"No," said Garrick.
He stood in the stockade gate with his arms spread, blocking it. Behind him, Sable and Hob. Behind them, half the Black Ninth, pulled out of their tents by the horn, standing in the gray dawn with their swords in their hands.
"Garrick," said Ren. "Move."
"He wants you alone so he can kill you. That's the whole point of it." The big man's voice cracked. "You go out there, he kills you, and then he kills them anyway. That's what happens."
"Maybe."
"So we all go. Six hundred of us. We hit them before they know we're coming."
"And the second he sees an army on the hill, he kills all of them at once." Ren didn't raise his voice. "Thirty three people, Garrick. Wren's there. The twins from Felling are there. I can feel them. Every one."
Garrick's face twisted.
"I'm going," said Ren. "Alone. That's what he asked for."
"Warden..."
"Captain," said Old Hob quietly.
Everyone looked at him. The old colonel stood with his blanket still around his shoulders and his pipe in his hand, unlit.
"He's a captain now, Garrick," Hob said. "Let him through."
Garrick stood there for a long moment. Then he dropped his arms and stepped aside.
Ren walked past him to the horse Sable had saddled. He swung up. Then he looked down at Hob.
"If I don't come back," he said, "the Ninth is yours. Get the villagers out. Get them south. Don't let Vex have any of them."
"Understood, Captain."
"And Hob. Nobody follows me. That's an order."
Hob looked up at him with his pale blue eyes. "Understood, Captain," he said again.
Ren turned the horse toward the gate.
Hana was sitting on the wall above it, her legs dangling over the edge, the huge sword across her lap. She watched him ride under her.
"I can't come," she called down. "You know that. The iron won't let me ride against Varenhal's heroes without an order. And she won't give one. Not for thirty peasants."
"I know."
"So I'll tell you something instead." Hana leaned forward. "I fought a Berserker once. At Tollan. Bloodrage doubles their strength. It also drains their Will, every second it's running. That's why their Will stat is always low. They spend it." She looked down at him. "Make him rage early. Keep him raging. Don't let him rest. When the Will runs out, the rage runs out too. And then he's just a tired man with a heavy axe."
"How long does it last?"
"Depends how much Will he has." Hana shrugged. "Longer than you'd like."
Ren nodded. "Thank you, Hana."
"Don't thank me," said Seo Hana. "Come back and tell me if I was right."
He rode out the gate.
***
He was an hour out, galloping north across the Burnt Mile, when the second candle went out.
He felt it like a cold needle under his ribs. He didn't slow the horse.
Sworn soul lost: Mara Sutton.
Mara Sutton had been the woman from Marrowby who sang while she split wood. She'd had a laugh like a bird, and she'd taught the twins from Felling to whistle through their fingers, and Ren hadn't even known her name until this second.
He rode faster.
He thought about Kenta while he rode. He didn't want to. It came anyway.
Middle school. The first week of seventh grade. A big, slow, awkward kid in a uniform that was already too small, standing alone at the edge of the gym while the teacher let two captains pick teams for dodgeball. Nobody picked him. He just stood there, getting redder, while the line got shorter and shorter.
Takeru had been one captain. Ren had been standing next to him.
"Pick the big one," Ren had said. "He'll be able to throw."
And Takeru had looked at Kenta, and grinned, and said, "This one's with me." And everyone had laughed, but not at Kenta. With him. Because Takeru said so.
Kenta had never known that it was Ren's idea. Ren had never told him. It hadn't seemed important.
He wondered, riding north across the ash with two of his people already dead and thirty two still kneeling ahead, whether it would have mattered. Whether Kenta would have stood in that kitchen with Takeru's hand fisted in his shirt and said something different, if he'd known.
Probably not.
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He rode faster.
***
Corran's Field was a wide green meadow in a fold of the hills north of the Burnt Mile, one of the few places the fire hadn't reached. There was a stream running through it, and a lone oak tree at the center, and on the far side, drawn up in long silver lines, the Varenhal vanguard.
In front of the lines, between the oak tree and the army, a row of people knelt in the grass with their hands tied behind them.
Thirty two of them.
Ren slowed the horse to a walk and rode toward them.
He could see their faces now. Wren Halloway at one end, her jaw set, her eyes burning. The twins from Felling, side by side, holding hands behind their backs as best they could with the ropes. Old women. Kids. Men he'd seen chopping wood in Millbrook. Two bodies lay in the grass at the end of the row, covered with someone's cloak.
Standing in front of them, alone, with his axe resting on his shoulder, was Fujii Kenta.
Behind Kenta, a little to one side, Hasegawa Tetsuo stood with his tower shield planted in the grass. Rina was there too, pale, and the lay judge Endo Mika, and Taguchi the bailiff. And further back, on a white horse in front of the silver lines, a tall man in Radiant armor with a gold sunburst on his breastplate.
Radiant Order Captain Aurelian · Paladin (Epic) · Level 35
Ren stopped the horse twenty yards from Kenta and swung down.
"You came," Kenta said.
"You asked."
"I thought you'd bring the army."
"You said not to."
Kenta laughed. It wasn't a nice laugh. "Same old Ren. Always doing exactly what he says." He hefted the axe. "That's what got you in trouble, you know. Back home. If you'd just said you were driving, they'd have gone easy on you. Suspended sentence. Takeru's dad would've paid the family."
"I wasn't driving."
"I know you weren't," said Kenta.
The meadow was very quiet. Even the wind had stopped.
"If I win," said Ren, "they go free. All of them."
"You won't win."
"If I do."
Kenta looked back at the Radiant captain on his white horse. Aurelian didn't move.
"If he wins," said a deep voice, "they walk."
