Thief of Destiny: The Collected Saga of the Panther Read online

  Glancing to the floor at his left, the rebel leader spotted his fallen spear and hide shield and slowly moved to retrieve them. Leaning on his shield when he set it right, Kosey broke into a slight chuckle. "It's almost too amazing to hear the other side of what happened."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Come, little brother," Kosey said, reverential. "Only Simo made it home to us. Nobou was cut down by the guards, and while those princes were recovered, what man wants to follow the defeated onto the next battlefield? To listen to your story..." He sighed, stood, and left.

  Kaarle remained in the little chamber of the cave, his shadow left lonesome by the lamplight. The flame eating at the cotton wick soaked in oil put off a sour smell, one that gathered itself in a slight cloud that hazed the room. When the stench became too much, he turned and marched out the door, only the find Manwe waiting for him beside the entrance.

  "Manwe," Kaarle cried, almost reaching to embrace the thief. He stopped when he saw the smile on Manwe's face infused with an appreciative hint of warning. "What happened? What did you do with The Latian Lion?"

  His grin diminished, he spoke in a serious tone. "The Latians have been sent their warning."

  "Meaning?"

  Manwe padded into the cave's dim tunnels, off in the darkness and, one guessed, whatever lay in the light beyond. "When they find their lord's head on Tolivius' gates, I'll tell you."

  THE END

  5

  Loss

  A bright, blue flower moon hung in the night sky, lost among sheets of stars where the great gods made love. The wind of the savannah, wet and warm, licked the grasses and trees into a frenzied dance, its music a roar through the boughs. Somewhere in the hills an elephant sang, calling to the herds as they had found one of the black ponds pocking the dried heath.

  Manwe the Panther rested against the trunk of his jackalberry tree, the place where he lived and slept and thought, away from the stifled streets and choking air of Tolivius, the Gypian outpost city western invaders had long ago settled and won. He preferred clean, fresh air, the feel of the soft red soil beneath his heels.

  He held his knife in his hands. The iron shone silver-black like the sky itself, glowing in the lunar light.

  It had been sixth months since Toba died.

  The corners of his eyes dewed tears, and he sniffed as he thumbed the edge of the blade. He imagined the look on the face of the lord he had slain, the shock on his young lover's features as Manwe gained vengeance for what had been taken from him. Had they known this had all been over a fence, some life they had thrown into a pit with the very emerald the lord had sought?

  Those tears dripped into Manwe's rough black beard as he stared at the moon.

  "Silver thoughts on silver nights, I take it."

  Cleon the Yellow, sorcerer and spy of Gypus' secret intelligence networks, emerged from the shadows of the tall glades, his saffron robe glittering like some faraway star. The dimness of that amber light bronzed his face brown face to a honey blond that made his eyes sparkle and expression seem kind.

  Manwe ceased fiddling with his knife, his eyes drawn to the intruder. He kept his surprise held in check, presenting an immovable facade of focus. "Very few know this location. Fewer so remain alive."

  "Oh, come now, Panther," said Cleon. "It's not like you and I don't have fun."

  "Not tonight." He let his head slump to the side. "Have you ever loved, Sorcerer? Or does your kind only vex upon your powers?"

  "Oh, this is one of those stories, is it?" Cleon questioned, his tone raised in annoyance. "There have been other men. Sometimes they were mentors who taught me of the world and the way it works, and they doted on me. There were, of course, soldiers and statesmen, for what good is a spy that does not pry open secrets from mouths on high? I've even tempted a senator or general a time or two."

  Manwe had never considered someone else after Toba. For a thief of his ability, finding such an experienced fence had been a rare feat of luck. It had been wonderful to share the thrills that came with the perfect heist, the finesse one had to have to thrive in Tolivius' poor but bustling streets, where outcasts of the west mingled with the conquered, be they enslaved or otherwise.

  And when the fence who sold all of his nefarious prizes tugged at the heart of a tribesman's patriotism, he had fallen in love during their midnight alley meetings and bathhouse visits. Such a love, spoken freely in an older time but now regarded as base degeneracy, often meant it remained silent.

