A-Viking (Betrayed by Faith Book 3) Read online

  “Now we are even, fimblewit,” Griffin replied. He knew Malcolm was unlikely to respond when insulted, but it helped him focus. Griffin kept circling the man, parrying and blocking, waiting for a chance to strike. And then he saw it. His opponent’s ankle was injured, forcing him to put more weight on the front foot. He feinted left and darted right, Malcolm’s sword crashing into the earth toward his feint... Inside the sword’s reach, he had but a moment to finish the fight. Griffin brought the back of his axe down on the man’s skull. The crack of bones was sickening, but the fight was over.

  Griffin’s body then demanded attention. As had happened in the past, while he was fighting he had been able to ignore his injuries, so long as he remained conscious. But now the fight was over, and his leg threatened to collapse.

  Brianna seemed to move towards the door, but Griffin waved her back. He wasn’t sure what had happened to the sniper, but there could be a smarter one out there, waiting for one of the women to exit the house. Using the axe as a support he moved to the house, blowing hard.

  “Grab what we’ll need for the tunnel, Joy. I doubt we will have a warm welcome if someone else turns up, either the police or the Order. I’ll seal the exit once we’re in it. Stale air is better for our health than more gunfire.”

  Brianna glared at him. “I’ll sort the air out in the tunnel while you let Joy stitch that cut. It’ll do none of us any good if you keep dripping blood and pass out from blood loss. We’ll have at least that much time. Even if the neighbors called the police, they wouldn't come charging into what sounded like a battlefield.”

  Joy nodded firmly in agreement. “It’ll take five minutes, Grif.” She pretended not to notice him wince at the name Agatha had used. “She can use the time to make us something to eat as we walk. The kitchen’s clear of all the damage and some food will do us all some good once we’re out of the battlefield stench.”

  Griffin looked at the determined expressions on both their faces and sat down on one of Joy’s chairs in the kitchen. He wasn’t going to convince them otherwise so he may as well let them do what they proposed.

  Joy came forward with a suture kit, handed him a bottle of vodka and prepared the needle. Griffin grimaced, because if they would be walking she was going to have to double stitch. He downed about a quarter of the bottle and splashed the overproof vodka over the wound. He grabbed a couple of the bandages from the kit and cleaned the wound. The sooner this was over, the better. He hissed as the needle dug into the flesh. He was relatively lucky, though. The cut wasn’t as deep as it could have been. It hadn’t severely damaged the muscle.

  Joy clucked, “Keep trickling that vodka as I seal this, Griffin. The last thing you need is an infection.” He complied, even though it hurt more. He managed to keep the leg still through all twenty-two stitches.

  Once that was finished, Joy put a pad over the wound and wrapped the leg, jeans pant and all, with a fresh bandage to keep the pad in place. He moved to get up and Brianna said, “Wait until I finish the sandwiches. I spotted a walking stick for you to use. I’ll bring it over when I’m done.” He nodded and went to put his hands on his face. He found he couldn’t, that there was a barrier preventing him from doing so. When Joy and Brianna saw this Joy swore. Brianna sighed.

  “Got creative, did you? I guess that’s why you are still alive, but once we hit the tunnel, I’m gonna have to teach you how to stop drawing on the dimensions. You can try now, but I don’t know if you’ll succeed. You have to focus on cutting the…” Brianna said. That was something that Griffin had learned over the years. He was used to applying the technique on another, but with a small effort, he employed it on himself.

  Brianna saw the short cut in his natural draw to the dimensions. “Ohhkay, then. That is usually one of the hardest things for someone to learn.” She shook her head and continued making the food for them. Once she was done, they headed down to the concealed armory. Joy muttered about stupid locks while grabbing one of the shelves with both hands and pushing it down. A piece of the wall shifted as she did. They had moved all the firearms they’d used to the armory.

  “Put ‘em in the tunnel. We might need them some time, and once I seal this end, it’s unlikely they’ll be found.” Griffin said.

