The wandering sword, p.13
The Wandering Sword, page 13
part #1 of Last Eternal Series
“I know where it is,” the wanderer said. In fact, there were very few, if any, cities on the face of the world that he had not been to during his hundred-year journey.
The young man coughed again, giving a weak nod. “T-there’s a b-bar called The Spilled Tankard. Y-you can find him th…” The youth trailed off then, taking a breath, his eyes closing.
The wanderer waited for the man to finish but he never did, and by the sudden stillness of his chest, he never would. Gritting his teeth, the wanderer rose, sliding the rolled parchment into his tunic. He had thought that his long life had inured him to the sharpest of grief’s stabs. He had been wrong. The grief was back, stronger than it had been in a century, and there was something else, too.
Rage.
He did not look for Veikr any longer, for he knew that the horse was not here. Which meant that he was somewhere else, and it didn’t take much work to consider where that could be.
The wanderer walked toward the door of the barn, the flames all around him nothing compared to the flame of fury raging inside his chest, making his hands knot into tight fists at his sides. He stepped out of the burning barn and into the night.
They were waiting for him there, as he’d known they would be. Seven in all, sitting atop their horses and arranged in a semi-circle in front of the barn.
The constable was at the front. His nephew, Lee, sat beside him, a cruel, satisfied grin on his face. At the constable’s other side was the man in all black, Gene, who held Veikr’s reins. Spread out to either side were four men the wanderer did not know but all of whom, he saw, had swords sheathed at their sides.
“Constable,” the wanderer said, turning to the fat man.
The man shook his head, a small humoring smile on his face like that a father might use when speaking to a willful child. “I thought I told you to call me Walter. Seems you really do have a problem listenin’.”
The wanderer said nothing, aware of his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, aware, too, of his jaw, squeezed so tightly shut that it hurt.
“Damn shame about the stables,” the constable said, shaking his head with feigned regret. “And is that poor Scofield I see in there?” He winced. “Must have succumbed to the flame.”
“That’s the story?”
The constable considered then shrugged, grinning like a man caught out at an innocent prank. “Well, it will be. After all, I’m constable in Fulwell, aren’t I?”
The wanderer said nothing, and the constable sighed. “You really aren’t much of a talker. Still, I told you we’d speak again about this horse of yours.” He paused, glancing over at Veikr who stood watching the wanderer.
“A damn fine bit of horseflesh that is,” the constable said. “And I want to tell you again, I’d be interested in buyin’ him.” He held up his hand as if to forestall any comment. “I know, I know, he ain’t for sale. Only, the thing is, if it hadn’t been for me and my men here happenin’ upon him, why, this beautiful horse would have burned up along with poor Scofield. Seems to me that, if you can’t protect what’s yours no better’n that, probably it’d be best if I took him off your hands. And, considerin’ that I did save him, it only seems right that I get him at a bit of a discount.”
“A discount.”
“Sure,” the constable said, grinning wider, “free, I was thinkin’. Yeah, that’d do me fine.”
“Listen,” the wanderer said, deciding he should give it one more try even though he didn’t want to. “I don’t want any trouble.” A lie, though. In truth, he wanted all the trouble these men could stand and then some.
“No?” the constable asked, then shrugged. “Well, I’ll tell ya somethin’, stranger. I don’t want my sister comin’ to me bitchin’ about how a visitor comes into town and beats her boy so bad he looks like a doll belongin’ to a child with a mean streak. And I damn sure don’t want to have to tell that sister that, seein’ her boy like that, I didn’t do nothin’ about it. That wouldn’t be right at all. Would it, Gene?”
“Not right,” the black-garbed man said.
“So you see,” the constable went on, “somethin’s got to be done. At least, that’s my thoughts on the matter.” He turned to look over at Lee, his nephew, the young man sitting his horse with an expression somewhere between a sneer and a smile on his face. “But then, what about it, Lee? You prepared to drop it, let it go? All of us go on about our lives?”
“No,” the young man sneered. “You should have left town when you could,” he said to the wanderer. “Now I’ll do to you what I did to Scofi—”
The man never got a chance to finish, though, for before he did the wanderer moved in one smooth motion, drawing the knife he kept sheathed at his waist, pivoting, and extending his arm in the man’s direction. The knife flew true, burying itself in Lee’s throat, and the man’s eyes went wide in shocked terror. He wavered in his saddle then fell off, collapsing to the ground, dead.
