3989 A.D., month of the oracle.
Do not ruin your knives. Stone is harder than steel. Normally you could let your magic carry into the blade and cut through the impossible; as the best swordsmen do, whether they know it or not. But right now you don't have a drop of magic to spare. Do not wreck your knives.
Lucid thoughts. Reasonable thoughts. Köinzell almost ignored them to attack the statues again anyway, snow stinging his eyes. Snow. Not tears. He refused to shed tears now.
Statues. Glorious monuments to the glorious Seven Heroes.
His breath hissed hot through clenched teeth, even as he shook from the chill wind. He'd had to use the Black Wing to take down the airship's commander; the moons were down, there'd only been one slim moment when the maschinendrache had dropped low enough for him to survive a crash, and nothing else could have carried him through the Wischtech marines fast enough. But it had cost him. Bleeding inside, magic drained, and shrunk. Again.
Hopefully Dart's right, and I'll recover faster this time... gods, at this size the wind goes right through you.
He stared one long moment more at Glenn's statue. Proud. Heroic. You'd never know those hands were stained with the blood of betrayal.
Deliberately, Köinzell turned his back.
Get inside with that trapper. Get warm. Tomorrow, plan.
It's going to be a long walk home.
"And that should help break up the dye-house's outline from above." Parsifal peered up at the camouflage netting half his family had just finished pinning into place. Grinned at Artur, then turned to their smallest helper. "Want to take a look, Dart?"
Resting on Sofia's shoulder, the scout fairy glanced up, then took off, soaring through gaps in the netting to get a good look from the sky.
The beekeeper followed her for a moment, then sighed. "She's still so sad."
"She misses Köinzell," the smith nodded. "We all do."
"It's been almost two months." Elsi ran a finger over one of the net ropes, eyes straying now and again to where Gurye and the other village children were playing with spiderwebs under Miss Cord's watchful eye, as Robin thumped a teenage Gwen on the back and listened to her lungs. Between fairy magic and human healing the girl had mostly grown out of her hay fever, but Robin always kept an eye on her lungs in late winter. "I hate to say it, but..."
"He might not have gotten out of this one, no," Artur said gravely. Damn Wischtech and damn airships; at least now, after three sorcerous incidents, the village had finally decided they were going to take a leaf from their fae neighbors' books and make it so Right Here was a lot harder to spot from the air. Camouflage netting over buildings, breaking up some of the fields with various grumpy trees and vines from the Forest, and bits of magic and mayhem to make the roads and paths look more like convenient animal tails wending through stream and stones. "But look at it this way, lass. If that airship made it where it was going, why hasn't it come back?"
Which was the reason Artur hung onto hope, no matter how much it hurt. Sorcerers, monsters, and treacherous nobles hadn't managed to do in the young swordsman. He doubted an airship could carry enough swords or sorcery to keep Köinzell down.
Though they could have hurt him. Badly. And Köinzell didn't heal well without moonlight.
He could have gotten buried somewhere. Hells, they went north; he could have been frozen in a block of ice for all I know-
Gurye stumbled over her spiderweb skipping rope, and almost sat down hard in one of the patches of melting snow. She let go of one wooden handle, neat blue dress speckled with sun and shadows from the nets as she gazed northeast. Pointed ears poked through white-blonde hair, almost twitching.
Our daughter looks more elf than I do, Artur mused, not for the first time. Parsifal and Elsi - they've had violet eyes ever since that night. I wonder; tales give all sorts of origins for elf-bloods, but I do wonder. Are we all just humans with a touch more fae than most?
Gurye dropped the rope, dashing away like a beehive was on fire. "Dad! Mom! He's here he's here he's here!"
What?
Parsifal raced after her, long legs giving him the speed Artur couldn't manage if his life depended on it. Artur limped after them both anyway; surely, she couldn't mean-
There was a small figure trudging out of the Forest, wrapped in furs, with knives at his belt. The pale-furred hood hid his hair, and weariness dragged at his stride, but nothing could erode a swordsman's balanced stance as he moved. And Dart was headed toward him like a singing arrow.
"Uncle Köinzell!"
The swordsman caught them both like he might catch stray bolts; swift and sudden, lifting Gurye away from anything that might do her harm, even as he tossed back his hood so Dart could grab his hair and shake a worried fist at him. "Hello, little one."
Catching up, Artur looked down into tired red eyes. "Well," he said gruffly, trying to still all the worry that had gnawed at him these past weeks. "And where have you been? You missed sugaring time!"
"We saved you some!" Gurye hugged him tighter. "Wren an' the other big kids tried to get it all, but I didn't let 'em!"
"I bet you didn't." Köinzell looked up at both men; gaze tired, with the embers of banked rage still burning in it. "I have a lot to tell you."
3991 A.D., spring.
Four rough cairns, fallen with time and the blows of nineteen winters. Each with a simple carved stick buried in the stones; enough to mark them, but a curious passerby would have to disturb the graves to read the names. And most wouldn't be foolish enough for that.
