The Elves of Cintra (46 page)

Again Logan shook his head. “We were given the staffs we carry to help those sheep. We owe it to them to do so.”

“We owe no one!” the other screamed suddenly, the words echoing off the metal walls of the building. “No one! We have tried that way, and we have failed! We have been all but broken trying to save those sheep, those pitiful creatures that won’t fight for themselves! We’ve wasted enough time on them!”

Logan knew where this was going, and there was nothing he could do to change its direction. “I can’t join you,” he said simply.

Krilka Koos, flushed with his passion, stared at him for a long moment. “You might want to rethink that answer. Come with me.”

He took Logan to one corner of the building, back behind the bleachers where the shadows were deep and layered. There was a sort of alcove there, a recessed portion of the wall perhaps fifteen feet high and another thirty long. Logan could just make out what appeared to be a series of implements fastened to the sheet metal by means of ties and bolts, all carefully arranged.

Krilka Koos walked over to the adjoining wall and threw open a pair of metal shutters to let in the light.

Logan stared. The alcove wall was decorated with weapons, everything from Parkhan Sprays and Tyson Flechettes to knives and spears and swords, Iron Stars and viper-pricks and hundreds of others. At the very center of the collection were three black staffs carved with runes, their once polished surfaces turned dull and lifeless, their symbols of power as gray and cold as ashes.

Logan looked quickly at Krilka Koos. “You’re not mistaken,” the big man answered his unspoken question. “They belonged to other Knights of the Word, men and women who stood where you are standing now, men and women who gave way to the darkness in their hearts. They were asked to join me; they refused. The price of refusal is sometimes much steeper than what we imagine it will be.”

“You killed them?” Logan asked in disbelief. “Other Knights of the Word? You killed them?”

Krilka Koos shook his head. “Not in the way you think. I wouldn’t do that. That isn’t who I am. They killed themselves.”

He stepped around so that he was facing Logan squarely. “I asked them to join me, just as I am asking you. For one reason or another, they said no. They were foolish. In this world, you must make your stand. You cannot walk away. You cannot refuse.”

He pointed at Logan. “If you are not with me, then inevitably you are against me. Perhaps not today, not right now, but sometime. The potential for it is there; there is no point in pretending otherwise. Those who are not our friends are our enemies in waiting. We cannot afford to let our enemies escape us. We would be foolish to do so.”

Logan got the gist of it, but still had trouble coming to terms with what he was hearing. “You said they killed themselves?”

“In a manner of speaking. I used them to measure my own strength and skill. I gave them the choice of joining me or testing themselves in combat against me.”

Logan almost laughed. If Michael had been insane at the end, Krilka Koos was beyond even that. “You made them fight you?”

The big man nodded, no longer smiling. “If you choose not to join me, you are choosing to set yourself against me. The matter is settled through a test of strengths, yours against mine. Trial by combat. Have you made the right decision by refusing to join me or have I by insisting you must? A battle to the death will decide. It is nothing new. It has been an approved method of judging right and wrong for thousands of years.”

He gestured at the wall. “These three—and all those others whose weapons hang here, those who were not Knights of the Word but who chose trial by combat nevertheless—fought and died in this arena. I was the stronger, the better trained, the more prepared. I was the one who prevailed.” He paused. “I was in the right. They were not.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Now you must decide, just as they did. Do you wish to test me?”

Logan shook his head, a great feeling of hopelessness welling up in his heart. He should have tried to make his escape earlier; he should have taken his chances. “I wish to go back to where you found me, take my kids, and go on my way. Let me do so.”

The big man shook his head. “Choose. Join me or fight me. Those are your options.”

“This doesn’t make any sense. What purpose does it serve for Knights of the Word to fight one another? We share a common enemy. Let me go. Let me carry the fight in the way I feel is best. I leave you to do the same. Why can’t we do that?”

Krilka Koos gave him a rueful smile. “Because combat is how we settle everything, Logan. Because the world is ending and the battle to save her is lost. What we have left, in the time we have left, is a chance to take the measure of ourselves. Do we stand around waiting to die like the sheep you are so anxious to save? Or do we die fighting like the men we are? You know the answer. In your heart, you know. We are the last and the best. How good are we? Set against one another, we can discover the truth.”

Logan shook his head. “I won’t fight you. I won’t do it.”

“I think you will. I think you don’t know yourself as well as you imagine.” He unfolded his arms and blew into a whistle hung on a chain about his neck. “Trial by combat, to the death. You have one hour to prepare yourself. Achille will keep you company until then. Do not attempt to escape. If you do, you already know what will happen to your children. It will be on your head. If you defeat me, you will be allowed to take them and go. It is the code I have established, and my men will follow it.”

He shook his head. “I should have preferred it, of course, if you joined me. But killing you will be exciting, too. One hour.”

He started to walk away, beckoning to Achille and the guards who were already responding to the sound of the whistle. “What does not kill us makes us stronger, Logan Tom,” he called back over his shoulder. “It’s an old saying. Try thinking on it.”

Logan watched him disappear into the shadows, lost to everything.

It was Michael at the end. It was madness.

“I
S IT SETTLED
?” Achille asked quietly, coming up to stand beside him. “You will face him in battle?”

Logan looked at him in disgust. “He seems to think I will.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why do you follow him?”