The wanderer turned to look at the constable who, along with the rest of his men, was staring in wide-eyed horror at the corpse. “I told him that if he came for me again, he’d find his death,” the wanderer said. “I meant it.”
“You son of a bitch,” the constable hissed, all traces of his feigned good humor gone now. “Kill this fucker!” he roared.
The four men sitting their horses behind the constable and the black-garbed man dismounted, drawing their blades. As he waited for them to slowly approach, the wanderer drew his as well. Then, with a roar, the first charged in, wielding his sword in a two-handed grip, raising it above his head as if he meant to cleave the wanderer in half. Before he even began to bring the blade down, though, the wanderer lunged forward and his questing steel struck the man in the throat and then went through it.
The man stumbled to a stop, a confused look on his face as if he were trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle, then the wanderer ripped the blade free in a spray of blood, and the dead man collapsed in a heap at his feet.
The others hesitated at that, beginning to circle him warily. As they did, the wanderer knelt, retrieving the dead man’s blade. A heavier one than he liked, but it would serve. He rose, holding the new sword in his left hand, his own in his right.
“Last chance,” he said to the three men. “You won’t have another.”
Unsurprisingly, the men liked their odds, and after a moment the wanderer nodded, relieved that they would remain, that he would have their bodies upon which to vent his unflagging rage. “Very well,” he said. Then he rushed the nearest.
The man brought up his sword, parrying the first blow that had been aimed at his neck—or at least meaning to. The blade never struck home, for it had been a feint, and the wanderer immediately spun backward, dropping to one knee and bringing the other sword around where it struck the man in the back of his knees, lopping his legs off.
The man screamed as he fell to the ground, now legless, but the wanderer paid him no mind as he rose, spinning in time to catch the descending blade of the third man crossways between his two swords. Then he forced the sword up and before the man could recover, brought his own blades across his opponent’s torso in an X, tearing two great gashes into his stomach.
As the man fell screaming to the ground, his hands covering the ruin of his stomach, the wanderer turned to the last who watched him with eyes the size of dinner platters in the moonlight.
“N-no,” the man said, as if he were not staring at a man at all but some avenging avatar of destruction. “No.” Then he turned, dropping his sword, and ran.
The wanderer watched him for a moment before heaving the sword after him. The man screamed as the blade pierced his back, and he fell to the ground.
The wanderer walked up to him, writhing on the ground, pawing desperately at his back as he tried and failed to remove the sword that was just beyond his reach. “Too late,” the wanderer said, then he brought his blade down, severing the man’s head from his body.
That done, he turned back to the constable and the man in black. The constable was staring at the dead men as if trying to understand what had happened. Meanwhile, the man named Gene was smiling a sharp smile. “You’re good,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Not good enough, though,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” the constable demanded. “H-he just killed four me—”
“Shut your fucking mouth, you fat pig,” the man in black hissed, and the constable recoiled in shock.
“G-Gene?” he asked, as if the man had somehow been possessed by someone else.
The man in black said nothing, though, only dismounting from his horse and letting Veikr’s reins drop to the ground. He came forward with a measured pace, removing his sword from its scabbard as he did, then stopped ten feet in front of the wanderer.
“Doesn’t seem fair,” the man said. “You bein’ tired and all after fighting the others.”
“What is?” the wanderer asked.
The black-garbed man inclined his head as if to acknowledge a point. “Now, before we get started, will you tell me your name? It seems only right that I should know it for when people come asking after what happened to you.”
“They won’t.”
The man shrugged. “Very well.”
Then the talking was done. The black-clothed man rushed forward, and the wanderer did the same. Their swords flashed out, twin bolts of silver in the darkness, and they froze, their faces inches from each other.
The black-garbed man was still smiling, but as the wanderer stared at him, he saw a line of blood begin to leak from the man’s mouth. “A…trade it is then,” the man hissed. “I’ll…take it.”
“Not a trade,” the wanderer said, looking down. The other man followed his gaze to see that, indeed, the wanderer’s blade had impaled him through the stomach but his own blade had missed by a hair’s breadth.
“Im…impossible,” the man said. “No…no one’s that fast.”
The wanderer stepped back, ripping his blade free, and the man stumbled, falling to his knees. “Will…will you not now tell me who you are? What you are?”
