Chapter 192: Beggar on the Road

Book 4, Chapter 33 - Beggar on the Road

The carriage slowed.

Emeria would not have thought it odd if not for the consistent pace at which Odain had driven the caravan. The day outside was bright, and roads reportedly clear. Of what Emeria knew, they were a mere several days from the gates of Heira.

But today, the carriage slowed in the middle of the road during the middle of the day. It was strange the things one had time to pay attention to when they were hardly occupied by the normal workings of their lives. Emeria had spent time estimating distance travelled per second by clicking her tongue. She more readily noticed the tiredness in the guard company's faces at the day's end. More easily heard the sounds a breeze made as it brushed along the grass. All of this she had taken for granted as a free person, but, and as much as it pained her to admit it, the unseen chains shackling her wrists and ankles gave her a strange and tranquil perception of life itself.

Emeria opened her window. Odain, sitting across from her, took little notice, engrossed as he was in another giant tome. Her tongue was bound, and any drastic actions such as opening doors were not allowed, but she let in the mellow air of Sowing Season, feeling a taste of liberty brush upon her lips, all while paying keen attention to the commotion at her caravan's head.

One from the royal guard in their blue coats approached and bowed his head. “Some vagabond causing trouble upfront, your majesty. Asking for coin.”

Emeria nodded. She glanced at Odain, whose attention to written words had yet to break. But Emeria felt her tongue loosened. “Then give him some coin.”

The guard thinned his lips. “Your majesty, it is likely this is one from among those Heiran refugees. If we spare charity for one on the road, there's no telling how many more might come swarm us on our path. Such a security threat cannot be allowed.”

They are our people, and my duty. Give him coin Emeria wanted to say. But her tongue was bound again.

“Then send the vagabond on his way —with a warning if need be,” Odain said, still not pulling his eyes from the book.

The guard glanced at his queen, and Emeria, against her will, nodded. Her guard bowed before carrying off.

The entourage continued moving again. Emeria stared out her open window, watching the sparsely vegetated hills and dips of open country pass her by. Farmsteads released smoke in the far distance. Even farther off she saw the black specs of what must have been a rancher and his grazing livestock. Then she saw the vagabond, lying upon the road not a dozen paces away in tattered black clothes with a piece wrapping around his head and eye. Mud stained him, and he wore a beard that'd gone uncared for too long.

Emeria met this man's eyes. The beggar picked himself up, slow, lazy, careful . Her guard paid him low mind until he rushed into their ranks, a flash of metal beneath his cloak.

“Your majesty!” the beggar croaked. “Please! Mercy, and blessings, I beg of you!”

The guard were upon him in an instant, but the beggar weaved his way through them, each shred of his tattered clothes coming off from him with ease each time a soldier grasped a loose ribbon of cloth. The beggar was steps away from the window. Emeria saw the hilt his fists were curled around, the blade hidden beneath yet more soiled cloth. She sat stunned, hopeful, almost excited .

Death at last were those final thoughts.

Emeria was made to squirm away from the window. Odain snapped up, tossing his precious tome to the side, and shut the window before the beggar could go near. Emeria was expecting the man to come smashing through the door, but instead, the pained whinnies of horses pierced through the wood grain of her carriage box.

There was a standard knock on the carriage door soon after. “Your majesty! The bastard hamstrung your horses and cut away the ropes binding them to the carriage.”

Odain let out an unbecoming growl. He kicked the carriage door open, slamming it into the poor guard waiting there. He leapt out and slammed the gate shut. “It's an ambush. Prepare yourselves!”

No sooner had he said it did the whistles of arrow fire abound. Bandit attack? A very coordinated bandit attack if true. For a breath, she hoped for their victory. Hoped for Odain's end. Surely captivity by bandits couldn't be worse than what she suffered now.

Emeria relinquished that thought no sooner. She was a puppet here, but she'd be lower than a toy in the clutch of lesser men. She sat perfectly still in the carriage's center as Odain had silently ordered her to do, unaware of the chaos ensuing outside, but hearing glimpses of screams, whinnies, and metal clangs every now and then.

***

An arrow slammed into Odain's right breast, knocking him a half step back. He ripped it out and continued forward, tearing free the Thousand Sun Sword from its golden sheathe. Everything should have been under control.

Alas, nothing worth fighting for ever turned out that easy. An ambush upon the queen's caravan. Only one man could be so bold. The Silver Eagle had not yet lost his talons, then . The truth would be revealed if any single attacker was captured and questioned. This assuming such was possible.

The queen's guard were dropping like flies. They'd not worn their armor for the sake of travel speed. And they were less skilled than those that'd served Dahlia and Eildred Aegis. Odain dropped the priestly act. It was time to play the warlord again. “Fifty men surround her majesty's carriage!” he roared. “Riders out to the plains. Our enemies can't be many. And someone get me a horse.”

The orders were not obeyed seamlessly. In the time that it took these men to accomplish the task and bring about a spare horse, another dozen had fallen prey to archer fire from beyond the surrounding hills. They were well hidden in between undergrowth and brushes. Riders in hoods and masks soon appeared, their cloaks holding no mark or crest by which to identify them. They came swift as an onset current, encircling the entourage within the span of several breaths. Javelins and arrows soon rained from all directions.

Odain charged the formation with a dozen royal guards riding behind him. Several of the ambushing riders broke free of their encirclement and came to intercept. They were skilled —Odain could see that in the sharpness of their eyes and their unwavering balance as they rode with weapons in hand. Their faces remained masked, but they wielded spear and bow between them. Two at the front had short bows they aimed directly at Odain. He clutched the reins of his horse with a single hand as two arrows slammed into him, nearly knocking him off. The attackers considered their job done, veering off to the side as the lancers came up behind them.

