I stumbled through the woods, every step an agony. I knew, subconsciously, that I wasn’t going to last. My wound — wounds — were bad.

  The bolt in my hip had lodged in bone, which I discovered when I tried pulling it out the first time and nearly passed out. Not long after I started coughing up blood, possibly from whatever the Glorysworn with the hammer had done to me with her unfamiliar magic.

  The power in me seemed fractured, almost withered. I couldn’t concentrate on it, did not feel the normally constant warmth in me from its presence. Without it…

  These wounds would kill me. The one in my shoulder burned, and I might have had a fractured rib or three.

  I wouldn’t last. Yet still, stubbornly, implacably, I put one foot in front of the other. Again and again, each step celebrated by the crunching of leaves.

  Step. Crunch.

  Step. Crunch.

  Step…

  I stumbled and caught myself on the rotten trunk of an ivy coated tree, gasping for breath. Sweat poured down my face to trickle into the undergrowth below. I vomited, wiped my mouth, and continued on my way.

  Step. Crunch.

  “Look how the mighty have fallen.”

  The voice whispered from the shadows, so faint I believed I only heard my own thought at first.

  But then more voices answered it, drifting from the gloom of the wild like whispering insects.

  “He killed him! The old man. Cut off his head and left him there to rot on holy ground.”

  “Almost killed the boy, too. Should have done it. Who’s he kidding?”

  “Think’s he still on the side of the angels.”

  “He is! That’s just the trouble, isn’t it?”

  “Do his oaths warm him?”

  I clenched my teeth against the tide of evil whispers. I shouldn’t have reacted. The trees filled with trilling laughter.

  Damn shades. Even in daytime…

  Step. Crunch.

  “This is not what you were meant for.”

  I took several labored breaths before I could speak. “I know that.”

  Perhaps another fifty steps passed before another presence drifted into the forest. A shadow seemed to fall over the trees like a cloud moving overhead and the air grew noticeably cooler. Only, the sky remained clear.

  The wind died. The birds ended their singing and even the distant music of the river died. The ground beneath me began to reverberate with what felt like the beating of an enormous, subterranean heart, the sensation traveling up through my legs.

  I steeled myself and felt a shudder of fear anyway.

  An iron-shod hoof stamped the grass within the sudden darkness of the deeper forest, so heavy I could feel the thud in my chest. A horse snorted — a real one — the sound somehow evoking a deep, guttural growl.

  Leather creaked and a towering shape seemed to form amid the shadowed trees. I took a deep breath, schooling my face and forcing my pounding heart to still. I did not stop walking, though I wanted nothing more than to turn and flee to the nearest patch of brightest light I could.

  Still that great heart beat, warning me of danger.

  Warning me that something not of this world had come.

  The horse, a great destrier, emerged from the darkened woods at an unhurried walk. It had been clad in the remnants of war barding, rotten chain mail and scraps of rusted plates covering most of its leathery hide, its equine head crowned by a cruelly designed helm set with a long blade so the beast resembled a fiendish unicorn. Its hide sported rusted iron thorns and protruding hilts from blades sheathed into its flesh.

  Its many wounds wept blood with every movement of its ever shifting muscles. It twitched and flexed, never for even a moment still. Its bloodshot eyes were disturbingly human and full of an insane malice as it regarded me.

  The rider of the fell warhorse, on the other hand, could not have been more mismatched to the steed. She was beautiful, with a heart shaped face and slender build, riding sidesaddle to accommodate a flowing gown seemingly spun from foam and starlight. Her hair was raven dark and so long it seemed a cloak.

  A gentle smile formed on her lips even as she looked down at me, letting her nightmare steed match my unsteady pace as she drew alongside.

  I took all of this in with a sideways glance and kept walking. “Nath,” I greeted the rider.

  Nath’s berry red lips curled into a frown. She leaned forward over her steed’s head to inspect me. Her eyes told the lie to her beauty. They were twin hollow pits, like the empty sockets of a porcelain mask. Nothing but shadow lay within.

  When she spoke, she did so with a voice that made the forest shiver.

  “Alken, my dear, what have you done to yourself? You are covered in mud and bruises like a little boy.”

  I spoke through gritted teeth. “Just a small… disagreement. It’s really not as bad as it looks.”

  It was getting harder to breathe.

  Nath snorted, placing her fingers over her lips. “Even so close to death — indeed, in the very presence of death — you haven’t lost that wry touch to you, my dear little knightling. I do adore a man who can jest in such times.”

  She propped an elbow on the devil steed’s head, which stilled at her touch even as its mad eyes rolled hatefully. One of her fingers uncurled lazily in my direction. “I would give you six hours, twelve at most, and then you’re done. Your aura is all a mess. You won’t be able to rely on the fire those faeries alloyed into you to save your life.”

  She leaned down, breathing in and shuddering as though catching the most enticing of scents. Her lips curled back from small teeth.

  “I suppose you wish to bargain with me?” She asked sweetly.

