A Rage in the Heavens (The Paladin Trilogy Book 1)

by James A. Hillebrecht

  With that, Darius swiftly mounted Andros and headed off at a full gallop, the great warhorse clearly rejoicing to be running again.

  Tallarand watched him disappear down the forest road, his eyes thoughtful.

  “Yes, my friend,” he said softly. “We may indeed meet again.”

  * * * * *

  The light step at the beginning of the journey had already changed to a heavy tread.

  Shannon shivered again and hitched her pack higher on her shoulders, trudging resolutely forward. After emerging from Decision Rock, they had walked doggedly eastward on the forest road, hoping to reach a village, an inn, or some fellow traveler who might be able to give them directions, or at the very least tell them where they were. But they had not met a single soul. Still, they had made good time, their youth and the excitement of the trip whittling away the miles, and on that first day, they had whistled to the spring birds, laughed at the sunshine, and munched away at the fresh tidbits from Jhan’s pack. Now the tidbits were gone with the sunshine, and the forest road had turned to mud which clung to their heels, making every step seem like two.

  The remains of a cold spring rain was still falling on them, small drops combining with occasional large drips from the overhanging branches to alternately tap and slap them with a wet chill. The rain had started pouring yesterday afternoon, quickly soaking everything, working its way inside their clothes and packs despite their rain slickers, and pushing up from the drenched ground to invade their shoes and freeze their feet. The downpour had guaranteed there would be no dry kindling available, and no fire had meant a cold supper and damp, clammy bedding, making for a bad night and worse morning.

  The good humor and optimism of the start of the journey had given way to a contagious case of the grumbles.

  “Three days of it!” Jhan snorted. “This mud is thicker than Father John’s pudding. We don’t have any idea where we are or where we’re going, slogging through the mire on foot to catch a mounted man moving in haste. And one mounted on Andros yet, the fastest steed ever to set hoof in the forest. We might as well be walking backwards for all we’re gaining.”

  The wet was having an even more serious impact on Jhan. Damp socks had chafed away at his feet, leaving him with a couple of blisters which they had bound carefully last night, and so far today, he had kept up manfully, showing no trace of the pain he must be feeling. Both of them changed socks at every rest time, placing the wet pair inside their shirts to dry them with the body heat raised by the walking; it was an old woodsman’s trick that was serving them well, but it also made them feel even clammier.

  “You say we’re making for a city?” Jhan asked. “What was its name?”

  “Alston’s Fey,” she replied, the name etched into her memory. “My father had specially marked the town on his map.”

  “You don’t really expect to catch up with him there, do you?”

  “There or another town,” she replied stubbornly. “I’m sure we’ll find someone to help us.”

  “Help us! Two young country bumpkins rolling into some tough trading town wearing forest clothes and a layer of road mud,” Jhan said with a shake of his head. “They’re going to be licking their chops at the sight of us. Wandering through a big city, arriving days behind your father, even if he bothered to stop there in the first place. And your solution is to walk right up to strangers and ask if they’ve seen a single warrior passing through.”

  “My father has a way of standing out from other people,” Shannon answered confidently. “We’ll find him.”

  “Sweet Mirna willing and the winds don’t rise,” said Jhan, quoting the old proverb.

  Shannon’s patience was nearing an end, but as she began to make a tart reply, her eye was caught by a splash of bright color moving through the trees. She stopped and looked, Jhan’s eyes being drawn to it as well. It was a large bird, about the size of a small hawk, but its outlandish mixtures of reds, yellows, and oranges marked it as a clear stranger to the predominantly green woodlands. The bird was coming down the eastern road, the direction in which they were going, and it was flying poorly, virtually going from tree to tree. However, when it seemed to spot them, it covered the remaining distance in one sprint and settled in a branch directly in front of them.

  “Auck! Save the Peddler!” the thing screeched, shocking them both, its words surprisingly clear. They had heard tales of speaking birds, but they had seemed like children’s stories, fables as reliable as cloud castles and fairy gold. Yet a moment later, it spoke again. “Save the Peddler! Auck!”

