Waylander

2

The mercenaries rode off, leaving the dead behind them. Seventeen bodies littered the roadside; eight men, four women and five children. The men and the children had died swiftly. Of the five carts which the refugees had been hauling, four were burning fiercely and the fifth smouldered quietly. As the killers crested the hills to the south a young red-haired woman pushed herself clear of the screen of bushes by the road and led three children to the smouldering cart.

'Put out the fire, Culas,' she told the oldest boy. He stood staring at the corpses, his wide blue eyes blank with shock and terror. 'The fire, Culas. Help the others put out the fire.' But he saw the body of Sheera and groaned.

'Grandmother …' muttered Culas, stepping forward on shaking legs. Then the young woman ran to him, taking him in her arms and burying his head against her shoulder.

'She is dead and she can feel no pain. Come with me and put out the fire.' She led him to the cart and handed him a blanket. The two younger children –twin girls of seven – stood hand in hand, their backs turned to the dead.

'Come now, children. Help your brother. And then we'll be going.'

'Where can we go, Danyal?' asked Krylla.

'North. The general Egel is in the north, they say, with a great army. We'll go there.'

'I don't like soldiers,' said Miriel.

'Help your brother. Quickly, now!'

Danyal turned away from them, shielding them from her tears. Vile, vile world! Three months back, when the war had begun, word had reached the village that the Hounds of Chaos were marching on Drenan. The men had laughed at the news, confident of speedy victory.

Not so the women, who instinctively knew that any army revelling in the title Hounds of Chaos would be bitter foes. But how bitter few had realised. Subjugation Danyal could understand –what woman could not? But the Hounds brought more than this; they brought wholesale death and terror, torture, mutilation and horror beyond belief.

Source priests were hunted down and slain, their order outlawed by the new masters. And yet the Source priests offered no resistance to any government, preaching only peace, harmony and respect for authority. What threat did they pose?

Farming communities were burnt out and destroyed. So who would gather the crops in the Fall?

Rape, pillage and murder without end. It was incomprehensibly savage and beyond Danyal's ability to understand. Three times now she had been raped. Once by six soldiers – that they had not killed her was testimony to her skills as an actress, for she had feigned enjoyment and on each occasion they had let her leave, bruised and humiliated but always smiling. Some instinct had told her that today would be different and when the riders first appeared she had gathered the children and fled to the bushes.

The riders were not seeking rape, only plunder and wanton destruction.

Twenty armed men who stopped to butcher a group of refugees.

'The fire is out, Danyal,' called the boy Culas. Danyal climbed into the cart, sorting out blankets and provisions left by the raiders as being too humble for booty. With lengths of hide she tied three blankets into rucksacks for the children, then gathered up leather canteens of water which she hung over her shoulder.

'We must go,' she said, and led the trio off towards the north.

They had not moved far when the sound of horses' hooves came drumming to their ears and Danyal panicked, for they were on open ground. The two girls began to cry, but young Culas produced a long-bladed dagger from a sheath hidden in his blanket roll.

'Give me that!' yelled Danyal, snatching the blade and hurling it far away from the road while Culas watched in horror. 'It will avail us nothing. Listen to me. Whatever they do to me, you just sit quietly. You understand? Do not shout or scream. You promise?'

Two riders rounded the bend in the road. The first was a dark-haired warrior of a type she was coming to know too well; his face was hard, his eyes harder. The second was a surprise, for he was slender and ascetic, fine-boned and seemingly gentle of countenance. Danyal tossed her long red hair over her shoulder and smoothed the folds of her green tunic as they approached, forcing a smile of welcome to her lips.

'You were with the refugees?' asked the warrior.

'No. We just passed that way.'

The young one with the gentle face stepped carefully from the saddle, wincing as if in pain. He approached Danyal and held out his hands.

'You need not lie to us, sister, we are not of that ilk. I am sorry for your pain.'

'You are a priest?'

'Yes.' He turned to the children. 'Come to me, come to Dardalion,' he said, kneeling and opening his arms. Amazingly they responded, the little girls first. His slender arms touched all three. 'You are safe for a little while,' he said. 'I bring you no more than that.'

