The Greater Challenge Beyond (The Southern Continent Series Book 3) Read online

  “There’s something about you – something broken,” she said. “The God wouldn’t use you to win the battle that is coming.

  “After this is over, I’ll go back home and resupply, then I’ll go to the Yellow Spring again,” she jumped at him both blades ready to strike as she seemed to rise up into the air and then come descending down towards him like a hawk falling upon a rabbit, with steel talons poised to skewer its prey.

  Except for the fact that Grange did the unexpected. He dove downward, aiming his body to drop down into the air beneath where she had departed from, so that he started to pass beneath her, headed towards freedom from her attack. As he passed below her he suddenly raised up and clipped her feet hard. He grabbed one and pushed it upward, rotating her body unexpectedly, so that she lost control of her body before she landed, and then Jenniline struck the ground hard, her shoulder striking the soft earth first, causing her to bounce and flip.

  She came to rest lying on her back, and Grange bounded over towards her, ignoring the pain in his leg, and across his chest, and upon his arm. His adrenaline was flowing from the heat of the combat, prodding him into more action that seemed possible.

  Jenniline lay still for just a moment, stunned by the force of the landing, and then shocked again when Grange sat heavily upon her chest, falling forcefully, and extending his legs to trap her arms, as a way to prevent her from lifting her blades against him again. His eyes looked into hers – he saw no fear, only pain. He lifted his sword, then stabbed it down hard, thrusting it with all his might so that it penetrated to a depth of several inches.

  Jenniline blinked, and her mouth fell open. She was shocked, unable to comprehend what had suddenly happened to her.

  Grange had stabbed his sword down into the earth, next to her head. A few strands of her hair were trapped in the dirt, where his sword had struck the wisps and buried them in the soil.

  “We’re done fighting!” Grange shouted at her. He lowered his face down close to hers, so close that he smelled her breath – they were both breathing heavily which carried an evergreen-like scent.

  “No more,” he told her in a softer voice, then he shrugged his body to the side and fell off of her, setting her free.

  She sat up, and he sat up.

  “I didn’t come here to fight you, or attack you, or follow you. I didn’t come here at all – you brought me here,” he told her in a level voice.

  “Hand me my sword,” he added in a more conversational tone.

  She swung her knife around and poked the point against his chest. “I could kill you right now.”

  “I could have killed you ten seconds ago,” he answered. “But I didn’t.

  “I don’t have any reason to, and you don’t have any good reason to hurt me,” he said.

  “How did you win this battle?” she asked. The princess pulled her knife away from Grange, then laid back and closed her eyes. “I’m a good fighter; you shouldn’t have been able to win against me.”

  “I was unconventional,” he answered. “You weren’t looking for me to flip you like that.” He too lay backwards, and closed his eyes. His leg was hurting. He placed his hand on the outside of his pants, and felt a sticky wetness. The stitches had broken open, he had no doubt.

  “Look the other way,” he grunted to Jenniline, as he put his hands on his hips and shoved his pants down to his knees. He sat up and looked at the wound in his thigh. One stitch had snapped open, and a trickle of blood ran slowly from the tear in his healing flesh. It would make little difference in how he healed.

  “Pull your pants up and stop exposing yourself; Acton would hardly condone his champion being an exhibitionist, I’m sure,” Jenniline spoke, drawing his eyes from the slice in his leg to look at her; she was sitting up, looking at him clinically, but when their eyes met, one corner of her mouth turned up in a smile.

  Grange lay back and arched his back as he tugged his pants back up around his hips. He heard Jenniline stand up, and he held his hand up, inviting her to assist him. She grasped his hand and tugged, as he thrust himself upward.

  The two of them stood beside each other momentarily.

  “It still makes sense for you to go on without me,” Grange spoke first.

  “It does,” the princess agreed. “Though I’m sure you’ll be able to follow tomorrow, not the day after.” She walked over to where she had dropped her pack, and once again prepared herself for her departure.

  “Whoever you are Grange, I expect I’ll see you again in a few days. Deithio'n ddiogel, rhyfelwr,” she again gave a half smile, then turned and left the campsite.

  Grange felt his own mouth curl into the shadow of a smile.

  He went back to the hot spring so that he could rest in the water later that afternoon, and slept soundly that night. The following morning he took his time packing up his small stash of supplies, looked over the warm pool of spring water one last time, then strapped everything in place, checked the direction of the sun, and started hobbling north. He walked up over the lip of the canyon that contained the small, welcome eruption of warmth, and returned to the chilly environment that he would have to travel through for the next several days to come.

  He doggedly marched through the wilderness, without trails or paths to offer any direction. Grange relied on the sun and the stars to give him guidance as he shivered in the cold and kept walking to the north throughout his first day away from the oasis. His progress was slow, but he continued walking after sunset, until the darkness made him stumble more than he walked. He settled down on the north side of a rise and curled up, carefully massaging his leg until he fell asleep.

