Coming of the Warlord: Chapter Five

Chapter Five: The Battle Begins

The enlarged bodyguard growing around himself and Velira could only be good, Garen thought. More hands would put out whatever fires were burning in the eastern side of the city, and more people with them gave them more mass to push through the crowds. It was that simple. He was glad of the armed people around them, even if the incessant clinking of their armor grated on his ears and made him want to yank them out of the body sized bells they wore.

Still, there was a feeling that he couldn’t shake. One hundred armed and armored bodyguards should have made him feel comfortable, and a part of him was, he admitted that. But the more that joined them, the more he felt that it was pulling attention to them, attention that they most definitely did not want.

He felt the hilt of his sword pressing into the palm of his hand, and he flinched at just how strong the feeling of that pressure had become. Forcing his grip to relax, Garen sucked in a deep breath. There was nothing here, nothing but town guards and townsmen. Wandering from one part of the city to another, of course they would be milling around aimlessly. The explosion in the eastern side of the city had to have them just as confused as him, if not more. There was no need to use the sword, particularly with his father’s warning still fresh in his mind. Eolser wouldn’t have warned him unless something very, very bad would happen if he pulled the sword out. That had been his way.

His hand wouldn’t completely move away from the hilt, though. There was just something, a feeling, a hunch, a prickling in the air that made it impossible for him to let go completely. But at least he was able to make himself stop squeezing it. Just a minute ago, it had felt like he was trying to bond the thing to his hand. His other hand flinched in sympathy for his sword hand just thinking about it.

Turning his head to his new companion, he decided to see what she might have to say about the whole situation. He might even learn a little bit about her. One never knew. Besides, they had time to kill. “Do you have a name, ma’am?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. “It seems a little bit ridiculous to keep talking to you as though you didn’t.”

She stumbled beside him, but declined the arm that he offered to help her keep her feet. She turned to him with eyes that seemed confused, and definitely wide. “I thought you’d already know who I was, considering how you flattered me at the docks.”

“Flattered you?” Now he was confused. “I don’t recall doing anything of the sort.”

“I beg to differ,” the woman said, her eyes hardening into hard points. “You said that I had beauty. I do have a mirror. I’m well aware that you couldn’t have been honest about that, not if you have any sort of decent eyesight.”

That was what she was talking about? She thought that he had been flattering her on looks that she didn’t have? He could have laughed at that, and almost did. He squeezed down on his sword hilt again before he could trust himself to speak, or even open his mouth without letting out a chuckle. “I promise you, you have beauty to you, ma’am. But why would I want to be flattering to you? I mean, obviously you’re someone important, otherwise all these tuneless marching bells wouldn’t be flocking to you. But why would that matter to a simple smith?”

“It might matter to you, if you consider what my rank is,” she said with a shake of her head. Her hair spilled over her face, hiding half of it from him. She pushed it out of her face again, with a small grunt of annoyance. “More than a few store owners, and most of the merchants, try to court my favor so that they might do better on the island.”

“I don’t think I have to worry about that. My quality will speak for itself. But you still haven’t answered my question, you know.”

“And what would that question be? I must admit, I’ve forgotten it. Must be the way the conversation branched off away from it.”

He would just bet she had. There was enough cunning and intelligence behind her sparkling eyes that he doubted she forgot a single word from any conversation or report. “I was asking your name, ma’am,” Garen said, looking past the guards at the slowly growing crowd. “After all, if I just call out ‘ma’am’, then half of the women in the area will turn to see if I was talking to them. A name would be appreciated, particularly so I can talk to you properly.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to just tell you my name, Mr. Tallas,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I’m Velira Glasmar, owner of the glassworks of the island, and the Trademaster of the island. I have the equivalent role to the Grand Craftsman of your island. In other words, I am the one in charge of this place.”

Garen almost stumbled among the smooth stones that formed the square. He caught himself by grabbing one of the guardsmen at his side, pulling himself upright again with a shake of his head. No wonder she thought he was just flattering her. In her position, that high up, she would be getting that on a daily basis. She probably thought any compliment would be something of a way to get into her good graces, to use her to get ahead in life.

He didn’t blame her for that, really. He would probably think the same, if he dealt with the things she must day in and day out. Shaking his head a few times, Garen shut up. He’d already made a fool of himself, he didn’t need to make a greater one.

Halfway between the tower and the paved street that led down to the eastern docks, Velira turned to him. “Do you know who your comrade was, on the Caronal?”

