Chapter 6 Sariel #2
No hiding it now; other tables were listening in on the conversation.
How many of these tired men were part of the growing desire for a fight?
As if Isabelle Dior would treat them any better.
Sariel knew of her, of course. All the west was awash in rumors of the golden-haired princess supposedly anointed by the goddess, Leliel.
Nonsense, as far as Sariel was concerned.
All these tiny little kingdoms were forever pecking at one another and forever conjuring reasons why they were virtuous and their enemies deplorable.
“My sword is my own, to be wielded as I desire it,” he said.
“Hey, what’s that sword made of anyway?” a man one table over asked. His nose and cheeks were bright red, and not from the sun. “We… we’ve seen it, you always got it with you, but we… we been guessing, and I got a bet. I say it’s wood, painted wood.”
Sariel hadn’t thought his mood could worsen. He had been wrong. The entire commons room… this was no gathering of friends and family. This was a meeting. The men and women all turned to surround him.
“Not wood,” Sariel said, glad for the excuse to grab Redemption by the hilt and pull it free so he could rest it across his shoulders. “Dragon bone, of a beast slain by my own hand.”
“Bullshit,” Mikel insisted. “No one’s killed a dragon in over a hundred years.”
Sariel gave his best smile. “I know.”
Mikel scoffed at him. “So a liar and a coward.”
“Please, we have no training among us,” Strom said, trying to regain control of the conversation. “But you, you have the look of a man who has seen battle. You’re also a stranger here, unknown to Mortimer. If you would kill him for us…”
Sariel interrupted, and his tone brooked no argument.
“No.”
Mikel was in his face in a heartbeat.
“Mortimer is a wretch,” he said. “A vicious, awful man who left us to die when the blight came. He taxes us within an inch of our lives but doesn’t spare a split copper to buy iron-beech bark when we need it.
You could do so much good with that sword of yours, thousands of lives in Argylle made better, and all for the cost of one life taken in return. ”
Sariel slowly stood. The collective breath of the crowd was held.
“One life,” he said. “That is all you ask for, one life? Then I name my price. One of you must offer your own life, to die by my blade, in exchange for Mortimer’s.”
Shocked murmurs filled the commons.
“You must be joking,” Strom said.
“A life for a life,” Sariel said. “Is this not a fair trade?”
“No, it’s fucking not,” Mikel shouted. “All of us here, we are good people, while Mortimer… Don’t you get it? The prince is an evil man, and all the little kingdoms would be better off with him gone.”
A chorus of agreement. They brushed off Sariel like a paltry breeze. He locked his gaze on Mikel.
“Is that what you are?” he asked. “A good man?”
He moved before anyone could react, his left hand closing around Mikel’s throat and slamming him against the wall.
His right lifted his sword, keeping it pointed behind him so no one would dare interfere.
Mikel squirmed, his hands clutching Sariel’s wrist, but he could no more free himself than he could split a rock with his bare fingers.
Radiance swelled within Sariel’s gaze, drawing out Mikel’s memories, his life, and his sins. They paraded through Sariel’s mind like half-remembered dreams.
“A good man, you tell yourself,” Sariel said, a particular strain dominant among the parade.
“A good man, as you creep outside Bethany’s bedroom window.
A good man, watching as the child sleeps.
You haven’t acted on your desires, not yet.
You’re too much of a coward, aren’t you, Mikel?
You’re a coward, and so you touch yourself, and watch, and imagine . ”
Sariel’s hand tightened as Mikel’s face flushed red and his eyes widened with fury.
“The stars save us from good men like you.”
The door to the tavern burst open and a young man stumbled inside. Blood dripped from his arm, which was poorly bandaged.
“Strom!” he shouted. “Please, you have to hide me!”
“Hide?” the older man asked. “Leliel help us, what did you do?”
Sariel’s grip tightened on his sword, his attention not on the newcomer but the faint sound of hoofbeats from outside the tavern walls. The others couldn’t hear them, not yet, but they soon would.
“I did what you told me,” the injured man said. “Keep to the trees, use arrows, but they saw me, I don’t know how, but they saw me, and they fired back with their crossbows.”
Enough of this , thought Sariel. He dropped Mikel, the fool collapsing to the floorboards.
