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  Bayne kept cutting.

  More arrows.

  Bayne slashed against rope.

  Drawstrings were pulled back. A sling bullet was readied.

  The netting fell away.

  Bayne stood there, his arms at his sides, shafts of wood protruding from multiple places on his arms and legs, one arrow hanging limp from the chain links of his shirt, blood trickling down his limbs in a half dozen places. He glared at the archers, his knife gripped tight in one hand.

  Fear now filled the bandits’ eyes. These men were facing something more than human, and only now was their mistake dawning on them.

  Bayne roared once more.

  Men turned and fled.

  The warrior flung out his dagger, catching the slinger in the back of the neck, taking the man down as if he were a skewered deer.

  He knelt and brushed aside the webbing at his feet to retrieve his sword. Standing, Bayne’s free hand plucked away a pair of the arrows from one of his legs.

  Then he was running.

  The bandits had split up in all directions into the woods, but Bayne’s main concern was with their leader. Trolg was the one he wanted. The man had proven his willingness for betrayal. He would pay the price.

  The swordsman darted after the leader of the bandits, tearing through brush and knocking aside tree limbs in his mad dash for vengeance.

  Up ahead Bayne could make out a figure stumbling over a fallen tree trunk. He thundered in that direction

  With a cry, the man ahead tripped and went down on the other side of the collapsed oak.

  Bayne pounced, his sword plunging.

  Steel slid between ribs, impaling the fellow into the forest’s floor. But he was not Trolg.

  Bayne yanked his sword clear and gave the dying man a glimpse before traveling on. Around him he could hear panicked men tearing through the woods. Most of them were not far away, and Bayne’s speed could more than match that of any normal man.

  He sprinted, ducking below a hanging vine before coming out in a clearing. Across the small grassy sward were two men, their backs to Bayne. One of those was an archer, though upon glancing back to see his doom, he tossed aside his bow and kept running.

  The other man was Trolg. He did not look back. He kept fleeing, disappearing into tree-shrouded shadows once more.

  Bayne took off after the bandit chief, his muscled legs kicking. As he charged into the woods once more, the arrows sticking from his body caught on tree limbs and cracked and broke away. But he did not allow that to slow him.

  Huffing, puffing ahead. Trumpings of booted feet on earth. Crackings of tree limbs and dead leaves.

  Bayne sighted the back of Trolg’s head, the bandit leader bobbing and weaving as he rounded a wide oak to jump between two hanging vines.

  The warrior gave chase. He was almost there, almost to his foe.

  Then suddenly he was there.

  Fury spilling across his features, Trolg spun, his big knife raised above his head.

  Unable to halt his forward momentum, Bayne shouldered into the man, sending him rolling backward into brush.

  Then all was quiet as Bayne caught himself, his boots digging into mud. He stood ready, his sword gripped in both hands as he eyed the bushes where Trolg had been thrown.

  There were no sounds, no signs of the bandit. Was he waiting in silence, hoping to ambush the swordsman within the confines of the scrub brush? Despite his cowardice, Trolg had shown desperate bravery at that last attack. Nowhere else to run, he had fought back. But why so silent now?

  Bayne eased ahead, his sword advancing the way.

  Still, nothing.

  The big warrior’s weapon waved aside greenery and chopped through one hanging vine.

  There on the ground several feet away lay Trolg on his back. His own knife extended from his chest near where the heart would lie, the hilt of the blade pressed up against his shirt.

  In the rush of action, the man had fallen on his own weapon.

  Bayne stared for long moments at the oddity of events. In the distance could be heard the final rumblings of the other fleeing bandits, but he paid them little mind. If they were foolish enough to return, he would deal with them then. Otherwise, let them flee. They had witnessed enough. By all rights, fear should have impressed upon them the futility of continuing against this seeming god who walked despite their arrows and who slew with ease despite their numbers.

  Though sometimes, the unusual happened bordering upon the preternatural.