“Sellas?” he asked, pulling his mind around to the new topic of conversation. “I know his name, not much else. He wasn’t the most talkative of his past, or his life, during the trip here.”

“Ha!” Velira laughed, almost barking the solitary syllable. “I’m not surprised. He’s not one to share information about his life. I’m surprised that he came back here, though. In such a good ship, too.”

“What do you mean? Do you know him?”

“Of course. He’s been here more than a few times. Each time, there’s been trouble following behind him. I can’t wait to confiscate that ship of his so he doesn’t have the chance to run away this time,” she said with obvious eagerness in her voice. There was almost a tone of hunger, of anticipation, in her voice.

Garen shivered lightly at the glint in her eyes, and decided that he really didn’t need to probe further into that matter. He didn’t know just what Sellas had done, but he was pretty sure that it didn’t merit losing passage on a ship. Besides, it wasn’t even his ship. Just because Velira had a grudge against Sellas didn’t mean she could take away the livelihood of an innocent captain.

Shouts from the front of their group shocked Garen out of his contemplation of what might be done to keep Sellas out of the hands of this woman. Shouts, and a sudden whistling shriek of something being flung into the air.

Jerking his eyes to the sky, Garen stared as dozens of arrows came into sight. They arched over the guardsmen, flying high into the afternoon sun. They reached their apex, and began to descend. Their deadly points glinted, promising pain and blood to those that they’d hit. The guardsmen barely moved, and Garen didn’t know if they even noticed the threat.
What he did know was that he and Velira didn’t have the slight advantage of armor, and the arrows were coming almost directly at them and their layer of guardsmen.

“Move!” He shoved her to the side, pushing through the ranks of guardsmen around them. The chain armor and plate they wore would provide some shielding to them, but the two of them, without any armor at all, would only find safety through movement or getting behind one of the guards and hoping for the best. Movement in this tight formation was next to impossible, if not actually impossible, so Garen didn’t bother trying to break free. He pushed Velira behind one of the guards, and then grabbed one of them by the waist and tugged him around, facing him up like a shield before ducking down behind him.

The guard protested, unsurprisingly, but it wasn’t long before the guardsman in question saw what the problem was. He raised a shield to it, and as he did, many of the other guardsmen in rank around them did the same.

Some few did it in time. Those that did managed to catch arrows on their shields, or, at worst, suffer some minor wounds when the points of the arrows dragged across their cheeks. The majority of the hundred man escort had failed to notice the arrows until the last minute, and took arrows to the throat, to the legs, to the places on the body where the wounds would bleed most. Those few that survived were mostly those that had been around him and Velira, the core of the escort, so to speak, and they quickly responded by waving their spears and shouting their warnings. There were calls for the intruders and attackers to throw down their weapons and surrender.

The response was nothing short of unmanning. The slight alleys between the buildings suddenly darkened as man after man, warrior after warrior, stepped out from the buildings. They continued flowing out before the guardsmen’s eyes, holding swords and bows in equal numbers. Dressed in crude leathers, armored in the same, they looked savage. Their faces were covered in designs of red, designs and patterns that made the bravest of the guardsmen shiver.

The warriors shouted out, and Garen reached out for Velira, still hiding behind one of the guardsmen. “Are you okay?” he asked, one eye still watching the ever-increasing line of warriors.

“Yes…yes I’m alright,” she said, rubbing her head a bit. She turned her gaze to the many bodies around her. To her credit, she didn’t flinch or pale at the bodies around her, but she was quite shaky when she stood up. She scanned the guardsmen still standing, and shook her head. “Only ten left…ten out of a hundred,” she muttered softly.

She was taking this better than he was, Garen didn’t mind admitting. “Definitely not enough,” he agreed, looking at the line of warriors forming up on the eastern side of the square. They had to be at least two hundred strong, now. “Now, I don’t mean to be rude, and I certainly don’t mean to tell you what to do, but is there a way to get out of here without causing the new arrivals over there to charge at us?”

Velira turned back to the line of warriors forming, and judging by the look on her face, she was going catatonic at the sudden invasion of her island.

Garen sighed to himself. This was getting worse and worse at every moment. He didn’t know enough about the city, not nearly enough, to get away from the invaders. If he tried running, all he’d succeed in doing would be to bring the warriors down into the western harbors and get himself killed. Shaking his head, he reached out to shake the Trademaster out of her little mini-coma.

