Courage of a Champion

By Kenneth McDonald

The finale of the "Daran's Journey" series. The armies of the barony of Aldrem, augmented by dark magic, have invaded deep into the lands of its rival Evros. But behind the front lines of the war a far more serious threat is gathering. Daran's immortality has been exposed, but his ability to return from death may not be enough to save him as he accompanies the Arunite priestess Arla and a small company of young recruits on a mission into the heart of the enemy's lands. Their goal is to rescue Jaros, who has fallen into the hands of the demon that truly rules Aldrem. But the demon is waiting for them, and he too has learned the secret of Daran's power, a secret that can spell the end of both baronies. Old friends return as enemies, and enemies become friends as humans and demons both gather their forces for a fight in which far more than one priest's soul is at stake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth McDonald
• Release date: Jul 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476298627

Kenneth McDonald

I am a retired education consultant who worked for state government in the area of curriculum. I have also taught American and world history at a number of colleges and universities in California, Georgia, and South Carolina. I started writing fiction in graduate school and never stopped. In 2010 I self-published the novella "The Labyrinth," which has had over 100,000 downloads. Since then, I have published more than fifty fantasy and science fiction books on Smashwords. My doctorate is in European history, and I live with my wife in northern California.

Book preview

Courage of a Champion

Book Four of Daran’s Journey

Kenneth McDonald

[e-mail]

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Kenneth McDonald

Cover Credit: The cover illustration is taken from the painting The Fountain of Vaucluse (1841) by Thomas Cole. The image is in the public domain.

* * * * *

Works by Kenneth McDonald

The Labyrinth

Of Spells and Demons

Wizard’s Shield

The Godswar Trilogy

Paths of the Chosen

Choice of the Fallen

Fall of Creation

Daran’s Journey

Heart of a Hero

Soul of a Coward

Will of a Warrior

Courage of a Champion

* * * * *

Chapter 1

Caylen was jolted hard as the wagon hit another bump in the road. Pain stabbed up her arm. It was likely it would add to the landscape of bruises that already covered her body. Her stomach felt like a vast, empty cavern. Their captors had not been generous with their rations. She had saved a bit of the hardbread that they’d issued that morning, in case they forgot to feed them again that night, and it was an effort of will not to dig it out of her clothes and stuff it into her mouth.

A soft moan drew her attention around. It turned into a sob, and might have become a cry, had not Caylen pulled herself up and crawled over to the slight form lying pressed up against the side of the wagon’s bed.

Keep her quiet, the guards will make us all pay elsewise! Meila hissed.

Shh, Kiri, it’s all right, Caylen said soothingly, taking the girl into her arms. Kiri was the youngest of the eleven women crowded into the back of the wagon. She was a good two or three years younger than Caylen, who herself was still a girl, well short of the bloom of womanhood. Caylen wasn’t herself exactly sure how old she was. Right now, with Kiri clutching to her, she felt far older.

She inadvertently jostled another of the woman. She offered a reflexively apology, but Miriem didn’t so much as stir, she just lay there, staring into empty space. Several of the prisoners were like that, escaping to somewhere inside themselves. Caylen envied them a little bit, even if her own makeup refused that kind of surrender.

I’m sorry, Kiri said. I didn’t mean to make the rock glow.

Shhh, it’s not your fault, she said. It will be all right, you’ll see. The lie sounded false on her tongue, but it seemed to calm the girl.

I’m so hungry, Kiri said.

Stifling a sigh, Caylen drew out the scrap of hardbread. Eat this, she said.

Kiri stuffed it into her mouth. The bread was as hard as pebbles, but it filled the belly, took some of the edge of the hunger they’d all had to live with since the sack of Vildenford.

You’d be better off saving that for yourself, Meila said. You’ll need your strength, where they’re taking us.

Kiri quivered in her arms, and Caylen shot the woman a hard look. Shut up, she said. Anger flashed in the other woman’s face for a moment, but it faded quickly, and she looked away. Anger was hard to maintain in the face of everything they faced.

