Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy)

by J. S. Morin

  The prisoners were lined up along a wall of the hold, ten men in all, and aside from the one whose uniform Denrik had stolen, all looked in relatively good spirits.

  “So were all the arrangements to your liking?” he asked, knowing that the men were in no position to object at that moment.

  “Yes, sir, Captain Zayne. We did everything just as your mate instructed,” replied the apparent leader, a lieutenant in the Acardian Navy.

  “And you told no one of our arrangement? It would not do for anyone to find out, you know,” Denrik said.

  “No, sir, everything was kept quiet. We shall be rescued once you run the ship aground, and we will tell everyone that the great Captain Zayne was too much for us.” The man winked at Denrik.

  “Excellent,” Denrik said with a grin that was not the least bit reassuring to the sailors. He turned to Jimony. “Cut their throats and throw them to the sharks. It is better than they deserve.”

  Denrik turned to head back up top.

  “Wait! What about our deal? I swear we told no one!” the prisoners pleaded, eyes wide with fear.

  Denrik spun about, a hard, ruthless look in his eyes. “The next one who talks gets thrown in with a belly wound … to be eaten alive!”

  He stomped up the stairs, leaving an uncomfortable Jimony to finish the gruesome chore.

  Jimony looked from the blade in his hand to the helpless prisoners who cowered before him. He was beginning to understand why Captain Zayne was known as the Scourge of the Katamic.

  Chapter 11 - Old Habits

  By mid-morning the next day, Brannis’s troops met up with the main road that led down from the Cloud Wall Mountains and forked south into the forest toward the Kadrin town of Illard’s Glen and north toward Megrenn. It was a well-cleared path of dirt, wide enough for two wagons to pass each other comfortably. In days gone by, it was a busy thoroughfare, as it was the primary land route between the heartland of the Empire and the far-flung settlements west of the mountain range. That was before the seas had been well-secured by the Kadrin fleet and shipping lanes had been plagued by privateers, making them a risky venture; wagons were thought to be the surest way for merchants to see a return on their investments. Though still in use, the road was now quiet much of the time, and so it was when Brannis led his men onto it, grateful to a man for a straight trail to follow, after days of tripping over roots and crashing through underbrush. The mild upward grade the whole way was the only downside for the weary bunch.

  With his route clear before him, Brannis’s thoughts moved onward to what lay ahead of them. The road would lead them up into the mountains along an old pass, cleared by magic hundreds of winters before. Lingering constructs of aether were supposedly still protecting the pass, their silent and invisible presence reassuring them of safety from avalanches and collapsing rock faces.

  Of course, Brannis thought, I would never notice if it was not here until we were buried beneath a pile of rubble.

  He briefly considered asking Iridan to feel his way into the aether to see whether they were still protected, but decided against it. After Iridan’s last attempt to draw aether, Brannis hesitated to give his friend another chance to re-injure himself.

  The thought of asking Rashan to do the same thing lingered a trifle longer before he finally decided against that as well. There was something he did not trust about the odd little hermit, and despite every indication to the contrary, he could not shake the feeling that Rashan was a potential threat. He had taken care of Iridan when he collapsed from self-induced aether burn. He had allowed Brannis and his men the meager comforts of his forest home. He had—or at least claimed to have—sent a message to Kadrin for them. He had accompanied them quietly, helpfully, and unobtrusively for days, and seemed to be getting on companionably with Iridan, whose health he was still careful of. But the sums just did not add up in Brannis’s mind.

  Should a forester, living off the land and being out of doors constantly, not be more … forester-like? Should his body not be hard and tough? Rashan looked as if a rowdy chipmunk could topple him. Should his face not be unshaven, weathered, tanned? Rashan was as fair as a sheltered noble lass of eight winters age, and no hairier, it seemed. Should his clothes not be dirty and worn? His homemade garments were certainly not fashionable but they looked newly made and undamaged; even Brannis’s own clothes seemed worse for wear after just a few days travel through Kelvie Forest. Should a man cut off for winters not be awkward among strangers? Brannis had instructors at both the Imperial Academy and School of Arms who were less eloquent, less sure of themselves. No, Brannis decided to forge onward into the mountains, trusting that either ancient magic, or luck, would see them safely to their destination.

