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

  "Why are you fighting for freedom?" Kaarle asked. "Many of us hope the murder of the lord is real, though we don't say so out loud in front of the holy folk."

  "It was real." Manwe stared down at the gibbets, his gaze faraway. "I was angry."

  Kaarle turned his head in The Panther's direction, keen to know the inside of this freedom fighter's mind. "And then there is a whisper of a party. They say that you and another of the city's cut-purses fended off a Gypian sorcerer and stole the Savannah's Tears. I know you did that."

  "And what do you think of it?" Manwe asked, hinting at annoyance.

  "I think you're the hero Kosey needs beside him. It's not him supporting the forces. It is the wealth you bring us. We have weapons and armor because of you. We are nowhere near the strength of the Gypians, but you're doing more than the rest of us. The few battles we have won came from your thieving."

  Squatted on his heels, Manwe crouched at the edge of the landing like some dark demon from the old tales Kaarle’s grandmother used to tell, or like one of the whispered horrors vodunis conjured on the battlefield when things were at their most desperate. Kaarle shook his head and shut his eyes, trying not to remember how many times he has witnessed such hell.

  "I don't do well with the other group," said Manwe. "There are those like Voduni Calla who would rather have their power than freedom. Call me an atheist, but I've been in the dark depths where the unclean souls go, and I found things worse than legends. I found something real. Something we have forgotten about this world is dangerous, and I think we might wake up things we don't like around us, let alone within ourselves. And vodunis are willing to do that for the sake of their might. "

  The point, quick and mindful, quieted Kaarle as he and the thief waited for the show to begin. Herds of people finished filing into the massive courtyard of Aemon's Fort, some of them there to celebrate a community brought together by death, while some were there to feed their quiet lusts, knowing one race, one society, was better than the other.

  The sun towered high when Kaarle parted through the crowds, down to where the wagons full of a volatile distraction waited. Much to his surprise, there were indeed fewer guards, and the ones he came across paid a slave master’s attention to seeing yet another slave. He drew his knife and a small piece of flint he had traded a kiss for with the Gypian priestess back at the temple.

  A great voice boomed on the air.

  "We punish those who do not know their place. Our kingdoms are jewels in the light of knowledge, ability, and innovation. All men will be made equal, in time, but only by adherence to our law. Consider this as we bring justice to those who chose otherwise."

  Working at a desperate speed to tear a piece of his clothing, Kaarle gave up the futile notion and searched his surroundings. He heard the trumpets, silver and bold, signal the executioner's march.

  The great doors of the keep opened. Chained and shackled in bright iron, the Sons of Juut plodded out into the daylight, a condemned line of five men guarded by at least fifteen armored warriors, the heads of their spears and shields glinting in the sun. Kaarle recognized these prisoners, the princes of Juut’s savannah tribes, men who had gone out to fight for freedom—and lost. Black flesh and muscle clung to emaciated, bruised bodies, clear signs of torture.

  A needling thought came to him in that moment: what if the Gypians had broken these men? What if they knew where Kosey was, or about whom Voduni Calla reported himself to be, or The Panther? What if they knew that the rebels were here, right now, trying something so foolhardy that benefited no one but some poor nobles left out of the Gypians plans?

  Pushing those doubts down, Kaarle spotted a torch sputtering its last wisps of flame in an alcove near one of the doors to the fort's many storage areas. He retrieved it without a big fuss, holding it low at his side as he walked back to the wagons. The princes of the savannah rose to the weathered platform and posted beneath the nooses that would soon stretch their necks.

  Kaarle removed the lid from one of the green painted pots, the stink of pine sap and sulfur assailing his nose. He looked up again, waiting for The Panther to move.

  An executioner ascended the steps, crowned in white lilies and black thorns. He slipped the first noose onto one of the princes, who hung his heads in a passive fashion, unbecoming of the proud man he should have been.

  Kaarle upended the torch in his hand and held it over the pot's mouth.

