The Warded Man (44 page)

ARLEN COULDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT, though it was not from the throbbing of his wounds. All his life he had dreamt of the heroes in Jongleurs’ tales, donning armor and fighting corelings with warded weapons. When he found the spear, he thought that dream was within his grasp, but when he reached for it, it slipped through his fingers and he stumbled into something new.

Nothing, not even that night in the Maze when he had felt invincible, could compare with the sensation of facing a coreling on its own terms and feeling the tingle in his flesh as his magic burned its life away. He hungered for that feeling again, and that hunger put all his former desires in a new light.

Looking back at his visit to Krasia, Arlen realized that it wasn’t as magnanimous as he had believed. Whatever he had told himself, he had wanted to be more than a weaponsmith, or one fighter among many. He had wanted glory. Fame. He had wanted to go down in the histories as the man who had given men back the fight.

As the Deliverer, even?

The thought disturbed him. For the salvation of humanity to mean anything, for it to last, it had to come from everyone, not just one man.

But did humanity even
want
to be saved? Did they deserve it? Arlen didn’t know anymore. Men like his father had lost the will to fight, content to hide behind wards, and what he had seen in Krasia, what he now saw in himself, made Arlen wonder about those who had not.

There could never be peace between Arlen and the corelings. He knew in his heart he could never sit safe behind his wards and let them dance in peace now that he had another choice. But who would stand by his side and fight? Jeph had struck him at the idea. Elissa had scolded him. Mery had shunned him. The Krasians had tried to kill him.

Ever since the night he had seen Jeph watch his wife be cored from the safety of his porch wards, Arlen had known that the corelings’ greatest weapon was fear. What he hadn’t understood was that fear took many forms. For all his attempts to prove otherwise, Arlen was terrified of being alone. He wanted someone, anyone, to believe in what he was doing. Someone to fight with, and for.

But there was no one. He saw that now. If he wanted companionship, he would have to slink back to the cities and accept it on their terms. If he wanted to fight, he had to do it alone.

The sense of power and elation, so fresh in his mind, faded. He curled up slowly, gripping his knees, and stared out over the desert, looking for a road where there was none.

Arlen rose with the sun and padded to the pool to rinse his wounds. He had stitched and poulticed them before bedding down, but one could never be too careful with wounds from a coreling. As he splashed the cool water on his face, his tattoo caught his eye.

All Messengers had tattoos, marking their city of origin. It was a symbol of how far they had traveled. Arlen remembered that first day when Ragen showed him his, the city in the mountains that graced the flag of Miln. Arlen had meant to get that same tattoo when he completed his first job. He went to a tattooist, ready to be marked forever a Messenger, but he had hesitated. Fort Miln was home to him in many ways, but it was not where he had come from.

Tibbet’s Brook had no flag, so Arlen took the crest of Earl Tibbet himself, lush fields split by a stream that fed a small lake. The tattooist took his needles and imprinted that reminder of home on Arlen’s shoulder for all time.

For all time
. The notion lingered in Arlen’s mind. He had watched the tattooist closely. The man’s art was not so different from that of a Warder: precise markings, painstakingly placed with no room for error. There were needles in Arlen’s herb pouch, and ink in his warding kit.

Arlen started a small fire, recalling every moment spent with the tattooist. He passed his needles through the flames, and poured a bit of thick, viscous ink into a small bowl. He wrapped thread about the needles to prevent them from piercing too deeply, and carefully studied the contours of his left hand, noticing every wrinkle and shift as it flexed. When he was ready, he took a needle, dipped it in the ink, and set to work.

It was slow going. He was forced to pause frequently to wipe his palm clear of blood and excess ink. He had nothing but time, though, so he worked with care, his hand steady. By midmorning, he was satisfied with his warding. He poulticed the hand and wrapped it carefully, then went about replenishing the oasis’ stores. He worked hard the rest of the day, and the day after that, knowing that he would need as much as he could carry before he left.

