Soldier Scarred

by D. K. Holmberg

  “What will you do with her?” Endric asked.

  “I will return her to the canicharl.”

  “They won’t to do anything for her.”

  “And how is what you did any different than that?”

  It wasn’t. And he knew that it wasn’t. Pendin was right, which meant that he needed to allow Pendin to return with Senda to the city and the canicharl, but doing so meant that anything he might be able to find and learn would be lost.

  Pendin was right. It didn’t require all of them to head up the mountainside in search of Urik. It could be only Endric. Besides, there was an added benefit that Endric hadn’t considered before. If there was anything to the Conclave here, and Urik had found some way to it, wouldn’t that be a reason to keep Pendin from it? Endric wasn’t a part of the Conclave. He might work on behalf of them, trying to help Tresten at Novan’s urging, but it wasn’t his place to be the one to share details of the Conclave.

  “Make sure that she’s safe. Make sure that she has every opportunity to recover.”

  “Endric—”

  “You heard it the same as I did. She’s not gone—not completely. If there’s anything that can be done for her, I want you to promise me that you will see that it is. If you care about her the way that you claim, you will do this for her.”

  “I do care about her,” Pendin said “but I also understand that there might not be anything that can be done for her. I understand that regardless of what we might want, there are limits to what can be done.”

  “I refuse to acknowledge those limits.” If he had accepted limitations, he would already have been dead. He would have died when he was exiled by his father. He would have died when he was trying to find Urik. He would have died when sent out of the Antrilii lands with nothing. Instead, he had survived. He had discovered that he was stronger than he had ever known—perhaps far stronger. And he knew that Senda deserved the same chance to prove her strength.

  “Fine. I will do whatever I can to ensure that Senda is given the possibility of recovery. You and I both know that there might not be anything that can be done for her.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Help me get her strapped to my saddle,” Pendin said.

  Endric shook his head. “Take this horse. She’s well secured in it.”

  Pendin arched a brow. “And this mare was small for me. I might crush the other one.”

  “I doubt it. She’s carried both of us for days. And she carried me before that. She’s strong, and that’s what Senda needs right now.”

  Endric climbed from the saddle and patted the horse on the side. This was the same horse that had traveled with him ever since reaching Salvat. He looked in her eyes and leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Guide them safely, girl. I think that you’re the only one who can do this.”

  The horse whinnied, almost as if she understood what Endric was saying. He patted her on the side again and reached for Pendin’s reins as he climbed from the saddle.

  “Be careful, Endric.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Pendin asked.

  Endric shrugged. “If something happens to me, then…” He shook his head. It made no difference what could be if something happened to Endric, not unless Senda recovered.

  “Care to provide any direction for me?”

  Endric pointed. “There’s something of a path that you can follow. I think the horse knows it as well as I did. Just keep pointing her north and west, and you will eventually come across what you need.”

  Pendin studied Endric for a long moment before turning the horse and starting away from them. Endric watched until they had become too distant to follow, and then he patted Pendin’s horse, climbing into the saddle and guiding her up the slope.

  Endric urged the horse more quickly than he had gone before, wanting speed more than anything else. He wasn’t sure if it was safe to guide the horse quite as quickly as he was, but it didn’t completely matter. The horse seemed to sense Endric’s urgency and moved quickly along the slope.

  They took a road that was narrow, little more than a ledge, winding around the side of the mountain. It switched back at times, moving higher and higher. As they went, they were accompanied by a steady rumbling. This close to the mountain, Endric could feel the tremors. The horse paused each time one came, only to resume again when it had passed. The horse was more fearless than Endric, seemingly unafraid by the steady rumbling. That reassured Endric more than anything else would.

  A few hours after Pendin had left him, there was a massive explosion.

  The horse had made it to a wider section on the path, and debris began raining down from above. Had they been on a narrower section of the path, Endric worried that the path itself might have collapsed, sending them sliding down to the base of the mountain.

  A dark cloud of ash poured into the sky and flames streaked into the air, a glowing orange that reflected off the haze. This close to it, Endric could feel the heat rising from the eruption, close enough that he could practically smell the sulfur in the air. His lungs burned with it and he waited, fearful that lava would come spewing down the side of the volcano, but it did not.

  Endric patted the side of the mare, and they continued up the side of the rock. This close, he couldn’t even look up and see the peak, unlike when he was farther back. From a distance, the slope seemed gradual, but now that he was upon the mountain, it was far steeper than he had expected. The horse labored on, making better time than Endric would have alone. He kept waiting for a stream, anything that they might find that the horse could water at, but there was nothing.

  After a while, he paused and poured some of his water into his hands, cupping it in front of the horse and letting her drink. She did so greedily and looked up at him as if demanding more. Endric took a brief swig and obliged, pouring more water into his palms, letting her have the majority of it. How could he deny her, especially as she was doing far more work than he?