  The executioner grabbed the lever at the side of the stage just as a gasp slit open the quiet. A shadow ran across, slicing a dagger through the Sons of Juut’s wrist restraints. Before any could stop this flash of movement, the executioner fell backward, pounced upon by this same shape.

  Manwe the Panther slashed the man in the throat and winced at the spray of blood.

  "The rebels are upon us," someone in the crowd cried.

  Dropping the torch into the serpent's blood, Kaarle leapt hard from the wagon, landing among some the Gypians who had massed around it.

  The world went out in a blast of fury.

  The smell of fire and seared flesh woke him, followed by a sharp ache that throbbed in his eyes. Wiggling his fingers and toes first, Kaarle pushed up on his hands and knees. A fallen body slipped off his back, the bronze flesh of the man's face black and oozing. He turned onto his bottom and scooted away with a cry, his bloody knees brushed harshly by the hot wind. The wagons burned before him, the impact point of an explosion that had flattened the crowd. Among them, the princes of Juut slew their captors as they escaped, swinging stolen weapons and stopping every so often to stab Gypians in their backs.

  Unable to balance his steps, Kaarle staggered away from the blaze, taking hold of the sword that still hung from his belt. He drew the old blade, standing in exhausted agony as he waited for the first enemy to appear.

  What he saw instead was impossible.

  Kaarle stared, gloomy as he focused on the memory. He still smelled the roasted flesh in his nose, heard the sounds of the dying. The lamplight in the cavern chamber shifted the shadows of Kosey and Voduni Calla. Jubilant that he had quieted them, he lay back into the bedding atop his pallet, clear-minded for the first time in days.

  "What did you see?" asked Kosey, his dark eyes gleaming onyx as he looked back. His posture had lifted since the story began, his shoulders squared, knees set apart. Kaarle saw his friend and mentor in a way he had never seen him before, and it brought a slight smile to his haggard face.

  His eyes did not shift over to the hunched shape of Voduni Calla, who stood at the back of the room like some conspirator worried of something in the shadows. Hardened by slavery and vengeance, the mystic’s eyes glowed like nightmare coals, their fire from another world.

  "I saw a shadow walk across a legend," Kaarle said, settled to finish his account.

  A sharper, cooler wind blew in from the east, pushing at the cinder walls that obscured the fort's courtyard. The roasted bodies of lords and poor alike, splattered in the resinous, burning serpent's blood, writhed on cobblestones and patches of barren dirt, their blood baked into their melted skins and snarled clothes.

  Kaarle lowered the sword in his hand, glad that no enemy charged to attack him, but froze when he saw two figures emerge in the hazy, weird light made by the sun and smoke.

  Yards away, enough that he could not directly hear them above the roaring wall of wagons he had set ablaze, Kaarle watched The Panther square off with The Latian Lion.

  The lord of another western empire had appeared, dressed in his full armor, a shining iron cuirass strapped to his great frame. A helm crested in black horse hair fluttered on the smoldered breeze, and on one arm was strapped a small shield, a round disk made of gold inlaid wood. In his other hand, the sharp, wide head of his spear glared silver in catches of sunlight.

  The thief across from him could not have been more different. Shorter by a full head, Manwe presented a more complex image, a wiry frame packed with spring-tight muscle and lithe fluidity, even when he remained in a placid
stance. A wicked knife, curved and hard-pointed, shone bloody in a more lurid light, the weapon of a true killer. When one looked at the thief, his namesake was appropriate.

  The soldier of the west charged Juut's natural born assassin. Manwe tilted right as he thrust his knife, letting the head of the spear go by as he penetrated past the Lion's reach. The Latian turned quickly to bring his shield around, but not before Manwe poked his knife into the man’s unarmored thigh. The thief danced away, leaving the warrior who lumbered after him.

  Jogging in a wide circle, Manwe called to Kaarle. "Find us a way out, boy!"

  Brought back to his senses, Kaarle turned toward the gates, through which hundreds of bodies clawed and shoved for an escape from the carnage. Untended in the mindless rush were a few chariots, bereft of their riders and harnessed with their frightened chargers. He hopped onto the frame of one of these riggings, grabbing the reins. Shouting at the horse, Kaarle drove the beast forward, back in the direction of Manwe and the enemy.