The wanderer considered, watching the man for a moment, and in the end, he decided it made no difference. He leaned forward, so that his mouth was inches from the man’s ear. “Youngest, they call me. I am the last. The last Eternal.”
The man raised his gaze to look at him as the wanderer leaned back, and the swordsman’s face seemed to have been bleached of all color. “Y-you’re him,” he said.
The wanderer did not answer, at least not with words. His sword licked out, too fast to follow, and a moment later the swordsman’s body fell to the ground, his head rolling for a few feet before coming to a stop.
“Yaaah!”
The wanderer looked up at the sound of the shout to see that the constable had turned his horse and was kicking its flanks hard, sending it in the direction of the street.
“No,” the wanderer said, as he had to the dying man, “it’s far too late for that. Come, Veikr.”
The horse did as requested, moving up to stand beside him, and the wanderer leapt into the saddle. “Go.”
The constable was urging the horse on, and his mount seemed eager, but for all their efforts the two had made it no further than the front of the tavern when Veikr’s powerful strides caught them up.
The wanderer rode up beside them, pulling himself over to ride side-saddle, then grabbing hold of the saddle-horn, he lifted himself up and gave the constable a kick. The man screamed as he went tumbling out of his saddle. As the constable’s horse ran off into the night, the wanderer urged Veikr to a stop, then turned him around. He dismounted then, leading Veikr back to where the constable lay on the ground, almost in the exact same spot, the wanderer noted, where Scofield had lain after Lee and his men had beaten him.
The constable didn’t look in much better shape. Falling from a horse was never fun, but when that fall was unexpected and was taken by a man who was at least a hundred-and-fifty pounds overweight, injury wasn’t just likely—it was pretty much assured.
Plenty of scrapes and scratches where he’d rolled across the ground, his body covered in the dust of the road, but what had him hissing with pain was neither of those but instead the fact that one of his arms, judging by the angle at which it lay, had been broken in the fall.
The constable saw him coming and mewled desperately as he backed away, sliding across the ground. The wanderer walked after him, aware of the people, drawn by the commotion, beginning to gather on either side of the street.
Still, he paid them no attention—in that moment, they might as well not have existed. There was only him and the constable and the blade in his hands. Nothing else.
“J-just hold on a damned minute,” the constable hissed as the wanderer caught up to him. “Y-you just hold on, damnit,” he said. “Listen, I-I can give you gold, more than you can—”
“I don’t want your money,” the wanderer interrupted.
“Fine, fine!” the constable said, a panicked desperation in his voice now. “Horse then, one for every day of the—”
“I already have a horse.”
“Damnit, then what do you want?” the man screeched. “Just tell me, and I’ll give it to you!”
“I want you to die,” the wanderer said simply.
The constable let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a growl. “You can’t kill me,” he hissed. “I’m the constable of this town, and you, you’re nobo—” His words turned into a scream as the wanderer casually stuck his blade into the man’s shoulder.
The constable backed up again, and the wanderer followed. “L-listen to me, you bastard, you won’t get away with this, understand?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” the wanderer said. “That’s not going to make any difference to you, though.”
“Look here, you, I’m the constable and…” He looked around, apparently just becoming aware of the people now lining the street, dozens in all and, the wanderer suspected, the better part of the town’s population. “What are you all doing?” the constable screamed. “Can’t you see this man means to murder me?”
The wanderer glanced around, saw that no one moved forward. “They’re waiting,” he explained.
“Waiting for what?” the constable hissed.
“This.”
The blade went in smoothly, taking the man in the heart. The wanderer would have liked to have believed that he took no joy in it. That what he did was only a service, the same, in its way, as a man putting down a dog that’s gone mad. But it wasn’t true. The fact was, his mind was on the young man lying, dead in the barn, and he did enjoy it.
He pulled the blade free, wiping it on the dead man’s shirt, then sheathing it at his back once more. He became aware of the sound of footsteps and spun, thinking that someone in the crowd had decided to attack him after all. Only the man wasn’t attacking but walking up, his hands held before him as if to show he meant no harm and the wanderer realized that it was Ellum, the innkeeper.
“He dead?” the man asked quietly.
“As they come.”
The barkeep nodded. “Listen,” he said, “about your room—”
“I’ll leave town tonight,” the wanderer said.
The man sighed, visibly relieved at that. “It’s no offense, understand, only, well, what with all that’s happened…”
“You don’t have to explain anything,” the wanderer said. He started toward his horse, pausing as the man spoke again.
