Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  Again, Carro nodded.

  “They’re Baoill’s, without a doubt,” he concurred. “But what in the Lifegiver’s name they’re doing this far east, I haven’t got a bloody damn clue. Scouts, maybe?”

  Raz shook his head. “Not likely. Scouts would travel lighter.” He kicked the iron plating on the closest man’s armor for emphasis. “And they’d have supplies, maybe even mounts. These don’t strike me as the ‘scouting’ type, anyway…”

  “You’re not wrong there,” Carro mumbled, looking suddenly more troubled. “Kregoan are among the more savage of the tribes. Other clans are better suited for reconnaissance. So again: what the hell are they doing here?”

  Raz hesitated. For a moment he thought of not telling the Priest what he was afraid the men might have been. He considered every possibility that came to mind, starting with deserters and ending with the most obvious choice. Deserters would have run from the sound of people, rather than towards them. Patrols—if the mountain men were pushing units this far into the Woods—would have had more men and been better stocked.

  These two, though, were paired, armed, without supplies, and carrying torches…

  “Carro…” he said slowly, looking north up the path, along the route they were meant to take. “I think these are sentries.”

  XXII

  “LAOR TAKE ME…” Carro choked in a shocked whisper.

  Raz considered muttering his own curses, but decided to let the Priest have his moment. In truth, he was more concerned with taking stock of the scene that lay beneath them, sprawling out from the base of the hill whose topmost lip they now crouched behind, a nightmare bathed in a bright orange glow beneath the trees.

  Hundreds of tents were staked sidelong across the broken terrain of the Woods, thrown up in any space that allowed for their width. They extended as far as Raz could see between the trees, illuminating the Arocklen with the dancing light of cooking fires that made the icy canopy above gleam and shimmer like a ceiling of solid crystal. Smoke hung thick in the air, an angry haze creeping across the forest when it was unable to escape upwards. The smell of the last ten-day, usually the crisp, clean scent of the evergreens and snow and wind, vanished in a curdling stench of fire and leather and piss.

  And through it all, little more than black silhouettes against the flames, dozens on dozens of men were moving about the camp, their voices and the sound of their day’s endeavors winding their way up the hill with ease.

  “He’s here,” Carro breathed in horror from beside Raz. “He’s here.”

  “He’s not.”

  The Priest blinked and looked around at Raz, who hadn’t taken his eyes off the camp.

  “What do you mean?” the man demanded in near desperation. “Are you not seeing what I’m seeing? That’s the Kayle’s army! He came east. Lifegiver’s tits, why would he—?”

  “He’s not here,” Raz insisted, reaching up to pull back the furs of his hood, freeing his ears. “At least, I don’t think so. And that’s not the whole of his army. I don’t think there can be more than a thousand down there, probably less.”

  He couldn’t get a physical count, given that the tents stretched further into the Woods than he could make out, but it was the noise that gave it away. The camp raised a ruckus, true enough, but it was the din of hundreds, not thousands. Raz had heard the voices of thousands, listened to them ringing out around him as he stood among the dead in the pit of the Arena.

  Even among the Woods, the full mass of Gûlraht Baoill’s army would have existed in a constant, ebbing roar of sound.

  “Not here?” Carro asked softly, clearly having trouble wrapping his head around everything he was seeing. “But then… Where—What is…? I don’t understand… Why are they here?”

  At that, Raz frowned. Of the pair of them, he didn’t remotely think it likely to be he would be the one to have a better idea of why the Kayle would have a contingent of his greater force camped along the base of the Citadel’s mountain path. He didn’t have a damn clue what the man was thinking, or if this was even part of Baoill’s plan at all. Maybe this was a mutinied unit, pressing further eastward in order to escape the wrath of their former commander. No… too much of a coincidence. With hundreds on hundreds of square miles, it was just too unlikely such absconders would just happen to have settled along the bottom of the stairs. It was all the more likely they had been ordered here, ordered to set up camp, almost like they were—

  It hit Raz like a bolt in the head.

