“Are you attempting to bludgeon it to death?”
She hadn’t heard Ashok approach. If she’d been able to move as quiet as a Protector, she would’ve been far more successful as a thief. She didn’t intend to greet him with a smile, but she couldn’t help herself. “The goal is to stick it, but I’ll take what I can get.”
Her hand flashed to her belt, and the next knife hit solid, but edge first instead of point. It actually stuck, though shallowly embedded.
“You are improving greatly.”
“It’s not good enough yet.” Thera shook out her fingers. It was hard to get the release right when most of the feeling was gone. Actually sticking a living, moving opponent in combat was a dubious proposition—often more of a distraction than a killing blow—but the warriors of Vane loved to do it anyway. It was tradition, and if she was being honest, normally a rather relaxing pastime. One that she really wanted back.
She looked over at Ashok. He was just standing there, tall and imposing, unreadable as usual, as if nothing had changed between them. Perhaps to him, nothing had. No one else was near enough to hear them, so she said, “You were gone when I woke up.”
“I thought it best. I did not wish to complicate matters for you.”
“You didn’t want these people to know their so-called prophet is a woman of flesh and blood? It might ruin my image as a pure vessel of the gods?” She pulled out the next knife and turned back to throw.
“I doubt even the most idealistic of these fanatics assumed you were that pure.”
That time she missed the stump by a several feet, and the knife went sailing off into a bush. “You fish-eating bastard!” She turned back to him. “You distracted me with all your charm.”
Ashok gave her a curious look. “You are being sarcastic.”
What an odd, damaged man, yet loyal and stronger than anyone she’d ever met. It was strange in a way. Ashok was so infamous as a Law-enforcing executioner that he was known across the continent as the Black Heart, yet despite being so named he was still a far gentler man than her former husband. The last time she’d seen Dhaval, he’d been trying to kill her. Perhaps Ashok only seemed like a good choice because her previous experiences with men had been so bad?
“Obviously. So how goes it?”
“I came to tell you it is almost time to go.”
Ashok seemed like he wanted to say something else, but this recent change was as strange for him as it was for her. She didn’t want to talk about it. She was no idealistic girl reading poems. Life had kicked her too many times for her to be naïve enough to believe in love. The gods—or whatever they were—had thrown them together, they were just making the best of it.
“If you’re worried about complicating things, Ashok, don’t. It is what it is. I was married once before and it didn’t end well.”
“You’ve not spoken much of your past. Death or divorce?”
Thera laughed. “We attempted a little of each.”
“Among the First they simply get an arbiter to dissolve the arranged marriage contract, but from your tone I take it yours was bad even by warrior caste standards.”
“If you genuinely want to know, I slashed him across the eyes with a knife while he was trying to throw me off a cliff into the ocean. It’s a long story. But since I’m telling you my secrets, don’t worry about last night. My husband had children from a previous wife, but he never got me pregnant. I think because I was sick for so long when I was young, the bolt left me near dead for a few seasons, I think I can’t ever have a baby.”
Usually Ashok did a much better job of hiding his emotions, but from the look on his face it was almost as if his brain had tripped over the idea. He had never even considered having a child before. She considered his discomfort payback for what he’d just said about her perceived virtue.
“I had not thought of that possibility.”
“In the moment men rarely do. But it was fun.”
Ashok looked uncomfortable. “Do you wish to speak about what happened?”
“Not particularly.”
“Good.” The man was no poet, but she appreciated his directness.
“Go on. I’ll join you shortly.”
Ashok simply nodded and returned to work.
Thera pulled out her last knife, wondering once again what she’d done to end up in a situation like this.
Three hundred people were counting on her here, and nearly a thousand more back at the Creator’s Cove. Not to mention all of the foolish casteless scattered about Lok who’d heard Keta’s sermons and taken hope from them. She didn’t give a damn about the gods who’d cursed her with a bolt from the sky, but as much as she hated to admit it, their believers had begun to matter to her.