He planned to do that, anyway. What happened was another story entirely, as she grabbed his wrist and shoved his arm back. She pushed him hard enough to throw him away from her, almost knocking him to his backside.

Velira pulled herself to her feet, and pointed at the warriors lining up on the other side of the square. “Attack them!” she shouted. “Guardsmen! Attack them, and keep them back!”

Garen watched with wide eyes. She was ordering ten guardsmen, all that they had between them and the enemy, to attack? They were outnumbered heavily, maybe twenty to one. She was sending them to their deaths, no two ways about it. What was she thinking?! They’d need the guards if they wanted any kind of guard while they retreated. He turned to the guards. They were smart enough to not follow suicidal orders, weren’t they?

Apparently not. Leveling their weapons, they charged forward with a shout. Shields held at their chest, they charged forward with spears pointed directly at the enemy.

He grabbed Velira’s shoulder, and spun her around to face him. “Have you lost your mind?! You just sentenced every one of them to death!”

“Nonsense!” she said, jerking her arm out of his grip. “If you think such, you don’t know the quality of the men of Reman Isle. They will sweep aside this rabble. If they know what’s good for them, they’ll run. The guards will have mercy if they get away, I’m sure.”

She was looking at him, so she didn’t see what took Garen’s breath away. The guards didn’t even cross half of the distance between them and the mass of warriors. They were cut down by arrow after arrow, and if they didn’t die immediately, they just suffered more than their comrades. Arrows bloomed from them like pins from a pincushion. There were no fewer than ten arrows in each of the guardsmen, and some had over twenty in them, spurting from legs and throat and face. Their chest plates hadn’t been worth anything, with the rest of the body so exposed.

Not a one of them lived. They fell to the square stones with ten clatters. With the guardsmen fallen, there wasn’t even the meager shield of their armor between the warriors and them, now.

“Trademaster,” Garen muttered, grabbing her by the arm again, “I think that we’re the ones that are going to be doing the running, today.”

She had just enough time to turn around, just enough time to see the corpses in the square, before he tugged her along. “Gotta get out of bow range, gotta get out of bow range,” he muttered to himself over and over again. They had taken down a full hundred men with that surprise attack, and he didn’t want to take any chances of getting caught in another attack like that. They couldn’t have that much range, though. They had waited until they were halfway across the square before loosing their deadly attack. They must have been waiting for them to get in range.

Garen avoided the western path, not trusting the warriors behind to stay there. If he led them back to the other harbor, back to the boats that were there, there wouldn’t be a single chance of escape for anyone. He didn’t know how many more guardsmen there were on the island. There might be enough men to push these warriors away, for all he knew. But if there was another group, even just one, the size of the enemy force they were leaving behind, it would result in a lot of deaths, regardless of the result. Even if he wasn’t officially a citizen here yet, he didn’t want that on his conscience.

Instead, he ran to the southern path, to the southern district of the city. The buildings there seemed a little more loosely packed together, more alleys, and thus, more hiding places.

Still tugging the protesting Trademaster by the arm, he ducked past the line of buildings that provided a wall of sorts around the tower and its square. The sounds of footsteps behind him, many of them, confirmed his guess that they would be chased. Whether it was because Velira was recognized as someone of authority, or because the south was their next target, or just because the enemy wanted them dead, he didn’t know. He just knew they were being chased, and he didn’t like it.

The golden buildings failed to grab his attention as he ran past them. He didn’t care about that wealth, with two hundred warriors, two hundred killers, on his heels. They couldn’t be far behind. He couldn’t stop. He dare not stop.

He wasn’t more than thirty paces out of the square before he heard the warriors screaming behind him. They were yelling in terrifying, ululating tones. He couldn’t understand a word they said, other than one word. It was repeated over and over in their sentences, and even though he didn’t understand any more of their words, he only needed to understand the one he did.

Voira.

That word, that name, sent a shiver down his spine. Were they her servants? If that was the case, he hoped that he would have a chance to cut his own throat if they were captured.

“Let me go!”

He looked over his shoulder at the panting Trademaster. She tugged on her arm, trying to pull herself free from him. “Let me go, Mr. Tallas! I have to get the rest of the guardsmen to the tower! I have to-“

“We have to hide, Velira.” He tugged her hard, once, rushing from the main street to a side street. Gold sheathed buildings reflected the sunlight, and if he hadn’t kept his eyes mostly on the paved street, he would have been blinded by the glare. He just hoped that the people following them wouldn’t be as prepared as he was.