  The destination that Brannis had most immediately in mind was a small fortress, kept up by the Kadrin military, which guarded the crossing of Two-Drake Chasm. The pass had gotten its name in the early days of the imperial expansion, when a group of mountaineers was sent to survey a route for a path to be carved through the Cloud Wall Mountains. During the expedition, two brothers, Carlen and Mortimer Drake, fell to their deaths in a chasm that split the eventual main route through the mountains. Finding no better route along safer ground, the fortress was built to guard a drawbridge that allowed the Kadrins to control access through the pass. During the height of the pass’s use, the fortress became a strategic bottleneck for the defense of the heartland, giving the Kadrin merchants quick access to the west, and providing the Kadrin Empire a good income from taxing foreign merchants for its use. However, just like the pass itself, the fortress had fallen from prominence, though not entirely from use. A small garrison of Kadrin soldiers manned it and guarded the drawbridge, and it was these soldiers Brannis was counting on for support.

  “Brannis,” called the hermit quietly from just behind, “might I have a word with you?”

  Brannis had not heard Rashan come up behind him, and was a little startled, as it was rare for him to leave his place beside Iridan, taking up the rear of the march.

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “Iridan seems to be much improved. By tomorrow, I expect he will be free to call aether again without harming himself.”

  “Well, that is good to hear.” Brannis sighed with relief.

  “Yes, and I think that means I have about played out my time with you. You should not need me any longer, and I should be heading back to tend my gardens. I shall take my leave of you once you are safely on your own side of the fortress.”

  “Who said anything about a fortress?” Brannis asked, giving the hermit a sidelong glance.

  For, indeed, he hadn’t mentioned it to his men nor had he overheard anyone mentioning it to Rashan.

  “I did not grow up in the forest here, Brannis, you know that. I told you I was born in the Empire. I passed through that fortress autumns ago. It is an open road still, you know,” Rashan replied a bit impatiently, as if he expected Brannis to have known better.

  “There you are!” came a call from behind them. Iridan was hastening up to join Brannis and Rashan as they walked side by side at the lead of the line. “I turn my attention away for moment and it is like you have disappeared.”

  “I just had to speak with your commander for a bit,” replied the hermit, smiling and looking a bit amused.

  “Oh,” said Iridan, sounding just a touch hurt at being left out. “Anything I might be interested in?”

  “Just that I will be parting ways with you all when we reach the fortress that guards the pass.”

  Iridan stopped in his tracks. The rest of the Kadrin contingent kept right on walking, and the young sorcerer was left gaping for a moment as he was slowly left behind.

  “What?” Iridan said.

  Brannis turned back to see Iridan jogging to catch up to Rashan, who was facing straight ahead and grinning to himself as he kept pace with Brannis. Iridan got ahead of both of them and stopped in the road, blocking the hermit’s path.

  “What do you mean you are leaving? Y
ou cannot just leave us, just like that.” Iridan snapped his fingers in the air.

  “I have a flower garden that will die without my care. It may already be dying, as I have neglected it these past days. It is a delicate species and requires a great deal of attention. Besides, you should be safe once you have reached more of your own men. That, and by tomorrow, you should be able to gather and hold aether without it hurting. You will not be needing me.”

  “Flowers? You cannot be serious!” Iridan shouted. “You have been away a long time; come back to the Empire with us. I can hear it in your voice every time you mention it, that you miss it there.”

  Rashan’s eyebrows rose slightly as this.

  “And how can you know I will not need you, that tomorrow I shall be able to use aether without any problem?” Iridan asked. “You are not even the same sort of sorcerer as we have in the Empire, you said so yourself.”