  The second day was challenging for Grange. He had seen no sign of Jenniline’s passage, no evidence that she had left before him, and he hadn’t expected to find any trail to follow. But when he awoke at the start of his second day of walking, the sky was a dark gray. Heavy clouds had moved in and covered the sky, leaving him with little notion of which way was east and which way was north. He hazarded a guess, based on his position the night before, and he started walking in a direction he hoped was north.

  An hour after he started his limping motion, sleeting rain began to fall. It came from the side, and the protective cloth he had wrapped around his head kept the sleet from falling directly into his face, but he grew colder as the moisture penetrated his clothing. He found shelter under a small stone shelf at mid-afternoon and spend the rest of the day there.

  His third day of travel started better, with a clear sunrise, but turned into his worst day since seeing the demons drive the attack on Jenniline. Trouble started as he was walking in the midafternoon.

  Chapter 3

  The wilderness landscape grew slightly less rough as Grange progressed north, though the strain on his injured leg prevented him from increasing his pace as he wandered across the tundra on his third day away from the warm thermal spring. The plants were larger, the bushes fuller, scrubby trees were joining the foliage, and there was even a path that appeared to be a game trail, an indication that larger animals were able to survive in the milder climate he was entering.

  By the middle of the afternoon Grange was walking through thick growth of plants that reached to his waist or higher, and he held his sword out, using it frequently as a scythe to clear a way northward. He was ready to accept any game trail or creek bed or other means of conveyance he could find that would make the task of traveling easier. He was tired, and because the rain the previous day had cut his travels short, he knew he was behind his presumed schedule to reach Southgar, where he hoped he would go to the temple of Acton and somehow be helped to regain his memories and his purpose in life.

  He didn’t believe that he was destined to be a mercenary, living by the abilities of his sword arm alone. He believed he was good with the sword, but he didn’t feel compelled to use his sword, as if it was his only natural vocation.

  Grange was passing through a thicket of bushes when he felt a peculiar sense of alarm. He stopped, and was co
nvinced that a female voice was whispering Beware!, though as he looked around he saw no sign of Jenniline, or of anyone else. His head turned to the left, and then to the right, and he caught sight of movement to his side.

  It was another of the shadowy rodent beings, the creatures that had ambushed and infected the Southgar quartet just days earlier, except that the creature he saw was springing across the top branches of the bushes surrounding him, coming straight towards him!

  He pulled his sword free and held it in front of him, as he began to back away from the stalker, while trying to look both left and right to make sure there were no more of the creatures approaching from any other direction.

  The creature closed in on Grange, then stopped when it was just inches beyond his sword’s reach.

  “Stay away!” Grange warned. “Leave me alone!”

  “We lost track of you, fallen warrior,” the creature said. “You’ve lived longer than we thought possible.

  “It’s a testament to your tenacity, but a shameful waste of effort. We’re not far away from the great conquest, you know,” the creature was strangely conversational. Grange stopped his backpedalling and listened to its speech.

  “Or you probably don’t know, do you, given your condition?” it asked.

  “What are you talking about? What are you? Where do you come from? How do you control people?” Grange asked all the questions that flew to the front of his mind.

  “This would all be so much easier if you would simply let me take control,” the creature answered. “You’re not going to be any impediment to us in your condition, especially with those meddlesome jewels dead.”

  “What are you talking about?” Grange practically screamed the words.

  “It doesn’t matter; I see that now. You’ve made my day – the Great Darkness will be pleased to know how helpless you are,” the creature said. “We’ll meet again, under less pleasant circumstances, I assure you. Until then, survive if you can,” it said, then turned and scampered away, disappearing south into the brush that surrounded him, and leaving him alone and unnerved.

  Grange looked around, expecting the creature to come back, or for others of its kind to approach from another direction. The thing was like a nightmare, a confusing, threatening nightmare. There were no signs of any such further monsters approaching, and after several frightened minutes, his sword still held ready, Grange checked the position of the sun, and resumed bushwhacking his way north, jittery and on edge.

  He walked for another hour, without growing any less nervous about the presence of the talking hallucination, when a pair of armed men rose out of the foliage that surrounded him, directly in his path.

  "Mae dau teithwyr o'r de mewn dau ddiwrnod; beth sy'n mynd ymlaen i lawr yno?" one of the men said casually.

  Grange stood still, not moving, and not comprehending the language the man had spoken.

  After several seconds of staring silence, the second armed man spoke.

  "Rho dy gleddyf ar y ddaear ac yn codi eich dwylo,” he commanded Grange to surrender.

  "I don't speak your language," Grange replied. "I'm just a traveler passing through this land."

  The two men looked at each other, then one of them spoke, haltingly. "You don't speak the true tongue?" he asked skeptically.

  "Not that I know," Grange replied. "I've been at Yellow Spring and lost my memories," he used the excuse Jenniline had given him. "I'm just passing north, if you'll let me be." He slightly shifted his grip on his sword as a subtle sign of his willingness to battle his way north.

  "You'll be going where we decide you should, " his interceptor said. "We'll take you to camp for our commander to judge your future."

  "I told you, I'm going north, to Southgar," Grange replied forcefully.

  The two men looked at each other. One spoke a pair of words, and then they crashed through the leafy foliage of the surrounding plants and launched their attack on Grange.