Halfway down the street, while it was still narrow and they were equidistant from the street they came from and an open square further ahead, Garen stepped into one of the side alleys. In the shadow between the buildings, he blended in pretty well. Velira didn’t, with her light dress, but it couldn’t be helped. It was their best chance.

He sat down on a crate that was a few paces from the alley opening. Hands on his knees, he sucked in a few deep breaths, calming down. Trying to, at least. It wasn’t easy, knowing that there were two hundred killers running around, all but guaranteed to find you. “We should have a few minutes here. A few minutes,” he muttered, mostly to himself, though to Velira as well, if she cared to listen.

He kept one eye on her, not sure if he could trust her to keep to the alley. The gleam in her eyes as she insisted on gathering more of the guardsmen of the city had frightened him. She looked like one driven a little mad, one that wasn’t going to be deterred by the small detail of being outnumbered by so many.

Velira was standing at the edge of the alley, peeking out at the street. Doubtlessly she thought herself sneaky, considering that most of her body was still hidden behind the walls of the building. In other cases, this would have been the case, but here, in Veleran, her body only showed up as a black spot in the glare of the golden light. If any of those killers looked down the street, they’d see her in seconds. She was a fool, in this.

Sighing, Garen stood up and grabbed her by the shoulder, intending to pull her back into the alley, out of view.

Instead, he found himself face down on the alley floor. His nose was bleeding, possibly broken, and his cheek was bruised. Groaning softly, he pushed himself up to his feet. “Third time in the last few days…I’m starting to wonder if people like making me hit the ground,” Garen muttered to himself as he stood up and shook his head. “Did you have to do that?”

“If you continue to insist on pulling me, yes,” Velira said. She turned to look out of the alley again, but this time, he was able to stop her.

“Stop it!” she hissed, jabbing at his belly. His body was hardened enough with muscle to make her grunt in pain, like hitting a rock, but he still felt it. “Let me go! I have to get my soldiers together, so-“

“So you can kill them too?”

She froze in his arms. He wasn’t sure if he had just picked the right words, or if there was something else in her mind for this, but he didn’t let go. He didn’t let up, saying, “I don’t know who they are, but they seem like fanatics to me. If they are, and if they are following the kind of orders I think they are, your guardsmen wouldn’t be able to make a scratch on them. You’d need more than a thousand of them. You’ve got…how many in this city?”

“Four-no, three hundred,” she whispered.

“That’s not enough,” Garen said. Not nearly enough, he thought to himself. There were two hundred, just that they’d seen. If there were more…”Right now, you’d be better served getting away. These guys are going to kill, not capture.”

“How do you know?” She turned her eyes from the street to his. “How can you know?”

He hesitated. Voira was known pretty widely on his island, but he didn’t know if Reman Isle had the same information, or if they even believed it.

“You know something, I can see that much!” Velira said, her voice little more than a whisper. She was learning, Garen noted to himself. “If you know something, you can tell me! I need to know what these people are!”

When she put it that way, he really didn’t have a choice. “They’re fighting for Voira,” he said, bracing himself for either an explosion or laughter.

Hearing neither, he looked at her. She had an eyebrow arched, and she had her arms crossed. Rather than laughing at him for what he said, or being angry at him, it seemed to him like she was more willing to lecture him about something. “Voira? Are we talking about the same thing here?”

“Well, if you are thinking of Voira the Destroyer, enemy of the Four, then I would say that we are,” Garen said. Velira’s eyes were starting to fill with the familiar look of superiority he saw back home when he ran across those that believed differently than he did. He was pretty sure that a lecture of Voira’s nonexistence was about to come out, and he really didn’t need to hear that right now.

“Before you say Voira isn’t real, let me finish?” he asked. Velira blinked, but nodded. “I couldn’t understand what they were saying while they chased us, but I could hear the word ‘Voira’ repeated over and over. I don’t know what languages there are in the world, but names generally stay the same. Whether she’s the one in charge of them, or whether they just believe it, wouldn’t it mean about the same thing? Regarding how they would behave here, I mean?”

“Logically, that would make sense. So long as you don’t expect me to believe that Voira exists, I can believe that premise.”

