Yann sat up on the makeshift bed he’d arranged on the floor of the church house bedroom.

Anríq already sat up on the edge of the regular bed—the only bed in the house.

He’d taken off his vest and all his weapons when he went to sleep last night. Now he sat there bare-chested with his arms propped on the mattress.

He looked as big and powerful as ever, but his shoulders slumped and he stared at the floor.

“Are you sure you have to go through with this today?” Yann asked.

“I have to,” Anríq mumbled. “Those people brought me here to help them. What kind of Servant would I be if I failed?”

“How long can you keep this up? You only worked for a few hours yesterday and look at you now. You’re already weak. You’ll be able to do even less today.”

“That’s a few more people I’ll be able to save, at least.”

Anríq pushed himself off the bed and started putting his clothes back on.

Yann left him alone and went into the alley behind the church house to wash his face. He had to do something about Anríq’s health. Yann couldn’t let Anríq work himself into an early grave—which is exactly what he would do if this went on much longer.

Yann didn’t even trust Anríq to make it through another day of fighting this curse.

Avol made it a thousand times worse by coming over while Yann and Anríq ate breakfast. Avol bustled around the two of them talking a mile a minute.

“Everyone is up and around!” he exclaimed. “I can’t believe it actually worked! You’re a miracle! I can’t wait for you to come and see my family.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Yann muttered.

Avol spun around fast. “What? Why not? This is wonderful! It’s the best thing that has ever happened to us.”

“You can see Anríq is working his way through town from the gate backward. He healed ten people yesterday before he collapsed. He won’t get to your house for a few days at the earliest.”

That took the wind out of Avol’s sails real quick. He stopped prancing around the room and gaped at the two men.

“But…what’s the point of you coming to town if you aren’t going to save everyone?” Avol asked.

“That’s what he is doing,” Yann replied. “You can see he’s already saved ten people. Don’t tell me you brought Anríq here just to save your family and no one else.”

“Of course not, but…..” Avol gulped. “Can’t you do it any faster than that?”

“Do you mean without Anríq winding up dead, too? Not likely. Anyway, I won’t let him. If I see him failing, I’ll bring him back here so he can rest. If you have a problem with that, you and I can have a conversation about it another time.”

Avol shut his mouth and left the house, thank the stars. Yann went back to eating his food.

“Thank you,” Anríq mumbled.

“You better not let it go so far today,” Yann countered. “I don’t want to find you passed out on someone’s bedroom floor. If you feel sick, you better come back here and lie down. I mean it, Anríq.”

Anríq bent over his plate. “All right. I will.”

Yann let it go at that, but he didn’t plan to trust Anríq’s word. Anríq was too kind-hearted to leave anyone in danger. He would drive himself to the brink even if it cost him in the end.

Yann made up his mind on the way out of the church house. He would force Anríq to quit before it went that far. Yann would drag Anríq away if he had to—even if it meant one of the townsfolk might die instead.

Yann took his glaive with him on their way up the street to the house where Anríq collapsed yesterday. Yann didn’t want to get caught unarmed if one of these cursed townspeople decided to attack him with a weapon again.

Anríq took all his weapons, too. He wore his axe slung across his back and his club and machete hanging from his belt as usual. He never went anywhere unarmed.

More noise of human activity drifted through the town now. The place seemed to come back to life even with that few people back on their feet.

The townsfolk walking around smiled at Yann and Anríq. The townspeople’s cheeks shone with more color even if they’d already been healthy yesterday.

Yann and Anríq passed Aria. She smiled at the two boys, but fortunately, she didn’t stop to talk.

Anríq turned off toward the house in question. Yann planned to turn off somewhere else and get some firewood from one of the piles he knew about.

Yann glanced up at Anríq to see if Anríq was really okay enough to go off by himself. Anríq started to smile back at him as if to reassure him that Anríq really was okay.

At that moment, the town gates burst open and Gachu stumbled through them from the road outside. “The Corsairs!” he shrieked. “The Corsairs are coming!”

Yann and Anríq both spun around to stare at each other. All thought of healing the sick townsfolk flew out of their heads.

Gachu blundered through the gate and turned back to slam it shut. Yann and Anríq raced over to him, grabbed the heavy wooden beams, and slotted them across the gate to barricade it from the inside.

That wouldn’t hold the Corsairs at bay. They’d already sacked the town dozens of times. The wall wouldn’t hold them—and two young men wouldn’t be able to hold them, either.