Odain ignored the pain of his wounds. The breastplate he wore beneath his robes, the Artifact known as The Renewal, mended his torn flesh around the barbed arrows embedded in his torso. He raised the Sun Sword and pointed it at the coming attackers. Skill can only do so much in the face of magic!

He willed forth the blade's power, letting a blinding light burst forth from its tip to encompass the attackers coming against him. The hilt grew hot, but Odain feared not its pain, for even burned flesh would be healed by the Artifact he wore. Not to mention the Gift of Healing that he'd stolen with the Sun Sword from countless Healers.

Enemy lancers found themselves blinded. Odain charged past them, shearing heads from their necks, leaving smoldering flesh that hissed in his ears. The royal guard riding behind him felled those he could not reach.

Odain began his chase of the deadly encirclement still throwing projectiles at the carriage and its guarding soldiers. Lancers broke free and charged the queen's carriage.

Odain cut them off from the side, and crashed into their lines, hacking at any exposed flesh his blade could reach, be it man or steed. Each wound he wrought smoked from the heat come from his sword, and the sickeningly sweet smell of cooked flesh followed. He blinded those he was poorly positioned to fight, and melted through swords that met his match with the Sun Sword's powers.

The ambush continued its hit and run tactics, more arrows finding their way into Odain's back. One caught his throat and cut through his windpipe. He ripped it free before the lack of air could claim his consciousness, letting the wound mend on its own. A dozen men in vagabond's clothes approached the main carriage and engaged the dwindling soldiers guarding it. Odain crashed into them, breaking ally and foe alike beneath the hooves of his horse. He swung indiscriminately, uncaring for the wrong lives ended. Any and all soldiers of Xenarian origin were disposable in the end.

The buzzing riders lessened as the royal guard engaged them and forced them away. Their plot now foiled, the ambushers began to flee. Odain ripped the remaining arrows from within him, screaming at the top of his lungs. “A servant of the Goddess does not fall so easily! Flee now before her might, before her justice, before her truth, oh cowardly foes of almighty Trillia!”

What survived of the carriage's surviving defenders looked at him in awe. Odain let out a heavy breath. Yes. Revere me. Worship me. Become mine so that you will die for me when I need it. A mere display of strength in a time of distress was enough to turn men into fanatics. These were the crucial moments that made heroes. The moments in which the right words, the right displays, turned skeptics into loyals. These poorly trained soldiers had been staring down defeat, and the certain death that it would bring. Odain had saved them in their fleeting moment of intense fear, and that was enough for them to look past his indiscriminate killings of ally and foe alike.

Odain dismounted. He kicked a living vagabond in the face before bending low and ripping the man's mask free. The beggar bled from his teeth, face scrunched in pain and eyes wide with panic.

“Who sent you?” Odain asked. Say it. Say Lord Serene and give me the excuse to march on this sole remaining thorn in my side.

“I—I don't know. Was paid. Fat silver bits they was. They said—”

Odain pressed the flat of the Sun Sword upon this beggar's hand, letting it burn his flesh. The beggar let out an ear splitting scream.

“I don't know! I don't know! I swears. We was paid! Paid to capture the lady!”

Odain ground his teeth. He plunged the Sun Sword into the beggar's heart, and let the blade sit there until the corpse became ashes. Clever, to have hired real beggars in this ambush. If only he'd captured one of the enemy riders instead. Such skilled riders could only be of the famed Eagle cavalry. Shame, that. But if they tried once, they might yet try again. And next time, Odain would not fail.

“Take quick measure of our fallen,” Odain said. “Leave the dead and board the wounded on wagons. I shall tend to them later with the power granted to me by the Goddess. Send a rider to make haste unto Heira and request immediate aid and patrols along our path. We will not be caught off guard again.”

“Yes, your brilliance,” said several surrounding Whitecoats. They set to work as the remaining queen's guard returned to stand watch around the carriage.

Odain spent spare minutes Healing fatal wounds and earning himself more praise among the guards. He then boarded the carriage, uncaring to change his bloodstained garb. Emeria grimaced. She pushed herself into a corner, eyeing his every move as he sat down with a huff, a bead of sweat slowly dribbling down the side of his head.

Odain had released her movements in the heat of battle so that she could watch the carnage from within her box. She'd for certain seen the arrow in his throat if those fidgeting thumbs and tapping feet of hers was any indication. “Sorry,” Odain said, sheathing the Sun Sword. “I'm not that easy to kill.”

***

Arhad Calthus hooked his monocular on his belt. The guard had been smaller and less experienced than he'd expected. Perhaps if he'd brought all thousand riders to bear, extracting the queen would have been easy. But that large a number would not have gone unnoticed by scouts the entourage frequently sent out. Scouts we might have hunted had we arrived here earlier.

No matter. Arhad already sent the vast majority of Lord Serene's taskforce into Heira. The city's surrounds would be watched, but the clutter inside a refugee infested city would present better opportunities. A mere one hundred riders had reduced a guard of three hundred to less than half, with many there wounded. Arhad had nine hundred more elite soldiers versed in infiltration, recon and espionage hidden among the citizens of Heira.

Vicegerent Odain presented the only problem. If ever there was doubt that he was the Lord Sun who'd taken from Lady Sar'tara her home, there was none now. He wielded the Thousand Sun Sword —that was evidence enough. And he's a warrior of considerable skill. One not easily slain either.

Arhad pulled up his hood and mask. He tugged the reins of his horse and dug his heels into her side, riding hard toward Heira.