The Old Ways

11

Darius was stunned to be awake. His back hurt like the Abyss, his left arm was asleep, and the red mark on his forehead would probably never vanish…but somehow, he was alive.

“Huh,” he muttered. “I’ll be damned.”

Well, maybe not quite, he thought with a chuckle. That was, after all, the entire point of what he was fighting against.

He ate his meager breakfast, always with an eye out for Valessa. It made no sense, really, why she hadn’t killed him in his sleep. How she’d mocked him, taunted him with that fate. She could wait, she’d said, yet Ashhur had commanded him to sleep, and no dagger had found his throat. It was a miracle, one he felt woefully unworthy of. Not that he’d complain. It was still vastly better than the alternative.

Darius caught sight of her only once as he gathered his things, watching from behind a distant tree. She looked like herself, plain-garbed and furious. When she realized she’d been spotted, she vanished. Darius saluted her direction, then continued east, toward the Gihon River. Once he reached it, he could follow it north to the Blood Tower. Sir Robert Godley, issuer of the bounty on his head, would be there. As he’d told Jerico, he’d explain everything and demand that the bounty be removed before anyone got hurt.

And if Robert refused…

Darius tried to not think about that.

Valessa bothered him little as the next days passed. Several times Darius felt a tingle in the back of his mind, and he’d turn, readying his sword. If she’d been planning to attack, she backed down at his reaction. At no point did he feel safe, nor relinquish his weapon. Even when he took a piss, he held the hilt in one hand, his dick in the other. Valessa might not think it honorable killing a man while he relieved himself, but he’d seen the madness in her eyes. As long as he died, he felt pretty sure she’d be content.

Every night he knelt in an open space or field, for he’d left the forest long behind him. He stabbed his sword into the dirt before him, closed his eyes, and slept. Every night, he expected death, and prayed Ashhur would take him. Every morning, he awoke shaking his head and chuckling.

It wasn’t until the fourth day that Darius encountered another human being. He walked a dirt path between great fields stretching north to south on either side. Gold wheat blew in the wind, and he ran his hands across their stalks. Half a mile beyond the Stronghold there had been a field, and a long time ago Darius used to play in it, weaving hidden from the world through the wheat when he was supposed to be performing his daily prayers. He’d been caught once, and that once was enough to ensure he never did it again.

His hand dropped to his side. Karak had stolen away his childhood. Surely that alone proved the destructiveness of the Stronghold. Lost in memories of rigid canings, forced prayers, and constant reaffirming of the chaos in his heart, he barely noticed the approaching wagon until it was right on top of him.

“Hold!” Darius called out, waving his arms at the approaching driver. A wagon meant supplies, and food, both of which he was running low on. What little coin he had should get him to the Gihon, and from there it was just a matter of time until he spotted one of their patrols along the river.

Two men sat at the front of the covered wagon, which was pulled by a pair of heavily panting oxen. Their clothes were the color of dirt and toil, their faces unshaven. They said something to one another, then issued a command with the reins. Darius knew nothing of how to drive a wagon, but he could tell when one wasn’t slowing. Frowning, he waved his arms again, making sure to keep his sword sheathed.

“Hold, I wish to trade,” he shouted. “I am a paladin, and mean you no harm!”

The men appeared unwilling to run over a champion of the gods, and finally slowed, close enough for Darius to reach out and touch the noses of the oxen.

“Could you move?” the driver asked Darius.

“Certainly,” Darius said. “Though I’d prefer we talk first. I’ve run low on supplies, and wonder if you have any to spare?”

The men exchanged a look.

“I can pay,” he insisted.

“Not got much to trade,” said the larger man beside the driver. “I suggest you move on. Town’s not far back behind us. Buy your fill there.”

Darius tried to show no insult for their inhospitable nature. While at times he’d received preferential treatment for his allegiance to Karak, he also knew there were plenty who wished nothing to do with the gods’ champions, or any matter of faith. With dark paladins hunting those of Ashhur all across Dezrel, they also might not wish to traffic with either side, lest they be caught in the middle.

“Just a scrap of food,” Darius said, doing his best to show he posed no danger. “I will pay fair prices, and be grateful for your kindness.”

Still they looked at one another, neither saying a thing.

“It’s that, or you run me over,” Darius said, his patience wearing thin. “I’m not moving.”

