Chapter 278: The Barbarian Column (1)

Ketal stood at the edge of the torchlit circle with a cool, distant gaze, watching the barbarians trade blows beneath the roar of their own voices. Then he caught himself and drew a slow breath.

No. I shouldn’t think like this,

Ketal thought.

He had been judging them for refusing to kill in a duel. That was the mindset of the barbarians of the White Snowfield. Worse, it was the mindset of an old man clinging to the rules that had hurt him. A duel did not have to end in death. If every contest demanded a corpse, the world would belong only to lunatics.

He straightened his shoulders and let the irritation drain away. Even so, the circle made its decision with the kind of blunt finality barbarians liked. One fighter shattered the other man’s weapon, snapped his arm at the elbow with a stomp, and raised a chipped axe over his head.

“Listen!” the winner shouted, voice hoarse with triumph. “I am the leader! If anyone objects, step forward.”

No one moved. Rough faces turned toward him and showed respect the only way barbarians knew how. They accepted the result. A leader had been chosen.

Darkul and Ketal did not bother to comment. They were here to reach the Barbarian King. They would walk with the column until it carried them to that audience. They didn’t care who the leader was.

At least, that was the hope. Barbarians chose their leaders like beasts. To them, hierarchy was not a line drawn on a map but a law written in muscle and bone. Spoils belonged to the leader. Even a simple property could be contested if the leader wanted it. Members of the column owned only what their leader allowed them to hold.

Trouble followed as naturally as night followed the sunset.

Ketal carried a black axe as he always did. A stone the color of deep water was set into the butt of the haft. Fine carvings wrapped the length of the wood. The edge had never taken a scar, and no one had to be a smith to know it was valuable.

Which was why the new leader noticed it. He came striding across the circle while the chant was still dying, eyes bright with the greedy light of a man who has just discovered something he can point at and claim.

“You!” he barked.

Ketal looked up. “Yes?”

“That weapon.” The leader jutted his chin toward the axe at Ketal’s hip. “It looks good. Give it to me.”

The Holy Sword at Ketal’s waist gave a surprised hum.

“Is he talking about me? I see. Even broken, I am still a Holy Sword. Anyone can feel my aura, even if they are not my chosen master. A barbarian would certainly covet me. He looks ignorant, but at least his eye is not blind,” the Holy Sword said.

However, the leader was not pointing at the Holy Sword.

“Not the broken sword. I do not want that. Give me the axe!” the barbarian shouted.

A little huff of indignation rose from the sword.

“A fool who does not know value. Teach him some manners. Do it now,” the Holy Sword said.

Ketal ignored the sword’s impatience and answered in his usual mild tone. “It is mine. I do not intend to hand it over.”

The leader’s mouth twisted. “You defy me.”

“I am refusing to give you something that belongs to me,” Ketal said. “That is all.”

“You defy the leader!” the man shouted, face reddening. “Do you want to die?”

The leader ripped his own axe free of its loop and dragged it into a guard. Around them, men who had just finished cheering for a victory began to smell the next piece of entertainment. The arc of the torches filled with faces.

Ketal studied the leader with genuine curiosity.

This is new,

he thought.

Back in the White Snowfield, he had been the one who settled disputes. He had been the chief who told people to put things down or pass them over and cut off arguments with a look. No one had ever walked up to him and demanded to hand over a weapon. It was odd enough to feel refreshing.

The nonchalance only made the leader angrier.

“Stand there and stare, will you?” he growled. “You look down on me. Say one more word and I will tear your head off!”

Ketal’s eyes cooled. He shifted a foot.

“Ketal. Leave this to me,” Darkul said as he laid a hand on his own sword and spoke over the noise. He stepped forward before Ketal could take a second step. “I think it is time to teach barbarians their place.”

There was a shade of fever in Darkul’s smile. He had spent more than half a year breaking barbarians with the flat of his blade. Not a day had gone by without a beating to hand out or take. He had grown so used to the work that he did not notice the way it had hooked into him until a chance like this stood up and waved.