  “It’s a siege,” he muttered in realization. Carro turned to look at him again, confused.

  “A-A siege?” he asked hesitantly, not comprehending. “I’m not follow—”

  Then he stopped, eyes growing wide.

  “Oh no… the stairs. They’re trying to block the stairs.”

  “Is there another way to or from the Citadel?” Raz asked him quickly, peering back down at the camp.

  Carro shook his head, his voice strained as he spoke. “Cyurgi’ Di was initially built as a fortress to guard against some unknown enemy come from the Tundra, to the north of the mountains. There would never have been a need for a secondary escape if they were only defending the one direction.”

  “The Citadel wasn’t built by the Laorin?”

  “No.” Again, the Priest shook his head. “No one is actually sure who built it, but it wasn’t the faith. We’ve just occupied it for as long as there’s been written record.”

  “And whoever built it never thought they’d need to defend from the south,” Raz muttered, finishing the thought. “This is bad. It’s definitely a blockade. This must be some kind of advance guard, meant to keep the Laorin in place until the larger body of the army arrives.”

  “But why?” Carro hissed, his good hand shaking as it clung to the steel of his staff, lying on the ground before him. “Why attack the Citadel? What good does it do them?”

  Possibly quite a lot, Raz thought privately. If everything Carro had said about the Laorin was true, then crippling the faith would be like cutting the head off the snake. Eliminating the influence of the Lifegiver—and his followers’ ability to band the valley towns—didn’t seem like such a terrible move to make…

  Maybe that’s all this was. Instead of a vanguard, maybe this smaller force was merely a detachment of the army on assignment, aiming to disrupt the activities of Cyurgi’ Di.

  Still… something felt off…

  “Stop thinking strategically,” he told Carro. “Is there a reason the mountain men would want to starve the Laorin out? Any reason.”

  Carro, surprisingly, snorted.

  “If we’re ignoring military value, then there are a thousand and more,” he said. “Most of the tribes are devout to their Stone Gods. Many despise the Lifegiver, and those that spread His light even more. Syrah once told me that Baoill threatened her life when—”

  For the second time, Carro froze. This time his eyes were blank, drawn back to some memory, some fragment of thought as something clicked.

  “What?” Raz demanded in a hiss. “What is it?”

  For another moment Carro said nothing. He just stared emptily at Raz’s chest, piecing together whatever was going on in his mind.

  “Syrah,” he finally said. “They… They might be here for Syrah…”

  That sent a chill down Raz’s spine he neither liked, nor fully understood. Carro’s words were simultaneously frightening, confusing, and infuriating.

  He didn’t completely know why, but Raz was sure of one single, absolute fact: he’d be damned if the mountain brutes thought they could lay a finger on the white-haired woman.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why would they be after her?”

  “I’m not sure they are,” Carro said, indicating the camp with an awkward shift of his broken arm. “Not personally, at least. But Baoill… Baoill might very well be. After Syrah returned from the Vietalis Ranges, she told us stories of the Sigûrth. She said even more in the letter she sent after the fall of Harond. It was part of her
plea for us to return home…”

  He paused, still gathering his thoughts.

  “Baoill hated her,” he said uneasily. “He despised the work she was doing, accused her of attempting to rob the tribe of its culture, the people of their gods. Syrah even said he suggested more than once she be made a prisoner, and treated to the old ways of execution.”

  “Which were?”

  Carro turned slightly green and shivered. “Too unpleasant to describe. Needless to say, if the new Kayle has a grudge…”

  “He may act on it, now that he has the means,” Raz said with a nod. “Two birds with one stone.”

  Carro looked confused at that, and Raz sighed.

  “He pays back an old enemy, and handicaps the one institution that may prove to be a major threat to his crusade in the immediate future,” he explained, voicing his earlier thoughts. “If the Laorin really have—or had—the ability to marshal the remaining valley towns, then by marching on the Citadel the Kayle has the opportunity to get his hands on Syrah and remove a majority of the faith’s influence in one go.” He looked back down at the camp. “All in all, I think your Kayle is one clever bastard.”