'They killed grandmother,' said the boy.

'I know, Culas. But you and Krylla and Miriel are still alive. You have run a long way. And now we will help you. We will take you to Gan Egel in the north.'

His voice was soft and persuasive, the sentences short, simple and easily understood. Danyal stood by, transfixed at the power he exerted over them. And she did not doubt him, but her eyes were drawn to the dark-haired warrior who still sat his mount.

'You are not a priest,' she said.

'No. And you are not a whore.'

'How would you know?'

'I spend my life around whores,' he answered. Lifting his leg over the pommel of his saddle he slid to the ground and approached her. He smelt of stale sweat and horseflesh and close up he was as terrifying as any of the raiders she had known. Yet strangely she viewed the terror from a distance as if she were watching a play, knowing that the villain is terrible but comforted by the thought that he cannot leave the stage. The power in him encompassed her without threat.

'You hid in the bushes,' he said. 'Wise. Very wise.'

'You were watching?'

'No. I read the tracks. We hid from the same raiders an hour back. Mercenaries – not true Hounds.'

'True Hounds? What more do they need to do to serve their apprenticeship?'

'They were sloppy – they left you alive. You would not escape the Hounds so easily.'

'How is it,' asked Danyal, 'that a man like you travels with a priest of the Source?'

'A man like me? How swiftly you judge, woman,' he answered equably. 'Perhaps I should have shaved.'

She turned from him as Dardalion approached.

'We must find a place to camp,' said the priest. 'The children need sleep.'

'It is only three hours after noon,' said Waylander.

'They need a special kind of sleep,' said Dardalion. 'Trust me. Can you find a place?'

'Walk with me aways,' said the warrior, moving some thirty feet down the trail. Dardalion joined him. 'What is the matter with you? We cannot saddle ourselves with them. We have two horses and the Hounds are everywhere. And where they are not, there are mercenaries.'

'I cannot leave them. But you are right – you go.'

'What have you done to me, priest?' snapped the warrior.

'I? Nothing.'

'Have you put a spell on me? Answer me!'

'I know no spells. You are free to do as you please, obey whatever whims you care to.'

'I don't like children. And I don't like women I can't pay for.'

'We must find a resting place where I can ease their torment. Will you do that before you go?'

'Go? Where should I go?'

'I thought you wanted to leave, to be free of us.'

'I cannot be free. Gods, if I thought you had put a spell on me I would kill you. I swear it!'

'But I have not,' said Dardalion. 'Nor would I if I could.'

Muttering dark curses under his breath, Waylander walked back to Danyal and the children. As he approached the girls clutched Danyal's skirt, their eyes wide with fear.

He waited by his horse until Dardalion was with the children. 'Anyone want to ride with me?' he asked. There was no answer and he chuckled, 'I thought not. Follow me into the trees yonder. I will find a place.'

Later, as Dardalion sat with the children telling them wondrous tales of elder magic, his voice softly hypnotic, Waylander lay by the fire watching the woman.

'You want me?' she asked suddenly, breaking his concentration.

'How much?' he asked.

'For you, nothing.'

'Then I don't want you. Your eyes don't lie as well as your mouth.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means you loathe me. I don't mind that; I've slept with women aplenty who've loathed me.'

'I don't doubt it.'

'Honesty at last?'

'I don't want any harm to come to the children.'

'You think I would harm them?'

'If you could.'

'You misjudge me, woman.'

'And you underestimate my intelligence. Did you not seek to stop the priest from aiding us? Well?'

'Yes, but …'

'There are no buts. Without aid our chance of survival is next to nothing. You don't call that harm?'

'Woman, you have a tongue like a whip. I owe you nothing and you have no right to criticise me.'

'I don't criticise you. That would suggest I cared enough to improve you. I despise you and all your loathsome brethren. Leave me alone, damn you!'