Ketal lifted his hand in a small gesture of permission and stepped back.

“As you like.”

“You dare defy your leader!” the barbarian bellowed. “I will kill you!”

“Come try,” Darkul said. “Come show me how.”

They drew steel and iron. The first clash rang like a cracked bell. Men crowded close for a better look, and the chant rose again in rough voices.

Darkul started well and fought with confidence. The leader’s Myst felt like the bottom of the Advanced level to him, while his own felt a notch higher. He had learned his blade-work in the holy land. The patterns sat in his bones, and he trusted them.

However, fights were not patterns on a page.

Darkul had little experience with opponents who matched him or stood above him. The barbarians he had knocked down in that mountain village had not even reached the Advanced level. They did not count. However, this leader did. He was Advanced and knew how to spend a life if he had to. He read angles faster. He chose to take a hit to give one that hurt more. He was not shy about using his shoulder or his knee.

Darkul gave ground. He tried to harden his guard and adjust, but each exchange knocked the rhythm out of him a little farther.

A smile of rough satisfaction dragged across the leader’s mouth.

“You dare raise a hand to me?” he shouted. “Defy the leader and die!”

He lifted the axe two-handed and drove it down. Darkul braced, teeth clenched hard enough to ache, and threw his sword up to meet it. His arms trembled. He would not hold.

“That is enough,” Ketal said.

By the time men turned their heads, Ketal was already there. He closed a hand around the leader’s wrist. The man jerked in shock and tried to pull back. His arm did not move. It felt to him like he had jammed it between two rocks.

Ketal gave a light push. The leader slid backward with a sound like leather dragging across wet grass.

“I will handle the rest,” Ketal said.

Darkul exhaled once and stepped away, shame and relief mixing on his face.

“Sorry,” he said. “He was mine to handle.”

“Do not worry,” Ketal answered with a small grin. “It happens.”

He turned back to the leader.

“You want my axe,” he said in a voice that carried to the edge of the ring. “If you beat me, I will hand it over. Law of the strong.”

The leader gulped, climbed to his feet, and tried to settle his breathing. Confusion flickered in his eyes. When Ketal had grabbed him, it had felt like his bones were being wedged apart. No amount of strength had mattered. The feeling set his instincts screaming.

This man is dangerous,

the leader thought.

He buried the warning under pride and wrapped his fingers tighter around his axe.

“I will kill you!” he barked, and charged.

He put everything into the swing. It was the kind of blow that split a log and broke a stone. Ketal raised his hand and extended two fingers. He caught the blade at the very tip. The axe stopped as if the air had turned to iron. The leader’s eyes went wide.

“What...?”

Ketal punched him in the chest, and the leader flew to the other side.

Silence spread in a clean ring from where he lay. Ketal walked back to Darkul as if he had gone forward only to adjust a tent stake.

“You are stronger than I thought,” Darkul said under his breath.

He had judged Ketal as the highest level of Advanced, because that was what he could sense. However, Ketal had not used the Myst inside him. He had knocked an Advanced barbarian unconscious with a single relaxed strike, and he had done it as if he were tapping a friend on the shoulder.

“What you see is not always what there is. But don’t worry about it,” Ketal said. “It’s late. Let’s go to bed.”

Darkul nodded dumbly. The camp settled, the torches burned lower, and the night passed without another fight.

At first light, Ketal sat up, not because his body demanded rest, but because there was nothing else to do while others slept. He rose and dusted off his cloak, then frowned.

“What is this?” Ketal said.

The former leader stood in front of him and bent low at the waist.

“You are awake, my lord,” he said.

Ketal looked past him, then back to his face.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” The leader blinked, startled. “You defeated me.”

Ketal sighed as understanding slid into place.

