“And because of that,” he continued, “I’m going to give you one chance to release me, before I kill you all.”
They all looked at him in silent shock, before the leader scowled and began to break into action.
Merk felt the blade begin to slice his throat, and something within him took over. It was the professional part of him, the one he had trained his entire life, the part of him that could take no more. It meant breaking his vow—but he no longer cared.
The old Merk came rushing back so fast, it was as if it had never left—and in the blink of an eye, he found himself back in killer mode.
Merk focused and saw all of his opponents’ movements, every twitch, every pressure point, every vulnerability. The desire to kill them overwhelmed him, like an old friend, and Merk allowed it to take over.
In one lightning-fast motion, Merk grabbed the leader’s wrist, dug his finger into a pressure point, snapped it back until it cracked, then snatched the dagger as it fell and in one quick move, sliced the man’s throat from ear to ear.
Their leader stared back at him with an astonished look before slumping down to the ground, dead.
Merk turned and faced the others, and they all stared back, stunned, mouths agape.
Now it was Merk’s turn to smile, as he looked back at all of them, relishing what was about to happen next.
“Sometimes, boys,” he said, “you just pick the wrong man to mess with.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Kyra stood in the center of the crowded bridge, feeling all eyes on her, all awaiting her decision for the fate of the boar. Her cheeks flushed; she did not like to be the center of attention. She loved her father for acknowledging her, though, and she felt a great sense of pride, especially for his putting the decision in her hands.
Yet at the same time, she also felt a great responsibility. She knew that whatever choice she made would decide the fate of her people. As much as she loathed the Pandesians, she did not want the responsibility of throwing her people into a war they could not win. Yet she also did not want to back down, to embolden the Lord’s Men, to disgrace her people, make them seem weak, especially after Anvin and the others had so courageously made a stand.
Her father, she realized, was wise: by putting the decision in her hands, he made it seemed as if the decision was theirs, not the Lord’s Men, and that act alone had saved his people face. She also realized he had put the decision in her hands for a reason: he must have knew this situation required an outside voice to help all parties save face—and he chose her because she was convenient, and because he knew her not to be rash, to be a voice of moderation. The more she pondered it, the more she realized that was why he chose her: not to incite a war—he could have chosen Anvin for that—but to get his people out of one.
She came to a decision.
“The beast is cursed,” she said dismissively. “It nearly killed my brothers. It came from the Wood of Thorns and was killed on the eve of Winter Moon, a day we are forbidden to hunt. It was a mistake to bring it through our gates—it should have been left to rot in the wild, where it belongs.”
She turned derisively to the Lord’s Men.
“Bring it to your Lord Governor,” she said, smiling. “You do us a favor.”
The Lord’s Men looked from her to the beast, and their expressions morphed; they now looked as if they had bitten into something rotten, as if they didn’t want it anymore.
Kyra saw Anvin and the others looking at her approvingly, gratefully—and her father most of all. She had done it—she had allowed her people to save face, had spared them from a war—and had managed a jibe at Pandesia at the same time.
Her brothers dropped the boar to the ground and it landed in the snow with a thud. They stepped back, humbled, their shoulders clearly aching.
All eyes now fell to the Lord’s Men, who stood there, not knowing what to do. Clearly Kyra’s words had cut deep; they now looked at the beast now as if it were something foul dragged up from the bowels of the earth. Clearly, they no longer wanted it. And now that it was theirs, they seemed to have also lost the desire for it.
Their commander, after a long, tense silence, finally gestured to his men to pick up the beast, then turned, scowling, and marched away, clearly annoyed, as if knowing he had been outsmarted.
The crowd dispersed, the tension gone, and there came a sense of relief. Many of her father’s men approached her approvingly, laying hands on her shoulder.
“Well done,” Anvin said, looking at her with approval. “You shall make a good ruler someday.”
