Chapter XIII

“Each day I left a new rose on her doorstep, with a new note comparing her beauty to something I'd seen. One time it was a calm stream, with the sunlight sparkling on the water. Another time I compared her to the way the sun lights up the Firmament in the early hours of the morning. Yet another time I had a long letter written about the way the mountains looked as the snow was slowly melting and you could see the green of the grass and the forest peering through.”

“And all the while she had no idea it was you?”

“That's what I thought, but she'd noticed that I was growing rose bushes in my backyard, and that each time she received a rose my rose bushes got just a little bit smaller. This went on for weeks before finally I came out and told her I was the admirer who had been leaving the roses, and in turn she told me that she knew, but didn't want to tell me because I'd be likely to stop.”

“And now that you're married?”

“Now I keep a flower garden in the front yard, and pay servants to tend to it when I'm traveling, so that every day she has flowers, ones that don't die in vases.”

“Good story, Omar,” Kamal, the geomancer, said. “What about you, your majesty? What's an interesting story from your courtship with the Queen?”

It had been a long trip. Not just because of the distance and the rocky terrain they had to cross, but because of the conversations as well. All of the paladins were telling stories about their lives, more specifically stories about how they courted their wives, fiances, and past lovers. Most of the stories were sentimental, but a few got somewhat risqué. Hadar didn't mind listening to some of the stories so much, but they kept prodding him for love stories of his own. Hadar had no stories to tell, not a single one, and even if he had he couldn't tell them. The only ones who knew about his sexual proclivities were Milo and Sarahi, and he intended to keep that secret for the sake of his kingdom.

Each time they asked him for a story he tried to wave it away. Sometimes he'd make a very vague innuendo to make them laugh. Sometimes he'd tell them a story about Milo and Sarahi's subtle flirtations over the years, but tell the story as if it were he, not Milo, who was flirting with Sarahi. Other times he simply told them he had nothing interesting to say. Every time it was a cruel reminder of the fact that he had no one, and every time he feared more and more that they would realize he was deceiving them all. It wasn't that they'd hate him for it, the Agalmite faith, unlike the Inquisition, had no problems with men who preferred the company of other men or women who preferred the company of other women. Still, for a king to have such inclinations was less than advantageous. Many times in Arx's history, if a king was found to be infertile or otherwise unable to produce heirs he was replaced by a brother, a sister, or a cousin just to keep the bloodline going. Hadar would have loved to just say “Hang the bloodline! And the traditions!” but even he, as King, had no power to do that, and it was those very traditions that held the nation of Arx together. Tradition brought the Council to anoint the new King generation after generation. Tradition had stopped the near civil-war that would have erupted to fill the vacuum of power when King Amasi, his brother, died.

Countess Ezra's castle was not far from the village of Wustung, which, when Hadar and his entourage arrived, had tents pitched in between all the houses. Those who had escaped the castle during the attack had fled to Wustung, and the tents there belonged to the refugees. The village militia and castle guards had erected a barricade between the village and the castle, and were standing watch constantly, with the village's sole priest and sole paladin standing with them.

“Greetings,” Hadar called out to them. “Has there been any stirring from the castle?”

“Not for days,” the priest said. “The sounds of fighting and screaming died off a while ago, which has allowed the villagers to sleep better at night but has certainly kept me awake.”

“Are you here to retake the castle?” the village's paladin asked. “Do you need our aid?”

“I need you to continue guarding this village as you have, all of you. If anything goes wrong and we don't return within two days' time we want you to evacuate the village immediately, take them to the capital, it's the most defensible city. Also, if it comes to that, take a message to my queen. Tell her to bombard the castle with catapults until it crumbles. If we fail here there’s no hope of reclaiming the castle anymore.” Hadar rode up and patted the paladin's shoulder. “You've done very well keeping them safe so far, I congratulate you.” Hadar turned his eyes to the militia-men, priest, and castle guards as well. “All of you. Your courage is commendable.”

“Sire,” Kamal said. “If I may, we might want to discuss our plan of attack. We have a small force and a rather daunting task ahead of us.”

“I agree,” Hadar said. “Let's discuss strategy in the temple.”

Minutes later all of them met in the temple, the golems they'd taken with them standing with at the barricade with the militia-men for the time being.