He had sought solitude after bidding farewell to Tara, not this.
Any hope of leaving was stopped by the three men in dirty chainmail pushing inside, bright blue-and-green tabards adorning their chests.
The mark of Argylle. Mortimer’s soldiers. All three had their swords drawn.
“Everyone on your knees,” the lead one shouted. “On your knees, damn it!”
The panicked crowd hurried to obey. They had no weapons, no armor, and as much as they wished to stoke the fires of rebellion, it was much easier to do so at a quiet table overflowing with alcohol, and much harder when staring at naked steel.
Even the bleeding man they chased dropped.
He must have hoped the soldiers would not recognize him.
A foolish hope. Only Sariel remained standing.
“There,” one of the soldiers said, pointing toward the injured man. “There’s the weasel who shot at us. I told you I saw him come in here.”
Sariel strode for the door, not caring that they still blocked it.
“You have your man,” he said. “Make way. I am not with them.”
“No one leaves until I say they can leave,” the first soldier snapped. He raised his sword. “And I don’t recognize your face. You come here stirring up trouble for Prince Mortimer?”
Sariel tilted his head to one side.
“No trouble, unless you wish to make it.”
Behind him, the instigator squealed as one of the three soldiers grabbed him by the injured arm.
Angry mutters swept through the tavern, but no one dared resist. The soldier dragged the man along, smearing more blood on the floor and knocking tables aside.
Meanwhile, the soldier blocking the door sneered at Sariel.
“I’m giving you to the count of three, stranger. Get down on your knees before I make you, and it won’t be pretty. Got it? One…”
On “two,” Sariel swept Redemption in a low, curving arc, slicing through the soldier’s legs, severing them at the kneecaps.
The soldier howled as he dropped, dragging the attention of the other two.
One was behind Sariel, holding the injured man, the other in front, before the door.
They both charged with their swords, flanking him.
It was a powerful advantage and would have served them well against any other foe.
Not against Sariel. He planted both his feet, twisted his hips left, and swung his enormous blade in a single, swooping slash. The momentum twisted his waist to the right, adding power, adding speed.
One cut, and Redemption sliced the head off the first soldier and the arm off the second.
“Damn fools,” Sariel said. A twist of his wrist, and he disemboweled the man with the missing arm, the sharp edge of dragon bone making a mockery of his protective chainmail.
A brief silence followed, but upon realizing all three soldiers were dead, the tavern erupted in celebration, men and women who cowered on their knees not moments before now leaping up to cheer and holler.
Sariel shook the blood from his sword. It would not stain the bone, no matter how much was shed. Tired beyond measure, he looked to Strom.
“Three lives taken,” he said, his voice nearly drowned out by the cacophony. “Consider it a kindness that I demand only one in return.”
Strom’s returned gaze was hard as steel. His was a spirit that could win a rebellion, if given time and men willing to fight for him.
“What you said about Mikel and Bethany,” he asked. “Is that true?”
Sariel closed his eyes. Visions flashed through him, ones he held no desire to keep.
Mikel, peering through Bethany’s window.
She looked ten years old, maybe eleven. Mikel’s thoughts became Sariel’s, and among the cowardice, he felt lust, and a stirring impatience.
Soon , Mikel told himself as his hand stroked his crotch. So very soon.
Sariel opened his eyes.
“Yes,” he said softly.
Strom straightened his spine and spoke with cold conviction.
“Do it.”
Sariel spun, one foot planting and his upper body stretching into a thrust. The tip of his sword punched straight through Mikel’s rib cage, puncturing his heart. The man died with his mouth open in shock, his bafflement erased only by brief pain before death took him.
Another swish of Sariel’s sword, and the blood flowed off its edge to the floor, joining that of the three soldiers. Stark, sudden silence followed, unnerving in a commons so crowded with people.
“I’m leaving,” Sariel said, fixing his black coat and then setting Redemption across his shoulders. He glared at the surrounding crowd. “Do not follow me.”
This time, no one dared block the door.
Sariel walked the winding dirt road between the rolling hills to either side.
It was hardly the first time he’d traveled beneath the stars.
He favored it, if he was honest with himself, though it’d have been more pleasant if his stomach were not full of beer and his head clogged with memories of the fight.
