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  Still, whatever fate had befallen such a place, the mountain still stood tall, as if a sleeping giant watching all that went on below. At one time Bayne might have even smiled at the mountain, as if it were an old friend. But not now. There was no light remaining in his vision, no source of happiness or gratitude.

  His iron eyes roamed the fallen town and the cold, gray heights of the crags, then the warrior shrugged.

  There was nothing for him here. He had left behind a companion, the priestly Pedrague, on a ledge of the mountain, and he would seek the man out. Why? Bayne did not know. He no longer felt little sense of loyalty to his fellow. Perhaps Pedrague was his last mortal link to this world, and perhaps Bayne wished to sever that final tie. The swordsman’s feelings on the matter were a mystery to himself. But he would find Pedrague, tell the man of his recent exploits to another world, a mad world, and then be upon his way to whatever fate awaited him out in the wide expanses of this world.

  He shrugged again. It was time to go. He tromped toward what was left of the village that was not a village, expecting to find the familiar road that wound its way up the mountainside to where Bayne had left behind the priest.

  Bayne paused. The road. It had been a path of red bricks, and it had ran from a forest into the village that was not a village. Now there seemed little sign of it.

  He turned and looked back the way he had come.

  There was the forest, looking much as it had when he had last seen it, full of tall trees and green. There was an opening between several of the trees, an alley where the road had once meandered.

  The warrior squatted and stared at the ground. There was but short grass beneath his booted feet. He reached and clawed at the greenery with his bare hands. He did not have to tear long at the grass and dirt. There was the brick road right beneath him. It had been overgrown.

  Bayne stood and looked back toward the fallen village that was not a village.

  Time had passed here. How long, he did not know, but long enough that the road could be taken over by the wild. How long would that take? A year? More?

  Had he been gone from this world that long? It had seemed but days or weeks at most. And if he had been gone so long, would Pedrague still await him atop the mountain? Not likely.

  Whatever the case, there were no answers to be found here in the middle of a field atop a forgotten road. Bayne marched towards the town’s remains.

  He was approaching the first building, a structure that had fallen in upon itself, when movement caught the corner of his eye. The swordsman glanced in that direction.

  Between two large bushes stood a short sun-skinned man of many years, his body wrapped in dusty muslin robes and his head toweled in dark wrappings. In one hand he gripped a flint-tipped spear as if it were a walking staff. His other hand held a rope that straggled away behind the fellow.

  He stood still, starring directly at Bayne.

  “Hello, there,” the warrior said.

  The old man did not move other than to blink.

  “There is no need to be frightened,” Bayne said. “I mean you no harm.”

  The stranger lifted his head back and eyed the warrior, his gaze taking in more than the mere physicality of Bayne.

  Finally, “That is a good thing. I thank you for it. I mean no disrespect, but your image is one of a bloodletter.”

  Bayne slowly approached, making sure to keep his hands hanging at his side so as not to further present himself as a killer.

  A bleating noise alerted the warrior to a near animal, and his eyes soon proved his ears correct when a sheep hoofed its way from around behind the old man, the other end of the rope attached to a thin leather muzzle about the animal’s snout.

  The old shepherd leaned over and patted the sheep’s head. To the animal, he said, “Yes, we are glad this big, tough man is not going to kill us, aren’t we?”

  At a time not so long in the past, Bayne would have smiled upon seeing such a sight. Now he did not smile.

  “The village,” the swordsman said, motioning toward the near crumbling structures.

  The shepherd glanced back up at the warrior, then to the fallen buildings. “Yes?”

  “How long has it been in this condition?”

  With his spear hand, the shepherd rubbed at his chin as if thinking. His gaze twisted to the clear sky for a moment to give further evidence to the fact he was trying to remember, then he said, “To my knowledge it has always been such.”

  “Do you live near here?” Bayne asked.

  The shepherd jabbed a thumb along the grass-covered road toward the far woods. “I have a shack in the forest.”

  “How long have you lived there?”

  Again the other man rubbed at his chin and stared to the sky, but not for as long this time. “I have been tending sheep along this mountain for a little more than a decade.”

  “A decade?”

  “Yes.” The man nodded his head. “I am sure of it. It will be eleven years come this winter.”

  Bayne could hardly believe what he was being told. At least a decade had passed, likely more. Bayne had been in that other world, a world of mad people and mad kings, for more than a decade.

  “Who is your patron?” the warrior asked.

  “The church,” the shepherd said.

  Bayne wore a quizzical expression. “What church?”

  “You haven’t heard of the church?” the shepherd asked, shaking his head. “Where have you been the last forty years?”

  “Forty years?” Bayne nearly choked on his own words, but then had other thoughts. “Do you mean the Ashalics?”

  “No, not that murderous lot,” the shepherd said. “I’m talking about the northern bunch, the Ashalites.”

  Bayne nodded. He was familiar with both religions that had derived their beliefs from the god Ashal, a god whom Bayne had spoken with atop this same mountain he now stood near. But to Bayne’s knowledge, the two faiths had only existed about twenty years, since Ashal’s mortal form had been slain.