She looked at the target, mostly unblemished after months of practice, and asked herself once again why she bothered.
This knife was a simple tool, four inches of polished steel. It was no less effective than before, but the hand that wielded it had become damaged, clumsy, and unfeeling. She’d learned to use these knives because she’d been born into a warrior house, to a father who’d treated her as if she’d been a firstborn son. Practice had continued even after she’d been married off to a beast because it had made her feel in control. Honestly, she had her own army now, and fanatics who’d lay down their lives for her. She didn’t need to be able to fight with a humble knife when the most dangerous man in the world had pledged himself to fight on her behalf.
But she’d keep practicing so that someday she could feel in control of something again.
Her arm flashed, the motion smooth, and the knife flipped toward the target.
It hit the dirt right in front of the stump.
Today would not be that day.
Chapter 6
It would take their ragged band a few days to cross the Bahdjangal, and with luck, they would encounter no demons along the way. A slow-moving column like this, with children and elderly among it, would surely be a delicious snack for a sea demon.
With his superior senses, stamina, and speed, Ashok decided it would be best if he spent the journey ranging back and forth, scouting around the main body of the group. The Wild Men knew their swamp well and moved through it comfortably, always able to pick out solid ground from the treacherous muck, and they were seldom surprised by the venomous snakes or crocodiles that lurked within. Yet as good as they were, they were nothing compared to Ashok. That was not pride speaking. It was a simple fact.
He would run ahead, find a good vantage point, and then watch and listen, using the Heart of the Mountain to heighten one sense, and then another, until he was certain there wasn’t any danger. Then he would move to a flank and check there, and then run to the rear of the column to make sure no curious demon had picked up their trail. Throughout the day he repeated the process, and would continue to do so until they reached terrain less suitable for concealing demons. That activity meant that he had to cross three times as much ground as the rest of them, and at a much faster pace. It was tiring, even for someone who had touched the Heart of the Mountain, but he didn’t mind. It gave him time alone without anyone calling him General.
While he waited in a position of cover, observing and catching his breath, he caught glimpses of Thera’s army through the trees. On point were always Toramana and his Wild Men, because only they could easily navigate the treacherous paths. As long as they stuck to the trails the hunters knew well, the livestock they were herding wouldn’t flounder into the mud and get stuck.
Occasionally someone would find an isolated group living unnoticed somewhere outside the control of the Law, but those groups tended to be sickly and dim-witted. The Wild Men were robust and clever. Ashok assumed it was because they’d had a bigger population to start with. Inbreeding made for weak and stupid children, which was why arbiters checked genealogical records before arranging marriages. The occasional escaped prisoner from the House of Assassins who joined them had brought fresh blood as well.
It was sur
prising how many of the tribe had come from the Lost House over the years. The wizards made at least a cursory attempt to catch their runaways, but if they made it very far at all it was easy to declare them dead from exposure or eaten by demons in the unforgiving swamp, and give up the search. If anything, the haughty wizards had probably assumed their neighboring barbarians would kill any escapees they found, not take them in and offer them shelter. With nowhere else to go, far from homes they couldn’t really remember because they’d been kidnapped as children, most of them had been glad to be adopted into the Wild Men. From what Thera had told him, the wizards had been a cruel and nefarious bunch of plotters. Better to live a simple life in a swamp.
The tribe’s hatred of the wizards was palpable. It had taken Thera’s direct intervention to keep the Wild Men from murdering their lone wizard prisoner, Waman. Both groups had been of the same house once, but after the Capitol had broken the dams and flooded their lands, the wizards had left the lower-caste survivors to fend for themselves. Knowing that the wizards had only spared their lives because rumors of a savage tribe living in the Bahdjangal helped keep their house a secret, had made the Wild Men even angrier at their wealthy cousins. Last night Toramana had said it was the prophecy of Mother Dawn that had told them to move to Thera’s paradise, but Ashok suspected the biggest reason the Wild Men had been so eager to join them was because with the House of Assassins destroyed, they had no one left to spite with their survival.