  Eventually, after the longest of times, Bayne pulled his eyes away from the tragic death of the bandit leader. He slowly made his way back to the road, reaching the spot where he had been netted. There he recovered the knife he had propelled into the back of a man’s head. A half hour later, he had cut away the arrows and arrowheads that had been remaining in his body. He paused to drink from a water skin he found tied to a dead man’s belt, and then rested for some few minutes, sitting on a log on the side of the road. By that time his wounds were no more. Then he spent the next couple of hours carrying bodies to the side of the road, digging shallow graves with his knife and planting the dead, momentarily wishing he had the tools to dig proper, deep graves.

  After another drink of water, and another few moments resting on the log, he was ready to go on once more.

  Bayne stood.

  And walked.

  Part IV: The Sheriff

  Traveling north, the road widened into a bricked avenue. Trees still lined the sides of the path, but no wild forest was here. These tall, green trees were planted in straight lines along the road and spaced out so one could easily walk between them if one wished. This was the work of man.

  Too, for the first time, Bayne came upon a sign at the side of the road. It was a slender green metal sign nailed to a tall wooden beam. A white arrow pointed in the direction the warrior was traveling, a long word beneath undecipherable to him.

  Also, every so often, evenly spaced out as far as Bayne could tell, round stones the size of a melon were stationed along each side of the road. Mile markers, or the local equivalent.

  He was nearing civilization.

  Was that a bad thing? Bayne was not sure. He had little more than ten years of memories, and during much of that time he had been alone, trekking after the emperor mage Verkanus. Initially coming to consciousness in the middle of a war, Bayne had known much combat during the short time which he remembered. There had been bandits, roaming soldiers, and more threats, all of that before he had come to the mountain to climb after Verkanus. Then the mountain itself had presented challenges and dangers, though the veracity of those events was up for debate as far as Bayne was concerned.

  Still, he had learned one thing in his days. Men equaled combat. While he readily admitted to being a warrior, and to glorifying in the sport of war, he did not enjoy killing. He would kill, there was no doubt, when he felt it necessary or upon deciding a particular individual was too evil to live. And his very demeanor, his weapons and size and his chain shirt, gave the impression of a fighting man, but that did not mean he constantly sought to struggle. Men had to prove themselves to each other, and to themselves. Bayne had no such inclinations. He knew he was a killer. He had nothing to prove in that regard. But that did not mean he necessarily wanted to be a killer.

  Which was one reason he had hoped to meet the woman Valdra once more. She, too, had been garbed as a warrior, but she had seemed no fool. Bayne recognized that a simple life out of harm’s way and far from strife was the best life, physically and mentally. Combat put strain on a man’s soul. Anyone who believed differently had never experienced true warfare. Some men liked to boast of their martial deeds, but in Bayne’s experience most such men were simply braggarts, making events larger than they truly were or staking a claim for the praise due others. Other men who glorified bloodshed, Bayne felt, were simply slaughterers, not true warriors, but men who had ridden down helpless villagers or decimated defenseless towns. Those were not real combatants, though
soldiers they might have been.

  His thoughts turned to the strangeness of this land he found himself marching through. The clothing itself was unusual for the most part, though the bandits in the forest mostly had worn nothing unusual with the exception of Trolg. Though there had been that one weapon, that long black stick with the glass ball on its end. The man wielding the stick must have been one of the survivors, as Bayne had not found the weapon among the corpses. Was it some kind of wand, such as a wizard might use? Bayne thought not. The woodsmen had been ruffians, lacking the couth often associated with mages.

  Another sign up ahead brought Bayne out of his meditations. He walked to the side of the road and looked over this broad, tall sign over from its top to its bottom. It too was green with white painted letters, many of them, and it took two posts to hold this sign up, one post on either side in the back.

  There was much information here on this sign. Bayne was sure of this because of the multitude of scribblings. It was unfortunate he could not read the text. Yet there was another arrow, this one pointing ahead, though this was useless to him since he was already going that way.

  Still, he neared the town or city he had spotted on the map at the ranger’s station. Surely there would be someone here who could tell him more of where he was, and perhaps even guide him back to the lands from where he had come. There, back in the Ursian world, he could continue the hunt for Valdra. And whether he found her or not, eventually he would try to discover more about himself, of his past before Verkanus had woken him on the field of battle. His friend Pedrague was waiting for him, and that priest was also a user of magic. There was hope yet. Bayne just had to get back to where he belonged.

