B008P7JX7Q EBOK (35 page)

Michael turned to look at him, and Alexis made
himself meet the man’s intense stare. “I know,” Michael said simply. “I don’t
know how I feel about it, but if the King ordered you to escort the boy, there
must be a reason for it. I suppose those two that died in Haven were with you,
as well?”

Alexis nodded.

“Death seems to follow you everywhere,” Michael
said gravely. “Let’s hope we can outrun it today.”

Alexis looked around the alley and into the
street. He cracked open the chambers to both guns and loaded them from the
pouch at his belt. Michael did the same. “It should be now,” Alexis said.

“
‘Duty binds us tighter than any chain’
,”
Michael quoted, and dashed out into the open and began sprinting up the street.

Alexis leapt around the corner and ran to meet
the red-uniformed guardsmen.

The guards were now out from the mob and making
their way up the street at a fast trot. When they saw Alexis dash out from the
alley they stopped abruptly, raising the crossbows they carried. Alexis saw
them and changed direction without slowing to run behind the cover of a tall
building. He peeked around the side and saw the street empty. A flash of red
from an alley down the street, and he ducked back. The bolt struck the side of
the building harmlessly and clattered to the ground.

Alexis closed his eyes in frustration. He had no
time for this! A gunshot from the town square caused him to open his eyes and
look towards the sound. The gunshot was followed by another and shouts and
yells.
I can’t stay here!

He looked around the corner once more, and as he
saw a guard dash up from his place in the alley, he fired his gun and fell back
against the side of the building. He heard another bolt strike the wall and fall
to the cobblestones. Had he gotten the man?
It doesn’t matter, I can’t let
them pin me here.

He dashed away from the building and darted
across the street, seeing the two men further down come out of hiding,
crossbows leveled. He abruptly changed direction in stride and ran towards the
other side of the street, raising his gun and firing as he did so. His aim was
true. One of the guards fell heavily back against the alley wall and dropped to
the ground, trailing blood on the wall. The other ran back to the cover of the
alley. Alexis changed direction immediately and dashed back across the street
in a zigzag pattern that centered on the remaining guard. The man poked his
head around the alley and shot his bow. Alexis pushed himself against a wall
and saw the bolt go whistling by him. He ran straight towards the alley mouth,
thinking to reach the man before he could reload his crossbow.

From behind him came the sounds of two gunshots,
closely following one another, but he didn’t let them distract him. He was
breathing heavily and sweat had broken across his forehead as he neared the
alley.

The guard suddenly leapt out into the street,
crossbow leveled in both hands. Alexis continued to run at the man, not
allowing surprise to slow him down, raising his guns as he did so. The man shot
the bolt, aimed squarely at his chest. On instinct, Alexis dove to his right
and shot at the man in the same movement. He felt the bolt strike his coat and
then rip right through it. He rolled to his feet and came up with both guns
extended, but there was no need. The guardsmen lay on the ground, already dead.
His life’s blood seemed only a brighter shade of the coat he wore.

Alexis studied the empty streets around ,
satisfied himself that there were no more guards to be dealt with, and then
trudged back up the street. He stopped at the alleyway and looked inside at
Leah and the boys. “Get them out of here!”

Leah rode her horse out, with the reigns to the
other also in hand. “Where do we go?”

“Out of the town. Head east.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’m going back for Michael,” Alexis told her.
“Get the boys out of here safely.”

“I will.”

Alexis watched as she led the horses down the
street at a fast trot and then around a corner. He turned to look towards the
town square. It all appeared quiet there now, but he didn’t trust the silence.
He headed towards the square at a fast trot, scanning the streets and rooftops
all around him.

As he neared the square, anxiety and trepidation
filled him. He saw the red-uniformed bodies that lay scattered across the
ground, but aside from those there appeared to be nothing else left there. He
thought of calling out Michael’s name, and then shunned it as idiotic. The
entire square seemed devoid of any life. Guns in hand, Alexis made his way across
the square, aware of what an open target he presented.
Where is he?

A slight ruffle of black movement from across
the wooden dais in the center caught his attention. Alexis walked around the
wooden platform, guns at the ready. He found Michael collapsed in a
half-sitting position against the wooden dais. He sat there with his head
lowered and blood flowing from his chest. The light wind disturbed his clothes
and his hair. For all the sight of him, Michael looked like a drunk who had
passed out. For a moment Alexis only stood there, feeling that all his worry
and fear had been true. He walked over to the dead Legionnaire on legs that
felt numb, and knelt down before him.

Michael looked up, and Alexis found himself
staring into the man’s dark eyes.

“ ... leave ...” Michael whispered.

“Not without you.” Alexis studied the man’s
wounds, a bullet hole in his arm and another high on his chest.

“Go ... leave me,” Michael said.

“No.”
I promised to never again leave another
behind
. He watched Michael’s eyes drift away and past him. The man
attempted to speak, but all that came out was a rasping, bloody cough.

In a sudden movement Alexis pushed himself to
his feet and wheeled around, bringing up both guns, and shot. The shots echoed
in the square. One bullet took Wendyl in his left leg, and he fell where he
was, just a little way inside the square. The man bent his head back and
screamed as he clutched his wounded leg and rolled back and forth in pain.
Alexis lowered his guns and looked behind him. Wendyl’s bullet had struck the
wooden dais just inches from Michael’s head. He began to walk towards the fat lord.
Wendyl saw him coming, and the anguished wails died off into whimpering
mutters, filled with a fury that would have surprised Alexis on any other day. Wendyl
removed one bloodied hand from his left leg and attempted to reach the pistol
he had dropped. Alexis raised his gun and shot the pistol; it bounced away and
out of the fat lord’s reach. Wendyl began to drag himself back along the
ground, leaving snail-trails of bright red upon the cobblestones, but he
couldn’t escape the Legionnaire.

