Chapter Two

 

 

The sun was low on the horizon, the sky darkening but not yet given way to night. That time in which the sun seems to struggle in the fight against the coming darkness, striving in a battle that, in the end, it could only lose.

The Broken sympathized.

Despite all his training, despite the fact that he was one of the most deadly warriors in the world, his skill once recognized even among his people—the Ekirani, who were inarguably the best fighters upon the face of the world—he sometimes felt that all he ever did was lose. That he was losing, even now. He was a man who others feared when met on the battlefield—and rightly so. This was a thought he could have without any trace of arrogance, for among those lessons he’d learned from his people was that false humility was no less a conceit than false pride—and he had long since lost count of the number of men and women he had bested in physical combat.

Yet, the battle he fought now, the battle he was losing now, was not a physical one. True, he was in pain from the stab wound Falla had given him before he and Sonya had escaped the camp, one which was leaking blood through the makeshift bandage he’d wrapped around it in haste. True, those men who had once served him—if such killers and would-be killers could be said to serve anyone but themselves—were hunting him and the girl, closing in on them like hounds after a hare. Even now, as the sun sank lower and lower, he could make out the orange flickerings of their torches through the shadows of the trees on all sides. Yet it was not the battle with his wound or the men chasing them, that twisted his insides. Instead, it was the battle which raged within his very soul.

He’d considered his actions in the command tent a thousand times. He’d tried to understand why he had attacked the men when they brought Sonya to him. To understand why the sight of her lying on the ground, her face bruised, her eyes wide with fear and pain, had taken such hold of him. He knew part of it was that she had reminded him of his son, of the way he’d found him when he’d stumbled into his tent that day so long ago, the day when everything had changed.

Or, perhaps, that wasn’t right. Perhaps it was he who had changed. He had always believed it to be so, believed that it was then that he had been awakened to the truth of the world, had learned to see it as it really was. At turns either a cruel beast seeking only to torture those who trod on its surface, or a pitiful creature mewling in pain, suffering in agony from a wound that would, that must eventually kill it. And regardless of which it was at which time, the Broken had decided that the best thing, the only thing, really, was to slay the beast, to put that which was wounded out of its misery, to put that which was cruel into the grave.

But as much as he might like to think that it had been the girl’s similarity to his son and nothing else which had caused him to attack the men, to abandon what he’d taken up as his life’s mission, he knew there was more to it. After all, he had been having doubts already, hadn’t he? He had spent the days leading up to that moment doubting Paren, doubting Shira and the shadow man, but most of all, doubting himself, his mission. So when the girl had shown up, her captor smiling as if he should be rewarded for kidnapping and beating a young child, she had served not as a catalyst for the change within him, but instead as proof of that change, her wounded yet innocent eyes reflecting himself back to himself. And so he had acted, the god-blessed weapon little more than a silver streak in his hands as he dealt with those men the only way he knew how to deal with anything—by destroying him.

It was a decision he would make again, he knew, despite what it was doing to him on the inside, even though they were now fugitives on the run from men eager to butcher them. And not just men—the Broken had always prided himself on accepting the truths of the world, whether they were hard or not, and he could not believe that Paren was pleased with the Broken having abandoned his cause.

But the greatest of his problems, just then, was not being hunted, being wounded, or even that the gods themselves wanted him dead.

His greatest problem was that he no longer knew who he was. For years, he had thought of himself as the world’s executioner—not an easy job, perhaps, or one to be celebrated, but a necessary one. He had told himself that his greatest weapon, his greatest motivation, was the truth, the dark, cold truth he had learned upon discovering the bodies of his family. Now, though, he was beginning to think that truth had not been his master after all. Instead it had been his anger, his rage at his family’s death which had guided him. It was a terrible realization, one so powerful, so big, that it threatened to devour him.