Yann scrambled onto the wall and stood on a jutting stone so he could see over the top. The countryside spread out before him.

A cloud of dust rose from the horizon far down the road in the direction Yann and Anríq traveled here. Yann couldn’t make out anything from this distance.

Only two other men climbed up on the wall to see. One was Gachu. Yann didn’t recognize the other man. Neither of them came armed.

Yann glanced at them down the wall as the penny dropped. The Corsairs would sack this town and might even kill the people Anríq worked so hard to save.

Yann looked up at Anríq at the same moment Anríq looked down at him. They were both thinking the same thing.

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Yann flung his leg over the wall and hopped down onto the grass next to the road. Anríq jumped down next to him.

Both men climbed up into the road in front of the gate. Yann hefted his glaive in both hands and braced himself to meet the Corsairs.

Anríq unslung his axe and unhooked his club from his belt. The two men spaced out from each other.

The distant rumble of horses’ hooves floated on the breeze. It started as a low hum in the farthest distance. The dust cloud got bigger as the wind caught it and spread it across the countryside.

All Yann’s doubts about his place in the Watch evaporated. He was born for this. He trained for it all his life.

He and Anríq wouldn’t be able to stop the Corsairs out here any better than the two of them would have been able to stop the Corsairs inside the walls.

Yann made up his mind. He had to do this just to make a point—to himself if not to anyone else. What else was his life worth?

He might never see his father, the Watch, or Eliska again. He would probably die here and that was just fine with him. At least his life would count for something.

He tightened his grip on his glaive. The dust cleared enough for him to see individual horses thundering through the dust cloud.

The dark mob of horsemen charged out of the distance and shrieked in a spine-chilling war cry.

Anríq flexed his knees and raised his weapons. Yann measured the horsemen’s distance and decided how he would take out the horses themselves. Bringing the horsemen to the ground would be the best way to reduce the danger to the town.

The Corsairs’ long black robes whipped behind them in the wind. Their horses stretched out their necks, flattened their ears, and plunged for the walls at breakneck speed.

The Corsairs saw the two men standing armed in the middle of the road. The Corsairs raised their glittering weapons on high to strike the two men down.

A solid wall of horses closed in on the two friends’ position. Yann couldn’t see the back of the Corsairs’ formation.

No matter how many he fought and killed at the front, those following behind would overwhelm him and Anríq in no time. Then the town would fall.

The horsemen came close enough for Yann to see their facial features now. They tattooed their cheeks in dot patterns under their eyes and across their chins and foreheads. The patterns made the horsemen look exotic and menacing but no less human.

The horses stretched out a little more. Those in the center pulled ahead of those on the sides. The formation narrowed to a point coming straight for the gate.

Yann and Anríq stood alone between the attackers and the defenseless town. This wouldn’t end well.

Without warning, the man in the very center of the pack jolted back in his saddle and dragged his horse’s reins away. The horse squealed in alarm and skidded in the dirt trying to stop in time.

The man raised his sword and all those around him pulled up short, too. That one guy wore a band of gold around his headdress to hold it on. He must be their captain if they had one.

The horses were running too fast. They came perilously close to trampling Yann and Anríq before the whole Corsair company thundered to a halt.

The horses snorted, stamped, and tossed their heads while their riders tried to control them. The horses kept lunging out of line to keep going, but their riders fought them back each time.

Corsair captain steered his horse to one side. The creature kept pacing back and forth. The man had to turn his head one way and then the other to keep Yann and Anríq in sight.

The Corsair captain glared down at them with brutal dark eyes. He had Omer Veco’s dark features, dark skin, hooked nose, and angular jaw as well as Omer’s fiery expression.

Yann didn’t slacken his stance at all. The horsemen kept their distance from him and Anríq. Yann would have attacked them right here if they came any closer.

Anríq didn’t relax at all, either. He raised both his axe and his club to take on the first Corsair to twitch an eyelash.

The whole thing happened in a split second. The Corsair captain vaulted out of his saddle, left his horse standing there, threw down his sword, strode forward unarmed, and fell down on his knees in front of Anríq.

The man raised both hands to Anríq, but the guy didn’t touch him. “You’re a Servant of the Barbarian tribes!” the guy blurted out. “You defend the helpless and heal the sick. Please….you have to save my daughter! She’s in grave danger! Please come! I’ll do anything! I’ll give you anything you want….”

“How about you leave this town in peace?” Yann interjected.

Anríq stopped him by laying a hand on Yann’s arm.

