Risen (53 page)

“Blind her! Blind her now, or I
will take her hand,” he snarled.

Grasping Sylvie, Yeorathe pulled her
to the center of the group of men, directly in front of Risen.
Holding her arm outstretched, he raised the weapon above his
shoulder, prepared to slice down at any moment.

“Blind her, I say. Pick up your
blade, or I will cut her to pieces as you watch!”

“No!” Risen cried, but when it
appeared Yeorathe would harm her, “Please,” he begged. “I will,
just…” He appealed to Yeorathe as though broken, allowing his
shoulders to sag and his head to fall. “I will. Just…just let
me….”

He reached for the saber as though
he would do as he was told. It lay on the ground by his right foot.
Down his hand went, down toward his right knee. Then, in one swift
move, he had not the saber but his own knife in his hand. It was
just as his father had said it would be. The knife was his friend,
his first in command, and much more familiar than the saber that
lay at his feet. He lunged for Yeorathe.

Risen might have mortally wounded
the man except for what happened next. Yeorathe meant to bring his
blade down just then, to take Sylvie’s arm from her, but William
launched himself from behind the awful leader, taking a severe cut
to the arm from one of the men as he did.

He leapt just as Risen did and, not
a small man himself, collided full into Yeorathe, knocking Sylvie
and Risen aside in the process. Risen’s blade connected with
Yeorathe, swept across the wrist of the monster, but the boy
dropped his blade in the skirmish.

William took the Turk down hard.
Into the fire they crashed and rolled, kicking cinder and flame
everywhere as they fought. Mayhem ensued.

The man with the gaping maw went for
Risen but was surprised to be met by a boy wielding a sword. Risen
had snatched up the one that lay on the ground. Another man
surprised Risen, however, catching him up from behind, encircling
his arms about his waist.

The man cheered. “I have him!” and
lifted the boy off the ground.

Two fisted, Risen swung the
unfamiliar blade in a wide arc, right to left, flipping his wrist
and pulling the weapon just over his own head as he completed the
tight circle. He dropped his chin as he did so he would miss
himself as the blade passed.

Into the man’s neck the saber drove.
It was a superb move, one Ravan had insisted he learn and one
they’d taken days to perfect. Risen felt the man’s grip loosen, and
he twisted, breaking free.

He was next hit by gaping-maw man,
and down he went, his sword thrown from his reach as the attacker
fell hard on top of him. Still, he did not see his knife. All the
while, William and Yeorathe were flailing away at one
another.

Yeorathe clawed his way free long
enough to snatch up a loose saber. Instead of turning it on
William, however, he went for Sylvie, evidently intent upon venting
his rage on an innocent one, killing her instead.

Catching Yeorathe just in time to
trip him, William leapt, sweeping Sylvie close to himself with one
arm. He held her tightly in front of himself so that no other might
harm her, and pulled his own sword to defend her. The blood from
the wound on his arm ran down his fingers and onto the chest of the
girl.

The Englishman was an extraordinary
swordsman. Risen could not know that Yeorathe had witnessed the
soldier’s skills both on and off the battlefield, and so the Turk
hesitated as though not certain he was willing to engage William
any further.

Risen spied all of this from the
corner of his eye, for his face was pressed into the dirt as the
man pummeled on the back of his head with his fists.

That was when he first heard it—the
howl—like a pack of wolves charging from somewhere in the trees.
Suddenly, everything seemed to move in an absurdly slow motion, for
as William held Sylvie tight, he stiffened, his eyes wide with
alarm. It was so queer how the Englishman just stood there, staring
first at Sylvie then at his chest. From it, just above Sylvie’s
head, just about where the Englishman’s heart would be, protruded
the tip of an arrow.

Williams’s eyes blinked slowly as
the dark stain of blood poured down the front of his
shirt.

“NOOooo!” Risen
screamed.

The rain of fists on his head
ceased, and he rolled out from under his assailant. There, from the
center of the man’s head, protruded another arrow. Risen ran to
William’s side just as Sylvie slipped from the Englishman’s
grasp.

