Damiynn
Fantasy Author
This is actually from my second book and it continues from my was this done right post. Please critique, I need to make sure its right. Please also remember that there is a lot more to this story than what is here.
Chapter 17
Capture
Damien woke, feeling as if he had been drowned and heard the sickening sound of flesh hitting flesh.
Without letting anyone know he was awake, he fought down the sense of weakness swirling through his insides and attempted to draw his magic to him. It was as if an unseen wall surrounded him and he knew his abilities were being blocked. He almost gasped out loud. Slowly, he prodded at the wall with his senses. He could sense the magical lines of power weaving around the world but his ability to draw upon them had been nullified.
Without having to be told he recognized the ward that had been used. It was standard training procedure for all battlemages to learn about the powerful nullifying wards that cut off ones ability to use magic and draw on the force lines. Nullifying wards were one of the main reasons why battlemages trained for combat as well as spellcasting.
But those wards were usually only taught to third level or higher slashed battlemages and only to those who extended out their original six year duty obligation. Nullifying spells or wards were used to render other types of magic dead so Alyssa probably couldn’t cast spells either unless her deity granted her a sort of divine intervention.
Only one exception to nullifying spells and that was through druidic magic effecting plant or animal life but Damien could see no way that could help. The worst part about being nullified was that the nullifying ward knowledge was kept secret amongst the higher levels that as only a first slash battlemage he had no knowledge on how to counter it.
Who, he wondered, had cast the powerful spell, then he remembered being betrayed. Caliban had tripped him and stopped his being able to flee. Obviously, as he had realized from watching the white haired young man fight, there was more to the supposed bodyguard than what had been told and it had probably been him who had cast the spell. That in itself was another thing that spoke volumes about the other man.
Again he heard the sickening sound of flesh hitting flesh and the grunt of pain that followed. He gave up his pretense and opened his dark blue eyes. Someone was definitely being hurt.
Everyone in the group had been put up against a tree with their hands tied behind. They all had their heads turned in one direction, staring in the direction of the noise with horrified looks on their faces. At least, he thought gratefully looking around, none of them were dead. Then he realized he didn’t see Travis amongst the others.
As he turned his head towards the sound of the horrific noises and in the direction of the glances he spotted the blademaster and wished as his eyes settled on him that he hadn’t.
A large man with a malevolent glare on his face, half mad eyes and stark white hair spotted red with bright flecks of blood was absently tracing a scar running down the length of his face. He stood in front of the baldheaded blademaster being held up before him between two other men in brown mercenary armor.
Travis’ sword and mace were nowhere to be seen. His arms, Damien noticed, had been tied to his own Esian fighting staff with bowstrings that were soaked in blood. He looked like he was being crucified by the way he was tied to the staff. His arms were outstretched and his muscles were shaking from the effort of trying to hold his head up between them.
His dark eyes betrayed the weakness in his body. They shone with defiance and something Damien had never seen in the blademaster face but one time, pure unadulterated anger. The two knights holding him had death grips on each of the staff’s ends. Blood covered the blademaster’s tied wrists and hands, so much had dripped from his outstretched fingers that it had formed pools on the ground near his feet.
His usually hard as stone face was a battered and bloody mess with split lips, cut cheeks and lesions dripping blood, smearing his skin. His face was so swollen that he was almost unrecognizable.
Damien recognized the large white haired man beating on his father’s blademaster as soon as he saw the jagged scar. No member of any royal house in the fourteen kingdoms could fail to recognize the face of the man who could command all of the Krannion knights in the kingdom to him if he wanted and gave the order.
Instead of being captured by mercenaries eager to collect a reward of gold. They had been captured instead by one of the men that wanted him dead.
Damien had to give Travis credit, even though the blademaster could barely stand, he still fought. Using his weight and legs, he twisted so wildly at times that the knights holding him were having a hard time controlling him. Blood from his efforts covered his face in a mask of red and had flowed down onto his neck and chest in little rivulets.
