"…I swore an oath to serve you, my friend, and I'll not abandon you to die in an old rot like this!"
He'd never appeared so weak.
With all his strength, muscles where most men didn't have any, he was useless as a newborn pup.
So Nathan had little choice, but to conjure up a solution, seek aid from The Brander, who was more protective over his own people than others. The birds hadn't returned, and Nathan believed they may have not been sent out at all.
Not a precarious man, from what Nathan could see, The Brander wouldn't risk sending one of his own. He made the village elder an offer himself, as much coin as his lordship, Razelael's Bane, had offered him to leave.
"Please sir, your fastest horse," Nathan urged Brander on a muggy black morning within the village church. "Any horse will do, just something so I can give him a chance!"
Brander, tending to a black kettle by a window, shook his head.
"Ye' who are soulless are destined to die. You are young, and you mistake his strength as security."
"He's the reason the Graves were made safe," Nathan argued.
Brander shrugged, the crone testing his patience. "Was Razelael's death the end of all darkness? This warfront you seek, hundreds of generations of men and boys fated to die, has gotten any better?"
"I'd be at the ends of the death angel's swords, and his majesty, were it not for that man!" Nathan shouted, pointing towards the hut. "You're lucky, he could be the first ray of hope this village's seen in an age!"
Smoke rose from the tiny moldy wood shack, where the weary champion rested.
Aside from himself, his lordship made a difference for a number of adventurers and townsfolk by clearing those accursed woods. There was so much more to be done as well, regardless of one's status with the death god.
"Very well," Brander said, holding out a boney hand. "I shall take a handful, and only a handful. Gold doesn't go very far here. You may take Brock, he's our youngest steed."
"Thank you," Nathan said, filling the old father's hands with as much coin as possible. "I'll return as s-."
"For your sake, I'd make peace with the lords now. Journeying those woods will certainly be your end, your valiant manner for such a young man is to be commended. Were I you, I'd not make the journey back should you make it to the mainlands."
In no mood to hear the old bastard's charming personality, Nathan made for the stables.
After acquiring Brock, a steed black as the sky, he farewelled his lordship.
On a shaking knee, the champion against evil leaned against the hut, mug of ale in hand, trying to keep himself awake.
"I shall return soon, my lord. Please, let the Brander help you," Nathan said, almost ashamed to leave him in such care.
His lordship nodded, then limped back into the hut.
Nathan's heels kicked Brock's sides.
The steed was off, faster than any horse Nathan rode.
Village fire became smaller than candles, and a few minutes later faded away. Upon crossing over a hill the ride became cold, and Nathan tucked himself within his cloak. At least last he remembered, there were at least five hundred miles separating the battlefield from Marryvia's outer lands.
Not as many vampyres, but plenty of ghosts, highwaymen, looters, and even gargoyles closer to the front.
No time to think so much, just ride, he told himself.
"Hurry Brock," he said, fighting against the wind.
As the day ended, he set up a quick fire.
Fingers round his cross he prayed. All the eight lords, the gods, maidens, angels, and the holy figures of blessed fate.
Which one of them had his best interest?
None possibly, as the warlord was a soulless wretch in the eyes of the lords. Even slaying an angel of the death god, the angel of combat and destruction who led a was for thousands of years in what used to be southern Creahllacia, didn't guarantee any favor.
'Breath boy. Or I'll clout some sense of the lords across your face!'
Father was crusty old war hound, but rarely wrong.
"Breath," he whispered to himself, stuffing his hands in his armpits. "Larosa'd kill you if you died in these woods. Well, you'd be dead, but she'd find a way to kill you again."
At dawn, a hint of light appearing in the sky, he rode Brock onward.
It was getting brighter, the sun was in the sky, yet the shadows of the darkland forever bound by shadow still shrouded the atmosphere. He caught a silver glint upon a hilltop, then slowed Brock.
Bandits? Warbands? It was too far to tell.