Zepho, the eldest paladin, spoke first, “Our castles are built to defend us against foreign invaders; the people of Nihilus, Subra, or the western city-states. Using geomancy we're able to make our castles nigh impenetrable, and with geomancers present we can even repair the walls during a siege, in seconds, should they be damaged. However, if our fortresses fall under the control of those who don't have geomancers that advantage disappears.”

“Agreed,” Kamal said. “As I said, we have a small force, but I can manipulate stone, and we're going into a castle that's made of granite bricks. Once we're inside, even though we'll be outnumbered, we'll have a huge advantage.”

“Very true,” Hadar said. “Kamal, I'm sure that with your magic you can easily get us across the moat and through the walls, but I suggest we do so under the cover of darkness, otherwise they'll rain arrows on us the whole way in. Demons can see in the dark, but their thralls still have difficulty with that, and it's the demons' thralls we have to worry about.”

“So, wait until nightfall and then we sneak in and kill every demon we see. Shouldn't be too hard,” Omar, a paladin of Subran descent, said.

“There is one other thing...” Hadar sighed and scratched his head. “I know that at Caelum whenever they teach tactics of how to deal with a situation like this they encourage paladins to treat the demons' thralls as already dead, and to not hesitate to kill them if they get in the way.”

“That's what the professors say, yes,” Magdiel, the youngest paladin present, said. “Cut through them if you have to. If you don't they'll kill you and then you'll never stop the demon behind them.”

“Well...I would prefer if we kept such casualties to a minimum,” Hadar said.

Had any other paladin suggested this all of them would have told him he was an idiot and dismissed his strategy as suicide, but this was the King of Arx, none of them were about to tell the King who'd been anointed by Arch-Bishop Absolom that he was a fool. “Sire,” Kamal began. “You are aware that going out of our way to avoid killing the thralls may cost us our lives?”

“The battle may already cost us our lives,” Hadar said. “What's one more risk, especially for such a righteous cause as saving as many lives as we can? If we kill the seekers then the thralls become human again, and they're free of the demons' control.”

“So we are to what...scare them off?” Zoltan asked. “Shall we shout harsh language at them?” This was certainly bolder and ruder than any of the others present were prepared to be, and coming from Zoltan it was particularly odd, since he was known to be a very compassionate soul. If any of them were likely to agree with his plan Hadar would have thought it would be Zoltan.

“Strike them with sheathed swords or with your shields. Aim for the legs or the arms rather than their hearts or heads,” Hadar said. “Injure them if you must, but only kill them if you feel you truly have no other choice. Broken bones can be reset, bruises can be healed, and cuts can be stitched, but if any of them die...there's no coming back from that.”

“Understood,” Zepho said, implying in his tone that he spoke for all of the other paladins present. He gave them all a look that told them that they needed to respect the King's wishes, even though the risk was great. Many of them silently shook their heads, or sighed in defeat, not liking the way the situation looked. Paladins weren't exactly taught non-lethal tactics. It was far more difficult to win a battle while pulling punches.

When night fell the twelve of them and their three golems snuck up on the back wall of Countess Ezra's castle. They used the cover of trees whenever they could, but otherwise simply tried to be as quiet as they could. Even in the darkness of night, if someone were to look over the battlements in their direction they'd see them, so it was important that they make no noise so as not to draw any attention.

When they got to the moat, Kamal started quietly using his magic to pull small grains of dirt and sand up from under the water and form a strong, cement-like bridge for them to cross. Since they were trying to remain quiet, he had to do this slowly, and the process dragged on for fifteen minutes. All the while Magdiel kept his longbow trained on the battlements, watching for thralls to appear. Fortunately no one spotted them while Kamal built this bridge, and they soon crossed it and walked up to the back wall of the castle.

Just as carefully as Kamal had built his bridge he used his magic to remove bricks from the wall, one at a time, each one sliding out. There was a sound of the mortar between the bricks cracking, which all the paladins feared would give them away. Soon Kamal had pulled out enough bricks so that there was a hole just big enough for each of them to squeeze through, single file.

Almost immediately after they'd entered they found themselves behind a thrall, with the eyes on the back of its neck staring at them. Kamal waved his hand and a stone from the ground bashed the thrall over the head. The thrall hit the ground unconscious. All of the paladins cringed as they heard the sound of the body’s thump on the ground. Still, though, it didn’t seem as if anyone had heard the noise.

“We have to track the demons,” Hadar said. “Give me a moment.” Hadar knelt on the floor. “Holy Creator, help me to find the unholy abominations from the Void that have invaded this place.” Hadar closed his eyes for a few moments as visions filled his head of where the demons could be found. “There's one in the throne room, very well-guarded, one in the barracks, and one in the north tower.”

