Chapter 2 of 49·6 min read·The following day and night
The General at Blackbridge
The bridge collapsed beneath the royal carriage before Aren could draw the shining sword.
Stone burst upward. The horses screamed and reared, dragging the carriage sideways as half the road dropped into the gorge. Aren seized Seraphine by the coat and threw both of them against the rear wall. The carriage tilted over empty air.
“Hold the reins!” Seraphine shouted.
“I’m busy not falling!”
Aren drove the shining sword through the carriage floor. Its blade punched into the bridge stones and flared bright. The carriage stopped with one wheel hanging over the ravine.
Across the broken span, black-armored soldiers emerged from the smoke. Their standards bore the red eye of the army that had burned his village.
Seraphine stared at them through the shattered window. “They followed us.”
“Then they picked the wrong carriage.”
Aren kicked open the rear door. The royal guards had formed a line around the horses, but the attack had split them from the carriage. Three lay motionless on the stones. The rest were fighting hard, pressed toward the ravine by soldiers in iron masks.
A horned demon vaulted over the carriage roof and landed in front of Aren. Its axe came down.
Aren caught the haft with both hands. The impact drove him to one knee. The demon leaned over him, teeth bared behind a bronze jawguard.
“Champion,” it growled.
Aren twisted the shining sword free from the bridge. Light flashed along the blade. The demon’s axe split in two.
Aren rose beneath the broken weapon and struck once. The demon’s breastplate burst apart, and its body flew across the stones. It hit the bridge wall hard enough to crack it, then slid out of sight.
The nearest soldiers faltered.
Aren stepped onto the carriage roof. “Who else wants to try?”
His voice carried over the gorge. The light of the sword painted every face in silver. Two demons backed away. A third lowered its spear.
Then something struck the ground at the far end of the bridge.
The soldiers parted.
The commander from the village walked through them.
He wore the same broken iron mask, though one side had been hammered flat. A dark cloak hung from his shoulders, and a long sword rested in his hand. The weapon was plain compared with Aren’s shining blade. Its edge, however, was stained with a dull red glow that seemed to drink the daylight.
Next
Aren has chosen the fortress of Veyr over the capital’s protection, but Seraphine knows the western ward’s prophecy contains a line she still refuses to translate.
Seraphine went rigid. “Aren. Get back in the carriage.”
“You know him?”
“Kharos Veyr.” Her voice had gone thin. “The First General.”
Kharos stopped twenty paces away. His golden eye fixed on the sword, then on Aren.
“The prophecy wastes no time,” he said.
Aren climbed down from the roof. “You attacked a royal road.”
“I attacked a moving army.”
“There are wounded guards behind me.”
“There are wounded soldiers behind me.” Kharos lifted his sword toward the carriage. “Give me the scholar, and this ends.”
Seraphine seized Aren’s arm. “Do not bargain. He is trying to separate us.”
Aren pulled free. “Why would your army want her?”
Kharos’s eye shifted briefly toward the northern horizon. It was the smallest movement, but Aren saw it. The general was listening for something beyond the gorge.
“Because she knows where you are going,” Kharos said.
“That makes two of us.”
“You know nothing.”
“Then come teach me.”
Kharos moved.
Aren barely raised the shining sword in time. The general’s first cut slammed into it and drove him backward across the carriage roof. The second struck low. Aren leaped over the blade, landed on one hand, and kicked Kharos in the chest.
The demon general gave ground but did not fall. His armor rang. He turned the kick into a sweeping slash that split the carriage’s roof behind Aren.
Aren jumped down as timber crashed around him.
Kharos followed.
The general was faster than any demon Aren had faced in the village. He did not swing wildly or roar. Every strike forced Aren toward the broken edge of the bridge. The red-lit sword scraped sparks from the stones, cutting grooves wherever Aren stepped.
Aren blocked high, then low. His wrists burned. The shining sword was powerful, but its weight pulled at his shoulders, and Kharos knew how to make him use it.
“You fight like a gate guard,” Kharos said.
“I was one yesterday.”
“Then yesterday was your last honest day.”
Kharos feinted toward Aren’s throat and drove an elbow into his ribs. Pain folded him. The general’s blade stopped against his neck.
Around them, the battle had gone quiet. Human guards and demon soldiers watched from opposite sides of the broken road.
Kharos could kill him. Aren knew it. The blade pressed hard enough to draw blood.
“Do it,” Aren said.
Kharos’s eye narrowed.