Caylen had no idea where they were. The wagons were making their way through a landscape of rough hills that seemed to be without end. More substantial mountains were visible to the northeast, but they seemed to always be on the horizon, even though they’d been heading more or less in that direction since they’d left the Aldremish camp. The first two villages they’d passed through had been deserted, or at least no one had emerged to watch them as they rode through. The third had been filled with people not that different from the prisoners; gaunt, hard folk who went about their business, studiously avoiding looking too hard at the wagons or their escorts.

Another hard jolt knocked her out of her musings. She rubbed Kiri’s hair, which was matted and dirty, just like the rest of them. She shifted and saw that the piece of cloth that she’d stuck into the manacle around the girl’s ankle had fallen out; she searched around until she found it, and tucked it back into place. They were all connected by similar bonds, linked by a length of chain. The guards had not let them loose since they’d left the camp, not even to tend to nature’s needs. Miriem had even soiled herself once; the guards had made the other women clean her, but they hadn’t given them any new clothes or made provision for more frequent breaks.

After tending to Kiri’s manacle Caylen tested her own. The shackle was hard iron, and it had chafed the skin of her ankle, despite the cloth she’d tucked into the gap where the metal covered her skin. Instead of a lock it was sealed with a thick iron slug that had been smashed into place by a blow from a blacksmith’s hammer. She’d tried to work it free, but without tools it was hopeless.

She should have tried to escape when she’d had the chance, in the aftermath of the destruction of Vildenford. The memories of that grim night and the following days were dark and unpleasant, but they seemed to spring into her mind whenever she let her guard down. They filled her thoughts again as she pressed herself against the side of the wagon, the girl in her arms, as the wagon continued its rattling course deeper into Aldrem.

* * *

The sun had seemed to struggle into the air that morning, as Vildenford had finally ceased its dying struggles. Tall black plumes of smoke had continued to rise into the air, pushed westward into Evros by the breeze that came from the Aldremish side of the river.

Caylen had found herself part of a long queue of prisoners being led across the river by men in long leather coats and dark tunics. As the flames set by the raiders had continued to ravage the town there had been fewer and fewer places to hide. Dazed by a blast that had torn apart the garrison as it had marched through the streets of the dying town, Caylen had joined the rest of the refugees that were being pressed into the closing pocket around the River Gate. The garrison’s survivors fought on almost until the eastern sky had begun to brighten with the coming dawn, but there hadn’t been enough of them left to offer effective resistance. When the Aldremish forces had finally closed in around them, their soldiers outnumbering the remaining defenders by more than four to one, and hundreds of unarmed refugees crowded into the garrison camp behind them, there had been no choice but to surrender.

What had followed had been… grim was not the right word for it, and Caylen’s recollections did not linger on it, not even in the relative safety of her own memories. What she focused on was the memory of the acrid tang of the smoke in her nostrils, the burning of it in her eyes, the icy cold of the river, which had left her sodden and shivering as she’d emerged on the far bank. Men had been visible along the riverbank, digging in the muddy ground, or cutting down trees. The men had been prisoners as well, watched closely by men in dark clothes, carrying bows or spears. They hadn’t lingered long enough for who to see what exactly the labor crews were doing, as they’d been marched into the hills, the prisoners strung out in a long column like a meandering serpent. Caylen’s clothes had almost been dry by the time they’d arrived at the Aldremish camp. The place was being built almost before their eyes, with more gangs of captives engaged in putting together crude huts, digging trenches, or doing other tasks under the supervision of the Aldremish soldiers. She remembered the stink, which had filled the camp even in its newness.

They hadn’t lingered there long. The female prisoners were separated and led off into a niche formed between two steep hills to either side. Panic had filled the women as cliff walls rose up to either side around them, but Caylen had still been too numb to do anything but shuffle along after the woman in front of her. In hindsight there wasn’t much that she could have done, but that had been her most likely chance to escape in that confusion. The trail had been flanked by thickets of brush, and she hadn’t been shackled then, not yet. But she’d let the opportunity, thin as it was, slip through her fingers.

The trail had ended in a small box canyon, surrounded on three sides by steep, nearly sheer walls. Men watched from up above, while others warded the gap of the entrance. Caylen guessed that at least three hundred women and children had been crowded into that space. The only water supply was a few stagnant pools left from the most recent rains, but even those muddy puddles were put to use, every drop drained by the thirsty captives.