Satisfied that there was no significant danger ahead of them, Ashok leapt up and ran east toward the sea. For speed and stealth, he was dressed like the swamp hunters, shirtless and barefoot. The suit of Protector armor that they’d found in the House of Assassins—which Gutch had repaired and fitted for him over the winter using the Wild Men’s meager blacksmithy—was packed with their baggage.
At the flank, Ashok positioned himself between his obligation and hell. But today the distant waves were still. The meanest predators they faced now were the mosquitos. From his hidden position, he watched the column pass.
Even though Jagdish had left them that morning and gone north, the Sons of the Black Sword were still following their risaldar’s last orders. Warrior and worker both—from several different Great Houses, their divisions forgotten—had placed themselves protectively around the women, children, and animals of the Wild Men.
They were called the Sons because their organization had been born with the destruction of Angruvadal. Though for Jagdish, it was more like he was their father, even though he was barely older than they were. Jagdish was a fine officer, and Ashok would do his best to lead them as Jagdish had, though he knew he would fall short. Some men—like Jagdish—were born to lead others into battle. Ashok was battle incarnate. Where he led would be the death of a normal soldier. But he would try to keep these alive.
Scattered among the crowd were the dozen slaves they’d freed from the House of Assassins. Thera had told him about how the wizards kept their numbers up by stealing magically gifted children from all over Lok. Those who developed the proper skills and mindset would eventually join the ranks of their captors, while those found unworthy had their minds scrubbed by magic and were made into slaves.
The simpletons were easy to pick out, because the former slaves needed to be guided along or they’d wander off. They were really only good at simple repetitive tasks, and anything that required much thinking left them befuddled. Ashok found that their presence made him uncomfortable, so he had avoided speaking with any of them too much. Perhaps it was because what had been done to them sounded similar to what the wizard Kule had done to him as a child. The difference being that Ashok had been carefully reconstructed afterward into a perfect servant of the Law, while the Lost House slaves were left broken and simple.
It was unknown if their minds would ever recover, like the one who had set fire to the Fortress powder at the Lost House had seemed to somewhat. Waman, their captive wizard, had denied knowing the answer. However, regardless of their condition, Thera had declared that they were to be treated well. Life was cheap in Lok, but not in her camp.
As for their wizard captive, Waman had not survived the winter. Thera had wanted to keep him alive in case she could think of a use for him. Except even a prophet’s authority only extended so far when it came to a wizard prisoner being held by a tribe those same wizards had hunted for sport. They did not know which of the vengeful Wild Men had snuck into the prisoner’s hut and slit Waman’s throat late one night. Finding that answer was not worth testing the tribe’s loyalty.
However, the wizard’s presence had one lasting effect. In the weeks before he’d been murdered, Waman had testified to everyone who would listen about how he’d seen Ashok return from the dead and lift himself off the meat hook that had gone through his heart, a feat that should have been impossible, even with black-steel magic. The tribe may have despised the wizard, but they believed his tale about Ashok, and since Ashok would never deny the truth—and he truly had died and come back—his legend grew.
Though Ashok had lived among them for a season, most of the tribe talked about him as if he was a supernatural being more than a man. Luckily their reverence was not too galling. One could hardly worship the Forgotten’s warrior as some high and mighty being when he went hunting or foraging with them every day.
Ashok moved to the end of the column.
As he crouched there, waiting to see if they were being followed, an odd thought occurred to him. For a few months, life had been uncomplicated. This had been a brief glimpse into a mundane existence of survival and labor. He knew it was naïve, but he could almost picture he and Thera living out their days in obscurity, tilling the soil like workers, not leading a futile rebellion to certain doom.