Arlen remained in the oasis for another week, warding his skin in the mornings and gathering food in the afternoons. The tattoos on his palms healed rapidly, but Arlen did not stop there. Remembering the skinned knuckles from punching the sand demon, he warded those of his left hand, waiting only for the scabs on his right to fall away before he did those as well. No coreling would ever shrug away one of his punches again.

As he worked, he ran through his battle with the sand demon repeatedly, remembering how it moved, its strength and speed, the nature of its attacks, and the signals that heralded them. He made careful notes of his recollections, studying them and considering how his reactions could have been better. He could not afford to stumble anymore.

The Krasians had honed the brutal yet precise moves of
sharusahk
into an art form. He began to adapt the moves, and the placement of his tattoos, so the two would act as one.

When Arlen finally left the Oasis of Dawn, he ignored the path entirely, cutting straight across the sand toward the lost city of Anoch Sun. He took as much dried food as he could carry. Anoch Sun had a well, but no food, and he planned to be there for some time.

Even as he left, Arlen knew that his water would not last all the way to the lost city. Spare skins at the oasis were few, and it might take as much as two weeks to reach the city on foot. His water wouldn’t last a week.

But never once did he look back.
There’s nothing behind me
, he thought.
I can only go forward
.

As dusk spread darkness across the sand, Arlen took a deep breath and continued on, not bothering to set camp. The stars were clear over the cloudless desert, and it was easy to keep his sense of direction; easier, in fact, than it was during the day.

There were few corelings so far out in the desert. They tended to congregate where there was prey, and prey was scarce on the barren sands. Arlen walked for hours in the cold moonlight before a demon caught his scent. He heard its cries long before the creature appeared, but he did not flee, for he knew it could track him, nor did he try to hide, for he had much farther to go that night. He stood his ground as the sand demon came bounding over the dunes.

When Arlen met the creature’s gaze calmly, the coreling paused, confused. It growled at him, clawing the sand, but Arlen only smiled. It roared a challenge, but Arlen did not react at all. Instead, he focused on his surroundings: the flashes of movement in the periphery of his vision; the whisper of the wind and the scrape of sand; the scent upon the cold night air.

Sand demons hunted in packs. Arlen had never seen one of them alone before, and he doubted this one was now. Sure enough, while his attention had been fixed upon the snarling, shrieking creature before him, two more demons, as silent as death, had circled around to either side, nearly invisible in the darkness. Arlen pretended not to notice them, keeping eye contact with the coreling in front of him as it drew closer and closer.

The attack came, as expected, not from the posturing sand demon before him, but from those off to the sides. Arlen was impressed with the cunning the corelings showed. Out on the sands, he supposed, where one could see far in every direction and the slightest sound could carry miles on the wind, it was necessary to develop instincts for misdirection when on the hunt.

But while Arlen had not yet become the hunter, neither was he easy prey. As the two sand demons leapt at him from either side, foretalons reaching, he darted forward, toward the demon that had been serving as the distraction.

The two attacking demons veered off, barely avoiding a collision, while the other backed away in surprise. It was fast, but not as fast as Arlen’s left hook. The wards on his knuckles flared, a sizzling blow that rocked the demon back on its heels, but Arlen did not stop there. He snapped his right hand onto the coreling’s face, pressing the ward tattooed on his palm against its eyes. The ward activated, burning, and the creature shrieked and lashed out blindly.

Anticipating the move, Arlen threw himself backward. He hit the ground in a roll and came back up a few feet away from the blinded creature, facing the other two corelings as they launched themselves his way.

Again, Arlen was impressed. Not to be fooled twice, the corelings did not attack in unison, staggering their strikes so he could not play them against one another.

The tactic worked against the demons, though, for it allowed Arlen to focus upon them one at a time. As the first reached for him, he stepped right up, inside its grasp, and boxed its ears. The explosion of magic collapsed the demon to the sand, where it shrieked and writhed in agony, clutching at its head.

The second demon was close behind the first, and Arlen had no time to dodge or strike. Instead, remembering another trick from the last encounter, he caught the creature’s wrists and threw himself onto his back, kicking upward. The sharp scales of the sand demon’s abdomen cut through the wrappings on his feet and into the flesh beneath, but it did not prevent Arlen from using the creature’s own momentum to hurl it away. The one he had blinded continued to flail about, but it was little threat.