“Then I would suggest that you think of all the histories that people keep about her, Velira. There’s a lot of things that followers of the Destroyer do to the ones they capture, according to the histories. I don’t want to experience it first hand.”

“Neither do I. But they are nothing more than myths. Where would they get anyone to believe in a myth, Mr. Tallas? Tell me that,” Velira said, leaning back against one of the building walls. She had the smug look of a person looking to win an argument and believing that she had found the flaw in her opponent’s logic.

He sighed to himself. He hated arguing with people like this. Atheism was all well and fine for people, but it was no excuse for blindness. He didn’t care if it was just because they found the texts and teachings of other religions annoying, or maybe even insulting. If one had the time, and the ability, learning about such things was always something worthwhile, yet people like Velira here seemed to think that it was beneath them. Sometimes, they just ignored such things because it threatened their own beliefs, and that was the worst excuse he knew.

“Velira, you’re missing the point. Whether or not Voira is real is irrelevant. Whether or not they believe in a myth is irrelevant. What is relevant is that they believe she’s real, and they are going to sacrifice us to her, in a very bloody way, if they catch us. Does that make it clear to you?”

Her eyes wide, she nodded. “Well, I don’t intend to stay here for that. If we can get to the western harbor again, we can take one of the ships away from here. Just let me get-“

“No.”

“What?” she asked, blinking at the word. “What do you mean, no? I need to get my-“

“I don’t care what you need to get, Velira, because you’re not going back to get it,” Garen said. In the back of his head, something screamed at him for giving orders to the person in charge of this island, but he kept going. “There’s so many killers in the streets now that it’s not safe to go back the way we came. There’s no way you can get anything back there, not without running a severe risk of getting killed. Our only chance is to find some side street to get back to the western harbor.” He crossed his arms, staring her down.

She looked back at him. The glint of madness that he’d seen when she’d ordered her soldiers to her death had returned. It wasn’t the madness that ordered people to their deaths, but a frantic worry of losing something. She pointed to the north. “But-but there is…someone…someone I have to warn. I have to get her out of here!”

“We can’t, Velira. At least, I won’t,” he revised. “If you want, you can try to get to her. I would give you some pretty long odds, if you were to try, but you can, if you want. But if I can convince you to try and get out of here, with me, that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t want to die, and if you stay with me, I don’t think that will happen.”

“Why? Because you don’t think they’ll slaughter someone that’s important?” she asked with a short bark of laughter. “I don’t think my position will matter much to them.”

Garen was getting very tired of her behavior. He was starting to see signs of hysteria in her, very similar to the way people back in Helles acted when the metal shipments were late, and the lives of the entire village were threatened. Normally, he would have just slapped the person, but she was the Trademaster. She could lock him up, she could order his arrest, and who knew how many other things she could do. A good sharp slap wouldn’t do the trick here.

He reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder again, this time using his other hand to grab her arm to keep himself upright. “Velira, you know this city. You know what goes where, and you know where each street goes. I don’t. If you can tell me where to go, we can both get to the western harbor ahead of these people. I need your help with this. Will you help me, Velira, or do you want to run off and get killed?”

She fell silent, and he didn’t press the matter, though he did keep hold of her arm. She looked down, her eyes gluing themselves to the alley stones. Silent, totally silent, she avoided looking at him, even when he bent over to try and look into her eyes. Just who was it that she wanted to warn in the northern part of the city, he wondered. It had to be someone important, or she wouldn’t have shown near this much emotion. She’d been like ice, to him, before the explosions in the east, before the appearance of those warriors. Who could she possibly be so worried about to make her this much more open? He didn’t know, and he didn’t dare ask. The air was filled with the sounds of screams, of pain. The killers were running through the streets, obviously, and doing whatever they wanted to the people they encountered. Too much noise from them would call their attention immediately.

“Mr. Tallas.” She looked up at him after a full five minutes. “Mr. Tallas. Are you…are you sure you can keep us safe on the way to the harbor?”

He wasn’t sure in the least. He had a sword, but he didn’t know if he dared pull it free to use. More to the point, he didn’t know how to use the blade. If he pulled it out, he might kill himself more easily than anyone he encountered.

But he couldn’t say that. Velira was hanging from a thread as it was, and if he told her that he couldn’t keep them safe, she would bolt. Whether to the arms of the killers or into the relative safety of her guardsmen was a guess he didn’t want to make. “I can keep us safe, so long as you can tell me where we need to go. Remember, I need you to keep me out of sight, and if you can’t do that, it doesn’t matter how well I can keep you safe.”