  The two were locked in another skirmish as Kaarle approached. He directed the horse close as Manwe dodged a series of spear thrusts from The Latian Lion, who had pushed forward with both hands on his spear, having lost his gold-shod shield. Blood trickled from under his helmet.

  Manwe turned and caught hold of the rail as the chariot rolled by. Perched on the edge of the frame, he sat back with a relaxed breath, poking at the sliced flesh on his shoulder. Blood sluiced down his sinewy arm, which he paid little attention to as he worked to staunch the wound.

  "Do I need to stop?" Kaarle shouted. He turned them toward the gate, and to his relief found the gates empty of most of the bodies. Hundreds of people scattered into the streets of Tolivius, leaving the way open.

  Manwe sat cross-legged and used some of the black canvas binding his wrists to bandage the wound. His knife rested between his legs, stained red. "Drive us out of the city. Take the east gate."

  "That means we will force our way back across the south," Kaarle said, his heart pounding with their horse's hooves. "That's madness!"

  "I don't want to go south," Manwe said. “Keep us east, toward the Glass Jungles. Our friend may be following us."

  "The Lion?"

  "Just drive. I need rest."

  The banded wheels of the chariot clattered on the gray paths. Buildings passed by, lonesome towers of shanties built atop other shanties. The sun, pinned to the piece of heaven directly above them, bleached the alleys bright and open. Rats, stray animals, the sick, and the poor were made to be seen in those moments, as was the ugliness of what the Gypians considered artistic and modern, where fresh paint captured the grime in the air. They arrived at the eastern gates and the paved road turned to red clay. A highway that faded on the horizon where the yellow hills of the savannah gave way to black tree forests waited beyond.

  Their beast bore the two men past groves of umber trees and thorny thickets home to lions, zebras, and gazelles, who supped from gentle ponds of emerald waters. At some point Manwe woke from his nap and relieved Kaarle of the reins. They carried forward to the border of the Glass Jungles, where they were met by the princes of the savannah in the shadowed glades. These freed men, all stalwart warriors of failed campaigns, welcomed The Panther with open arms and led him to their fire where a forest boar roasted on a spit.

  Birds broke the trees somewhere near sunset, and a line of white dust trailed in the last foothills of the hot plains. Manwe and Kaarle guarded the edge of the Glass Jungles, situated on a thick tree branch fanned with broad green leaves.

  "You were right. He followed us."

  "Of course he did," said the thief, his feet dangling. Reinvigorated by his meal, he rested on the branch in a lazy fashion, unhampered by the spear wound now covered with a dry salve of berries, herbs, and wet oats. Manwe looked as much as he had during his first bout with The Latian Lion, completely at ease with what was to come. "I told him to come here."

  "You did?"

  In his hands, the thief examined his knife, an iron edge with a tied leather handle. He thumbed the blade, watching the line of far-off dust draw closer and closer. "I challenged him to finish our fight, for me to show him why Latia should leave Gypus to its own demise. I have to kill him to convince his people that the Gypians have too much on their hands with the rebellion, and if I know westerners, they like taking advantage of each other."

  "They might go against each other." Kaarle flattened his mouth, thinking on the things he had seen in the last day. "You live up to your name, Panther."

  "There's a point to it," the thief admitted. "At some juncture in this war, we are going to have to pick sides and make friends with those who will make friends with us. We might have to ally with those we do not expect, consider our friends our enemies, and truly decide the fate of Tolivius. This either ends in peace or it ends in ruin. Either way, I am ready."

  "You're worried about people like Simo."

  "I'm more worried about the people that Simo listens to. I don't hear much of Kosey's words in anything anymore."

  "I want our people to be free, but only in the truest sense."

  "Then question who you choose for your friends," Manwe said. "Question wisely."

  The Latian Lion pulled his chariot into the first clearing past the forest's perimeter; his horse dragged to a heavy stop. The hulking warrior removed his helmet to let his honey brown hair free, and he stepped off the back of the frame with only a sword in his hand, its short blade heavy and curved. As he walked toward the mossy meadow's natural center, he favored his left leg with a steady but tender step.