  Brannis was a little surprised at hearing this, but the effect on the hermit was more pronounced.

  “No, I am not,” Rashan returned evenly, his expression stern and his nearly colorless blue eyes flashing in anger. “But I do know what I am talking about. You would think you could show more respect for my knowledge, seeing as it saved your life the other night. Yes, I quite think you would have died had I as little understanding as you are now attributing to me. But anyway,” and with an abrupt change, the hermit’s mild tone had returned, “we ought not pass the day just standing here. Onward, eh?”

  The entire group had halted when Iridan had blocked Rashan’s path and forced him to stop, and all had been watching the whole scene unfold. No one seemed to know quite what to make of it, though, and everyone, including Iridan and Brannis, seemed a bit ill at ease. There were certainly none among the soldiers who would shed a tear at the strange hermit’s parting.

  The rest of the trip up the mountain passed in uneasy silence. Rashan seemed to be unaware of the discomfort he was causing to those around him. Brannis and the soldiers had found his sudden small burst of anger troubling, especially now that he had apparently admitted he was a sorcerer of some sort—though they were all quite suspicious already after the bird-messenger incident, despite never having seen him perform anything that looked like spellcasting. Iridan, on the other hand, seemed to be nursing a case of hurt feelings. It seemed that he had grown rather fond of the hermit and had been quite grateful for the care he had received from his injury. But, no doubt, he could not help but feel rejected and neglected when Rashan had snuck off and told Brannis of his coming departure, and not told him first.

  The mountain road was in exceedingly good condition with a low grade and smooth surface. Brannis hoped it was evidence of a healthy aether construct at work—wards buried under the dirt, down in the bedrock, and in the side of the cliff faces themselves—keeping things in order and preventing the hundreds of tons of rock overhanging the pass from falling on them. With the lack of voices in the air, the only sounds to be heard were the creak of leather boots as they trudged along the rock, the clatter of the soldiers’ gear, and the sound of the wind moaning between the mountains.

  The view nearly made up for the miserable company his fellows were being, Brannis thought. As they ascended, he could see the treetops of Kelvie Forest, green and lush, with no sign of the turmoil of battle and marching armies. Brannis had looked back often, wary of signs of pursuit, or of the movements of the main goblin force, but the goblins were far too clever to give themselves away by, for instance, creating great smoking bonfires at their encampments.

  The men were in reasonably good spirits as they approached the safety of the garrison at Two-Drake Chasm. It promised a rest from pursuit and a good meal, and possibly horses for making the final leg of their journey back to the Empire proper in good time. And thus it came as quite a shock when they finally came within view of Tibrik, the fortress that Kadrin kept garrisoned to defend High Pass.

  The garrison itself presented a drab, grey wall of fitted stone to those who approached from the western half of the pass, weather stained and ancient looking. The top of the wall was crenelated, and arrow slits broke up the monotony of the otherwise unadorned facade. A drawbridge of iron-bound timbers blocked the gate, and its absence precluded any attempt at crossing the chasm on foot. What was out of sorts was that the fortress should have been adorned. Thin iron rods jutted out along the top of the wall, meant to be hung with the red and gold of the Kadrin flag. There were six of them in all, and all were bare.

  It was not a comforting sign.

  In its heyday, the garrison housed upward of fifty soldiers and could still accommodate stopovers by merchants and other travelers. The whole fortress had bustled with activity as a miniature trading town along a lucrative road. Even in modern times, it should still have been at least manned to the point of having a lookout to have hailed them by now. That the Imperial Colors were not flying was an even worse sign. Brannis hoped that nothing horrible was about to happen.

  “Hello there,” Brannis called across the chasm as they reached the point where the drawbridge should have ended, were it to be lowered.

  “… there … ere,” his voice echoed back to him.

  “I am Sir Brannis Solaran, Knight of the Empire. I say, is there anyone on duty?”

  “duty … uty.”

