“That sounds nice,” Lois said. “The simple things in life really do matter. I never thought we’d see the day that we’d leave the Fortress. The silence out here is blissful.”
“It is,” Abner said. “I miss Mal now that I’m going to be no longer training under him. It’s sad knowing that our lives are headed down separate paths. But this is what I’ve been working towards my entire life.”
“Just remember I’m here with you, Ab,” Lois said rising from the crouched position she was in, stretching towards the stars. “Damn, I could use a change of clothes.”
Abner looked discreetly at her long frame, the firelight reflecting off of her blonde hair and bounced off the subtle curves in her armor. She looked down at him after cracking her neck from side to side.
“They definitely don’t make this armor too comfortable, but it’s all we really have.” Lois removed one of her pauldrons, dropping the shoulder guard to the ground. “We’ll need a bath soon, no doubt. Maybe we should go to a city at some point.”
“Do you need help getting that off?” Abner asked.
“No, I’m good, I’ll finish in my tent,” Lois said. In the firelight Abner saw her lips curl into a smile. “Just because we’re out of the Fortress doesn’t mean we’ll end up making love under the stars. We’re in for a big day tomorrow so you better rest up. See you at dawn, Ab.”
Abner’s face went red as he felt a stiffness growing between his legs. Lois turned away, ducking into her tent. He moved closer to the fire, spreading his hands over the flames, his mind turning to the wishful thought that Lois couldn’t see straight through him. Abner doused the fire, before going to his own tent.
Abner woke with smoke in his lungs. Coughing, he rolled out of his tent finding the rest of the mountain covered in a smoky haze. Seconds later Lois emerged from her tent, coughing, and looking out over the plains.
“This isn’t good,” she said.
“Someone’s been burning the grasslands overnight,” Abner said. “This can’t be the Alilletians, but there’s nobody else that would do this, especially so close to the Fortress. We have to get back and warn Mal.”
“No, not a chance, I’m not losing my chance at my Aksah! That’s freedom for us, Ab! If we go back we lose it!” Lois said.
“If we don’t go back and get everyone out of the Fortress or at least warn them, they’ll all be dead! How do you think Mal will give us the Aksahs if he dead?”
Lois recoiled as if Abner had slapped her. “You’re right, we need to get back and do something!” She ducked into her tent, tossing each piece of her armor outside, rushing to dress herself in it. “But if these fires have been burning all night, how are we going to get there in time to do something about it?”
“Whoever did this won’t know where the Fortress is. If we retrace our steps we should find it quickly enough. Then we can get people onto the boats and they can cross the Bulldrag and flee!” Abner madly threw his armor on. “Let’s go!”
The apprentices grabbed their weapons and set off down the mountain, legs shaking with nerves. Malvrok had trained them to the peak of their physical ability, but even now the apprentices were tired from the long run. It was late afternoon as they slowed, entering the tree line, on the lookout for any possible foes that lay waiting in ambush.
“Where do we go from here, Ab?” Lois asked pressing up behind him. “All the trees look the same and we don’t have a compass.”
“Just keep heading west and we’ll hit the Bulldrag at some point,” Abner replied.
“For fuck’s sake, Goldenleaf!” an extremely loud voice rumbled in the distance. “Why the fuck are we out here anyway? What exactly did Graytooth tell you we were doing?”
Abner looked at Lois wide-eyed. The voice carried with it a heavy Alilletian accent. Lois spotted a rocky outcrop and pointed Abner to it. She ducked behind it a second after he did. There were no sounds of alarm from the giant men nearby. They’d obviously not heard the two warriors make their break for cover.
“Graytooth told us to find any sneaky bastards that manage to get past the wall he’ll have around the Hunter’s Fortress,” Goldenleaf said.
Abner raised his head over the rocks, taking note that a Hunter was inside the Fortress. Through a gap in the trees he saw two Alilletians, draped in fur, heading towards them. Each man was larger than Torvak, carrying a battle-axe on his shoulder with thick brown hair that hung around his neck.