Dardalion sat with the children until the last was asleep, then he placed his hand on each brow in turn and whispered the Prayer of Peace. The two girls lay with arms entwined under a single blanket, while Culas was stretched out beside them with his head pillowed on his arm. The priest concluded his prayer and sat back exhausted. Somehow it was hard to concentrate while wearing Waylander's clothes. The blurred images of pain and tragedy had softened now, but still they kept Dardalion from the uppermost pathways of the Road to the Source.

A distant scream pulled him to the present. Somewhere out in the darkness another soul was suffering.

Dardalion shivered and moved to the fireside where the young woman Danyal was sitting alone. Waylander was gone.

'I insulted him,' said Danyal as the priest sat opposite her. 'He is so cold. So hard. So fitted to the times.'

'Yes, he is,' agreed Dardalion, 'but he is also the man who can lead us to safety.'

'I know. Do you think he will come back?'

'I think so. Where are you from?'

Danyal shrugged. 'Here and there. I was born in Drenan.'

'A pleasant city with many libraries.'

'Yes.'

'Tell me about your days as an actress,' said Dardalion.

'How did you … oh yes, there are no secrets from the Source.'

'Nothing so magical, Danyal. The children told me; they said you once performed the Spirit of Circea before King Niallad.'

'I played the sixth daughter and had three lines,' she said, smiling. 'But it was an experience to remember. They say the King is dead, slain by traitors.'

'So I have heard,' said Dardalion. 'Still, let us not concentrate on such things. The night is clear, the stars are beautiful, the children sleep dreaming sweet dreams. Tomorrow we will worry about death and despair.'

'I cannot stop from thinking about it,' she said. 'Fate is cruel. At any moment raiders may run from the trees and the terror will begin again. You know it is two hundred miles to the Delnoch range where Egel trains his army?'

'I know.'

'Will you fight for us? Or will you stand by and let them kill us?'

'I do not fight, Danyal. But I will stand with you.'

'But your friend will fight?'

'Yes. It is all he knows.'

'He is a killer,' said Danyal, lifting her blanket around her shoulders. 'He is no different from the mercenaries or the Vagrians. And yet I hope he comes back – is that not strange?'

'Try to sleep,' urged Dardalion. 'And I will see that your dreams are untroubled.'

'That would be nice – and of a magic I could warm to.'

She lay by the fire and closed her eyes. Dardalion breathed deeply and entered once more into concentration, summoning the Prayer of Peace and projecting it silently to shroud her body. Her breathing deepened. Dardalion released the chains of his spirit and soared into the night sky, twisting over and over in the bright moonlight, leaving his body hunched by the fire.

Free!

Alone with the Void.

Stopping his upward spiral with an effort, he scanned the earth below for sign of Waylander.

Far to the south-east the burning cities illuminated the night sky in a jagged crimson arc, while to the north and west watch-fires burned, their regular setting identifying them as Vagrian sentry fires. To the south a single blaze twinkled in a small wood and, curious, Dardalion swooped towards it.

Six men slept around the fire while a seventh sat upon a rock spooning mouthfuls of stew from a copper pot. Dardalion hovered above them, an edge of fear seeping into him. He sensed great evil and prepared to depart.

Suddenly the seated man glanced up at him and grinned.

'We will find you, priest,' he whispered.

Dardalion did not move. The man placed the copper pot by his feet and closed his eyes … and Dardalion was no longer alone. Hovering beside him was an armed warrior, bearing shield and black sword. The young priest darted for the skies, but the warrior spirit was faster, touching him lightly on the back as he passed. Pain lanced Dardalion and he cried out.

The warrior hovered before him, grinning.

'I will not kill you yet , priest. I want Waylander. Give him to me and you can live.'

'Who are you? whispered Dardalion, fighting for time.

'My name would mean nothing to you. But I am of the Brotherhood and my task is set. Waylander must die.'

'The Brotherhood? You are a priest?'

'Priest? In a way you would never understand, you pious pig! Strength, guile, cunning, terror – these are the things I worship, for they bring power. True power.'

'You serve the Darkness then?' said Dardalion.

