The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 2a - Sir Willard's Error

...The blood of the Phyros made great knights immortal, but it also drove them mad. Countless are the tales of those who woke from black rages to find the blood of loved ones on their hands. Yet few could bear abstinence, and only one succeeded long.

- From Lore of Ancient Arkendia, by Sir Benfist of Sudlin

Chapter Two

Sir Willard woke from an unintended sleep in the saddle. The sound of Molly’s snort had wakened him — a snort of warning, of enemies nearby — and not the first alarm she’d raised, he realized, only the first to wake him.

He cursed and peered about through the slots of his helm. At a glance he saw they were still on the road to Gallows Ferry. The two mortal ponies still plodded before them. To his relief, the ambassador remained fastened to the saddle of the smaller pony, his blanket still cloaking him, hiding his inhuman shape.

Nothing amiss there.

But it was past dawn, and their cover of fog had disintegrated in a brisk north wind, exposing their position to their pursuers. Worse, their road no longer crept along the bottom of a scabland canyon; it had climbed onto an open ridge above the river to his right, and a dry gulch on the left, where they stood skylined against the glowing mist. The river rushed below, wide and swift and cold. On its far bank, the cliffs of the Godswall erupted from the waters and soared into frosted pinnacles in blue sky.

“Something is wrong ahead?” Ambassador Brolli stirred, his weirdly fingered foot poking briefly from under the blanket.

Willard grunted, finally awakening fully to the backward cant of Molly’s ears and glances. “Something behind us.”

“Perhaps our pursuers did not give up as we thought.”

Willard turned around in time to see the first crossbowman loose his bolt from two hundred paces on the opposite side of the dry gulch. The bolt whipped past Molly’s nose and over the ambassador’s head to crack against a stone.

 “Willard — ?”

“Keep your head down!”

Willard spurred Molly hard into Brolli'’s pony, herding it toward the cover of a massive boulder and shielding the ambassador with Molly’s bulk and his own armored back. A bolt stuck deep in Molly's neck, below her ear. She tossed her head in rage, and Willard tore the shaft away, painting the stones with immortal violet blood. Another bolt snapped upon the boulder as the ambassador reached safety, followed by a wet thack! and a flash of pain in Willard’s thigh. A glance down confirmed a feathered bolt jutting behind the steel of the cuisse.

He cursed, and freed the shaft with an unconscious yank. White-hot pain lanced up and down his leg, and he nearly fainted. Perhaps he did faint, for he’d apparently dropped the bolt, and now he couldn’t see it among the stones. Long ago he’d forgotten the crippling pain a mortal feels. How it ruled him now! Bile welled in his throat. His vision spun.

The ambassador threw off the blanket and looked about, gold owlish eyes full of fear.

In that moment, the absurdity of their predicament flashed before Willard in dismaying clarity: with a single bolt through the ambassador’s heart, their enemies would turn Brolli’s people from a needed ally in her war against the Old Ones, into a vengeful enemy. Brolli’s people would attack, and when the Old Ones saw her armies stretched and weakened, they’d seize the throne and return the kingdom to the tyranny of the Old Ways. One well-placed bolt, and the Queen and everything Willard worked ten lifetimes to achieve would be lost.