The village folk went back to their ways, the hustle and bustle returning, the tension dissipated, and Kyra turned and searched for her father’s eyes. She found them looking back, he standing but a few feet away. In front of his men, he was always reserved when it came to her, and this time was no different—he wore an indifferent expression, but he nodded at her ever so slightly, a nod, she knew, of approval.
Kyra looked over and saw Anvin and Vidar clutching their spears, and her heart quickened.
“Can I join you?” she asked Anvin, knowing they were heading to the training grounds, as the rest of her father’s men.
Anvin glanced nervously at her father, knowing he would disapprove.
“Snow’s thickening,” Anvin finally replied, hesitant. “Night’s falling, too.”
“That’s not stopping you,” Kyra countered.
He grinned back.
“No, it’s not,” he admitted.
Anvin glanced at her father again, and she turned and saw him shake his head before turning and heading back inside.
Anvin sighed.
“They’re preparing a mighty feast,” he said. “You’d best go in.”
Kyra could smell it herself, the air heavy with fine meats roasting, and she saw her brothers turn and head inside, along with dozens of villagers, all rushing to prepare for the festival.
But Kyra turned and looked longingly out at the fields, at the training grounds.
“A meal can wait,” she said. “Training cannot. Let me come.”
Vidar smiled and shook his head.
“You sure you’re a girl and not a warrior?” Vidar asked.
“Can I not be both?” she replied.
Anvin let out a long sigh, and finally shook his head.
“Your father would have my hide,” he said.
Then, finally, he nodded.
“You won’t take no for an answer,” he concluded, “and you’ve got more heart than half my men. I suppose we can use one more.”
*
Kyra ran across the snowy landscape, trailing Anvin, Vidar and several of her father’s men, Leo by her side as usual. The snowfall was thickening and she did not care. She felt a sense of freedom, of exhilaration, as she always did when passing through Fighter’s Gate, a low, arched opening cut into the stone walls of the training ground. She breathed deep as the sky opened up and she ran into this place she loved most in the world, its rolling green hills, now covered in snow, encased by a rambling stone wall, perhaps a quarter mile wide and deep. She felt everything was as it should be as she saw all the men training, crisscrossing on their horses, wielding lances, aiming for distant targets and bettering themselves. This, for her, was what life was about.
This training ground was reserved for her father’s men; women were not allowed here and neither were boys who had not yet reached their eighteenth year—and who had not been invited. Brandon and Braxton, every day, waited impatiently to be invited—yet Kyra suspected that they never would. Fighter’s Gate was for honorable, battle-hardened warriors, not for blowhards like her brothers.
Kyra ran through the fields, feeling happier and more alive here than anywhere else on earth. The energy was intense, it packed with dozens of her father’s finest warriors, all wearing slightly different armor, warriors from all regions of Escalon, all of whom had over time gravitated to her father’s fort. There were men from the south, from Thebus and Leptis; from the Midlands, mostly from the ca
pital, Andros, but also from the mountains of Kos; there were westerners from Ur; river men from Thusis and their neighbors from Esephus. There were men who lived near the Lake of Ire, and men from as far away as the waterfalls at Everfall. All wore different colors, armor, wielded different weapons, all men of Escalon yet each representing his own stronghold. It was a dazzling array of power.
Her father, the former King’s champion, a man who commanded great respect, was the only man in these times, in this fractured kingdom, that men could rally around. Indeed, when the old King had surrendered their kingdom without a fight, it was her father that people urged to assume the throne and lead the fight. Over time, the best of the former King’s warriors had sought him out, and now, with the force growing larger each day, Volis was achieving a strength that nearly rivaled the capital. Perhaps that was why, Kyra realized, the Lord’s Men felt the need to humble them.
Elsewhere throughout Escalon, the Lord Governors for Pandesia did not allow knights to gather, did not allow such freedoms, for fear of a revolt. But here, in Volis, it was different. Here, they had no choice: they needed to allow it because they needed the best possible men to keep The Flames.