“What about the lad, Scofield?” he asked. “Did you ever find him?”
The wanderer’s first instinct was to tell the man that no, he had not. After all, the fire in the barn would burn all the evidence that the young man had ever been there, and should he lie, the man might go on for the rest of his life thinking that Scofield was still alive, only that he had gone somewhere, traveling perhaps. But after spending a hundred years with the entire world believing that their rulers were the actual Eternals instead of impostors who had taken over their positions when they were dead, the wanderer had learned something.
The truth was always better. Sometimes it hurt—most times, in facts. And the truth, laid bare, often caused far more pain than pleasantness, far more grief than relief. And yet…the truth was better.
“Dead,” the wanderer said.
The barkeep’s eyes went wide at that. “No, it can’t be. Can it? I mean…are you sure?”
“Yes.”
The man swallowed hard, running a hand across his mouth. “Then…this bastard was responsible?”
“Yes.”
The barkeep turned to look at the constable’s corpse, his eyes dancing with anger. “I wish you would have made him suffer more before you killed ‘em.”
“So do I,” the wanderer said honestly. Then he turned and walked to Veikr, swinging up in the saddle.
They did not boo or shout curses at him as he rode away through the street, but neither did they cheer. They only stood, silently regarding him, until he disappeared into the night…like a ghost.
CHAPTER FIVE
The wanderer left the town of Fulwell behind, traveling south for two days. On the third day, he’d only been traveling for an hour after waking when he turned a corner in the trail and saw, in the distance, the great city of Celes, known around the world as the Jewel of the South.
For his part, looking at it, now, as with the other times he had been to the city, the wanderer could not deny that it lived up to its name. Great walls of white marble surrounded a city which had been around for a thousand years in some fashion or another, making it one of the oldest cities in the world.
Yet despite their age, the walls were immaculate, for they were regularly maintained by crews of hundreds of workers given the constant task of their upkeep. As clean as they were, they seemed to shine in the early morning sun, like the jewel after which the city was named.
But as beautiful as the distant city was, as magical as the effect of its shining was, the wanderer, staring at it, felt only disquiet. After all, as fine as the city was, it was also massive, housing hundreds of thousands of people, so big some people lived their entire lives within its walls without ever setting foot outside of them.
The young man coughed again, giving a weak nod. “T-there’s a b-bar called The Spilled Tankard. Y-you can find him th…” The youth trailed off then, taking a breath, his eyes closing.
The wanderer waited for the man to finish but he never did, and by the sudden stillness of his chest, he never would. Gritting his teeth, the wanderer rose, sliding the rolled parchment into his tunic. He had thought that his long life had inured him to the sharpest of grief’s stabs. He had been wrong. The grief was back, stronger than it had been in a century, and there was something else, too.
Rage.
He did not look for Veikr any longer, for he knew that the horse was not here. Which meant that he was somewhere else, and it didn’t take much work to consider where that could be.
The wanderer walked toward the door of the barn, the flames all around him nothing compared to the flame of fury raging inside his chest, making his hands knot into tight fists at his sides. He stepped out of the burning barn and into the night.
They were waiting for him there, as he’d known they would be. Seven in all, sitting atop their horses and arranged in a semi-circle in front of the barn.
The constable was at the front. His nephew, Lee, sat beside him, a cruel, satisfied grin on his face. At the constable’s other side was the man in all black, Gene, who held Veikr’s reins. Spread out to either side were four men the wanderer did not know but all of whom, he saw, had swords sheathed at their sides.
“Constable,” the wanderer said, turning to the fat man.
The man shook his head, a small humoring smile on his face like that a father might use when speaking to a willful child. “I thought I told you to call me Walter. Seems you really do have a problem listenin’.”
The wanderer said nothing, aware of his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, aware, too, of his jaw, squeezed so tightly shut that it hurt.
“Damn shame about the stables,” the constable said, shaking his head with feigned regret. “And is that poor Scofield I see in there?” He winced. “Must have succumbed to the flame.”
“That’s the story?”
The constable considered then shrugged, grinning like a man caught out at an innocent prank. “Well, it will be. After all, I’m constable in Fulwell, aren’t I?”
The wanderer said nothing, and the constable sighed. “You really aren’t much of a talker. Still, I told you we’d speak again about this horse of yours.” He paused, glancing over at Veikr who stood watching the wanderer.
