Chapter 71

Corrine recognized the girl immediately though she’d never laid eyes upon her before. She could tell from the fiery red hair and the small swarth of freckles that dotted the young girl’s cheeks and nose. She had heard of Kestrel’s ward, it was one of the first things he had told her when she’d been brought into the fold.

This little girl was the lynch-pin. She was the rut in history that had started everything and had wove the basket that had brought Kestrel to them and brought them into the world of magic that she hadn’t known she’d already been a part of.

A sudden irrational anger rose in Corrine’s breast. If it wasn’t for this child, she wouldn’t be here now. She wouldn’t have seen so many of her friends and servants die. If it wasn’t for her…

But it wasn’t for her. It wasn’t her fault. The child had done nothing.

Corrine swallowed her anger. This child was a victim. She was a victim of more than just that bastard Evrain, but of a cruel world that had abandoned her before she was old enough to even realize what had happened to her. She’d learned, from Sephira, who in her confused feelings over the young man Kestrel who told her how he’d found her, her belly swollen from hunger, crying on a heap of rubbish and she had barely been three years old.

No, she didn’t deserve her hatred. She deserved Corrine’s love. She deserved protection. She deserved the family that had been torn from her when she had been taken from Kestrel. She deserved to live.

“Cillia?” Corrine’s voice was barely a whisper. Even that caused her jaw to ache.

The child stared forward.

“Cillia?” She said again.

The young red-headed girl sat emotionless, but Corrine saw something in her eyes.

“Cillia, is that you?”

Something flashed across her eyes. Corrine could see the struggle in them. It was as if she were fighting with everything inside her to find that part of her that had been stolen.

She lost the battle. Her little body slumped forward into the bars separating them. Corrine rushed to the side of the cell and cradled her limp form through the bars.

Anger rose in her chest again, but this time it was different. It was a holy anger. It was the kind of anger that she was sure that God felt when he saw the pinnacle of his creation being profaned and violated. She felt a righteous fury boiling inside her. She would kill the monsters who had destroyed the child so profoundly that even the mention of her name would cause such stress that she pass out.

Corrine swore to herself as she cradled Cillia, who couldn’t have been but a year or two younger than her own daughters, that she would protect this child with her life. She would do whatever it took to save this child. She would sacrifice anything to restore little Cillia to Kestrel. She swore that she had give Cillia the family that she’d never had. She would bring her into her family. Neither she nor Kestrel, her surrogate father would ever want for a family again. They were her children now.

She was but a little thing in the face of the changes that crashed around her like tsunamis that would batter the coastline, but just like the heavy granite that the old lighthouses she’d heard of as a child would stand on, she herself would stand strong against the tide of history that was crashing over her now.

She knew that she was going to be used as a lure to bring her husband into the middle of the trap that they were surely setting for him, and she knew that, without a doubt in the world, that he would come for her. She knew her husband. She knew him better than he knew himself. He would fight an army by himself with his hands tied behind his back if it meant that he had even the slightest chance of saving his family from danger.

The thought of it tore at her. He would put everything at risk, the rebellion, his fight against the Emperor to save Vealand, his own life, to save her.

She needed to save him. She needed him to fight. Vealand needed him. He was the only one that could lead their nation. Without him, even if Vealand survived the destruction that Evrain lusted after, they would be lost and directionless. The best that they could hope for would be a brutal dictator to take Evrain’s place and bring the dying mess into something resembling a people once again.

No, Aris needed to live. He needed to kill Evrain and lead their people. He would chafe at the idea, but Corrine knew that he would be a just leader. He would hate having that power, he never lusted for power, and that was exactly why he would make a good Emperor.

She would protect Cillia, and she would live to see her husband take the thrown from that imposter Evrain. She swore on it.

Corrine ran her hands through Cillia’s bright hair and kissed her prone form through the bars separating them. She would protect her. She would protect Aris and her children.

*****

After much deliberation William was chosen to stay with Aris’ young daughters. He wanted to go with Aris, to fight by his side and avenge the loss of his brothers at the hands of Emperor Evrain’s men, but when he heard the tone of command in Aris’ voice, he’d saluted and gathered the two young girls to his side.