Before the thrown demon could recover, Arlen pounced on the one writhing on the ground, digging his knees into its back and ignoring the pain as its scales cut into him. He caught the coreling about the throat with one hand, and pressed the other hard into the back of its head. He felt the magic beginning to build, but was forced to relinquish his hold too soon in order to roll out of the way as the coreling he had thrown renewed its assault.

Arlen came back to his feet, and he and the sand demon circled one another warily. It charged, and Arlen bent his knees, ready to sidestep the slashing claws, but the demon stopped short, snapping its stout, powerful frame about like a whip. Its thick tail collided with Arlen’s side, sending him sprawling.

He hit the ground and rolled to the side just in time as the heavy, ridged end of the tail thudded into the sand where his head had been. He rolled back, narrowly avoiding the next blow. As the sand demon retracted its tail for another strike, Arlen managed to grasp it. He squeezed, feeling the ward tingle in his palm, then grow warm as the magic gathered. The demon howled and thrashed, but Arlen held fast, locking his other hand just below the first. He quickstepped to keep out of reach as the magic intensified, finally burning right through the tail, popping the ridged end off in an ichorous splatter.

Arlen was thrown by the severance, and the coreling, free again, whirled on him and attacked. Arlen caught one of its wrists in his left hand and jabbed his right elbow into the creature’s throat, but the unwarded blow had little effect. The demon flexed its sinewy arms, and Arlen again found himself flying through the air.

As the creature pounced, Arlen called upon his last reserves of strength and met it head-on, locking his hands around its throat and bearing it backward. The coreling’s talons ripped at his arms, but Arlen’s limbs were longer, and it could not reach his body. They struck the ground hard, and Arlen brought his knees up to the coreling’s arm joints, pinning the limbs with his weight as he continued to choke, feeling the magic swell with every passing second.

The coreling thrashed about, but Arlen only squeezed harder, burning through its scales and into the vulnerable flesh beneath. Bones cracked, and his fists closed.

He rose from the now-headless demon, and looked to the others. The one whose ears he had boxed was crawling weakly away, its will for the fight gone. The blind demon had vanished, but Arlen was untroubled by that fact. He didn’t envy the crippled creature its trip back to the Core. Most likely, its fellows would tear it to pieces.

He finished off the demon limping pathetically in the sand, bandaged his wounds, and then, after a short rest, picked up his roll of provisions and headed on toward Anoch Sun.

Arlen traveled night and day, taking his sleep in the shadow of the dunes when the sun was highest. On only two other nights was he forced to fight; once against another pack of sand demons, and once against a lone wind demon. The others he passed unmolested.

Without the weight of the sun upon him, he covered more distance by night than by day. He was windburned and raw by his seventh day out of the oasis, his feet blistered and bleeding and his water gone, but new strength flowed into him as Anoch Sun came into view.

Arlen refilled his skins at one of the few working wells, drinking deeply, and then set to warding the building that led into the catacombs where he had found the spear. In some of the nearby collapsed buildings, wooden support beams were left exposed, and in the dryness of the desert, they remained intact. Arlen harvested these, along with the sparse scrub brush, for fires. The three torches left at the oasis and the handful of candles in his warding kit would not last long, and there was no natural light below.

He rationed his dwindling supply of food carefully. The edge of the desert, and the nearest hope of more, was at least five days from Anoch Sun on foot, perhaps three if he traveled at night as well as day. That didn’t give him much time, and there was a lot to do.

For the next week, Arlen explored the catacombs, carefully copying new wards wherever he found them. He found more of the stone coffins, but none contained weapons like the first one he’d found. Still, there was an abundance of wards etched upon the coffins and pillars, and more were painted into stories upon the walls. Arlen could not read the pictograms, but he understood much from the body language and expressions on the sequential images. The works were so intricate that he could make out some of the wards on the weapons the warriors carried.