  I turned a sullen glare on the Onsolain. “I’m not desperate enough to make deals with a Fallen. Piss off.”

  “Pah.” Looking bored, Nath propped her chin on her fist. The movement of her arm seemed to irritate the horse further, which stamped its iron hoof restlessly. “Your word. Men call you a devil, do they not? So many fun names you’ve earned since we last spoke. Headsman. Blackbough. Bloody Al. I feel as though I should take issue with that last.”

  “I didn’t coin that one myself,” I replied. “If I find out who did, I’ll let you know.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I didn’t mention that the ‘Bloody’ epithet was about as common in Urn as apple trees. Not every poet can be original.

  The being known to many as Bloody Nath smiled, pleased. “So sweet. I will take that as an oath and call it binding. But I digress. As much as I enjoy flirting with you, knightling, I’m rather busy of late. What are you willing to offer so I might save you?”

  “I already told you.” I paused to catch my breath, leaning against another tree. “I’m not willing to offer you a damn thing. Up to and including…” I took several more deep breaths. “My soul.”

  “So dramatic.”

  Nath scoffed and spurred her monstrous steed forward, turning it to block my path. The beast was enormous, as large as most war chimera I had seen, and its bloodshot eyes rolled hatefully toward me. If not for the pale hand holding it at bay, I suspected it would gladly stomp me into a gory paste.

  Nath tilted her head as she spoke to me. “You have already sold your soul to my brothers and sisters, Alken Hewer, and they hold it in penance until they deem you worthy of salvation. If you die today, where do you think you will go, hm?”

  She arched a perfect eyebrow at me, waiting for my answer. It didn’t seem a rhetorical question.

  Forced to stop my agonizing march, I glared up at her. “I know where I’m bound,” I said, repeating the words I’d said to Leonis Chancer.

  “Do you?” Nath asked, propping her chin on the other fist, shifting that arm to dig a bony elbow into the fiend steed’s scarred neck. Its mad eye rolled up in insane, impotent hate, and the Fallen continued speaking as though she didn’t notice. Perhaps she didn’t.

  “Your order allowed the Gilded City to fall. Your own captains betrayed the elf king and you…”

  Her lips curled into a lazy smile, her empty eyes narrowing coyly. “You, Alken Hewer, Knight of the Alder Table, failed in your duties to safeguard that realm and all others that fell under its shadow. You have betrayed, lied, murdered, even become outcast by the mortal priesthood and the lords who were once your peers.”

  Her grin widened into something macabre. “Your sad tale will have a fiery end, I think.”

  I could barely stand, much less muster up some witty riposte. I glared for a long while before I could gather the strength to answer.

  She was right. Not just about how close I drew to death, but also about where I could expect my soul to go once that end came. Images of crumbling towers and bloody fields scorched my mind. I closed my eyes against the flood of images. Of memories.

  “What do you want?” I finally asked when I felt able to speak. My voice was hoarse, weak, and without much fight. I had been fighting a long time. I had to admit part of me wanted it to be over.

  But it wouldn’t be over. I knew that better than most. In the surrounding forest, the dead watched me with mad eyes and whispered among themselves.

  “In return for saving you?” Nath’s smile widened and she lifted herself up, regarding me thoughtfully. She seemed to be the only thing in the world that produced light, as though she’d drank it all into her. Even the sky seemed dimmer.

  Despite my weak show of defiance, I was very afraid of her. I would be a fool not to be. She was Onsolain. Or she had been.

  “Hm…” Nath tapped a long fingernail against her red lips. “How about that pretty ring and the name of the woman who gave it to you?” She smiled winningly down at me.

  I glanced at the ring on my right hand. “No,” I said without hesitation.

  “Poo. The axe, mayhap?”

  “It’s not mine to give.” Though, I felt tempted. Maybe she could actually free me from the cursed thing.

  Nath hummed quietly, unperturbed. She tapped a finger against her chin, running her eyeless gaze across the sun-dappled canopy as though looking for inspiration there.

  She was enjoying this, I realized, even as I stood there bleeding out.

  Damn immortals and their games.

  “Why are you even bothering?” I asked, exasperated. “You know you can’t make me a pawn easily, Nath, not with your brethren looking over my shoulder. They will take issue with any attempts to turn me to your own ends.”

  “True enough,” Nath agreed, her smile fading as her empty eyes turning skyward. “But favors owed… that I am allowed. I may not be able to lay claim to your soul, knightling, but that holds less interest to me than you might think, Alder touched though it is.”

  She turned her regard back on me, and I felt the weight of that void stare like the pull of a bottomless chasm. “This land is broken. The Fall culminated in the deaths of kingdoms, and there are power vacuums that have yet to be filled. I have already made some progress in this, but I need agents. Allies.”

  She smiled again and placed a delicate hand on the head of the fiend horse, which rolled its veined eyes hatefully. It seemed as though the beast longed to buck her, but wouldn’t dare. “I am refashioning myself as a warlord, you see.”

