Beacon: Chapter 1

SPARK TO FIRE

Five Years After The Escape

---

Jordai Stonefist saw Aaron the Marked turn his back from the bar, and the drinks they pretended to drink, to glance at the pub behind them. Then he turned back to Jordai.

“We are done. We have to move,” Aaron said. He slipped his hand in his vest and Jordai knew he gripped the ice steel dagger Peter had given Aaron the day Aaron became a man.

Jordai shifted the great sword on his back and turned to catch Peter’s eye. The king was in talks with Rextur. The two nemeses had talked all through the morning and deep into the night. Now maybe an hour before dawn, still Rextur and Peter discussed the war that had been fought in Tienne, and the ways of leadership and warcraft.

After a breath or two, Peter looked up to make eye contact with Jordai. Peter nodded and stood. “We will have to finish another time, my friend. Seems the city boils around us.” He crossed the floor to where Aaron and Jordai waited, then looked at Aaron.

“The bar is bladed,” Aaron said. “We will have to fight our way out.” He took one long swig of his drink, which Jordai knew was an act. Aaron grabbed the bar to steady himself, which was also crap, and turned to Jordai who held him up. Jordai fought hard against the urge to scan the room. If Aaron said it, it was true. Over the three years the Nation of Four had stayed in Tienne after the war to help rebuild, Aaron honed the ability to sense danger. He was more attuned to enemies around him than any man Jordai had ever seen. It was as if Aaron could sense the steel about to be thrust into his skin.

Peter nodded and turned to Rextur, who was just joining them. “My man says we are surrounded.”

Rextur looked around, but only casually. He sniffed and nodded.

“Yes, Boy King, the bar is poised against me. I will not ask you to fight my fight,” The Madness said.

“I’m afraid it’s not you they have come to eradicate. We have been busy since we arrived in Corlene.”

“I’m not going to let you become overwhelmed,” Rextur said. “I am not saying they could kill you—whoever they are or however many they have brought—but I will say I am not leaving you this way.”

Peter slapped Rextur on the back. “You are of course welcome to join me in battle. That change will be a welcome one indeed.”

Jordai remembered a time when the massive man towered over Peter. Now three years later they stood almost eye to eye. Peter’s progetten blood was making a grand man out of him, but Jordai knew Peter Redfist would never be as big as Jordai himself.

Aaron looked Rextur over and grinned a monster’s grin. “This will be fun.”
Peter pulled Calm, his mighty long sword, once so much bigger than he should have been able to handle, now almost perfectly sized for him, and he looked to the three men standing beside him.

Aaron pulled his Bloodblade sword and unsheathed his dagger. Jordai shrugged his great sword from his back and let it fall into his hands. He flexed his back, curled his fingers around the handle and grunted.

The bar stopped very suddenly. Almost every eye raced across the three of them until Rextur released the curse of a weapon that sat his back.

It was a black-bladed great sword with a bone-white shaft running straight up the center of the steel. Its handle was the color of blood and crafted entirely of stone. When Rextur held it the handle started to heat up and in seconds was the color of burning sulfur. The pub began to stink of it and the patrons pulled back in horror.

Jordai waited for them to rise, for the men of the bar to stand and attack. But that was not going to happen. He did not know why, but they were waiting.

“Open hell on them?” Aaron asked.

“No, my friend,” Peter said. “We will wait for them to move. Stay close and ready. I fear this might be much worse than we imagined.”

Aaron laughed.

They made for the door. As they reached it and Peter’s hand fell on the latch, the bar behind them rose.

Jordai cursed.

The door opened and the brightening day betrayed the gravity of the fight to them all. The wide street had been cleared of all citizens. The way out of the street was blocked on both sides and both alleyways by soldiers, seven ranks deep. The roofs around them were loaded with archers. In the sky, mages hovered, their hands held out and ready like waiting vipers. Beyond the soldiers on the road stood a rank of soldiers on Dusters, the horses’ gray bodies coated in mail, their riders gripping tight to their spears and shields.

“Been making friends, I see,” Rextur grunted.

“We have been busy,” Peter said. From the roof across the street, a man dressed in golden armor wearing a royal blue cloak and carrying the most ridiculous sword Jordai had ever seen stepped forward and grinned down upon them.

“Peter Redfist, you are being summoned by the dictator of this city-state. He demands your presence at his court. Seems you have a lot to say about him. Maybe you would like to say it to his face?”

Peter looked the man in the eye and scanned the men around them. “This will be good,” Aaron whispered.

“You came to take me but you didn’t think it through,” Peter said.

“What detail have I missed?”

“You didn’t bring enough men,” Peter said. “Aaron.”

Aaron’s hand was a blur, the dagger thrown with such force as to be nearly invisible as it buzzed through the air. It struck the man in the throat and spun in the wound. The handle turned toward Aaron, then the weapon ripped back through the air to land in his hand again.

Clark had begged for many days to enchant the weapon of Peter’s line. Finally after Peter granted his blessing, Aaron’s dagger had been given the power it was becoming known for. The soldiers around them paused as the commander of their numbers tipped and tumbled from the roof to land in the street before Peter.

“Wish Gralton was here,” Aaron said. “Need a man to compete with.”

The soldiers burst forward as the bar emptied behind them.

“I’ll take you,” Jordai said.

“Yeah, like that will be a challenge,” Aaron said laughing.

Jordai spun and men began to die.

“Aaron, the bows,” Peter snapped.

Aaron sliced a man down and jumped on a wagon sitting beside a building. He leapt again, much higher than Jordai had ever seen a human jump before, and he gripped the sign of the building before him. He swung. The chain he hung upon creaked but held as he launched his way into the air to the roof of the next building. He landed in a group of archers and they panicked. Aaron laughed.

Jordai felt an arrow strike his shoulder and cursed.

