Isroc raced forward, frantically waving his arms. “Stay your blades! We’re not the enemy!”
Moran tossed up a hand and the cavalry slowed to a stop, mere feet from the mock Acedens.
The wall of horsemen peered down at the terrified soldiers, silence between the two forces. Mist burst from the horses’ nostrils as they clawed the mud with impatience. The Alliance watched warily from behind their shields.
“So,” Moran Regulus growled after what seemed ages. “I suppose this means I have to trust you now?”
Isroc smiled. “I did save your sorry ass after all.”
“That you did, my friend.” Moran reined his hulking destrier to the side and extended a hand.
Isroc shook his hand. “You listened to me; that’s all I needed.”
The Alliance breathed a sigh of relief and the cavalry lowered their weapons, the two now one in their triumph.
“We’re not out yet,” Isroc continued. “Five thousand men lay on the other side of the valley. They may not have heard the battle over the rain, but we can’t take that chance. They’ll learn what happened here any moment now.”
“You’re not proposing we run, are you?” Silas asked. “We have the upper hand. I say we attack before they know what hit them.” His blood pounded in his ears. He wanted to fight, to slaughter, to make them pay. His knuckles clenched white around Sitare.
“We’re lucky we got this far. We need to withdraw before the other camp catches wind of what happened.”
“Exactly. We should attack and take them out so they can’t give chase.”
“Your friend here is right, son of Hallus,” Moran said. “We hit hard and fast and rid the world of a few more traitors.”
Isroc sighed. “Branim tasked me with rescuing you and your troops and bringing back as many men as I could. Alive. I won’t jeopardize my mission for your sense of glory.”
“And the king will thank us for taking out more Acedens. We must attack while they are still unaware.”
“I lead these men, Moran. We are retreating. Now.”
Moran chuckled. The rain drenching his beard and the wet blood on his face gave him an eerily dark look. “Look around you, Isroc Braygon. These are all Inveirans. Who do you think they will listen to: a foreigner with no authority, or me?” He raised his great sword overhead. “Men of Inveira! Come with me and wet your blades. Let us fight with fury in our hearts and blood on our lips. We shall make them rue the day they betrayed our glorious country. We attack!”
At this, the Inveirans gave a mighty cheer and brandished their weapons. Moran spun his cavalry about with a fierce bellow and heeled his mount into motion. The armies tore through the camp and charged across the field to the beating of hooves and snapping of banners.
Silas raised Sitare and Isroc followed him, cursing. Together, the two joined their army and smashed into the enemy fortifications.
Familiar Words
Cain was a nervous wreck. He always was around her, even after all this time. He never knew what to say when those olive-green eyes turned on him. He could face down hordes of arzecs, but those eyes left him helpless as a babe.
Those eyes must have seen something in him. Maybe his stammering, his overly cautious ways, his insistence on politeness, amused her. A woman like her surely couldn’t be interested in a man like him. But for some reason she was.
He breathed her in. Her soft floral soap. Her sweet sweat. Her.
“Aren’t you listening to me, Cain Taran?” Eileen turned to him, that ever-present smile on her face.
“I’m sorry, I was thinking.” How could a woman be with someone who never listened to her?
“You’re always thinking,” she smirked. “Thinking is good. I can’t have an empty-headed man. And you need all the thinking you can get.”
“Thinking of how I can fill this,” he tapped on his skull. The two laughed, continuing their walk.
They climbed the hills, green with fresh spring grass, capped with a coloring of wildflowers. The sun sank low and splayed warm rays of orange across the plains. Andaurel’s shadows stretched long.
“As much as I’d like to continue this walk, it’s getting late.” Eileen turned to him, frowning. “Besides, you have to leave at first light. We should get some rest.”
The thought of leaving her again pained him. He hated goodbyes, but fortunately he knew one way to ease the pain of parting. He fumbled in his pocket.