  Brianna looked concerned. “Are you sure you can? I mean… You’ve only just learned how to draw on the dimensions. I’d hate to be in the tunnel when you caused an earthquake by accident.”

  Griffin thought for a moment, then shrugged. “You said it was one element I had an affinity for. And when I created the patch of ice under Malcolm’s feet it worked exactly as I wanted. I think it'll be all right, but…”

  Joy piped up, “If you don’t do it, we need to figure out some other way of blocking the door. I don’t want to be followed to my friend’s house.”

  Brianna shrugged and smiled. “If you think you can block the tunnel with elemental power, I’m willing to let you try. Especially knowing you can stop your draw on the dimensions if you need too. I still don’t understand how you could just sever your connection to the planes like that, though. It usually takes at least days to learn how.”

  Griffin grunted as he headed for the doorway, motioning that the others should pick up the guns. “It was something I already knew how to do to others. I just didn’t realize that it was what I was doing.”

  Brianna’s face paled. “Please, please never do that to me. It would be horrible. Doing it to yourself is one thing. To someone else, it would be torturous. It’d be like you cut off an arm or a leg.”

  “I won’t, so long as you never try to hurt me.” He softened the comment with a grin.

  Still shaken, she walked up to him and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Hurting you is the last thing I would want to do.”

  After all the equipment was in the tunnel and they had moved some distance from the door, Griffin drew on the plane of earth. He pulled power up from the plane, shaping it into the walls of the tunnel and over the doorway. He carefully stepped back, slowly thickening the layer of stone. Once the layer was at least nine feet thick he stopped and fell to a knee. Feeling drained, he carefully rose to his feet. With the assistance of the women he managed to place his pack comfortably on his back, and they headed down the tunnel.

  Farm Outside Mudgee, Before Dawn, March 11, 2014.

  They walked down the tunnel which was fairly regular in places. Other sections were obviously natural caves. It was far longer than either Griffin or Brianna had expected, at least ten kilometers, mostly flat. Brianna was looking at it with an expression of awe. Eventually, she asked, “How was this made? I can see some sections are natural, but there are no tool marks.”

  Joy glanced at Griffin, then said, “How d’ya think dearie? I have friends that are as friendly with talkin’ ta the Earth as Grif here is. So, I asked.”

  Brianna paused, then looked at her when Griffin and Joy stopped. “There’s more to it than that. You said you’d tell. So spill, or I stay here for the night.”

  Griffin rolled his eyes. The young could be so melodramatic at times. Joy only sighed. “You have the right of it. So I’ll talk while we walk.”

  “Ever wondered why the Order teaches that a nick from a Were can turn anyone without enough faith?” Brianna asked. Griffin snorted in response.

  “Let me speak, young’un,” Joy chided “Griffin don’t know all you an’ I do. It ain’t true. Weres can infect any human that ain’t Godsborn or Magi. There’s somethin’ about the ability to draw on them planes that stop it takin’ over cold.”

  “That’s how I started the journey that ended with you meetin’ me here. I ain’t changed you see. Not then and not now. Instead, one sister in the monastery that night wasn’t of the Ritans. She was of the Lost Sisterhood - an offshoot, ya could say, that tries to have one of its members in every monastery or chapter-house. Just in case what happened to me happens. Or a sister shows signs of spontaneous use. We’ve even smuggled the occasional Brother of St. Michael out of their sites from
time to time who was showing the signs. Or once they were given the heave-ho out once they showed they could do ‘Unnatural things,’ we got ‘em outta sight.”

  “Basically, the Lost - or True - Sisterhood, dependin’ who ya ask, started out seeking the Godsborn and Magi as vessels of the Impossible. Eventually, we saw some of the truth o’ the matter regarding the Order. Those they hunted ran the gamut from honest citizens to the vilest scum. And those they found before us, well we couldn’t risk tryin’ to save them. Coulda put all we’d saved at risk.”

  Brianna stared at her. “How did you keep them out of the Conclaves?”

