Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4269816" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 54ONE KNIGHTAldos Jennar had been eleven on the Night of the Dead, when Camar had been gripped in a cataclysm of violence and death.  The memories of that night had been burned into his psyche, and he still woke from vivid dreams of his family’s armsmen and servants holding the front door of their house in the Gold Quarter against a pack of ghouls, the foul monsters’ screams echoing through the house.  The last attack had broken through, ghouls crashing through the heavy-paned windows into the study and the dining hall.  He remembered his father standing at the head of the stairs, a sword that Aldos had never remembered seeing him holding bare in his hand.  The young Jennar had been in a position to inherit a thousand acres of prime land not far from the city, along with the estate within Camar, and investments worth almost ten thousand gold crowns.  But that night, his life had changed.  He never got a chance to meet the man who had led the armored soldiers who had come to their aid; his father had exchanged barely ten words with him before he took his forces back out into the night, to rescue others from the wandering knots of undead that were rampaging throughout the city.  But he had never forgotten the face of Talen Karedes, and six years after that dread night, on reaching his majority, he had abandoned his inheritance to his younger brother Kayel, and had dedicated his life to the order of the Dragon, the Knights of Camar.  Now, running along a metal gantry, he felt a sense of everything falling apart around him that he hadn’t felt since that deadly night twelve years ago.  An empty hole flared in his chest, a sadness that he could not let himself feel now.  There would be time for mourning later, if Allera could not bring Petronia back from the dead as she had promised.  He glanced back over his shoulder, but the curve of the chamber and the vast gray pyramid had already obscured his view of the entrance.  He could hear the battle that continued to rage there, however. The young knight clung to his duty, his orders.  He felt a twinge at having abandoned Kiron, but he knew that his superior would have given him the same orders he’d received.  Duty, the Mission, was all important.  For all that Kiron was three years younger than he was, he’d developed a respect for the other knight that had nothing to do with their relative ranks.  So he drew strength from the other man’s example, and ran toward who knew what.  Allera Hialar and the mysterious woman, the sorceress who’d transported them up to this gantry, were each heading for one of the tunnels accessed by the metal scaffold that ran around the entire perimeter of the room.  The one ahead, its blue beam becoming visible ahead as he ran, was his objective.  He had no idea what he was going to face once he got there; he only knew that he had to stop the enemy from doing whatever they had come here to do.  And then, as he looked up again, he saw a man in his path. The knight came to an abrupt halt, surprised.  The man was a lean figure, Drusian by his coloring and look, clad in non-descript garments that might have been worn by a middling-prosperous farmer or tradesman.  But there was something else, a look in his eyes, that sent a cold chill down the knight’s back.  And perhaps most disturbing, he had not been there just a moment earlier, before Aldos’s gaze had momentarily swept away from his destination, and he’d glanced back toward the chamber entry.    “Stand aside,” he said, but he’d already lowered his glaive.  The man’s mouth twisted slightly, and something... dangerous... entered his gaze.  “I must aid my Master.  I am not strong enough to hinder the sorceress or the healer, but you, you I can defeat, young knight.”Aldos’s response was to charge forward, but he only made it one step forward before his entire body seemed to lock up.  He tottered on his right foot, his weight unbalanced, and almost fell onto his face.  He could not even twist his head, and could only watch as the Drusian stepped forward.  The man was not even armed, but Aldos could do nothing as the man calmly pressed the head of his polearm aside, and stepped up to him, close enough for the knight to smell him.  The Drusian reached down and drew Aldos’s dagger from its sheath at his hip.  The knight struggled to move, but he could only tremble as the man lifted the blade with one hand, and with the other lifted up the metal links of his gorget.  Then pain, as the Drusian dragged Aldos’s own knife across his throat.  He could feel the blood gushing, and his awareness seemed to pulse out of his body with it. “You have failed, knight,” the man said.  The words pounded in Aldos head, and suddenly, desperately, he lurched forward.  His weakening body seemed to lessen the hold that the Drusian had on his mind, and he collided with the man as he fell.  The Drusian tried to break free, but Aldos snagged his arm around the man’s body.  He hit the railing hard, and both men toppled over it, plummeting head-first down toward the hard floor fifteen feet below. Aldos did not feel the impact.  He was only dimly aware of the body of the Drusian under his.  His vision was already growing dim, but he could just feel the man’s body, convulsing.  The knight’s lips twisted into a faint smile; the man’s neck was broken. And then, everything dissolved into black.</blockquote>

Verification