Köinzell stared at the pitiful cairns, not needing to shift wood to remember who he'd buried. Kfer. Güsstav. Krentel.
And one whose name he'd never known, assuming the moon-fae had even had a name as humans thought of them.
"You were barely alive yourself." Artur rested a hand on his armored shoulder, opposite the one Dart was perched on. "I don't think they'll mind."
"Will you look after the graves?" Köinzell said quietly.
"Every spring. We'll take care of them. We'll remember." Parsifal strode forward to study the pale wood in Kfer's cairn, then looked back at him. "But it would be better if you did."
"Parsifal..." He wanted to say something hopeful. He'd watched this boy grow into a fine young man, and a swordsman Miss Gurye herself would have been proud of. No Blade Master, no - but Parsifal had the heart to know when to fight. And when not to. "The odds of my making it back... aren't good."
I'm going to kill the Emperor's son. And a half-dozen other Heroes, all beloved by the Empire. No. My odds aren't good at all.
"And what were the odds of beating the Land of Shadows, then?" Artur said shrewdly. "Don't you go giving up before the mission's over, Blade Master Ascheriit."
"Heh. I suppose I deserved that one." Köinzell tapped the blade at his side, testing how it would draw at need.
"That had damn well better be a masterwork, or I'm hauling you right back to the village over my shoulders, see if I don't," Artur grumbled.
"It is," Köinzell assured him, smiling just a little. The smith wasn't joking. For all his elven blood Artur was no small man; and while Köinzell had managed to grow a bit over the years, it was beginning to look as though he'd never even get close to five feet tall. "It's no Fairytite blade, but..." His left hand tapped his right bracer. "I do have a bit of an extra edge."
Fae magic. Not something a Blade Master should ever have to depend on.
I don't care. This is more important than my damn pride. Blade Master's just a title; Master Ludift said it himself. I'll use what I have to, when I have to. They have to die.
"Only when the moons are up," Artur reminded him. Tilted his head back and looked over the armed and armored swordsman, knife-ended braids to booted feet. "You look like King Daren right out of the history books. Only with pointy ears."
The Slayer of a Hundred Kings, over two thousand years ago. Köinzell grinned. "What, did you think that was an accident? If I'm close enough for them to see me, I want them to know what's coming."
"Because panicked people make mistakes," Parsifal muttered. "Don't panic, okay?"
"I assure you, I have a great deal of practice in not panicking," Köinzell said wryly. "And I have a bit more on my side than you might think. The Fourteen Holy Lances weren't just weapons. We were given... various pieces of information not known to most in the Empire." Weapons placements. Secret passages. Knowledge of who held the keys to some of the Empire's darkest secrets. "After all, if you're meant to defend a place, you have to know what those defenses are."
He lifted his left hand to his shoulder, so Dart could step onto it and they could see each other face to face. "You still have a prior claim, my lady. I told you I wished to live to avenge my friends. And I do. But there's a very good chance I might fail; or succeed, and die in the doing of it. And then you'd never have your own swing at me."
The scout stared into his eyes, then shook her head, green hair waving like ferns.
Kin, sang through his heart, even with the moons weakened by daylight. Friend. Be well. Be safe.
"Safe is the last thing I'm looking for," Köinzell said softly. "Be well, Dart." He watched her flit off, then shouldered his pack. It was going to be a long, muddy walk.
I don't want to go. I don't want to leave.
But I swore. And I will do it.
"Oh, Köinzell," Artur called after him.
Still walking, he slowed, and glanced back.
The smith winked. "Remember. Short doesn't matter, if the lady's got a bed!"
Despite himself, Köinzell broke out laughing.
The Borderlands, 3992 A.D.
An army. Part of an army, at least, flying the Black Wing and Sword crest the Emperor had awarded to the Blade Masters. The crest his past months investigating the borderlands and tracking down shreds of rumor said now belonged to the Four Traitorous Lances, returned from Hell itself to plague the Empire once more.
"I think," Köinzell said to himself, very softly, "I am annoyed."
A battalion of a hundred, slow-marching through the valley below, carrying loot and a few weeping women. Laughing and joking, as if there were nothing at all in the world to threaten them. Under a banner they should never have dared to touch, much less fly.
And the moons were bright tonight.
Smiling fiercely, Köinzell leapt down among his enemies.
-End.
A/N: Much of the impetus for this fic was that for a guy who'd supposedly been lost in the Forest of Death for decades, Köinzell seems remarkably well-adjusted and sane. (Apart from the whole Roaring Rampage of Revenge, at least. As someone once said, "Violence may not be the answer, but sometimes it's the only possible response.")
Based on what I know, people don't come out of being almost tortured to death that sane without a lot of help. And war creates refugees, and sometimes those refugees will try to sneak into places no sane person would try to live, just so they stand a chance of being left alone. So Right Here isn't at all canon. But I haven't found any canon info that says it couldn't exist. If that happens to change, given canon is still in progress... well, I've been jossed before, and AUs are always fun, too.