“Only three Seekers are responsible for all this?” Omar said in disbelief.

“Element of surprise,” Zepho reminded him. “Which we won't have much longer if you don't keep your voice down.”

“What I want to know is how we're going to keep the element of surprise with these golems following us,” Magdiel whispered. “They weigh a ton and their feet are made of stone. Any step they take on a hard floor is bound to give them away.”

“They'll wait here,” Hadar said. “If the alarm is sounded then we'll call for their aid.”

The twelve of them moved silently through the halls of the castle, with Magdiel and Kamal at the front of the line. Whenever they saw a thrall coming around a corner Kamal clubbed the thrall over the head with a stone. Each time he knocked a thrall out he knew he was taking a risk that the stone did enough brain damage to kill them, but he was being as merciful and careful as he could. Their first target was the most difficult of them, the demon that occupied the throne room.

When they got to the door they knew their sneaking around had come to an end. As Hadar said, the demon in the throne room was heavily guarded, so it'd be impossible to keep the element of surprise while slaying said demon. Berne worked his way up to the front of the line, his great war-hammer drawn, and he threw his body through the door. All of the paladins rushed in the room after him.

Immediately the thralls inside all drew their swords and knives and rushed at the paladins. Berne swung his maul low. He took out the thralls’ legs from under them and swept them aside. Hadar rushed in shield first, pushing the thralls back as he struck them with it. Magdiel aimed his arrows carefully and shot thralls in the shoulders or legs to keep them from attacking his allies. The paladins were drastically outnumbered in that room, but they pushed in as hard and fast as they could. They knew that most of those they struck would never walk again, even with healing, but it was better than killing them. At least that's what Hadar argued.

In the far end of the room was the seeker. It was a large, round demon with many long, spindly arms reaching out in every direction, one big eye and several smaller ones all over. Hadar pushed his way through the thralls. Knives and swords clanged against his shield and his armor, and he swung out his long-sword at the demon. The demon reached out at Hadar with its clawed fingers, trying to touch his skin and turn him into a thrall as well, but Hadar severed the demon's hands as it drew close. One of Magdiel's arrows struck the demon in the eye and Hadar pierced its body with his blade. As the demon shrieked and died all of its thralls fell on the ground. They writhed and groaned as the eyes all over their bodies faded away and they turned back into human beings.

“Zoltan,” Hadar called out.

“Yes, sire?”

“Stay here for now. Do your best to heal all these people. With any luck none of them will die of their wounds.”

Zoltan looked around at all of the injured people in the room, some of them bleeding profusely from their shattered legs, bones protruding through their skin. “You have a rather optimistic appraisal of my abilities.” Zoltan immediately began doing what he could to reset the broken bones. He muttered healing spells to help close the wounds.

“Are you certain you don't want to take Zoltan with us?” asked Omar. “To heal us if we get wounded?”

“We can defend ourselves,” Hadar said. “These people are already injured. Besides, I’m a gifted healer myself.”

“Well, we've lost surprise,” Kamal said. “It's going to get much more difficult from here. I'll call for the golems' aid.” The golems could be called with a simple spell that every geomancer, priest, and paladin knew.

“Yes,” Hadar nodded to him. “We'll be going to the barracks next. Since they definitely know we're here we'll have to charge there as quickly as we can.”

The paladins burst out of the throne room and charged into the hundreds of thralls blocking the hallways. Soon it didn't matter where the paladins aimed their weapons, those who got in their way would certainly die, because as they knocked their assailants down they then had to tread upon them in order to continue on. Those who fell, though they fell of non-lethal wounds, were soon trampled to death by men in heavy steel armor. Hadar in particular tried to step carefully, but soon found that his plan to kill as few of the thralls as possible may have been deeply flawed from the start, and a part of him wondered if in some cases it might have been more merciful to merely behead them, giving them quicker and more humane deaths.

Fighting their way through the spiral staircases leading up to the barracks was even more difficult. The staircases were built specifically so that those up higher had the advantage, more space on their right sides to draw their swords and swing their arms. Worse yet, the ground was difficult to tread because of the bodies of the fallen thralls spilled all over the steps.