Damien still found himself staring incredulously at the blademaster’s eyes and at the fire burning in them. Their look, considering the beating, wasn’t one of defeat.
Damien remembered the only time that he had ever seen that look on Travis’ face. It had been on the day he had returned home and had called Vargas the legitimate and rightful ruler of the fourteen kingdoms. That had been the only time he had ever seen the blademaster openly angry.
Despite the cuts and blood, Travis’ dark eyes now blazed with a fire so hot that it made the last time seem like a candle next to a bonfire. They shone with fury and outrage as he looked up into the face of the large proctor with the blood speckled white hair standing in front of him.
“Trav,” the royal proctor said with familiarity in his voice as if he knew him. A familiarity, that in Damien’s ears almost sounded like once they had been, what, friends? Gunther fingered the long jagged scar on his otherwise handsome rugged lion like face, “It’s been a long while.”
Nothing was said by the blademaster strung up on the staff. Instead he spat out a clot of black blood towards the other man’s feet, and the large man in brown armor continued speaking in a voice that was filled with disdain and admonishment.
“We all thought that you were dead and gone. Long buried in a grave somewhere and probably standing by Morid’s side in the underworld. Maybe even,” the proctor said mockingly, his voice turning cold, “standing at his doors trying to protect him from harm.”
At hearing this, Travis gave such a violent twisting heave with his upper torso and arms that he almost broke free of the men holding him. One of his legs even managed to kick out, almost catching the proctor in the stomach.
The white haired proctor contemptuously pushed the kicking foot aside with a wave of his hand.
“How is it Trav, after twenty years of thinking that you were long dead, that you are actually still alive and with him nonetheless?” The proctor of Kallamar curiously pointed a finger over at Damien, saying, “He does, I will admit look a lot like his dead father, especially with that beard.” Turning his gaze back to Travis who coldly ignored the statement, he said, “He also seems to fight a lot like him.” Gunther’s face grew hard edged as he added maliciously. “Unless he was worn out from killing thirteen men in a feeble attempt to save others lives. Dorian was though, I will admit, a lot better fighter than either of us and if he hadn’t been so tired,” the white haired proctor leaned in closer to the blademaster, “I doubt I would’ve been able to have killed him so easily.”
Damien watched as sadness and despair washed over the blademaster’s face at these hate filled words being hurled at him. Each seemed to pierce him and all of the anger fled from the Blademaster’s eyes.
Gesturing again towards him, the knight proctor leaned back and said almost respectfully, “He managed to kill six of my knights before he was tripped up by Cyadine’s son,” waving a hand at Caliban who was sitting off to one side not looking back at any of them.
“Are you trying to serve as his protector as well Trav?” the royal proctor asked with more mocking regret filling his voice. He shook his head sadly. “Be careful, that you don’t let him die as well,” the big man finished contemptuously, spitting back into the blademaster’s bloody face. “Without him there won’t be any others left for you to protect to take the throne.”
Travis didn’t answer. The fight seemed drained out of him and instead he slumped in despair against the blood soaked bowstrings around his wrists.
“But no one besides us here,” the proctor said with an evil smile, “will ever learn about that small fact, will they protector?”
Damien felt a cold chill run down his spine at hearing the large man’s words. What did he mean by stating his father had killed the attacking men? Wasn’t that what Bertravis Liolbane the knight’s champion of his parents was famous for? His having killed almost all the attackers single handedly before he had been killed on the Night of Sorrows.
That question along with several more filled Damien’s mind, raced around in it like a spinning windstorm. Why had the royal champion called Travis protector, and what could Travis know about the deaths of his parents.
More importantly how did he know anything at all? According to his father and Travis, he was only a simple fighting slave freed from the pits. How could the royal regent’s third in command from the far away capitol city know him and seem on such familiar terms with him almost as if he had known him all of his life. It seemed as he spoke to Travis as if he had known him for a long time, longer even than the ten years he had.