  “After Verkanus went missing, the Trodans took over all this land,” the shepherd explained, pointing with his spear along the tree- and mountain-strewn horizon. “They deeded it to the Ashalites about twenty years back.”

  “Is there a local temple?”

  “Just the other side of the mountain,” the shepherd said.

  Bayne’s gaze flowed along the rocky crags to the other mountains beyond. There was a string of high bluffs running north and south with this largest of mountains before him being central. He knew of and saw no path that would lead around the mountain.

  “How does one get there?” he asked of the other man.

  “You go south around the mountain along an old goat path to where you will find a newer village,” the shepherd said. “From there a trail leads up into the heights. That way rises high, but eventually it will bring you down into a valley where the church temple rests. It is a remote spot, but the head priest there says he needs his solitude for some project on which he is working. It’s a fine valley, though, with a flat lake for drinking water and fishing, and the monks there have enough land to support themselves.”

  “Is that the only route?”

  The shepherd jabbed his spear to the sky. “Up the mountain there used to be a road that supposedly went over to the other side, but I’ve heard it has been blocked by rockslides for years and years.”

  Bayne paused with further questions, giving himself time to think. He knew from experience that the road above indeed was blocked, at least at one point, and from there one would have to climb directly up the side of the mountain. It was a treacherous path, one Bayne had conquered before though he had no interest in doing so now. Why climb if there was an easier route? For that matter, why travel near the mountain at all when there was so much more of the world to see? What intrigued him was the Ashalite temple the other side of this mountain, and that was the same church of which Pedrague had been a priest. Perhaps someone there would know the whereabouts of Ped
rague, if the man still lived. From what little the shepherd had told him, Bayne was beginning to believe he had been gone from this world for nearly twenty years. It was possible Pedrague no longer survived.

  There was only one way to find out.

  “I thank you for your time,” Bayne said with a nod, then he turned and trod past the old man and into waist-high brush.

  The shepherd waved to the warrior’s back. “Good luck with wherever it is you’re going!”

  Part II: The Game

  Bayne pushed his way through spiky brush to come out on the southwest corner of the mountain. He walked onto rocky ground with millions of pebbles and stones of all sizes beneath his boots. Pausing for a moment, he saw to his right stretched green fields where a hundred or so pale but dirty sheep wandered as if they had not a care in the world. To his left were boulders scattered across this side of the mountain, above the large rocks a straight wall of a cliff rising up and up into the shadows of clouds.

  Curling among the boulders was a thin, broken path of dirt and stones flattened by years upon years of use. This was likely the old goat path the shepherd had mentioned.

  Seeing no reason to further put of his travels, Bayne set off at a marching speed, climbing his way between rocks the size of horses before setting foot on the actual path itself. At a slight elevation now, the warrior’s eyes could take in the green fields below reaching nearly as far as he could see, with a gray line that appeared to be trees on the horizon. Directly ahead and slightly to his left was the extension of the mountain line, the gray and white peaks branching straight due south as if they followed an ancient line of a launched arrow.

  Bayne ambled on, the path narrow but flat enough to not be too treacherous. Still, there was evidence here and there of minor slides in the past, and the warrior kept a watch on his footing.

  As was often the case while his eyes and feet were busy upon the way he trod, his mind slipped into thoughts of his own. Waking on a battlefield years earlier with no memory of a past life, Bayne had set out after a mad wizard-king who he believed held the answers to his lack of memories. His belief in the mage, an Ursian emperor named Verkanus, had proved unfounded. Then, along with the aid of the Ashalite priest Pedrague, Bayne had gone in search of a woman named Valdra, a woman he had met but briefly when climbing the very mountain he now edged past on his immediate left. Instead of finding Valdra, Bayne had been transferred by magic to another world, a world which held the truth of Bayne’s identity. He was a god of war. He had been created on that world by another god, Marnok, who ruled as king and wished for Bayne to take his place so Marnok could be free to do whatever it is free gods do. Bayne had refused, and for that he had been tortured, whipped with an iron-tipped leather strap wrapped in flames and dripping acid. The anguish had gone on for one thousand strokes of the whip, tearing into more than flesh, but into Bayne’s very soul. When the torture was complete, Marnok had sent Bayne back to this world, the world of the Ursian continent, with no hope of ever returning to the land that was Bayne’s true home.

  It still hurt to walk. Even the slight warmth of the breeze upon his tattered skin was as if wasps were pecking away at him. But these were little more than minor irritants to a man who could seemingly not be killed.

  What was worse for Bayne was that he now realized he had no future. Perhaps he should have accepted Marnok’s offer to rule, but that had seemed a prison to the proud warrior. His past was gone, tied away from him. Even Valdra no longer existed, having been killed by Marnok himself thousands of years in the past in another universe. Bayne’s only real tie to anyone was his brief friendship with the cleric Pedrague.

  And that was a friendship that no longer existed for the striding swordsman.

  It was not that he had grown to dislike Pedrague, nor that he expected the man of any treachery. Bayne simply would no longer allow himself companionship. The majority of his waking memories were spent by himself and he would have it that way once more. Both universes which he had experienced had proven full of men greedy, selfish and undeserving of anything but his ire. Bayne had never been affable, but until Marnok’s torture the big man had never carried the weight of misanthropy. Now he wore it as a curse, as another weight upon his broad shoulders.