That seemed to be all that she needed to hear. She nodded a few times and took a few deep breaths. Holding the last one for a moment, she turned to the alley opening, and pointed down the way they’d been running. “We run down to the next square that way, then turn north in the first alley we see. We’ll come to a place while the alleys meet. We’ll go west from there, alternating between north and west with each new intersection we find. If we do that, we should keep the killers away from us, by sheer speed if nothing else.”

Garen nodded to himself as he memorized the directions. Simple enough. He checked the street outside the alley, making sure that there weren’t any of those killers anywhere near him.

Thankfully, there weren’t. Grabbing Velira by the arm, he tugged her out of the alley and started running. He trusted to the sound of her footsteps that she was still behind him. He couldn’t look back at her, not when they needed to run this fast.

The square was empty of living things, but filled with the dead. Merchants and shoppers alike were piled up in bodies of two or three, one even as large as six people piled on top of one another. Their bodies were slashed across the torso, and their necks were slit in all the ones he could see. The odor of blood covered the square, and splattered the gold on some of the buildings that he could see. The warriors had been thorough, very, very thorough. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a single sign of anyone left in the square. No shadows moving in the window of a house, nor even the slightest twitch from those piled together on the ground. It was a scene of silent death, with only the wind rushing through the streets and the square to fill it.

He gagged at the smell of so much blood, at how similar it was to iron. It made him sick, but Garen managed to hold himself together, barely. Forcing himself to take a few deep breaths of the smell, forcing it into his mouth and nose. That would be him if he didn’t get out of here. He needed to remember that he would be no different from the corpses littering the ground, if he made a mistake here.

He impressed that thought upon himself, but the deep breaths almost made him throw up again. Forcing himself to stop, and just take normal breaths, Garen looked for the route out of the square. It wasn’t far away, just a few hundred paces. It was out in the open, though, and no matter how short the distance it might be from where they stood, they’d still be outside of the protective barriers the buildings provided. If there were any archers waiting for stragglers, this would be dangerous to the point of suicidal.

But they couldn’t just stay there. None of the enemy were around right now, but that had to be just circumstances, didn’t it? Lowering his hand to his sword again, Garen looked left, then right. “Ready to run, Velira?” he asked without taking his eyes from the square in front of them.

“I’m ready…if you are,” she whispered. He turned to look at her. Her face was drawn, pinched, and she shivered like the wind had stolen away what warmth she had.

It was the dead, of course, but there was no way they could stop and let her deal with it. They had to keep moving, no matter the cost of being seen. He nodded, and stepped out into the square.

Every step of the way, he expected to hear the snap of a bow and the whistle of arrows as the bladed shafts dived towards them. They had no shields, nothing other than the clothes on their back and his sword. None of that would do any good at blocking the arrows. Garen gazed one way and then another as he ran, trusting the Trademaster to keep up with him. He imagined he heard the sounds of bowstrings every few steps. Before he was even halfway to the other side, he thought he’d have a heart attack from the sheer fright and horror of the whole endeavor.

They weren’t attacked, surprisingly. Garen thought they would be caught the instant they set out from the cover of the narrow street, but not only didn’t that happen, but they made it to the other street without incident in the least. Maybe they’d be able to get to the western harbors without encountering anybody else, after all.

He panted as they reached the cover of the narrow alley again, leaning against the wall of a nearby building. Velira did the same on the opposite side of the alley, sucking in air, more out of relief from not being shot than from any level of exertion. They hadn’t run that hard.

“North, then west, repeat until we get to the harbor, right?” he muttered.

“Correct.” She pulled herself upright again, and seemed to exert a great deal of willpower to keep herself upright. Her eyes were steely, cold. “Let’s keep moving.”

“No objection here,” Garen muttered, jogging along the alleyway.

The alleys were empty, quiet. There were none of the dead that filled the square, but there wasn’t a sign of anyone else using them either. It was like they had been forgotten. It didn’t make sense to Garen that they had been. The enemy had the excuse of not knowing about them, perhaps, even if that was stupid. But the people of the island should have been using these alleys. They were an excellent route to keep people out of bow range, and limit enemies from coming at them quickly. Why weren’t they being used?

He told himself he didn’t care, but he couldn’t help shivering. He felt more and more frightened the longer they went without seeing anyone.