The Aldremish had left them there for the better part of two days. They’d brought food only once, baskets filled with stale, weevil-filled bread and moldy cheese that were shared out and consumed down to the last crumb. There had been some wild thistle that some of the women had plucked and distributed, and some had even dug in the ground to find insects to eat. Caylen hadn’t gone that far, but as her hunger had deepened she’d found herself looking at the women grubbing in the mud more and more.

From time to time guards came to them, singled women out of the crowd, took them away. Sometimes they went kicking and screaming, other times mutely, their heads hung low, the others looking away. Some returned later, others did not. One time a woman batted at a soldier with a rock she’d hidden in her clothes; the soldiers left her bleeding her life out on the ground. Caylen had lingered near the back of the canyon, trying to will herself to be small, unseen.

It had been midafternoon on the second day when they had come for her. They dragged her and another dozen or so girls out of the mass, marching them back along the trail. Caylen remembered her own hunting looks around the trail, but that time there had been no opportunities; the soldiers were all around, watching them all like raptors chasing their prey. They took them into the main camp, which had been transformed just in the short span of time they’d been held in the canyon. A dozen wooden huts now stood in the space, and part of a stockade wall had been erected. Several pens fashioned out of branches that had been nailed or tied together stood against that partial wall, and it was there that the guards took them. Caylen was thrust into a cage that had already been full of women and girls. It was there she’d first seen Kiri and Meila, though she would not learn their names until later.

The camp had been busy, though she and the other women she was with were not summoned for work duty. Aldremish men came and went, most heading toward the river, though there were a few groups of messengers that rode in from the hills to the northeast. A group of wagons arrived from that direction just as the sun was beginning to set; with insufficient space in the camp for them, they were driven off the road and unloaded.

The sun had fallen halfway behind the crest of the hills to the west when a group of men had ridden into the camp. Caylen had been watching from the corner of the cage, so she noticed right away that this group was different than the others she’d seen. For one thing they’d appeared to come out of the north, rather than either east or west along the main roads. There had been five of them, riders in dark clothes, led by a man in metal armor. She still remembered the look on that man’s face when he first scanned the camp, taking in every detail in one wide sweep of his eyes. That piercing stare had lingered on her barely an instant, but she’d felt an electric jolt at that brief contact.

She’d recognized the man at once as a leader, even before a group of Aldremish soldiers had hurried over to greet him and his party. They’d been close enough to the cages that Caylen had been able to make out much of their exchange.

Arl Turosk! Where did you…

Where is Arl Navren?

He is across the river with the main body, pressing forward…

Who is in command here?

I am. The man who approached had looked stern, and wore almost as much armor as Turosk, along with a sword and axe hanging from his belt. Arl Selkir, he said.

Why are these prisoners still here? Has the testing been completed?

Selkir drew himself up. We have not had time. We are still setting up our position here, and must be ready in case the Evrosians manage an incursion across the river.

Evros will not be able to do much for some time, Turosk replied. The immediate priority is the testing, and shipment of the prisoners east. He looked at Selkir. You have an issue with that?

Selkir looked uncomfortable, but his swelled his chest, his lips twisting into a sneer. This testing… it smacks of magic, sir.

Turosk turned, and Caylen could see the smile that crept across his face. It is sometimes necessary to adopt the weapons of the enemy to defeat him, my dear Arl.

Magic, Selkir said, the word a curse. I won’t have my men…

Turosk shifted only slightly, turning his full attention upon the other lord. Caylen could not see Turosk’s face, but she saw the look on Selkir’s as he trailed off, and he grew suddenly pale. A sudden quiet came over the men around him, so she heard Turosk’s next words clearly despite the fact that he spoke quietly.

You have the testing stone? At Selkir’s nod, he continued, Have it brought here. You will begin with the priests that you captured in Vildenford. And then you will test the rest of your prisoners. You will see that the wagons are prepared for departure, along with an escort of twelve riders. They will be ready to depart by the coming of dawn, do you understand?

Selkir’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. One of the other officers managed, But… my lord, the wagons are supposed to bring supplies across the river to Arl Navren’s soldiers…

The prisoners are a priority of Baron Robarr, Turosk said. You would gainsay his orders, lieutenant?

No, m’lord.

Do you have any questions, Arl Selkir?