Could it be, Damien wondered as a frightening thought crossed his mind, maybe Travis who would not speak about his past also had a hand in killing his parents?
Damien squashed that thought with a mental fist as fast as it crossed his mind. One thing Travis wasn’t was a betrayer of honor or a deceiver of others. The blademaster always strove hard to stand high as a pillar of morality and he succeeded.
No one, including the other knights who looked about guardedly, could keep their eyes off of the two men surrounded by the glow of orange firelight. All of them sensed an unspoken war going on between the pair and that a lot more was being left unsaid than what was being spoken of aloud.
Some of the knights, Damien noticed, also had looks of almost disgrace on their faces as they watched the brutal display of hostility. Their looks weren’t directed in Travis’ direction, but instead at their leader and proctor. A few even looked like they were on the verge of saying something. Especially, since this wasn’t even the murderous female cleric of Dar whom they were supposed to be after. It seemed as if their proctor could care less about the murderess who had killed a hero of the realm and more about the man in front of him and the battlemage tied up to a tree whom both men kept throwing hard looks at.
The thoughts about honor were not only theirs. Kendle was bellowing in outrage, shouting loudly in an irate voice, “This is outrageous and a disgrace! I thought knight swore vows! None of you allowing this to happen should be knights and should be stripped of your rank as men of honor and valor!”
The large proctor seemed completely oblivious. Placing a blood splattered mailed hand under Travis’s chin he raised it high, looking into his dark eyes.
Despite the brutal beating that the blademaster had received, Travis seemed to recover from his earlier despair and shook his head free of Gunther Haldron’s bloody gauntleted fist. He drew a deep shuddering breath and spat out again defiantly. This time the glob of blood flecked spittle flew directly into the proctor’s face, hitting him squarely on the scar next to his eye. Damien watched as it ran down his face, sliding through the jagged furrow.
One of the knights holding the blademaster started to draw back his leg to kick the blademaster when the white haired man spoke sharply, “No!”
The single word was spoken with so much force that it froze the other man and silenced the buzzing of the other knights about the camp watching their leader with wide eyes and awed expressions. They had never seen anything out of the man who commanded them like what they were seeing right now.
Gunther Haldron smiled grimly at the bloody blademaster and said with a rather sad expression on his face and in an almost melancholy voice, “You should have stayed dead Travis. Soon you are going to lose another you were supposed to protect and there will be no one else left.”
Gunther’s expression turned rock hard, his steel gray eyes showed no hint of compassion as he raised his clenched hand high. The silver and red of his gauntleted fist glittered evilly in the firelight before he smashed it into Travis’ face a final time, sending the blademaster spiraling into darkness with a bone crushing impact.
* * *
Travis finally stirred, awakening to the sound of the others in the group talking around and about him in hushed tones. Discussing about what had occurred and about how Gunther had gotten his scar. The blademaster realized as he tried to lift aching neck that he too had been tied in place against one of the forests trees.
“He could have had it healed years ago but refused,” Travis told them in a weak voice, struggling to form the words with his broken and still bleeding lips. “Gunther uses the scar of his betrayal to your family Damien, as a beacon. He has a warrior’s charisma and he tells men that he acquired it while trying to reach your dead parents in order to save them. That he acquired it while killing the so called Terians invaders attacking them. It draws men to him like bees to honey.”
Damien, who had never met the knight commander and protector of the throne and crown, glanced at Travis and said in a flat voice, “He seems to be quite a character and not to found of you either for some reason.” He said this deliberately brusque and gestured towards the bruises and cuts on Travis’s face with his chin.
“That he is.” stated Travis evenly in response to Damien’s statement, ignoring both the question and the tone.
His face was a completely unreadable mask and Damien felt a burn of irritation sweep through him at his not offering anything more. It was his destiny on the line here and he was tired of the secrets that he knew were being kept from him. He almost wanted to shake the answers out of the stoic blademaster’s mouth personally.