  The creature waddled a little ways along the branch and then back again, obviously agitated.

  “What do you think it means?” Jhan asked, his eyes warily on the bird.

  The creature flapped its wings and flew to a tree across the road and a little farther down.

  “Auck! Save the Peddler!” it repeated and flew to another tree further along as if leading them back in the direction from which it had come.

  “I think it wants us to follow,” said Shannon slowly.

  “Do you think we should?” wondered Jhan. “It could be a clever trap.”

  Shannon half-snorted at the thought. “More likely somebody’s in trouble. Come on.” She took a few steps towards the bird. “Lead on.”

  “Auck!” the thing cried, and took off down the path, pausing on a limb a little further down to look back and make sure they were still following. They quickened their pace and were easily able to keep up with the bird. The creature led them some distance down the road before suddenly darting off to the side into a slightly clearer area of woods, dominated by a few, large trees, spaced well apart.

  As they moved cautiously off the road, Shannon saw that the bird had perched in a tree where the ground seemed to drop away sharply. They walked carefully to the edge and saw it was a muddy slope rolling down to a ravine filled with mud, rocks, and uprooted trees. There, half-buried in the debris, was a large, square-built wagon.

  “Help!” came a weak cry.

  “Auck! Save the Peddler!” the bird said again, its meaning now perfectly clear.

  The same rain which had made their night so unpleasant had caused the mud slide, apparently carrying the wagon and its occupant down to the bottom of the ditch. Jhan tested the ground a few times and found it still soggy but not likely to give way again.

  “You wait here in case I get into trouble,” he said to Shannon, and she nodded in agreement.

  He then half-walked, half-slid down the slope, coming to rest beside the wagon. He shoved away one small tree and a couple of rocks in order to reach inside, and the sound of items being shifted indicated that the victim had also been buried beneath the wagon’s contents. A moment later, Jhan emerged, and with him was a chubby older man wearing only a long gray nightshirt. Jhan reached back into the wagon and pulled out what appeared to be a pair of trousers. Together, they managed to struggle back up the ravine to where Shannon could reach them and offer a hand.

  “Praise you, friends!” the man gasped. “Praise you now and again! I feared I would die down there in that cold black muck!”

  He had a curious manner of speech and a strange accent that didn’t belong to any part of the forest they knew. He made no effort to introduce himself, and after a moment’s thought, Shannon decided that was probably the wisest course.

  “I was trying to sleep out the storm last night, when suddenly it felt as if giants had grabbed my poor wagon,” the man said, accepting his trousers from Jhan and unabashedly donning them in front of Shannon. “I was turning and rolling as if falling down into the Pit itself, and then it stopped and I was buried beneath all my wares! What a terrible joke for a merchant to be nearly killed by his very livelihood!”

  The man clearly had had a frightening experience, but Shannon suspected that he spoke in the same breathless manner about even common events.

  “Well, at least you’re alive and unhurt,” she said. “And you can thank this marvelous bird for your rescue. Withou
t him, we never would have found you.”

  “Auck!” cried the bird, but the man paid it no attention at all.

  “Unhurt? Unhurt!” he said. “My horses are gone, fled with the storm! My goods, my wares, my wagon! Unhurt? Friends, will you not at least help me to get my wagon back up to the road?”

  Shannon looked dubiously down to where the heavy wagon lay at the bottom of the ravine.

  “Your wagon’s still half buried in the mud,” Jhan said. “All three of us couldn’t budge it even if we carried all the contents up the slope first.”

  “And I fear we haven’t the time,” Shannon said shortly. “But you can come with us to the next village to get help if you wish.”

  “You can’t abandon my good wagon like that, friends!” the peddler cried anxiously. “My entire life is lying at the bottom of that ravine. If I go to the nearest village for a horse, it will surely be looted by the time I get back.”

  Shannon and Jhan exchanged glances, realizing the peddler was probably right. Based on their own experience, the nearest town was likely to be days off, and there was no guarantee that he would find people willing to travel all the way back here to help.