'Darkness or Light … word tricks of confusion. I serve the Prince of Lies, the Creator of Chaos.'

'Why do you hunt Waylander? He is not a mystic.'

'He killed the wrong man, though doubtless the death was well-deserved. And now it is decreed that he must die. Will you deliver him to me?'

'I cannot.'

'Go your way then, worm. Your passivity offends me. I shall kill you tomorrow – just after dark. I will seek out your spirit wherever it hides and I will destroy it.'

'Why? What will you gain?'

'Only pleasure,' answered the warrior. 'But that is enough.'

'Then I will await you.'

'Of course you will. Your kind like to suffer – it makes you holy.'

Waylander was angry, which surprised him, leaving him uneasy and ridiculously resentful. He rode his horse to a wooded hill and dismounted. How can you resent the truth, he asked himself?

And yet it hurt to be bracketed with the likes of mercenaries who raped and plundered the innocent, for despite his awesome reputation as a bringer of death he had never killed a woman or a child. Neither had he ever raped nor humiliated anyone. So why did the woman make him feel so sullied? Why did he now see himself in such dark light?

The priest.

The damned priest!

Waylander had lived the last twenty years in the shadows, but Dardalion was like a lantern illuminating the dark corners of his soul.

He sat down on the grass. The night was cool and clear, the air sweet.

Twenty years. Vanished into the vacuum of memory. Twenty years without anger as Waylander clung like a leech to the ungiving rock of life.

But what now?

'You are going to die, you fool,' he said aloud. 'The priest will kill you with his purity.'

Was that it? Was that the spell he feared so much?

For twenty years Waylander had ridden the mountains and plains of the civilised nations, the Steppes and outlands of the Nadir savages and the far deserts of the nomads. In that time he had allowed himself no friends. No one had touched him. Like a mobile fortress, deep-walled and safe, Waylander had ghosted through life as alone as a man could be.

Why had he rescued the priest? The question tormented him. His fortress had crumbled and his defences fallen apart like wet parchment.

Instinct told him to mount up and leave the little group – and he trusted his instincts, for they were honed by the danger his occupation aroused. Mobility and speed had kept him alive; he could strike like a snake and be gone before the dawn.

Waylander the Slayer, a prince among assassins. Only by chance could he ever be captured, for he had no home – only a random list of contacts who held contracts for him in a score of cities. In the deepest darkness he would appear, claim his contracts or his fees and then depart before the dawn. Always hunted and hated, the Slayer moved among shadows, haunting the dark places.

Even now he knew his pursuers were close. Now, more than ever, he needed to vanish into the out-lands or across the sea to Ventria and the eastern kingdoms.

'You fool,' he whispered. 'Do you want to die?'

Yet the priest held him with his uncast spell.

'You have clipped the eagle's wings, Dardalion,' he said softly.

There had been a flower-garden at the farm, bright with hyacinths and tulips and ageing daffodils. His son had looked so peaceful lying there and the blood had not seemed out of place among the blooms. The pain tore into him; memories jagged like broken glass. Tanya had been tied to the bed and then gutted like a fish. The two girls … babes …

Waylander wept for the lost years …

He returned to the camp-site in the hour before dawn and found them all sleeping. He shook his head at their stupidity and stirred the fire to life, preparing a meal of hot oats in a copper pan. Dardalion was the first to wake; he smiled a greeting and stretched.

'I am glad you came back,' he said, moving to the fire.

'We will need to find some food,' said Waylander, 'for our supplies are low. I doubt we'll find a village unburned, so it means hunting meat. You may have to forget your principles, priest, if you don't want to collapse from hunger.'

'May I speak with you?' asked Dardalion.

'An odd request. I thought we were speaking?'

Dardalion moved away from the fire and Waylander sighed and removed the copper pot from the heat before joining him.

'Why so downcast? Are you regretting saddling us with the woman and her get?'

'No. I … I need to ask a favour of you. I have no right …'

'Out with it, man. What is wrong with you?'

'Will you see them safely to Egel?'

'I thought that was the plan. Are you all right, Dardalion?'

