Chapter Fourteen What You Use It For #2
“How?” the Defender asked, laughing. “We slaughtered your horses! Hah hah! You have no way to catch them. You should have been more careful in setting up your campfire… we could see it through the trees a mile away. Didn’t even need the Bloodmage to point us in the right direction at that point.”
“I told her!” the Prince said, suddenly angry at the Exiles, trying to make it their fault for some reason he didn’t understand. “I told you both, we needed to be more careful!”
“Too late for that now,” Tomaz growled at him, anger and pain in his eyes, and the Prince realized, with despair, that the big man had a point.
It didn’t matter who was in the wrong. Leah was gone, and they had no way to get her back.
If he had continued to use the Talisman, like she’d suggested, to feel around them for signs of life and pursuit… .
“They will reach Formaux before you can come within a dozen miles of them,” the Defender said, breaking into the Prince’s thoughts. “And once she’s there, she’s out of your reach, and we will have a bargaining chip the Exiled Kindred dare not ignore!”
“What is she to you? Why didn’t you take me instead?” the Prince demanded, grabbing the man by the throat. He squeezed too tightly, but he couldn’t help it. Impotent energy was racing through him that he had no other way to express.
“The daughter of General Goldwyn, the leader of the Armies of the Exiled Kindred?” the Defender managed to choke out. “And not only that but part of a Rogue pair and likely a Spellblade as well? She’s worth ten of you!”
The Prince shot a quick look at Tomaz. The look of horror on the big man’s face was all the confirmation he needed.
“How do you know all that?” the Exile asked, pushing the Prince out of the way and grabbing the man himself, lifting him clear off the ground into the air as far as the restraints would allow.
The Prince had never seen Tomaz lose his temper, even when he was fighting for his life, but there was a panic beneath his anger now, and his massive shoulders were shaking. He was on the verge of losing control.
“We know more than you could ever guess, Exile.”
The way the man spat the final word struck a chord in the giant, and he dropped the Defender, drew his sword, and held it against the man’s neck. The Defender stared back at him defiantly, and it was clear that he was ready to die.
Tomaz raised his sword, held it high, and then let out a bellow of frustration. He turned away and threw Malachi end-over-end into a nearby tree, where it sank up to the hilt and caused the tree to sway dangerously.
“Tomaz,” the Prince said. His mind helplessly began imagining what kind of treatment Leah would undergo if she made it to Formaux, into the hands of his brother Tiffenal.
The thought of seeing her at the mercy of the Prince of Foxes was enough to make him sick to his stomach.
“Tomaz, your people will come for her, won’t they? Isn’t there some way to get her back?”
“NO!” the giant roared. He strode forward, pulled his sword from the tree trunk with wrenching, bone-breaking power, and swung it around in an enormous arc, to sink it into the side of another tree, a tall redwood, where it stuck fast, quivering.
He let go of the hilt and fell to his knees, covering his face with his hands.
“Once she is in one of the capital cities, she will be disavowed,” he said, his voice heavy with despair. “She will not be rescued. She will be mourned as if she were already dead, though she may cling to life for years to come.”
The Prince stood stock-still, unable to wrap his mind around what the man was saying.
The girl had always seemed… untouchable.
No matter what danger had been thrown at her, she had dealt with it quickly and efficiently.
Following him undetected through Banelyn, dispatching Death Watchmen in the Elmist Mountains… .
And she had rescued him. From the bowels of a Seeker’s lair. She had rescued him. He, who wouldn’t have lifted a finger to save her.
Now you are your own weapon. Now you have a choice.
He spun to face the Defenders. Five of them, all told. Five of them.
What matters is what you use it for.
The Defender was watching Tomaz with evil glee. “Yes. Now you see. The Empire cannot be defied. Make your peace with whatever god you pray to, Exile, for there is nothing you can do to bring her back.”
“Nothing he can do,” the Prince said softly. “But something I can do.”
The Defender shifted his gaze to the Prince, and his smile faltered and became uncertain. The Prince reached beneath his drape-over, feeling the cold wire-wrapped hilt of the dagger Leah had given him.
“What can you do?” the man sneered.
“I can kill you. Because what you don’t know is that you’re right. She is worth ten of me. And she’s also certainly worth five of you.”
The Prince walked forward and slammed the dagger into the Defender’s chest, piercing his heart.
Immediately, the man’s life was added onto the Prince’s own.
He staggered under the weight of the man’s memories even as he forced them to the far corner of his mind along with the bloodlust that came from the man’s zealotry.
His limbs flooded with strength and the world leapt forward as his eyesight improved; the smell of the trees and grass and the stink of the Defenders’ bodies filled his nose; the sounds of skittering wildlife and calling birds suddenly seemed far too loud and close.
The Prince turned to the other four Defenders. Without pausing to think, he stepped to each of them in turn and cut their throats.
Their lives fell on him one by one. His heart began to beat so quickly and to pound so forcefully that he felt it might jump right out of his chest. He felt as though he could leap to the top of any of the tall trees surrounding them; he could see the veins of each individual leaf, hear insects buzzing and birds calling to each other what seemed like miles away.
His blood was on fire with power and life.
He had never absorbed so many lives at a single time.
He reeled under the memories as they crowded against his own—memories of home towns, of childhood sweethearts, of murders and beatings they had committed in the name of the Empress.
He focused on those—on their evil deeds—and used them to fuel his anger and his need to save the girl who had saved him.
“What are you doing?” Tomaz asked, shocked.
“Bringing her back,” the Prince said.
He grabbed two swords from the dead Defenders, one a long hand-and-a-half sword, the other a short stabbing sword. They felt no heavier than twigs. He reached out, questing for the life of the distant Defenders and the Exile girl.