A band of horsemen was charging down
on them from the distance, through the twisted stand of trees.
Sylvie dropped to the ground next to William and sobbed.

“No!” She cried, her hands
searching the mortal wound on William’s chest as though she might
stop the bleeding. It was just as it had been with her father, the
arrow so small, so seemingly insubstantial, so deadly.

Confusion continued, for the
advancing thundering of horse’s feet was nearly upon
them.

“Your father,” William sputtered as
he lay on his side. “I’m certain of it.” He smiled weakly at the
two children. “You will be free.”

It was true…the arrow tip was
Ravan’s. Risen recognized the barb and looked up to try to pick his
mercenary father out of the band of horsemen that thundered across
the small meadow to their encampment.

The prophecy was complete. Ravan, in
all his fury, was here at last. The other two of Yeorathe’s group,
scattered, giving up the fight.

Sylvie cried and wrapped her arms
around the Englishman’s neck. She stroked his cheek. “William, I’m
so sorry!” He was fading.

“Don’t be,” he sputtered. “I have
wanted this…for many years. You gave me the strength…” he
struggled, “…to do something about it.”

The Englishman coughed and reached a
bloody hand to her face and murmured one last word, just before he
died. “Eleanor…”

“William,” Sylvie, covered in his
blood, sobbed, but the chaos allowed no time to indulge her broken
heart, for Risen was instantly snatched from where he knelt next to
her.

It was Yeorathe. Clutching the
sickled saber to Risen’s throat, he backed away, toward the narrow,
stone trail behind them. He stared hatefully at the man he’d met
twelve years before, his one, unbelieving eye a hollow hole to his
wicked black soul.

“Follow, and I will kill him!”
Yeorathe bellowed as he held Risen fast and continued to back away
from the band of men.

Ravan held up his hand, and behind
him his men halted their horses. In one swift move, he had an arrow
drawn. His target—the monster who held his son.

“Release him. Release him or you
will die poorly,” Ravan commanded, his deep voice echoing through
the sudden quiet. All that could be heard was the crackling of the
fire, the snorting of tired horses, and the coarse breathing of the
captured boy.

“I will kill him and drag him to
hell with me,” Yeorathe snarled, his blade pressed hard against
Risen’s throat, a trickle of blood running down the boy’s neck. He
lifted Ravan’s son off the ground as he held him, peering over the
shoulder of his young, human shield.

“Take him,” Velecent encouraged
Ravan as his horse stepped nervously in place, but Ravan was
perhaps not entirely sure he could. What if…what if…

* * *

Yeorathe dropped Risen, his face a
mask of surprise. The boy fell away and spun, surprised to have
been released, his hand to his throat. Everyone froze, unsure
exactly what had transpired. The most surprised of all was
Yeorathe. His mouth opened in a wretched, sickening snarl as he
staggered first, then fell hard, face down onto the ground, his
skull crunching against a rock as he landed. In his back stuck the
blade, Risen’s blade—monster killer…

Sylvie teetered beyond, hands
clasped in front of her, tears staining her beautiful cheeks,
William’s bloody handprint marking her own heart. She felled the
demon, freed the boy she loved. Into Yeorathe’s back she’d plunged
the blade.

Letting go a single sob, Sylvie
collapsed just as Risen reached her.

* * *

The Red Raven drifted from her slip
as Samuel tossed the last lanyard to the docks. Salvatore was at
the helm, father and son stood side by side on the
foredeck.

There, four ships down, rested the
slave vessel. Wordlessly, Risen mimicked his father, dipped the tip
of his arrow into the smoldering tar bucket and seated it onto the
rest of his bow. Together they drew—together they let
go.

Risen’s arrow flew aloft and found
the coiled up sails of the aft mast of the Virgin Wolf. Ravan’s
slipped through an open hatch and smoldered in the coiled up
rigging while all attentions were directed at the burning sails. By
the time the arrow below caught, by the time someone noticed the
fire, it was too late.