How could he deserve her? He was a soldier. He would only bring her suffering. But he sought desperately to change that inevitability, to walk a different path. He knew he could never deserve her, but he would try every moment of his life to earn her. If only he could speak those words.
“Cain?” she looked at him questioningly.
By tradition, a Kaanosi man had to show he sought to earn love. A man had to take up a new trade or skill, to show his worth as a soldier and as a contributor to society. He had to make something, to prove his dedication. He could only hope to master love when he mastered this skill.
He produced his work, a delicate necklace of bronze rings. Its intricate pendant of silver almost glowed in the ruddy light.
“Cain,” she gasped, a hand clutching at her mouth. “You… is this…?”
“Eileen. I know I can never deserve you. But I hope that you can find it in you to let me try and earn your love for as long as I live. Eileen, will you be mine?”
“Oh, Cain! Of course I will!”
They embraced and met with a long, teary kiss.
The town below them exploded with cheers. All the townsfolk burst from their hiding places in a procession of flowers and ribbons. They swelled around the hill and around Cain and Eileen, showering them in laughter and cheers. A raven floated over the hilltop, giving a single, shrill cry.
Cain bolted from his mat. Heaving with exhaustion, he looked around the transport’s hold. Scores of mats and hammocks filled the belly of the ship, surrounded by towers of crates and barrels. Fierce snores rose from the sleeping soldiers around him.
He gripped his head. The cold dark within seemed to resonate with the cold dark of the hold. For a single, terrible moment, he felt alone. The pain and anger threatened to overwhelm him.
He refused to let it take him again. He shook his head and forced himself to his feet, throwing on his cloak. He weaved his way through the sleeping soldiers and soon stepped into a beam of moonlight.
A cool breeze met him upon stepping out onto the deck. Dark clouds rolled across the starry skies like an undulating tide.
“Cain!” Aren’s voice called from somewhere in the dark.
He spotted his friend near the bow, playing a game of cards with Adriel. He worked through rows of sleeping men and sat down beside his friends. “What are you two doing up so late?”
“I should be asking you the same,” Aren wryly replied.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
Adriel took several cards from a pile and split them evenly between the three of them.
Aren eyed his hand for a time. “We were just enjoying the nice weather. And teaching Adriel how to play cards.”
“At least you’re not playing Joshua,” Cain said to her with a grin. “He’d leave you for broke.” Their smiles quickly faded. They played in silence for several minutes, listening to the snores of their fellows and the dull lap of water against the ship’s hull.
“Are you alright?” Adriel asked after a time.
Cain shook himself from his thoughts and frowned at Adriel’s victory. Aren collected their cards and shuffled them before passing out new hands. “I keep having these dreams every night. I can’t sleep anymore. I can’t get them out of my head.”
Aren drew a card. “Is this about… never mind.”
“About what?” asked Adriel. The two men remained silent and she turned her attention back to her cards. “Never mind then.”
“I thought you’ve never played cards?” Cain asked as Adriel tossed down a winning card.
“I might
have lied,” she said with a coy smirk.
Aren cast his hand down in frustration. “I don’t see why Silas and Joshua even play these games, it makes my head hurt.” He then stood and Cain and Adriel followed him to the bow.
The Eraeos’ waters slapped against the transport’s planking. The oars tossed shining caps of white into the night. Beyond, the starlight shimmered across the pines.
“Do you ever wonder what’s the point?” Cain asked. “We fight, we die. That’s all there is. These Acedens make me wonder that if we defeat Abaddon, would we just be fighting among ourselves again? Are we ever going to be free of death?”
Aren frowned, looking out over the river.
Adriel turned to Cain and smiled. “We fight to make a world where that’s not the only purpose.”
Despite himself, Cain smiled back. She’d always somehow managed to make him feel better. The darkness seemed a little more manageable with her around.
Aren continued to stare ahead. The others followed his gaze to a form breaking the water. The black bundle reached the transport and bobbed off the keel. The three Warriors watched another bundle float toward them and thump against the ship. Another form appeared from the dark, then another, then dozens.