  Carro continued to watch him, the look on his face equal parts impressed and terrified.

  “Apparently he’s not the only one,” he muttered after a time, finally looking away.

  “Hmm?” Raz asked, not taking his eyes from the milling throng of mountain warriors moving about their cooking fires, shouting to each other and shifting as patrols and sentries came and went.

  “Nothing,” the Priest said shakily. “But I’d like to get moving. Staying here makes me nervous.”

  “Is our goal still the stairs?”

  Carro stopped, half stooped as he’d been making to stand and turn away from the firelight.

  “Of course,” he said, his tone almost accusing in his surprise. “Did you think there was another option?”

  Raz said nothing for several seconds, still not looking away from the glow of the camp.

  “It’s going to be risky,” he spoke up finally. “This changes things, Carro. Getting to the stairs isn’t going to be a simple matter of finding them and making the climb. There are bound to be men watching the base of the path, and even if we do get past them, what have we accomplished? Nothing more than getting us stuck in the Citadel with the rest of your people. It’s not the smart play. We would be better off turning around and making back for Ystréd.”

  “Ystréd?” Carro demanded shrilly, looking suddenly furious. “Ystréd? And what are we going to do there? How does turning and running help those trapped atop the mountain?”

  “How does getting trapped up there with them help them?” Raz retorted. “It doesn’t. We have nothing with us that will be of use, no information that might solve their predicament. They must know they’re trapped, by now. They know the Kayle’s men are waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. But if we turn around and make back for the valley towns, we do have information. We can tell them that we think the Kayle isn’t actually pushing south. We can tell them they have time to prepare, to gather an army and launch a counterassault before Baoill even has a chance to make for Ystréd. We could—”

  “Leave my people to die,” Carro cut across him in a harsh, hissed whisper, his face still set in fury. “You’re suggesting we abandon the faithful, suggesting we sacrifice them to their fate in order to buy the rest of the North a few months of time to prepare.”

  Raz was taken aback. “That’s not what I’m saying. I just think we—”

  “No, you’re not thinking,” Carro spat. “You’re not thinking at all. If we leave now, we sentence the men and women of the Citadel to nothing more than a delayed death. By the time we reach Ystréd again—in the full freeze, mind you—contact the valley towns—again, in the full freeze, which I’ve already told you is difficult enough as is—and marshal them to our banner, it would be summer at minimum. And that’s if Talo had been with us!”

  He calmed suddenly, as he spoke his lover’s name. For a moment, pain and sadness replaced anger, and his body seemed to sag as his gaze fell to the ground. When he spoke again, it was with a softer, kinder tone.

  “I’m sorry, Raz. I know you don’t have an ideal grasp on all the players in this game, so this time I need you to trust me. I understand the logic of your idea, but it won’t work. There are too many factors, and I don’t have the pull Talo did with the towns. The best we could hope to do is get back to Atler and have her petition Ystréd’s High Court to reach out to the other municipalities, and you can be damn sure no one will answer—at least not in time.” He sighed. “I know there’s probably nothing we can do. I know it’s a fool’s errand, but I know the only life I would be saving by turning around now is my own. Worst of all—” he looked up at Raz, his face pained but composed “—I know I can’t do anything alone.”

  Raz watched him carefully, taking in the man and processing his words. There was truth there, Raz conceded. He didn’t know all the factors, and he just couldn’t imagine Carro letting emotion cloud his judgment in this crucial moment. If he said Raz’s plan was scrap, then it was scrap. If he said leaving now was equivalent to condemning the residents of the Citadel to their fate, then he meant it.

  And that, Raz told himself as the dreamt image of a dancing woman crept among his thoughts again, is unacceptable.

  As the self-preserving wedge of himself screamed in frustration, Raz knew he had made his decision.

  “Alright,” he said simply. Carro blinked in surprise again.

  Then he looked suddenly hopeful.

  “Al-Alright?” he asked tentatively, eyes brightening.