  The worlds of men held no place for him, and Bayne’s own world held no place for other men.

  He would not go out of his way to bring misery and suffering to others, but he would no longer tolerate the foolishness that men allowed themselves. Bayne would not be a part of it. And if fools should cross his path, he would deal with them most harsh.

  Such men deserved their fate.

  Still, Pedrague was not such a man, unless he had changed since Bayne had last met him. While the warrior felt he owed no man anything, Pedrague had always been decent with him, at least beyond their initial violent meeting that had been in the middle of a battlefield. Bayne could not blame the priest for protecting his Trodan companions. No, Pedrague was one of the few decent men Bayne had known. He felt the holy man should at least be told of Bayne’s continuing existence. Had Pedrague waited and waited, perhaps for weeks and months, and been wondering ever since what had become of the warrior? Perhaps, or perhaps Pedrague already knew, having utilized his own magical skills to determine the whereabouts and fate of Bayne. But could Pedrague’s magic reach into another world? Bayne had been gone from this world for so long, he did not even know if Pedrague still lived. Thus there was, as well, his own curiosity to answer.

  By this time Bayne had been traversing the narrow goat trail for some while, his legs taking him between small gorges and over humps in the land. Most times he had held an excellent view of the fields beyond the mountain, though sometimes the rocks sprang up like gigantic fingers to block his sight in most directions except straight ahead. It was a view Bayne would likely not have noticed as caught up in his own thoughts as he was.

  But rounding a bend in the trail, one sight appeared below that drew his eyes.

  A good hundred yards beyond the rocky terrain outlining the mountain sat three wagons in the middle of the field. The first wagon, on the left, was gigantic, easily large enough to hold half a dozen war horses with room for grooms, food, barding, tack and harness; it was a solid pine structure, almost like a small building, on heavy oak wheels with a flat, thick roof covered in layers of thin copper and several closed windows shuttered in black on the one side Bayne could see. The second wagon, the one in the middle, was a sizable coach with its doors on either side hanging open and scarlet curtains waving gently in the open windows. The final wagon, on the right, was nothing atypical, though it was heavy with many wooden crates, several barrels and a few black iron caldrons.

  The animals for these contraptions were further off, on the other side of the three carts, and had been placed in a sizable temporary corral made of local rough wood, looking to be mostly pine taken from the near mountain range. The beasts were mostly oxen, which made sense to Bayne as the heavy animals would do a more proper job at pulling that large wagon than most other beasts of burden, but there were a half dozen horses in the mix as well.

  Near the back of the far right cart was a small circle of stones surrounding a cooking fire. Over the blaze a small black caldron hung from an iron tripod. Sitting on stumps around this fire was a trio of men, all dressed in simple animal skins, no weapons apparent on them from Bayne’s distance.

  Another half dozen men worked at various tasks about the encampment, which appeared to be relatively new, no older than a couple of days by the wear on the ground. Some of these other men were feeding the horses, while others appeared to be repairing wheels or working at sewing leather garb.

  Finally, Bayne’s gaze fell upon a pair of men stripped of their shirts off to one side in front of that gigantic, fortified wagon. These two men were sparring, circling and going at one another with short swords. Every few seconds one would strike, his blow either blocked or missing, then the next would seek an attack. Neither landed a direct hit u
pon the other, even after Bayne had watched for several minutes. Someone unfamiliar with the arts of combat might have believed the two sword fighters were amateurs, but right away Bayne knew differently. These were far from amateurs. These were men familiar with one-on-one combat. These were men skilled in avoiding taking a blow from an enemy.

  “Gladiators,” the big man said to himself.

  In all his travels, Bayne had never actually met such warriors. A few times he had spotted wagons in the distance that were traveling from town to town, and he supposed some of them must be traveling gladiator troupes, or gladiators being moved from one training camp to another. But he had never seen gladiators himself, though he had been somewhat intrigued by what would cause a man to fight solely for fame and money. The actions seemed foolish to Bayne. But he also knew many gladiators were not free men, but slaves forced to fight. He actually had higher respect for these warriors, as rumors told these men could actually win their freedom after many years of trial by combat.

  Bayne considered, for pure interest, going down to visit with these men. He suspected the two sparring were free men, but it was possible there were others in bondage within that large wagon.

  He shook his bald head and shrugged. No, he would not travel down there. He could not be certain of what type of reception he would receive. Besides, he wished to finish whatever business he might have with Pedrague, if he could find the magic-using priest. Then Bayne would have no more ties to the world at large and he could go about his way, do as he wished. What that would entail he did not yet know, but at least the decisions would be his. He expected he might spend a lengthy time alone, possibly deeper in the mountains beyond this temple he expected to discover. But first, he had to find his old companion.

  Bayne turned and walked away from the sight of the encampment below, once more following the beaten path around the sides of the mountain.

  He had gone barely a dozen steps when a figure appeared from behind a large rock on his right.