Beyond the Dark Gate

by R. V. Johnson

  Striding on her right side, the big man spoke. “You can let go of her now.” His voice had a familiar tone to it, gentle but clear, vibrant like her dad’s, even with his ailing heart. Thinking of him caused her heart to race; she hoped he was still alive. Astura was too violent for an organ as weak as his was.

  General Karnas removed his hand. “If she runs, you shall have the honor of retrieving her then.”

  “If she runs, you can count on it. No other of your men will need to lift a foot or a weapon.”

  The shadowy full helm of General Karnas swung toward her. “All the same, if she runs, all my men and I personally will chase her down.”

  The big man didn’t respond. Instead, he held a bowl out to her. “Here, you should eat while you can, keep your strength high.”

  “Thank you,” Jade said quickly, taking the bowl. Another pang of worry for her dad welled up in the pit of her stomach. Her father would say something similar, a gentle reprimand. She tried to keep the half-full bowl steady as they walked. There was no spoon; she’d have to drink from it.

  Passing by the tent General Karnas had gathered her from, they stopped at a line of saddled horses tied to a guide rope. General Karnas bellowed names to an attendant to fetch ‘his men’ for him. The attendant trotted away, presumably to get them.

  Raising the bowl to her lips, Jade took a tentative sip trying not to spill. An unfamiliar broth and something soft slid down her gullet, but she didn’t care what it was; she was famished. Jade drank the rest and handed the empty bowl back to the personal guard of the hooded man. He handed it to an attendant who rinsed it from a flask he carried and then stored it in saddlebags. Untying the black horse, he handed the reins to the big man and another to General Karnas.

  Mounting up, the big man stretched an arm to her. “She rides with me,” he declared as she took his hand.

  “You will slow us down, she gets her own horse. You can have the reins,” General Karnas said.

  As the big man let go of her hand, his arm slowly receded. “Agreed,” he finally said.

  Jade lowered her hand, looking around. She was suddenly unescorted. Did she dare run?

  “Someone put the girl on a horse! Gently, treat her better than your own daughter or I will impale you upon my sword!” General Karnas bellowed.

  Strong arms lifted her onto a tall horse. A dark land of shadows in the moonlight, the ground seemed so far away. The horse jolted forward. Jade clutched the saddle’s pommel as it moved behind an even taller horse the big man rode. A dark form handed him the reins.

  All at once, there was a flurry of activity as men climbed upon skittish horses and General Karnas rode back and forth calling out to each man. Jade began to wonder if she’d have been better off with the maimwright and then shuddered at the thought.

  After much shifting and moving about, they finally moved out, thumping the meadow with hooves two horses wide and a long string behind. General Karnas rode in the forefront next to a horse and rider she didn’t know.

  “Hold!” General Karnas suddenly yelled, raising a shadowy arm. The dark form of a man stood in his path.

  The hooded man folded his thick arms at his stomach. “General Karnas, a word with you.”

  “Blast! I nearly rode you down, My Lord!”

  The hooded man did not respond. Instead, the dark hood swung toward the man escorting her on his big warhorse. “You are my greatest experiment. Continue to prove your value. Protect the anomaly, get her to the Dark Citadel, and you shall have many such missions from me. No longer shall you be limited to traveling with only me,” he said. He strode back the way they’d arrived.

  “Blast it!” General Karnas swore again, pulling his horse around. “Keep them moving, Captain Bozlun, I will catch you.” He rode after the shadowy form of the hooded man.

  Jade was surprised. How could a man be an experiment? She couldn’t wait for daylight and a chance to study the man.

  They rode in silence, the thud of nearly thirty horses behind her thunderous in her ears. At meadow’s end, the experimental man slowed, handed her the reins, and then dropped behind her. Soon after, they climbed a moist trail single file that wound through evergreen trees switching back and forth close to the roar of falling water.

  The land around her grew slowly brighter as they topped out at a pine and aspen meadow. There, General Karnas rode past her to the front. Slowing beside Captain Bozlun, the general gestured to the trail ahead. “Keep going, I want to get through Broken Gap before we rest the horses.”

