Thief of Destiny: The Collected Saga of the Panther Page 11

  "I stopped when I noticed how Abo had tarried," Kaarle informed.

  Abo set his spear down and tried to brush the dry blood off his eyelids with equally bloody hands. "They were saying..."

  Manwe stepped forward and put a hand on Abo's shoulder. "Do you need a moment?"

  "No," said Abo, fighting tears. He set his shoulders square, his mouth into a resolute line. "I heard the Gypians reveal the real reason why they came out here. It wasn't to catch you," he said to Manwe. "They're out here searching for Cleon the Yellow."

  Manwe froze as he heard Voduni Calla’s gasp. The witch-doctor grabbed Abo's other shoulder with a skeletal hand, his eyes lit in a hungered light. "Gypus' sorcerer is in these hills?"

  Abo nodded in a broken manner.

  His perpetual sneer transformed, Voduni Calla looked to Kosey with a calculated grin. "We must slay this man! To do so would cause the Gypians a blow that will shake them like Aemon's Fort did. It will show the strength of our cause!"

  "Cleon is a mighty sorcerer," Manwe said quickly. He studied the young solider in front of him, still focused on Abo as the young fighter tried desperately to remain placid in the mortality painted upon him. "Hunting him will be no simple task. Maybe even a waste of life."

  "Then perhaps a single hunter should prove his patriotism, to the cause and to our people," Voduni Calla suggested.

  "This is an opportunity we might never have again," admitted Kosey. His tired brow furrowed in thought, the warrior craned his head toward the clear morning sky. Bringing his gaze back to earth, he spoke to Manwe. "You've dealt with him before, Panther. What would you suggest?"

  With no escape and no excuses available, Manwe felt his stomach sour as he watched Voduni Calla's grin widen. The loss of his home, already compounded by the guilt over a blissful night, drove nails into his heart as he continued to behold the ruins of revolution. He saw the bloodied and broken anguishing in stained cots, the terror on Abo's face reflected in perfect suffering. Now the evil of change—of freedom—demanded further sacrifice.

  Bound to freedom, Manwe gritted his teeth. "I'll find him," he said, sinking into the cold killer he knew himself to be. "I'll hunt him down."

  Running upon the shadows latticed on the ground, Manwe wove through the cool glades, his dagger freed in one hand. He returned to the edge of the pond where he and Cleon had hidden, a spot that had remained untouched by the ferocious skirmishes and howling charges that had thrown the savannah into chaos. Their individual trails, printed onto soft banks, separated in two distinct tracks, with his sandaled gait headed north while another, toes and a heel, wandered east in the direction of Tolivius.

  Creeping on the sorcerer's trail, he slipped into the shadows of a burgeoning afternoon. The din of combat still raged in clashing echoes, but fevered hearts had weakened, bodies tired, and more fighters searched for positions of strength instead of outright engagements.

  Manwe used this lull to his advantage, combing the groves of umber and boga trees. Cleon's trail carried for miles before it stopped at the edge of a narrow goat path, a long road broken by thousands of different feet, most of them sandaled. Two parallel ruts in the red clay, set wide apart, indicated a transport wagon had lumbered through that day.

  Manwe followed the wheel marks. Those ruts led to a longer ridge that served as a boundary of the rustic farmlands that grew around Tolivius, its border a series of low hills where palatial plantations and fenced ranches stretched across its swath.

  The Gypian forces had set camp at the southernmost stead where a huge manor stood in sharp relief with its white-peaked roofs and marbled columns. Hundreds of servants, soldiers, messengers, whores, dealers, craftsmen, lords, ladies, and slaves buzzed in and out, set to chaos by the battle taking place at edge of their posh domains.

  Manwe crossed the flowering wheat fields in the direction of the clotheslines, where the garb of slaves and lords alike fluttered in the mid-morning sun. Freeing a tattered green tunic, he slipped it over his sinewy body and put his eyes to the ground, taking on the broken man's slouch he had seen far too often in Tolivius' alleys.

  Setting out from the drying fields, Manwe wandered toward the manor, folding into the constant traffic until he found himself inside the long, palatial halls. Filing in with the weary slaves who manned the kitchens, he spied lines of soldiers posted at the stairs leading to the top floor. Volunteering to take a tray of bandages and slaves to a master's quarters, he carried the load as his ticket to explore the manor.