  He waited, but there was no reply from inside.

  “I guess we will have to work out some other way of getting across. Iridan, do you think you are up to doing a little heavy lifting?” Brannis asked, turning to the sorcerer, who had been conferring with the hermit in hushed tones off to the side a ways.

  Brannis was not sure he cared for how close the two of them were becoming. It was not jealousy as such but more of the caution of an older brother, worried that his younger sibling was getting involved with unsavory associates. Best friends though they may have been, Brannis had always been sort of watching out for Iridan as long as he had known him. Brannis’s musings were cut short, though, as a reply was finally forthcoming from the fortress, though not the type that Brannis had really hoped for.

  “Fire!” someone from inside shouted.

  “Fire … Fire … ire.”

  The air erupted in arrows, and bows thrummed a deadly tune as the garrison sprang from its slumber and attacked. The chasm was not particularly wide, and there was no cover worth mentioning. It was quite an efficient and forthright defensive position; it was constructed in a time when builders were advised by generals rather than merchants and noblemen. The archers who were manning it now were also no fools. They had waited and watched, and knew who the leaders of Brannis’s group were. Incidentally, Brannis’s proclamation of his own rank may have helped confirm who was in charge.

  Of all the arrows fired in the initial volley, there were only three men picked out and targeted: Brannis, Iridan, and Rashan. Brannis felt the arrows pound the breastplate of his armor and deflect off, thankful for the excellent, runed armor his family was able to afford. He wished he had made Iridan wear the conscript’s armor he had been issued. The sorcerer stood out enough already without drawing more attention to himself, and was a sitting duck.

  Instinct took over as Brannis and the soldiers scrambled back down the pass as quickly and as low to the ground as they could. Brannis had the presence of mind, as well as the foolhardiness, to hang back and cover his men’s retreat, trusting that his armor would turn aside any arrows that struck the enchanted metal. Trying not to think of all the areas his armor did not fully cover and what an arrow in them might feel like, he nevertheless spared a glance back toward Iridan, ready to go back if he showed any sign of having survived the barrage. What he saw made his blood go suddenly cold.

  Standing slightly in front of Iridan was the hermit, Rashan. His arms were outstretched to one side, as if he had reacted to block the arrows aimed at the sorcerer. In fact, arrows had pierced Rashan’s hands and one arm, apparently leaving Iridan unharmed. Both men still stood. As Iridan came to his senses and headed for safety down the
pass, Rashan simply stood there, bringing his hands in front of him. As he turned a bit, Brannis saw several arrows sticking out of his chest and stomach. It seemed as if what had just happened somehow failed to register in his head and had not told him to fall dead.

  Instead he clenched both fists and swatted an arm across his front, shattering arrow shafts. A somewhat confused and less organized volley of arrows followed from the fortress, as the archers slowly started to realize that something was very wrong. Six or eight arrows ought to have been enough to fell a slightly built young man, the brighter ones surely reasoned. The more slow-witted of the archers rapidly caught up with those forward thinkers when their second volley of arrows hung briefly in midair, then dropped harmlessly into the chasm.

  Not everyone in the fortress that day had been assigned to the wall with a bow and arrows, so not everyone had been privy to the sight of the unkillable hermit and his arrow-stopping magic. So those uninformed individuals were unaware as to what was befalling their captured fortress until the screaming started.

  Brannis and his men stood there mutely, unsure whether to be confused, relieved, or horrified; most of them went with all three. Someone may at some point have uttered something to the effect of “What in the name of all that is holy is going on in there?” but it went unanswered.

  After shrugging off several mortal-looking arrow wounds and halting a second volley mid-flight, the hermit had leapt across the chasm and landed on top of the wall, then disappeared from view into the fortress. It looked so simple, but Brannis had not heard any magic being used, and there was no hand-waving or finger-waggling that he would have recognized as proper spellcasting. Rashan simply shot across the gap as if fired from a ballista.