He turned to regard the girl beside him. She had suffered at her kidnapper’s hands, and since fleeing the army camp the night before, her bruises had grown worse, showing that in the brief amount of time he’d had her, her captor had made sure to make her suffer if for no other reason than that causing such pain had made him feel good. Yet despite her pain, despite the fact that they had not stopped to eat, drink, or rest since leaving the camp the night before, she did not complain. And her face reflected neither suffering or despair. Instead, her expression seemed determined, perhaps even hopeful, reflecting a belief that things would work out in the end.

It was a simple belief, but a powerful one, one which the Broken had shared long ago, one which his people had taught him. But he had abandoned that truth, and he did not know if he was prepared to accept it again, did not know if he could, even should he wish to, for the simplicity of it lay years behind him now, separated not just by time but by the man he had become and by the corpses that man had left in his wake.

Suddenly, an alarm bell went off in his head, and he came to an abrupt halt, grabbing the girl’s arm to stop her as well before quickly releasing it, wincing and suddenly afraid that she would scream or call him a monster.

She didn’t, though. Instead she only turned and looked at him, her eyes wide in the near-darkness. “What is it?” she asked in a voice that was nervous but nowhere near as afraid as it might have been.

The Broken shook his head slowly, withdrawing his weapon from where it was slung across his back. “I’m not su—” he began, but cut off as two men stepped into the path in front of them. He realized that some sound must have alerted him to their presence, for they carried no torch or other light.

“Well, hi there,” one said, grinning and displaying a mouthful of teeth that were little more than black stubs. “Foolish, you bein’ out this late,” he continued, shaking his head, “and bringin’ your daughter with you, too? Don’t you know it’s dangerous, bein’ out at night?” His companion laughed.

The Broken spun, expecting to see more troops surrounding them, but there were none, seemed to be only the two men. Then he realized that the men couldn’t be from the army. Had they been, they would have known the girl traveling with him was not his daughter. “Who are you?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“Me?” the man said, grinning again. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that none, fella. Tell you what, why don’t you give us all your coin, huh? We’ll start there, and if you behave, you and that little daughter of yours might even make it out of this alive, how’d that be?”

Bandits. Not members of the army at all, not part of the pursuit chasing him and the girl through the woods, only normal bandits who had happened to be lying in ambush along the forest trail. It was almost too much to be believed, but there was no other possibility. Shaking his head in wonder, the Broken hefted his weapon, starting forward, but the girl grabbed his arm.

He turned to look at her; she was about to speak but the bandit beat her to it. “Look, fella,” he said, all traces of his false good humor gone, “I ain’t gonna ask you again. You put that sticker you’re carryin’ down, or I can promise you losin’ your coin’ll be the least of your problems, you hear me? We’ll make sure you suffer before it’s over, and that girl of yours? Well, there’s folks’d pay a lot of money for one so…young.”

The Broken felt a flash of rage at that and bared his teeth as he turned toward the man.

“You don’t have to,” she said softly.

The girl was studying him, watching him with pleading eyes. Her words were barely loud enough to hear, yet they seemed to hit him with the power of a lightning strike. “You can put it down,” she said, eyeing the weapon he held.

The Broken followed her gaze. He could put it down, of course, after all, it wasn’t the first weapon he’d used and it likely wouldn’t be the last. But he didn’t think the girl was referring to the weapon, or, at least, not only that. He could put down this weapon and all others, could put down the willingness, the urge to kill and never pick it up again. Plenty of men had done it before, had decided to fight their life’s battle in a way that drew no blood and caused no more pain than needed.

But the Broken was not such a man, and whatever change was taking place within him, he had not changed that much, so he only shook his head slowly. “I am not ready,” he said, the words heavy with guilt.

The girl said nothing, only nodded and released his arm. “I’ll wait over there,” she said, pointing toward a big tree on the side of the trail. “I don’t want to see.”

The Broken watched her go, feeling amazed and awed in a way he couldn’t quite understand, and he decided that there were many kinds of strength, many types of power. And some few of them, perhaps the best of them, were quiet, easily missed if one did not pay attention.

“Alright, fucker,” the speaker of the two bandits said, “have it your way.”