Fallon, a paladin born of Nihilus immigrants, was most unfortunate, and while trying to step over one of the bodies on the stairs he tripped and fell back down the stairs. Since he was at the back of the line there was no one else to catch him, and he fell all the way to the bottom. The weight of his own armor crushed his bones at the bottom of the stairs. Once down there, unable to move, he was an easy target for a large group of thralls who beat him with hammers and clubs, and stabbed through the joints of his armor.

Hadar heard the sound of Fallon's armor sliding down the flight of stairs and turned to see what happened. When he saw Fallon's body disappear around the corner he shouted, “Fallon! No!” and immediately tried to go back for him.

“Stay the course!” Zepho shouted at Hadar, pushing him forward. “He's gone!”

“You don't know that! he might have survived!”

Zepho shoved Hadar forward hard, nearly causing him to trip on the stairs too. “If we don't work quickly none of us will survive this!”

Soon after that they'd all arrived in the barracks, minus Fallon and Zoltan. They saw the demon floating in the center of the room, with many of the castle's guards, now its thralls, standing around it. The thralls’ tower shields were at the ready. Magdiel immediately loosed arrows from his long bow. He was trying to hit the demon, but the guards raised their shields in the demon's defense. The diamond-tipped arrows were sharp and hard enough to pierce the steel tower shields, but the shafts broke and the arrows never made it to the seeker.

Kamal waved his hands over the ground and the stone tiles under the guards crumbled underneath them, causing them all to come crashing to the ground on the floor below. Berne took the opportunity to charge the demon. He leaped over the hole in the floor and brought his maul down. The seeker, however, saw Berne's attack coming and managed to get out of the way and touch his face with one of its many hands.

Within seconds, eyes began to appear on the back of Berne's neck. He'd become a thrall of the demon. He turned toward his companions and charged at them. His maul roared through the air as he assaulted his comrades. Magdiel fired two arrows into Berne's shoulders, but this barely seemed to faze him, and he brought his maul down on Zevi. Zevi raised his shield to defend himself, but the force of the maul was so great that his arm easily broke and he fell to the ground. While Zevi was on the ground Berne brought his maul down on his head.

With now two companions down and a third turning on his own allies Hadar was beginning to doubt that he was ever the right man to lead this attack. He remembered the words of Professor Zuriel at Caelum Academy, the way he'd criticized Hadar and his friends for employing strictly defensive strategies during the training exercises. He'd said that in order to defeat true demons he'd have to be much more aggressive. When Hadar saw Zepho drive his sword through the demon's body, freeing Berne of its control, he felt that perhaps he should have asked Zepho, the senior paladin, to take charge instead of trying to play the leader himself.

“Sire, wake up!” Zepho shouted at Hadar. “Stop daydreaming! We have one more demon to slay!”

“Right! Sorry, sir,” Hadar said. He'd not meant to address Zepho as if he was the one in charge there; the words just came out that way. So natural it was to take orders from the senior paladin, obviously the stronger leader here.

From the barracks the north tower was up another flight of stairs. This staircase, surprisingly, was unguarded, and the paladins had a much easier time scaling that one.

Down below, Zoltan continued to heal all of the civilians he could. It was clear, though, that not all of them could be saved, and some of them had even died before Zoltan could get to them. Then the door of the throne room opened and in walked dozens of other thralls, weapons in their hands, and all of their eyes glaring at Zoltan. For a moment Zoltan considered lying on the ground and pretending that he was just one more corpse in the room, but he knew that they'd be far too smart to fall for that trick. There were far too many of them for him to stand against on his own, but even knowing this he picked up his diamond mace and his shield, prepared to defend himself and the survivors to the last moment.

As the thralls charged at him Zoltan silently recalled one of his favorite passages from the Sacred Scriptures, the words of the prophet Roi. “The greatest virtues are compassion, temperance, wisdom, and justice, and among these the most important is compassion. One with great wisdom but no compassion becomes cunning, using that wisdom for ill. One with a great sense of justice but no compassion can become a merciless executioner, one with no sense of forgiveness. One with great temperance but no compassion may keep control of himself, but do nothing to help others. Compassion is what truly keeps men from becoming evil, compassion is the greatest of all virtues, and the most compassionate souls are the ones who will be hailed as the greatest heroes in Heaven.”

Because of that passage, Zoltan had always striven to show as much compassion as he could to all he met. It was why he had focused on learning to be a healer more than being a warrior. And while it was the reason why he would die here in Countess Ezra's throne room, it was also the reason the crowds would cheer as he entered the halls of Heaven.