“A damn fine bit of horseflesh that is,” the constable said. “And I want to tell you again, I’d be interested in buyin’ him.” He held up his hand as if to forestall any comment. “I know, I know, he ain’t for sale. Only, the thing is, if it hadn’t been for me and my men here happenin’ upon him, why, this beautiful horse would have burned up along with poor Scofield. Seems to me that, if you can’t protect what’s yours no better’n that, probably it’d be best if I took him off your hands. And, considerin’ that I did save him, it only seems right that I get him at a bit of a discount.”
“A discount.”
“Sure,” the constable said, grinning wider, “free, I was thinkin’. Yeah, that’d do me fine.”
“Listen,” the wanderer said, deciding he should give it one more try even though he didn’t want to. “I don’t want any trouble.” A lie, though. In truth, he wanted all the trouble these men could stand and then some.
“No?” the constable asked, then shrugged. “Well, I’ll tell ya somethin’, stranger. I don’t want my sister comin’ to me bitchin’ about how a visitor comes into town and beats her boy so bad he looks like a doll belongin’ to a child with a mean streak. And I damn sure don’t want to have to tell that sister that, seein’ her boy like that, I didn’t do nothin’ about it. That wouldn’t be right at all. Would it, Gene?”
“Not right,” the black-garbed man said.
“So you see,” the constable went on, “somethin’s got to be done. At least, that’s my thoughts on the matter.” He turned to look over at Lee, his nephew, the young man sitting his horse with an expression somewhere between a sneer and a smile on his face. “But then, what about it, Lee? You prepared to drop it, let it go? All of us go on about our lives?”
“No,” the young man sneered. “You should have left town when you could,” he said to the wanderer. “Now I’ll do to you what I did to Scofi—”
The man never got a chance to finish, though, for before he did the wanderer moved in one smooth motion, drawing the knife he kept sheathed at his waist, pivoting, and extending his arm in the man’s direction. The knife flew true, burying itself in Lee’s throat, and the man’s eyes went wide in shocked terror. He wavered in his saddle then fell off, collapsing to the ground, dead.
The wanderer turned to look at the constable who, along with the rest of his men, was staring in wide-eyed horror at the corpse. “I told him that if he came for me again, he’d find his death,” the wanderer said. “I meant it.”
“You son of a bitch,” the constable hissed, all traces of his feigned good humor gone now. “Kill this fucker!” he roared.
The four men sitting their horses behind the constable and the black-garbed man dismounted, drawing their blades. As he waited for them to slowly approach, the wanderer drew his as well. Then, with a roar, the first charged in, wielding his sword in a two-handed grip, raising it above his head as if he meant to cleave the wanderer in half. Before he even began to bring the blade down, though, the wanderer lunged forward and his questing steel struck the man in the throat and then went through it.
The man stumbled to a stop, a confused look on his face as if he were trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle, then the wanderer ripped the blade free in a spray of blood, and the dead man collapsed in a heap at his feet.
The others hesitated at that, beginning to circle him warily. As they did, the wanderer knelt, retrieving the dead man’s blade. A heavier one than he liked, but it would serve. He rose, holding the new sword in his left hand, his own in his right.
“Last chance,” he said to the three men. “You won’t have another.”
Unsurprisingly, the men liked their odds, and after a moment the wanderer nodded, relieved that they would remain, that he would have their bodies upon which to vent his unflagging rage. “Very well,” he said. Then he rushed the nearest.
The man brought up his sword, parrying the first blow that had been aimed at his neck—or at least meaning to. The blade never struck home, for it had been a feint, and the wanderer immediately spun backward, dropping to one knee and bringing the other sword around where it struck the man in the back of his knees, lopping his legs off.
The man screamed as he fell to the ground, now legless, but the wanderer paid him no mind as he rose, spinning in time to catch the descending blade of the third man crossways between his two swords. Then he forced the sword up and before the man could recover, brought his own blades across his opponent’s torso in an X, tearing two great gashes into his stomach.
As the man fell screaming to the ground, his hands covering the ruin of his stomach, the wanderer turned to the last who watched him with eyes the size of dinner platters in the moonlight.
“N-no,” the man said, as if he were not staring at a man at all but some avenging avatar of destruction. “No.” Then he turned, dropping his sword, and ran.