The tight alleys forced them to walk in single file, and he made sure that Velira remained behind him. She might be strong enough to flip him around in midair, but he was carrying their only weapon. They’d hear someone coming from behind long before they’d see them, but they’d never hear anyone in front of them until they were about to run into them. If that happened, he’d use the sword. He wouldn’t have a choice, then.

Still, it was looking more and more as though he wouldn’t have to use it. They hadn’t encountered anyone. The alleys were empty, narrow enough at this point that no one could come at them from the streets. What was there to be concerned about?

Garen cursed that thought the moment it came into his head, mentally praying to Ganyon that he wouldn’t hold that thought against him, and forget he’d thought it. The God of Fire must have not heard him, because the exact thing that he’d hoped wouldn’t happen, happened. Just as he’d known it was. It was the same as saying things couldn’t get worse. It just caused it to happen. Saying there was nothing to be concerned about just about guaranteed that there would be.

One of the warrior invaders stepped out from one of the other alleys this one intersected. Clad in the crude, dark leathers that his people seemed to favor, the warrior turned to them with a broad grin on his face. The patterns on his face, easily discernable from this distance, seemed to be blades of blood, traced across his cheeks and his forehead, with other blades along his chin and his neck.

He threw down his bow and pulled out a rough sword. It wasn’t metal, but something darker. Obsidian, Garen thought. Strong, sharp, hard, but possible to break if he hit it in the right spot. Obsidian couldn’t stand up to steel, he hoped.
The warrior charged at him, sword held high. “Get back,” Garen muttered to Velira, hoping he sounded half as calm as he hoped. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, tight enough that the emblems on the hilt were pressed into his palm. It hurt, badly, but he couldn’t pull his fingers loose. He just held tighter, when he tried.

He’d have to swing the sword at just the right moment. He didn’t know how to fight, so if he could wait, unsheathe the sword at just the right time, just the right moment, he could catch the warrior by surprise.

If he was wrong…well, he’d die first, and give Velira a chance to run.

The patterns of swords and other weapons on the warrior’s face as he charged caught Garen’s eyes. He couldn’t look away. No matter how much he wanted to, no matter how much he needed to focus on the matter at hand, he couldn’t. The patterns glimmered in the light, like the gold on the buildings around him. The red shimmered, and seemed almost to pulse. More and more, it looked like the blood it seemed designed to emulate. In the back of his head, Garen knew this warrior intended to paint himself with his blood.

Raising his sword, the enemy warrior screamed in challenge. His voice soared loudly, as he ran forward, sword ready to chop.

Garen yanked at the blade’s hilt, forcing it from its sheath as fast as he could move. The blade hissed softly, and for a moment, he thought it wouldn’t come free, rust and age keeping it inside of the sheath. But it did come free, and fast. It whistled through the air, its curved blade cutting through the leathers covering the warrior, slicing open his belly. Lines of blood followed the sword in its arc around, carrying the life of the enemy with them.

For the briefest of moments, the warrior seemed unharmed. He froze in his charge, looking down at himself just in time to see his belly open, and his intestines and organs spilling out at his feet. They splattered against the stone of the alleys, staining it wet with blood and other fluids. He looked up at Garen, and the swordsmith hesitated. It would take less than a second for him to completely finish the warrior, but why? He was dead already. Why should he push him further, take away what little dignity he had left?

The warrior stared at him for a moment before smiling. “Voira…comes…” he whispered softly. He held the smith as he fell on his face, unconscious or dead.

Garen looked down at the dead body with a shake of his head. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. It had to be done, he told himself. If he hadn’t killed this man, he would have died, and then Velira would have died, not long after. He had to do it.

He shook his head, and leaned down. He rubbed the bloody edges of his sword off on the leather, shivering the entire time. “Why are they doing this? What the heck did anyone here ever do to them?” Garen muttered, slowly sliding his sword back into its sheath. “What could make people do this to each other?”

With a sigh, he settled the sword into its sheath, making sure it was well secured. Unsheathing it didn’t seem to have done anything. Maybe his father had been worried about nothing. He desperately hoped that was the case. If more trouble reared its head, he wasn’t sure he could take it. “Next intersection in the alleys, we go north, right?” he asked.
Velira nodded, and he started jogging again. He forced himself to forget about the body behind him, and keep an eye out for the trouble that might have come from unsheathing the sword.

Little did he know that it was already done.