Achille’s face was cadaverous beneath the shock of wild black hair. “Isn’t it obvious? Because he is invincible.” He gestured toward the wall of weapons. “Because he prevails in combat against all who stand against him. No one has been able to defeat him. No one ever will. Not demons or once-men. Not even other Knights of the Word. He is too much for any of them.”

He gave Logan a long look. “You’ll see. He will be too much for you, too.”

Achille’s smile was rueful as he looked away. “You don’t know him as we do, we who follow him. He has given us hope, when there is no hope to be found. He is the one who will save us all.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

P
ANTHER PEERED THROUGH
the bushes that screened him from the men gathered in front of the warehouse, searching for any clue that would tell him what had become of Logan Tom.

“How long has he been in there, anyway?” he whispered to Catalya.

She shook her head, a barely perceptible movement, her body flattened against the ground next to his.

“Well, what do you think is happening?”

She shook her head again.

“So what do we do?”

She shifted her gaze sideways. “Don’t you have a plan?” she whispered back.

“No! I thought you did!” Irritated with her, he scowled in rebuke. “Why would I have a plan? This was your idea!”

“Not my idea to bring you along, it wasn’t.”

“Your idea to come in the first place!”

She made no response, and he went back to watching the entry to the warehouse, searching the darkness for movement.

Nothing. For all he knew, Logan Tom might have been dropped into a black pit and covered over.

They were hidden on a rise off to one side of the building entrance, safely back and above the outbuildings and the ghost town beyond. Knowing that they must have been seen coming down the freeway initially from some distance off, they had chosen to come directly after the men who had taken Logan Tom, reasoning that while the freeway might be watched, the compound that housed the men might not. So far, they had been proven right. They had seen no one and not been stopped as they moved through the ravines and hollows that snaked between the hills, at last finding themselves in the wooded area they presently occupied.

But now that they had found the perfect hiding spot, a place where they could see what was happening below and not be seen, they were stymied as to what to do next.

Or at least Panther was. He glanced sideways at Catalya. Hard to tell about her.

He studied her mottled face. Strange, at first glance, but once you got past the Lizard patches, rather nice. She was different in the same way as Tessa—unusual, unique. Black hair like Tessa, but she had pale skin like Chalk. He couldn’t explain the attraction. Of course, part of it was the way she could fight. Any girl who could take out three men as fast as she did was something special. Even Sparrow couldn’t do that. He studied her some more. Couldn’t turn away. Didn’t want to. He wondered why she worked so hard at trying to make everyone think she was ugly.

She looked over at him suddenly, her mouth twisting into a wicked grin. “Can’t take your eyes off me, can you?”

He turned away, burning with embarrassment.
Stupid Freak,
he thought, then squelched the words at once. It was wrong to call her that, even without actually saying the words, wrong to think of her that way, double wrong to suggest that she was bad somehow just because of her condition.

He hated that he thought and said things before thinking them through. Hated that he did it so often. Like when Logan Tom had brought the girl into camp. First thing he did, he called her a Freak, his mouth quicker than his brain, like there was no connection between the two. Sparrow called him on it regularly. River, too, now and then. It was all right. He deserved it. He had it coming.

“I’m sorry I said those things about you earlier,” he whispered impulsively, not able to make himself look at her as he said it. “I shouldn’t have called you names. You don’t deserve that. I didn’t mean it. Not really. I was just being stupid.”

“Give me your Spray,” she said in response, almost as if she hadn’t heard him.

He hesitated, surprised by the request, but then handed over his weapon. Cat took it and slipped it quickly beneath her cloak, doing something he couldn’t quite see to secure it once it was tucked safely inside.

“Hey!” he objected. “What are you doing?”

She glanced over, giving him a wink. “Saving you from yourself. You’ll get it back when you need it.”

Below, the open space in front of the warehouse was beginning to fill with men and women, all rather ragged and haggard, all carrying weapons. They seemed to appear all at once and out of nowhere, but in truth they had come from the outbuildings and the hills beyond. They were all talking and seemed excited as they moved toward the open doors of the warehouse and poured inside.

“What’s going on?” Panther asked.

Cat looked over at him, her smile gone. “We’re about to find out. Don’t panic. We’ve been seen. They’re right behind us.”

He stared at her, thinking she was joking, that this was another of her games played at his expense. He started to say something in response, and she quickly put a finger to her lips.

“Stay where you are,” a voice ordered.

Panther felt his heart sink.

“What do you two think you’re doing?” a second voice asked.

“Just looking for something to eat,” Catalya answered at once, her voice pitifully frightened and desperate. “We didn’t mean any harm. Please, mister, we haven’t eaten in days.”

“Street kids,” said another voice. “That one’s a Freak. Look at her face. Don’t touch her.”

Panther started to turn. “I told you not to move,” the first voice said, closer now, and the cold muzzle of a weapon pressed up against his cheek.

“Just let us go, mister,” Catalya begged, starting to cry.

“I don’t think so,” the first voice said. “Not till I find out something more about you. I think you’d better come with us. Get up. Slowly.”

Panther was furious.
I knew I shouldn’t have given her the Spray!

“Hurry it up,” the second urged. “We’ll miss the show.”

The muzzle of the gun left Panther’s face.

As the boy and the girl climbed to their feet, Catalya gave Panther a sideways glance and a wink and mouthed,
Trust me.
Then she said over her shoulder to their captors, her voice shaking, “What sort of show, mister?”

I hope you know what you’re doing,
Panther thought sourly.