That One Time I Went on a Quest

Talukiel the Blade (2/2)

The freezing wind cuts to the bone. As the lovable hostage and the demented kidnapper snail across the inner courtyard, hundreds of soldiers follow suit at a distance. Arkai is being carried on a stretcher behind the crowd, shouting instructions. Can't hear what he's saying at all, because Talu's mouth is still shoved against my ear. 'Do you feel it? She's watching us. Why won't she come out and play?'

'There's more of them in the barracks!' I shout for the thirteenth time, trying so hard to ignore him and failing miserably. 'They're dressed like the Phalanx!'

'Yes, yes!' Talu chimes up in a nasally caricature. 'The Champion of the Games, heir ordained of Ush'Ra's blade, has returned! Flock to my rallying cry, ye spineless masses! My disciples shall herald unto you the will of the Maker!' With a flourish he stabs his dark sabre at the sky. 'Eustace of the Vassal of Lucia – show them!'

His voice, shrill to the point of piercing, rises easily above the wind.

Two seconds later, a scream from up high, on the inner wall. A headless body falls from the ramparts. A soldier of the Phalanx is brandishing a bloodied sword and shouting some nonsense about answering the call. The soldiers around him react; a brief, violent struggle, and he collapses with four spears through his gut.

Muttered gasps ripple through the courtyard. Talu takes the opportunity to take two great steps toward the inner gate, dragging me by the neck. The soldiers barring his way hesitate for a moment, then make way.

'Underwhelming. Had such high hopes.' Talu mumbles, then raises his voice again. 'How about you, Beatrice of the Green Isle?'

Right in front of us, not ten steps away, a sack flies into the air and spills open, letting out a cloud of crystalline dust – dry powder. Whipped by the wind, it instantly spreads out onto a throng of people, many of whom holding firebrands.

An explosion of white. If I hadn't pre-emptively shut my eyes the flash would've taken them out; amidst the stabbing of thousands of invisible needles upon my eyeballs there are screams, dreadful screams, and the crackle of combusting flesh, of a dozen people turning to ash.

A shove in the back. Talukiel. But my legs refuse to budge. Before a swarm of dragons they had worked just fine, because I had been scared and wanted to flee. No fear now. No fleeing.

'What's the point? Iborus won't be brought down by your dozen lackeys.'

Talu's dagger is roving all of my jowls, more erratic with every stroke. 'Point? Point? The nesting grounds, the Crescent Bridge, three months in the Stone Graves buried in claws and fire, the sound they make oh the sound they make when they're starving, I hear them even in sleep they don't stop the screeching is always there – but the sounds people make? That, is a sweet sweet lullaby.'

'You're not making sense –'

'NO YOU LISTEN TO ME! I had to leave. I had to. I'm not afraid I have no fear because I am Talukiel the Blade!' Jagged pain; his sabre sinks a fraction into my back, enough to draw blood. 'But you know what that cursed sword told me, when she finally finally finally put it in my hands? It. Called me. A COWARD!'

I could picture the scene in my head: pressured by his insistence and her guilt for the Scouring, Kathanhiel gives Talu the sword of Ush'Ra, thinking that despite all appearance she might have found a worthy successor to her charge – he had stuck around, after all. The dragons, her Scouring...if those bitter trials couldn't drive him away, then surely he was good enough.