THE GIFT OF LODAN

She walked carefully among the scattered corpses on her way to the Sacoridian encampment. Enemies lay side by side in death. Those who had fought for Second Empire had been Sacoridian citizens, but had chosen to reject that affiliation and commit war on those who’d been their neighbors for centuries, rather than continue to live in peace. They refused to acknowledge that their blood was, in fact, more Sacoridian than Arcosian. Instead, they embraced the idea of an empire of the ancient past that no longer existed, rather than coexist in the land that had, for centuries, accepted them.

She glanced over her shoulder as she walked. The Sacoridians were closing in around Second Empire’s camp. Fighting had ceased. Hoff’s illusion of an army remained, but she didn’t think he’d be able to hold it for much longer, which didn’t appear, at this point, to be a problem. How would General Birch react when he realized he’d surrendered to an illusion? She wished she could see his face.

Mostly, however, she was just terribly tired now that the fighting was done and her blood no longer surged through her veins with excitement. Fighting was hard work, and muddy conditions had made it much more toilsome. She could almost drop right there on the ground, among the dead and wounded, and sleep. But she did not. She continued to trudge on, the wound of her arm throbbing. The sooner she reached the castle, the sooner she could fall into bed and rest.

She was walking past a clutch of dead soldiers when the hand of a corpse darted out and grabbed her ankle and yanked her foot out from beneath her. She screamed as she thudded to the ground. The dead man then rose over her.

He was, of course, no corpse, even with the skeletal countenance of his face.

“Torq,” she whispered.

“Well, well. What luck it is that it would be you,” he said. “I’d have been happy to have grabbed any Greenie, but it’s you, you who stole my travel device, and then left me to die in that strange white place.”

She started to climb to her feet, but he kicked her legs out from beneath her.

“Going somewhere, Greenie?” he asked.

She attempted to push herself up again, and this time he kicked her wounded arm and she fell with a cry of pain.

“Looks like you are going nowhere,” he said with a harsh laugh. “And I will have the pleasure of killing you. Slowly.”

“Where have you been?” Karigan asked, trying to buy herself time.

“I bet you think I was lost wandering around that white place, eh? Well, no, as luck would have it, I crossed one of those bridges and found myself back at the mountains.”

Too bad, she thought, he hadn’t crossed over the Eletian bridge.

“Bided my time to see which way the wind would blow with this little war,” he continued. “Watched the lower city burn. Watched the two armies position themselves. Thought that with the king and his people here, I could fulfill my promise to the Red Witch and grab a few Greenies to tear apart.”

“Seems like there are better uses for your time,” she muttered. “Maybe take up embroidery or something.”

He laughed. “A Greenie with humor, how amusing. It’s vengeance that eats at me. It is a sickness, I know. I will destroy any Greenie I can find.”

She had started to crawl away, but he kicked her arm again. The pain caused her to nearly faint, her vision blur. When she could see normally again, she saw he held not a sword, but a warhammer.

“Picked up this beauty on the battlefield,” he told her.

Her other self, whom she had not seen in some time, stood beside him. She was dressed as before, in sleek dark grays and blacks. With Nyssa banished to the deepest of the hells, it was now abundantly clear that the other was indeed an independent manifestation arising from Karigan’s own mind, which would make her difficult to eradicate.

You cannot do that, the other said. I am you. But we will both be “eradicated” if you continue to sit there waiting to be killed.

No, she was not waiting to be killed, but she was exhausted and hurting.

You’ve been worse off.

She knew it was true, but it didn’t change how she felt at this moment.

Trust me, her other self told her, he will make sure getting killed hurts.

Torq admired his warhammer. “Imagine what I can do with it.”

Karigan could.

And yet here you still lie, the other said in exasperation.

“I’m not just lying here,” Karigan protested, “and you’re not being very helpful.”

Torq gave her an odd look and she realized she’d spoken aloud. He followed her gaze to where her other stood, but of course he could not see her.

She sank her hand into the muddy, churned earth. It was strangely warm and had a smooth, clay-like consistency. When Torq turned his attention back to her to say something, she flung a ball of mud at him. It hit his chest and splattered his face.

Mud? That’s your defense? the other demanded.

“Mud?” Torq echoed. “You are going to fight me with mud?”

It was not a defense but a distraction, and it worked. It gave her the moment she needed to rise to her feet and draw her sword.

“Are you perhaps a little mad?” Torq asked as he wiped the splatter off his face with the back of his sleeve.

“Not just a little,” she said.

“I am still going to kill you, slaughter you like a butcher.” He swung the warhammer about as if to warm up his muscles.

The warhammer could punch through her cuirass, or her skull. He could hook the sword out of her hand with it. She must be careful.