Aris spent the rest of the evening reaching out to his contacts, and currying every favor he could from the various lowlives he knew in the city. By the morning he had gathered himself an army.

He brought the fight to Edrian’s soldiers.

Aris and his band of criminals, murderers, and scoundrels cut through the first battalion they came upon. The Vaeish military was indeed formidable, Aris trained his own men to their standards, and those standards were by no means easy. But they were used to fighting in the open.

The Veaish military hadn’t battled in an urban environment. They hadn’t fought inside the city.

Aris had.

He was leading violent men who’d never left the city and lusted for revenge on those who had destroyed so much of their city. The first battalion they came upon had as little chance of protecting themselves as a puppy would at the hands of a hungry Wendig.

Aris had offered them to join his army or face death.

They had chosen death.

He gave it to them.

Aris’ heart tore at the thought of the violence he was bringing to his city. Who was he leading men that he despised? Leading monsters, many of whom he’d thrown into prison and now released to fight.

His heart wrenched at the thought that he was feeding Evrain the very violence he’d sworn he would keep Vealand from descending into. Each death fed the chaos that would fuel the mad Emperor’s disgusting possession of a new host body. The problem was that he saw no other way. Edrian Wolls and his men needed to be dealt with. If he somehow did succeed in killing Emperor Evrain, it would leave an empty throne, and Edrian Wolls, the Minister of Defense, if not dealt with now, would plague the country that would soon find itself without a leader.

Anything would be better than that snake having the throne. As evil as Evrain was, he ran his country well. The citizens, though many lived in squalor, were mostly well off, more so than even their neighboring countries, despite the razing of the coast all those years ago when Evrain had ascended.

Evrian was evil, but he was a good ruler despite it all. Edrian Wolls, however, burned for power. His lust for distinction burned in his loins. He would destroy what was left of Vealand if he were to gain power, in a blind quest to rule all in his sight and beyond.

So Aris would destroy his forces, find the man, then kill him. He was a rabid dog that needed to be put down. It was the Inquisitors, under his control, who had slaughtered the rest of the noblemen of Vealand.

He needed to pay for his crimes, and his debt would be met at the end of Aris’ blade.

The next battalion that Aris and his band of criminals came across as they fought their way towards the Imperial Keep put up more of a fight. A few of the men who had escaped from the first band had alerted the second battalion.

Aris met them with the same offer, join or die.

He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth before they tried to kill him. A knife from Wallace, who hadn’t left Aris’ side since their meeting on the mountaintop, found its home in the opposing Captain’s chest before the swing of his sword had reached the pinnacle of the arc meant to swipe Aris’ head from his shoulders.

That signaled the battle.

Aris and Wallace, caught in the middle of the battle on the front lines, fought like demons as their men swarmed the battalion, sniping men from rooftops and luring them into houses where they were ganged up on and slaughtered.

It was an ugly battle, but soon, Aris, Wallace, and Kestrel, who’d stayed behind, with Sephira glued to his side —she had insisted on coming, and despite being refused, she’d fought her way to Kestrel’s side, insisting that she would be there alongside her father the whole time. She wouldn’t let the mother she hadn’t known she had had, die without her doing everything she could to stop it— found themselves leading a diminished, but battle hungry force.

“How is she?” Aris asked Kestrel, who had hung back at the edges of battle where he’d been tasked with protecting Sephira. It chaffed him to not be in the middle of the action, but he had hung back and killed or debilitated all who had tried to escape from the wave of violence that Aris’ force brought with them.

He hated what he had done, but it was necessary.

These men would just as soon kill him and everyone he loved if they escaped.

“I’m fine,” there was an edge to Sephira’s voice. She’d never seen this side of her uncle, and despite herself, it left a bitter taste in her mouth.

She couldn’t quash the disgust at the sneaky way they murdered the soldiers. What they were doing wasn’t up-right.

It was the farthest thing from noble.

