The Elves of Cintra (45 page)

He needed to give that possibility a chance.

Still, the urge to strike back, to lash out with all the power that was his to command through possession of the black staff, was almost more than he could resist. He could scatter these men like bits of dust, burn them to ash, and flee back to free his helpless charges. He could turn this thing around in an instant’s time.

Maybe. But all it would take was one shout, one shot fired, one hint that something was wrong.

The men around him kept their distance, walking in loose, easy fashion, following the lead of the man who had done all the talking earlier. But their casual attitude was only a pretense that was betrayed by the constant surreptitious glances they directed Logan’s way when they thought he wasn’t looking. He detected wariness in those glances, but something else as well—an excitement, an eagerness for something these men understood and he did not.

It was this secret knowledge that bothered Logan most. He had seen such looks before on the faces of other men like these, and it always signaled a fresh form of bloodletting. But he had committed himself; he had his staff to protect him, and his training as a Knight of the Word to reassure him. Whatever waited, it would find him ready.

They passed down through the hills, winding between the gentle slopes toward the buildings, leaving the freeway and Ghosts behind. No one talked. Logan thought once or twice to ask questions, and then decided against it. He was better off keeping his uncertainties to himself.

“Just ahead, now,” the man who had done all the speaking advised.

“You knew I was coming,” Logan said, changing his mind about staying quiet. “You were waiting for me.”

The speaker glanced at him. “We did and we were. We keep watch on the roads to see who passes. Those who suit our needs, we bring back. Most, we ignore. Not you, of course. We knew you for a Knight of the Word ten miles back. That staff. There’s no mistaking it.”

“So you only stop Knights of the Word?”

The speaker smiled. “Krilka Koos will explain.”

Krilka Koos. Even the name was loathsome by now. Logan kept the rage from his face, his expression purposely blank. Krilka Koos was going to have a lot to answer for. Maybe more than he was expecting.

They rounded a berm, and Logan found himself moving toward a warehouse-size building that had the look of an implement sales and storage facility. There were faded images of tractors and machinery for which he did not know the names painted on the sides of the corrugated sheet metal, and a tractor-shaped weather vane on a squat steeple. Huge doors were rolled open on the long side of the building facing him, clusters of men standing watchfully at their edges. The interior was lit faintly by daylight that spilled through the doors and seeped through cracks and breathing holes in the ceiling and walls. The stale smells of dirt and manure and hay hung mingled in the air, trapped in the low spaces between the hills.

Beyond the larger building were other, small buildings—houses and sheds and livestock shelters. Beyond that was what remained of a small village, its structures falling apart, long since abandoned and neglected. He studied the ruins for a moment, then glanced back at the larger building. The earth surrounding it was muddied and worn, as if trod on repeatedly by many men. Logan did not see those men and wondered why.

They reached the rolled-back doors and entry into the warehouse building, and the man leading him gestured for him to stop. “Wait here,” he said.

He left Logan standing in the midst of his other captors and walked into the warehouse. Logan glanced at the men surrounding him. All of them were pointing their weapons at him, uneasiness reflected in more faces than not. Logan decided not to give them further reason to worry. He sat down where he was, his legs crossed, his staff resting in his lap.

A few minutes later, the man in charge returned. “Go on in. Krilka Koos is waiting for you.”

Logan got to his feet, smiling. “All by himself?”

The man laughed. “Of course. He’s no different from you.” He winked. “You’ll see.”

Logan resisted the urge to turn that wink into something else and passed through the entry into the mix of shadows and suffused sunlight. His eyes worked hard to adjust to the change of brightness as they swept the vast interior. At first he could see almost nothing, but slowly he began to make out a vast open area ringed by bleachers that were set back against the walls. A space had been left between the bleachers at the building entry, and he could see that the flooring below the bleachers had been torn up. The exposed earth had been carefully, almost lovingly raked, the dirt made soft and loose.

An arena,
he thought.

