“Well?” Alere asked, urgency creeping into his voice.
Darius took a deep, shuddering breath. There was no easy choice to be made, no simple solution to be found. So much of him wanted to abandon the region; to let those who wronged him despair while he sought pastures anew.
Something about that warmed his hardened heart, which he thought impossible after the hell they endured in Valga. He could already taste the warm coastal air of northern Estrana; already imagined what it might feel like to walk on earth unblemished by war and division. Yet amid these visions of liberation crept a voice Darius couldn’t shun. Words that had clawed at him since his return from the Frosty Peaks:
“The destiny of this region rests in your hands. Fail to heed this call, fail to rebuild bridges that have long been burnt from betrayal, and entire generations will perish.”
It was a damning prophecy, and one he wished he could scrub from his memory. Darius ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled sharply as the weight of two impossible choices pressed down on him like a mountain of stone.
If Alere was right, and the foretelling was merely the ramblings of a madman, he would simply be marching to his death. But if it turned out the seer had been correct, then fleeing Estos meant the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children who played no hand in his downfall. Could he live with that?
He wasn’t sure. He may be a hardened criminal—a thief, a murderer—but somewhere deep within still beat a man’s pulse. Still lay the desire to protect, opposed to plunder.
“I’ve made my decision,” Darius said.
Alere stood to attention, his throat bulging with anticipation.
“I shall ride south and answer the prophecy. It might be the maddest thing I ever do, but it beats a lifetime of sleepless nights.”
All that met his ears was one of the many leaks in the lair. Plink… Plink… Plink. The silence—the suspense—made his stomach lurch.
“Then I’ll join you,” Alere replied with a straight face.
Darius almost fell forward in relief. For longer than he wanted to admit, he feared he’d tread this path alone. He was prepared to do it if he had to. After all, he had overcome the dangers of the Forbidden Forest and survived for ten summers in a kingdom that would gladly gut his kind. The gods’ own luck, it seemed, had been on his side. But he wasn’t foolish enough to believe it would last.
Amid his relief, something creaked by the doorway. Jangar. His broad frame cast a long shadow across the empty beds, stealing the air from the room. “Vresha was right all along,” he said. “‘Son of King Robick… Ride south to answer some blimmin’ prophecy,’” he scoffed. “How could I have been so blind? Maybe that’s why the gods cursed me with one eye. You were never a lost drifter… you lying snake!”
Darius ignored Alere’s worried glances. Rather than cower, he tucked his shoulders back and turned to the man he had fought hard to shield this secret from. “It’s true. I am Darius Rarkez, son of King Robick—not the Vlencian wanderer I claimed to be. I was exiled by my father ten summers ago for a crime I didn’t commit, thanks to a brother I thought I could trust. You believed my story, and that spared my life.”
Jangar sneered and launched a ball of phlegm onto the flagstone. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t cleave you in half.”
“Because it would be the last thing you do.” Alere drew his bow.
A ghost of a smile stretched across the big man’s face, cold and filled with disdain. “Ah, so you DO have a pair of bollocks between those sticks you call legs. Then you can both meet the gods arm in arm.”
Darius unsheathed his sword, which failed to glisten in the dim light. He lost count of how many lives it had taken, and yet despite their differences, he didn’t want to add Jangar’s to it. “Doesn’t need to end this way.”
“Too late for that, tittling.” Jangar yanked his axe free. “You’ve made a mockery of me for too long—but no more!”
“Don’t do it.” Alere pulled back his bowstring. “We’re stronger as a group.”
Jangar charged towards Alere when the muffled cries of distant hounds halted him. A second too soon and he would be lying on the ground with an arrow between the eyes. Darius twisted his neck in all directions to discern where they were coming from. Too hard to tell. The barking was far too chaotic and numerous to get a proper gauge.
“Strays?” Alere asked, but going by the flat edge in his voice, even he knew the answer to that.
“No.” Darius shook his head. “When have you known a pack of feral dogs to roam these parts? This is bloodwolf territory.”
“There are dozens of them.” Alere lowered his bow.
“Hellhands.” Jangar’s axe fell to his side.
“They must have picked up our trail.”
Darius sheathed his sword. “That might explain why the bloodwolves fled yesterday. We have to leave. Now.”
“We?” Jangar growled.
Darius began packing furs, flint and steel, and other essentials he could scoop into his satchel. “There will be a time for us to kill each other, Jangar. This isn’t it.”
The former guild leader grumbled as his meaty fingers flexed and squeezed the haft. With a curse under his breath, he stormed into the corridor, leaving behind a cloud of frustration.