“Some broke through,” Kestrel said. “I couldn’t stop them. They’ve surely gone to inform Edrian Wolls of what we’re doing. We aren’t gonna have it so easy in the next battle. Word of us has traveled. He’s surely gathering his forces to face us. We’re going to have Hell meet us.”

Aris nodded. He looked at Kestrel and something swelled in him at the sight of the boy, well, he wasn’t a boy anymore.

He hadn’t really ever been, but he hadn’t yet been a man either.

Now though, he had grown into his skin. He’d transformed from a distrusting stubborn skulker, to a strong young man with a surprising mind for the martial ways…Who was still as stubborn as a hundred year old donkey.

Kestrel had indeed grown into a fine man. Aris hadn’t expected to love this young man like his own son the first time he laid his eyes on him at Wallace’s house what felt like years ago as Kestrel, despite facing injuries that he had seen lesser men succumb too, helped fight their way to freedom.

Should the love between he and Sephira blossom, Aris would readily welcome him into the family.

“It was to be expected. We would be crazy to think that we’d have it easy this whole time,” Wallace grunted as he finished wiping and sheathing his Kukri blade. “How many men do we still have?”

Aris shouted a command and a minute later a runner came to them huffing. “Two-hundred-sixty-four men sir,” he saluted crisply. He was wearing a guardsman uniform. He was one of the few that hadn’t been slaughtered in the melee that had taken so many lives and had taken his home, friends, and wife from him.

Aris nodded his thanks and the man went back to his command post. As much as the ruffians liked killing the soldiers that they had learned were there to foster distrust after their own had burned down a whole district of their capital city, Aris knew that they couldn’t be fully trusted.

For every group of five criminals, he’d done his best to assign one of his men. It hadn’t been exact, and Aris knew that there would be a lot of cleaning up to be done after the aftermath of his so called army, but they were the only men left able to stand against the tides of soldiers that Evrain had thrown against them.

Ideally, Aris would bide his time before striking. He would gather strength and resources.

He would make a plan.

He would make another plan.

He would make plans for the backup plans.

Aris couldn’t afford to do that now though. Not when they had his wife. Not when the fifteen thousand that guarded the borders were descending on his city and would arrive any day, sure to quell any rebellion that might happen.

No he needed to act.

He needed to strike now.

They were expecting him, they knew he was coming, the surprise of the first few attacks had long been spent.

They would be ready for him and his ragtag army, but that didn’t matter. None of it mattered as long as he stopped Evrain.

Even if he fell and all his men with him, they would save Vealand from the monster that wanted its destruction.

He would not fail.

*****

The force that Edrian Wolls had gathered was truly impressive. Despite the battalions that Aris and his men had sliced through, there were still near one thousand men that gathered and positioned themselves around the Imperial keep.

“How are we going to get past them?” Kestrel asked, sidling up to the General’s flank.

“We aren’t,” Aris said, surprising him.

“What do you mean?”

“Look at them, we’re beyond outnumbered. We have no idea how many Memory Mages that they have mixed in with the regular soldiers. I can’t tell you how many Inquisitors are there, waiting to torture our men with visions they aren’t equipped to handle. All our men who had been trained for that are dead now. No. We aren’t going to fight. We’re going to do the last thing that they’ll expect…”

“And that is?” Kestrel asked.

“We’re going to surrender.”

Kestrel’s eyes knit together. Had Aris really said that?

“We’ve killed enough men already. I don’t want to tear our country any further apart. I know these men. I was one of them. I trained some of them before I gained my Generalship. They will honor our surrender. They will bring us right to Edrian Wolls, and when we’re in front of him, and only then, we will strike. Now go inform the squads.”

Kestrel rode off, Aris’ plan was foolhardy, but he had long ago learned that his trust in Aris was well earned. He would do as his commander asked.

Kestrel winced as his steed galloped to inform Aris’ other commanders. He still hated horses. They terrified him, but he was getting the hang of it.

Necessity was an excellent teacher.