“Fine,” said the driver. “Grick will see what we can spare, if you’ll curl around to the back.”

“Much appreciated,” Darius said, bowing. He walked past the wagon, smacking one of the oxen across its muscular side. Grick vanished into the covering. For a brief moment Darius thought the driver might resume now the road was clear, but he did not. At the rear of the wagon, Darius peered inside. Various bags and crates were stacked to either side. Many of them were already open. Grick wandered around them, as if unsure of what he was looking for.

“On the way to market?” Darius asked.

“Huh?” Grick looked over at him, then shrugged. “Yeah, right. Been lean, so me and Gacy thought to take some things to sell down at Murkland. Now where…”

Darius watched him search as a cold feeling settled in his stomach. When Grick turned aside, Darius stepped closer, and peered at the visible boards of the wagon.

Dried blood.

“So are you and Gacy brothers?” he asked, swallowing hard.

“Brothers?” Grick chuckled. “Yeah, we’re brothers. Ain’t we brothers, Gacy?”

“Just shut up and sell him what he wants,” Gacy shouted from the front.

A strange sensation hit Darius, though it was less of a sensation and more of a certainty. He knew, without a shred of doubt, Grick had just spoken a lie.

“Poor wagon looks like it’s been through plenty of hard winters,” Darius said, making casual conversation. “Had it long?”

“Yeah,” Grick said, pulling out two loaves of bread from a sack. “Had it forever, it seems.”

Another lie. Darius knew that Jerico had always possessed the ability to detect truth, and now it seemed Ashhur had granted him the same gift. Darius slowly pulled his sword off his back and rested it across his shoulder.

“Where’d you get it?” he asked.

Grick was about to offer the bread, but paused. Something in Darius’s voice must have set him off, for he pulled back.

“Asking a lot of questions, mister,” Grick said. “Why you care about my wagon?”

“I don’t. I care about what you and Gacy did to the original owners.”

“Go!” Grick shouted, ducking further into the covering. Darius climbed after him. On his knees amid stolen goods and atop wood stained red with blood, he felt his anger rise. Before he could take to his feet, Grick was back, knife in hand. He lunged, the small blade aimed for Darius’s throat. It was a meager weapon, suitable for robbing peasants, not combat with an armed professional. Darius smacked it aside with his gauntleted hand, then kicked himself forward. The headbutt knocked Grick to his rear. The ensuing kick sent the knife flying.

The wagon shuddered as it started to move, and then Gacy was there, climbing over the divider between the front seat and the rest of the wagon. He wielded a heavy club, and swung it overhead with all his strength. Darius blocked it with his sword, kicked Grick again when he tried to get up, and then swung. His sword slashed across Gacy’s arm, severing tendons. Howling in pain, Gacy leapt at Darius, his hands reaching to strangle him.

Darius reacted as he’d been trained to a thousand times. Stepping back, he put the tip of his sword between them and let the man impale himself on the blade. Gritting his teeth, he kicked the man away and pulled his sword free. The body collapsed on the floor beside Grick, arms and legs sprawled atop various crates. Grick’s lower lip quivered, and he pushed at the corpse.

“Don’t kill me,” he pleaded. “Take it. Take the wagon; it’s yours, all of it, yours. Just don’t kill me!”

Darius pressed the tip of his blade against Grick’s throat. Blood trickled down the sword, obscuring the blue glow beneath. His pulse pounding in his ears, Darius tried to think, tried to decide what Jerico would do.

“You’re thieves, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Grick.

“You stole this wagon, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I…I didn’t want to, it was Gacy’s idea, I swear.”

“Shut up!”

Darius felt his jaw begin to tremble, so he clenched it tighter. He ground his teeth as he fought for calm.

“What did you do to them?” he asked. “What did you do to some poor farmers on their way to market? Tell me, Grick.”

“We just roughed ‘em up,” Grick said. “I swear, roughed them up, but they’re alive. We left them alive.”

Again came that certainty. The man spoke a lie.

“They’re dead,” Darius whispered. The tip of his sword pressed harder against Grick’s neck. “That makes you a thief and a murderer.”