Alyssa had been set free, in a way, her ropes had been lengthened enough that she could see to their injuries. Gunther allowed this because he had told them while Travis was passed out, that in the morning they would walk to the spot of their execution at the boundary of the Edgemoor swamps. By letting her tend to her injuries it made sure that none the noble knights would have to carry the bodies of murderers, in order to be rid of them.
“Well?” stated the female cleric of Dar, eying the beaten blademaster, a questioning look in her sky blue eyes, “I disagree with Damien, to me it seems that he was quite taken with you, Who is he and how did he get that horrible scar?” she asked, placing a cool wet rag against the blademaster’s face, dabbing at the cuts and bruises, washing away any traces of dirt.
Alyssa, who had lived for years with the all male clerics in the isolated fortress of Highhold didn’t really know the faces of any of the Lords or Ladies in the fourteen kingdoms. That seclusion seemed to have protected her from the pitfalls of everyday life in a way and made her see a lot of things in either black and white with very little gray in between.
Travis looked at all of them, then hurt filled his eyes and turned sad. Somehow, Damien knew at seeing the tears, they weren’t being caused by pain in his body but by a different sort. A pain that the blademaster felt in his soul, that he kept hidden away from everyone around him. Damien felt bad for his anger and irritation earlier.
“His name Alyssa, is Gunther Haldron, I’m sure you have heard it before,” She nodded.
“He is or at least was at one time,” Travis continued in a voice choked with emotion, “the closest thing to a brother that I ever had. He is the only the other member of my family’s bloodline and once he was my best friend and still is my blood cousin.” They all listened and stared speechlessly at the Castlekeep blademaster who most had always thought of as a simple fighting slave before being freed.
“As to the scar, I gave it to him” This part came out in a bitter tone. “Out of his hatred for me is probably why he has kept it for so long.”
Kendle groaned loudly and blew out a long breath through his long mustaches. “Well,” he said, shrugging his thick shoulders holding his tied wrists in tightly place. “That’s just great.” A bit of anger seemed to fill the dwarf. “If you don’t mind my saying so, and I really don’t care at this moment whether any of you do, Travis,” stated the dwarf, glaring at the blademaster as if he was trying to make some sort of unknown point that only he should understand, “I don’t think that he’s your friend any longer nor is he a respectful cousin towards you!” He leveled an even harder glare at the blademaster and growled, “If any of my cousins or family members treated me the way he was treating you tonight or at any other time in the past, the rest of my family would probably bashed his or her head in with their own hammers or his, just out of pure principle!”
Alyssa, like Damien and like Logan who was now dead, was an orphan and had known only love from the monks who had taken her in, gasped placing a tied hand to her mouth.
“Your own blood did this to you!” she stated with a concerned look on her pretty face, “Why Travis, what kind of emotion can draw out that type of hatred in man who is of your own family line?”
Travis let out his breath in a long shuddering sigh, and after a few moments he spoke two words and fell silent.
These were, Damien noticed immediately, the exact same two that he had spoken back in Castlekeep when he had been told that he was the heir to the throne and Travis had mentioned why his parents had been killed. “Love and Greed.”
All could tell by the way he had said it now with an air of finality that any more speaking on the subject was closed. Almost as one, they all turned their attention to another subject that had caused almost as much duress. One, that had like the other, set Kendle’s beard to quivering with righteous indignation and outright anger every time it was mentioned.
The white-haired young man with the slate blue eyes who had betrayed them. Caliban. He was still sitting hunched over and staring at the ground near the far edge of the firelight. Gunther had named him while beating Travis, Cyadine Syndell’s son.
“Why do you think he waited so long to betray us?” asked Alyssa, casting a baleful glance over at their former companion. Her thoughts as a cleric of Dar were still usually in black and white and all she could see right now was that Caliban had broken their trust.
Damien thought about this question for a long minute before answering, “To deliver me and the Dragon rings into the hands of Vargas and his pet wizard, his father, Cyadine.”