Could Aris’ plan truly be trusted? Was his faith in the honor of the soldiers misplaced? Experience told him so, but experience also told him his faith in Aris was well-placed.

There needed to be a contingency.

Kestrel found the leaders of the rebellion, he singled out Trask and Frenz, to whom Aris had delegated the leading of his forces. He told them of the plan to surrender. He told them exactly what Aris had relayed to him.

He also told them his own plan.

It was nearly a half an hour later when Kestrel returned to Aris’ side with affirmations from every squad.

“I’m ready,” he said.

Aris nodded.

Kestrel, together with Aris, Wallace, and Sephira —who no amount of insistence against her coming could stop her— strode into the middle of Edrian Wolls’ large force of men, hands raised.

Shouts greeted their sight. Spears and crossbow were lowered and surrounded them as far as the eye could see.

It was as if they were swimming in an ocean of blades.

“I call for parlay,” Aris shouted, his voice still carried weight even in the middle of such a sea of hostiles.

It demanded their obedience.

Nothing happened.

Wood creaked. Fingers hovered far too close to crossbow triggers for the comfort of any halfway sane man. Spear tips hung inches from their throats. Kestrel wrapped his arms around Sephira in an unconscious display of protection.

She squeezed him so tightly he thought his ribs might break.

Despite the quiet hum of thousands of slightly shuffling men garbed in chain mail, the atmosphere of silence was deafening.

Sephira could feel her heart thundering in her chest. What was she doing!?

She didn’t belong here in the middle of a thousand heavily armed men with commands to kill her and everyone she loved! She was insane!

Kestrel squeezed her back.

How was he so calm?! He looked at the crowd with the same disdain he would if it were a thousand newborn ducklings surrounding him.

When had he transformed from that awkward, quiet boy into this man who radiated strength in the middle of an army of enemies?

“HE SAID WE CALL FOR A PARLAY!” Kestrel shouted.

Silence still.

It carried on for nearly five minutes before the line broke and a face that was familiar to only Aris and Wallace strode before them.

It was the face of a man who had been born from a vulture. The nose was long and hooked and the man’s cheekbones were sharp enough to cut. His eyes were a cold dark blue and so full of schemes they practically leaked from his sockets.

“Aris my dear, what a surprise,” The Minister Of Defense, Edrian Wolls, said in a sugary tone. It was as if his vocal cords were made of molasses. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

Aris scowled at him. “Enough of the pointless pleasantries,” he said.

“I’m fine with that. I never liked dealing with you anyway,” the hawkish man said, the sweetness gone from his voice in an instant. “What do you want?”

Aris didn’t answer quickly, he let the silence hang between them, he waited until he saw the Minister of Defense start shifting uncomfortably. He stared into the man’s eyes, he waited until they broke contact. Aris’ dominance established, he finally spoke. “I want to surrender.”

A wave of whispers broke free at the General’s words. Had he really given himself up?

Why?

What had his slaughter of their comrades been for? Was it some sort of trick? Was he mad? What could it possibly be?

“Excuse me? I don’t think that I heard you right?” Edrian Wolls’ voice gained its formal edge again. “Did you really just tell me that you wish to surrender to me? You want to surrender to me now, after you’ve slaughtered to battalions of my men? Are you insane?!”

Aris nodded and smiled. “That’s exactly what I want to do. I want to surrender myself, and my right-hand men, Wallace and Kestrel to you,” open palm indicated the duo. “We wish to discuss the terms of our surrender.”

Edrian Wolls’ eyes furrowed. Could he trust the man? What was Aris planning? He knew without a doubt that Aris was far more cunning than most would ever give him credit for, but he was also a man of honor.

It was his honor that was bringing him against the Emperor now.

It was the slaughter that had happened at the hands of the Inquisitors that Edrian himself had overseen that had caused Aris’ madness to grow to the point that he fought against his own military.

“Tie them up,” he commanded the man who stood beside him.

The soldier snapped to attention and soon the coterie were patted down, their weapons relieved from them and their hands tied in front of them and they were led through the sea of swords that parted as Edrian Wolls led them into the keep.