  “And you?” Cleon asked. “How many honey lips have sweetened that sharp mouth of yours?”

  "I've only known one," Manwe said. Slowly he rose from his place under the tree, stretched his arms and shoulders, and waited for Cleon. The sorcerer's yellow robes dimmed as the Gypian neared. He kept his knife at his side, unsure of whether he should strike out or not.

  Cleon scratched the point of his bare chin and grinned. "That is remarkably less than I imagined, though if I received that dour look every time we met, I would reconsider you as well."

  "Why are you here, Cleon? Did you come to finally hunt me down? Are you here to break me apart with your magics until I reveal what my heart truly holds?"

  "The first question's answer is obvious, the second moot, and the third is the greatest of mysteries."

  The sorcerer in yellow closed in, his hands out in a reaching, begging fashion. He took hold of Manwe's shoulder and face, his lips pressing into the hard line that was the Panther's mouth. At first Manwe thought to resist, but the boldness of this Gypian's unexpected, unpredictable actions—they demolished the final wall between what he knew was best and what he felt was completely right.

  He pulled Cleon into him, his hands on the man's hips as fingers dug into tight, defined muscle. Their mouths hungered for each other, and without another word of doubt, Manwe allowed himself to fall into the darkness of one he had failed to deny.

  A red sun lifted over the earth and casted a warm wave of light, pushing back the darkness foot by foot until it bathed the front of Manwe's body. The night's cool needles, touched by this heat, disappeared as he blinked sleepily at the dawn. Flat on his back and his head propped on one of his tree's roots for a pillow, he paid no attention to the naked sorcerer beside him. Cleon snored softly, his body wrapped in the yellow robes they had used as a blanket for their lovemaking.

  When the hot disk freed itself from the clutches of the horizon, he rose, dusting his bare bottom and the backs of his legs as he marched the open groves of the savannah, shady places filled with tall trees and sleepy ponds where herds, hunters, and prey slaked their morning thirsts. He brought along his loin cloth and knife; the first he dressed in so he could carry the second in its band. Quiet yet troubled, Manwe brooded as he came across one of the small glens where a small, hip deep hole of water waited, free of any animal who would soon wander in.

  Squatted at the edge, Manwe looked upon his appearance caught in the silver surface. His black hair, a wild shock, carried the leaves and dirt he had slept in. He looked up at the brightening skies and wondered what he would do.

  There was a shadow on the water, born from some strange angle. It shaped into a slighter frame, tall and corded. "I can see why you live out here," said Cleon, his hands clasped behind his back. He stood to Manwe's right, his gaze roaming the pond. "It's quite beautiful."

  "So the humor goes first?" Manwe asked, cracking a smile. "You were more talkative last night."

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Cleon shivered in morning chill, wearing nothing under the thin wrap of his yellow robes. The pair waited at the edge of the water for a long time before either said anything. Lilac birds shattered the silence with a sudden flight as the wind eddied through the branches.

  "Are you going to keep hunting me down?" Manwe asked.

  "I don't know," said Cleon. "I thought I knew what I was doing last night. Now I don't."

  "Is this the first time you don't have all the steps worked out?" Manwe's own chuckle sounded hollow in h
is chest, his grin quaking. He had slept with a Gypian without real concern at what happened afterward. Standing up, he glanced to the sorcerer.

  Cleon turned his head and looked square at Manwe. "You don't know what it is like always having to be at the ready. Maybe you do, but in Gypus, a man can never allow himself to be swayed by such things as passion in the pursuit of his own perfection. 'Beauty before death', my people say, but it is never simple. If the Senate Consul were to find out that I have lain with our shared foe..." He chewed the inside of his cheeks and exhaled. "Sometimes I understand why you want to bring it all down."

  "I don't want to bring it all down," said Manwe. "My people were making themselves their own civilization before the Gypians invaded all those centuries ago. They never were allowed to find their own way, to make up their own minds, or have their own futures."

  "And you think your rebels will make a future where people like you and I will be free?" Cleon shook his head, morose as he stepped into the pond. The water reached his ankles and rippled out in wavering rings. "Do you actually think they'll have room for people like us?"