Alyssa, who was still glaring in indignation nodded, knowing what he was saying made sense and had to be the reason.
Chapter 17
Capture
Damien woke, feeling as if he had been drowned and heard the sickening sound of flesh hitting flesh.
Without letting anyone know he was awake, he fought down the sense of weakness swirling through his insides and attempted to draw his magic to him. It was as if an unseen wall surrounded him and he knew his abilities were being blocked. He almost gasped out loud. Slowly, he prodded at the wall with his senses. He could sense the magical lines of power weaving around the world but his ability to draw upon them had been nullified.
Without having to be told he recognized the ward that had been used. It was standard training procedure for all battlemages to learn about the powerful nullifying wards that cut off ones ability to use magic and draw on the force lines. Nullifying wards were one of the main reasons why battlemages trained for combat as well as spellcasting.
But those wards were usually only taught to third level or higher slashed battlemages and only to those who extended out their original six year duty obligation. Nullifying spells or wards were used to render other types of magic dead so Alyssa probably couldn’t cast spells either unless her deity granted her a sort of divine intervention.
Only one exception to nullifying spells and that was through druidic magic effecting plant or animal life but Damien could see no way that could help. The worst part about being nullified was that the nullifying ward knowledge was kept secret amongst the higher levels that as only a first slash battlemage he had no knowledge on how to counter it.
Who, he wondered, had cast the powerful spell, then he remembered being betrayed. Caliban had tripped him and stopped his being able to flee. Obviously, as he had realized from watching the white haired young man fight, there was more to the supposed bodyguard than what had been told and it had probably been him who had cast the spell. That in itself was another thing that spoke volumes about the other man.
Again he heard the sickening sound of flesh hitting flesh and the grunt of pain that followed. He gave up his pretense and opened his dark blue eyes. Someone was definitely being hurt.
Everyone in the group had been put up against a tree with their hands tied behind. They all had their heads turned in one direction, staring in the direction of the noise with horrified looks on their faces. At least, he thought gratefully looking around, none of them were dead. Then he realized he didn’t see Travis amongst the others.
As he turned his head towards the sound of the horrific noises and in the direction of the glances he spotted the blademaster and wished as his eyes settled on him that he hadn’t.
A large man with a malevolent glare on his face, half mad eyes and stark white hair spotted red with bright flecks of blood was absently tracing a scar running down the length of his face. He stood in front of the baldheaded blademaster being held up before him between two other men in brown mercenary armor.
Travis’ sword and mace were nowhere to be seen. His arms, Damien noticed, had been tied to his own Esian fighting staff with bowstrings that were soaked in blood. He looked like he was being crucified by the way he was tied to the staff. His arms were outstretched and his muscles were shaking from the effort of trying to hold his head up between them.
His dark eyes betrayed the weakness in his body. They shone with defiance and something Damien had never seen in the blademaster face but one time, pure unadulterated anger. The two knights holding him had death grips on each of the staff’s ends. Blood covered the blademaster’s tied wrists and hands, so much had dripped from his outstretched fingers that it had formed pools on the ground near his feet.
His usually hard as stone face was a battered and bloody mess with split lips, cut cheeks and lesions dripping blood, smearing his skin. His face was so swollen that he was almost unrecognizable.
Damien recognized the large white haired man beating on his father’s blademaster as soon as he saw the jagged scar. No member of any royal house in the fourteen kingdoms could fail to recognize the face of the man who could command all of the Krannion knights in the kingdom to him if he wanted and gave the order.
Instead of being captured by mercenaries eager to collect a reward of gold. They had been captured instead by one of the men that wanted him dead.
Damien had to give Travis credit, even though the blademaster could barely stand, he still fought. Using his weight and legs, he twisted so wildly at times that the knights holding him were having a hard time controlling him. Blood from his efforts covered his face in a mask of red and had flowed down onto his neck and chest in little rivulets.
Damien still found himself staring incredulously at the blademaster’s eyes and at the fire burning in them. Their look, considering the beating, wasn’t one of defeat.
