them? Could she do so without harming them? And if she did, how would the others react? She couldn’t fight off half the camp if they thought she and Qurrah were a threat. Confused, she watched and waited.
“Now,” hissed their leader.
Two men lunged, each going for an arm. They yanked the half-orc from his blankets and pinned his arms behind his back. A third held a sword against his neck. Qurrah’s long hair fell across his face, and through it he glared at his attackers.
“Say anything,” insisted their leader. “A single word, and Rick here slices your throat. I hope you don’t, though. I want to do that. I want to pay you back for everything you done.”
Qurrah chuckled, so void of humor or fear that the others tensed. Mira ran a list of spells through her mind, trying to decide on one before the killing started.
“Payback for what?” Qurrah asked, unafraid of the blade pressed against the tender flesh of his throat. In response, their leader struck him, splattering blood from his nose.
“You got to ask?” the man asked. “You slaughtered thousands when you took over Veldaren, and you got to ask?”
“Make it hurt,” said Rick. “Real bad, Jeremy. Make it hurt bad.”
“Angels and kings have pardoned me,” Qurrah said. Blood trickled down his neck from the cut made from his talking. “Must I now beg forgiveness from every commoner in the land? How have I hurt you, Jeremy? In some way, I have hurt every single man and woman alive.”
Jeremy grabbed Qurrah’s hair and lifted his head so they could stare eye to eye. Mira shifted in her bed, angling herself better for a spell. Someone was to die soon. She felt it.
“You don’t deserve an answer,” said Jeremy. “I don’t care about kings. I don’t care about angels. I know what you done to me, and that’s enough. Don’t you get it? To me, that’s all that matters. And your blood’s going to pay for all of it.”
“Stop,” Mira said, lurching to her feet. Her voice was calm, but it had a power to it. All of them turned her way, and one of the men even dropped his sword.
“Stay out of this,” said Jeremy. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“He’s here to help you,” Mira said, ignoring his protest. “He stands with you, ready to die when the demons come. Are you so eager he beat you to your twin fates? Is your hatred so great you’d deny him any chance at redemption?”
“He killed them,” Jeremy said. “All of them. Don’t you get it? You…you’re just some witch; you’re an elf in human form. You don’t understand. You couldn’t possibly understand!”
He shoved the others aside and grabbed Qurrah by the front of his robe, and he pressed his sword tight against Qurrah’s neck. The half-orc refused to fight back, instead standing still and calm, though his eyes burned with anger and sadness.
“You wearing the white robes of an angel? A sick joke. I don’t care how many demons he helps kill, he’ll never atone for what he did!”
“Who was it?” Qurrah asked, his voice suddenly quiet. “Tell me.”
“My little girl,” Jeremy said, suddenly taken aback. “My wife, and…and Tasha. My little one. Butchered. Don’t you get it? All of you, don’t you get it? He deserves to die!”
He looked ready to kill. His hand shook, and tears streamed down his face. Mira felt her spells flutter in her mind, so great was his sorrow. Could she deny him? Their task was so hopeless, a fool’s stand against an unstoppable force, might it be better for that one man to have his moment of peace in the last remnants of his life?
“I deserve it,” Qurrah whispered. “You are right. I won’t run from what I have done, and I won’t pretend that your hatred is unjustified. But I will help you, if you let me, Jeremy. I will bleed and die beside you, all the while praying I might one day be worthy to stand in my brother’s shadow. But you will not kill the one you wish to kill. The monster that took your beloved is already dead. He died holding his own stillborn daughter.”
Everything slowed to a pause, a frozen moment in the night. Qurrah and Jeremy stared face to face, and there were tears in both their eyes. Slowly, the half-orc put his hand on Jeremy’s wrist and pushed the sword tighter against his skin.
“Do it,” he said. “Let this end. Every night I see a thousand faces come to haunt me. I have watched cities burn. I have watched loved ones of those dear to me bleed out by my hand. If your hatred is so great, then give me your blessing. Take it. If it’ll ease your suffering, cut now! If not, leave me be so I can face the one who turned me into what I was. Let me see if I can bring a thousand demons with me to the Abyss that most certainly awaits me when I die.”
“Fuck it,” Jeremy said. He yanked his hand free and pushed Qurrah away. “I don’t care how eager you are to die. You can wait like the rest of us.”
“Such a kind gesture.”
As the men departed, Jeremy turned back one last time.
“They claim you can summon the dead with a wave of your hand,” he said. “They say you can clap your hands and bury an army in fire. That true?”
Qurrah nodded. “It is.”
“Then prove you’re not who you were. Fight with us, and fight like one of the damned.”
Mira waited until he was gone, then put a hand on Qurrah’s shoulder. “They’re only…”
“I know what they are,” Qurrah said, brushing her aside. “And they showed me more restraint than I ever could. If anyone killed Tessanna, or had killed Teralyn should she have lived…not even the gods would find their corpse. All the more proof of how wretched I am compared to the rest of the world.”
“Must you be so hard on yourself?”
The half-orc laughed. “The world is ending because of my hand. Yes. I must.”
He lay back down to sleep, rolling over so his back was to her. Mira stared at him while chewing on her lower lip.
“You won’t win them over by how many you kill,” she said. “You could call fire from the heavens and destroy every demon, and they will only fear you. Protect them. Struggle with them. Give everything you have, and then beyond, and they will see you are more than what you were.”
She curled back under her blankets, and when he failed to respond, she was not at all surprised.
Q urrah was gone before she awoke the next morning. Preparations for defenses had already begun, but a few still ate. She stopped by one of the center campfires and accepted her morning rations. As she nibbled, she looked for Qurrah. Again she found him by the bridge, but this time he did not watch.
“Their undead have no balance,” she heard him say as she neared. A group of men surrounded him, apparent leaders of the constructions. They all looked grumpy, but when Qurrah spoke, they nodded and didn’t argue. “We need barriers every few feet, shin high. Your walls on the sides of the bridge need to go. Every dead body is a risk, and we must shove them off and into the water before they can bring them back to fight…”
She left for the nearby forest. She needed the solitude, for she had a message to send, one that needed to be absolutely perfect.
It was time to bait a god.
16
H e thought himself beyond most human emotions, but Thulos felt a combination of eagerness and impatience as he led his army closer to the bridges. Since arriving on Celestia’s world, he was yet to kill a man in combat. Nations had sworn their allegiance with hardly more than a shake of his sword and a promise of victory. He needed troops, yes, but everything felt too easy. As he walked, he thought of worlds where he’d encountered hundreds of mages in unified defense, or when elves had assaulted his legions while riding dragons of all colors. That was one of the few times he’d nearly ‘died’, in the mouth of an elder black wyrm, but he’d prevailed, and he bore the scars proudly on his body.
But this world? Pathetic.
Velixar assured him that in Ker, across the bridges, he would finally meet an army willing to fight. While