  “We were already hidin’ from the Order. I’d guess that those who were found by the Conclave kept quiet. The Hathori know of us, an’ we help each other from time to time. Helped ‘em in the U.S. fight off a bunch of Ajeyptos. One’s who’d decided they had right to take their wives back, ‘spite of the Keltos protection. We found a fair amount about how to train our own from them. The rest we learned through trial and error. An’ from the odd member, here an' there, who run afoul of their Conclave and sought aid.

  “We kept a close eye on them, me girl. We had to. Crims fleein’ justice were some of ‘em. Other ended up being good enough sorts. Some married into the Sisterhood. The name makes people expect that we’re all family-less spinsters, so we kept it, see?”

  She continued by reciting tales of skirmishes and the basic structure the Sisterhood used. It seemed to be a decentralized cell-based organization. Some cells were there to stay hidden. Others were more combative. Others ran businesses to fund everything. Some traveled, others lived where they were born for their entire lives. They blended in with everyone else. Maybe a bit on the militant side, as most learned to use weapons and various martial arts. And they only used their planar abilities in certain small towns that have been fully populated by members or remote farms and wilderness.

  All this information seemed like insanity to Griffin. Finally, he burst out, “How in blazes do people not notice all these groups?! And why haven’t they taken over or something? What you’re describing is a decentralized force with weapons that can’t be countered.” Brianna looked startled. Joy merely laughed.

  “The total numbers o’ the Sisterhood of an age for what you describe be at most fifty thousand, boy. Some of the Minor Conclaves are but a tithe of that and gettin’ more’n two or three Conclaves headin’ in the same direction will be like herdin’ cats. They have old grudges and disagreements.”

  Griffin sighed. “So the Order, with lay brothers, outnumbers those you could call up to aid. And we don’t have a clue what other forces may be waiting in the shadows. The Mid-East and China divisions probably know about us, one way or another. China has forces like the Order itself. From what you say, uniting the Conclaves is an impossible task.” He fretted that Agatha had gone off on an impossible task. He’d left her to it.

  A possible solution appeared to him, and it caused him to groan. His brother had pointed out he and Agatha were both potentially uniting figures. If one united one group of Conclaves while the other worked on others, they might, maybe, be able to cobble what they needed together.

  He planned in his head, walking in silence as Joy and Brianna. His mind was swapped by the few details of what they knew about other socio-political structures beyond the veil.

  By the time they reached the end of the tunnel the were all pretty tired. It was vanishingly unlikely that someone would stumble on the hidden entrance at this end. The noise of someone breaking through the tunnel entrance where they began would wake them, so they set no watch. They ended up sleeping through most of the day just short of the exit to the tunnel.

  Farmhouse “Friendly Waters,” Outside Mudgee, March 10, 2014.

  Xandrie was annoyed. She flicked her blue braid over her shoulder. She’d found and eliminated a nest of Demonspawn, but they’d taken out one of her men with a rifle shot. They’d captured the family group, and she had two of her men down with injuries from sharp icicles that had been thrown at them by the man of the household.

  Torturing them hadn’t gained her any information, though. She was really disappointed by that. She might get told off for not calling a cleanup for the site, but she wanted to send a message to the other Demonspawn in the region. The torture had been applied hoping to get more names and locations, especially when she’d threatened to replicate the pain on the children in front of their parents. She’d promised them all quick deaths if they’d just give her the location of one more Demonspawn.

  They’d refused. Their mistake. She tried again to call Mal, but he wasn’t picking up. Damn it, she’d have to go to the farm he was attacking. The arrogant bastard had said this was a waste of their time, that Griffin was at the other site if he was anywhere. She didn’t consider killing the “spawn of Hell” a waste of time anywhere, and their orders were to cleanse the land where Griffin had disappeared.