“Please, no,” the man said, barely understandable between his sobs. He was a wretched man, poor, uneducated, without a shred of courage. His skin barely clung to his bones. Yet he had taken a life. Many lives, most likely. Gacy was already dead, and Darius could only imagine Jerico’s unhappiness at that. But what was he to do? Turn them over to the law, and risk capture himself? Let them go free, with an easily broken promise to do no wrong?

Mercy over vengeance, Jerico had said. Grace over condemnation. But what of justice? Grick continued to sob, and in Darius’s mind, he became the wounded stranger that Karak’s prophet Velixar had brought him to on a dark night. Velixar’s lesson was that killing could be done for good, that the ending of a life was a mercy. How could Darius reject Karak’s teachings, yet desire nothing more than to shove his sword right through Grick’s throat? He would not be a hypocrite. Darius would rather be a failure-or a weakling-than a hypocrite.

“Get up,” he said. He saw a coil of rope in the corner and gestured to it. “Grab it, and step out of the wagon. Slowly. If you run, I will chase you down and make sure you get every scrap of pain you deserve. Have I made myself clear?”

Grick nodded.

“Good. Now do it.”

The man slowly stepped out from the wagon, wincing every time the tip of Darius’s sword nudged his back. When they were both out, Darius tied one end around Grick’s wrists, then looped it about his neck, always careful to keep an eye out for Valessa in case she thought it an opportune moment to strike. When finished, he took the other end and held it while he replenished his store of food from the wagon.

“We’re going to travel the way you came, Grick. You’ll lead. We’ll find those bodies, and if you and your bastard friend didn’t bury them, then we’ll do that, too. After that, we head to town, find someone who knew the people you killed, someone related. They’ll decide your fate. But first…”

He nodded toward the wagon.

“Grab Gacy out of there. You have a body to bury.”

Darius left him plenty of slack as Grick climbed inside and dragged out Gacy’s body by a leg.

“In the field,” Darius said when Grick paused.

“What am I going to dig with?” Grick asked.

“The gods gave you hands for a reason. Now start.”

“What about the wagon? You just gonna leave it here? Someone will take it.”

Darius chuckled. The irony was not lost on him.

“Then let’s pray whoever finds it is much more deserving of it than you.”

He watched Grick dig as the sun crawled across the sky. Progress was slow in the hard ground. Darius did his best to feel no compassion, no remorse, as the cuts grew across Grick’s hands. He was a murderer, after all. Karak would have had him executed, the old ways even calling for his sacrifice upon an altar. Glancing down at the scratched off lion on his chest, Darius reminded himself he was slave to those ways no longer. Blood dripped across the shallow groove that was Gacy’s grave.

“Slide over,” Darius said as he jammed his sword into the dirt, still within arm’s reach. “I killed him. This is my grave to dig, too.”

Together they tore into the ground with their hands, until at last there was enough space for a body. Darius dragged Gacy into it, and then covered it with what dirt they had. It was not enough, and Darius knew wild animals would soon come to dig it up. Still, there was little else he could do. If not wild animals, then the worms would have him, but at least they’d done something.

“Come on,” Darius said, grabbing his sword. “Walk.”

Darius had no desire to chat, and thankfully Grick picked up on it. In silence they traveled down the dirt road, Grick ahead, Darius holding the rope like the other man was some sort of pet. The hours spent digging the grave had killed much of the day, and by the time they found a trio of trees growing beside the road, the sun had begun to set.

“There,” Grick said, pointing toward the trees. “That’s where we hid. Bodies should be around here someplace.”

It wasn’t difficult to find where they’d been dumped. Darius just followed the blood. There were three bodies. Two were husband and wife, lying side by side as if they would stay together even in death. At their feet, face down, was the body of a child. Darius rolled her over so he could see her face, see the bugs crawling across her pale skin, see the trickle of blood dripping from her nose to her mouth. The paladin swallowed hard, and he heard Velixar’s voice in his head, mocking him.

What say you now, Darius? Is this man worth the time, the effort? Run your sword through him, and make this world a better place. Or do you still see compassion as a virtue, and not a weakness?

“Why?” Darius asked, turning to the thief. “Why did you kill the child, too? You had their things. You had their wagon.”

Grick stepped back, reaching the extent of the rope. It tightened about his neck, and he winced.

“It was a mercy,” he said.

“Mercy?” Darius felt his fury swell. “Mercy!”