“Jordai, reinforcements,” Peter said.

Jordai threw his head back as he sliced another man’s head off and the Fendis warrior loosed a howl. The cry of the wolf lifted into the air and hung there like a living thing, pleading for aid. Jordai felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand high as howls filled the air all around them.

He became nearly insane at the sound and his sword swung faster and deadlier.

He swung his mighty sword and hit a man at the shoulder. The blade traveled through the shoulder, into the abdomen, and out the other side. The man fell in two halves and Jordai growled.

Rextur gripped a man by the throat and tossed him into the air. The soldier flailed wildly as he soared then slammed into the body of a mage. The two men tumbled to the ground to be trampled by horses now rushing to get to them.

The Dusters would not spook, not even when the wolves arrived. The wolves leapt high and terrible, slamming into the riders and dragging them to the ground to devour throats and faces. The archers were being shot from their perches by Aaron who had learned the bow from a ranger named Knuk-nuk after the war. The arrows seemed to shift directions in the air, turning and darting side-to-side almost to slam targets that shouldn’t have been available. Every arrow felled a target, and Jordai could hear Aaron laughing over the sounds of the battle.

Peter and Rextur fought back-to-back. They brought death to their enemies and the enemies of each other as they moved flawlessly through their attacks. This was not unexpected. Peter was this way with everyone he ever fought beside. It seemed he had learned to predict the attacks of the man beside him as well as he could predict his own. Fighting beside Peter brought the best out in his allies, and Jordai regretted not being closer to his king.
The horses were moving now, hacking down at them all with savage might. It was nearly impossible for a normal man to bring a rider down but Jordai was a progetten.

Jordai was a Stonefist, like his father before him and his before that. He gripped the ankle of the man on the horse above him and, with one hand, jerked hard. He felt the bones shatter in his grasp, felt the hip rip out of socket as he roared and pulled.

The man screamed in terrible pain and Jordai pulled harder, grunting and spitting until the man’s other hip ripped from the socket and he was yanked from his horse. Jordai stomped the man’s throat and gripped the reins of the horse with one hand. With the other he swung his great sword, chopping men down as he made his way to his king. He whistled. Peter spun and, sensing the action, gripped the saddle, and in a moment was atop the mount.

Peter kicked the Duster into motion and turned it for the nearest mounted warrior. He cried out, “Redfist,” as he chopped the man down and Jordai added his own voice to the call. He heard Aaron now inexplicably across the street on the roof shout the battle cry as well. Before the street, beyond the fighting, cried back the sudden fury of hundreds of voices.

“Redfist!”

Jordai laughed and the sound of many and more dying men entered the air. Horses were being attacked. Men were being ripped from the backs of their mounts or stabbed with spears and polearms as the hundreds of Bloodblades trained and led by Aaron the Marked entered the fray.

The soldiers were being subdued and the fighting was coming to an end. Two remaining mages turned to flee. Rextur cried out names that chilled Jordai’s blood to ice.

The names were old. Jordai did not know them, but the way they made his skin crawl and the way they made his stomach bunch told him everything he needed to know about what was about to happen.

“Pisha! Morgana!” The Madness shouted. From the street two massive creatures erupted comprised of stone and fire. They had wings and long powerful legs and quickly caught the fleeing mages in massive black claws. They bent demonic heads to breathe fire on the mages, who screamed in terrible agony. In a matter of moments the last remaining mages had been reduced to curled black husks and the monsters dropped the bodies that cracked and crumbled to so much ash and soot on the ground.

The streets went silent until Peter broke the still.

“You will all become prisoners of the people in order to salvage your honor,” Peter said.

“How do prisoners hold tight to their honor?” Rextur asked.

“Today these streets will rise up and we will rip the dictator from his throne,” Peter said. “On this day I will become the ruler of Mance. On this day you will serve me. Were you to turn to my aid now, your honor for forsaking your ruler would be forfeit. Should you be released I will only have to face you again. You and your brothers are noble warriors, wielded by a vile man. I will not ask you to fight against us for him. I will take you to the place where the rest of your comrades are being kept. And hold you there until this time of trouble is over.”

Rextur laughed as the Bloodblades began binding soldiers and leading them away. “Busy indeed. Peter Redfist wishes to be king of the Kingless Nation, I find that hilarious.”

“I am king of my own people. King of the Nation of Four,” Peter said. He shook his head. “I do not wish to rule Corlene. I wish to find a king for it, or a queen. A ruler, just and fit for rule, who will take this place from its steaming ashes and lift it high and righteous into the air. These people who live here deserve peace; they deserve justice. While the dictators hold sway over this land that peace will never come.”

“By the gods, you talk well,” Rextur said. “One day you will change the world, my friend.”

“One nation at a time,” Aaron said.

“One battle a day,” Jordai added. He looked at his brother and grinned. Suddenly he missed Gralton quite a bit.

“We can wait no longer. We march now for the ziggurat. We must pry this place from the grasp of the tyrant!” Peter said, holding his sword high.

Jordai smiled and pumped his sword into the air.

“Aaron, you will take your Bloodblades and secure the wall. I must have it. There is no other way.”

Aaron nodded and jumped from the building above to roll to his feet. He gripped a riderless horse and kicked the beast. It bucked, kicking and snorting, until it decided it could not knock Aaron loose before it bowed to his will. Dusters didn’t like Aaron.

“On me,” Aaron commanded and his troops grunted. Loho and a few others grabbed horses and rushed off, the rest following on foot.

The wolves joined Jordai. They seemed dipped in blood and lapped their lips hungrily. “Jordai, I must have that stable. It will be heavily guarded. If it is too much for you to take it, I will—”

“Worry not, my king. It will be done,” Jordai said. He whistled to his wolves and rushed off across the city.

---