As dawn approached, he focused on a map of the region in his mind.
If Faron had followed Sariel’s advice, he’d still be at Clovelly, which Sariel could reach by midday if he forfeited all sleep.
Once together, they could better plan their coming war against the Astral Kingdom.
The brewing skirmishes among the little kingdoms would hopefully work in their favor.
Once people’s blood was boiling, it would be a simple matter of choosing a champion and then shifting their goals toward something much grander than petty grudges and unsettled borders.
It’d be much easier, of course, if Faron or Sariel could lead these kingdoms themselves, but even the thought of it made the skin of his left arm burn.
No crowns. No thrones. The unbreakable vow.
Sariel’s isolation ended an hour after dawn. Four men on horses approached, one of them flying a green banner sporting a blue raven. Sariel’s grip on his sword tightened.
“Greetings, traveler,” one said as they halted beside him in the dirt road. All four wore chainmail and blue-and-green tabards. Swords rattled at their hips. “What brings you to the road so early?”
“I walked the night,” Sariel said, keeping his tone dull and neutral.
“You’d walk these lands alone after dark?
” asked the farthest back of the four. He sported a large helmet whose opening at the front was flanked by what appeared to be the spread wings of a raven.
Unlike the others, his chain was colored an obnoxious shade of blue.
“Either you’re easy prey for bandits, or a bandit yourself. ”
“It’s bandits that brings us here,” the first soldier said, his hand drifting toward the hilt of his sword. “Do you know of them? There might be a handsome reward for you.”
Sariel ignored the question and instead eyed the man with the ridiculous helmet.
“Are you Prince Mortimer?” he asked.
The man straightened in his saddle. “So you know of me?”
Sariel’s first swing severed the neck of the nearest soldier’s horse and then continued into the waist of the rider. The chainmail fared no better, parting before the sharpened edge of dragon bone to spill intestines across the collapsing horse’s corpse.
The other horses reared and startled, and the riders themselves froze, overwhelmed with shock.
They paid for their hesitation. Sariel’s movements were perfect, fluid, his sword looping from the high arc of his first swing to then curl around and plunge halfway up the hilt into the chest of a second soldier.
A twist of his wrist turned the blade sideways.
He planted his feet and swung, ripping Redemption out in one direction to slam into a third soldier.
“Bandits!” Mortimer cried, nonsensical in his fear. His horse reared up from his panicked tug of the reins. Its hooves thrashed the air before Sariel, but he deftly sidestepped them, waiting for the opportune moment.
When the horse came back down, Sariel slid closer, gripped Redemption’s hilt in both hands, and swung.
The tip of his sword was all that reached Mortimer, but it was enough to cut underneath the wings of his helmet and open the flesh of his throat.
The idiot gargled blood, clutching at his neck in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding.
One more swing, and Sariel cut the straps of the saddle, dropping him.
The freed horse sprinted away, joining the other two mounts that fled once their riders collapsed.
Mortimer hit the dirt and lay on his back. Blood leaked through the fingers of his gauntlets. His brown eyes widened in bafflement. His mouth opened and closed like a fish, forming words he had no breath to give voice to. Sariel jabbed the tip of his sword into that open mouth, ending it.
Silence returned to the morning. Only the faint beat of hooves marred it as the surviving three horses hurried away. Sariel shook the blood from Redemption and glared down at Mortimer’s corpse. Frustration and anger built within him, directed solely at himself.
“Barely awake a day and you’re already rubbing off on me,” he muttered, knowing Faron would have eagerly agreed to help the townsfolk.
Such foolishness was beneath Sariel… At least, that’s what he told himself.
The bodies said otherwise. No price. No payment.
Tara was in greater danger now, too. King Bentley would hear of his son’s death, and he would assume the worst about how it happened.
The people of Barkbent would suffer. Tara would suffer.
Unless something happened to the King of Argylle.
“You better be waiting for me,” he said to a distant Faron as he trudged toward Clovelly, his mind mapping out allegiances and territories. King Bentley lacked allies, and there were several nearby little kingdoms and queendoms already mustering armies for the expected war to come.
Perhaps Argylle might be in need of a little rebellion, after all.