  Their pause was brief, and then they continued up. The horse began to slow and, despite Endric’s urgings, there wasn’t any more speed that she could manage. He climbed out of the saddle and began leading her, wanting to maintain a steady speed. Going this way, at least she had a break from carrying him, though he doubted it would matter all that much to her.

  There was no sign of anything else.

  He had been convinced that the increase in rumbling had been tied to Tresten and whatever was needed to save him, but what if that wasn’t it at all? What if there was nothing that they could do and no way of finding where Urik might have gone or where he had brought Tresten?

  When night fell, Endric felt as if he were no closer to the summit. How much longer did he dare continue like this? How much longer did he dare putting the horse through this journey? There would come a time when neither he nor the horse could continue on, both of them suffering from dehydration.

  He stopped at a wider ledge of rock and sat. He held onto the reins, not wanting the horse to bolt with an explosion. So far, she hadn’t been spooked by any of the tremors that had continued to come, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t be.

  He rested for a while, not daring to sleep too long. The uncomfortable position that he found himself in prevented him from sleeping too soundly. Thankfully, he didn’t need a lot of sleep. His time traveling had trained him to get by with as little as possible, and he managed to wake feeling somewhat better. Not refreshed. That would be unlikely without having a chance to sleep in the comfort of a bed, but he certainly felt better than he had.

  He stared out at the sky. With the occasional explosion, he was able to see into the night, light reflecting off the haze in the clouds.

  There were no sounds around him other than his breathing and that of the horse occasionally stepping when she was unsettled by the rumbling. It was eerie, a sort of solitude that he hadn’t had even while chasing the groeliin in the Antrilii lands. This was terrifying in a way that had n
ot been, and he was armed here.

  He drifted off and on, eventually falling into a deeper slumber than he had intended to.

  He dreamed but lost track of what he dreamed about. He had snippets of visions of the mountain and an eruption and Senda and even his brother. It was strange that his brother would plague him so long after his death. Would there ever come a time when the loss of his brother didn’t hurt quite so much? More than his father, Andril had been responsible for his training, seeing to his first foray into learning the sword, mastering that skill. Without him, he felt as if he had lost more than a brother. Maybe that was why he had those dreams.

  Finally, Endric jolted awake. There was a dream of someone calling his name, and of a hand on his shoulder. When he stirred, he looked over to see if the horse was still there, and saw a man standing across from him.

  His eyes widened.

  Not just any man. Urik.

  18

  Endric jumped to his feet and resisted the urge to reach for his sword. Light had begun to color the horizon, giving enough illumination to the growing day. He glared at Urik, surprised to see that the man was dressed differently than when they had last been together. Whereas before he had been dressed in Denraen colors, a remnant of his time in Vasha as a prisoner, now he was dressed in a finer cut: brown pants and a deep gray jacket that had seemingly been made to fit him. A short sword hung at his waist.

  “Urik. What are you doing here? What did you do with Tresten? Why did you abandon us?”

  Urik cocked his head to the side. “That’s a lot of questions.”

  “Is it too many for you to answer?”

  “For now.”

  “What are you doing here?” Endric asked. “The last time we saw you—”

  “Was along the shore. I was there. I remember.”

  “It wasn’t along the shore. We were inland.”

  Urik glanced out over the Salvat landscape. “In these lands, there is the shore, the cities, and the mountain. I left you on the shore.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.”

  “You didn’t have choice? You disappeared while we were sleeping.”

  “I didn’t disappear. I was abducted.”

  Endric blinked. His mind lurched forward but he was tired, still exhausted from everything that he had been through over the last few days. He was possibly a little hungry, and it was possible that he was delirious from lack of enough water. He had heard of men losing their wits when they weren’t able to get enough to drink.

  “What do you mean that you were abducted?”

  “I think that part was plenty clear.”

  “And Tresten?”

  “Tresten was taken with me.”

  “Why?”

  Urik looked over his shoulder and then shook his head as he turned back to Endric. “I can only surmise that they were from the Conclave, but they have not been forthcoming about their intentions.”

  “They?”

  “There are three of them. They are down at the base of the mountain, and they sent me here.”

  “Why? What have they done with Tresten?”

  “As I said, I don’t know what they did with Tresten, but I suspect that they are part of the Conclave.”

  “What did they want you to do? Why did they send you up here?”

  “I am supposed to gather something.”

  “And what are you supposed to gather?” Endric was having a hard time believing that Urik had been abducted, but that was a better explanation then him having abandoned them. He had thought that Urik had changed, so that when he abandoned them, Endric had been troubled by it.

  “According to the people who claimed me, I am supposed to gather a part of the gods.”

  “And how do they anticipate that you will be able to gather a part of the gods?”

  “My time with the historian guild taught me that the people of Salvat view the mountain itself as an extension of the gods. It’s much different than what is believed in Thealon, though they worship the same gods. I suspect that what I’ve been asked to do is gather a part of the mountain, though I’m not quite clear on what part I have been asked to claim.”

