A warriors redemption bo.., p.1
A Warrior's Redemption: Book Two of Saga of the Known Lands, page 1
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
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CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
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About the Author
Note from the Author
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Warrior’s Redemption: Saga of the Known Lands Book 2
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Copyright © 2021 Jacob Nathaniel Peppers. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
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Thank goodness not too far.
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CHAPTER ONE
Of all the perils a man faces in his life—and there are many—none are more dangerous, more deadly, than his dreams.
For in the darkness of those nightly visions, a man is forced to confront, without conscious artifice or design, his demons.
He confronts them without weapon to slay nor shield to stay their reaching claws.
He confronts them naked and alone and woe to the man who understands not his peril.
For in dreams, a man finds himself. In dreams, a man finds truth.
And often that truth is sharp. Often, that truth cuts.
—Writings found among skeleton in unmarked tomb; author unknown
He was in the Black Woods again.
It was impossible and yet…he was. He needed only to gaze at the trees surrounding him to know it. Certainly, the great towering sentinels which loomed all around him, their shadowed heights reaching more than a hundred feet into the air, jutting into the sky like great spears, looked nothing like those trees underneath which he had lain down to sleep.
For those trees had been pines and oaks, those trees which made up the forest outside of Ferrimore to which he, his companions, and those villagers who had survived the Fey attack and his brother’s subsequent assault had fled. The same forest in which he should be now. Only…he wasn’t.
He was in the Black Woods again.
It didn’t make sense that he was here, not after he and the others had traveled miles away from that strange, alien place that was the heart of Fey power. But impossible or not, those trees which surrounded him, ancient, massive sentinels which seemed to press in on all sides and which regarded the trespasser into their domain with palpable hatred, were the trees of the Black Wood. He would know, for he had seen them, and they had seen him before.
But as worrisome as the realization that he had come once more into the Fey lands was, there was something else, something worse. At first, he could not tell, for sure, what it was, some niggling sense that something was out of place. But then, in another moment, he knew.
He was being hunted.
He took a moment, slowly looking around in a circle, narrowing his eyes to try to see past the thick gloom that lay on the world. His breath plumed in front of him in great clouds from the chill air, and the shadows seemed to hunch and shift at the bases of the great trees.
But look as he might, he saw nothing, and listen as he might, he heard nothing. And yet, he knew, as strongly as he knew anything, that something was hunting him.
And it was growing closer.
Cutter had been hunted before, of course, and had hunted himself. He had killed, many times, and it was likely that he would kill again before he was through. He had risked his life in this duel or that battle and never been much bothered by that fact, had never worried over what he might lose as so many others did.
But now he felt that worry that he had evaded for so long, creeping into him, stretching forth its tendrils and spreading like some corrupting vine, and he licked his lips, feeling his heart begin to race.
It was ridiculous for a man like him, a man who had risked so much so many times to be afraid of some unseen, unheard, unproven presence. And yet…he was afraid. Terribly, deathly afraid.
For Death had roused itself from its ever fitful, ever brief slumber, and now it stalked the Wood around him. Searching. Always searching. He could feel that wretched thing as it approached, could feel it in the same way that a man might taste ozone before the storm came. Cutter had felt the feeling before, of course, of death come onto the world to feast, but never had he felt it so strongly as this.
It was coming, drawing closer with each moment that he remained still. He knew that without knowing how he knew it. Yet still he heard nothing, the only sound the harsh rasp of his breaths and the creaking of the trees which, in a normal forest, might have been no more than the shifting of branches in the wind. Here, though, in the Black Woods, it was more than that, for it seemed to Cutter that the trees did not sway—they moved. They drew closer, crowding around him with alien purpose and alien design, intent, perhaps, on cutting off every avenue escape so that he would not be able to evade his pursuer.
“Matt?” he asked, his voice dull and hollow and somehow empty in the stillness. “Maeve?”
They did not answer, and of course, they would not. For he could feel that he was alone in this place, with no one to help him, no one to remind him how to be brave. It was only him and that which hunted him. And the alien presence of the Wood itself which he felt watching with excited, malicious glee.
And yet, though Matt and Maeve did not reply, an answer did come. Not in a voice but in a sound that was so deep, so loud, that it seemed to come from all around him, like the crash of lightning nearby but stronger, and thicker. Not sharp like a lightning blast but deeper, more of a thud, like…
Like a footstep.