The Corsair captain didn’t notice. He kept staring up at Anríq with eyes overflowing with anguish. “Please—my daughter—she was captured by Darklings. She’s being held in a Layer we can’t find. You’re my only hope.”

“Why have you been attacking this town?” Yann demanded. “These people are just as helpless as your daughter. That’s why we’re here. These people can’t defend themselves.”

The Corsair captain spun around to glare at Yann for the first time. “These people as you call them are the Darklings who kidnapped my daughter! I razed the town a dozen times to find her and now they’ve used their magic to transport her to another Layer! Do you think I would waste my time with this trash heap if I didn’t want to get her back?!”

Yann gaped at the guy in horror. “You think these people are Darklings?! Are you…?”

Yann broke off when the puzzle pieces connected. These people were under a curse. It poisoned the whole town. Was there a connection?

Yann looked up to find Anríq making eye contact with him. Anríq must be thinking the same thing.

Anríq lowered his axe. “I will serve.”

“Oh, thank you!” The Corsair captain seized Anríq’s wrist, dragged his hand up, and kissed Anríq’s knuckles. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Anríq shot a sidelong glance at Yann’s glaive to remind Yann to put his weapon down.

The Corsair captain scrambled to his feet. Dust covered his robes, especially around the knees where he knelt in front of Anríq.

Yann found it impossible to believe that this whole scene really happened that way. These Corsairs had been about to cut him and Anríq down, not to mention the whole town.

The Corsair captain stalked back to his men and yelled orders at them in another language. A few of them answered him and then the whole company wheeled back the way they came.

The Corsairs took off at a full gallop for the distant horizon. The Corsair captain caught his own horse to stop it from running away with the others.

The dust cloud floated away as the horses retreated into the distance. Gachu and the other man watched the whole scene from behind the wall. They didn’t come out to help defend the town.

The Corsair captain held onto his horse’s reins, halted in front of Anríq, and bowed from the waist. “You have my eternal gratitude. My name is Costico Nastase.”

Anríq bowed back to him. “I am Anríq.”

The guy burst into a grin and then his features spasmed in another pang of emotion. He pressed his wrist to his mouth before he got himself under control.

“Please….follow me. I’ll take you to my home where I can explain the whole thing to you. Then you will understand how to proceed.”

Anríq bowed a second time. “I will serve.”

Costico shot a hard glance at Yann. “Who are you, boy?” Costico’s eyes darted down to Yann’s uniform. “I don’t know your insignia.”

“My name is Yann Dilnao and I’m a member of the Black Watch,” Yann replied. “Anríq is my friend. We’re traveling together. I’ve been helping him try to break the curse on this town.”

Costico’s features hardened even more. “I see. Then you better come with me. Perhaps when you figure out what these people are doing, you’ll be able to solve both problems at once.”

He turned away and set off walking up the road in the direction his men just rode off. Costico didn’t mount his horse. He walked and led the horse by the reins.

He talked to Yann and Anríq on the way. “You won’t believe me when I tell you that these townspeople are Darklings,” Costico went on over his shoulder.

“I don’t believe it,” Yann replied. “I don’t think you would believe it, either, if you saw what condition they’re in. These people are dying—men, women, and children of all ages. Whatever Darkness took your daughter is affecting the town, too. It’s cost dozens of lives.”

The muscle of Costico’s jaw flexed when he clenched his teeth. “We’ll see about that. The Darklings that took my daughter came from that town. People transformed into Darklings, took my daughter, and then spirited her away to another Layer. Then all those people turned back into people as if it never happened. Whoever they are, they’re communing with the Dark to carry out some evil purpose—and my daughter isn’t the only one. A dozen other people have vanished into that town and never come out.”

Yann frowned. “That’s strange. The same thing happened to that hog.”

Costico jerked around to glare at him. “What hog? I’m talking about my daughter getting captured by Darklings and you’re talking about some hog?!”

“I am talking about your daughter getting captured by Darklings. I went hunting with another friend of mine. We tracked down a hog and she hit it with her magic to try to kill it. It changed into a Darkling and knocked her out. I killed it and it turned back into a hog. Maybe the same thing happened to these people. Considering the way they’re suffering from this curse, I’d say maybe they don’t have any control over whatever Dark powers might be operating through them. Anyway, everyone in that town is too sick to hold anyone as a captive, especially not a dozen people like you say.”

Costico scowled even more darkly. “You may be right.” He pointed to his left. “Turn here. This is the way to my home.”

End of Chapter 40.