  “Have they said anything about what they know of the tremors?”

  “They haven’t said anything about that. I suspect that the mountain prepares to erupt, though you’re bright enough to have made that connection.”

  “I’ve been told that the mountain hasn’t erupted in several hundred years.”

  “That doesn’t mean that it can’t. Volcanoes are unpredictable. We know so little about them, other than they are stirred by something deep within the earth.”

  “This one seems to be stirred by something else.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Urik asked.

  “It’s just that since I’ve been here, it’s been acting increasingly agitated. The mountain continues to rumble, and I’ve seen ash and fire spewed into the sky. If you ask me, it looks as if it’s ready to erupt.”

  Urik frowned. “Then why would they have sent me up here if they suspected it would erupt?” He asked the question mostly to himself, pressing his lips together in a frown. He began pacing in a small and controlled circle. There wasn’t much room for him to pace any differently.

  “What else have you been doing?” Endric asked.

  “I’ve been trying to understand what they want of me.”

  “What did they do with Tresten?”

  “I haven’t seen what they did with him. After they abducted me, he disappeared. As I said, I suspect they are from the Conclave.”

  And if they were from the Conclave, then they would be inclined to help Tresten rather than intending him any harm. But, it still seemed strange to Endric that they would not have shared with Urik what they were after.

  Urik looked over at Endric, his frown deepening. “Where is Senda?”

  Endric shook his head slightly. “She was injured. When we lost you and Tresten, we lost the ship, too. It forced us to try to reach Elaniin. We took the dinghy, thinking that it might be faster, but—”

  “The dinghy? You would have been a day, maybe a day and a half at most to walk from there. Why would you have risked the coast?”

  “We didn’t know where we were and didn’t know how far we had to travel,” Endric said.

  Could they have only been a day and a half walk away? If that were the case, then they had made an enormous mistake. Senda had been injured for nothing.

  “The dinghy was attacked by some sea creature.”

  Urik arched a brow. “That’s quite nonspecific.”

  Endric shrugged. “That’s all I can tell you. I never got a good glimpse of what it was, but when I rescued her from the water, she had nearly drowned.”

  Urik took a deep breath and then sighed. “I am sorry, Endric. I know how much she meant to you.”

  “She’s not gone. I brought her to the canicharl, and the Teachers will help her. If anyone can, they will.”

  Urik smiled tightly. “Yes. That was probably the best decision short of finding the Conclave.”

  “I didn’t have any way of finding the Conclave.”

  “Why have you come here?” he asked.

  “I came looking for you. And Tresten. I came looking for answers, to see where you might’ve gone and why you had disappeared.”

  “And now that you found me, you should turn back,” Urik said. “There is no reason for you to risk yourself here.”

  “Why not? You are.”

  “I am because there is no other choice for me.”

  “There is always another choice,” Endric said.

  “In this case, I’m afraid there might not be,” Urik said. “Normally, I would agree with you that there would be another choice. But in order for me to get the information I want—and need—I think that I need to comply with these individuals.”

  “Let me help you,” Endric said.

  “You don’t want to do that. You and I have never se
en eye to eye, so I understand if you leave now that you found me. Know that Tresten is where he needs to be. Especially if the Conclave is able to help him.”

  “And what if they aren’t?”

  “Perhaps they will not be able to help,” Urik said. “And if they aren’t, then I have a different purpose in being here. I need to know all that I can about the Conclave. I need to do this so that I can join them, so that I can get the information that I have longed for.”

  Endric let out a deep sigh. Who was he to refuse Urik this quest? Tresten had felt that Urik was deserving, at least deserving enough to want Endric and Urik to work together.

  “I promised my father—and Novan—that I would work with you and that together, we would find the answers for Tresten. I can’t really help them without staying with you.”

  Urik regarded Endric for a moment. “No. I suppose that you cannot. I won’t have you delaying me.”

  “You think to dictate to me how this will go?”

  “I think that in this search, you will need to defer to me.”

  Endric didn’t want to argue the point, and he simply wanted to accompany Urik, mostly to see if the Conclave had any understanding of what had been taking place here. Maybe they could explain the increase in tremors. And maybe—if they were able to help Tresten—there might be something that could be done to help Senda. That was his motivation more than anything else.

  “I will follow your lead, but only so long as you don’t put either of us in any danger.”

  Urik arched a brow at him. “And why would I put either of us into danger?”

  “I don’t know why you do the things that you do, Urik. All I know is that I don’t have any intention of having you lead me into danger.”

  “Oh, there will be danger.”

  “Is that your intention, then? Do you intend to find some way of injuring me to abandon me?”

  “I’m not that person,” Urik said. “I know it’s difficult for you to believe, but that’s not who I am.”

  “It difficult for me to believe because of everything you’ve put me through.”

  “In the name of trying to understand the Conclave.”