  Manwe stared at the water, playing games in his head with the shadows that stretched and danced on the water's surface. He’d opened his mouth to answer when a horn sounded in the east, long and low. A second soon joined it, a clarion note from a silver trumpet. Hundreds of nearby voices shouted in unison from all directions as Gypians rushed the grove, clattering in their bronze armor and crested helms.

  Grabbing Manwe in a tight hug, Cleon pitched them forward into the pond's depths.

  Manwe rose in the middle of a battle.

  Off through wide-set trees, dozens of men fought around the area leading back to his camp. Drawing his knife, he blinked hard as he searched the depths beneath him for Cleon. No hint of yellow, no writhing form waited in the pond.

  He escaped for the nearest grove, away from the fight. Hidden behind an uneven ridge of bushes, Manwe crept along one of the streams that fed the pond, a muddy clay ditch that sucked at his feet. At the next bend, he halted, crouched beneath an embankment.

  Bronze-armored Gypians clashed with Juutan rebels who fought bare-chested with white paint and hide harnesses as their only garb. Armed with iron spears, axes, and clubs, these homespun warriors held their hide shields against the sharp swords and cunning formations of the invaders.

  Blood misted the air and mingled with the dust thrown up by sandaled feet, a choking cloud that rumbled and clanged with the storm. Smart enough to know there was no place for him in that fight, Manwe sneaked by the edges of the thundering battlefields.

  He made it to where his tree stood only to find a camp had been set up around its base. Dozens of Juutan women and older men busied around the site, erecting tents and cots while groups of warriors rested beneath his jackalberry's budding fronds. One of the central figures, a tall man with powerful shoulders traced in white reliefs of a maned lion, doled out orders with his voice and point of his spear.

  Manwe emerged from his cover when he saw Kosey, the leader of the savannah's revolution against the Gypians, and all thought of subterfuge banished. A great celebration sparked in the camp when one of the perimeter guards spotted him, and all the warriors stood in time to meet the savannah's greatest thief.

  Kosey led their welcoming party. "Manwe," the rebel leader cried. A sincere smile creased his face. "You escaped the Gypian ambush!"

  "Ambush?" Confused by the expressions of relief spread on the faces of the fighters massed behind Kosey, Manwe set both hands on his hips. “What are you talking about?”

  "We were given word by one of our contacts in Tolivius that the Senate Consul had sent Cleon the Yellow to murder you while you slept," Kosey said, gesturing to the flatlands around them. "I collected who I could and marched them from our base near the Glass Jungles. On the way, we ran into a Gypian unit that was sent to support the sorcerer in his hunt."

  "The sorcerer never appeared," Manwe said with the practiced measure, his lie hard and assured. "How many did you bring?"

  Kosey tilted his head to the side, his bright brown eyes filled with suspicion. "Two hundred.”

  "You need to get them out of here," said Manwe, much to the derision of those who had come to rescue him. "We need to retreat from this area completely."

  "Leave?" one of the warriors questioned, an unarmored youth with a gangly frame. "But the first wounded are coming. We just started fighting!"

  A chorus of agreement sounded from the hot-blooded fighters, and Kosey raised his eyebrows in a considerate expression. For his part, Manwe knew better than to try to convince them otherwise, his lips pursed in an annoyed line. He studied the grove he had long called home, the place where he had rested his head—and shared his first moments of happiness with Toba.

  And Cleon.

  Wise to the cruel ways of the world, Manwe knew the time of him and his tree was over.

  The young rebels went back to their rest as they waited for the next group of skirmishers to come and take their places. The racket of battle in the distance, the eerie calm of this camp, the desecration of his home after a night where he had allowed himself to be happy for a moment, laid a thick tension upon Manwe’s shoulders.

  Kosey noticed his disappointment. "I'm sorry, Panther," said the rebel leader. He squeezed the handle of his weapon in frustration. "We only meant to make sure that you were all right. Things are harder now after Aemon's Fort. The Gypians hunt us with a keener focus, which is a sign that we have done damage. We owe so much of it to you. We would not leave you."