'Yes … No … I am going to die, you see.' Dardalion turned away from him and walked up the slope to the crest of the hollow. Waylander followed. Once there Dardalion told him of his spirit meeting with the hunter and the other listened in silence. The ways of mystics were closed to him, but he knew of their powers and doubted not that Dardalion was speaking the literal truth. He was not surprised that the hunters were on his heels. After all, he had killed one of their number.

'So you see,' concluded the priest, 'once I am gone I was hoping you would still guide Danyal and the children to safety.'

'Are you so well trained in defeat, Dardalion?'

'I cannot kill – and that is the only way to stop him.'

'Where was their camp?'

'To the south, But you cannot go there – there are seven of them.'

'But only one, you think, with the Power?'

'As far as I could tell; he said he would kill me just after dark. Please don't go, Waylander. I do not wish to be the cause of anyone's death.'

'These men are hunting me, priest and I don't have many choices. If I promise to stay with the woman, then they will find me anyway. Better that I find them and fight on my terms. Today you must stay here. Wait for me. If I do not return by morning, set off for the north.'

Waylander gathered his saddlebags and gear and rode away to the south just as the dawn was breaking. Swinging in the saddle he called out, 'And kill the fire – the smoke can be seen for miles. Don't light it again until dusk.'

Dardalion stared gloomily after him.

'Where is he going?' asked Danyal, coming to stand beside the priest.

'He is going to save my life,' said Dardalion, and once more he told the story of his spirit travels. The woman seemed to understand and he saw the pity in her eyes. He realised in that moment that he was engaged in confession and knew that he had compromised himself badly. In telling Waylander he had forced the man to fight for him.

'Don't blame yourself,' said Danyal.

'I should have said nothing.'

'Would that not have doomed us all? He had to know they were hunting him.'

'I told him so that he would save me.'

'I don't doubt it. But he had to know. You had to tell him.'

'Yes. But there was only selfishness in my mind.'

'You are a man, Dardalion, as well as a priest. You are too hard on yourself. How old are you?'

'Twenty-five. And you?'

'Twenty. How long have you been a priest?'

'Five years. I was trained as an architect by my father, but my heart was never in it. Always I wanted to serve the Source. And as a child I would often have visions. My parents were embarrassed by them.' Dardalion grinned suddenly and shook his head. 'My father was convinced I was possessed and when I was eight he took me to the Source temple at Sardia to have me exorcised. He was furious when they told him I was merely gifted! From then on I attended the temple school. I should have become an acolyte at fifteen, but father insisted I stay at home and learn about business. By the time I had talked him round, I was twenty.'

'Is your father still alive?'

'I don't know. The Vagrians burned Sardia and murdered the priests. I assume they did the same with neighbouring townsfolk.'

'How did you escape?'

'I was not there for the horror; the Abbot sent me to Skoda with messages for the Mountain Monastery, but when I arrived that also was burning. I was on my way back when I was captured, then Waylander rescued me.'

'He does not seem like a man who would bother to rescue anyone.'

Dardalion chuckled. 'Well, no. He was actually recovering his horse which the mercenaries had stolen and I was, somewhat ignominiously, part of the package.' Dardalion laughed once more, then took Danyal by the hand. 'My thanks to you, sister.'

'For what?'

'For taking the time to lead me away from the paths of self-pity. I'm sorry I burdened you.'

'It was no burden. You are a kind man and you are helping us.'

'You are very wise and I am glad we met,' said Dardalion, kissing her hand. 'Come, let us wake the children.'

Throughout the day Dardalion and Danyal played with the children in the woods. The priest told them stories while Danyal led them on a treasure hunt, collecting flowers and threading garlands. The sun shone for most of the morning, but the sky darkened in mid-afternoon and rain drove the group back to the camp-site to shelter beneath a spreading pine. Here they ate the last of the bread and some dried fruit left by Waylander.

'It's getting dark,' said Danyal. 'Do you think it's safe to light the fire?'

Dardalion did not reply. His eyes were fixed on the seven men advancing through the trees, swords in hand.