“So he wants us to kill people that might be innocent, while he’s only got a vendetta against the man that stole some necklace from him? You do know that includes women and children more than anything?”
“You’ve got too much of a conscience, Laron. I don’t know why Graytooth paired me with a commoner like you,” Goldenleaf said.
“You nobility are arrogant,” Laron said. “I bet I could beat you in a fight any day. Did you want to try it?” He turned to face his partner stopping less than thirty feet from the warriors that lay in hiding.
“Lois, get your bow ready,” Abner said drawing his own, sliding an arrow into position. “They’ve stopped.”
“I’ve had enough of your shit, Laron,” Goldenleaf said. “Now leave me in peace, I’m going to take a piss.”
“Whatever you say,” Laron said.
“Now!”
Goldenleaf paused as he found himself staring at a boy with a longbow raised at him. Laron turned just in time to see Lois rise and release, the arrow on a collision course with him. He tried to avoid it, but was too slow. Lois’ broad arrowhead took Laron in the face, bursting through the back of his skull sending blood splattering across the trees.
Abner looked into the eyes of Goldenleaf. He hesitated on seeing a real person at the other end of his arrow. As the Alilletian realized what was happening, he roared and slid his axe off his shoulder. Before Abner could fire his arrow into the giant man, Lois had fired again. Her second arrow tore through his throat.
Abner looked at her awestruck. She dropped the bow, her hands covering her face and sobbed.
“I just killed two men! After all this time that’s what killing a man was! That was so fast! Malvrok never told me how you felt!”
“Hey, hey,” Abner said pulling her to him in a tight embrace. “It’ll be alright, I promise. You did what you had to do. I’m lucky you were here. I couldn’t shoot him. You’re braver than I am, Lois. We’ll get through this.”
“I know,” she said looking up, tears running down her beautiful angelic face. “But you didn’t do it. Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Abner said. He caught his hand in a strand of her hair. “But it’s over and we’re going to be okay. The Fortress still needs us.”
“Ab, everyone we have ever known is in there. What do we do if it falls?”
“Lois, I’m here with you, we have each other,” Abner said. “We trained for this. Nine years of our lives with Mal everyday has prepared us for this. We’re more than ready. Mal had faith in us and our abilities. We’re going to survive.”
29
Graytooth
Lois let go of Abner and walked over to the dead Alilletians, pulling her arrows from their bodies. They were both bent, unable to fly again. Abner looked at the dead men, his heart pounding, feeling like it was ready to come out of his mouth. With a quivering hand, he ran his fingers over the men’s eyes, laying them to rest.
They moved on further into the forest, now desperate to reach the Fortress though still careful of their movements. At last they burst out of the trees two hundred feet from the two walls. No men lined them. Every post lay abandoned. Aside from the lack of people and the open gate, the Fortress seemed normal, completely unscathed.
“We’re too late,” Abner said.
“I don’t hear anything,” Lois said.
“They’re dead.”
Lois’ eyes lit up with a fire burning inside them. “You know how I said we shouldn’t go kill Alilletians? I think now is the perfect time,” she said, rising from the bushes.
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“Wait!” Abner pulled her back down.
An Alilletian appeared on the wall, covered in his white furs. Lois slid her bow off her back and slowly drew an arrow. No other men were visible on the wall and Abner nodded at her, giving her the all clear. With one sharp motion, the Alilletian hit the battlement, Lois’ arrow finding its intended mark.
The apprentices rose together, Abner drawing his sword, sprinting low towards the first wall. They peered around the corner, horrified at what they saw. The streets of the Fortress were bloodied. Corpses of their friends and people they knew, were scattered everywhere. A pair of Alilletians marched away from the warriors and Abner felt a burning rise in his chest.
“Shoot the one on the left.”
Even with his heavy armor, the Alilletian’s didn’t hear him coming. Malvrok’s design had enabled them to move with little to no noise. Lois fired, her arrow piercing through the Alilletian’s back just as Abner leapt upon his friend. They went down in a tangled heap, the Alilletian crying for help as Abner stabbed wildly into the man’s back with his sword. Fresh blood ran thick across his blade as he rammed it repeatedly into the Alilletian with a wild frenzy.