The man looked as though he’d been stabbed in the belly, but he shook his head, recapturing some small measure of his dignity. No, Arl Turosk. It… it shall be done as you say.

Very good.

Men rushed about, shouting orders or moving to put them into action. Within a few minutes the brief pause caused by Turosk’s arrival had been transformed into a bustle of activity.

The testing was done in the open space directly in front of Caylen’s cage, so she had a full view of what happened. At first it didn’t make any sense to her what they were doing. The first one they brought forward was a man clad in the raiment of a priest of Khel, the pale tunic torn and ragged, the starburst sigil sewn upon its breast stained through with blood. The man himself was in little better condition; his face was so battered that Caylen could not tell if she had seen him before in Vildenford. Two Aldremish soldiers had to keep him upright during the testing. The test consisted of nothing more than another soldier holding out a black stone, about the size of her fist, dangling from a length of silver chain. Nothing happened as far as she could see, and after about a minute the prisoner was carried back off to wherever he had come from, passing out of Caylen’s limited field of view.

The result was the same for the second prisoner, a woman who managed to walk haltingly forward under her own power, despite the crude bandages that covered her face and pinned one arm close against her body. The third was a young man, younger even than Arla, who looked to be uninjured save for an ugly red scar along one side of his forehead. The guards pushed him roughly to his knees, and the stone was brought out again. By then the sun had set fully, and torches were being set around the perimeter of the camp. The stone gleamed slightly; it was as black as coal, but its polished faces caught the light almost like metal.

Because of that she almost missed the effect at first. But she saw Turosk’s reaction. The Aldremish knight had been standing along in the shadows a short distance away, watching the proceedings, but now he came forward, his attention upon the young priest. As his shadow fell over the guards and their prisoner, Caylen could see that the glow inside the stone was not just a reflection of the torchlight; there was a light inside it, a faint but definite glow. The guards reacted with obvious concern; to Caylen it looked as though they half expected the priest to start attacking them at any moment. They took him off with much more care than they had brought him forward.

With the captive priests tested, they then began testing the other prisoners. Caylen thought that they might start with the cages, given their proximity, but instead they brought in the laborers from around the camp, taking them in small groups. There were no more cases like with the priest, no more instances where the stone was made to glow. They then started bringing in strings of women prisoners, presumably from the canyon. Caylen tried to watch but found herself drifting off, her exhaustion overcoming her fear.

She woke suddenly to find the door of her cage being opened, and several soldiers standing before it. It was full night, the sky a black canopy above the glow of the torches. There was no sign of Turosk, but the man who’d been holding the testing stone was still there, looking exhausted.

The guards led the women out of the cage, one by one, to be tested. By now the efforts seemed almost perfunctory; Caylen got the impression that they had not had many more cases where the stone had been made to glow. But to her surprise, there was a faint flicker when Meila was tested, and a stronger gleam when the girl Kiri was brought forward, almost as bright as the light that had come from the stone when they’d tested the young priest. The two were separated off and taken away.

Finally it was Caylen’s turn. Her belly twisted, and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She wasn’t exactly sure what the test was for, but she could guess, and she definitely believed that making the light appear was a bad thing for the prisoner. She thought about her secret, the special power she possessed. Would the stone be able to tell that she was different from the rest of them?

Her palms were sweaty and she felt a growing panic as the guards pushed her forward, but the test itself turned out to be an anticlimax. The soldier with the stone looked bored as he held it out in front of her; there was no glow, not even the slightest flicker. He nodded at the guards flanking her, and they started to pull her away.

Wait a moment, a familiar voice said.

Caylen had just started to breathe normally again when the words caused her throat to tighten. Arl Turosk appeared; apparently he had been watching after all, in the shadow of one of the crude huts that had been thrown together for the garrison. The guards stepped back as he came forward to face Caylen.

What is your name, girl?

All thought fled; she could feel the danger in the Aldremish lord’s stare, but she could not manage enough reason to come up with a false answer. A faint buzzing echoed in her ears, as though a bee had gotten trapped in her skull. If she had been able to move, she would have run then, guards or no. Caylen, she whispered.

Turosk’s lips twisted slightly. My lord? the guard with the testing-stone asked.

Bring her as well, Turosk said.