Damien remembered the only time that he had ever seen that look on Travis’ face. It had been on the day he had returned home and had called Vargas the legitimate and rightful ruler of the fourteen kingdoms. That had been the only time he had ever seen the blademaster openly angry.
Despite the cuts and blood, Travis’ dark eyes now blazed with a fire so hot that it made the last time seem like a candle next to a bonfire. They shone with fury and outrage as he looked up into the face of the large proctor with the blood speckled white hair standing in front of him.
“Trav,” the royal proctor said with familiarity in his voice as if he knew him. A familiarity, that in Damien’s ears almost sounded like once they had been, what, friends? Gunther fingered the long jagged scar on his otherwise handsome rugged lion like face, “It’s been a long while.”
Nothing was said by the blademaster strung up on the staff. Instead he spat out a clot of black blood towards the other man’s feet, and the large man in brown armor continued speaking in a voice that was filled with disdain and admonishment.
“We all thought that you were dead and gone. Long buried in a grave somewhere and probably standing by Morid’s side in the underworld. Maybe even,” the proctor said mockingly, his voice turning cold, “standing at his doors trying to protect him from harm.”
At hearing this, Travis gave such a violent twisting heave with his upper torso and arms that he almost broke free of the men holding him. One of his legs even managed to kick out, almost catching the proctor in the stomach.
The white haired proctor contemptuously pushed the kicking foot aside with a wave of his hand.
“How is it Trav, after twenty years of thinking that you were long dead, that you are actually still alive and with him nonetheless?” The proctor of Kallamar curiously pointed a finger over at Damien, saying, “He does, I will admit look a lot like his dead father, especially with that beard.” Turning his gaze back to Travis who coldly ignored the statement, he said, “He also seems to fight a lot like him.” Gunther’s face grew hard edged as he added maliciously. “Unless he was worn out from killing thirteen men in a feeble attempt to save others lives. Dorian was though, I will admit, a lot better fighter than either of us and if he hadn’t been so tired,” the white haired proctor leaned in closer to the blademaster, “I doubt I would’ve been able to have killed him so easily.”
Damien watched as sadness and despair washed over the blademaster’s face at these hate filled words being hurled at him. Each seemed to pierce him and all of the anger fled from the Blademaster’s eyes.
Gesturing again towards him, the knight proctor leaned back and said almost respectfully, “He managed to kill six of my knights before he was tripped up by Cyadine’s son,” waving a hand at Caliban who was sitting off to one side not looking back at any of them.
“Are you trying to serve as his protector as well Trav?” the royal proctor asked with more mocking regret filling his voice. He shook his head sadly. “Be careful, that you don’t let him die as well,” the big man finished contemptuously, spitting back into the blademaster’s bloody face. “Without him there won’t be any others left for you to protect to take the throne.”
Travis didn’t answer. The fight seemed drained out of him and instead he slumped in despair against the blood soaked bowstrings around his wrists.
“But no one besides us here,” the proctor said with an evil smile, “will ever learn about that small fact, will they protector?”
Damien felt a cold chill run down his spine at hearing the large man’s words. What did he mean by stating his father had killed the attacking men? Wasn’t that what Bertravis Liolbane the knight’s champion of his parents was famous for? His having killed almost all the attackers single handedly before he had been killed on the Night of Sorrows.
That question along with several more filled Damien’s mind, raced around in it like a spinning windstorm. Why had the royal champion called Travis protector, and what could Travis know about the deaths of his parents.
More importantly how did he know anything at all? According to his father and Travis, he was only a simple fighting slave freed from the pits. How could the royal regent’s third in command from the far away capitol city know him and seem on such familiar terms with him almost as if he had known him all of his life. It seemed as he spoke to Travis as if he had known him for a long time, longer even than the ten years he had.
Could it be, Damien wondered as a frightening thought crossed his mind, maybe Travis who would not speak about his past also had a hand in killing his parents?