  “Alright,” Raz repeated with a nod. “I’ll help. Moon knows I’ve been dodging Her long enough as it is. Might as well keep gambling. But it’s one thing to knock out a pair of distracted sentries in the half-dark, Carro. It’s another entirely to take on whatever guard the commander of this—” he waved down at the tents “—has undoubtedly posted. We’re already going to have to go around the edge of the camp to even get to the path. After that… I have no idea what’s waiting for us, but whatever it is there’s a good chance we’re going to have to fight our way through.”

  Carro’s face lost its hopefulness, looking suddenly green again, but when he opened his mouth to speak, Raz cut him off.

  “Don’t bother asking me not to kill, Carro. I’ve done your Lifegiver one favor already today. I intend to do him—and Talo—another by getting your neck up to the Citadel in one piece, if I can manage it. To do that, I can’t keep playing the saint. I’ll do what needs doing, despite your hounding.”

  “You can’t,” Carro pleaded. “Please, Raz. You can’t. They’re people. They’ve been granted life by something far beyond you and I. They have families. Children. Please. You ca—”

  “I can, and I will,” Raz growled, edging away from the hill and getting to his feet, lifting Ahna back over his shoulder from where she’d lain crossways on the ground before him. “You can’t win this one, Carro. I know they have families. I know they have children. If that were enough to stop death—even enough to stop cruelty—then the world would have no use for people like me. Maybe it would be better for it, and maybe not. Either way, you have a choice. I’m not giving you an ultimatum. It’s simply the reality of your situation: either you accept my help in every form it comes and we have a shot at actually making it to your High Citadel, or we turn back.”

  “Before you say anything,” he continued quickly, interrupting Carro’s angry spluttering as he started to reply, “consider the consequences: if we make it up the stairs, you have a chance to help your people. If you’re thinking of leaving me here, ask yourself if you can get to the path on your own. If not, then it’s worse than if we had made for Ystréd again. I die—likely to this damned cold—you die, and the Laorin die in their fortress on the mountain, with no chance of anyone sending help. Personally I think we’re all fucked either way, but that’s my business.”r />
  Carro’s face was deathly white. “Th-they could send letters,” he stuttered. “Syrah and the council can plead for assistance on their own! I’m sure they have already!”

  “And to what end? You’ve done your best to convince me that Talo was the only true solution the Laorin had to this mess. Talo is gone, Carro. I’m sorry, but he’s gone. So what good will inked words from some nameless Priest or Priestess do your people now?”

  Carro was quivering. Not out of anger, Raz knew, but out of horror. He was at an impasse with his own ethics. Whatever direction he chose, death awaited. It was the inevitable difficulty of holding true to a code, of wielding iron morals.

  And it had been the undoing of more than one man who’d been unable to bend his rules in order to make a decision.

  Carro seemed to be fighting that exact struggle. He was shaking, a permanent expression of hopelessness imprinted across his features. He looked practically on the very edge of going mad, like he’d been handed a blade and told to murder one of his children.

  After a while, Raz decided to throw him some rope.

  “Your lover had to make a similar decision, not so long ago, Carro,” he said kindly, taking a step forward. “In Azbar. Talo had to choose in the space of a very short time whether he would lend me—me, the bloody, savage Monster of Karth, the murderous Scourge of the South—his aid, and the faith’s aid. He had the same struggle, with the devil of my persuading logic sitting on one shoulder and the godly words of Kal Yu’ri on the other. He had to make a choice, and do you know what he said?”

  Slowly, Carro shook his head, his blue eyes shining in the orange glow reflecting off the icy canopy above them.

  “He said, ‘Until the day comes when He sees fit to end all wars, the Lifegiver is not unaware that violence will exist among His flock.’ He spoke of the difference between a life taken, and a life given, and said that if any were to ask him what he would prefer—the death of less or the death of more—then it would be an easy answer to give. He said that, when your Lifegiver saw fit to give him the opportunity to save those he could, he would take it. Even if that opportunity was me.”