The wanderer watched him for a moment before heaving the sword after him. The man screamed as the blade pierced his back, and he fell to the ground.
The wanderer walked up to him, writhing on the ground, pawing desperately at his back as he tried and failed to remove the sword that was just beyond his reach. “Too late,” the wanderer said, then he brought his blade down, severing the man’s head from his body.
That done, he turned back to the constable and the man in black. The constable was staring at the dead men as if trying to understand what had happened. Meanwhile, the man named Gene was smiling a sharp smile. “You’re good,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Not good enough, though,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” the constable demanded. “H-he just killed four me—”
“Shut your fucking mouth, you fat pig,” the man in black hissed, and the constable recoiled in shock.
“G-Gene?” he asked, as if the man had somehow been possessed by someone else.
The man in black said nothing, though, only dismounting from his horse and letting Veikr’s reins drop to the ground. He came forward with a measured pace, removing his sword from its scabbard as he did, then stopped ten feet in front of the wanderer.
“Doesn’t seem fair,” the man said. “You bein’ tired and all after fighting the others.”
“What is?” the wanderer asked.
The black-garbed man inclined his head as if to acknowledge a point. “Now, before we get started, will you tell me your name? It seems only right that I should know it for when people come asking after what happened to you.”
“They won’t.”
The man shrugged. “Very well.”
Then the talking was done. The black-clothed man rushed forward, and the wanderer did the same. Their swords flashed out, twin bolts of silver in the darkness, and they froze, their faces inches from each other.
The black-garbed man was still smiling, but as the wanderer stared at him, he saw a line of blood begin to leak from the man’s mouth. “A…trade it is then,” the man hissed. “I’ll…take it.”
“Not a trade,” the wanderer said, looking down. The other man followed his gaze to see that, indeed, the wanderer’s blade had impaled him through the stomach but his own blade had missed by a hair’s breadth.
“Im…impossible,” the man said. “No…no one’s that fast.”
The wanderer stepped back, ripping his blade free, and the man stumbled, falling to his knees. “Will…will you not now tell me who you are? What you are?”
The wanderer considered, watching the man for a moment, and in the end, he decided it made no difference. He leaned forward, so that his mouth was inches from the man’s ear. “Youngest, they call me. I am the last. The last Eternal.”
The man raised his gaze to look at him as the wanderer leaned back, and the swordsman’s face seemed to have been bleached of all color. “Y-you’re him,” he said.
The wanderer did not answer, at least not with words. His sword licked out, too fast to follow, and a moment later the swordsman’s body fell to the ground, his head rolling for a few feet before coming to a stop.
“Yaaah!”
The wanderer looked up at the sound of the shout to see that the constable had turned his horse and was kicking its flanks hard, sending it in the direction of the street.
“No,” the wanderer said, as he had to the dying man, “it’s far too late for that. Come, Veikr.”
The horse did as requested, moving up to stand beside him, and the wanderer leapt into the saddle. “Go.”
The constable was urging the horse on, and his mount seemed eager, but for all their efforts the two had made it no further than the front of the tavern when Veikr’s powerful strides caught them up.
The wanderer rode up beside them, pulling himself over to ride side-saddle, then grabbing hold of the saddle-horn, he lifted himself up and gave the constable a kick. The man screamed as he went tumbling out of his saddle. As the constable’s horse ran off into the night, the wanderer urged Veikr to a stop, then turned him around. He dismounted then, leading Veikr back to where the constable lay on the ground, almost in the exact same spot, the wanderer noted, where Scofield had lain after Lee and his men had beaten him.
The constable didn’t look in much better shape. Falling from a horse was never fun, but when that fall was unexpected and was taken by a man who was at least a hundred-and-fifty pounds overweight, injury wasn’t just likely—it was pretty much assured.
Plenty of scrapes and scratches where he’d rolled across the ground, his body covered in the dust of the road, but what had him hissing with pain was neither of those but instead the fact that one of his arms, judging by the angle at which it lay, had been broken in the fall.
The constable saw him coming and mewled desperately as he backed away, sliding across the ground. The wanderer walked after him, aware of the people, drawn by the commotion, beginning to gather on either side of the street.
Still, he paid them no attention—in that moment, they might as well not have existed. There was only him and the constable and the blade in his hands. Nothing else.
“J-just hold on a damned minute,” the constable hissed as the wanderer caught up to him. “Y-you just hold on, damnit,” he said. “Listen, I-I can give you gold, more than you can—”
“I don’t want your money,” the wanderer interrupted.
