Medalon

The blade buried itself in the man’s chest with a solid thunk. The man cried out, dropping his sword with a clatter as he fell. Tarja barely had time to wonder where she had learned such a deadly skill as the Defenders turned on them. He kicked the table over, ramming it into the oncoming Defenders and unsheathing his own sword all in one movement. R’shiel rolled to the side, pulling a sobbing serving wench with her as she went, to give him room to fight. He was on the attacking Defenders before he had a chance to stop and think about what he was doing. The first man fell with a bone-crunching thump as Tarja smashed his elbow into his face, driving splinters of bone up into the man’s brain, killing him instantly. He snatched the sword from the Defender’s fist and threw it across the room to a young man who had charged into the fray and was trying to hold off two Defenders with a table dagger and a gutful of courage. The lad caught the sword in mid-air and swung it wildly, his unpredictability making up for his lack of skill. In almost the same movement, Tarja turned on the remaining Defenders.

There was a startled moment of recognition as the lieutenant realized whom he faced. They stood in a tense island of stillness amidst the chaos as it dawned on the officer that he was vastly overmatched. It did not stop him attacking. Neither did it save him. Tarja parried his strike and countered it so effortlessly that he wondered for a moment at the dwindling standards of the Defenders. The man should never have made it to lieutenant. He would never make it to captain.

It had taken only moments, but the sergeant of the troop called the retreat before the carnage got any worse. Tarja recognized him. A battle-hardened man with more skirmishes behind him than his dead lieutenant had years. The Defenders were hampered by the tight quarters, the screaming civilians, and the fact that the men they faced seemed to care little if they lived or died. He ordered his troops back, and they battled their way to the door, fighting off both the men in the tavern who had leaped into the fight and the women who were hurling mugs, plates, and food at them, screaming hysterically. As the last Defender withdrew, Tarja lowered his sword and leaned on it, his chest heaving as he looked at the carnage that surrounded him. There would be no mercy for them now. R’shiel was climbing to her feet near the kitchen door. She looked angry. The rage she nursed against Joyhinia and anything to do with her was back and burning ferociously.

“Did you see them run!” cried the young man who had caught the sword, his eyes glittering. He stood on one of the few tables left standing, brandishing the weapon bravely. The letdown would come later, Tarja knew, when his blood had cooled and he had time to consider his own mortality. “We made them run!”

“They retreated because the fight was pointless,” Tarja said, wiping his blade off before he replaced it in its scabbard. “If you’ve any brains, you’ll do the same thing. They’ll be back, and next time they’ll be prepared for resistance.”

“I fought them off once!” the lad boasted. “The next time—”

“The next time they will cut your throat for being a fool, Ghari,” the tavern keeper snapped. He was sitting on the floor, cradling the head of the child in his lap, tears streaming down his cheeks. He looked at Tarja, his eyes bitter. “I thank you for your intervention, sir, but I fear you have made things worse. They will be back.”

Tarja squatted down beside the older man. “If you’ve done nothing to be guilty about, then the Defenders will be reasonable.”

The man shook his head. “How little you know them, sir. There was a time when that might have been the case, but not now. My son attacked a Defender. That is all the proof of guilt they need. Jelanna cannot protect us now.”

Jelanna. The pagan Goddess of Fertility. “Then you really are heathens,” he said, with the bitter irony of knowing that he had killed Defenders to protect a heathen. He glanced up and looked at R’shiel, but her expression was unreadable.

“When this is justice according to the Sisters of the Blade,” the man retorted, stroking the fair hair of his dead son, “do you blame us?”

Tarja didn’t answer. Everything he believed in had taught him that the heathens were a danger to Medalon. He had spent a large part of his adult life stamping out pagan cults. He had never expected to find himself fighting to protect them.

“What will you do?” R’shiel asked, picking her way through the wreckage toward them.

“Flee,” the man said with a shrug, looking around at the ruins of his tavern. The cries of the wounded settled over the taproom like a blanket of misery. A woman in the corner was making an attempt to right some of the overturned stools. Others just stared, aghast at what had happened. “What else can we do?”

“Do you have somewhere to go?”

The old man nodded. “Some of us have families in other villages who will take us in. Others, like young Ghari and Mandah there, are far from home. It is the ones like them I fear for. They are the ones the Defenders will hunt down first.”

Tarja nodded in agreement. Joyhinia might want every heathen in the country destroyed, but the Defenders would do it their way. They would take out the dangerous ones first. Those who were young and hot-headed enough to resist. The Defenders might be acting under spurious orders, but it had not rendered them stupid.

The man clutched at Tarja’s arm suddenly, his grip painfully tight. “You could help them. You could lead them to safety.”

“There is no safety for your kind in Medalon,” Tarja pointed out, rather more harshly than he had intended. “The Sisterhood will destroy you.”

The tavern keeper shook his head. “No, the demon child comes. He will save us. Jelanna has given us a sign.”

Tarja stood up and glared at the man. “Jelanna could write it across the sky in blood, old man; that still won’t make it true. Forget this nonsense and get away while you can.”

“Are you afraid of the demon child?” Ghari challenged.

“No, we just don’t believe fairy stories,” R’shiel said. “And neither would you if you had any brains.”

“If you had any faith, you would know the truth of it,” the young heathen retorted. “Jelanna protects us.”

“Really?” R’shiel asked cynically. “I didn’t see her doing much to aid you this night.”

“But she has,” a female voice said behind him. Tarja turned to find a young, fair-haired woman standing behind him. She looked enough like Ghari to be his sister, with the same hair and pale green eyes. “The gods do not always work in the way we expect them to. Jelanna brought you here, Captain, to aid us.”

Tarja stilled warily as she addressed him by rank. “You mistake me for someone else. I have no rank.”

“You are Tarja Tenragan, Captain of the Defenders and the son of the First Sister. You and your sister are on the run, and there is a price on both your heads. Your presence here will distract the Defenders. They will ignore a simple cult of heathens for the chance to capture either of you. By bringing you here, Jelanna has, therefore, protected us.”

Tarja turned from her and discovered Ghari and the others staring at him, open-mouthed.

“You are Tarja Tenragan?” Ghari asked in a tone that bordered on awe.

“I am nobody,” Tarja countered. “Stay and face the Defenders if you must. We’re leaving. Unless your goddess has made you impervious to steel, you might think about doing the same.”

“We can help you,” the young woman said. “If you will help us.”

Tarja gripped the hilt of his sword as he glared at her. “Help you? As you so accurately pointed out, our presence will draw the Defenders’ attention from your cult. Haven’t we done enough?”

She stepped closer and looked up at him. “What you see here is nothing, Captain. This same scene is enacted every night in villages across Medalon. People are dying. Your people. Heathen and atheist alike. And what are you two planning to do? Ride south and live the high life in Hythria or Fardohnya, maybe? While your people are slaughtered by a woman who kills to assure nothing more than the consolidation of her own power?”

Tarja studied the young woman for a moment, wondering how a simple villager could glean so much from gossip and rumor.

“I was a Novice,” she said, as if she understood his unasked question. “For a while. Until I saw the truth about the Sisterhood. I was a couple of years ahead of you, R’shiel.”

He glanced at R’shiel who nodded slightly. “I remember. You were expelled.”

“That’s when I embraced the old ways.”

“Just what is it you expect of us?” he asked her.