  She didn’t know why the owners of the vineyard hadn’t been targeted before now. After all, through the droughts in the last ten years, they had not been affected. They claimed to others it was because of a natural aquifer. Her attack had proved otherwise. That one of them could produce ice and fling it with such force was unusual. Demonspawn tended to go for fire or chunks of stone. But it was something that had been encountered before.

  When she caught up to Mal, at the least she would have a bunch of ‘told you so’s’ for the bastard. He’d tried to dissuade her by threatening to go to the council if there wasn’t a Demonspawn on site.

  She rounded up her men, after recovering the fallen soldier, they loaded up their vans and headed to the other site.

  ********************************************************************

  Xandrie was shocked by the violence that had occurred. Damn it, Mal had been right. Looking at his corpse, she felt something approaching sorrow. She wasn’t really that upset he was dead. She was more upset that fifteen of the Order had been killed for no gain. No-one else in the farm seemed to be dead. Worse her lover, who had been the sniper for the main force, was burnt to a crisp.

  An average person might have been feeling grief, she supposed. All she felt was rage. The individuals in the farm had apparently prepared for an attack. The number of deaths showed the preparations that the defenders had made. This whole incident, if you included Griffin, Joakim, and Agatha, had cost the Order five Paladins. It was not to be tolerated.

  She scowled as she looked at Malcolm’s corpse. He had been killed in hand to hand combat. She doubted that was from an ordinary Demonspawn, but felt confident… no, wait. There was something about the wounds. Axe wounds. Precise ones, in a pattern she’d seen before. It wasn’t definitive, but she suspected that they were Griffin’s work.

  Damn Griffin. He’d betrayed them all. Gone to serve with the Demons. She gritted her teeth. He’d always seem a little off. Not enough fire in him, in her opinion. Too willing to let a target move away from potential witnesses. Not willing enough to accept that for the good of all sometimes ordinary lives had to be sacrificed.

  She took a deep breath. She could be wrong, and she needed to report in and wait. He didn’t know it, but he wasn’t the only Paladin that could tell when others had been using foul powers. It might take a day or two for them to get here, but the local police would be re-directed, ordered to hold the site for other investigators.

  “Pull out. Leave the place as is. We’ll call it in, get backup. If it is who I think is responsible for this, we might need it.” Honestly, she believed she could take the old bastard. He might look like he was in his thirties, but he had to be slowing down at two-hundred years old. Besides, he’d always shown scorn for her choice of weapons. He thought a Katana was a poor choice and repeatedly scolded her for following the popular belief in its superiority. When she encountered him, she’d show him how wrong he’d been about that too.

  Campsite, Blue Mountains, March 11th

  Nin and Rinzen parked and left their car at a rest stop. Wh
ile they were stretching their legs, Nin frowned, pointed further into the bush, and asked, “Can we go this way?”.

  “Yes, but why?” Rinzen asked, “I mean it’s the middle of nowhere out there. Do you think he’s camping out there, hiding from someone?”

  “No, not that. But there’s something odd in that direction. I believe we should check it out, just in case it’s important. We’ve just driven in a circle for the last half hour because I can’t feel him through my link. Someone drew on the plane of Water recently out there.”

  Rinzen shrugged. “If you believe we might achieve as much doing that as driving around I have no objections. We could both use the exercise as long as we’ve spent sitting down in various vehicles anyways.”

  They walked steadily, following Nin’s internal direction finder. The going was rough because the path had left the direction she wanted to follow. They took over an hour to reach what she was looking for. They found a small spring halfway up a hill and evidence of a flash flood. Shrubs, bushes, and grass, had been piled at the bottom of the hill, along with large stones and topsoil. It had been entirely clear weather in the area for at least a week. This was fresher than that. Only a small area had been washed away, starting at the spring where one shouldn’t be.

  Nin approached it. She frowned as she looked at it, then stuck her hand into the center of it. It went down to her wrist, which was far too shallow for the flow coming off it. A small stream went down the hill along the centerline of the flash-flooded area, from this spring. She felt a familiar tingle. Someone had opened a gate to the plane of Water here.