*****

Edrian Wolls’ mind danced as he led Aris and his men, and that girl. Was that his daughter? No, the age was wrong.

That had to be her, the daughter of the traitor Van.

Treachery must run in their blood. First the big brother had risked and ultimately lost his own life trying to lead a rebellion against Emperor Evrain, and now the dead revolutionary’s baby brother had followed in the elder’s footsteps.

Edrian still couldn’t figure out why Aris Ravenscroft had surrendered to him. It was a foolish move. He had to know that he was laying down his life. Surely he knew that there was no way he was going to survive this.

And why had he allowed his niece —what was her name?— Sephira, that was it, to come with them?

Edrian led them deep into the keep, they hadn’t known it, but he’d surrounded them with Memory Mages. All of the soldier’s that had followed them into the keep were the Mages that Emperor Evrain had put under his command.

It was a death trap for Aris and that made Evrain nervous.

That he had surrendered so calmly meant that Aris had a plan.

Did he have someone on the inside? Was that what he was planning? A rebellion by his own people led by a mole inside his own force?

Edrian’s skin crawled. He quickened his pace down the granite hallway.

Was Aris planning on killing him for what he’d done to the other nobles? Did he even know that it was him who was behind it?

Of course he did.

The only two who’d escape the blades of the Inquisitors had been Aris and himself.

Aris would have to be a mindless dolt to think there was anyone else to blame.

No he knew.

He knew and he wanted to get him alone and bring him to justice.

What scared Edrian Wolls was that he knew that Aris’ desire was just.

Not only just, but righteous.

He was an ambitious man, there was nothing wrong with that. He had even gone so far as to have many men killed at his behest. That young girl that the Emperor was so interested in had been but a small casualty in his war for power.

What Emperor Evrain had him do was different though.

It wasn’t just having enemies killed. It was a slaughter.

It was destroying the foundation of Vealand.

But Edrian could use that build new foundations.

Alongside Emperor Evrain, he could restore this country to its former greatness. He could bring it to a place it hadn’t been since before the fall of the Coast. He could make Vealand more than great.

He could make it a world power again. Something it hadn’t been since before the fall that had destroyed the coast and transformed Vealand from a thriving empire to a middling kingdom that had barely expanded its borders in nearly half a century.

Something clicked in Edrian’s mind.

He knew what he needed to do.

He turned his head slightly and nodded.

*****

Aris waited until he saw it.

He knew that Edrian was bound to betray them.

It wasn’t a matter of if, rather, when. He’d hoped it would be later, in his offices, making it much easier to find a weapon and dispatch the man, but it didn’t matter. It only mattered that Edrian died.

At the nod, Aris whipped his leg to the side with crushing force.

His heel slammed into the side of the knee of the soldier a half step behind him.

He collapsed.

Aris used his tied hands to trap the man’s head and slammed his knee into the man’s face, then drove his hand downward, retrieving the knife that the man hadn’t had time to draw and slammed it into his guards throat.

The man was in less than the space of ten heartbeats.

At the same time Kestrel and Wallace threw themselves forward, slamming their bodies into the two guards who swinging their blades to pierce Aris with.

The bodies were driven into the wall by the powerful shoulder slams from the two men. Wallace’s military experience showed and he immediately drove a knee into his guard’s sternum, then stepped close to the crouching body and slipped the rope that tied his hands together under the man’s chin, twisted, using his back as a lever and snapped the neck of the suffocating man.

Kestrel kicked the instep of the guard in front of him, making him lose his footing and raised his leg into an axe kick that landed on the back of the mans neck.

Kestrel stomped on the neck once more to make sure the man wouldn’t get up again.

Kestrel, finding a split second of rest, raised his eyes to where he’d last seen Edrian Wolls.

He had grabbed Sephira and he turned and fled, a knife stuck to the side of her neck.

Coward!

He needed to die!

Kestrel’s eyes shifted back towards Aris.

He’d somehow sliced off the ropes that had bound him and sent the knife that was still covered in the blood of his first victim sailing through the air at the same time as the visions of torture slammed agains them with the force of an avalanche.