  “If you could but help me get the wagon and goods back to the road,” the man continued, “I could pull it myself. It would be a long draw, but at least I’d have all my wares when I reached town.” His eyes narrowed shrewdly as he eyed their already thin packs. “Perhaps we can come to some arrangement?”

  Shannon glanced down at the wagon, thinking of all the things that might be stored there. Provisions, new shoes for Jhan, weapons. Perhaps a map.

  “Jhan…?” Shannon asked, their minds working alike.

  The youth let out an annoyed sigh and began to study the wagon, the slope, and the surrounding woods. He walked over to a tall oak not far from the edge of the slope and patted its thick trunk, looking carefully up at its limbs. After a moment, he turned back to the peddler. “How much rope do you have in your wagon?”

  “A league of rope!” the man shouted with enthusiasm. “Rope enough to circle half the forest if need be!”

  “Let us see,” Jhan answered skeptically.

  They tumbled back down the slope together, and the man unlatched one of the bins on the side of the wagon to reveal a large cache of coiled rope; far less than a league, of course, but apparently more than enough for Jhan’s need.

  The youth nodded slowly and said, “I make you no promises. The wagon is damaged and half-buried in the drying mud, so we can’t be sure it will stand the strain. But if this works, you’ll be back on the road in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll stand the hazard!” the man said, his eyes bright. “My old wagon shan’t fail me, I know!”

  Jhan nodded again and took the end of the rope and tied it securely to both the body of the wagon and the front axel. Then he threw the remains of the coil around his shoulder and labored up the slope to the foot of the great oak. Here, he tied the other end around his waist, placed his axe in his belt, and, with a woodsman’s skill, began to climb the thick body of the tree. He paused at one point and cut away one small branch, letting it tumble to the ground before continuing to climb. Shannon frowned, wondering what he was about.

  Nearly half way up the tree, Jhan took the end of the rope, climbed out on a thick limb that pointed away from both the slope and the wagon, and tied it to the center of the branch. Once it was secured, he moved back to the trunk, took a safe position, and began to cut away at the base of the limb.

  “What in wonder…?” the peddler said as he stared up. But Shannon was already beginning to understand, and she grabbed the peddler’s arm and moved him safely off to the side.

  Jhan’s axe was flying with long skill and youthful strength, and it wasn’t long before the limb was shivering with every blow. There was a creaking, a jerk, and then a crack, the limb half-falling, still attached to the tree. Four more blows from the axe was all that was necessary, and the heavy limb plummeted downwards. But it didn’t hit the ground. The rope caught on a thicker lower limb, the heavy severed branch jerking to a halt and giving the rope a pull to match the strength of a giant.

  Shannon and the peddler looked down at the wagon, and they were overjoyed to see that the sudden jerk had broken it loose from the mud. It was still at the bottom of the great ditch, but the branch was pulling hard on it, supplying much of the muscle they lacked.

  “Come along,” said Jhan as he scrambled down from the tree. “The oak won’t do all our work for us.”

  He went to the wagon and tied two more ropes around it, carrying the ends back up the slope. One he handed to Shannon and the peddler, and the second he took himself. On the count, they all three pulled hard, and with surprising ease, the wagon rolled back up the slope. It reached the top before the branch hit the ground and thus rolled alarmingly towards the oak for a moment, but the next instant, the limb was on the ground and the muddy wagon was safe and sound.

  Immediately, the bird flew from the tree limb to a perch right beside the driver’s seat, clearly delighted to be there.

  “Praise be to all the Gods!” cried the Peddler. “I am forever in your debt my friends, forever and a month! Such cunning, such skill, such…!”

  “Praise your luck and your good wagon,” Jhan answered. “But I fear we can’t waste any more time here. There’s still hours of daylight ahead of us.”

  “I’d like to take one of these lengths of rope with us,” Shannon said, coiling the long piece she held in her hands. “And we could make good use of a map of the road ahead.”

