A warriors penance, p.21
A Warrior's Penance, page 21
part #4 of Saga of the Known Lands Series
“What’s an empath?” Priest asked, glancing at Chall.
“A man with the gift,” Chall said, watching the unassuming carriage driver, having difficulty believing it even as he stared at him. Empaths were rare, so rare that many thought they didn’t exist at all, that they were no more than a fiction created by some teacher or student at the academy, though what purpose such a fabrication might have served Chall couldn’t have guessed. He himself had doubted their existence often when studying about the different users of the gift, the different forms it might take. He had doubted empaths were real—he had certainly never expected to meet one.
“You mean…like you?” Priest asked.
“No,” Chall said, “no, not like me. Empaths were…well, they are rare. So rare, in fact,” he went on, turning to eye the carriage driver with a frown, “that many of us thought they were just…bogeymen the instructors created for their own purposes.”
Ned gave him a humorless smile. “Boo.”
“But…if they really are as rare as you say,” Priest said, “then…wouldn’t the other mages look for them? Wouldn’t they know what he was?”
“A good question,” Chall agreed.
Ned sighed. “They do know. Or, well, at least they did. Back at the academy in Daltenia.”
“Wait a minute,” Chall said, “are you trying to tell me you went to the academy, that an empath was going, and I never knew?”
“Um…yes?” Ned asked.
Chall frowned. “That’s impossible. Seems to me I would remember you being in my classes.”
Ned winced. “Right, well, thing is, I wasn’t in any classes. Empaths bein’ rare and all, the instructors decided to take up my…education, such as it was, separately from the rest.”
“You mean they taught you alone?”
“That’s right. I don’t mind tellin’ you it made it a pain in the ass to cheat on tests.” He glanced between Chall and Priest, both of them watching him with frowns on their faces and grunted. “That was supposed to be a joke.”
“Don’t feel much like laughing just now, I’m afraid,” Chall said. “Say that you are an empath and that somehow you did attend the university without my knowledge—I won’t pretend I didn’t get easily distracted, it was a failing which the instructors there made abundantly clear—”
“Hey, me too,” Ned said, grinning.
“Either way,” Chall went on, “none of that describes what you’re doing in the poor district, and why you saved us.”
Ned blinked, glancing between them. “Um…sorry, I guess? I reckon I was just under the impression that you fellas would prefer goin’ on unstabbed.”
Chall frowned, trying to find a way to approach that irrefutable logic, was still trying when Priest spoke. “While we appreciate your having come to our aid, that does not explain how you were able to do so in the first place. Specifically why you were there. Why you were following us.”
Ned blinked. “Oh, well I can answer that easily enough. I wasn’t.”
Chall and Priest shared a look before turning back to the man. “You weren’t?” Chall asked.
“Followin’ you, that is,” the carriage driver said. “I was there, of course. Would have been a pretty nifty trick to save you if’n I wasn’t.”
“What do you mean?” Chall said. “Of course you were following us. Or are we to believe that it’s just coincidence that you happened to be in the poor district, happened to be at the exact tavern that that bastard Catham the Cu—”
“Not coincidence,” Ned said. “After all, I was followin’ someone, only it wasn’t you.”
“You were following Catham,” Priest said, a tone of dawning realization in his voice which meant that he was several steps ahead of Chall.
“That’s right,” the carriage driver said, giving a nod.
“But…why?” Chall asked.
Ned winced. “Well, now that’s goin’ to take a bit of explainin’.”
“Suppose you’d best get started then,” Chall said. He glanced around. “Doesn’t seem to me you’ve any cause to worry about being interrupted at any rate.”
Ned gave him a humorless smile. “I s’pose that’s true enough.” He studied the two of them for a moment then finally gave a reluctant nod. “Very well. Follow me, the both of you—s’pose it’s best if we were all sittin’ down for this part.”
The man turned without waiting for either of them to respond and started toward one of the cut-out “doorways” that Chall had noticed earlier. Chall glanced at Priest, and the man gave him a shrug before following, which left Chall to do the same.
