Marked for Death

Chapter 19

Everyone lapsed into a respectful silence, and Kandler turned back to examining the damaged monument.

“It wasn’t lightning,” Burch said. He had come up behind Kandler to peer at the broken end of the obelisk too. “No scorch marks.”

Kandler nodded, ignoring the confused looks from the others. “See the marks here near the break?” he said. The place where he pointed was covered with the marks of dozens of tiny chips smashed off the obelisk. “Looks like a warhammer or mace.”

“Maybe both.”

“Maybe lots of them.”

“Whoever it was, they wanted this thing down bad.”

“Who?” asked Deothen. “More importantly, why?”

“Does it really matter?” Sallah asked.

Kandler stood up. Before he could speak, Burch cut him off.

“Hostiles! All around!”

Kandler glanced at Burch, but before he could ask what his friend meant, bodies on either side of the path around them erupted. The horses screamed and bolted.

The hunters drew their weapons. A score of armored creatures stood up from underneath the corpses arranged near the river and staggered toward them. “Zombies!” Levritt shouted, his voice shredded by panic.

“We can handle this,” Brendis said, clapping the youngest knight on the shoulder as he spoke. He looked back at Deothen and said, “Stay back and witness the power of our faith.” He, Gweir, and Levritt stepped forward, leaving Deothen and Sallah behind with Kandler and Burch.

As the creatures stomped closer, their armor clanking all about them, the knights raised high their silvery swords, which burst into sparkling flame. “We are the defenders of the weak and foes of the darkness!” Brendis shouted. “Your kind cannot stand before our righteous light!”

The creatures halted for a moment just outside of the swords’ reach. They gazed up at the blazing blades in what the young knights could only believe was awe.

And then the creatures laughed.

It was a hollow, tinny laugh, as if the suits of armor were empty and the sound echoed inside their breastplates before making its way out.

The three young knights glanced at each other, confused and filled with a doubt they’d rarely known. While their blades were still held high, the creatures leaped forward and stabbed at the knights’ exposed middles.

One of the creatures ran Gweir clean through. The knight fell over the sword and coughed up blood onto his attacker’s arm. He tried to scream, but he just spurted more crimson from his mouth instead.

Brendis managed to bring his sword back down in time to offer some defense, but two of the creatures bowled into him and knocked him over. They kept on him, pinning him to the ground, and began poking at his defenseless form with their blades. He screamed as he was stabbed again and again.

Levritt stumbled backward and fell. As he went down, Burch’s crossbow twanged, and the creature about to drive his blade down through the young knight’s heart fell over dead.

Kandler and Sallah dashed forward. Deothen held his blade before him and called on the Silver Flame to protect the knights from these creatures.

“It’s not working!” Kandler said to the senior knight. “We’re on our own here!” He cut down one of the creatures with a single blow then parried attacks from two others. They were fast but unimaginative in their savagery. Kandler could almost predict exactly where their blows would be aimed each moment, and this gave him the kind of advantage he needed over their superior numbers.

“Does the Silver Flame’s light not reach into this damned land?” Sallah asked as she stepped into the fray, swinging her sword left and right.

“Blasphemy, daughter!” Deothen said, staring at the flames dancing on his sword. “I can feel the Flame’s power coursing through me and my blade.”

Kandler kicked one of the creatures off of Brendis, then decapitated the other with a single, well-placed blow.

The severed cranium sailed through the air and bounced off Levritt’s head, knocking him back to the ground and conveniently out of the way of a slashing sword. As he scrambled to his feet again, he looked down at the thing’s face. It was made of cast metal bolted to a skull, and all over it was carved intricate runes, the color of which faded from red to black as he watched. The thing’s jaw flapped loosely from a pair of rivets as its leathery tongue lolled out of its mouth. Its blank, obsidian eyes stared back at the young knight like those of a statue, with as little life left in them.

“By the Silver Flame!” Levritt squealed. “What is that?” The knight stumbled backward away from the skull, waving his sword recklessly before him.

Kandler stepped in front of the downed Brendis. As he did, another of the creatures stepped up to face him. Its body looked more like that of a living statue than a man. Plates of metal and disks of stone overlaid muscular fibers flexing beneath. The creature stood as tall as a man, had the same shape, but it fought with the tireless fury of the undead.

