Infinity Blade: Redemption

just were—to fawn over their rescuer. Joyous exultation and all that.”
    Siris rode in silence.
    “I can say your part, if you want,” Isa suggested.
    He shrugged.
    “Very well. ‘Gee golly, thanks for saving me, Isa. I sure am happy you done did that.’”
    “‘Done did’?” Siris asked, looking up. “‘ Gee golly ’?”
    “Well, I’m not terribly good at accents in your stupid language, but you’re a farmer boy, aren’t you?”
    “No. You know what I am.”
    “I do—you’re a hero.”
    “That’s not what you said when you first found out I was Deathless.”
    “I will admit,” Isa said, “I was surprised.”
    “Surprised? You were outraged. Betrayed.” He looked away from her, scanning the hilly scrubland. “I understand. I felt the same way.”
    “You are a hero, Whiskers,” she said. She sounded like she was trying to convince them both. “At least, that’s how you’re going to act—because that’s what I’ve made of you.”
    He looked at her, frowning. She simply smiled, and then guided her horse into a small canyon.
    Siris followed, joining her when she eventually dismounted and stepped up to the far wall of the canyon. She pulled back some scrub brush, revealing a small cavern mouth—a tunnel into the rock. Together, they pulled the dead brush away, making a hole wide enough to bring the horses through.
    The inside of the cavern reminded him of growing up in the hills outside a city that had been built within an enormous cavern. This was much smaller, but it smelled like home.
    How many lives have I lived? he wondered. My home was not truly my home, no more than a crab’s temporary shell is its home. That’s just a skin to be discarded, once outgrown.
    They wound through the tunnel, continuing eastward. Isa got out a rod that glowed like a torch when the top was twisted, but it didn’t let off any heat. One of the wonders of the Deathless, he supposed. Had these things been common to him, once? Why did his kind hoard this sort of knowledge? Wouldn’t life be better for everyone, themselves included, if such wondrous items were part of everyday use?
    “What did you mean?” Siris asked. “About you having ‘made’ a hero of me?”
    Isa continued through the tunnel without answering. Siris followed, growing annoyed, but stopped moving when he heard a noise. It seemed to becoming from inside the wall. He reached for the sword that Isa had given him, but she waved him down.
    Stone ground on stone, and a section of the cavern wall slid back. Scout post, Siris realized, noting the holes in the rock he had mistaken for natural depressions. Someone here could send warning—probably by pulling a string or making some sort of noise that would echo in the cavern—if enemies came through the tunnel.
    A youth peeked out of the scout hole. Though the boy wore a sword strapped at his side, he couldn’t have been older than fourteen. He stood up straight and saluted Isa, then glanced at Siris.
    “Is it . . . him?” the boy asked.
    Isa nodded.
    The boy stood up straighter. “I . . . um . . . oh! Sir! Mr. Deathless, sir! I’m Jam.”
    Siris glanced at Isa. Behind him, his horse snorted and tugged against the reins. Jam blushed, then fished out an apple, which he tossed to the floor awkwardly, then saluted again. “Sorry, Mr. Deathless, sir! Grummers likes his apples.”
    “I see,” Siris said as the horse crunched the apple.
    “I’ll tell the others!” Jam said, then scrambled down the tunnel. He soon started yelling. “He’s here ! She found him! He’s here!”
    “What did you tell them about me?” Siris demanded of Isa.
    “The truth,” Isa said. “With some extra . . . extrapolation.”
    “‘Extrapolation’?”
    She tugged on her horse, continuing. He joined her, the tunnel having widened to the point their horses could walk side by side.
    “I thought you were dead,” she said softly. “Killed for good by the Weapon. Then the God King returned . . . but worse. In the past, he’s always kept order—too much order for my tastes, but structure can be a good thing.
    “Well, that stopped. He let thugs take over cities, allowed chaos to reign. He seemed angry—like he just wanted everything to burn. I hadn’t thought the world could get worse than the tyranny of his Pantheon in days past, but it could. It did .”
    “I’m sorry,” Siris said. “It was my failure that led to this.” That wouldn’t have been the real God King, but an