“You do realize I’m a swordmaster, don’t you?”

“Swordmasters are made of flesh and die just like anyone else.”

He lunged, but she had anticipated it and stepped out of the way. A man like Torq would always try to seize the offensive position with aggression rather than skill. That was something she could use against him.

They circled one another, each assessing the other. She knocked away another blow with her sword. Her left arm hung uselessly, but the pain was a distant thing as she focused all her attention on her opponent.

She maneuvered so she was on a slight downslope position from him. She could see the calculation in his eyes, and his pleasure at what he perceived to be her disadvantage.

Once again, she anticipated his next move. He was like a cat preparing to pounce on a mouse, tensing his muscles and holding his body just so. He was not subtle, but those who were accustomed to using brute force generally were not.

When he lunged, she sidestepped and tripped him at the last minute. Momentum sent him sprawling onto the ground. He’d lost hold of his warhammer, and she kicked it out of reach even as she pressed the tip of her sword into his back. But it wasn’t her sword, was it . . .

“What are you waiting for, Greenie?” he demanded.

When he started to crawl away, she let the swordtip trail along his back, cutting into his flesh.

“I’m waiting,” she said, “only to tell you that this sword that I am about to kill you with belongs to Colonel Laren Mapstone of the Green Riders, who you know as the Red Witch.”

He stopped. “What? No!”

She plunged it into his back.

He slumped and sobbed, “No . . . Not the Red Witch. No . . .”

“This is for Colonel Laren Mapstone and all the Green Riders you ever hurt,” she told him, so that the last words he ever heard, the last thoughts he had in his mind, were of his old enemy.

She withdrew the sword and heaved it into him again, and twisted the blade. He did not speak or move this time.

“We got him, Colonel,” she murmured. “We got him.”

Karigan was not, she knew, the only one who suffered nightmares. The colonel must have had many about the Darrow Raiders over the years, and yet, she had never let on to her Riders how she must have been haunted by the atrocities she had witnessed.

The only thing that would have made killing Torq more satisfying was if it had been the colonel who had done it, but she was not here. Telling her about it would not provide very much closure. Karigan knelt beside his body.

You know what to do, her other self said.

“It’s not the sort of thing I do,” Karigan replied.

You are not doing it for you.

She closed her eyes and heaved a deep breath, then hacked into his neck with her sword. She had to saw a bit to cut all the way through flesh and sinew, and the bones. As she did so, she murmured over and over, “This is not me, this is not me, this is not me . . .”

It hadn’t been a clean job; messy, really, but when she was done, she turned his head over to look at his face. His eyes and mouth were open in an expression of astonishment and denial. The skull tattoo lent a macabre embellishment to his head.

“Dear gods,” she muttered. “What am I doing? This is not me.”

No? her other self asked. Zachary said it. You are no longer that schoolgirl running away from Selium. You are a warrior. You have killed many. Even Valora recognized you as such. Remember, you are not doing this for you.

Karigan wiped her swordblade on Torq’s sleeve, then stood and sheathed it. With great reluctance, she grasped Torq’s convenient topknot and lifted his head.

As she made her way across the battlefield, soldiers and menders who had begun to search for wounded gaped at her with her burden. She did not blame them.

A loud shout went up from Second Empire’s camp. She paused, but couldn’t make out what was happening. She located a spyglass on an enemy captain’s corpse. It couldn’t have helped him much in the fog.

She set Torq’s head aside, and removed the glass from its case and gazed through it. The remaining troops of Second Empire were ranked up and surrounded by the Sacoridians, though Hoff’s illusions were long gone. Their weapons had been removed and heaped in a great pile. The ground of the camp looked like a bog.

A man with his hands tied behind his back was shoved into an open space where all could see. His neat, close-cropped white hair and fighting leathers identified him as General Birch. The muddy water splashed when he was forced to his knees.

Zachary then approached him and appeared to address the assembled troops. He paused, looked down at Birch, then drew his sword. Before she could glance away, he swept his sword through the air and decapitated the enemy general. Birch’s head slopped into the mud face-first.

“Dear gods,” she murmured, jerking the glass from her eye. She might have just cut Torq’s head off his body, but it didn’t mean she wanted to view another decapitation.

Zachary is a warrior, as well, her other self said, and you must never forget that he, too, has blood on his hands. The lives he has taken, however, were for the benefit of the realm he rules. He is a warrior king whose duty is to mete out justice. This is the gift of Lodan.

Karigan knew this. It was not the first time she had witnessed him carrying out an execution, but it was at times difficult to reconcile the gentle, scholarly, and caring man she knew him to be, with the warrior king.