“What are you waiting for?” Aren demanded. “Your lord sent you to finish the job.”
For the first time, the general hesitated.
Aren saw the opening—not in the sword, but in Kharos’s stance. His left foot stood on a cracked section of bridge. Aren slammed the pommel into Kharos’s mask, stepped aside, and drove the shining sword into the stone beneath the general’s heel.
Light exploded through the bridge.
The crack raced outward. Kharos sprang back as the section beneath him collapsed. He caught the edge with one gauntleted hand, hanging above the gorge.
Aren could have cut his fingers loose.
Instead, he grabbed Kharos’s wrist.
The general looked up at him. “Why?”
“You were about to fall.”
“I am your enemy.”
“So was the demon in the village. It still needed killing. You need pulling up.”
Aren strained and hauled. Kharos rose high enough to hook an elbow over the ledge. Then he drove his free fist into Aren’s shoulder.
The blow broke Aren’s grip.
Kharos landed on the far side of the gap, balanced and untouched except for a bright cut across his mask. Aren’s blood marked the general’s gauntlet.
The general looked at it. Then he looked toward the north again.
A horn sounded from beyond the hills. Not the attack signal. Three low notes, followed by a fourth that trembled at the end.
Kharos turned sharply.
His soldiers began withdrawing.
“Run?” Aren called. “That’s the famous First General?”
Kharos sheathed his sword. “Reach the capital, Champion.”
“You’ll be waiting there?”
“No.” Kharos’s gaze settled on the red stone in the shining sword’s guard. “I will be waiting where the first road ends.”
Seraphine climbed from the wrecked carriage. “The western ward.”
Kharos looked at her.
She had gone pale, but she did not lower her chin. “That is where the scripture sends him. To the fortress of Veyr.”
The general’s hand tightened around his sword hilt.
“Do not read roads you have never walked,” he said.
“Then stop placing bodies along them.”
Something changed in the soldiers at that. Several lowered their weapons. One demon turned his head toward Kharos, waiting.
Kharos gave the retreat signal.
The demons vanished into the pine line with disciplined speed, carrying their wounded and leaving the dead behind. No one pursued them. The bridge was too damaged, and the gorge below was filling with dust.
Aren stood amid the wreckage, breathing hard. His shoulder throbbed. The sword’s light faded until only its sharp silver edge remained.
One of the surviving royal guards approached. He was young, with a torn cheek and a broken spear. He looked at the dead demon Aren had struck down, then at Aren.
“Sir,” he said. “Did you defeat General Kharos?”
Aren glanced at the gap. “He left before I could ask.”
The guard swallowed. “That still counts.”
By sunset, the royal engineers had secured a rope crossing, and the convoy reached the opposite ridge. The carriage could not be saved. Aren walked beside the horses while Seraphine rode one of the guards’ mounts.
She had said nothing since the bridge.
Aren finally broke the silence. “The western ward. What is it?”
“The first of the Seven Great Wards. An ancient seal tied to the western frontier.”
“And Kharos guards it.”
“He commands the fortress above it.”
“Then that is where we go.”
Seraphine looked at him. “The capital must name you Champion before the allied kings. You need an army, supplies, training—”
“I need to stop him before he attacks another road.”
“He did not attack another road. He attacked ours.”
Aren turned in the saddle. “You said the prophecy sends me to his fortress.”
“I said the scripture describes a road.”
“You recognized him the moment he arrived. You knew his title. You knew where he would be.” Aren leaned closer. “What else have you not told me?”
Seraphine’s fingers tightened on the reins. “The prophecy names seven generals. Kharos Veyr is the first. If you defeat him, the Sealing March will begin in earnest.”
“Defeat means kill.”
“It usually does.”
Aren looked back toward the smoke rising over the broken bridge. The general had spared him in the village. He had spared him again. Yet the soldiers had attacked, the guards had died, and Kharos had spoken as though the road belonged to him.
Aren drew the shining sword. The red stone in its guard pulsed once beneath his thumb.
“Then we go to Veyr,” he said. “And I make sure he cannot walk away a third time.”
Far beyond the ridge, unseen by the travelers, Kharos stood beneath a darkening sky and watched the fracture above the northern mountains widen by another finger’s breadth.
He had been ordered not to kill the Champion.
Now he wondered whether obedience would cost more lives than disobedience.
In the capital, the bells were already being prepared to announce Aren Vale’s arrival. In the west, the fortress of Veyr closed its gates.