The Broken looked after the girl for a moment longer, watched her step around the tree, then, once she was gone from sight, he turned back to the man. “Leave now,” he said, “and I will not kill you.”

The bandit laughed, glancing at his comrade. The two of them drew rusty, nicked swords, neither of which had been sharpened or cared for in some time. The Broken knew he would have to be fast. For one, his wound continued to sap his strength, and he was unsure how much longer he could remain upright. For another, he could make out the distant glow of dozens of torches moving through the woods on either side of him. Should he and the girl tarry too long, their pursuers couldn’t help but find them. And what was worse, night was coming on, and with it, the nightlings who called the darkness home. With their bestial senses and stamina, they would stand a far greater chance of finding him and the girl if they didn’t find a place to hide and soon.

That gave him a thought, and he examined the two bandits more closely. Neither man had a lantern or torch, and even bandits who spent their time waylaying travelers would know the foolishness of braving the darkness without a light. Which could only mean one thing—their shelter, such as it was, must be close, and they were obviously confident in its ability to conceal or protect them from the dangers the night presented.

“Where is your camp?” the Broken asked.

The bandit said nothing though, his only answer a growl of anger as he charged. He was obviously untrained in the use of the blade he carried, and his heavy downward strike was easy enough to sidestep. Or, at least, it would have been if the Broken’s body hadn’t been weakened and sluggish from blood loss. As it was, he realized at the last moment that he couldn’t make it out of the way in time. So he was forced to bring the haft of the god-blessed weapon up to bat the notched steel aside with a metallic ring.

The man cursed in annoyance, seemingly frustrated the Broken hadn’t stood there and been chopped in half. He started to bring his blade back around. But wounded or not, dying or not, the Broken was still an Ekirani, still a warrior, and he pivoted before his attacker could recover, lunging forward and driving his weapon into his opponent’s throat. Blood showered from the wound, and the bandit let out a rasping gurgle before stumbling backward off the blade and collapsing to the ground.

Alerted by the crunch of dried twigs and leaves, the Broken spun to see the second bandit barreling toward him. The exertion of the fight had taken a lot out of him, and the bandit’s features—and the blade he held—were indistinct blurs of colors in his suddenly wavering vision. He squinted, doing his best to judge the man’s approach, and dodged to the side as a gray smudge—what he took to be the man’s sword—flashed toward him. He managed to avoid the man’s strike more by luck than design, nearly stumbling as his legs threatened to give way beneath him. By the time he got his balance and was preparing to counter, the man’s fist crashed into his face. The Broken grunted in surprised pain, his head rocked back from the force of the blow, and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He staggered backward, and his foot caught on a root half-buried in the trail. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back, the man’s blade blurring toward him.

The Broken turned desperately, his foot lashing out and catching the man in the wrist. He was rewarded with a curse from his attacker as the sword flew into the forest. Instead of chasing it, the man pounced on him, striking the Broken in the face before pulling a knife from inside his tunic.

With a growl, the Broken bridged his back, knocking the man from his perch atop him. He tried to rise, but his weak muscles were slow to respond and before he could, his attacker was on him again, driving the knife downward toward his chest with both hands. The Broken caught his opponent’s wrists desperately, and the two of them struggled against one another, their muscles flexing, hiss and spittle flying from their mouths, but no matter how hard he tried, the Broken’s weakened muscles couldn’t match his opponent’s, and he was forced to watch as the knife made its slow, inexorable way toward his heart. Another second, maybe two, and the blade would find its mark, and it would be over.

Once, such a thought would have pleased the Broken. He would never have admitted as much to himself before, but he had been forced to confront some hard truths lately. Among them was the realization that while he had styled his mission of destroying the world as noble, in truth, that had never been his goal at all. Or, at least, not his primary one. Instead, his goal had been to destroy himself, throwing himself into one battle after another, into one life-or-death struggle after another, in the hopes that one of those he faced would manage to do what those before him could not—kill him and, in that way, end his suffering.

