Hazad answered, his gruff voice at once mocking and dangerous. “You call us brothers, yet I do not recall suckling at my mother’s teats with you by my side. That makes you either a liar … or a priest. Which is it?”
“All men are brothers-all the more when days darken and the world begins to pass away.” The man’s smile was broad, toothy, and utterly humorless.
“What errand finds you here, alone?” Kian asked, cautiously searching for the man’s companions.
“Once, I was a high priest serving Attandaeus, the Watcher Who Judges. With the death of that false god, I found truth in the shadowed mountain halls of the Madi’yin. Brother Jabolk is my name, and my travels since the Awakening have taken me to every corner of Aradan. Now, I return to Ammathor from the Izutarian border. I bring revelations from the gods for the wretched souls yet sheltering in the king’s city.”
Listening with half an ear, Kian leaned over and spoke quietly to Azuri. “You are sure you saw pilgrims?”
Azuri nodded, his hard gaze never straying from the begging brother.
“Ambush?” Kian suggested. “Or are they hiding from us?”
“Let’s find out,” Azuri said, then spoke to the priest. “Where are your followers, brother?”
The Madi’yin cocked his head to the side as if perplexed. He held his arms apart, looking pointedly in either direction. “I’m sure I do not know what you mean. I’m quite alone.”
Azuri’s lips formed a retort, but Kian dropped a hand on his wrist, stilling him. There was the very real chance that this man’s followers had gone to ground in fear. If so, he did not want to pointlessly goad them into taking up arms.
“I hope for you many blessings,” Kian said amicably. “I regret that we must leave you to your pilgrimage.”
“Look about you,” the begging brother urged, his laughing tone brittle as rotten flagstone.
“The great cities are as decaying corpses. Even villages-those few that remain inhabited-brim with lusts of every kind, unmentionable perversions and murder. The highborn rail against the Ivory Throne, constant skirmishes between Aradan and Tureece spill innocent blood into the sands of the Kaliayth. Kelrens raid from the eastern seas, as never before. The kingless Bashye rage and slaughter, and so too stir the ice-born savages of the Whitehold, taking spoil where they will. Two of the Three false gods are dead and gone, and only the ghost of Hiphkos remains. The world has been afire long months, and continually shakes as will a dying beast. All are omens of doom, promises of worse yet to come, and you do not have time? For the sake of your souls, turn from your wicked endeavors, and join me before it is too late.”
“Stand aside,” Hazad growled.
“Do you deny my divine message?” Jabolk asked flatly.
“You are a thrice-cursed fool,” Hazad snapped.
The silence of Kian and the others proclaimed where they stood.
“Your willful arrogance and mockery condemns you,” the priest said, diving behind the boulder at his side.
Kian flinched at the telltale hiss of an arrow slicing through air. Azuri grunted at a sharp thud, and stared down at the quivering shaft protruding from the center of his pommel. Without command Kian, Azuri, and Hazad bared their swords, while Ellonlef brought her bow to bear. Arrows began to fall from all directions, but the archers remained mostly hidden. Kian twitched away from the fiery pain of an arrowhead scoring his cheek, and all at once, his mind seemed to catch fire, burning away the lethargy born of his fatigue and hunger. He raised his blade with a murderous snarl, then slapped the flat of the sword against the rump of Ellonlef’s mount. The horse squealed in alarm and bolted back the way they had come, with Ellonlef holding on for dear life.
Satisfied that she would not be able to halt the horse until she was well away from danger, Kian kicked his mount into plunging leap. As always when the battle rage fell on him, his sword hilt felt hot and alive against his palm, wrapped leather melding with the creases of his fingers and palm until flesh and weapon became one.
In a spray of sand and pebbles, he reined the horse around the boulder hiding Jabolk. The bald priest popped his head up, eyes bulging with stark surprise. There was no question that he had believed Kian was dead already. The begging brother jumped up and ran into the open, robes flapping like the wings of vulture. Gone was his self-righteousness, the confidence in his cause; now he was but a man seeking to survive. Kian rode him down, keen sword parting Jabolk’s head from his neck with a ringing clang. The fool’s skull slapped into the dust and rolled under a thornbush. Kian took no further notice.
Dragging the reins, he wheeled toward the road. Ahead, a howling Hazad and grimly silent Azuri assailed attackers emerging from behind bush and stone. At the frightful slaughter the pair made, many of Jabolk’s new converts threw aside their weapons and ran.
The fire in Kian’s mind froze hard, and all became preternaturally clear. His horse trampled one man as if he were no more than a shrub. Another loosed an arrow that missed skewering him by a hair’s breadth. Kian furrowed his assailant’s skull with a single, crushing blow. More foes rose up. All fell. Steel rived life from flesh, and before one corpse found its resting place in the dirt, he was off after another enemy.
Another arrow narrowly missed Kian’s throat. He ducked low, putting heels to the horse’s flanks. His mount took him in a wide arc just out of range of the archers. Still riding hard, Kian slammed his sword into the scabbard. With his knees, he guided the horse back the way he had come, all the while drawing his bow from the wooden case hanging from the pommel. With the skill acquired over a lifetime of earning his way in treacherous lands and against ruthless enemies, Kian deftly strung the bow, drew a steel-headed arrow from the quiver, nocked it to the bowstring, and fired. The shaft whistled as it sped away, and his target turned at the last instant, the arrow ripping through an eye and bursting out the back of his skull.
Before the man fell, Kian had already shifted his aim, searching out other targets, riding and firing. He skewered enemies without hesitation. The wider battle rapidly became a slaughter, then a bloody rout. He had not asked for this fight, but he would finish it.
With the enemy facing decimation at the hands of but three men, confused panic set in.
Kian reined in, breathing easy. Far afield, a lone man fired a last arrow in his direction, then ran in a half-crouch, trying to use brush and boulders for shelter. Kian nocked another arrow, drew fletching to cheek, raised the bow high … and thought of Ellonlef. The assailant would have killed her, given the chance, just as he would have killed any of them. The days of easy mercy had become a memory.
“You should have stayed in your blankets this morning, friend,” Kian whispered.
The string slipped off his fingertips, the arrow sped upward, then began its long descent. Eyes narrowed, Kian watched the running man, not the falling shaft. The arrow buried itself into the base of the fleeing man’s neck. His arms flew wide, his feet tangled, and he fell dead, falling to vanish amid a scatter of stones.
Kian turned at the sound of hooves and found Ellonlef cantering toward him, her features taut with indignation. Other than her irritation, she appeared unharmed. Despite himself, Kian felt a rush of relief, and he began laughing. Ellonlef reined in some distance off, her ire replaced by a mystified look. When he continued to laugh, giddy as a boy, her lips twitched toward a grin, then she shook her head and rode off toward Hazad and Azuri, who were searching the dead.
After a time, Hazad raised a large leather pack. “We have food!” he called in triumph.
Kian laughed again. It felt good to laugh, despite the grave danger they had been in just moments before. Mirth of any sort, he reasoned, with what was coming between him and Varis, would soon be in short supply. He tried not to think about that, as he again took up the lead toward Ammathor.