He passed between the stands and stepped out into the center of the open space. A man was sitting on the seats to his right. The man lifted one hand in greeting. “You’re here!” he called out, sounding decidedly cheerful about it. “The road-weary traveler has found his way!”

He stood up and walked over, whistling tunelessly. He was big, much bigger than Logan, and his dark, seamed features suggested that he was older, too. His black hair was long and uncut, and a heavy beard shaded his jaw. But even the hair and the beard failed to hide the scars that crisscrossed his face like spiderwebbing. One set lasered up from his mouth to what was left of his right ear in vivid red streaks. Another slashed diagonally across his mouth. His eyebrows appeared to have been burned away.

“I’ve been looking forward to this,” he added, breaking into a grin. “Quite anxious for it, really. I can’t deny it.”

He was dressed in loose-fitting gray and black clothing that was tattered and frayed, but the loosening of the seams and the rips in the cloth seemed to suit him. He carried no weapons, but then perhaps he had no need of them: in his right hand he held a black, rune-carved staff identical to Logan’s.

“I’m Krilka Koos,” the big man announced. He glanced at his staff, his smile twisting crookedly. “Are you surprised to find that I’m one of your own?”

Logan nodded. “If you mean that you’re a Knight of the Word, I guess I am.”

“You should be. How could you even suspect? Achille would never tell you. He never tells my guests anything.”

Achille. That would be the leader of the men who had brought him here. “He didn’t this time, either.”

“What’s your name?”

“Logan Tom.”

Krilka Koos held out his hand, but Logan ignored it. “I was not brought here by polite invitation, so let’s get to it. What is this all about?”

The big man laughed, reaching out boldly to clap Logan on his shoulder. “This? This is about—everything!” He extended his arms wide, his laugh deepening. “Everything that matters in this godforsaken world, this hellish killing ground populated by demons and once-men and things that are abominations too terrible to name. It is about being cast out of our lives like rats from a sinking ship. It is about being forced to rebuild those lives in the image of our enemy. It is about who will die and who will survive in the days ahead.”

He paused. The scars on his face were livid. “It is about you and me, Logan. Because when you come right down to it, we’re all that counts.”

Logan stared at him. Krilka Koos might have been mistaken for something approaching normal if not for his eyes. They were eyes that Logan recognized immediately, because he had seen them once before, ten years earlier, staring back at him from Michael’s face on the day he had killed him.

He shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Krilka Koos nodded, as if Logan were merely stating what he already knew. “Give it time. Now then, let me see if I can guess which one you are. Which of the Knights who remain alive. There are only a few of us left, you know. Only a handful, and that was yesterday’s news. Let me guess. You travel with children. I like that. A man who has children fights for someone other than himself. And you drive that modified Lightning S-One-fifty AV. Shows you have talent, skills that other men lack. You’d be the one who’s laid waste to the slave camps all through the middle of the country, freeing the prisoners so that they can run off to find a new set of captors and be made slaves once more. Am I right?”

“Probably. How do you know of me?”

“Word gets out this way, if you know how to listen for it. Word travels through one means and another. I came here five years back to make my stand. Fought all the way out from the East Coast while the oceans rose and the seaboard flooded and its cities sank. Fought all the way past the inland cities after that and watched them fall, one by one, to the demon-led armies. Took out my share of demons and once-men while it was happening, and I liked doing it. But there were always more, always others. I grew tired, Logan.” He paused. “Isn’t that what’s happened to you? Haven’t you grown tired?”

“Long since,” Logan agreed. A dark suspicion was beginning to form. “So you came west to escape all that. Over the mountains?”

“Through the passes.”

“North, traveling through what used to be Montana?”

The big man smiled. “You know who I am, don’t you? You found those pathetic creatures that worship the mountain spirits, and they told you about me.”

Logan nodded, his suspicions confirmed. This was the rogue Knight of the Word whom the Spiders had told him about when he crossed the mountains on his way west weeks earlier. This was the man who’d killed thirty of them for challenging his right to pass.