It was Tetsuo. He hadn't moved from beside his shield. But he was looking at Aurelian now, and his face was very calm.
"I'll make sure of it," Tetsuo said.
Aurelian looked at him for a long moment. Then he shrugged one silver shoulder. "As you like, Guardian. It hardly matters."
Kenta turned back to Ren. He was grinning now. His eyes were bright.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go."
***
Ren drew his sword.
He opened Read the Field one more time. He already knew what it would say. He looked anyway.
Fujii Kenta · Berserker (Epic) · Level 34
STR 104 · AGI 41 · VIT 92 · INT 14 · WIL 18
Kuroda Ren · Hero of Dominion (Mythic) · Level 22
STR 55 · AGI 62 · VIT 49 · INT 42 · WIL 55 · AUT 81
He was faster. Kenta was twice as strong.
When Kenta raged, he'd be four times as strong.
Ren didn't wait for him to start.
"Kneel."
Kenta's knees buckled. He went down on one knee in the grass, and his face went red, and then he roared.
Skill activated: Bloodrage.
The red shimmer came up around him like heat off a road. He stood. Kneel slid off him. He came across the grass at Ren like a train.
Good, Ren thought. Early.
The first swing missed by a foot. The second missed by an inch. The third, Ren couldn't fully get out of the way of, so he turned his sword and let the axe slide off it, and the impact went through his arms and into his shoulders and spun him halfway around.
His hands went numb. He kept his grip.
Then it became a dance.
Kenta swung, and Ren moved. Kenta swung again, and Ren moved again. He didn't block. He couldn't block. Each swing of the axe tore a trench in the meadow where Ren had been standing a half second before. One hit the lone oak tree and went a third of the way through the trunk. Kenta ripped it out, roaring, and kept coming.
Ren cut him every time he could. Small cuts. Quick ones. The arm. The thigh. The back of the knee. Hero Slayer made each one bite deep, deeper than it should have, and soon Kenta was bleeding from a dozen places.
It didn't slow him down at all.
The first real hit came a minute in. Ren slipped an overhead swing and stepped straight into the back swing, the haft of the axe coming the other way, and it caught him across the ribs. He felt them go. Two, maybe three. He hit the ground and rolled and came up, and every breath was a knife.
Kenta laughed and came on.
Ren watched his face. The red in his eyes. The veins standing out on his neck. And something else, something he'd been waiting for. A twitch at the corner of Kenta's mouth. A sweat that wasn't from the sun.
He opened Read the Field without taking his eyes off the axe.
WIL 11.
It was dropping.
"Is that all you've got?" Ren said.
Kenta screamed and swung harder.
Another swing. Another miss.
"Takeru used to laugh about it," Ren said. "At parties. When you were in the other room."
WIL 7.
Kenta's next swing missed by three feet. He was breathing like a bellows now. The red shimmer around him was getting patchy, like a fire running out of wood. But he didn't stop. He swung, and swung, and swung.
The last one caught Ren on the left arm.
He felt the bone go. He heard it. The sword fell out of his left hand and he caught it with his right, and the pain was so huge that for a second the whole world went white.
WIL 2.
When it came back, Kenta was standing in front of him, swaying. The red was gone. His axe hung down from one hand. His chest was heaving. He was bleeding from twenty cuts, and he looked down at them now like he was seeing them for the first time.
Bloodrage: Ended.
Exhausted.
"Kneel," said Ren.
Kenta went down on both knees in the torn grass.
He didn't try to get up. He didn't have anything left to try with. He just knelt there, breathing, with his head hanging, and his blood running down into the dirt.
Ren walked over to him. Every step hurt. He stopped in front of him, holding the sword in his right hand.
Kenta looked up.
"Do it," he said. "Like you did him."
"Takeru begged," said Ren.
"I know." Kenta's voice was hoarse. "I'm not him."
Ren looked down at him for a long moment.
"I saw his shoes," Kenta said. He said it quietly, so only Ren could hear. "That night. In the kitchen. There was blood on them. I saw it, and I said what he told me to say." He swallowed. "I'm not sorry. I want you to know that. I'd say it again."
"I know," said Ren.
He swung.
***
The System spoke into the silence.
Kill confirmed. Fujii Kenta, Berserker, Level 34.
Level up. Level 23.
Level up. Level 24.
Level up. Level 25.
Level up. Level 26.
Level up. Level 27.
Level up. Level 28.
Then the screen changed. The letters went black, edged in violet, and burned.
Title evolved: Hero Slayer → Hero Eater.
When you slay a summoned hero, you may claim one of their skills.
Available: Bloodrage. Iron Hide. Cleave.
Claim?
Ren looked at the list. He thought about the red shimmer. The axe going a third of the way through an oak tree. The Will draining away, second by second, until there was nothing left.
He thought about what that would mean in the hands of someone who had Will to spare.
"Bloodrage," he said.
Skill claimed: Bloodrage.
He felt it settle into him, hot and red and hungry, somewhere down under his ribs next to the System's slow heartbeat. It didn't feel like the Dominion skills. It felt like something that wanted to be used.
He closed the screen.
Across the meadow, the row of villagers stared at him. Tetsuo stared at him. Rina had both hands over her mouth. On his white horse, the Radiant captain Aurelian had gone very still.
Ren turned toward Wren Halloway at the end of the row. He opened his mouth to tell her it was over.
And felt something go out, far away.
It was the faintest candle he had. The very edge of what he could feel. A tiny point of light, miles and miles to the north, that had been flickering and steady ever since a night in the Warden's tent when he'd said yes.
It went dark.
The System didn't make a sound. It just opened one last line in front of his eyes, small and gray.
Sworn soul lost: Nakano Sho, Shadowblade.