  To that end, he started walking again, brushing past the big sign at the side of the road.

  He had not gone far when the road begin to rise gradually toward a far hill, and a metallic, clopping din came to his ears from far away. As he trudged up the rise, the distant noise grew closer and closer. Halfway up the hill, that metal clanking seemed almost right on top of him.

  Then the reason for the noise appeared at the top of the hill. It was a rider in a long red cloak sitting atop a horse.

  Bayne blinked. Was that a horse? The riding beast had the general size and shape of a steed, but its body was covered in metal plates. For the briefest of moments Bayne believed the horse was layered in military barding. But as his eyes grew more familiar with the sight, he realized this was not the case. The animal, if it was that, was sheathed in a skin of small metallic plates, silvered and shining beneath the day’s sun.

  The beast snorted and tossed back its head, much like a horse, as its rider yanked its reins and halted the thing atop the hill.

  The rider, too, was an oddity, as had been many in this world. Bayne could not make out the cloaked face at such a distance, but the bulk and shape of the figure gave the impression this was a man. The fellow gripped a short, dark staff in his right hand, the object extended up above the horse’s head.

  Bayne paused as he took all this in, the rider and its steed standing still, obviously returning the perusement.

  After several seconds, the warrior in the road continued walking, making his way toward the rider and beast. He had been in need of help, perhaps this individual could provide such.

  “Halt!”

  The single word came as Bayne was within rock-tossing distance of the other man and his horse. The swordsman did halt, in part because he had been ordered to and he wished no illness between himself and this person who seemed to be of some authority, but he also saw no reason to not do so. Showing some acquiescence might improve his chances of finding a way back to Ursia.

  “Remove the sword!” the rider commanded.

  Bayne’s eyebrows furrowed. Confusion. And a hint of anger. Warriors did not easily give up their weapon, even such a one as Bayne who remained deadly without his heavy blade.

  “I will not tell you again,” the rider said, shifting in his saddle, that strange stick in his hand extending slightly, almost pointing in Bayne’s direction.

  Bayne shrugged. Why not? This person did not appear to be another of the bandits, and Bayne could well defend himself without the sword. He heaved his shoulders, the baldric, sheath and sword rolling over his head. He placed the big weapon and its accoutrements at his feet.

  “The knife, too” the cloaked figure said.

  Bayne tugged his dagger from its place on his belt and tossed it down next to his sword.

  “Step away,” the cloaked figure said.

  The warrior nodded and stepped back from his weapon.

  The rider lifted a leg over his saddle and dropped to the road. He allowed the reins of his beast to hang beneath the animal, which showed no signs of moving even though it had been released.

  The man approached, and a man it turned out to be, his hood falling back to reveal a wide face that showed more auburn hair than it did flesh. Thick curls of red set atop that big head, and whiskers of the same color covered the chin and lips.

  He extended that short staff, aiming it directly at Bayne now, and the warrior took note there was a small hole in the end of the shaft. Was this some type of weapon? It would appear so. Bayne glanced over the man, seeking other weapons, but all else he spotted was a simple dagger sheathed on the man’s wide belt.

  The rider moved forward cautiously, his hard eyes never straying from the big man before him. Nearing Bayne’s sword, he lowered himself without taking his eyes from the warrior. His free hand shot out and grabbed up the long sword, only momentarily struggling with the great weight of the weapon.

  The rider stood tall once more, his staff still pointing at Bayne.

  “Your name?” the fellow said.

  “I am Bayne kul Kanon.” There was no need for more. It had not been asked, and it was obvious this was a man of short temperament.

  “Where are you from Bayne kul Kanon?”

  “That … is complicated.”

  The red-haired stranger scowled. “Explain.”

  “I come from a land far from here,” Bayne said. “It is known as Ursia, but --”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  Bayne gritted his teeth upon being interrupted.

  “I suggest you come with me, Bayne kul Kanon,” the other man said.

