts. They’d been so close. Baile, too. It was a cruel joke for the Dragon to play, bonding siblings so closely, only to have those siblings turn on one another.

“This ends here, Pashkah. I’m not running. I’m not hiding. I’m returning to the Indranan to repair the damage you’ve done.”

“With this disgusting Reaper?” He kicked Tallis in the stomach, who was slowly rousing but pinned to the ground by four Guardsmen.

“He’s going to kill you,” Kavya said. “Not even the Dragon could change that now.”

Pashkah strode forward, his Dragon-forged sword in hand. Kavya backed up a step, then another.

She was defenseless.

Around them, the fray had eased. Everyone knew why they were there. The Guardsmen and Tallis’s family were foot soldiers as the generals squared off.

“You always thought you were above the rest of us.” Pashkah’s face contorted in a blend of expressions. “You thought you could erase thousands of years of suspicion and hatred. It can’t be done. She said the same thing, and she forced my hand.”

“She? What are you talking about?”

“Baile! Don’t you remember what we promised? We’d never succumb to what the others did. We were stronger than that. Kavya, you remember how we vowed.”

“And then you killed our sister! What sort of vow is that?”

“One I couldn’t keep when she attacked me with Father’s sword.”

Kavya staggered back a step. “No. That’s not how it happened. You betrayed our trust and you killed her.”

“I did kill her, yes.” His single nod reminded her more of her lost brother than anything ever had. His voice wasn’t the same, nor his looks nor his demeanor. Kavya caught images of unfamiliar men and women, but mostly she saw Baile. Their sister. Her so-distant features flickered over his. But Pashkah had used that particular nod when absorbing new information or admitting a wrong. “It was her life or mine, not because I meant to betray anyone. Who was the strongest of us, Kavya?”

She swallowed. The cold was getting to her now, although the sea winds had nothing to do with it. Old memories realigned. She adjusted her grip on the hilt of Tallis’s seax, if only to urge blood back into her pinched, numb fingers. “She was.”

“And who was the strongest of us, physically?”

“You.”

Pashkah shone through his own eyes. He was taking control of . . . something. Even the appearances of his shape-shifting features had slowed, calmed, resumed their usual configuration. He’d always been so handsome. Now Kavya saw that he’d have matured into a magnificent man. “And who of us was the least threat?”

“Me. My gift was weaker. I was weaker.”

“We were all wrong on that score.” He twirled the hilt of the sword their father had kept safe. Their pod had been so peaceful. He and Mother had assembled another three couples. The sword had been insurance, in case adult brothers or sisters came with murder in mind. It hadn’t been intended for one child to use against another. Members of the pod had worked tirelessly to teach the siblings tolerance and peace—that they were better than the greed of their gift.

“That’s right,” Pashkah said. Kavya had been with Tallis for so long that she’d forgotten how invasive that could feel. “Tolerance and peace. You learned that lesson better than any of us. Baile smiled along. She hid from us even then. Tell me in truth that you knew our sister. Knew her heart, her fears, her deepest thoughts. Tell me whatever it is you think you know and I’ll tell you it was a lie. She wanted both of us dead, and she started with me. I never saw it coming, and you wouldn’t have either. She wanted a stronger body to keep pace with her mind.” He smashed his left fist against his skull and roared in pain that didn’t seem physical. “Then we’d come for you.”

“This is long past, Pashkah. It’s too long past. Fight her now. Let Chandrani and my husband go. We can walk away. Or . . .” Her voice broke, thick with emotion. She didn’t like seeing him this way—as her brother. As the brother she’d loved long ago. “Or, Dragon be, you can help me. Our people need us.”

A telltale sneer reshaped his face. Baile again. Even his voice took on her inflections and cadence. “Always so good. It’s not going to happen, Kavya. You’re going to die today, so I can stop chasing you and begin the culling that needs to take place.”

Kavya raised the seax, although she knew it would be destroyed if they clashed weapons. She growled. Only then did she glance at Tallis where he remained pinned. The dawn bathed his face with a pink light that added more vitality than he possessed. Blood dripped from his temple, and his eyes were unfocused. She knew that look. Constantly bombarded by psychic pain.

And yet . . . She looked again.

Her berserker was in there. And he was waiting.

“He’s a mindless Reaper.” Pashkah grinned. “But he knows the truth. She’s been feeding it to him for years.”

Kavya stilled. “She?”

“Our sister dearest.”

“Baile?” Kavya lunged on pure instinct. The seax stabbed deep into the joint that powered Pashkah’s right shoulder. He cried out and clutched the wound. “Baile has been in Tallis’s dreams?”

“Using your face,” came the singsong taunt of madness. They were blended into one now, brother and sister, both of them tying Kavya’s gut in a sick spin of knots. “And using your body and the sweet innocence of your ideals of peace. Funny thing to find those same ideals in a Pendray. We searched the world. He was the one who seemed happy to see us. Happy to do our honorable bidding. But we couldn’t have you two figuring that out, could we?” Pashkah’s mouth formed a smile that eerily echoed their dead sister’s. “So we blocked your thoughts. No sharing secret weapons. Only these crude pieces of metal.”

“Pashkah,” she pleaded. “I know you’re in there. Fight her. Help me end this!”

“Oh, I plan to.” He stepped forward.

Kavya knew to stand her ground. She saw it and heard it in every aspect of her brother’s body, face, warped mind.

He doesn’t want me dead.

“You’re right on that score,” he said. “And neither does Baile. You see, I’m through fighting her. Help you end this? There’s no other way than to end my life.”

She swallowed a flash flood of grief. “Then give Tallis the sword. He can end your misery.”

“I would.” Pashkah lifted his fists, one of which swished the sword through the air. The other tugged his hair with so much force that he could have stripped his scalp clean off. “But she doesn’t want to die. Our dear departed Baile. She wants you to do the dirty work, Kavya dear. The three of us together as one. All those followers ready to do your bidding again. Your pretty face. Your endless optimism.”

The horror of that scenario made Kavya want to vomit and scream, but her skin held her body together. She trusted that it would until the Dragon took her back to the Chasm for eternity. “I would have to kill you, Pashkah.” She shook her head, correcting herself. “I’d have to kill both of you. But I won’t be a vessel for your insanity. I won’t do it.”

“Yes, you will. Or your new husband loses his head.”