Kyra turned and looked out, beyond the walls, beyond the rolling hills of white, and in the distance, on the far horizon, even through the snowfall, she could see, just barely, the dim glow of The Flames. The wall of fire that protected the eastern border of Escalon, The Flames, a wall of fire fifty feet deep and several hundred high, burned as brightly as ever, lighting up the night, their outline visible on the horizon and growing more pronounced as night fell. Stretching nearly fifty miles wide, The Flames were the only thing standing between Escalon and the nation of savage trolls to the east.
Even so, enough trolls broke through each year to wreak havoc, and if it weren’t for The Keepers, her father’s brave men who kept The Flames, Escalon would be a slave nation to the trolls. The trolls, who feared water, could only attack Escalon by land, and The Flames was the only thing keeping them at bay. The Keepers stood guard in shifts, patrolled in rotation, and Pandesia needed them. Others were stationed at The Flames, too—draftees, slaves and criminals—but her father’s men, The Keepers, were the only true soldiers amongst the lot, and the only ones who knew how to keep The Flames.
In return, Pandesia allowed Volis and their men their many small freedoms, like Volis, these training grounds, real weapons—a small taste of freedom to make them still feel like free warriors, even if it was an illusion. They were not free men, and all of them knew it. They lived with an awkward balance between freedom and servitude that none could stomach.
But here, at least, in Fighter’s Gate, these men were free, as they had once been, warriors who could compete and train and hone their skills. They represented the best of Escalon, better warriors than any Pandesia had to offer, all of them veterans of The Flames—and all serving shifts there, but a day’s ride away. Kyra wanted nothing more than to join their ranks, than to prove herself, to be stationed at The Flames, to fight real trolls as they came through and to help guard her kingdom from invasion.
She knew, of course, that it would never be allowed. She was too young to be eligible—and she was a girl. There were no other girls in the ranks, and even if there were, her father would never allow it. His men, too, had looked upon her as a child when she had started visiting them years ago, had been amused by her presence, like a spectator watching. But after the men had left, she had remained behind, alone, training every day and night on the empty fields, using their weapons, targets. They had been surprised at first to arrive the following day to find arrow marks in their targets—and even more surprised when they were in the center. But over time, they had become used to it.
Kyra began to earn their respect, especially on the rare occasions she had been allowed to join them. By now, two years later, they all knew she could hit targets most of them could not—and their tolerating her had morphed to something else: respecting her. Of course, she had not fought in battles, as these other men had, had never killed a man, or stood guard at The Flames, or met a troll in battle. She could not swing a sword or a battle axe or halberd, or wrestle as these men could. She did not have nearly their physical strength, which she regretted dearly.
Yet Kyra had learned she had a natural skill with two weapons, each of which made her, despite her size and sex, a formidable opponent: her bow, and her staff. The former she had taken to naturally, while the latter she had stumbled upon accidentally, moons ago, when she could not lift a double-handed sword. Back then, the men had laughed at her inability to wield the sword, and as an insult, one of them had chucked her a staff derisively.
“See if you can lift this stick instead!” he’d yelled, and the others had laughed. Kyra had never forgotten her shame at that moment.
At first, her father’s men had viewed her staff as a joke; after all, they used it merely for a training weapon, these brave men who carried double-handed swords and hatchets and halberds, who could cut through a tree with a single stroke. They looked to her stick of wood as a plaything, and it had given her even less respect than she already had.
But she had turned a joke into an unexpected weapon of vengeance, a weapon to be feared. A weapon that now even many of her father’s men could not defend against. Kyra had been surprised at its light weight, and even more surprised to discover that she was quite good with it naturally—so fast that she could land blows while soldiers were still raising their swords. More than one of the men she had sparred with had been left black and blue by it and, one blow at a time, she had fought her way to respect.
Kyra, through endless nights of training on her own, of teaching herself, had mastered moves which dazzled the men, moves which none of them could quite understand. They had grown interested in her staff, and she had taught them. In Kyra’s mind, her bow and her staff complemented each other, each of equal necessity: her bow she needed for long-distance combat, and her staff for close fighting.