But while he understood that he had been seeking death and an ending not just for the world but for himself since his family had been murdered, the Broken did not seek it now. Yet, this knowledge did nothing to strengthen his fading muscles and still the knife crept closer. He was not a laughing man, had not laughed in so long that he suspected he might have forgotten how. However, some small part of him couldn’t help but find it funny that he had sought death for years without ever being able to find it and now, now that he had decided he wished to live—although he still was trying to figure out exactly what that meant—he was going to die. And this not even because of the many crimes he’d committed which deserved a brutal death but because some man had perhaps lost his job or his family and decided to take up banditry.

No. The thought came to him, powerful and strong and his own, and he found some last bit of resolve, some last vestiges of strength in his muscles after all, managing to stop the blade less than three inches from his chest. Stop it, but not push it away, for the man was putting all his body weight and strength behind it, practically lying atop the knife’s handle. The Broken growled and hissed and fought, telling himself he would not die, not the way this bandit wanted. He would die as he had lived—his way. But telling himself as much was one thing; managing to knock the man’s blade away was another matter entirely. Soon, hidden resolve or not, the knife began to inch toward his chest once more.

The knife moved toward him in tiny, almost imperceptible degrees, yet with less than three inches standing between his heart and the questing steel, the Broken’s life might have been measured in such degrees. He knew, then, that he was going to die. He would finally find the peace he had sought for so long. He thought of his wife and his son, running his hand along memories that were blurred and indistinct to his mind’s touch, like some favored portrait or beloved letter which has faded from years of handling. But then, to his surprise, his thoughts drifted to the girl, Sonya. She had gone somewhere behind the trees and out of his sight when the fight had begun, and he hoped she would be okay, that she would not see.

But his greatest fear was the bandit. Would he go after her, once the Broken was dead? He would like to think the man would be satisfied with what the Broken carried on him—not much coin, but the weapon Paren had given him might be traded for a hefty sum—for what might such a young child be carrying that would be worth the man’s effort?

Yet, try as he might to believe it, the Broken did not. After all, no matter how little a man had, the world would always find a way to take it, would always covet it, and judging by his worn-out clothes and long growth of ratty beard, his would-be killer had decided some time ago that if a man couldn’t fight the nature of the world, he may as well join it.

The Broken did something then, in his desperation, that he had not done in a very long time, not since he had found the bodies of his wife and son, not since he had become the Broken. Thinking of the girl, of what the man might do to her, he prayed. He prayed to Amedan, the Father of Light, the Bringer of the Flame, asking him, as he had not since his family was still alive, for help, asking him to look after the girl. She had been through so much already, and the Broken prayed she would go through no more, that she would somehow find her way back to Valeria and her friends. Such a girl so young and so innocent, needed protection, and such a girl, one who might save even her enemy, the man who had tried to hunt and kill her and her friends, well, such a girl more than deserved it. The Broken only wished he could be the one to give it to her, not to atone for the many sins he had committed in his life—he had long since passed the point of salvation, he knew—but only because it was the right thing to do. Yet the knife was coming closer, and he was very nearly out of time.

Just when he knew he would feel the sharp steel slide into his chest, into his heart, there was the crackling sound of dried leaves underfoot and something flashed out of the corner of his vision, striking his opponent in the side of the face. The man let out a grunt and his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed on top of the Broken.

For a moment, the Broken only lay there, panting and trying to get his breathing under control, unable to turn to see what had saved him for the weight of the man’s unconscious form atop him. Then, his weary muscles straining with the effort, he managed to roll the body away, and it landed on the ground beside him in an unmoving heap.

The Broken turned with an effort and was surprised to see the young girl standing beside him, a tree branch clutched tightly in two small, white-knuckled fists. Her eyes seemed huge in the fading light as she studied the man she’d hit, her lip trembling, appearing on the verge of tears. Once again the Broken was struck by the understanding that despite her youth and her small size—perhaps, in some ways, because of them—the girl was more human than anyone he had ever met. The suffering she’d endured at the hands of her kidnappers had not been enough to bring her to tears, nor had being forced to flee into the woods with the Broken and being hunted by the gods knew how many men and women out for their blood. But as her gaze slowly traveled back and forth between the man she’d struck and the branch she held—the end of which was coated in blood—tears began to course down her face.