The pair hit the ground and the Alilletian went limp. But Abner continued stabbing wildly at the corpse. He only stopped when he felt a hand grab his. Lois stood behind him, tears swelling in her eyes at what the Fortress had become. Abner rose from his first kill, the adrenaline slowing as he regarded the destruction the giant men had caused.
He gulped as he saw the bloody bodies strewn before him. Their mangled limbs somewhere off to the sides, hacked to shreds by the Alilletians. No man, woman or child had been spared by their brutality. He could taste the death in the air and his legs shook as he recognized the few faces that hadn’t been mutilated.
“We’re too late,” he said.
“Pick it up,” Lois said. Her voice was shaky as she tried to focus on the only living thing in sight. “You’re going to need it again. We have to see everything.”
They ducked into a side street, sliding from cover to cover, careful to avoid detection. As they neared the bakery, they heard voices nearby. Six Alilletians walked towards them and the young warriors threw themselves behind several wooden crates. A brief prayer tumbled from Abner’s lips, as he hoped the men wouldn’t find them.
“There’s a field down past the biggest house where Graytooth is dealing with the executions. We have orders to burn everything, once they are done,” one Alilletian barked to his comrades as they strode past the concealed warriors. Lois shot a look at Abner, he raised an eyebrow in return.” Graytooth doesn’t want anything touched until he learns the location of the amulet from the Hunter. If you find it, you alert me at once. Graytooth will pay whoever finds it a large bounty.”
“They’re going to burn the whole place down,” Lois said. After the men had faded from sight. “Our home!”
“We need to get to the training field and quickly,” Abner said.
Malvrok’s house was damaged more than most inside the Fortress. Its roof now housed several large boulders, no doubt lugged up by the Alilletians to try and collapse the ceiling in on whoever defended it against them. The glass doors had been broken in and a dozen men lay in ruins, torn apart by axes. Lois planted one of her arrows outside the door, letting any survivors know she had been there. She was the only person inside the Fortress to carry that particular type of arrow, each with a small red stripe on each fletching. It was as if she was leaving a breadcrumb trail for others to follow.
Their footsteps echoed off the wooden floors and none of the dead men inside stirred. Two Alilletians were impaled on the walls, spears run through their chests. There was activity outside on the field, Alilletians returning triumphant from the archery range. They carried the heads of three men raised on pikes.
Abner dived into cover in the kitchen, Lois following him a second later, swiping at several objects that had been left on the bench. Without a word she showed them to Abner with an excited look. Two were Aksahs, one with a red tie and its partner, black. Abner took the Aksah with the black tie, clipping it into his hair, while Lois adjusted the red in her own. They were finally Sword Lords in name.
Lois’ attention then turned to the third item. She turned it in her hands and examined it. The amulet was a plain grey colour and Abner looked at it unimpressed.
“If that’s what the Councilor is here for, give it to me,” he said.
“Why? It obviously holds some value,” she said.
“We need to hold onto this until we find out what the story is behind it,” Abner said.
“I suppose you’re right,” Lois said handing it over.
Abner went to leave but he was rooted to the spot as he saw the white chest plates of the Alilletian Vanguard breakthrough the crowd of vicious marauders. Between two of them a prisoner was being dragged forwards with a sack over his head. Until now, Abner hadn’t noticed the blonde Alilletian that sat on one of the wooden benches that had been ripped out of the ground, picking his fingernails with a battle-axe.
Abner watched as the giant blonde man rose from his chair, placing the axe onto his back as the prisoner was tossed before him. A second axe completed the set in a large X shape. He stood shirtless and wore only the straps that held the axes in place. From his demeanor, he appeared to be the Alilletian leader the one the others referred to as Graytooth.
Darkness rolled over the training field and it began to rain. The large drops of water splashed into the blood that filled the field. Every Alilletian raised the back of their furs. The heads of animals, ranging from wolves to bears, decorated the field, keeping the rain off their faces. Graytooth turned to the sky and held open his arms.