Kyra also discovered she had an innate gift that these men lacked: she was nimble. She was like a minnow in a sea of slow-moving sharks, and while these aging men had great power, Kyra could dance around them, could leap into the air, could even flip over them and land in a perfect roll—or on her feet. And when her nimbleness combined with her staff technique, it made for a lethal combination.
“What is she doing here?” came a gruff voice.
Kyra, standing to the side of the training grounds beside Anvin and Vidar, heard the approach of horses, and turned to see Maltren riding up, flanked by a few of his soldier friends, still breathing hard as he held a sword, fresh from the grounds. He looked down at her disdainfully and her stomach tightened. Of all her father’s men, Maltren was the only one who disliked her. He had hated her, for some reason, from the first time he’d laid eyes upon her.
Maltren sat on his horse, and seethed; with his flat nose and ugly face, he was a man who loved to hate, and he seemed to have found a target in Kyra. He had always been opposed to her presence here, probably because she was a girl.
“You should be back in your father’s fort, girl,” he said, “preparing for the feast with all the other young, ignorant girls.”
Leo, beside Kyra, snarled up at Maltren, and Kyra laid a reassuring hand on his head, keeping him back.
“And why is that wolf allowed on our grounds?” Maltren added.
Anvin and Vidar gave Maltren a cold, hard look, taking Kyra’s side, and Kyra stood her ground and smiled back, knowing she had their protection and that he could not force her to leave.
“Perhaps you should go back to the training ground,” she countered, her voice mocking, “and not concern yourself with the comings and goings of a young, ignorant girl.”
Maltren reddened, unable to respond. He turned, preparing to storm off, but not without taking one last jab at her.
“It’s spears today,” he said. “You’d best stay out of the way of real men throwing real weapons.”
He tur
ned and rode off with the others and as she watched him go, her joy at being here was tempered by his presence.
Anvin gave her a consoling look and lay a hand on her shoulder.
“The first lesson of a warrior,” he said, “is to learn to live with those who hate you. Like it or not, you will find yourself fighting side-by-side with them, dependent on them for your lives. Oftentimes, your worst enemies will not come from without, but from within.”
“And those who can’t fight, run their mouths,” came a voice.
Kyra turned to see Arthfael approaching, grinning, quick to take her side, as he always was. Like Anvin and Vidar, Arthfael, a tall, fierce warrior with a stark bald head and a long, stiff black beard, had a soft spot for her. He was one of the best swordsmen, rarely bested, and he always stood up for her. She took comfort in his presence.
“It’s just talk,” Arthfael added. “If Maltren were a better warrior, he’d be more concerned with himself than others.”
Anvin, Vidar and Arthfael mounted their horses and took off with the others, and Kyra stood there watching them, thinking. Why did some people hate? she wondered. She did not know if she would ever understand it.
As they charged across the grounds, racing in wide loops, Kyra studied the great warhorses in awe, eager for the day when she might have one of her own. She watched the men circle the grounds, riding alongside the stone walls, their horses sometimes slipping in the snow. The men grabbed spears handed to them by eager squires, and as they rounded the loop, they threw them at distant targets: shields hanging from branches. When they hit, the distinct clang of metal rang out.
It was harder than it looked, she could see, to throw while on horseback, and more than one of the men missed, especially as they aimed for the smaller shields. Of those who hit, few hit in the center—except for Anvin, Vidar, Arthfael and a few others. Maltren, she noticed, missed several times, cursing under his breath and glaring over at her, as if she were to blame.
Kyra, wanting to keep warm, pulled out her staff and began spinning and twirling it in her hands, over her head, around and around, twisting and turning it like a living thing. She thrust at imaginary enemies, blocked imaginary blows, switching hands, over her neck, around her waist, the staff like a third arm for her, its wood well-worn from years of molding it.