  Kaarle spied from between the massive trees, hidden from sight. A long spear rested across his lap, its length a promise he had made to The Panther before dawn…

  If the thief fell, it would be his turn next.

  The Latian Lion spoke aloud, his voice the boom of a god made flesh. "Come out, thief.” He loosened his sword arm, swinging his blade in wide arcs. "Let's see if your miserable race has a better honor than the Gypians."

  "There will be no worries there."

  Perched on the tree branch directly above the Latian, Manwe stood in an easy pose. His curved knife glittered in a sunrise ray that pierced the heavy green canopy as the wind seeped through the leaves.

  The Latian, one eye squinted from a scab on his eyebrow, smiled wide and showed his clean teeth. He took a few steps back and presented the battlefield, a mock invitation.

  Manwe leapt from the high place, landing on the soft black soil with nary a sound. He scampered back on all fours, hands and feet patting the ground in rapid beats. The Latian stalked after him, a grim smile on his shaved face. He cut off angles by stepping to the left and right, cornering the thief into one of the trees.

  Pivoting on one foot, Manwe pressed the other against the trunk of the iroko, throwing himself forward like a dart. His entire body zipped past the Latian's ill-timed slash, and with a quick cut, he sliced at the larger man's elbow, opening a shallow wound.

  Manwe came up on his feet and leaned away from the Latian's next heavy cut. The two traded attacks, their iron deflecting away the points of their weapons, the armored warrior at a better advantage. He shoved the thief, forcing him backward.

  "I like chasing you," the Latian Lion bellowed.

  Manwe turned onto his heels, cartwheeling away from the Latian's slashes. The pair fought their way back to the grove's shaded center. The Latian's eyes reflected his utter contempt for his opponent, a wasp with a sting harder than iron.

  For his part, the thief did not retreat without his own scores. He poked and prodded, nipped and stabbed, opening several small cuts and punctures on the westerner's face, neck, and arms. The Panther, brown-eyed and taciturn, moved with the grace of a dancer. Without effort he dodged, always giving ground.

  Reaching forward with a quick grab, the Latian snatched Manwe by the throat and jerked him close to butt heads. The thief teetered backward on his feet, trying to keep the horizontal guard he had formed with his knife. A ha
rd slash roared out of the Latian as he smacked the knife from Manwe’s hand, twisting the thief to a knee. The Latian reared back for his next attack.

  Kaarle, without a single thought, charged from the shadows. Letting his spear lead, he plunged the point into the Latian's bare thigh, piercing meat and muscle.

  The sword fell from the Latian's hand as he looked down at the wound for a moment with grim acceptance. He grabbed the spear's shaft with both hands and snapped it with a strike of his callous palm.

  Kaarle stumbled into a heavy chop from the warrior. A fire seized his body as he felt his knees quiver and he landed hard with a groan. The Latian Lion held his limp body up by the wrist and began to kick at his body and face, smashing him at a steady, measured pace.

  From light to dark, the world played out in flashes of consciousness. He saw the Latian sneer, bringing back his bloody fist as his own life seeped from between his teeth.

  Begging through broken lips, Kaarle whispered a prayer when the Latian let go.

  Manwe appeared before him, his nose broken and swollen. "Run, you damned fool," he shouted, yanking Kaarle from the ground and toward the light. The young rebel stumbled toward the edge of the jungle, back to the wild hills where lions roared, hyenas cackled, and the thunder of the herds carried on the wind.

  Voduni Calla stormed out of the chamber, muttering under his breath about the damnations the thief would endure, the shame he brought to their cause, and whatever else the mystic hated about Manwe the Panther. Kosey simply remained on his stool, his expression contemplative.

  "I don't remember anything else," said Kaarle. He had thrown off his blankets, too hot for their warmth. His joints and sides ached as he slowly rose to his feet, holding his shoulder in discomfort. "I just ran as fast as I could. I don't know what happened after that.”