Down the Virgin Wolf went. The
harbor militia pushed the burning ship from its mooring and it
sunk, not thirty meters out. Demetrios, drunk in his cabin, went
down with the ship. The small, black boy who’d coveted a lock of
Sylvie’s hair leapt overboard and swam to shore. Shrugging, he
disappeared into the market, off to seek a different fortune for
himself.

“So you would make me run,”
Salvatore grinned. “I will never be welcome in Antalya
again.”

Ravan nodded toward the harbor
militia who were just now positioning themselves as though they
suspected the Red Raven of foul play. “I suppose that is right.
But…I know of a ship they cannot possibly catch.”

CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT

†

“You were on the edge of a cliff.”
A nine year old Risen was animated with excitement, stabbing at the
fire with a stick.

“I was…and with nowhere else to
go,” his father admitted.

“It was amazing, what you did! The
traps…the deception…all so perfect! Duval and his men must have
been so angry!”

Ravan shrugged. “I was fourteen
years old with all the belief that I could survive and, if not, die
on my own terms.”

The boy stopped stabbing at the fire
and peered at his father’s dark face, so brooding and strong as he
gazed into the night sky.

“Was that wrong? To believe you
could have beaten them? Survived it?” his son wondered.

Ceasing his study of the stars,
Ravan turned to face Risen, leaning on his elbow. He seemed to take
a long time, to look very deeply into the eyes of his only son.
“What do you think?” It was a sincere question, not at all
sarcastic.

Risen thought for a moment, glancing
down as he did. “I think the will to live is strong.”

His father said nothing only
waited.

The boy continued, “I think the will
to die well is even stronger, to die on your own terms, as you
say.”

This prompted a smile from Ravan,
rare though it was. It spread across his face, and Risen glanced up
in time to see it and wonder at what a splendid face it was, scars
and all.

The smile subsided, and Ravan
replied, his voice wonderfully deep and rich to his son, “Yes, that
is exactly it. You are a man—blood and bone. There is only so much
you can do to affect the strength and purpose of it. But your
death…” he stared at the fire, “…that is something you can affect
the purpose of entirely, no matter how dire, no matter how grim
your fate might seem.”

Now it was Risen’s turn to smile. “I
like that. It’s…good.”

* * *

Sylvie returned to France with
Risen, and they were married that summer. Her beautiful heart was
one day finally too weak to carry her soul any farther, and she
died in the fall, cradled by the young man who loved her more than
anything.

They buried her on the castle
grounds in a lovely little meadow…next to William. Salvatore had
orchestrated bringing him “home.” He’d burned the body and
collected the ashes before they left Turkey. The Englishman would
forever be with the young beauty who freed him, who helped him to
live again.

Curiously, a sparrow lit on Risen’s
shoulder as he laid flowers upon Sylvie’s grave. It looked at him
solemnly with its bright, black eyes for only a moment, then it
flew away. Salvatore thought it was a good sign.

Ravan pulled from his pocket a small
bag of earth—the very earth he took from D’ata’s grave so long
ago—and handed it to his son. Risen sprinkled the soil onto the
fresh grave of his love, and it was there that wildflowers grew in
the spring.

EPILOGUE

†

One year later…

Risen stood in the middle of the
small arena just west of the stables. He held in his right hand a
long whip that pointed to the ground. His other hand was open, his
arm extended to the left. Around him, in a circle, loped the
yearling colt, tossing its face and bucking for a few lengths
before slipping back into the beautiful stride that ate ground like
a monstrous rocking chair.

Leaning against the gate, Ravan
watched his son lunge the horse. Beyond the technical aspects of
what the boy was doing, there was something else happening between
the pair—something that was more than a human training a horse. His
son’s gestures inspired in the colt something willing, something
playful and alive. The two had a magnificent symbiosis—something
that he had with the black Destrier stallion. It was
magic.