He had never been allowed thoughts of a future. That had always been a nebulous concept at best. There had been only obligation, and when his service to the Protector Order was done, then surely there would have been new duties assigned by his house. There was no longer a plan. He did not have a place. Was it possible? Dare he make his own?
Only Thera had an obligation from the gods, and he had an obligation to her. In a few days they would be back within the civilized world, beneath the unflinching gaze of the Law, and in all likelihood their lives would be short, and never simple again.
He was going to miss the swamp.
Chapter 7
The snow in the mountains was beginning to melt, so the Nansakar was running high, fast, and cold. It would have been madness to try and swim this group across—especially since none of the higher castes could swim—but Thera had thought ahead. Before she had sent home the casteless who had delivered the Sons of the Black Sword here, she had gotten them to drag one of their barges safely inland and leave it behind.
It had actually been Jagdish’s suggestion for them to stash a barge for future use. It was a good thing too, since Thera had been in too much pain at the time to think much beyond her burns. The Lost House had still been smoldering, Ashok was buried in the rubble, and she had only just met the small band of fanatical warriors who’d come so far to save her.
Of course, when she’d agreed she had only been thinking about how to get herself back to the Cove, not a whole village worth of people, two milk cows, several goats, donkeys, and two carts full of squawking chickens.
They found the barge right where Jagdish had told the casteless Nod to hide it. Luckily it had survived the winter and was still intact. The plan was simple. They tied all their ropes together and then Ashok and a few of the Sons had poled the barge to the other side of the river to attach their line to a sturdy tree. They had to battle a fierce current that wanted to carry them toward the ocean the entire way. They’d pushed so hard that Thera had been afraid their poles would snap, and then they’d be carried off, but they’d made it across.
Once their line was secure, the real work began. The process took an entire day, from dawn to dusk, with their strongest men taking turns poling back and forth across the rushing
Nansakar. The casteless barge wasn’t very big. They could crowd at most fifteen bodies on at a time. If it flipped, or anyone tumbled over the edge, they’d surely die in the freezing water. If a demon were to come from below—and they weren’t too many miles from the sea—everyone aboard was as good as dead. Occasionally a massive log would float by, big enough to upset the barge, and they would have to time it to avoid the impact. For the passengers, the trip across the Nansakar was one of white-knuckled terror.
Ashok was aboard for every single trip.
Thera watched him, curious why he’d been so quick to volunteer for such a duty, because she knew how much he despised being on the water. In a land where anything deep enough to hide your legs from view might conceal a demon, everyone was distrustful of water. For Ashok it was more than that. To him water was the source of evil and the home of hell, because the Law declared it so. And though he’d learned to tolerate some criminals, the rivers, lakes, and seas would always be beyond his control.
Yet he remained out there, going back and forth across the white froth and tearing currents, pulling on the rope like an ox pulling a wagon. And when they’d land, and the shaking nauseous warriors fell into the grass, and new volunteers took up their poles and got aboard, Ashok just stayed there—soaking wet, surely chilled to the bone—and off they’d set again.
When one of the Wild Men’s cows panicked halfway across, kicking and thrashing, threatening to swamp the barge, Ashok had calmly stunned it with a fist to its thick skull, and then simply gone back to pulling the rope. They’d rolled a thousand pounds of unconscious beef off on the other shore, and Ashok had immediately gone back for more people.
Once half their force was on the south bank, it was Thera’s turn. Their prophet was precious cargo, and they wanted her on whichever side had the majority of the warriors. Since she’d been a smuggler, she’d spent more time on the rivers than anyone else here, but even for her this was the roughest water journey of her life. Churning, bouncing, and crashing, it was far worse than it had looked from the shore. The river was so turbulent and dark with silt that there could be a demon right beneath them and she’d never know. The rocking made her stomach clench. Water washed up over the sides, and spray soaked her clothes. The wind was so sharp it cut right through her damp coat. The shivering began immediately.
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