Alere slung his bow onto his back and moved around the lair with his bag, filling it with waterskins and rations. When Darius returned to the living area, thunderous hooves now accompanied the barking. The Hellhands were close. It wouldn’t be long before their steel boots kicked down the door, and they unleashed the wrath of King Jefor.
When Jangar joined them, he carried a plump satchel and an attitude that left no doubt about whom he had contempt for. He flitted between them. “Well? What are you two wet nurses waiting for?”
“We cannot leave through the main entrance. It’s too late,” Alere declared. “They will be upon us before we can taste the winter air.”
After a tense silence, Jangar spoke with barely contained hatred. “There’s another way out. But considering your lies, I’m not sure I want to help.”
“Either we escape together or die together,” Darius said plainly. “There is no third option.”
Jangar’s jaw clenched and unclenched as his narrowed eye darted between him and Alere, nostrils flaring. Placing the satchel over his shoulders, he gave one stiff nod for them to follow as he turned out of the living area.
Darius glanced at Alere as loose bits of rock rained down from the cavernous ceiling. He glimpsed at the shrouded steps that led in and out of the ruin, his mind painting a thousand ways they might die if they didn’t move fast. And if there was one place he refused to take his last breath, it was in this dump.
They followed Jangar through the corridor and into his private quarters, finding him kneeling by the far corner. Two dull candles protected the room from total blackout while he struggled to budge an object.
“Help me move this!” he huffed, manoeuvring his frame around to reveal a boulder. The rock wasn’t all that large, but it promised a challenge. Darius dropped his bag and rushed over to assist. He gripped the other side while Alere kept watch in the hallway. “When I count to three,” Jangar breathed, “we pull.”
“Sounds familiar,” Darius said, his mind cast to their Valga escape.
“One… two… heave!”
Together, they strained until their veins bulged. The rock resisted, then finally gave way, rolling forward and nearly crushing their toes in spite. Darius peered into the jagged hole that stared back at them, wondering how in the seven hells they were going to fit through it.
“Where does it lead?” he asked.
“Out of here.”
“How long is—”
“Do you want to fucking live or not?” Jangar snarled, revealing rows of crooked teeth stacked on top of each other like crowded tombstones. “Alere! You’re up first.”
The archer peered around the corner, his bow still poised. “Why not you?”
“Because if Jefor’s goons are up there waiting, I want to see them lop off your heads before they take mine. Now move, or I’ll throw your scrawny arse in there myself!”
The commotion outside intensified. Darius heard muffled calls for surrender and knew there was no more time for questions—no more room for doubt. He gestured for Alere to heed the big man’s order and watched as Alere crept beside the gaping hole.
He glanced at Darius, then heaved his satchel into the narrow tunnel and crawled through the tight space toward what Darius hoped was their salvation. After a few prolonged grunts, his boots melted into the inky blackness, but he took none of the lingering tension with him.
Darius started to suspect that Jangar wanted Alere to lead the way so he could have a fair crack at the Vlencian. It wouldn’t be the first time the big man plotted and schemed. He remembered when Jangar lured him, Alere, and Bjolan to a house he had no intention of looting.
They were told it was the property of a general enriched by years of corrupt spoils. Guild members often referred to these types of raids as ‘noble misdeeds,’ though Darius knew it was merely an excuse to plunder without sin.
However, when they arrived to find a modest cottage surrounded by wheat fields, Darius sensed something was off. Not least when he peeked through the foggy windows to see an elderly couple inside.
The old man, grey-haired and stooped, sat by a flickering hearth while his wife bustled about preparing tea, oblivious to the intruders in their home. Darius always remembered the way Jangar’s face hardened. It was as if he had been transported to a dark period in his life. When the old man caught their scent, Jangar moved like lightning.
His massive hand grabbed the man’s throat, slamming him against the stone wall. The wife screamed—a godawful shriek Darius could still recall to this day.
“You’re the one,” Jangar growled. “You killed my parents. Took my eye.”
The old man fought with a fighter’s instinct that hadn’t quite faded, but age and Jangar’s strength proved too overwhelming. He grabbed the general’s head and pounded it against the wall until blood and matter decorated the stone.
Never would Darius forget the crazed look in his pupil. He had descended into the darkest depths of lunacy; an animal that needed putting down. When he faced the man’s wife, her screams turned to desperate pleas. Before Darius and Alere could intervene, her cries were quickly silenced by a swing of his axe. When Bjolan demanded an explanation, Jangar’s response was chillingly simple:
“Revenge.”