  Bayne began, “I am in need of your aid, if --”

  “You do not seem to understand,” the man said. “You are being placed under arrest by the authority of the Sheriff of County Queen. Come with me peaceably, or there will be trouble for you.”

  Bayne’s eyes narrowed. “What are the charges against me?”

  “The sheriff will present those to you.”

  “You are not the sheriff?”

  “I am Deputy Boyle Walticoff.” The deputy’s wand hand disappeared within the folds of his cloak for a moment, then returned to the light. He held out a set of silvered bracelets connected by a black chain hanging off the end of his stick weapon.

  He twirled his wand and tossed the bracelets to the ground several feet in front of Bayne. “Place those about your wrists.”

  The warrior glanced from the handcuffs then back to Deputy Walticoff. “You are a fool if you believe I will allow myself to be shackled like some common thug.”

  “I thought you might do it the hard way.” The lawman extended the odd-looking staff, a thumb sliding along the weapon.

  A puff of dust from the end of the stick.

  An invisible fist the size of a wagon wheel hammered into Bayne, knocking him from his feet to smack hard onto the brick road.

  The warrior lay there stunned and surprised. The only other time he had been hit so hard had been with magic. So, this was a magical world. He grinned. And sat up.

  The deputy had not moved, his weapon still posed and aimed at the warrior. “Stay on the ground.”

  Bayne ignored the order and climbed to his feet.

  Another puff of dust, and the warrior was struck from above. It was as if a gigantic, unseen a
nvil had been dropped upon him. Bayne was flattened against the ground, the ghostly weight pressing down on him and forcing his flesh to press into the very bricks of the road.

  “Will you yield?” the deputy asked.

  Bayne gritted. He had never been bested by anyone. Never. One time he and Pedrague had crossed one another, and then Bayne had suffered beneath the cleric’s magic, but he had not been forced to surrender, to submit. A mutual arrangement had been agreed upon, and soon a friendship of sorts had been reached. This situation was unlike that one. Bayne was being forced to give himself up to a strange man in a strange land.

  But what difference did it make? If Bayne were shackled, would he likely not be able to free himself at some point? And what better chance would he have of discovering where he was? Once he had talked with this sheriff, then maybe Bayne could be afforded aid in his situation.

  He gritted his teeth even harder, blood seeping from his gums.

  “I submit,” he finally said.

  “Very well.”

  The invisible weight lifted from atop the fighter, allowing him to gradually gain his feet.

  “The wristlets,” the deputy said, pointing his magic wand at the handcuffs.

  Bayne snarled, but leaned down to retrieve the bracelets. He clamped them about his wrists, then held out his hands, expecting to be lead away.

  Instead of approaching his prisoner, Walticoff hid his weapon beneath his cloak, turned away and placed a boot in the stirrups of his riding beast, then pulled himself into the saddle.

  “Follow,” he ordered.

  Bayne watched as the rider, gripping the big sword in one hand, spun his metallic horse about and headed over the hill’s ridge. When only the deputy’s shoulders and head could be seen over the rise, then did Bayne put his feet to motion.

  As soon as he reached the top of the hill, the view below changed drastically, being much different than what Bayne had become accustomed to in this land. Along the horizon there was still the green of trees and the gray of distant hills, but in the wide valley that now presented itself below was a site unlike any Bayne had before beheld.

  It was obviously the city from the map, but there was no castle, no walls, no squalid tenements. There was no port, no obvious temples, nothing with which Bayne would have normally believed classified this place as civilization. Instead, everything was gleaming white, of clear glass or seemingly smooth, almost unnatural stone. The road would run into the heart of this metropolis, and near the first building to which they would come the road turned from the red bricks of clay into a hardened green substance, looking almost as if grass had been flattened by some giant walking upon it. Beyond, in the city proper, their were buildings as tall as the tallest towers Bayne had ever witnessed, at least fifty times as tall as a man. And there was great movement within that city, the people only specks at this distance though Bayne could still make out that they milled about and hustled and bustled in the thousands. Here and there were multi-colored lights flashing, to what end Bayne could only guess.