The thralls of the demon struck him with their swords, and he struck back with his mace and his shield, frantically trying to injure as many of them as he could before they brought him down. Keeping the civilians he was defending in mind to granted him greater strength, but the thralls soon brought him down. Their swords pierced the weak points of his armor, and he collapsed onto the ground.

When the other paladins finally made it to the north tower the golems finally joined them there. The demon they sought was waiting for them, along with two humans, a man and a woman, who did not appear to be its thralls, but nonetheless stood with it. In an instant Hadar knew who and what they were. “You're the ones responsible for this! Damned warlocks! Are you proud of what you've done? Are you proud of this madness?”

“Why yes,” the woman said. “We've drawn the attention of the King of Arx himself, and soon he'll be a thrall of the daemon too.”

“The fool God you idolaters worship will soon die,” the man said. “Prunikos has blessed this generation of Nihilites with victory and freedom. That is her promise.”

“Don't listen to them!” Zepho shouted, “Silence them! Send them to meet the demons they so love!”

Just as all of the paladins charged at the witch and warlock, the two of them began to chant and soon the room was filled with copper-colored locusts with the faces of men and tails like scorpions. The locusts swarmed around the paladins. The paladins in turn swung their weapons wildly, trying to knock the tiny insect-like demons out of the air. The locust demons stung whatever exposed skin they could find on the paladins, injecting a poison into their bloodstream that made them light-headed and weak. The golems swung their over-sized hands around and swatted locust demons out of the air. Kamal reached into a small pouch tied to his belt and held up a handful of tiny, sharp diamonds. He tossed them into the air and the diamonds began to fly about, striking the locust demons.

While Hadar was distracted by the locusts, the seeker came up behind him and touched the back of his head, turning him into a thrall. In all the confusion Hadar stabbed two other paladins before Kamal saw what was happening and realized he had to do something quickly. Kamal redirected all of the tiny, sharp diamonds at the seeker and tore its body to pieces. Magdiel shot both the witch and the warlock full of arrows, and the locust demons disappeared now that their conjurers were dead.

Once the demon was dead Hadar's humanity returned to him, but the memory of the looks on Achava and Adem's faces as he took their lives was one that would never go away. He was not to blame for what happened to them, he knew that. He was under the control of the seeker, but no matter how many times he told himself that the guilt simply wouldn't go away.

With the demons dead the paladins could focus on their search for survivors. They soon found Countess Ezra, still alive, and free of the demons' influence. They also found, however, that Zoltan had been killed defending those Hadar had asked him to heal, and that all those whom he had healed had then been killed by the demon's thralls.

Almost half of the people living in the castle had died, as had five of the paladins who'd gone into the castle with Hadar, so when the King and the remaining paladins returned to Wustung village to the sound of the villagers cheering them on as heroes Hadar couldn't bring himself to feel victorious. The villagers of Wustung saw it as a victory because they'd saved Countess Ezra, defeated the demons, and liberated the castle, but to Hadar the battle was nothing more than a disaster, and these so-called victories were just examples of how he'd managed to make the disaster slightly less terrible than it could have been.

In his childhood Hadar had read stories of brave knights going off to fight in war, and the glory they had in chivalrous combat. The stories told of how these knights won battles and came home as heroes. Hadar was sure now that the stories were pure myths. Battles weren't something one could win, they were terrible events that happened, like wildfires or tornadoes, and those who fought in them were only there to limit the damage done.

The remaining paladins and geomancer started their long journey back to the capital together, most of them congratulating each other and talking about what a success it was, but after what they'd seen Hadar and Magdiel were totally silent for the whole trip.

Even Zepho patted Hadar on the shoulder and said, “You liberated the castle! Great work!”

“Thank you.” It was a hollow thanks. Hadar didn’t feel he’d done anything right there. He was not so accustomed to losing comrades as Zepho must have been.

Hadar knew that when he returned to the capital this affair wouldn't be over for him, because he'd have to write letters to the families of those paladins who'd fallen in the battle. He’d have to apologize to them that he couldn't keep them safe, praise their fallen loved ones for their courage, and offer what money he could to compensate them for their losses. It would feel like the money he sent was a way of saying, “Here's what his life was worth.” He'd have to attend the funerals of each of these brave men, and see the crying faces of their family members. Worst of all would be facing the families of Achava and Adem, knowing that it was on his sword that they'd lost their lives.