Kestrel could barely focus through the mental agony, but he saw the knife find its home in Edrian Wolls’ thigh. He cried and stumbled, but his blade still stuck to the bound Sephira’s neck.

Before Kestrel’s vision could return to their fight, Aris was at his side and his hands were free from the rough bindings.

Kestrel didn’t hesitate as he ran towards where he’d seen Edrian fall. Pain and terror from the Inquisitor’s visions ran through every vein in his body but he wouldn’t let that stop him. That weasel couldn’t be allowed to get away.

He was a parasite and Vealand needed to be rid of him.

****

Wallace’s instincts took over. His body was old, it didn’t move like it once had, but the decades of drilling and years spent on the battlefield steered his body without him needing to think.

Aris had freed his hands and he had retrieved the blade from the man whom he’d killed.

A duo of fighters came after him, the taller one who was hanging back was an Inquisitor. The visions of the hell that he had been raised in assaulted Wallace’s mind.

He welcomed the memories.

They gave him targets.

The smaller of the two who the old soldier was keeping at bay with expertly placed swipes of his knife must have been a Forgotten then.

At that man’s touch, he or Aris could lose whole swaths of his life.

The Forgotten lunged at him. He sidestepped and reversed his grip on his knife. Before the Forgotten could escape, Wallace’s backhanded swing of the blade parted the flesh on the Forgotten’s back and collapsed the man’s lung, piercing through bone.

The man fell with the knife still in his back.

Another wave a visions slammed against Wallace.

This one even more intense than the first one. Again he welcomed it. He’d been through hell itself and back again countless times. He still had marks from the abuse from his mother had given him.

He’d seen men being burned alive.

He’d tasted the smoke from the burning of their flesh on his tongue.

He’d seen his companions torn apart at the hands of monsters that would cause men to quake in their boots and soil themselves.

The Inquisitors were doing his job for them. They were giving him targets to aim at. Each memory of torture showed him a soft spot, showed him a weakness that he could exploit.

He welcomed the visions. The tortures that these monsters delighted in sharing would be their downfall.

Wallace had failed Aris before when he’d been too much of a coward to support his brother and Van had died for it.

He wasn’t about to fail Aris now.

He was a coward, but he could redeem himself.

He would not be a coward anymore!

He would’t let fear control him anymore!

Wallace waded into the middle of the crowd and he danced a dance of death.

He looked a man twenty years younger than he was.

One Inquisitor had bad knees. Wallace shifted, dropping levels and lunged at the man’s legs. His blade sliced through the Inquistor’s tendons, severing them.

The knife found its home in the armpit of another.

Metalvines slammed into him and knives scored his skin, but he didn’t care.

He was death incarnate to these men.

They fell at his touch. He was a whirl of blades and metalvines. Each touch of his weapons maimed, incapacitated, and killed.

****

Aris bobbed under the grasping arms of a Forgotten.

He stabbed his blade into the meat above the man’s knee as he dove away from him.

The Forgotten fell to the ground in anguish.

Aris used the momentum of his dive and turned it into a roll that he used to propel himself into a double leg takedown of the man in front of him.

The Inquisitor’s skull slammed into the granite floor with a resounding crack. Aris grabbed the man’s face with both his hands and drove the skull into the ground once, twice, three more times until he saw bone fragments in the blood.

He moved on to the next man.

*****

Kestrel chased after Edrian Wolls, intent on killing the man who was the source of his agony.

He was the one who had ordered the murder of Cillia.

The man who was holding the woman he loved hostage.

He was the man who commanded the Inquisitors who had nearly killed him and Sephira.

He was the one who was responsible for the attack on Aris’ compound.

Kestrel was going to put the man down. He would rid the world of this monster.

A wall of Memory Mages blocked him.

Memories of having his nails torn off and then having salt poured on the open wound overwhelmed him at the same time as memories of being stretched on the rack until his muscles could no longer take the strain, only to be brought to a skilled healer and have the actions repeated over and over infected his mind.