Ned led them into a cavern that was considerably smaller than the last, the space dominated by a large dining table sitting at the room’s center. The wooden table and the chairs surrounding it, like the rest of the caverns, were covered in dust, and Ned grunted. “Sorry, but I didn’t have a chance to clean the place up. Still,” he said, glancing around, his hands on his hips, “s’pose it’ll serve. Have a seat.” He extended his hands toward the table.
Priest eyed the carriage driver, and the chairs come to that, as if he didn’t trust them in the least. Chall understood, for he was confused and feeling particularly suspicious himself, but his suspicions, at least, did not extend to the chairs. That was just as well considering that he’d spent the entire day and now night being rocked by revelation after revelation, not to mention a seemingly increasing likelihood of being murdered, and it was quickly becoming a case of sit down or fall down.
He moved to the table, slid one of the dust covered chairs out and, with a sigh of relief, chose to sit. There were still plenty of chances, he figured, that he would end up dead before the day was through, as there were a few hours left yet, but he was determined, if he did die, that he was going to do so sitting down.
Priest hesitated for another minute then finally walked over and sat beside him. Ned came last, moving toward the table, his eyes roaming the room and the walls, looking lost in memory. Finally, he walked to a chair and grabbed it to pull it out only to hesitate as his hand touched it.
He stared at the chair, and Chall saw what he thought was some great emotion—sadness, perhaps—glide like a dark cloud across the carriage driver’s face. But it was gone in another moment, and Ned took a slow breath as if to steady himself before sliding the chair out and sitting, though from the way he’d sat he might have been sitting on a chair made of fire, so careful was he.
“Sorry,” he said, glancing around himself, “it just…brings back a lot of memories. Being here.”
“Well?” Priest said, sounding as impatient as Chall had ever known him. “You said you had an explanation?”
Ned nodded slowly. “Enough of the pleasantries, then. Well…might be…” He frowned, scratching at his chin. “Might be that I lied to the two of you before, about the Crimson Wolves, I mean.”
“You mean you didn’t create them?” Chall asked.
“No, no, I did,” he said, “only…well, it wasn’t just me. There was another, a friend of mine, Robert. Robert Palden.”
Chall frowned. “I don’t recognize that name.”
“Nor would you,” Ned said. “Fact is, we went to pretty great lengths back then to make sure nobody would recognize our names or our faces. Anyway, that ain’t the point. Here’s what you need to know—I wasn’t lyin’, before, when I told the prince he saved my village from the Fey, he and his men. That happened alright, durin’ the war, and I wasn’t puttin’ him on when I told him I was grateful, neither. After all, if the prince and his men hadn’t shown up, well, me and everybody else in the village’d be dead, eaten by those damned monstrosities. But while the bards love to write their songs about such battles, such rescues, they rarely spend much time on what follows.” He shrugged. “Can’t blame them, I suppose, for in my experience, after the celebration is done, after the rescuin’ is done, well, the next bit ain’t much worth singin’ about. Diggin’ graves and fillin’ ‘em, mostly. With dirt, sure, but with shed tears and broken dreams and bodies, too, those aplenty. Watchin’ folks die, it’s a hard thing—but I’ll tell you, bad as it is, it ain’t got nothin’ on watchin’ a whole village die.”
“I…I don’t understand,” Chall said, his voice coming out in a little more than a whisper, for it seemed that the carriage driver’s words had transported him back to that time, that place of grief and sorrow. Not by the magic of an empath, men and women who were said to be able to not only feel the emotions of others but to also manipulate them. Instead, this was a uniquely human type of magic, one comprised of regret and sorrow. “How does a village die? I mean, that is, the prince—you said he saved it.”