“I heard they had made the mistake of angering you, so you killed several dozen in retaliation.”

“Not in retaliation,” Krilka Koos advised with a thoughtful look. “As a lesson. My reputation is not something I can afford to let anyone tarnish—certainly not a bunch of Spiders. If word of that got around, I would be finished. They had no right to challenge me. So I made an example of them. By the time I was settled in this place, ready to make my preparations, word had gotten around. Those who came to join me already knew that there would be no tolerance for disobedience. It saved me a lot of time. You would have done the same in my place. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

There were many responses Logan could have made, but the bright gleam in the other man’s eyes suggested he wasn’t open to hearing them. So he shrugged his seeming indifference. He didn’t need an argument. He simply needed to get out of there. “What is it you want of me?” he asked.

“What is it I want of you?” The big man laughed anew. “Why, Logan! I want you to join me! I want you to stand with me when it comes time to face them down!”

“Face who down?”

“Our enemies! The demons and once-men! The armies that are coming here to destroy us! Wake up and smell the roses, Logan! They tear down the compounds one by one. They enslave or kill the inhabitants. They eradicate everything. Eventually, they’ll come here to try to do the same. But they won’t find it so easy when they do.”

He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I have been preparing for them for almost three years now. I have been training every day, working at making myself invincible. Testing myself. We exist in a crucible where our metal is toughened by the raw heat of combat. We pass through the fire and emerge purer and stronger. More resilient. When they come, the demons and once-men and anything else that seeks to destroy me, I will be ready for them.” He paused. “I am ready now.”

“Why can’t you do this alone?” Logan asked quietly. “You seem to have been managing all right until now.”

Krilka Koos gave him a hard look. “You don’t understand.”

Logan nodded. “Maybe not. Maybe you should explain it.”

“One is good, but two are better. Two would share the burden of the struggle, make it easier, make it more bearable.” His voice lowered, and his eyes strayed off into the distance. “What good are you doing anyone, Logan? You travel here and there, you attack slave camp after slave camp, you do battle with one set of once-men or another, you face down a demon or two, and what does it get you? How much better off are you now than you were ten years ago? How much better off is anyone you’ve tried to help? It won’t last, you know. Your luck. Your determination. Sooner or later, it will give out.”

“I took an oath to serve the Word,” Logan said. “I am doing what I can where I can. It doesn’t do any good to sit around waiting for the enemy to find you. You have to get out and find them. You have to destroy them before they have a chance to destroy you.” He hesitated. “What about the oath you took as a Knight of the Word? Have you forgotten it?”

The big man made a dismissive gesture. “It was a false oath made to a false god. It was a promise given without adequate consideration for the consequences. What help does the Word offer us? What hope are we given? The Lady and the Indian, where are they when it comes time to fight our enemies? Where are any of them? No, Logan, we owe nothing of allegiance to anyone but ourselves.”

The gleam in his eye had grown brighter, and there was an almost rapturous look on his scarred face. Krilka Koos, whatever else he was, had turned his back on his life as a Knight of the Word and embraced something Logan could not yet define. He might carry the staff and wield the power of the Word, but he no longer served the cause he had once committed to.

Logan shook his head. “I don’t think it would work out, you and me. Your fight and mine, they’re not the same. You decided to go one way, but it’s not my way. I have my own path to follow.”

“Once you join me, you will be second in command of my army.” Krilka Koos seemed not to have heard him. “I have been training my followers. They are invincible. They will stand and fight against anything that threatens. They will survive because they have no fear of dying, because they have been tested, over and over. I will not let them die. There are thousands, and more come to join every day. If you join, as well, you will have a chance to do something that matters, a chance to make a difference. No more wasting time and effort on those who don’t merit it. Slave camps were built for sheep. You and I, we’re wolves! We stand and fight! We do what Knights of the Word should have done years ago: we leave the sheep to their fate and conduct ourselves as warriors.”