  “Allies,” I said, making the word a surly growl. “You and me? Is this the part where I laugh in your face?”

  “Do it,” Nath said, her voice quiet and cold as glacial ice. “See what results.”

  I had to suppress a shiver of quiet, primal horror and remind myself that there were worse things than death, even the one that awaited me.

  I chose to forgo laughter.

  “Point is,” I continued, “my soul isn’t for sale, metaphorically or literally. I’ll help you about as soon as the stars freeze over. Now, are you going to move?”

  I tightened my grip on the axe, feeling its sharp imperfections press into my skin. “Or am I going to have to move you?”

  It was an idle threat, and we both knew it. Even at the top of my form, taking on a being of Nath’s caliber would be tantamount to suicide. In my experience, however, it never paid to let the world’s monsters see you sweat.

  Nath snorted in disdainful amusement. “Oh, knightling. If vapid bravado wasn’t part and parcel of your ilk, I might weep for you. But hear me; you will die. Soon. There is no one else who can save you, no one else who cares to. Your old allies have long since dismissed you from their thoughts. My brethren think of you as a disposable tool. Many of the lords of Urn would happily see you dead as a murderer and a renegade.”

  A touch of what might have been genuine emotion laced her next two words, had I not known better. “Be reasonable. You need help, Alder Knight. You and I are not so different, after all. We were both outcast. We both long for a home we can never return to.”

  I opened my mouth for an angry retort, and then closed it as her words settled on me. Perhaps there was a touch of aura in the Fallen’s voice, but…

  But she was right, damn it. For the rest of Urn, the violence of the Fall of Seydis was years gone now. The Accord had instituted something like peace across the land, though its authority varied from region to region.

  But for me, the fighting had never truly ended. Vinhithe had just been the most recent in a long parade of bloody, terrifying tasks.

  I had done things. Could I really scruple at this? Better men than me had fallen to the Briar’s wiles.

  I had served. I had bled. Would it be so wrong to accept an offer of aid, even from a being so untrustworthy as Bloody Nath?

  I did not know. Doubt gnawed at me, as it often did. The Church of Urn taught that those who lived outside the light of the Heir were not to be trusted or heeded under any circumstances. But I had just killed a bishop. I lived outside that light as an excommunicate. I had refused to heed the words of another such, long ago, and a kingdom had burned.

  Several minutes passed before I spoke. When I did, it was in a quiet, tired voice. I could muster no anger, no righteous fire. Just hard-earned weariness and bitter resignation.

  “The difference,” I said, “is that I didn’t spend the last four centuries trying to conquer this land, or make friends with the Briar. You’ve left mountains of corpses in your wake.”

  I took a steadying breath and spoke as calmly as I could, making certain my words left no room for doubt. “The answer is no, Nath. I don’t want your help. Get thee behind me.”

  “Fool,” Nath said with no particular feeling. “You will die.”

  I began to walk, not caring that the enormous fiend horse blocked my path. “So be it. But I’ll die me, not as one of your monsters.”

  Nath did not move her steed. “They already see you as one of the monsters.”

  I stopped and stared pointedly forward, standing nearly underneath her now. Her bare feet and the hem of her white gown were coated in blood, I noted.

  I began to gather my will, focusing my aura until it thrummed within my chest. It did respond, though weakly and in fits. Could I muster enough to smite the horse? Not the dark spirit who rode it, but just this one petty victory I could claim, even if it were my last?

  “I don’t care how they see me,” I said. “I swore oaths to protect the realms from things like you. I fight monsters.”

  Nath lifted her narrow chin. “And yet you kill your fellow men.”

  “I fight monsters,” I repeated. “Even human ones. Now are you going to move, or am I going to have to axe your pet?”

  A faint flicker of amber flames stuttered around my weapon. They were short lived, but the threat was clear enough. We stood there a while, in that still forest where even the wind held its breath. I counted each of my own, wondering which would be my last.

  After what seemed an eternity, Nath inclined her head and tightened her grip on the horse’s reins, spurring it to move aside. I moved past her.

  Step. Crunch. Step. Crunch.

  Step—

  My vision went blurry, and at a remove I realized I’d lost too much blood. The world began to spin.

  Damn it. Not now. Not in front of her.

  I fell. I didn’t really feel myself hitting the ground. I lost my grip on my weapon and my fingers stretched for it.

  I have an old nightmare, of dark things catching me before my hand can grasp a weapon.

  The nightmare came true. A monstrous hoof slammed into the ground near my head. I could feel the world shudder beneath me with that impact. Nath’s power thrummed through the rotten soil, and her voice caught me in a low, soothing murmur from what seemed like a world above.

  “Such a shame. You had potential, Goldeye, but your stubborn pride has proved your bane. As it has so often been for the True Knights. Farewell. I would wish you peace in death, but I assure you there will be none.”

  I expected that hellborn creature to bring an iron-shod hoof down and flatten my skull.

  It did not. Instead, cruelly, it began to move away. Nath left me there to die slowly.