“He saved the people,” Ned said. “But the village…well. Imagine a village is a person, Challadius. That person might be being ravaged by a wolf and you might come to that individual’s rescue, slaying or driving off the wolf only to find that the wounds the man had taken were fatal and that he would, in time, die. Such is what happened to my village. We had just taken too many wounds, that was all, lost too much blood. It wasn’t just that nearly everyone had lost someone—although they had. It was that we had lost far more than that which remained to us. We had lost our loved ones, yes, and many of us lost our livelihoods as our shops and our fields, even our homes, were destroyed in the fighting. But we lost, also, our hope. And so, slowly at first but increasingly quick as the days went on, men and women of the village began to leave, not really knowing where they were going for the most part, I think, only wanting to get away. To flee from the ghosts that seemed to lurk around each corner, from the memories that would sneak up on you when you were least expecting it. You’d just be walking one minute, the next you’d find yourself in tears, or you’d hear the sound of a child laughing and think for sure it was a scream.” He shrugged. “There were no more than a handful left when I decided it was my time to go.”
“But…go where?” Chall asked.
“Anywhere at all,” Ned said. “Anywhere I thought the ghosts wouldn’t follow. Only, they did follow. I don’t believe in haunted houses, Challadius, nor in haunted bed chambers or haunted fields. But I do believe in haunted people, oh yes, and how not? After all, I was one. In some ways, I still am. In some ways, I’m just another ghost.”
“So…how did you end up here?” Chall asked. “In the capital, I mean.”
Ned took a moment to answer, seeming to be lost in memories. Finally, he shrugged. “How does anybody end up anywhere? Truth is, I couldn’t really say. You see, I showed up to the city a broken man, as I said, a ghost. Or if not a ghost, nearly one. There was only one person that saved me.”
“Emille?” Chall guessed.
Ned gave a small, seemingly involuntary smile at the mention of his wife’s name. “No,” he said slowly, “not my Em. I didn’t meet her until later. See, I was drinkin’ in a tavern, nursin’ a hangover and workin’ on another, when I heard a serving girl’s scream. I’m ashamed to say that weren’t enough to even get me turned away from my ale. After all, the type of places I frequented in those days, well, there weren’t anythin’ all that unusual in the shout of a servin’ girl as one bastard or another tries to get somethin’ that ain’t meant to be for sale.”
“What does that have to do with the Crimson Wolves?” Priest pressed.
“I’m getting’ there, fella,” Ned said. “Just as quick as I’m able. It ain’t easy, understand, rememberin’ it all, travelin’ back into it this way. Those memories, they’re like traps, like dreams, and in those dreams, Priest, demons walk.”
Priest let out a frustrated growl. “Just hurry up, damn you, and tell us what—”
“Enough, Priest,” Chall snapped, and the man recoiled as if he’d been slapped, his surprise at being shouted down by Chall clear on his face, and a surprise that Chall understood for he was equally surprised. “Enough,” he said again, thinking as he did that it could not be a good sign of what they—of what the world—had come to that he was now forced to be the reasonable one. “Let’s hear him out. If you want to lose your shit then, fine, but until he’s finished just relax.”
A look akin to betrayal passed across his companion’s face, and Chall felt a momentary regret, yet he did not relent, continuing to scowl at him. Finally, Priest sighed, nodding. “You’re right…I’m…I’m sorry.”
Chall watched the man for a moment, deciding that whatever was going on with him would have to be addressed, and soon. For the meantime, though, they had other problems to worry about. He turned back to Ned. “What happened next?”
The carriage driver watched Priest for a moment then nodded slowly, turning back to Chall. “Well, as I said, I wasn’t payin’ all that much attention to the scream—fact is, I didn’t pay much attention to anythin’ in those days, except the ale in my hand and where the next one was comin’ from. But then I heard somethin’ else—not a scream, this, but a voice, tryin’ for calm but shaky around the edges, tryin’ for threatenin’ but mostly just scared. A man’s voice. Sayin’ stop, sayin’ to let her alone. Her, bein’ the servin’ girl, I s’posed. And while the woman’s shout might not have drawn my attention for how common it was, this did. For whatever else might be said about the poor quarter, about the places where I lived my life then, if such an existence could even be called a life, they were not the places a man or woman went, if they were lookin’ for heroes. So I turned to look.”