The barbarian hierarchy left no gaps. If one defeated the leader, he was the new leader. He had known that rule in the White Snowfield, then forgotten it because he never lost after he took the chief’s seat. At first, there had been a few who challenged him for the right to take the position. However, as time passed, those who stepped forward did so only to prove their own strength, not to claim his seat. The rule had grown half-forgotten, buried beneath years of unbroken victory.

The former leader dropped to both knees and pressed his forehead to the ground. “Please look after us, leader!”

***

The arrogance the former leader had shown before was gone without a trace. The barbarian was utterly subdued before Ketal. If Ketal demanded he surrender everything he had, he would obey without hesitation. That was the way of hierarchy among barbarians.

Ketal narrowed his eyes. He looked as if he meant to refuse, then paused, reconsidering.

“Very well...,” he said.

Even if he rejected them, the barbarians would not accept it. They would only cry out his name as their leader and cling to him no matter what. He had seen enough of that in the White Snowfield to know it well. So there was only one answer left: ignore them.

From that moment, Ketal was the leader of the column. It changed almost nothing. They were still headed for the King. People bowed when they spoke to him and used respectful words, but the road beneath his boots felt the same.

If anything, it made Darkul’s life easier. Anyone who thought to start a contest of pride had to think twice with Ketal standing at the front.

They moved on. By afternoon, another group joined them, then another. Each time, the men at the head would call across the road.

“You are the leader of this column!” they would shout. “Fight me!”

“And if I refuse?” Ketal would ask.

“Then we force you!”

They would run forward, weapons lifted high. Ketal would flick a finger against a jaw or step inside a guard and tap a skull. It only took him one strike to subdue the challenger. The man would fall asleep on his feet. Hours later, he would wake, spit grit, and shout cheerfully across the road.

“I acknowledge you as my leader!”

The column grew larger each day.

“This is tiresome,” Ketal said at one point, earning himself a sharp stare from Darkul that he pretended not to see.

“You seem full of complaints, yet you never try to leave. If you dislike it so much, you could simply abandon everything and run. Or you could just say you lost a duel and be done with it,”

the Holy Sword said.

Ketal faltered.

He realized the sword was right. There was no reason he had to remain bound here. If he wished to leave, he could do so at any time. If he found the position of leader burdensome, all he had to do was concede defeat in a duel, and it would end. Yet such thoughts had never once occurred to him. It was as though guiding others had become his duty, a responsibility he could not abandon. As he searched for the reason, he understood why.

It’s bec

ause of the White Snowfield, he thought.

It was because of the life he had lived there. For so long—so endlessly that counting the years had become meaningless—he had led the barbarians as their chieftain. Leadership had become part of his very existence. Even after leaving that land, he unconsciously continued to carry the barbarians forward, believing it his natural duty.

Unbelievable. I am already broken by that place,

Ketal thought. A shiver ran down Ketal’s spine, and he let out a deep groan of regret.

“Even now, you could leave,” the Holy Sword pressed. “With your strength, you could abandon everything, take only Darkul, and let the rest survive as they may.”

“You sound sulky,” Ketal remarked.

“Sulky? Hardly. I simply have no wish to remain with barbarians too foolish to recognize my worth. I am not sulking, I am speaking reasonably.”

“Fair enough...,” Ketal conceded. T

The words themselves were reasonable. He bore no obligation to shoulder these barbarians. Ketal looked at the barbarians. Their gazes upon him were the gazes of those who had found their leader. They were eyes that sought someone to follow, eyes he knew all too well.

“Let’s just go,” he said at last.

This was not the White Snowfield. This was fantasy, and he could not allow himself to remain buried in that old memory forever. He decided to accept it.

Let this be some sort of trauma therapy,

he told himself.

So Ketal accepted the role of leader. The band of barbarians continued to swell, their numbers soon surpassing a hundred. Believing in Ketal as their leader, they moved north toward the seat of the Barbarian King.

The eyes that followed Ketal held the respect due to a leader. His power was great, but still within the bounds of comprehension. They trusted him, they believed in him, but nothing beyond that.

Yet soon, events would unfold that would change everything.