Adriel peered over the bow to one of the forms bouncing off the keel. She gasped and cried out for the soldiers to awake.
Corpses filled the river. They bobbed across the waves like meandering driftwood, each body swollen with water and pus. The corpses glowed like ghouls in the night.
The oars made a path straight through the corpses, stirring the dead. Many oars swatted them aside, others pushed them back into their watery grave, but a few accidently opened their foul husks with a blade. The bodies squelched against the sides of the ships as they passed, sending their innards across the waters.
The soldiers crowded the transport decks, whispering among themselves.
“They were Inveiran soldiers,” Valerik whispered to Cain, gesturing at their silver livery and blue or white chasings. The black and gray banners of the Acedens wrapped each of the dead like a funeral veil.
“Iscarius will pay for his crimes. He will pay for tearing your country apart.”
Valerik sighed. “I know he will. I just worry about the damage he’ll leave behind.”
Fearsome gales and blinding rain tore through the Aceden camp, nearly burying a group of Inveirans in a tomb of earth and water. Isroc hammered a stake into the mud and waved for a group of soldiers to rush inside. Rain stabbed at his face, but he kept his hood back so he could see easier. The hood no longer kept him dry anyway.
Isroc watched his soldiers battle through the slurry, the mud sucking in panicking horses. The trees quivered and splintered. Dark clouds roiled over the hills.
“We have to get inside!” Silas cried from nearby.
“We need to get our soldiers to safety first!”
Silas cursed, hand raised against the beating wind. He pulled an Aceden tent taught as Isroc staked it into the ground. They continued down the row of tents in this way, ensuring their men were sheltered against the storm.
Isroc grabbed a straggling Inveiran and pulled him onto the road. The three men huddled together as they made for a captain’s tent.
Soaked, bloodied, and thoroughly exhausted, Isroc at last stumbled into the pavilion. A fire crackled in a furnace, filling the spacious quarters with a stifling heat. Moran and several of his officers were already here, dripping wet as steam rose from their skin. Moran himself sat at the former desk of an Aceden captain, muddy boots propped onto the wood. He raised a horn of ale to the newcomers.
Isroc lashed the tent flaps together as the storm raged outside. Trees buckled and cracked under the strain of the wind. Tents not properly staked tumbled away into the dusk. Others blew away anyway. The rain battered the canvas and snapped with the surges of wind. Silence pervaded beneath the roar of the storm.
Isroc sat on a cot, staring at the fire in the furnace. The sweet smell of boiling pine needles wafted from a kettle. It was muggy in the tent, the body heat of a dozen men pressed together and mixed with sweat and mud and blood.
The storm had blown in during their attack on the second Aceden camp. Fortunately, they’d managed to rout the enemy and take over their abandoned tents. They’d scattered their foes to the wilderness, and now those poor fools were exposed to the wrath of the storm. They hadn’t bothered to take any prisoners.
Rescuing Moran and his men from Hesed had been almost too easy. That made him increasingly certain that these Acedens weren’t as organized as they first appeared. It seemed as if they fought in separate armies, brought together only by a common goal. But what was the goal?
The battle wasn’t the only easy part. He had killed without remorse. He’d gone into a rage and killed and killed until there was no one left. No amount of rain could wash away as much blood as they’d spilt.
He had to make himself feel something other than anger. These Acedens were likely misguided or power hungry, but they were still human. He had to remember that. He had to feel each death, its loss, its senseless destruction. If he didn’t, then he was no better than an andred.
He turned to the nearby Silas who had been uncharacteristically quiet. His friend sat with his back against a dresser, shuffling through a deck of cards. He clenched them tightly, as if the outside winds would somehow blow them away.
Isroc had suspicions that the man probably didn’t care about their situation so long as he could kill Acedens. He couldn’t blame his friend; he’d felt that same anger with the death of his daughter. So many years after Claire’s death and he still had to push down the rage.