  “Certainly! Certainly!” he cried, scrambling up into the front of his wagon. “I have just the thing, a wonderful map of all the Southlands, drawn by the master cartographer, Machlar, himself!”

  A moment later he produced a small leather cylindrical case and opened it to pull out a detailed map much like the one Darius had had.

  “We are here,” the Peddler added casually, indicating a point on the far western edge of the map. “Barely a day’s walk from the Green Cliffs.”

  Shannon smiled at Jhan. They had what they needed.

  The Peddler caught the look and added hastily, “But wait, wait! There must be something more I can do to repay you, some other small token I can offer. My wagon is at your disposal!”

  Again, they exchanged glances, eyeing the jumbled contents of the wagon.

  “Well, we could use a sword,” Shannon said cautiously.

  “A sword?” repeated the peddler. “A sword! Why, of course! I have blades from every part of the continent, weapons that…”

  “Auck! Show them the Widow!” the bird suddenly said. “Show them the Widow! Auck!”

  “Silence, bird!” the man said harshly.

  “The Widow?” repeated Jhan slowly. “What does the bird mean?”

  “He’s only a stupid animal,” the man said, brushing it off. “Pay him no heed. Here!” He reached under the seat of the wagon and pulled out a gleaming scimitar, offering them the hilts. “Here is a weapon to be proud of, a weapon to be feared! I purchased this in the bazaars of the Spice Islands years ago, and have kept it close ever since. But to settle my debt to you, I am prepared to part with it for a mere 10 dinars. Far, far less than I paid for it in the bazaars.”

  “You expect us to pay for it?” Shannon asked in surprise.

  “Only a token payment, only a token,” the man assured them. “I will have to buy a new horse, make repairs to the wagon, deal with all the breakage within. A few dinars to keep the wolves from my door.”

  Shannon took the proffered hilts, but she could tell immediately that the blade was of mediocre make and had a poor balance. A glance at Jhan was all the warning he needed.

  “I would like to know more about this Widow,” he said firmly.

  “Auck! The Widow!” cried the bird. “Auck!”

  “You are much too inexperienced, my young friend,” the peddler said. “It would be of no use to you. Now here…”

  “The Widow, ple
ase,” Jhan persisted.

  The Peddler looked from one to the other and read the determination in their faces. After a further moment of hesitation, he reached far back into his wagon and pulled out something draped in a blanket of black velvet. Carefully, he drew back the folds, and both youngsters gasped at the dark light which poured forth. The peddler pulled the sword free of the blanket and held it up for all to see: a gleaming ebony blade with blood red hilts.

  “I found this at the side of a dead warrior in the midst of the bodies of a dozen savages,” the man said softly. “The warrior had been felled by a blow from behind, for none could face the fury of his sword. I named it the Widow, and I buried the warrior with full ceremony as the only payment I could offer for it. Behold its power!”

  The Peddler walked over to the fallen branch which had helped to raise the wagon, the branch which had taken Jhan two dozen axe blows to cut. He raised the sword and brought it crashing down, the sword flashing as it severed the thick body with a single stroke. Jhan gasped in open astonishment, but Shannon found herself nodding, remembering the power which she had sensed within Sarinian. With a weapon such as this, she might be a real aid to her father.

  “How much for the sword?” she asked abruptly.

  The Peddler looked at her in some surprise, slowly shaking his head. “I’ve never really considered selling it. I…”

  “We’ll give you twenty golden dinars,” Shannon said, trying not to sound absurd.

  “Twenty crowns?” repeated the Peddler in disbelief. “For such a weapon?! You must be mad! The Widow is worth thousands, perhaps tens of thousands!”

  “Wrapped in the back of a stranded peddler’s wagon, it is worth nothing,” Jhan countered.

  “And to a starving man, it’s worth less than that,” Shannon added.

  The peddler opened his mouth to protest, glanced at his wagon and at the sword, and thought better of it. Finally, he said with a trace of bitterness, “You have me at your advantage. But come, my friends, be fair. A weapon such as this. Surely you can see that it would be robbery even at a hundred crowns.”