  At the top of the stairs, he was directed left by one of the helmed Gypians, who ushered him to a bedroom. The door opened from the inside, allowing him to slip in.

  An older man, his stomach swollen with years of vice, sipped from a polished silver goblet. Wiping his fat face of red wine dribbles with the corner of his embroidered robe, he refreshed his cup from a stone pitcher. "Dreadful business hunting by yourself, Cleon. This Juutan should have been treated with more concern."

  Lying in bed, Cleon rested beneath a few light blankets as a healer applied a salve to a scattering of wounds on his face and neck. With both hands bandaged, he lazed about the plush mattress, his attention far away. "Beg my pardon, Senate Consul, but by the time I handled the proper documentation, he would have been gone. I've demonstrated my skill time and time again against such brigands, whether they were Thom Flightfeet or The Knives of the Jade Emperor."

  "But this brigand has eluded you three times so far. Perhaps we frontiersmen deal with hardier stuff than you do in Gypus," said the Senate Consul with an air of superiority. "And you brought a full-scale battle with you, no less."

  "Restless remains the vaunted security of Tolivius," Cleon said in a mock boast. "Was it my government that allowed a cherished dignitary like The Latian Lion to disappear into the jungle, forever missing in its timeless dark? How goes the repairs of Aemon's Fort, by the by?"

  The lord's satisfaction diminished as he slugged wine. "Well, we both have swords upon our backs."

  Manwe looked down at the contents of his tray: bandages, herbal pastes, and salve pots. He attended to the healer in the bed beside Cleon, an older gentleman with eyes faded from cataracts. This healer nodded to him when he approached, muttering some blessing about helpful slaves as he started to unwrap the bandages around the sorcerer's hand. The strips of linen peeled wetly off.

  Cleon winced as the cuts and punctures were exposed to the air. "Careful, old man," he said with a quick, pained grin. "I'll need those for later." The sorcerer laughed and checked on Manwe, silenced when he caught eyes with him.

  Manwe stared dire warning back at the sorcerer.

  "So what do we do, Sorcerer?" asked the Senate Consul. "You failed to capture this Panther, and now we have rebels at our city's borders. Seeing that we are fighting for the very land we have rightfully claimed, I say we need a plan if we are both to be free of this mess when it is all said and done. The Empire can hardly afford another loss to these rebels."

  Manwe glanced to the official, which drew a brief cough from Cleon.

  The Senate Consul picked up his pitcher and offered it in the sorcerer's direction.

  "Ugh, no," said Cleon dismissively. Smiling at Manwe, he bit his lip seductively, a hint of mischief in the nibble. "Do you dare imagine us losing to these rapscallions?"

  "Before Aemon's Fort?” asked the Senate Consul. "That thief went beyond stealing my wife's jewels, Cleon. His prizes and victories bond legends to his shadow, and this dirty little rebellion has co-opted it, never knowing the cost of what they do."

  "Because we all fear Gypus," said Cleon, his expression thoughtful as he nodded at Manwe.

  His back to the both of them, the Senate Consul rested his large bottom on a couch in the middle of the room, facing the small stove used to heat the space on the savannah's chillier nights. A goblet on one knee, he sighed. "I'd rather face those savages in the hills than the Empire's armies. They would fall hard on everyone's back if summoned, Gypian or not."

  "Perhaps
we should leave savage lands to savages," said Cleon.

  "Perhaps we should have in the first place," the Senate Consul replied.

  Manwe heard this conversation in perfect stillness, holding his tray as the healer took what bandages and pastes were needed to redress Cleon's wounded hands. The fear he heard in these Gypians' voices when they spoke of their own homeland—what if they had come to Tolivius to flee, choosing waste against the suffocating tyranny they left behind? He and Cleon locked eyes again, sharing a concern beyond the personal attachment they had created behind the lies they had told.

  Manwe knew the answer Kosey would give to such knowledge, something brave but foolish.

  How Voduni Calla would respond could be disastrous.

  "Everyone could die," said Cleon.

  Even the healer paused at what seemed to be a random comment applied to the battle outside the manor, but Manwe understood its true depth. He swallowed hard, refocused on what went on in the room. The healer bound the last bandage on Cleon's hands.