He kept Brock trotting at a steady pace, though the steed was smarter than the average horse. It stayed low, snorting against he ground while facing the hill.
"What do ya' think lad?" Nathan whispered.
Brock snorted, shaking his head, and Nathan rubbed his neck.
"Aye, we'll stay low for now."
Whizzes overhead turned him up.
Bright whistling steel, one after another.
"Hurry Brock!" He shouted, arrows hissing by his face.
One landed into his shoulder, and he cursed.
Brock galloped hard.
Torches ignited, and Nathan turned to see at least a dozen rider, howling and waving weapons above their heads. Axes, scimitars, daggers, spears, and they wore no armor upon the torso, only leather pants. Their horses were too fast, faster than anything from the lands of the kingdoms.
They were foreign riders, from a land where war was sport.
So many different tribes, he couldn't remember them all, yet they were all ruthless as the god who damned souls.
Sword drawn, Nathan turned Brock up hill.
Better to not have them on higher ground, and he rode up until more riders appeared crossing over the top.
Brock darted east, arrows soaring inches by their faces.
"Don't slow down!" Nathan shouted as an arrow grazed his face.
He cursed, a hand over his bleeding left cheek, losing his vision.
Darkness overtook the sun.
Air became thick, so thick Brock slowed against Nathan's wishes. It didn't matter, as the riders slowed as well, some dismounting to take precision shots. By the dark gods' grace, none landed between Nathan's eyes, but Brock whimpered as an arrow scraped the steed's backside.
"Easy lad," Nathan stuttered, rubbing the Brock's mane.
Another hundred paces or so and Brock stopped.
So he was there, the fallen lord of darkness.
At least his abyss was, and Nathan held his breath trying to stay upright. Brock breathed easy, the steed used to the harrowing power of all things evil, what ye of the damned used to torment one's soul. Eternity laid before them, the black fall were he or anyone to cross over those cliffs, and nothing could convince him otherwise.
'You'd have to be mad to even be a hundred paces from this cliff!'
The foreign riders whistled.
They whooped and hollered, laughing like wild dogs.
Even with no service to the lord of light, they persevered with a lust for blood. The riders were so close Nathan could smell them, their must, the fresh blood on their iron and bronze.
Yet they couldn't find him.
"Brock?" He whispered, a hand on his cross beneath his collar. "When I say so, run."
Brock growled, the riders lowering their voices.
"Shit!" Nathan gasped.
A rider lunged towards them.
Brock rose on his hind legs, then slammed the rider into the dirt. While the savage whimpered beneath his hooves, he kept stomping until bones snapped.
Other riders swung at the darkness, and Brock galloped wild. Hind kicks, charges, even snatching a rider by the throat and heaving it off the cliffs, it was a sight Nathan could barely see.
Cross out, he ignited the air, and found a pair of riders before him, backs turned. As they spun to face him, he thrusted through one's back. Quicker than the other could swing an axe, he side stepped while slicing for its throat.
Blood splattered across his face. More riders, whoever wasn't being trampled by Brock, charged him. They swung axes but were so wide it was easy. A thrust skewered one's belly, followed quick by a slice to another's throat. He parried, then cut off an axe hand. The stump holding rider howled, falling to a knee. He cut off the savage's head, then parried another.
His light, the light of all gods, shined. His blade was bloody, his right shoulder ached, and Brock was good a steed as he could have asked.
"Easy lad," he said, the last rider backing away towards the cliff.
He and Brock faced him, a mad dog without his pack.
Upon a final step back, the rider tumbled, falling over the cliff.
Nathan covered his ears. It wasn't an ordinary scream. It was a cry of realization, for the rider would never know what it meant to be warm again. Those screams echoed for far longer than Nathan would've cared.
Brock brushed against him, kneeling for him to mount.
Though the riders screams still rang in his ears, Nathan climbed atop.
Brock galloped from the abyss, back towards the light.