  Manwe raised a dirty hand to stay the words of Toba’s brother, caught between the shallow grief of homelessness and the knowledge that in revolution things were destined to be lost. He offered Kosey a small false smile. "This is where your brother and I used to meet after he started fencing for me. Over time, it became my home. His too."

  Kosey, his mouth shut, rose up in a deep breath. "I know, Manwe. I know what this place meant to you and him."

  He flashed a nervous glance. "Freedom comes from suffering. At least that is what your Voduni tells the rest of you, isn't it?"

  "The kingdoms of the old savannah are dead and gone,” said Kosey. “We will restore what was remained and built from there.”

  "We lost those old ideas with the Gypians," Manwe said, embittered. "We replaced them with purity and religion and heritage, never remembering that it was those very things that made our old kings and queens fight on the savannah. Those royals are bought or dead now. Our young are enslaved or dying at the point of a sword. Will the new kingdom be one of diversity and faith and community, or will we still be worrying about purity and religion and..."

  Kosey swiped the air with his spear. "Say your piece, Panther."

  At that moment, another contingent of rebels charged the camp led by a wild presence, a wiry man of ichor skin who whooped and wailed fragments of old songs and spells. A necklace of bones weighted by a vulture’s skull ringed the man's bird-like throat. His scraps of armor tied with small amulets rattled as he approached, followed by a horde of rough men covered in blood, much of it their own. Thrusting his gnarled staff in the air, he paraded before Kosey on a victorious warpath as his men collapsed behind him.

  Manwe motioned at this man. "What else do I need to say?" he asked Kosey.

  "The soil of freedom is nourished in righteous sacrifice," Voduni Calla cawed at Kosey. He glared at Manwe, his scarred shoulders hunched in incredulity. "And look, we have found the precious snake, one worthy of life after the flood."

  "Looks like it will be a dry, barren one," said Manwe as the older folk came along to treat the wounded, picking up the exhausted where they fell. "Or is the water too impure for our people's soil as well?"

  A wicked smile worked its way across Voduni Calla's skeletal face, his cheeks bunched into two sharp mounds of tight, taut flesh. "Famine will produce a better yield in the spring of victory."

  "Enough," called Kosey, shouldering into the small space between
Manwe and the mystic. A wall of black muscle and sinew, he paid Voduni Calla a glare, a slight the mystic did not fail to notice. For a moment the bone-thin man stood against Kosey, who towered over him by a full head. Voduni Calla eased back, his staff hanging at his side.

  "Let the men rest another ten minutes before we call the retreat," said Kosey when peace resumed. "We'll withdraw westward, toward the ravines down near the low forests. Calla, your group and mine will provide—"

  "Retreat?" Voduni Calla shouted. "We cannot retreat! Our young men and women have found battle and glory! We must stay and finish these Gypian dogs."

  "We completed our mission when we found Manwe," Kosey replied. "To stay here for your ego would only get more people killed."

  "Better dead and free than alive and enslaved," countered Voduni Calla. "The heart of every true revolutionary welcomes bold death." He turned his baleful eyes on Manwe. "It is far better to fight and fall for the next world than to sneak away into the shadows."

  A second band of rebels charged into the camp, running headlong as fast as their dusty feet could carry them. Manwe recognized the young lad who led those men, nodding to Kaarle as the two caught sight of each other.

  "Reporting in, sir," Kaarle told Kosey as he approached.

  "You weren't due for another half-hour," said Kosey, confused. "Why have you returned?"

  Kaarle turned back to his brothers-in-arms and waved them in with his spear. "Where's Abo?"

  "Right here," called a young boy, his face a flaky mask of blood. Shivering from the toll of battle, the one known as Abo fidgeted as he broke from Kaarle's main pack, trying to steady his hands that held his spear and shield. He coughed when he noticed his commander's glance. "Pardon, sir. Reporting."

  "It is fine, little brother," Kosey said with a forgiving smile. "What do you have to report?"

  Abo shrank at the question. He raised his shield upright like he would soon defend himself. "We were sneaking atop a ridge when I heard some Gypians below us. I spotted them in an empty old grove."