* * *

Another rough jolt of the wagon brought Caylen roughly back to the present. Kiri, half asleep in her arms, whimpered. Caylen rubbed her hair, whispered reassurances. But there was no one to reassure her. Turosk’s whim had taken her from the camp, joined with these other captives for a purpose she did not understand. Her universe had shrunk to the wagon and its seemingly endless journey. They were going east and north, that much she could divine from the path of the sun, but what lay at the wagon’s eventual destination… that she could not know, and the uncertainty only added to the terror that build in her gut with each passing rumble of the wagon over the rough road.

* * * * *

Chapter 2

A shadow fell over Daran as he fumbled with the straps of his pack. He knew he was late, that the others were waiting for him, but he’d lingered here, going through the leftover gear they’d gathered here, inside the empty ruin of the old tower. The things that littered the floor were mostly junk, scraps of armor and broken weapons, bloodstained clothes too torn or ragged to be useful, even a saddle for which they no longer had a horse. The detritus left by battle, scrounged from victors and losers alike. Though he wasn’t sure if either term really applied to the men and women who had been left at Ciar Ridge.

They’re waiting, the shadow said. It was Armon, his bow in hand, a quiver on his hip and another slung across his back. Daran looked up at him, nodded. Just checking to make sure we didn’t leave anything important, he said.

Armon nodded, though they’d already checked and rechecked the night before. They were still short of supplies, though they’d found mushrooms and other edible plants in the canyons that surrounded the ridge. But they’d been able to replenish their supply of weapons from the men who’d perished in the final battle, up here at the summit of the ridge. Men weren’t the only ones to have died here, but the gear that had been carried by the ogres was too big for most of them to handle.

Daran didn’t want to think about ogres, or battles. He didn’t want to think about where they were going, but he had little choice, since it was his fault they were doing it at all.

He followed Armon back outside, blinking against the intensity of the morning sunshine. The others were all there already, and looked at him. He saw accusation in some of those stares, and other things as well. Fear, maybe, but that might have been his own fears, which had chased him through his recovery since he’d first awoken in the tower three days ago. Since his most recent journey back from death.

They all knew, now. The secret he had guarded since his first resurrection, in the city of Evros, was out in the open, at least among the members of the small company that was all that was left from the garrison sent to defend Ciar Ridge against invaders from Aldrem. Armon walked over to join Brannik and Sludge. The three young men were a reminder of Daran’s past; they were all from his village, originally. They’d left months after he had, volunteering for the army that Baron Thargus was gathering to check the ambitions of his rival in neighboring Aldrem. Davin and Nalder were young men from other villages in the region. Nalder was sitting atop the back of their draft horse, looking wan and unsteady. He hadn’t been the same since he’d taken a blow from an ogre that had cracked several ribs and fractured his skull. Even so, there was a part of Daran that envied him.

Caleb stood in front of the horse, holding onto its tether. He was the last of the men who had come from the city of Evros; the others in that cohort had all been killed in the battle for the ridge, either down at the lower camp or up here at the summit. The fallen included their leaders, Sergeant Taebur and Lieutenant Neskar, the former slain by an ogre spear, the latter in a bloody sacrifice that had bought the last survivors of the expedition time to get to safety.

Daran saw Braskar standing near the wall that warded the entrance to the ruined outpost that occupied the summit. The big man’s face was scarred by an old fight with pox, but he was stronger than any of them save perhaps for Brannik. He noted Daran’s attention and shifted the long spear he carried in the crook of his arm. He wore Neskar’s armor, the mail links stretched over his torso.

The last member of the company nodded to him as he came fully into the sunlight. The wind whipped at her hair, cut short around her scalp. In her mail shirt and iron-bound cap she looked more a soldier than the rest of them. Are you ready, Daran? she asked.

Yeah, I guess I am, he said. The Lady Arla was the leader of their company, perhaps she always had been, even before Neskar’s death. A priestess of the Khel’arun, she had been with most of these men since before Vildenford. She was a warrior-priest, an initiate of the Order of the Sword. The men looked to her with respect, and in some cases with more than a bit of awe, despite the fact that she was only a few years older than most of them. That was why they had volunteered to come on this mission. That loyalty to her had trapped Daran in this course of action