“Fine, fine!” the constable said, a panicked desperation in his voice now. “Horse then, one for every day of the—”
“I already have a horse.”
“Damnit, then what do you want?” the man screeched. “Just tell me, and I’ll give it to you!”
“I want you to die,” the wanderer said simply.
The constable let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a growl. “You can’t kill me,” he hissed. “I’m the constable of this town, and you, you’re nobo—” His words turned into a scream as the wanderer casually stuck his blade into the man’s shoulder.
The constable backed up again, and the wanderer followed. “L-listen to me, you bastard, you won’t get away with this, understand?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” the wanderer said. “That’s not going to make any difference to you, though.”
“Look here, you, I’m the constable and…” He looked around, apparently just becoming aware of the people now lining the street, dozens in all and, the wanderer suspected, the better part of the town’s population. “What are you all doing?” the constable screamed. “Can’t you see this man means to murder me?”
The wanderer glanced around, saw that no one moved forward. “They’re waiting,” he explained.
“Waiting for what?” the constable hissed.
“This.”
The blade went in smoothly, taking the man in the heart. The wanderer would have liked to have believed that he took no joy in it. That what he did was only a service, the same, in its way, as a man putting down a dog that’s gone mad. But it wasn’t true. The fact was, his mind was on the young man lying, dead in the barn, and he did enjoy it.
He pulled the blade free, wiping it on the dead man’s shirt, then sheathing it at his back once more. He became aware of the sound of footsteps and spun, thinking that someone in the crowd had decided to attack him after all. Only the man wasn’t attacking but walking up, his hands held before him as if to show he meant no harm and the wanderer realized that it was Ellum, the innkeeper.
“He dead?” the man asked quietly.
“As they come.”
The barkeep nodded. “Listen,” he said, “about your room—”
“I’ll leave town tonight,” the wanderer said.
The man sighed, visibly relieved at that. “It’s no offense, understand, only, well, what with all that’s happened…”
“You don’t have to explain anything,” the wanderer said. He started toward his horse, pausing as the man spoke again.
“What about the lad, Scofield?” he asked. “Did you ever find him?”
The wanderer’s first instinct was to tell the man that no, he had not. After all, the fire in the barn would burn all the evidence that the young man had ever been there, and should he lie, the man might go on for the rest of his life thinking that Scofield was still alive, only that he had gone somewhere, traveling perhaps. But after spending a hundred years with the entire world believing that their rulers were the actual Eternals instead of impostors who had taken over their positions when they were dead, the wanderer had learned something.
The truth was always better. Sometimes it hurt—most times, in facts. And the truth, laid bare, often caused far more pain than pleasantness, far more grief than relief. And yet…the truth was better.
“Dead,” the wanderer said.
The barkeep’s eyes went wide at that. “No, it can’t be. Can it? I mean…are you sure?”
“Yes.”
The man swallowed hard, running a hand across his mouth. “Then…this bastard was responsible?”
“Yes.”
The barkeep turned to look at the constable’s corpse, his eyes dancing with anger. “I wish you would have made him suffer more before you killed ‘em.”
“So do I,” the wanderer said honestly. Then he turned and walked to Veikr, swinging up in the saddle.
They did not boo or shout curses at him as he rode away through the street, but neither did they cheer. They only stood, silently regarding him, until he disappeared into the night…like a ghost.
CHAPTER FIVE
The wanderer left the town of Fulwell behind, traveling south for two days. On the third day, he’d only been traveling for an hour after waking when he turned a corner in the trail and saw, in the distance, the great city of Celes, known around the world as the Jewel of the South.
For his part, looking at it, now, as with the other times he had been to the city, the wanderer could not deny that it lived up to its name. Great walls of white marble surrounded a city which had been around for a thousand years in some fashion or another, making it one of the oldest cities in the world.
Yet despite their age, the walls were immaculate, for they were regularly maintained by crews of hundreds of workers given the constant task of their upkeep. As clean as they were, they seemed to shine in the early morning sun, like the jewel after which the city was named.
But as beautiful as the distant city was, as magical as the effect of its shining was, the wanderer, staring at it, felt only disquiet. After all, as fine as the city was, it was also massive, housing hundreds of thousands of people, so big some people lived their entire lives within its walls without ever setting foot outside of them.