Damien squashed that thought with a mental fist as fast as it crossed his mind. One thing Travis wasn’t was a betrayer of honor or a deceiver of others. The blademaster always strove hard to stand high as a pillar of morality and he succeeded.
No one, including the other knights who looked about guardedly, could keep their eyes off of the two men surrounded by the glow of orange firelight. All of them sensed an unspoken war going on between the pair and that a lot more was being left unsaid than what was being spoken of aloud.
Some of the knights, Damien noticed, also had looks of almost disgrace on their faces as they watched the brutal display of hostility. Their looks weren’t directed in Travis’ direction, but instead at their leader and proctor. A few even looked like they were on the verge of saying something. Especially, since this wasn’t even the murderous female cleric of Dar whom they were supposed to be after. It seemed as if their proctor could care less about the murderess who had killed a hero of the realm and more about the man in front of him and the battlemage tied up to a tree whom both men kept throwing hard looks at.
The thoughts about honor were not only theirs. Kendle was bellowing in outrage, shouting loudly in an irate voice, “This is outrageous and a disgrace! I thought knight swore vows! None of you allowing this to happen should be knights and should be stripped of your rank as men of honor and valor!”
The large proctor seemed completely oblivious. Placing a blood splattered mailed hand under Travis’s chin he raised it high, looking into his dark eyes.
Despite the brutal beating that the blademaster had received, Travis seemed to recover from his earlier despair and shook his head free of Gunther Haldron’s bloody gauntleted fist. He drew a deep shuddering breath and spat out again defiantly. This time the glob of blood flecked spittle flew directly into the proctor’s face, hitting him squarely on the scar next to his eye. Damien watched as it ran down his face, sliding through the jagged furrow.
One of the knights holding the blademaster started to draw back his leg to kick the blademaster when the white haired man spoke sharply, “No!”
The single word was spoken with so much force that it froze the other man and silenced the buzzing of the other knights about the camp watching their leader with wide eyes and awed expressions. They had never seen anything out of the man who commanded them like what they were seeing right now.
Gunther Haldron smiled grimly at the bloody blademaster and said with a rather sad expression on his face and in an almost melancholy voice, “You should have stayed dead Travis. Soon you are going to lose another you were supposed to protect and there will be no one else left.”
Gunther’s expression turned rock hard, his steel gray eyes showed no hint of compassion as he raised his clenched hand high. The silver and red of his gauntleted fist glittered evilly in the firelight before he smashed it into Travis’ face a final time, sending the blademaster spiraling into darkness with a bone crushing impact.
* * *
Travis finally stirred, awakening to the sound of the others in the group talking around and about him in hushed tones. Discussing about what had occurred and about how Gunther had gotten his scar. The blademaster realized as he tried to lift aching neck that he too had been tied in place against one of the forests trees.
“He could have had it healed years ago but refused,” Travis told them in a weak voice, struggling to form the words with his broken and still bleeding lips. “Gunther uses the scar of his betrayal to your family Damien, as a beacon. He has a warrior’s charisma and he tells men that he acquired it while trying to reach your dead parents in order to save them. That he acquired it while killing the so called Terians invaders attacking them. It draws men to him like bees to honey.”
Damien, who had never met the knight commander and protector of the throne and crown, glanced at Travis and said in a flat voice, “He seems to be quite a character and not to found of you either for some reason.” He said this deliberately brusque and gestured towards the bruises and cuts on Travis’s face with his chin.
“That he is.” stated Travis evenly in response to Damien’s statement, ignoring both the question and the tone.
His face was a completely unreadable mask and Damien felt a burn of irritation sweep through him at his not offering anything more. It was his destiny on the line here and he was tired of the secrets that he knew were being kept from him. He almost wanted to shake the answers out of the stoic blademaster’s mouth personally.