His mind, powered by the deaths, shot out farther than it had ever gone. There was a woodsman several miles to the east. There were two women moving to the south. There were several small bands of what must be families off to the west in a little town.
And there, a mile or more north, a band of soldiers and a girl—flashes of green and silver, the sound of steel cutting silk—moving steadily away.
He set off at a run, his feet digging deep trenches in the soft ground as he shot through the forest with inhuman speed. Trees flashed by him to either side at an astounding rate. Each of his strides covered nearly ten feet, his bounds leaving long gouges in the earth.
He didn’t know how long he ran for, following the life energy of the fleeing Defenders, but as he ran the sun moved overheard, and he felt more than saw the forest take note of his passing.
He was a phantom—a blurred wraith made of six men but controlled by the anger of one.
He ran faster and harder and longer than he ever had, dodging fallen trees, running up the side of hills, leaping streams, all with barely any effort, all while focused on that distant point of life in front of him, that single beating heart that belonged to a girl with green eyes and raven hair.
And finally, just as his stolen strength began to wane, he caught the scent of horses and the sweat of men in rusty armor.
He pushed himself even harder, passing through the forest so quickly that he left whirlwinds of leaves swirling in his wake. Without warning, the forest ended, and he was running across a grassy plain that stretched out several hundred yards before ending in another line of trees.
And silhouetted against that plain was his quarry.
The squad of Defenders rode in a tight knot, with Leah, bound and gagged, struggling and bucking wildly against her restraints, at its center.
As he watched, one of the Defenders turned to her and carelessly backhanded her across the face.
The blow was so hard that it struck her temporarily still, and if it hadn’t been for the ropes binding her to the saddle, she would have been sent tumbling to the ground.
The Prince growled deep in his chest, and the bloodlust of the Defenders he had killed rose up inside him like a tide and swept him away before it.
When he was twenty paces away, he hurled the hand-and-a half-sword toward the white-plumed helmet of the captain as if it were a javelin.
The power of the throw sent the sword straight through the man’s head, sliding neatly into the helmet up to the hilt, as if it were a hot knife sinking into butter.
The Prince felt his flagging strength and speed surge anew as the man’s life was added onto his own. Memories flashed before his eyes, but he blocked them all out except for one: which men were where in the squad.
He ran toward the left-hand column, which contained all four under-officers.
The entire group was in sudden disarray, horses rearing in shock as their riders turned every which way to look for where the sword had come from. Leah, eyes wide and staring as the captain fell off his horse right in front of her, was in the right-hand column.
A few men spotted the Prince and notched arrows to bows, letting out cries of alarm. He watched them calmly, his mind moving at extraordinary speed, and as the arrows left their bows, he simply ran between them.
And then he was among them, hacking, slashing, and cutting with the short sword, twisting past their blades with the speed of a demon.
He leapt from the ground onto the back of a horse, slit a Defender’s throat, pushed off the creature’s back, flipped high in the air, and landed astride the horse of another under-officer.
He pulled Leah’s dagger from his belt, severed the man’s spine, and then rolled to the ground and moved on.
Soon the sword and dagger were both coated in scarlet blood, and with each kill he grew stronger and faster. He was invincible, a whirlwind of pure death, a tool of absolute and complete destruction.
And then it was over. The horses cantered off out of sight, leaving the Prince alone with twenty-three dead Defenders lying on the ground around him.
Leah had somehow managed to free herself from her bonds during the fight and roll to the edge of the battlefield.
She was staring open-mouthed at him and the carnage he had wrought.
He knelt amid the bleeding corpses, his eyes closed, his body shaking.
Every muscle in his body jumped and rippled, bunched and released, only to tense again.
His breath came in short, harsh gasps, rasping and tearing his throat, the smallest particles of dust in the air choking him, the scent of blood and death so strong that he could think of nothing else.
He was on fire with life; it filled him so fully that he felt he must explode, that he must die at the very moment when he was filled with so much life that he felt like a beacon shining across the world for anyone who cared to see.
The memories of all twenty-eight men he had killed that day pounded inside his skull, overwhelming his mind, coursing through him as real as if he had lived them.
Images of childhood, the scents of fresh-baked bread and a father’s hug, hopes and dreams achieved and unfulfilled alike.
Families, lack of families, lovers, friends, enemies, first kills, first loves, passion, hatred.
Their fears, worst of all, always worst of all, buried so deep and left so long uncomforted that they were raw and bloody, brought out like a swarm of mutilated, deformed monsters from a dark cave, ready to devour him whole.
“Stop,” he begged, “please stop! I don’t want it—I don’t want to care about you! I don’t want to know you—leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
His hands clutched convulsively at his head. He wasn’t aware that he had spoken aloud, wasn’t even sure who he was anymore. He was the Defender Bolin who had joined up in Lerne—he was Liam who had joined outside—stop!—he was Jimal, who had three children and a fourth on the way—
STOP IT!
He had no name to cling to, no identity. The Empress had taken it from him. He felt himself dying, submerged beneath all of the memories, all of the men he had killed—
Strong, slender hands grasped his head, holding him as tears ran down his face. He was clutched against a lithe frame that smelled of the strong earthy soap a giant named Tomaz made, and raven-black hair fell into his face, cool and feathery.
“Breathe,” a voice told him—a scared voice, but one with a thread of steely insistence in it that would not be denied. “Breathe. I’m here, princeling, I’m here. Be here with me, stay here with me. Breathe.”
He did breathe then, a long shuddering breath that burned his nostrils and lungs but helped to clear his mind.
His own memories began to come back to him as the girl’s insistent voice calmed his racing heart, her hands clutching him to her chest, holding him tightly.
He took another breath, and the memories retreated further.
Another breath and his mind went completely blank, leaving him in silence.
“You’re okay,” Leah said. “I have you. I have you.”
And the rest was darkness.