Darius scanned Jangar’s features once more for any hint of the deception he showed on that day. When he reached for something—his axe? The dagger in his sword belt?—Darius’s fingers slipped to the hilt of his weapon, ready to send the man into the Void if his leather so much as creaked.
“Here, take this. I can’t push that and my axe at the same time.” Jangar chucked his satchel.
Darius caught the pouch and released his grip on the sword in one swift motion. The bastard. He almost started a fight that they had no chance of finishing. He studied the satchel and swept the private chamber a final time, knowing this would be his last memory of this dank hole he called home for ten long summers.
With a steady breath, he tossed both his and Jangar’s bags into the opening and crawled into the damp space. The first thing to hit him was the drop in temperature and the waft of wet earth. It only compounded his desire to get out of the burrow as quickly as possible.
Putting one elbow in front of the other, he inched forward as soil and blunt rock pressed in from all corners. Visions of the Hellhands storming the quarters with their mutts played before his eyes. Must… hurry.
The deeper he travelled, the colder and wetter the conditions became—which he didn’t think was possible. It was as if he was crawling into the stomach of a beast, for each intake of air sounded like a distant growl.
He looked ahead but couldn’t see Alere. Not even the faintest outline of a boot. He could hear him, though. Struggling, panting.
“Is everything alright up there?” Darius asked, the damp clawing at his throat. He thought he heard a ‘yes’, but wasn’t totally sure.
The burrow had no light, no space to turn, and only one point of direction. Darius half-anticipated Jangar might seal the tunnel behind with that boulder and leave them to rot inside if it weren’t for the Hellhands. He imagined the brute would draw immense satisfaction from it.
Darius squeezed forward, ignoring the serrated edges that bore into his forearms. When the passage narrowed and took on a steep incline, that was when he could no longer hold back the panic.
First, his chest tightened. Then beads of sweat trickled down his face. Every instinct urged him to stand and push away the muddy walls that were slowly suffocating him, slowly squeezing the life out of him. When his vision began to swim, a shaft of light shone up ahead.
“I found it,” Alere called out.
Through bleary eyes, Darius watched Alere’s silhouette scramble towards the daylight. The sight reinvigorated him. He crawled forward with renewed spirit, every movement sending pain and relief in equal measure.
The sun almost blinded him when he craned his head up to see swaying branches and clouds moving with an indifferent grace.
“You look as if you’ve seen a nightraven, brother.” Alere took the satchels and extended a hand to him.
“I feel like I’ve seen a hundred of them.”
Darius lifted himself onto the greenery, where he collapsed to catch his breath. By the time he sat up, Alere had already pulled Jangar out of the tunnel, which surprised Darius. A lot. He figured the brute was too large to squeeze through such a tight gap, let alone reach the other end at such speed.
Jangar’s cuirass was muddied and grazed, much like his own. Without uttering a word, he snatched the satchel from Alere’s grip and closed the grassy lid with a swift kick. Ahead of Darius sat a mound that obstructed their view of the neighing horses and frenzied hounds below.
They each crawled to the edge and parted the tall grass with their fingers. Darius counted twelve—no, fourteen riders—each astride armoured steeds that pawed at the ground. Sunlight glinted off the mounted Hellhands, their breastplates and helms blazing like fire in the afternoon light.
Through gaps in their helmets, he glimpsed women among their ranks, but their eyes held none of a woman’s warmth. Only a cold determination, tempered by years of training in the barracks.
Running around them was a sea of hounds that made the ruin seem alive with fur and docked tails. He watched each mutt follow an invisible trail with growing unease, knowing it would eventually lead to them.
“Surrender or die!” the commanding knight called from his stallion. His helmet was fashioned with two feathers and a design that left no question as to who he was. “You have nowhere to run!”
“The bastard!” Jangar muttered. “He’ll pay for what he did to Vresha—and Philyp.”
After several pauses, and with no yielding in sight, the commander nodded at his battalion. “Have it your way. Hellhands… spare no one!”
With perfect obedience, all but a pair of knights dismounted their horses and stormed the lair. The reinforced door—a pathetic barrier by any measure—splintered beneath their assault.
“Now what?” Alere whispered.
“We cannot flee on foot. They will track us down in no time.” Darius scrutinised the commander and the two warriors saddled beside him.
“Don’t tell me what I fear you’re thinking.”
“What other choice do we have?” Darius said.
“These aren’t ordinary knights.”
“And I’m no ordinary man. I am a trained Crimson Guard.”
Jangar craned his neck over. “Another one of your secrets, eh, tittling?”
Darius ignored the remark. “We need horses if we want to live beyond sunset.”
“But I only have six arrows left in my quiver.”
“Then make them count.”
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