  "I'll come back," Manwe said, his lips moving soundlessly.

  The sorcerer nodded and sank back into his plush pillow.

  Long after the sun had set and the roaring in the hills quieted, Manwe returned to Cleon's bedroom where the open windows looked out over smoking fields and the firefly clusters of torches, spots where rebels and Gypians dueled in the deep night. Starlight wreathed a full moon, though it all shone ruddy behind the smoky clouds. Some form of peace came to the farmlands and manor houses, a tense calm amid the scared whispers and worried rumors. He slipped inside the calm, cool darkness of the chamber, his knife held tight in one hand.

  A single lamp, its light low and troubled, wavered a glow on the walls and cut shadows on Cleon's handsome, tired face.

  "Do you come for my life?" the sorcerer asked aloud.

  As lonesome as they were, Manwe checked the hidden places a spy could occupy, expecting someone to rise for his capture. When nothing moved, he calmed. "I'm supposed to."

  "Will you?"

  He approached the foot of Cleon's bed, a four-posted frame carved of ebony and with pearls inset on the headboard. The softness of the mattress met Manwe’s knees as he climbed atop of it, his curved blade moving like the liquid tail of his namesake. He perched beside the sorcerer, who did not move to defend himself.

  Cleon scooted himself taller in the bed. "Well, Panther? Am I pardoned or prey?"

  Manwe shut his eyes at the question, a hard distinction he wondered himself. "We cannot continue this war this way. Not if you're telling the truth."

  "Gypus' reach is far for distance and cruelty. There is a reason why they send dissenters out here, hoping we grab more land as the east slowly picks at our dead."

  "Dissenters who are still part of the empire they flee from," reminded Manwe. He knelt on the mattress beside Cleon. "But I know jackals that see power in destruction, who would invite hell upon all of us for the sake of pride."

  "So what will you do, Panther?" asked Cleon. "You spare me and you become a traitor; you fail to kill me and you will lose face to one of those jackals you clearly worry about. Your choices are few and less than kind."

  At a loss for an immediate answer, he looked to the sorcerer's bandaged hands. "What happened to you after you drove us into that pond?"

  "Oh, this," Cleon said with a sigh. He set both hands on his robed lap. "Probably what happened to you—wandered in one direction trying to stay out of the fray. Unfortunately, I wandered into one of those pernicious thorn bushes."

  Unable to contain a snort of laughter, Manwe covered his mouth with his hands and chuckled furiously. Cleon put on a wounded expression before the pair of them sat there on the bed, snickering like some old couple. The moment, clear and defined, brought Manwe back to balmy days out in the grasslands with Toba, lazing beneath the sun while elephants drank from muddy ponds and zebras foraged out in the hills. The gentleness of the oil lamp on the bedside table, the silk of the sheets, and the quiet of the night—these scenes fought with each other, a cold guilt set against fierier passions.

  When their shared mirth died, the sorcerer glanced toward that single point of flame. "What do we do about us, Panther?"

  Manwe let his gaze drift to the bed's canopy. He stared at the hanging fabric, a light, airy material used to keep the insects that climbed through the windows away from the occupant when they slept. He looked at Cleon with curiosity.

  "Where's your robe?" he asked.

  Cleon nodded to the lone desk in the chamber, and on the chair set before it rested his yellow robe, its velvet fabric torn to shreds. Small smears of blood streaked the lapels.

  Manwe climbed across the bed and onto the floor, going to retrieve the garment. He held it in his hands like some sacred shawl. "You'll never be able to be Cleon the Yellow again."

  "True," said the sorcerer with a defeated look. "Ah, well," he said with a casual wave of dismissal. "We don't get to keep everything, do we?"

  "Not everything." Manwe stared blankly at the sorcerer before turning away, headed for the door out to the manor's halls. "I'll see you soon."

  "Where?" Cleon called.

  "Wherever there is solace in the dark."

  Free of the manor, the plantations, and the scratchy tunic he had stolen from the clothing lines, Manwe strode the dark woods of his homeland, at ease in that nighttime realm. The stars glimmered through the thick branches of the high trees and past the sounds of the nocturnal world, lion's roars and hyena's yelps. He melded into the shadows on his way back to the rebel camp.