“Even the gods weep at the downfall of the mighty Malvrok!” he said. “Where is the man?”
“Here, Councilor,” the two men holding the blind prisoner said, dragging the almost lifeless man forward before removing his hood.
Malvrok could barely raise his head to stare the Alilletian Councilor in the eyes. His own had been beaten nearly closed, the sockets blackened. The top of his head had been split open, blood rushing down onto his face. His lips were swollen and a tooth stuck to his lip, dangling from his bloodied gum. Abner could only imagine what the rest of his body looked like underneath his clothes.
“Ah, Malvrok,” Graytooth said. “It’s so good to see you again after all these years. Tell me, how did a life in hiding suit you?”
“Graytooth,” Malvrok said. “You’re looking well after what my men put your army through just now. I would have thought you’d gotten dirty.”
“Still as talkative as ever,” Graytooth said. “Guess there’s only one thing we can do to sort that out. Hold him still.” Without warning the Alilletian’s huge knee rammed into Malvrok’s nose once, breaking it with a loud snap. Malvrok cried out and in pain, more blood running onto his face. “Now you’ll fit in well with the residents of the Lock.”
Malvrok’s head dropped at the mention of the Lock, the massive island prison lying off the coast of Sauria. It was where the most hardened criminals were sent to die. Most men lasted less than a month behind its cold steel bars.
“I assume you want something from me, Graytooth,” Malvrok said.
“Of course I do,” Graytooth said circling Malvrok like the man was a wounded animal. “You have a very valuable artifact in your hands that you stole from me. You remember the one, don’t you? A grey amulet, nothing too flashy.”
Abner looked at the amulet he had clutched in his hand. He looped it around his neck, stuffing it underneath his armor.
“Aye, I stole it, but I don’t have it any longer.” Malvrok paused to cough up more blood. “I sold it. Traded it for some valuable metal to make my swords from. The merchant has probably sold it on by now. It could be halfway across Taagras. I find it’s really impossible to keep track of small things.”
Graytooth swung a meaty backhand at Malvrok, connecting with the side of his face. “Who
did you give it to? Answer very carefully, my friend. Bring the other prisoners forward!”
From amongst the assembled Alilletian crowd, four prisoners were dragged forward. Two of the men were guards on the wall that Abner knew only by sight; however the other two bore much more importance to Malvrok. One was Darris. The other, Talia. Both of them beaten as badly as Malvrok had been.
“Let them go,” Malvrok said.
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Graytooth asked. He sounded like a large bear. “Malvrok, I know you like it when the odds are stacked against you, but this time your day has run its course. Now tell me who you gave the amulet to.”
“No.” Malvrok spat blood onto the Councillor’s face.
The Alilletian roared as if he had been wounded, unleashing a massive kick, connecting with Malvrok’s face, knocking him flat on his back. “Pick the piece of shit up and make him watch!” He waited until Malvrok was facing the prisoners before drawing an axe. “This is what you get for not answering me when I order you to. Now who dies first? Your lovely wife? Or your second in command? Choose!” Graytooth said flinging spittle at Malvrok.
“Leave them alone, they’ve done nothing wrong,” Malvrok said.
“So your wife then,” Graytooth said, holding the axe against Talia’s throat.
“No, don’t do this,” Malvrok said.
With an almighty roar Graytooth swung the axe high, bringing it down into Darris’ head, cutting through to his spine in a single blow. Abner cringed as he saw the blood and fleshy remains spray over everyone in the area. Graytooth kicked the body backwards, triumphantly pulling his axe out of Darris.
“Now are you going to tell me who you gave the amulet to?”
“Fine, he was some young man. I met him once and his name was Abner, I’m not too sure. He was in his early twenties.”
“Duncan, wasn’t there a child that Malvrok taught named Abner?” Graytooth asked. “Aye,” Duncan Northgate said. Abner seethed as he watched the traitor step through the Alilletian ranks unscathed. “Malvrok treated him like his son.”
The Toldar Series Box Set Page 20