  “As the general commands,” Captain Bozlun replied with a nod.

  General Karnas nodded slightly at the man, a small smile on his lips.

  With a start, Jade realized she could see the two leaders’ interactions as they both turned to face the trail ahead. They’d ridden all night. Looking first behind her, she found only the grim and grizzled faces of two black-haired soldiers; she quickly turned back in her saddle.

  Glancing to the side, she discovered the experimental man riding alongside her. Thin brown hair and blue eyes reminded her of her dad, but there the resemblance ended. Where her father was overweight and weakened from congestive heart failure, this man’s muscles bulged with strength and vibrancy. He rode easily upon the tall warhorse. The worn hilts of two swords peeked over his shoulders rocking forward and back, riding easily, as he did in the saddle.

  Though she’d never tried it riding before, Jade slowed the cyclone spinning around him. Focusing intently on the stormy gray cloud, she forced his rotation slower. The three images inside rotated leisurely around him. A great silver sword encrusted at the hilt and pommel with prismatic diamonds, a disembodied brain, and an empty vial stoppered with a black cowl rotated around him… past her father. One of her dad’s images had changed but there was no doubt now.

  The rotation tugged hard at her mind. Jade let it go. Released, it twisted back into the gray cyclone spinning around him.

  Shocked, she gaped at her dad as he turned toward her. Glancing forward and backward casually, he tightened his grip on her reins and coaxed his warhorse ahead, closing the distance between them and the general, only to slow abruptly before getting too close. “So you know,” he said, looking to both sides of her but not at her.

  His words sent joy racing through her, but he wished to keep it secret, as he should. The general would separate them the moment he found out. “How is it possible, Dad?” Her excitement grew when she called him that.

  “Try not to smile, Jade. Remember we don’t know each other, and you’re my captive until I can get you safely out of here.”

  Jade curtailed her excitement with difficulty while watching the two riders ahead. At differing intervals, first one, then the other, shot a glance behind them keeping a watch on the two of them. She kept her voice down. “I’m trying, Dad. But you’re so healthy and so… young.”

  “The hooded man’s power as an alchemist is great. His potions have enhanced my physique. Let’s save that for when we escape. Until then, these men cannot find out about us. Now that I’ve finally found you, I don’t intend to let anything separate the family any longer, Astura is too dangerous. Where is Crystalyn?”

  For all her excitement, Jade grew worried. “I don’t know. We were escaping a fire from the southern outpost built upon a great falun tree when the maimwright grabbed me.”

  Her father shifted in his saddle, seeming to keep a lookout into the trees ahead and behind them, before settling on the trail. “That must be the group Kara Laurel went after.”

  “Who’s Kara Laurel?”

  Her dad glanced surreptitiously behind him. “Never mind for now, it just means we have less time to get away than I thought. We leave tonight, prepare for it.”

  “Dad, Crystalyn has changed here. She and I have found—” Jade clamped her mouth closed when General Karnas suddenly turned in his saddle, gazing first at her and then at her father. Signaling the men behind them to close the gap, he watched
until satisfied with their compliance to his command. Jade could hear the dull thump of added hooves not far away.

  Jade forcibly kept her eyes ahead, a frown of terror fixed upon her face, she hoped. Captivity had just gotten better and more frustrating at the same time. Her father—her too young father—was planning to help her escape, but she couldn’t ask him anything. Blurting out questions would put them both at risk. Something she’d do everything in her power to avoid now that they’d found each other.

  UPTURNED SOIL

  The sentry died with barely a gurgle. Camoe lowered him to the ground, a soft thump the only indication something was amiss. No one would hear the soldier’s lone death; the guards on either side had been slain just as quietly. He waited until Peers and Long Draught coalesced out of the shadows beside him. He did not have to look behind to know Kerna’s wonderful vision perused the area they had cleared. Girth, with his axe, would keep watch over her and their planned escape path.