He rushed the man, struck him with his fists. The heavy gauntlets smashed into Grick’s nose and teeth. Darius flung him to the ground, kicked, and then fell upon him, his hands clutching the front of his shirt.

“Mercy?” he shouted. “You killed a child, and you call it mercy?”

“Gacy woulda kept her,” Grick said, spitting out blood and a tooth so he could talk. “Woulda taken her, done…we didn’t know she was in the wagon, and the parents died fighting back. She’s just a little girl, no ma, no pa. It was mercy, please listen, either that or Gacy.”

No warning this time, no certainty from Ashhur that he spoke a lie. Darius thought of the wounded man Velixar had brought him to, bleeding and in pain. Killing wasn’t a punishment, Velixar had said. It was a mercy. Staring down at the thief, Darius saw pieces of himself, of what Velixar had sought to create, only in a far more terrible light.

“I made sure she felt nothing,” Grick said when Darius said nothing. His words broke the silence, and Darius stood.

“We have no time for a burial,” he said. “We’ll burn them, just as you should have.”

By the time the pyre was complete, night was upon them. Darius felt tired, his armor heavy on his body. The fire burned, and in it, Darius thought he saw a glimpse of the Abyss, and Velixar’s mocking smile. This was the world he defended. These were the people Darius had sworn to defend, to save, when he sided with Jerico over Karak.

“How much farther is the town?” Darius asked Grick as the smell of burnt flesh and hair filled the air.

“Another four miles,” Grick said.

“Too far, then. We’ll stay here for the night.”

They moved to the cluster of trees and built a small fire. Darius chewed on his lip, then removed the rope from around Grick’s neck, leaving only the tight cords about his wrists.

“I won’t leave you hog-tied through the night,” Darius said, settling down opposite the fire and the trees. “You’ll want to run, I’m sure, but know that I can track you. I’ve been trained for this, Grick. I know where you’d go, how you’d hide, and I can’t promise to control myself the next time I find you.”

“Then what do you want me for?” Grick asked, pressing his hands against his neck and rubbing the raw flesh.

“To deliver you to justice. Like I said, we’ll let the townspeople decide your fate.”

“Then just kill me now. You know that’s what they’ll do.”

Darius rubbed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids. Yes, he did know that. What in the gods’ names was he doing? What did he hope to accomplish?

“You killed people,” Darius said. “You know you must be punished.”

“You killed Gacy. Don’t see no one punishing you.”

“Children,” Darius said. “You killed children.”

“Yeah, I did, and I did it to protect her. You saying you never done something like that?”

Darius opened his mouth, then closed it. The praying family flashed before his eyes, followed by Velixar’s laughter echoing in his ears. Yes, he had. And Jerico had forgiven him for all of it. And now Ashhur placed his trust in him. Damn it, why couldn’t things remain simple?

“Yes,” Darius said quietly. “I have. And then I flung myself to my knees and demanded that my friend deliver justice.”

Grick shifted against the tree he leaned against.

“Why didn’t he kill you?” he asked.

Darius chuckled.

“Because he’s a better man than I.”

He rolled over, clutched the hilt of his sword. When he spoke, he did not look at Grick, did not want to see his reaction.

“Go if you wish, thief. I don’t know what is right anymore. You deserve death, but then again, so do I. So go. Let someone who can sleep through the night decide your fate. Run away from your punishment. When the gods one day find you on your deathbed, may they possess greater wisdom than I.”

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He heard rustling several times, but Ashhur cried no warning in his ear. At last sleep came for him, and he dreamt of a little girl running through a field, flowers in her hair, her face lit with a smile.

When Darius woke, Grick lay against the same tree, his head lolled to one side. His neck was slit, and blood soaked the front of his clothes. Valessa stood beside him, grinning. Darius grabbed his sword, but Valessa only laughed at him.

“Ashhur protected you from me,” she said. “But not him. What does that mean, Darius? Can you answer?”

She stepped through the tree and vanished.

“What does it mean?” Darius asked, fighting away the lump in his throat. “It means I must bury him. That’s what it means.”

He spent the morning digging the grave and the afternoon filling it back up with dirt. He gave a quick prayer over it, for he knew not what else to say.

“I know nothing of him but his sins,” Darius whispered to the cold evening air. “But he stayed. I pray that meant something.”

The grave went unmarked, and traveling east, Darius did his best to think no more on it.