Kandler recognized what the creature was. He’d fought against some of them in the Last War, both in Breland and abroad. “Warforged!” Kandler shouted. He continued to hack away at the creatures, peeling their armored skin from them with his blade, then taking them apart a piece at a time. “They fight like animals but die like men! Keep at them!”

The warforged were the monstrous creations of wizards who served kings that were running out of warm bodies to place into a soldier’s garb in the final decades of the Last War. They were constructs somehow gifted with humanoid sentience, creatures like the unliving golems that served in many a wizard’s tower, but imbued with the power to reason, as well as what could only be called a soul.

Deothen stepped into the fray, standing back to back with Sallah as the creatures surrounded them. As each of the warforged stepped forward to brave an attack, the knights made them pay. Soon, the ground around them lay covered in pieces of these strange constructs.

Using his clawed hands and feet, Burch scaled the obelisk and stood atop its broken shaft. From the safety of this vantage, he rained bolt after bolt down on the creatures. Many fell with the shifter’s steel-tipped missiles jutting from the spaces between their metallic plates.

Brendis struggled to his feet and stood with his back to Kandler. His left arm was hurt, and he held it close to his side as he blocked blow after blow from the warforged. The justicar rolled around to the knight’s left side to protect the young man from attacks from that direction.

With Kandler’s flank protected, he lay into the warforged who came at him, weaving a steely net of death with his blade. They fell before him, one by one, and it was not long before only three of the creatures were left.

Sallah knocked the warforged in front of her flat with her pommel, then stabbed it through the chest with her blade. The creature screamed as it expired, and in spite of herself Sallah whispered, “May the Silver Light guide your final journey.”

Levritt found himself facing one of the last warforged. It circled around him, putting his body between itself and Burch. The young knight lunged at the creature with his sword, but it parried the blow. Its riposte tore open a gash in Levritt’s cheek.

The young knight fell over in pain and shock, clutching his face. As he tipped over, he left the warforged standing over him exposed. A bolt from Burch’s crossbow punched through the creature’s obsidian eye and buried itself in its fibrous brain.

“Cursed breathers!” a warforged fighting Kandler said. “The Lord of Blades rules this realm. Leave or be killed!”

Kandler removed the warforged’s sword hand at the wrist. He’d heard rumors of the Lord of Blades from the infrequent visitors to Mardakine, people passing through on their way out of the Mournland or in. The most revered of the warforged, this creature hoped to establish a homeland for its kind in this most desolate land.

Few but the orphaned offspring of Cyre would envy the Lord of Blades’ choice. The unforgiving Mournland suited the warforged, who could go without food, water, or even sleep. Most people were happy to leave the creatures to their own devices in this blasted land. Others, though, feared what the Lord of Blades might do with an army of dispossessed ex-soldiers who were literally created to kill.

At that moment, none of that mattered to Kandler. These creatures were just another obstacle standing between himself and his adopted daughter. Standing here on the site of his wife’s grave, Kandler’s recalled what Esprina had said to him the last time he’d seen her. She said the same thing every time they parted.

“Take care of Esprл,” Esprina whispered as she caressed the curve of his face. “She had nothing else in the world but me.”

“And me,” Kandler said, just like always.

Esprina smiled, and the sight caused Kandler’s breath to catch in his chest. “You are more of a father to her than any other has been,” she said.

“And I always will be,” Kandler said, taking her hands in his. “I promise.”

“I know, my love.” Her smile turned wistful here, as if she somehow knew the fate that would befall her soon after. “I know.”

Brendis collapsed against Kandler, nearly knocking the justicar from his feet. He had to leap forward to avoid falling. As he did, the warforged before him lashed out with its remaining hand and caught Kandler around the throat. It pounded him in the face with the severed stump at the end of its other arm.

Kandler tried to pull the warforged’s grasp from his throat, but the creature’s thick three fingers held him like a vise. He brought up his knee into the warforged’s groin but only bruised his knee on thing’s metal codpiece.

“Your time on this world is over, breather!” the warforged said as it squeezed Kandler’s throat. The justicar felt his world begin to go black.