Alexis stood over the pompous lord, staring down
at him piteously. How much had been risked today by this man? How many deaths
had this one man caused today?
Well, no more,
he thought bitterly. He
raised one silver-gray gun, aimed at the man’s head.

“No --no,” Wendyl whimpered. “You ... cannot ...
Please. I beg you--” His voice became a pleading whine.

“Too much death has been caused this day because
of you,” Alexis told him in a voice as hard as rock and edged with bitterness.

Alexis turned his head aside and pulled the
trigger.

He turned and walked back to Michael without
ever looking at his handiwork. Michael sat there, chin on chest, and Alexis
knew him to be truly dead this time. He holstered his guns as he knelt before
the Legionnaire, and raised Michael’s head to look into that once-hard face,
now almost serene in its passing. He closed the man’s eyes. He picked up the
great gun that lay on the ground beside Michael, and the other one that he
still gripped, and placed them into the holsters at the man’s side. He slipped
his arms behind the other man and picked him up. The corpse in his arms was
heavy.

Alexis turned and walked out from that place of
death.

 7

He made it halfway down the street when he saw
Leah coming towards him. Alexis stopped and waited.

“Is he all right?” Leah asked as she drew up
reign.

“No,” Alexis said, and his voice was bereft of
emotion. “You left the boys?”

“Yes, they are hidden beside the road out of
town. I had to come back and see what had happened to you both. I could not
have turned and fled.”

And how well we both know that feeling.

“What--what will you do with him now?” Leah
asked.

Alexis saw tears well up in her eyes and heard
the way her voice faltered. He shrugged. “I don’t want to leave him behind.”

Leah simply nodded. “Let’s put him on the horse.
We can walk out of this place.”

Alexis placed his comrade across the saddle. He
grabbed the reigns, and the two led the horse down the street.

The people they saw were all in a turmoil, like
the scattered survivors of a disaster, and many of the houses they passed had
faces at the windows that peered out uneasily at anything that moved in the
streets.

It was a relief to put the small city behind
them and come out onto the dirt road. They didn’t have long to travel before
being surrounded by fields of wheat on one side and of corn on the other. It
was in the cornfields that they gathered the boys, sitting there and looking as
though they had expected no one to come.

Together they made their way from the small city
where death had brushed them all.

The
Darkest One

1

The noise of the crowd was too much for Mordred.

He tried to block it out and keep moving on his
way, but it proved too difficult. Everywhere he looked he saw smiling faces,
none that matched his own. The sky was clear, the sun shining brilliantly on
everything, eliciting such good moods from everyone. Mordred hated those
smiling faces.
What do they have to smile about?
he wondered. Some of
those faces turned to regard him as he pushed his way through the crowd, some
maybe even recognized him. Mordred didn’t care, he simply wanted to escape this
swarm of joy that was like a knife to his heart.

What the hell are they so cheerful about?
he wondered.
He fought his way past the market with still no clear idea
of where he was heading. The dark scowl on his face kept others clear of his
path. He walked among the rest of the citizens, and yet felt distinctly apart
from them. But then that wasn’t such a surprise. Ever since he could remember,
he had been alone. He could recall no friends from his childhood, or from any
other time.

I do not need friends
.
He told himself as he edged his way past the throng and into another street.
I
do not need any of them
!
Those words seemed a part of him now, and
chained to them were the bitter, lonely memories he wished he could leave
behind.

He stopped suddenly as he came to an
intersection. He stood still for a moment as he wondered just where he wanted
to go. Anywhere that was far from the palace, he realized. There wasn’t much
there to occupy his mind, and it felt more a prison than anything else at
times. Slowly, he turned right and headed towards Singer’s Alley.

He clutched his short cloak around him as he
made his way down the street. A few girls a little older than himself in bright
skirts caught his attention, and he watched them in passing with a dull ache.
They would never talk to him. He saw the calculating disgust plainly on their
faces as they noticed him. Behind him one of the girls said something, and they
all laughed aloud.
I could kill you, you whores
, he thought. He clenched
his jaw and continued on, a fixed stare of murder keeping everyone away from
him.

He could not recall there ever being a time when
he had not been alone. He had had his father with him for much of his life, but
they were too similar in that they preferred their own company to the other’s,
thus allowing for the growth of a distanced relationship. Once he had a mother.
He could recall her from his earliest memories. He liked to imagine that had
she still been alive he would have been a different person now. She would have
taught him to smile and enjoy the world around him. Instead, she had died when
he was four and his father had filled his head with nothing but hatred.

No, his
entire life had been spent in his own company, always revolving around others
but never able to bring himself to join them completely. But then, he didn’t
need them at all. What good were people for? They only created problems and
hurt one another maliciously. Over and over he had witnessed it from the
outside.

Near Singer’s Alley he stopped to watch a small
group of boys his own age dicing beside a merchant’s store. He watched them
jesting with one another as they played, crude remarks that put a faint smile
on his lips. Those were the kind of people that he felt he could be friends
with. He watched them from across the street for a few minutes, and then headed
towards them on hesitant feet. He strayed outside their immediate space and
watched them. Perhaps they would notice him and invite him to join in. A part
of him screamed he was being a fool and that he would only end up getting hurt,
but the boy within him needed to be acknowledged and embraced by others. He
approached the three boys.