  Moving hunched over, they slipped through the meadow without a rustle in the spongy grass. Over halfway to the two darkened tents lit by flickering torchlight from stands placed on each side of the entrance, they came upon two soldiers in the third sentry ring lying dead, side by side, in the grass. Tarn lay on his belly not far away and gazed at the tents. They dropped to the ground beside him.

  Camoe kept his voice low as he took in the surroundings. “Have you seen a young woman yet?” The armored shoulder of a soldier stood out prominently beside the smaller of the two tents. Three people conversed beyond a fire too far away to overhear.

  Tarn turned to him sharply. “We came here after a young woman?”

  The astonishment in Tarn’s voice surprised Camoe. “Yes, she has auburn hair.”

  “There is someone else here you know well with that color of hair. Look past the fire,” Tarn whispered.

  Leaning toward Tarn, Camoe looked, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness of the moon’s light. A hooded man with silver bands on his bare biceps spoke with a man and a woman. The silver bands identified the Alchemist though he had not met the man in person. The Green Writhe had transacted with the man in the past, not all of it good.

  The other man he did not recognize, nor would he forget if he had—his thinning hair, going white, seemed out of place for his toned physique.

  The woman shifted her demure stance; the shadowed light of the moon illuminated one side of her features with a blue-white radiance. Camoe’s breath escaped him.

  He did know the woman well, though he was not certain how he felt about it. He should have deduced where Kara Laurel had stolen off to after Maialene… though he decided it did not matter. Not now, not with the mission. “Stay focused, look for a young woman, find her,” he hissed, his voice more abrupt than he intended.

  Kara Laurel suddenly dashed away from the two men. Briefly, Camoe wondered where she was going.

  The two men strolled to a fire where several soldiers stood in a line leading to a large cook pot. The two men did not stand in line. The soldier ladling from the kettle grabbed the bowls from the nearest waiting soldiers and handed them to the two men.

  An armored soldier strode away from a large tent, going over to the hooded man without deviation. Camoe’s breath caught in his throat. Jade followed him. Thank Onan, she still lives.

  The soldier moved Jade in front of him, and after a time, he relinquished his hold on her arm. The tall man with thinning brown hair escorted her back toward the tent she had come from, placing a bowl in her hands before they moved out of sight.

  Camoe touched Tarn lightly on his back, signaling a withdrawal. Tarn did the same to Peers, and Peers to Long Draught. As one, they crawled backward away from the torchlight, melting into the shadows to a place out of sight of the activity of the fire and away from the unwanted eyes of the sole remaining guard at the large tent.

  Camoe drew them all close, huddling together. “Our target is the largest tent closest to the guarded perimeter where they will keep her after she is fed.” He gripped Tarn’s shoulder lightly. “Go now and use the next half bell to cut a quiet entrance in the back, it should be less bright with moonlight by then. Do not go inside until I give you leave.” Tarn slipped from his grip and faded away.

  “Long Draught, you shall have to wait at midpoint. Find a depression and become a false layer of meadow grass. Should you have no choice, remove any sentries coming to relieve those that were on patrol, those half-spears you carry should do the work quietly. With luck, we still have a couple bells before that happens. I want each and every one of us well away from here, by then.”

  “Leave it to me,” Long Draught said. He too, slipped into the shadows.

  “Peers, we shall wait a quarter of a bell, permitting Tarn a head start, any concerns?” Silence answered his question. His respect for his companions grew. All of them were aware the longer they remained inside the enemy encampment, the greater the risk of discovery, yet no one had bothered to voice the concern. They were professionals and better followers than he deserved.

  Time passed excruciatingly slow.

  Finally, Camoe judged they had waited long enough. “Let us begin, Peers.” Slipping into the darker shadows whenever possible, Camoe moved from grass clump to grass clump, depression to depression, crawling whenever the blanket of dim light was unavailable, most of the way. The moonlight grew brighter. While the light of a full moon made for great viewing of the enemy, it also left him feeling exposed.

  Fifty steps from their destination, he stood, walking boldly to it from a rear angle. Trampled, likely intentionally, the lack of cover left him little choice. Peers stood and strolled with him.