As soon as Cutter had the thought, he knew it to be a true one. That great, deafening sound had been the footstep of that which hunted him, and so he was right to be afraid. For he was not hunted by man nor beast but by some great monolithic entity, some being that had lived for thousands of years and would live for thousands more to come.
It was not a god, this creature, this thing, but a force. One more in common with the natural upheavals of the world, hurricanes and tornadoes and tidal waves, similar to them but far, far worse. And it was coming right at him.
There was another thunderous crash, as loud as the first, and Cutter started, his breathing ragged now, his great chest heaving with it, his thick arms whose strength had bested so many enemies, trembling and shaking, and he was afraid.
As he waited in sick fascination for the next impact, Cutter became aware of another sound, one far lower in pitch than the first, but in its way, he thought, just as powerful. It was a pulsing throbbing. For a brief instant he thought it the beating of his own heart, but he dismissed that in another moment, for the throbbing beat did not come from the confines of his chest but from somewhere behind him, somewhere deeper in the wood and in the opposite direction of his hunter.
Was it the heart of the Black Woods itself that he heard? Even as the thought struck him a vision flashed into his mind, a vision of some great, twisted, blackened lump of a heart, veiny tendrils as dark as midnight reaching out from it, stretching down deep, so very deep into the ancient soil, corrupting the trees in which i
Ridiculous of course, but try as he might to banish the image from his mind, Cutter could not. It was evil, that beat, that heart, but even its evil paled in comparison, in his mind, to that of the thing that hunted him. For while the evil of the wood might kill him, might make him suffer before the end, the evil which came was one that would consume him—he would not die but become part of it, an unwilling part forced to witness in horror as it went on to consume the entire world.
And even as this realization came, he caught sight of a great figure moving in the distant wood. Despite the shadows of night, he could not have missed it, for the figure was so great that it towered above the trees, hundreds of feet tall, a shadow in which no specific features could be seen, so large that it seemed to block out the pale light of the moon.
Staring at it, Cutter felt frozen to the spot, for he knew that what he looked upon was an ancient evil, one as old as the world itself.
Cutter was not a man who frightened easily—many who had known him would have said that he was afraid of nothing, but then that would have been wrong even before Matt. The only difference between him and most people was that, when faced with something which made him afraid, most men’s reaction was to turn and run, to put as much distance between himself and that which scared him as he could. Cutter’s, though, had always been different. He had always charged at the object of his fear, real or figurative, intent on destroying it as quickly as possible, thereby destroying his fear.
But he did not charge forward toward that great, monolithic figure, not this time. Instead, he found himself backing away, his breaths growing more ragged, more desperate. There was another resounding thudding footstep as the creature drew closer. Then, Cutter, Prince Bernard, the man hailed throughout the Known Lands as the Crimson Prince, turned and ran into the darkness. He could do nothing else.
He ran away from that great figure and toward the beating of the corrupted heart of the wood. The underbrush was thick, seeming to spring up around him out of nowhere so that a path that looked clear one moment was suddenly choked with thorned bushes and vines the next. And all of these seemed to pull and tug at him like the hands of a crowd trying to pull him back toward the creature, toward the doom that waited for him there.
Cutter cursed and hissed, ripping at the vines, oblivious to the bloody scrapes and cuts he endured as he struggled deeper into the forest. He gave no thought to where he was going, knew only that he had to get away. Away from the creature, away from the unending darkness its touch promised.
As he forced his way through the thorned bushes and choking vines, the throbbing, the beating of that great heart grew louder until it thundered in his ears, and his teeth were gritted against the pain of it, feeling as if his head was going to explode.
He did not turn to look back, to see if the creature marked his passage, if it came for him. He knew that it did, could feel its hatred, its hunger radiating from it in waves, and so he ran on, knowing that in the end, he would be, could only be, too slow.
There was a great groaning behind him, as if a mountain shifted, and he knew without looking, that the creature was reaching for him, that at any moment its great hand would wrap around him, would take him. Growling like some cornered beast, angry and scared all at once, Cutter fought harder against the vines and the bushes, tearing and ripping and clawing until, just when he felt sure the great being would grasp him, the undergrowth suddenly vanished from in front of him.
