Morgan Rice - A Rite of Swords

“Work harder, you creature, or I’ll throw you to the dogs!” the man barked at Steffen.

There came the rise of laughter all around him, as the other laborers turned and mocked him, mimicking his bent figure. Steffen looked away, forcing himself to stay calm. He had received much worse than these provincial villagers could dole out, and at least the pain and humiliation kept his mind off Gwendolyn, off of dreaming of a life that was too big for him.

Bells tolled, ringing loudly in the small town, and all the workers stopped, turned and looked. The bells tolled again and again, urgently, and villagers began to crowd around the town center, looking up at the bell keeper.

“News from the North!” the man yelled out. “The Empire has been driven from the Western Kingdom of the Ring! We are free again!”

A great cheer rose up among the villagers; they turned and grabbed each other and danced. They passed around wineskins and drank long and hard.

Steffen watched it all, shocked. The Empire driven out? The Western Kingdom free? It didn’t make sense. When he had left Silesia it had all been in ruins, all his people enslaved. There had seemed to be no hope for any of them.

“Thorgrin has returned, a dragon with him, and the Destiny Sword! The Shield is up! The Shield is restored!” the bell keeper announced.

There came another shout and cheer, and Steffen’s heart lifted with cautious optimism, as his thoughts turned back to Gwendolyn. Thor was back. That meant she would now have a reason to leave the Tower. A reason to return to Silesia. There might be a role for him once again.

Steffen turned and looked at the tower and saw no activity. He wondered. Had she somehow left?

“I saw him fly this way, the other day, the boy on the dragon, holding the Sword. I’m telling you!” one villager, a youth, insisted to another. “I saw him fly to that cursed tower. He landed on its roof!”

“You were seeing things!” an old, stern woman said. “Your imagination got the best of you!”

“I swear that I wasn’t!”

“You’ve been dreaming too much, lad!” mocked an old man.

There came laughter, as all the others mocked the boy; he reddened and slinked away.

But as Steffen heard his words, they made perfect sense to him: Thor’s first stop would be Gwendolyn. He loved her, and she mattered to him most. That was what these simple villagers could never understand. Steffen knew the words to be true, and his heart swelled with a sudden optimism. Of course, if he’d returned, the first place Thor would go would be to the Tower of Refuge, to see Gwendolyn—and to take her away. Likely, back to Silesia.

Steffen smiled for the first time since he had arrived here. Gwendolyn was free of that place. He smiled wider, realizing his life was about to change again. He no longer needed to be in this village, and he no longer needed these people. He no longer needed to seclude himself, to resign himself to a life of pain and labor and misery. He had a chance at life again; his fleeting dream was coming back. Maybe, after all, he was meant for a noble life.

“I said get back to work, you imp!” screamed the taskmaster, as he raised his whip high and aimed it for Steffen’s face.

This time, Steffen lunged forward, drew his sword and slashed the whip in half before it reached him. He then reached out, snatched the remnant of the whip from the taskmaster’s hand, and slashed the taskmaster himself across the face.

The taskmaster screamed, clutching his face with both hands, shouting and yelling at the pain.

Other villagers took notice and suddenly charged Steffen from every direction. But Steffen was a warrior with skills beyond what these provincial men would ever know, and he used the whip to lash them all, spinning and ducking and weaving from their blows; in moments, they were all on the ground, crying out in pain from the lashes.

Yet more men came charging, more serious men, with more serious weapons, and Steffen knew he had to get more serious as well; before they could get any closer, Steffen reached back, notched an arrow and raised his bow, aiming it at the lead man, a fat fellow wearing a shirt too small.

As he raised it up high, the fat man, wielding a club, suddenly stopped in his tracks, along with the men beside him.

A crowd gathered, everyone keeping a cautious distance from Steffen.

“Anyone comes closer to me in this dung-eating town,” Steffen called out, “and I will kill you all. I will not warn you twice.”

From the crowd there emerged three burly men, wielding swords and charging for Steffen. Without blinking, Steffen took aim and fired off three arrows, and pierced each man through the heart. They each fell to the ground, dead.

The town gasped.

Steffen notched another arrow and stood there at the ready, waiting.

“Anyone else?” he asked.

This time the villagers stood frozen, all with a new respect for Steffen. No one dared move an inch.

Steffen reached down, grabbed his sack of grain and of water, slung them over his shoulder and turned his back on them, taking the road out of the village and heading for the forest. He was on edge, listening carefully, waiting to see if anyone pursued him—but not a sound could be heard in that place.

Not a single person dared insult him now.

Romulus strutted down the forest trail, following the Wokable, which walked with a strange gait in its glowing green robe, prancing through the forest so quickly that it was hard to follow. If there was anything Romulus distrusted more than this Wokable, it was this place, Charred Wood, which he had always avoided at all costs, given its reputation. The trees here grew short and fat, the gnarled branches spreading over the trails in every direction, and they were alive in ways that other trees weren’t. They were rumored to have swallowed men whole. As Romulus looked over warily, he saw small sets of teeth embedded in some of the trunks, opening and closing lazily.

He quickened his pace.

Charred Wood was a place of darkness and gloom, and as they went it grew thicker, the wood growing dense in a thicket of tangled branches and thorns. It was a place permeated by fog and filled with all things evil, a place you came when you wanted just the right poison to assassinate someone, or needed just the right potion to place a curse.

Now Romulus needed this place, as much as he had hoped to avoid it. He had relied his whole life on strength, on his battle skills; yet what he needed now was not strength alone. He was battling in a new realm, a realm of politics and subtle treachery, a realm in which the sword alone could not slay your opponent. He needed a weapon greater than a sword. He needed an edge over all of them. And the key lay deep inside this twisted forest.

For years, Romulus had embarked on his own secret mission, on a hunt for the legendary weapon rumored to hold the power to lower the Shield. Of course, keeping the Destiny Sword in the Empire would have been the simplest option; but with that gone now, Romulus had to turn once again to the weapon. For years he had been chasing wild rumors of its existence, following trails here and there only to discover another false lead.

This time, it felt different. This time, the lead had come after the torture and assassination of a long string of people, until the trail had finally led to this Wokable. It could not have come at a better time; if Romulus did not find it, the Grand Council—or Andronicus—would kill him. But if he truly held the weapon to lower the Shield, he would be invincible. The others would rally around him, and there would be nothing left to stop him from ruling the Empire.

They twisted and turned down yet another trail, through a tangle of thorns, the fog growing thick. The Wokable put on gloves, several feet long, to shield his long fingers from the thorns. Romulus, though, tore them from his way with his bare hands. He felt the thorns piercing his skin, drawing blood, but he did not care; he actually enjoyed the pain.