  The battle was a long, grueling contest, as Grange repeatedly thwarted the attacks of the men, but found that the bushes and grasses around them slowed his counterattack, until they had fought long enough to trample down a swathe of growth, producing an open ring in which Grange wounded and disarmed one man, and started to best the desperate second fighter, until a trio of reinforcements suddenly appeared with a series of shouts.

  Grange stood in the center of the small battleground, breathing heavily, as the new men surrounded him and spoke with the original warriors in their own language for a minute.

  "I don't want to harm anyone else," Grange said at last. "I have no quarrel with you. Just let me pass."

  "We're past the point of no quarrel," one of the new arrivals replied. "You'll come with us to answer for the blood you've drawn," he pointed with his sword at the wounded man on the ground.

  "I'll take down others before I surrender," Grange replied heatedly.

  His opponent spoke a word in the other language, and two men switched from swords to bows, with arrows pointed directly at Grange.

  "Don't make us murder you lad. You've fought well, I'm told. Come with us, we'll treat you fairly, and maybe let you go when our commander has heard your story," the man tried to sound reasonable.

  Grange looked at the bows. Even if he managed to evade the first salvo of arrows fired at him somehow, he had little hope of evading the four men now around him.

  He lowered his sword, then put it in his scabbard. He felt himself drop out of fighting mode, aware once again of the chilly air around him.

  "I have no choice," he stated. "I am your prisoner." he walked over to the man he had beaten and dropped the man’s sword on the ground beside him.

  Two men escorted Grange as two others assisted the wounded man, while the captors spoke among themselves in their own language during the ninety minute walk to their settlement. Their pace was slowed by the wounded man, so that Grange was able to keep up despite his own wounded leg.

  When they arrived at the edge of an extremely large settlement of tents, two men peeled away silently and began to journey back out into the wilderness to resume the guard duty there, while the remainder of the group drew stares and comments in the native tongue as they proceeded towards a large tent with a flagstaff raised in front of it, a green pennant hanging limply.

  "Wait here," his escort told him. The wounded man was escorted out of sight, and a guard stood next to Grange.

  "Remove your weapons and your pack, and leave them here," the guard told Grange. He pointed to a small pile outside the entrance to the tent.

  Grange did as instructed. As he bent to place his pack next to the entry to the tent he heard the murmur of voices inside the tent, speaking in the local language. And he saw that among the items already on the ground, Jenniline's bow lay next to her pack.

  She had been caught as well, and the captors were presumably the rebels she had spoken of. The princess had obliquely alluded to some past upheaval in Southgar society, speaking of an older regime a time or two, but without any details. Grange had paid little attention and cared even less about the politics of the Southern land.

  He cared about very little, period, except the idea of reaching Southgar and potentially having his memory - and his identity - restored.

  His new guard spoke in the Southgar language, then repeated his comment more insistently, with a wave of his sword, when Grange didn’t respond.

  "You want me to go into the tent?" Grange asked.

  The man repeated his statement in his own language.

  Grange tentatively placed a hand on the entry flap of the tent and pulled it open. When the guard curtly nodded approval, Grange walked in and stepped forward, looking around the interior.

  A trio of elderly men stood around a table, while a half dozen others were at various chores elsewhere.

  The men looked at him, and their eyes widened. The three spoke to one another softly, in their own language.

  "Approach us," one of the trio commanded.

  "Tell us who yo
u are, and why you're here," the man ordered when Grange stopped in front of them.

  "I can't," Grange said simply. "I do not know. I was in the wilderness and drank water at Yellow Spring.

  "I have no idea of who I am," he said simply.

  "You're a companion of the usurper's daughter," one man stated.

  There was an accusation, and hostility in the statement.

  "When I was at the spring, I met a girl," Grange carefully admitted.

  "But you're not traveling together, and she denied she had a companion," the man threw the statement in Grange's face.

  "We are not companions, and not traveling together," Grange calmly agreed.

  "So you would not object if you knew we held her captive, and intended to punish her?" his inquisitor let the question hang in the air.

  "If she has done something wrong and deserves punishment, I don’t care," Grange answered. He knew the man was trying to goad him into admitting a relationship with Jenniline.

  The trio started talking softly among themselves, speaking in the language Grange did not understand. One man kept his eyes on Grange at all times, searching for a sign that Grange understood them.

  They completed their conversation at length, and then all of them directed their attention to Grange. "We believe you are the guard of our captive. We are told that you fought like a trained warrior, and you aren't talking like one of the flops at the court," the man in the center of the trio spoke. “Although there’s your looks, on the other hand,” he left some comment unsaid.

  "We're going to use you," he stated after a pause, and Grange grew suddenly alert, sensing that some bargain was about to be offered.

  "We will set you free to go to the capital, if you carry a message for us," the man's eyes were watching Grange carefully.

  "That's all? What message?" Grange asked.

  "We want payment of five thousand golds, and five thousand arrows, delivered to us at the southern falls of the River one month from today," the man spoke in a voice of great self-importance, as if he were an oracle pronouncing a holy proclamation.