Yes, he knew that look in Silas’ eyes. Fury. Hatred. It was like being a caged animal, with so much rage but nowhere to put it. You could beat against the bars but it’d do nothing but break you. Isroc had freed himself from that cage, but even now those bars threatened to close back around him.
He was angry at the world. Angry at these Acedens for starting another war while they still fought Abaddon. Angry that they killed their fellow man and that he’d been forced to kill in return.
Isroc clenched his fists. He couldn’t let his wrath consume him. Not again.
A strange noise suddenly filled the tent.
Moran leaned back in his chair, strumming the cords of a silver-etched lyre. His fingers scaled the strings with a lithe beauty, so contrary to the battle-scarred Moran that Isroc found himself staring in disbelief.
Moran held his hairy face high, a soft smile on his lips as he strummed. The gentle notes seemed so out of place among the storm and the army, and yet, it fit. Like a missing piece wedged into place. It brought serenity amid the turmoil.
Isroc glanced at Silas. The man wiped an eye and returned his attention to his cards. The wind around them began to settle and the rain dwindled to a steady beating. Silas split the deck and set several cards before him.
He looked through his hand before drawing cards from a pile at his side. He then leaned forward to check the hand before him. He sighed with defeat and set his cards down.
“What is that?” Silas gestured toward Moran.
Isroc crooked a brow. “What, the lyre? You’ve never heard one before?” Silas shook his head. “I can’t believe—” Isroc stopped himself as Silas bowed his head.
“I’ve been a soldier most of my life, scouting far-off places. I think I’ve heard a few instruments before, but nothing like that. It’s… nice.” His eyes cast down.
“That’s a shame. In Erias, we had wandering caravans of bards and entertainers that would visit us on the battlefield. They sang of many great tales and the lore of old, of love and peace, of the time before Abaddon. They were the only thing keeping us sane.”
Silas reshuffled the deck and laid the cards back out. Isroc watched him lose another game against himself. “Mind if I play a round?” he asked. Silas grunted in response and Isroc settled in front of Silas, taking a handful of cards. The two cast down their cards an
d Silas sighed again. Isroc laughed, examining the cards. “I guess that means I’ve won. Sorry, beginner’s luck!”
The cog fleet continued through the wilds of Inveira. The afternoon sun filled their sails with a warm wind and sent them swift against the current. They carved up the Eraeos River, weaving through trees and hills as they neared the heart of Inveira.
Cain sat in the shadow of the mast, peering over a map of Inveira.
Valerik approached with a salute. “Our scouts report that Ekran lies just ahead. The place is quiet, but they think they saw movement.”
“Ekran?” Cain glanced back at his map. “I don’t see that place on here.”
Valerik gave a hearty chortle. “It was all but abandoned a few years ago after it flooded. That place isn’t worth shit now; let alone the ground it’s built on. You won’t find it on any proper map.”
“What do you mean they saw movement? Do you think it’s an ambush?”
Valerik shrugged. “Hard to say until we get there. It’s possible some of our men are hiding out. Even though it’s on the river, the Acedens would probably just overlook the place. Or, it could be a trap.”
Cain stood as a small cluster of buildings appeared around the bend. His hand reached instinctively for Ceerocai. “Go and ready the men, Valerik. If it’s an ambush, I want everyone prepared for it.”
Valerik saluted and hurried off, barking orders.
Cain watched the approaching buildings. Wooden docks laid on the water’s edge, splintered and broken in places. Dense undergrowth filled the muddy roads, weeds and shrubs practically burying small, dilapidated buildings. New construction and maintained roads pushed into the surrounding trees, a stark contrast to the old homes and dilapidated stores. A lone watchtower patched together of various stone served as the river’s main line of defense.
The transports sailed beneath the tower and entered Ekran’s port. The town was silent, the happy calls of the Alliance echoing in the empty streets.
“I don’t like this,” Adriel muttered as they steered toward the dock.
A New Reign Page 12
