51. Severing
Severing
Faren
When Faren had joined the Mighty, he’d wanted to become a hero. He’d imagined himself courageous and revered. Righteous and powerful. Purposeful and fair. He’d imagined glory.
But as he watched Mariana engage with a monster of twice her height and strength, backdropped by clashing knights and burning curtains and the glittering shards of broken glass—not for glory or duty, but for the good of the realm, selfless, gallant, and unstoppable—Faren finally understood the true meaning of heroics.
Mariana was everything he wanted to be, but better.
His heart throbbed in his ears as he tore his attention away from her, back to Heris and Lord Haorn closing in from opposite sides of the room.
Igniting his twin shortswords, he gave each weapon a swing, relishing the heat of the flames whooshing past his face.
Warner took a wide stance beside him, his own sword lit up with red Oath fire.
“Captain?” his friend prompted, eyeing the gold-clad knights advancing with Lord Haron. Familiar faces, now their enemies. “Are we doing this at all costs?”
The implication in his question was clear: what of their Oaths?
“We protect the ledgermasters,” Faren reiterated.
“We can’t easily fight our own.” It wasn’t hesitancy, just fact.
They could not afford to be incapacitated as Lee had been. Not yet, at least. They had to be smart.
“Let’s hope the Valiant do it for us,” Faren said. “And pray to the Fates that Heris and the Lord destroy each other so that we don’t have to.”
“That’s all we have? Hopes and prayers to the Fates?”
Faren glanced sidelong at his friend; there was a deep line between Warner’s eyebrows, as if he were calculating their piss-poor odds. Faren had never seen his lighthearted, humorous friend appear so stone-faced.
“What happens once they’re dead?” Warner pressed. “What of Fenrir?”
Faren took in the room. Sheltered by a table, Shae was crouched beside Lee, patting his cheek as if to rouse him from the daze of his broken Oath.
Down the center of the hall, Oderin was engaged with a pair of former Morta, hacking them back from Archer Loth.
Phina was picking her way toward her brother, using the dead bodies of abominations as cover.
The entire space was filling with smoke from the spreading fires: curtains ablaze, tables charring and catching, with the fallen chandeliers glittering in the light of the flames they’d set.
Meanwhile, the ledgermasters were chanting in their strange language behind the upturned throne, and Lord Haron was screaming as he stomped toward them, and Heris was closing in from the opposite side with his bow over his shoulder and a sword in hand, and the leaders’ knights—Valiant and Lord-loyal Mighty—were brandishing their weapons with their sights set on Warner, Faren, and each other.
Six seconds away.
“Faren?” Warner’s voice was tight with alarm. “What of Fenrir?”
Five.
Four.
Faren swiveled Mercy in a forward arc, then Honor. He didn’t have an answer, only steel. “One problem at a time.”
Three.
Two.
Valiant and Mighty clashed in a blaze of blue and red flame, their weapons singing, armor clattering, men gurgling as they went down.
One of the former Morta—a man with gnarled antlers and red-ringed eyes—lashed out at Faren in a vicious assault of long black claws.
Just as Mariana had taught him, Faren got in close, using a backhand grip on Mercy to knick the creases of his foe’s inner arms and hips; he did what he could to evade a grapple, favoring his footwork to keep the knight off-balance and unable to utilize his superior strength.
“Fight close!” Faren called out to Warner. “Quick feet! Go for the joints!”
“Heard!” Warner replied from somewhere behind him.
Faren loosed a grunt as he crowded his enemy, swiveling to slam Honor’s pommel into the former Morta’s nose.
The man wailed and threw a punch at Faren’s bad leg.
With better aim, the blunt strike would’ve broken Faren’s femur, but Faren managed to evade a direct hit, the man’s fist merely clipping him.
Still, it had Faren buckling to his knees.
He leaned into the fall, dulling the bruising pain with his magic.
Then, rising up on his shins with a burst of energy, Faren crossed his swords in an X against his enemy’s stomach and jerked his arms outward, cutting true.
The small victory gave Faren a chance to get his bearings.
The Valiant and the Lord’s knights were thoroughly engaged.
Lord Haron peeked out from behind the shields of two knights to scream orders, but through sheer blunt force, the former Morta were gaining an edge on the Lord’s Mighty.
Bones cracked and steel sliced wetly through flesh, and with the loyal cover of Castor and Brom, Heris was hacking his way toward Lord Haron, singular in his focus.
The battle seemed to slow as the Valiant leader forced his way toward the ruler of Fenrir.
Brom and Castor assisted Heris, soon joined by two former Morta.
The added strength had the Lord turning, scrambling away, leaving his knights to slow Heris’s pursuit.
The knights guarding the Lord were brave in their standoff, but they didn’t know the superior strength of the former Morta.
They were caught off guard when the antlered men bashed their shields, denting the metal and knocking them off their feet.
Something stirred in Faren’s Oath as the sovereign was left unattended.
Lord Haron tripped over his own robes as he ran, slipping on spilled food and clambering over abandoned dining chairs.
He screamed for his one remaining Morta to help, but Mariana had it distracted.
Lord Haron’s billowing red robes became an easy target as Heris broke from the melee and took aim with his bow.
The arrow whistled through the air. Sunk into Lord Haron’s back.
Faren had the sudden compulsion to take Heris down, but it was his Oath magic tugging at him, a leash yanking on a dog that wouldn’t budge.
Treason, Faren thought. Just by standing here, he was committing treason—but he was doing it for the good of the realm, and somehow that was enough to keep his Oath intact.
Lord Haron sprawled on the floor. Faren’s Oath magic pulled harder as Heris and two former Morta closed in on the Lord lying prone on the marble. Heris’s altered knights raised their claws, and Faren’s throat began to sting—
—but then, abruptly, he felt the leash slacken, and he knew, he knew, that the ledgermasters had done their work.
They’d severed Lord Haron from his throne.
A surge of freedom met Faren’s senses, a harmony in his veins as he realized that he’d managed to keep his Oath in the Lord’s defeat. In an instant, his duty became blissfully uncomplicated; without a sovereign to pull his Oaths’s strings, the only thing Faren presently served was the realm.
And so, he watched.
Faren watched as Heris dropped to his knees beside Lord Haron, grabbed his hair, and yanked his head up.
Faren watched as Heris spoke, spat in the Lord’s face, then turned his back on the fallen ruler.
Faren watched as the two former Morta descended, ripping the disgraced ruler of Fenrir apart with their cursed claws—claws that Lord Haron himself had created. Monsters killing their creator.