He grunted what might have been a laugh. “Not sure what I was expectin’ to see, but I can tell you that what I found wasn’t it. You see, there was two men, big fellas, one of ‘em pawin’ at the servin’ girl even as he and his companion loomed over a third man. This one barely standin’ higher than five and a half feet, a hundred and thirty pounds soakin’ wet with ink stains on his hands that marked him as a clerk. This, I knew immediately, was the fella who’d spoken, he of the shaky voice. His skin was pale, and his entire body was possessed of the same tremble his voice had betrayed, yet he stood there just the same, facin’ the two men down, his expression a mixture of fear and determination. Lookin’ at him, I realized three things at once. One, I saw that this stranger, whoever he was, knew about as much about fightin’ as I knew about knittin’. Which, of course, is to say none at all. Second, the two he was squared off against, judgin’ by their scars, had been in quite a few scraps and the little clerk, if he didn’t back down—and maybe if he did—was about to get his ass kicked. But the last thing, the one that really drew my attention, that really interested me enough to pull me out of my drunken haze, was that the man knew all these things too and yet, he wasn’t going to back down. He was going to stand there—at least for as long as he could stand—and get his ass kicked. Nothin’ in it for him, no money or women, certainly no bards there to make a song about it, not that they would have done even if there had been. Yet, I could see in the man’s eyes that he was going to go through with it.”
“But…what did you see to make you think that?” Chall asked.
Ned considered that, scratching at his chin. “Well. He’d just had enough, that’s all. You could see it in him, in his face, in his eyes. The poor bastard had just had enough. And I understood. You see, I left my village, came to the capital, thinkin’ maybe things would be better here, safer. Thinkin’ maybe I could find some peace among my own kind, safe from the Fey bastards who’d taken so much from me…and you know what I found? I found that we as a people didn’t need no lessons from the Fey on how to go about doin’ evil. In fact, I reckon we probably could show those bastards a thing or two. And that fella, well, it seemed to me that he’d come to about the same conclusion, that he was sick of it, sick of all the evil, all the badness. Me, I’d decided to drown that feelin’ of helplessness it gave me in ale. Me, who knew a little somethin’ about fightin’—and who’d learned a lot more in one barroom brawl after another. Meanwhile, this soft-faced, dewy-eyed clerk had decided to deal with the problem head-on. Foolish, maybe, but courageous too. Even I, in my drunken stupor, saw that. Just as I saw the way the clerk took the first punch on the side of his face, cried out and fell to the ground, only to rise again. And then I saw that understandin’ begin to blossom in the eyes of the two men loomin’ over him. Men who might as well have been giants as far as the clerk was concerned.”
“Don’t tell me they stopped,” Chall said doubtfully.
“Stopped? Fire and salt no,” Ned said, laughing. “No, I reckon they were all set to beat the ever-living shit out of this clerk, even if they were going to be slightly impressed about it. Only, as I said, I’d seen the man’s courage, and it was enough for me to take notice. Enough, also, for me to find myself getting out of my stool, me surprised as anyone, and walk over to stand beside the bastard as he picked himself up off the ground. Now, I’ll tell you, in the days that followed the attack on my village, I got in quite a few scraps. Some I won and some I lost, and the truth was the victories felt pretty much the same as the losses. I almost always ended ‘em bloody, and almost always ended ‘em regrettin’ getting out of bed that day. This one, though, this one was different. You see, for the first time in a long time, maybe even for the first time in my entire life, I fought for something other than myself.”
“For the serving girl,” Chall said.
“For the man,” Priest said quietly.
“No,” Ned said. “No, not the girl—I figure even if I saved her from those bastards’ pawin’, so what? Just be another couple of bastards pawin’ her tomorrow. And no, no it wasn’t for the man, either. After all, he struck me mostly as a fool and fools have a tendency of gettin’ their asses kicked in this life. No, I guess what it was that I fought for, more than anything, was the answer the clerk gave. An answer I’d been looking for ever since my village was attacked, had searched for it at the bottom of more mugs of ale than I care to mention or contemplate.”
“What answer?” Priest asked, and to Chall he did not seem angry now. Instead, he seemed intrigued and, more than that, almost a little desperate. “What did he tell you?”
Ned shook his head slowly. “Oh, don’t mistake me, he didn’t tell me anythin’, at least not with words. But he told me enough. But to understand the answer, you’d best know the question. And that—”