  They made it to the relative safety of the shadows at the rear of a tent. Tarn allowed the curved piece of canvas he had cut to fall on the ground as soon as they arrived. Light brightened the ground around the cut.

  Drawing his sword, Camoe signaled Tarn to wait ten counts and dove inside. After rolling to his feet, it took but a moment to know he was alone. Two candles mounted on the center pole illuminated every corner of the square, fair-sized tent.

  Peers sprang inside behind him, a dagger clamped in his teeth.

  Disappointed there was no Jade, Camoe padded to the tent flap and looked out. The blackness outside was too deep to see through. Then the darkness shifted as someone raised the tent’s flap and stepped inside.

  Camoe wrapped his arm around the person, his sword pressing against a thick neck. “Make a sound and you die,” he whispered, putting his lips close to a black hood. The man froze, presumably feeling the metal of his sword at his throat. A silver armband glinted by candlelight as the man dropped his arm to his side. “Go to the back of the tent. A single false action shall result with your death.”

  Taking delicate steps, the man complied, stiffening a little when he noticed Peers standing guard by the hole. Camoe shoved him over to it, a vague idea forming in his mind. “Tarn?” he called with a whisper.

  The reply came just as quietly from outside the tent. “I am here.”

  “We are coming out but not alone. Watch for treachery.”

  “Aye.”

  Camoe glanced at Peers. “Stay close. If he makes a sound or deceitful move, silence him, even if you have to take me first.”

  Peers answered by pulling both swords from his back sheath, holding one in each hand, to add to the one he had clamped his teeth over.

  Satisfied, Camoe lowered the man to his knees and pushed him through the hole. Forced to put one hand awkwardly on the man’s back, he kept his sword somewhat in place as they crawled through without incident, glad to be on his feet again. The man seemed to want to cooperate, which made Camoe suspicious.

  The candlelight leaking from the tent vanished as Peers came through.

  An elbow slammed into Camoe’s stomach taking his breath and hunching him slightly forward, gaining the hooded man a small opening between Camoe’s sword arm and his neck. Wedging a hand between them,
the hooded man slipped from his hold and dropped an object to the ground at Tarn’s feet where it broke with a soft splotch.

  Sucking in a breath, Camoe rammed the hilt of his sword into the back of the hooded man’s head as he turned to flee. He collapsed in a heap.

  Coughing quietly, Tarn bent over the fallen man. “He is breathing but unconscious.”

  Camoe cursed low in his throat. “We cannot kill him and leave him here; I need him alive until he reveals the anomaly’s location.”

  “What anomaly?” Peers whispered.

  “I mean the young woman,” Camoe said softly. “Both of you get under his arms. I want it to seem as if he has swallowed too much drink. I shall take the lead, attempting to make it appear we are tossing him into the forest to sleep it off.”

  Tarn and Peers lifted the comatose man to his feet and put a shoulder under each side. “That is a flimsy assumption if we are seen,” Tarn said. He coughed lightly.

  “Then pray to Onan they do not see us,” Camoe said, striding boldly back the way they had come. His two men followed, dragging the hooded man between them. They were two of his best, as close to friends as he could have with the way life had set him on the solo path after losing Maialene.

  Keeping the tents between them and the fire, they made it halfway across the meadow before losing the cover the tents provided. Without breaking stride, he risked a glance behind. No one stood at the campfires, and the soldiers guarding the large tent had vanished. What is going on? He did not need to know; as long as no one had discovered the man missing, whatever was happening provided a welcome distraction. Still, the faster they got to the trees the better.

  Long Draught stood up almost under his feet, materializing tall, as if an aspen tree had sent a stalk nearly seven hands high shooting from the main root. The four-bladed half-spears he carried sheathed on his back added to the effect. “The burden shall lie with me from here,” he whispered. Bending at the waist, he folded the hooded man over a shoulder and dashed for the trees. Camoe and his two companions raced to keep up. As it was, they slipped into the evergreens at the same time, well behind Long Draught.