  Broken packs of Gypian hoplites and Juutan freedom fighters stalked the groves, on the hunt for each other in the narrowing hours between midnight and dawn. Slinking through the trees, Manwe neared the ridge between him and the glen where the rebel camp rested.

  Five odd shapes rose from the grasses.

  Dark-skinned men coated in hot wood gum that scalded their flesh into pockets of yellow puss lurched forward, each movement a display of gross will through unnatural agony. They wore the brown loincloths and tattered armor of the rebels, but as they stalked toward him, Manwe knew these men were not men—at least not anymore.

  He drew his knife as he met them. Rolling into a dive, Manwe slashed the first ghoul open at the ribs when he came up before drawing a cut across the next opponent's throat.

  The final three attacked in an organized trio as the first two fell, thrusting from behind their shields with iron spears, poking and prodding to catch Manwe’s flowing limbs and shifting movement. He cut at the nearest ghoul as he wheeled to the left, opened one of the dead thing's forearms. Black sludge leaked from the wound.

  Manwe bounded up the muddy incline toward the ridge's apex, clawing clay and small rocks. He grabbed at the dry crust near the top and forced a handhold. Pulling himself over, he rolled down the other side of the hill, covered in muck until he splashed into a watering hole.

  Manwe wiped his eyes clean of silt as the three ghouls tumbled down the slope after their prey. Their pitch-covered bodies hissed with steam when they hit the shallow waters. Backed against the nearest bank, Manwe stabbed the closest ghoul in the throat when the dead men clamored towards him. The other two surged forward as the first sank to his knees, still crawling to reach his mortal prey.

  Forced toward the grove where Kosey's camp waited, Manwe fled past shrubs that scored his skin with their hard thorns as the ghouls’ haunting wails followed after him. He halted at the edge of the clearing, horrified beyond measure as he saw what lay before him.

  Their limbs dusted white, dozens of men and women skipped and twirled in a wide circle over a field of bodies half-buried in the dirt. They avoided those prone forms, which sizzled as a strange substance oozed and spread like the fingers of some dread beast. The charred smell of human flesh choked the air with its awful steam.

  Beyond this first ring lay a smaller ring made of Voduni Calla's devotees, who chanted a droning song, their weird words crackling with the flames. Off to the s
ide stood Kosey and his most loyal followers, who watched the proceedings clutching the shafts of their short spears, their shields up and at the ready.

  Yet beyond these weird shadows and shifting forms, it was what happened at the epicenter of this ritual that drew Manwe's full attention.

  A cauldron forged of black iron rested in the center of a pit dug into the ground, a bubbling container of tar that roiled in the flames. The heinous liquid splashed over the sides in gross curtains that seared the dirt where it landed.

  Standing barefoot in the pool his pot created, yet miraculously unharmed, Voduni Calla waved his staff over the cauldron's mouth. His eyes rolled to white as he shouted spells at the night sky. With each pass of his blood-splattered stick, the tar's surface escaped the rim. The pond of black goo in the depression crawled from its hole like snakes from a nest. These tendrils snared the corpses buried the dirt beyond his devotees, enveloping them in viscious hell.

  The bodies started to rise.

  The devilish mystic smiled at the grotesqueness he had made.

  Manwe's mind took him from the scene without choice, back to the dim shadows of the recent past when he plied the underworld beneath his beloved savannah in search of his dead Toba. The hollow chorus of drumbeats droned on as he watched these ghouls begin their new existences—damned, dead, and doomed to burn forever.

  At the edge of madness, Manwe focused when a great crash sounded from behind, the sign that the first ghouls he met had found him. Two burnt forms limped into view, their dead limbs torn to shreds by the thorn bushes.

  Manwe’s fear dissipated when he surmised who had made them. Returning his attention to Voduni Calla, he drew his iron knife, remembering how he had ended the life of the shaman who had slain Toba. He sprinted forward, arms pumping as his bare feet pounded the dirt. He outdistanced the ghouls, hurtling forward at a breakneck pace. He crashed into the first line of dancers as Kosey's men intervened.

  "They were your men," Manwe screamed at Kosey, reaching for the rebel lord through the limbs of the warriors fighting to bar him. These soldiers, many of them boys and teens, struggled to hold him. "They were your men!"