Bardiya stood tall, his shoulders back, his vision marred red with his fury.
“Why?” he bellowed.
There was no answer from the elves, only action. The one in front, whose khandar had been embedded in Bardiya’s neck, clucked his tongue. The other seven surged past him, swords raised, their war cries pulsing through the air.
Despite the danger, Bardiya felt unnaturally calm. He still held the khandar in his hand, his fingers so large that they could have wrapped around the handle twice. The thing looked pathetically small in comparison to his great size. He swung the sword sideways as two elves came near enough to hack at him. So powerful was his strike that the attackers’ blades shattered on impact, as did his own. Shards of metal rained to the mangold-covered ground with the sound of tinkling glass.
Bardiya tossed the broken khandar aside and grabbed one of the elves, lifting him as if he were nothing. With a cry, he launched him through the air. The body struck another two assailants, knocking them over like a gale-force wind. Bardiya snatched up a fallen limb from a willow tree, this weapon far more comfortable in his grasp. With an easy swing he cracked the other nearby elf across the face, snapping his head back. A gush of red ejected from his mouth as he fell.
There was sound behind him, soft footsteps and crinkling leaves. Without thinking, Bardiya flipped the tree limb to his side and thrust it backward. It met resistance, followed by the gasp of someone struggling for air. Two more elves came at him from the front, trying to keep their distance, maximizing their reach with elongated lunges. It meant nothing, though; Bardiya’s arms gave him a reach far greater than that of the short, lithe elves. His branch crashed through their bodies, smashing bones, pushing aside their blades as if in mockery of their futile attempts at defense.
One of the elves held up his hand, halting the others from advancing. Bardiya looked at him closely, studying his face, and recognized him as one of those who had come to threaten Ang after Bardiya’s merciful slaying of the kobo. The elf’s name was Ethir, and a hateful sneer twisted his lips.
“Leave,” Bardiya said in a low murmur, “and tell Cleotis to never step foot in our land again. Do that, and I will let you live.”
“Cleotis is in Stonewood no longer,” Ethir replied, puffing his chest out to look bigger, a fool’s gesture with Bardiya so close by. “His reign was weak and foolish. I answer only to Detrick Meln, the new Lord of Stonewood. Your threats mean nothing to me.”
“They should,” Bardiya said.
“And what of them?” the elf asked. He gestured toward the Hempsmen family, still surrounded by the remaining elves. The parents cried as they held their daughter close. Blades rested against all three of their necks.
“Would you let your grief doom them as well?” Ethir asked. Bardiya let his body relax, let his head dip in defeat. Ethir laughed, and the anger that had fueled Bardiya’s earlier rampage returned. He leapt from his kneeling position, crossing the distance between them with shocking speed. His hands clamped around Ethir’s shoulders, and with a simple twist of his waist he slammed the elf into a nearby tree. Ethir’s head crashed against the trunk, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
The remaining elves drew their bows and aimed in his direction. Going against his every inner principle, Bardiya screamed over his shoulder, “Which is faster, your arrows or my hands? Put them down, or I’ll cave in his skull!”
He sensed their uncertainty, saw the tension of the men who held the family captive. Bardiya prayed Ethir was important enough for them to make such a compromise. It appeared as though he were. Bows dipped, and the elves stepped aside so Gordo and Tulani Hempsmen could shuffle their daughter out of the grove. He hoped they reached safety, that there weren’t more elves lying in wait around the grove.
Bardiya turned to his captive, who coughed and wheezed under his grip. Ethir’s expression was no longer quite so impudent. The elf looked frightened. Bardiya took a deep breath. Never before had the commandment of forgiveness been so hard.
“I do not know why you hate us so,” he said, “nor why you wish us harm. If my parents had lived through this, they would have hunted you down and placed your heads on spikes along the Corinth’s western banks. But I am not my parents. I am Bardiya Gorgoros of Ker, the land we have so named. Violence is not in my heart, nor in the hearts of my people. You will never again see us near your forest home, but hear this: should you ever step foot into these plains again with any intention but love and cooperation, I will strike you down. That is a promise, from one man of honor to another. Am I understood?”
Ethir nodded.
“Good.”
Bardiya released his grip, allowing the elf to fall. Ethir stood up shakily, brushed himself off, and flexed his arms. He whistled to his fellow elves, and one by one they disappeared from the thicket. Ethir was the last to leave, fixing Bardiya with one final, conflicted stare.
“You will not see us again,” the elf said.
“Before you go,” said Bardiya. “I must know. Please. Was this my fault, because of our misunderstanding about the birds?”
Ethir shook his head. “Birds? No, giant, there are things much greater than you moving through this world now. I will not weep for the rulers of House Gorgoros, but neither would I have moved against them if not for the gods. Put the blame on them, if you must.”
Before Bardiya could ask him what he meant, the elf ducked out of sight. Once he was gone, an emptiness flooded into Bardiya’s massive chest. The tree limb, the blood on it still drying, dropped from his limp fingers. Slowly he shuffled over to where his parents lay. He fell to his knees before them, rolling them apart so that he might gaze at their beautiful faces. He placed his hands on their broken, blood-soaked chests, and began uttering his prayers. In the back of his mind he knew it was hopeless, but in that moment he didn’t care. His father and mother, the people who had raised him, who had first imparted to him the glory of Ashhur and the virtues of peace and prosperity, were gone. No matter how much healing magic he poured out of his fingers, he could not reverse that.
Death was permanent-forever.
Tears flowed down his cheeks. He felt no hatred for the elves, but he wished he could dive into their minds. He wished he could hunt them down, drag them before the corpses, and plunge into them the sadness and ache he felt. But what could he do? What explanation was there for such madness? He scooped up the corpses, all seven of them, and positioned them in a line beneath the shade of the largest willow in the grove. That done, he knelt beside them and let loose his despair, weeping as he waited for the Hempsmen family to return with more of their people. Then they could begin the procession into the desert, where the bodies would be buried beneath the silhouette of the black spire.
Love and forgiveness, that is the key, he heard Ashhur’s voice whisper in his mind. Bardiya clung onto that mantra for all it was worth. The first man solely created by Ashhur, Bessus Gorgoros, was dead. As far as omens went, none could be darker or more ominous.
CHAPTER 17
The liquid burned as it flowed down his throat, but it was better than the pain in his chest. He welcomed the calming numbness that followed, and even the nausea the liquor caused as it worked its way through his veins. In the end, though, it was no real comfort. Nothing was. Vulfram knew that the drunkenness would subside as it always did, and his thoughts would return to Lyana.
He dropped his head into his palms and worked at his eyes as if trying to pry them from his skull. He couldn’t sleep, could barely eat. It had been this way ever since that fateful day two weeks ago, when his lashings had stripped the flesh from his daughter’s back. On the rare moments he did stumble into unconsciousness, he was plagued with nightmares of Lyana’s future life as a Sister of the Cloth, of the abuses she would endure at the hands of the men who purchased her services, especially the young and nubile. More than anything he wanted to seek out the Sisters who had scurried away with her, perhaps even storm into their large vicarage in Felwood and free her. But he wouldn’t-couldn’t. Lyana’s punishment had been Karak’s decree, a decree given to him personally the evening before that fateful day. He could never turn his back on the word of his god.