So abrupt, so unexpected was the suddenly open path before him that Cutter stumbled, nearly falling. He stood in a clearing, the moon-spattered grass looking almost black in the near-darkness. His chest heaving, Cutter finally turned to look behind him, expecting to see the hand of the great, monolithic beast reaching toward him. But the creature, the form he had seen towering over the trees, was gone. Gone just as the undergrowth which he had struggled through only moments before was. Gone, gone as if it had never been, as if he had only imagined it, and as he stood there panting, his hands on his knees, Cutter noted something else. The beating of that dread heart, that terrible throbbing, had ceased.
Perhaps this should have given him comfort, but it did not. Wolves on the hunt might howl and yip in excited anticipation of the meal to come, but once they had caught their prey, once they had cornered it, dragged it down, they did neither of those things. Instead, they feasted. Suddenly sure that someone or something was behind him, Cutter spun and, as he did, his breath caught in his throat.
The clearing in which he stood had been empty moments ago, he was sure of it, and yet now it was not. In the center of the grassy expanse stood a wide-shouldered hulking figure dressed in furs, its back to him. But it was not the man in furs which caught his eye. Instead, his gaze was drawn to another, smaller figure of a youth lying on his back in the short grass, his hands held above him in a gesture that at once communicated his terror and his desperation, his pleading.
Matt.
The boy could not be here, not any more than Cutter could himself, for they had escaped the Black Woods, escaped with Maeve and Chall and all the others. And yet…he was here. Cutter knew the boy’s face, knew it better than he knew his own, and even etched with terror as it was, even twisted with fear, he could not have failed to recognize it.
Had it all been a lie, then? Had everything since they’d left the Black Woods, his battle and ultimate—if temporary—victory over Feledias and his troops been nothing but the imaginings of a man desperate to cast his mind anywhere but on the truth? Or had it been some Fey trick which had caused him to imagine it? Indeed, the Fey were strange creatures, powerful in their illusions, and even he, who knew far more of their kind than most, had only glimpsed the slightest fraction of their true power, their true nature.
Was it not possible, then, that he and the others had never left the Black Woods after all? Was it not possible that their escape, that everything that had happened since, had been nothing but the creation of some Fey creature, one greater at illusions even than Challadius?
As he stood there, regarding the scene which seemed frozen, he thought that perhaps it was. After all, what was more believable, truly? That he and a young boy who knew nothing of fighting had somehow managed to make their way free of the Black Woods—the heart of Fey power and a place where full companies of soldiers had vanished without a trace during the war? That they had somehow managed to stumble into Challadius, into Maeve, and Priest, the companions he had traveled with so long and the only people on the face of the world that he trusted just when they needed them most?
Was it easier to believe that they had come to warn him of an ambush, saving him and the boy in the nick of time, and that the villagers of Ferrimore, among whom such tragedy had occured—because of him, no less—had taken sides against the rightful prince of the kingdom in order to save him, making of themselves outcasts and fugitives?
Or was it easier to believe that they had never escaped, that he and the boy were in the Black Woods still, trapped like so many others had been over the years, never to see the light of day again, only to catch the faintest glimpses of the sun past the thick, choking boughs of the great trees overhead?
“C-Cutter?”
He was ripped from his thoughts by the sound of the boy’s voice, and suddenly Matt was frozen no longer but staring at him with a desperate pleading in his gaze. “Cutter, p-please,” the boy said, his voice thick with his terror, “p-please—”
But just as the youth was no longer frozen, neither was the wide-shouldered figure standing over him. The figure moved with supernatural speed, withdrawing a double-bladed axe from its back. Cutter screamed, starting forward, but had moved no more than a single step before the blade whistled down and the boy’s pleas abruptly ceased.
Cutter froze, his breath catching in his throat. “No,” he rasped, his body shaking. “No,” he said again, “i-it can’t, you can’t—”
The figure turned to regard him, and either by some trick of the twilight, the Black Woods, or simply by the tears gathering in his eyes, hot, burning tears of loss, its face was a blurred mystery. All of it, that was, except for the figure’s smile. That he saw clearly enough. A great, wide smile of pleasure, one that mocked him, mocked the dead boy lying in the grass.