Alyssa had been set free, in a way, her ropes had been lengthened enough that she could see to their injuries. Gunther allowed this because he had told them while Travis was passed out, that in the morning they would walk to the spot of their execution at the boundary of the Edgemoor swamps. By letting her tend to her injuries it made sure that none the noble knights would have to carry the bodies of murderers, in order to be rid of them.
“Well?” stated the female cleric of Dar, eying the beaten blademaster, a questioning look in her sky blue eyes, “I disagree with Damien, to me it seems that he was quite taken with you, Who is he and how did he get that horrible scar?” she asked, placing a cool wet rag against the blademaster’s face, dabbing at the cuts and bruises, washing away any traces of dirt.
Alyssa, who had lived for years with the all male clerics in the isolated fortress of Highhold didn’t really know the faces of any of the Lords or Ladies in the fourteen kingdoms. That seclusion seemed to have protected her from the pitfalls of everyday life in a way and made her see a lot of things in either black and white with very little gray in between.
Travis looked at all of them, then hurt filled his eyes and turned sad. Somehow, Damien knew at seeing the tears, they weren’t being caused by pain in his body but by a different sort. A pain that the blademaster felt in his soul, that he kept hidden away from everyone around him. Damien felt bad for his anger and irritation earlier.
“His name Alyssa, is Gunther Haldron, I’m sure you have heard it before,” She nodded.
“He is or at least was at one time,” Travis continued in a voice choked with emotion, “the closest thing to a brother that I ever had. He is the only the other member of my family’s bloodline and once he was my best friend and still is my blood cousin.” They all listened and stared speechlessly at the Castlekeep blademaster who most had always thought of as a simple fighting slave before being freed.
“As to the scar, I gave it to him” This part came out in a bitter tone. “Out of his hatred for me is probably why he has kept it for so long.”
Kendle groaned loudly and blew out a long breath through his long mustaches. “Well,” he said, shrugging his thick shoulders holding his tied wrists in tightly place. “That’s just great.” A bit of anger seemed to fill the dwarf. “If you don’t mind my saying so, and I really don’t care at this moment whether any of you do, Travis,” stated the dwarf, glaring at the blademaster as if he was trying to make some sort of unknown point that only he should understand, “I don’t think that he’s your friend any longer nor is he a respectful cousin towards you!” He leveled an even harder glare at the blademaster and growled, “If any of my cousins or family members treated me the way he was treating you tonight or at any other time in the past, the rest of my family would probably bashed his or her head in with their own hammers or his, just out of pure principle!”
Alyssa, like Damien and like Logan who was now dead, was an orphan and had known only love from the monks who had taken her in, gasped placing a tied hand to her mouth.
“Your own blood did this to you!” she stated with a concerned look on her pretty face, “Why Travis, what kind of emotion can draw out that type of hatred in man who is of your own family line?”
Travis let out his breath in a long shuddering sigh, and after a few moments he spoke two words and fell silent.
These were, Damien noticed immediately, the exact same two that he had spoken back in Castlekeep when he had been told that he was the heir to the throne and Travis had mentioned why his parents had been killed. “Love and Greed.”
All could tell by the way he had said it now with an air of finality that any more speaking on the subject was closed. Almost as one, they all turned their attention to another subject that had caused almost as much duress. One, that had like the other, set Kendle’s beard to quivering with righteous indignation and outright anger every time it was mentioned.
The white-haired young man with the slate blue eyes who had betrayed them. Caliban. He was still sitting hunched over and staring at the ground near the far edge of the firelight. Gunther had named him while beating Travis, Cyadine Syndell’s son.
“Why do you think he waited so long to betray us?” asked Alyssa, casting a baleful glance over at their former companion. Her thoughts as a cleric of Dar were still usually in black and white and all she could see right now was that Caliban had broken their trust.
Damien thought about this question for a long minute before answering, “To deliver me and the Dragon rings into the hands of Vargas and his pet wizard, his father, Cyadine.”
Alyssa, who was still glaring in indignation nodded, knowing what he was saying made sense and had to be the reason.