“Did…did I…” She swallowed hard as if she was having difficulty putting the question into words, and she could not finish.

But the Broken thought he knew well enough what she would ask. Calling on the last remaining strength of his failing body, he rose to his knees and put one finger under the bandit’s nose. At first, he felt nothing, but then he detected the unmistakable feel of soft breath against his finger, and he turned back to her. “He lives.”

The girl swallowed hard, nodding, but still did not speak. Instead, she looked with disgust at the branch she held and threw it into the underbrush. Tears still leaked from her eyes, and she turned back to him. Still she said nothing, but the Broken could see her wanting, needing something from him.

“You did what you did to save my life,” he said, gritting his teeth as he struggled to his feet. Never mind that he didn’t deserve it, that he could think of no other—man or god or beast—who deserved it less. “This man was a breaker, one who offers nothing and takes what he can take. It is never wrong to stop such a one, if you can.”

“A breaker,” she repeated in a voice barely audible despite the stillness of the night. Then she looked up at him slowly, as if having a thought. “Are you a breaker?”

Oh, young one, he thought, I am the worst breaker of all. He brought the knife to the unconscious man’s throat, meaning to finish it. After all, they had enough to worry about with the army chasing them, not to mention Paren and Shira, both who were no doubt furious at his betrayal. When a man is being chased by monsters, he does not allow one who falls beneath his blade to escape, as the one he allows to live might be the one who pulls him down, in the end.

The girl said nothing, did not protest or cry out from behind him as he thought she might have. He wanted to believe she did not because she understood the necessity of the thing, but it was not understanding he saw in her eyes. Instead, there was a different dawning realization there, and she looked at him not as she had since they’d met, but as if he were a monster and had suddenly sprouted fangs and sharp claws. And is she so very wrong to look at you so? he thought, the hand holding the knife hesitating.

He knew leaving the man alive was foolish, that a warrior, when victory is close, must seize it with all his strength and will, for no matter how small such a victory is, enough of them may well lead to winning the war. But after crouching there for more than a minute, his muddy, fragmented thoughts seemed to crystallize, and he realized it was not the girl who had lacked understanding—it was him. He recalled the words she said to him when she had helped him to escape the camp, something he would never have been able to do on his own, not wounded as he was. When he had asked her why, why she had risked staying to help him get away and put herself in danger of getting caught, she had answered him as if it was the simplest thing in the world, a thing even a child could understand. Because it’s the right thing to do, she’d said.

Finally, the Broken took the knife from the man’s throat, feeling somehow, at that moment, as if it had been poised at his own throat instead. Then, he tossed it away, into the darkness. As he rose, he thought he saw a small, relieved smile on her face.

“We must leave, Sonya,” he said, glancing at the newly risen moon just cresting the horizon. “For night is here, and what hunts us now will not be men only.”

“You know my name,” she said, her eyes locked on his, “but I don’t know yours. What should I call you?”

The Broken. It was on the tip of his tongue, the answer he had given to so many, the answer he had given to the God of Conflict himself, but when his mouth opened, he was surprised by what came out. “Call me Tarex.”

“Tarex,” she repeated, and there was no denying her smile now. “I like that name.”

So do I, he thought. He retrieved his weapon from where it had fallen and soon they were walking into the woods again, away from the nearest torches visible through the trees. As he walked, the Broken considered something. But not the Broken, he reminded himself, no longer. He had thought when he found his wife and child dead that something had shattered within him, had been broken beyond repair. But to his surprise, to his very great and barely understood relief, he was beginning to realize nothing could be broken so thoroughly that it might not be mended if given time and energy enough. Though he felt weak from his wound and the fight with the bandit, though they were being hunted by uncountable adversaries, as he and the little girl walked into the gathering darkness, he had a smile on his face. And why not? The Broken, after all, was finally on the mend.