by AC Cobble
They drank their fill from the stream then started again. Without speaking about it, the whole party had decided to keep going the entire night. It wasn’t a decision they would have made without complaint months ago. King’s Sake, it wasn’t something they could have done months ago. When Rew had first embarked with the younglings from Eastwatch, they couldn’t have hiked more than two or three hours without collapsing in a heap. Now, they were going to hike the entire cycle of the sun. Hopefully.
In the dark, he could see the silhouette of Raif. The big fighter was shuffling, trying to stretch his legs. His breath was long and slow. Not quite panting, but he was wearing out. The lad might have the constitution of a bull, but he had heavy armor and a giant sword as well. He was built for fights, not flight. Raif would keep moving, though. He wasn’t going to admit he was tired before his sister did.
Rew grinned, thinking of when they’d first armed themselves in Eastwatch and how he’d warned the boy about how impractical armor and a huge sword were on a long journey. Some things didn’t change. Rew adjusted his pack and twisted his back, feeling his aching muscles and hearing the crack of his spine. Some things did change.
He looked up, staring at the night sky as the sporadic clouds churned slowly in front of the stars. He hadn’t seen the moon yet, but at least there was some break in the clouds. They might get a little light to see if the soldiers were still coming.
He waited until he saw constellations he recognized through the cloud cover and fixed a point to the north in his head. They’d been going the right way, but in his time in the wilderness, he’d learned that even an unfailing sense of direction had a tendency to fail at the worst times. It was always wise to double-check which way you were headed.
“Everyone doing all right?” he asked quietly.
The others murmured responses, nearly whispers. Rew didn’t think their pursuers could be close enough to hear them over the wind across the plain, but then again, he hadn’t thought a group of armored soldiers could have kept up with them, either. He worried what it meant that there was a spellcaster back there with unusual robes. He worried that Zaine thought the man looked like Valchon. What would a child of Valchon’s be capable of? More than the father?
For hours, they trod across the plains, steady steps eating ground, no one speaking, all lost in their own thoughts, or their own struggles to keep up in Raif’s case. To the fighter’s credit, he never complained, just kept trudging onward, one foot in front of the other.
Sometime hours after midnight but hours before dawn, Anne whispered an offer to heal any hurt they’d acquired. They all turned her down. They’d long since broken in their boots and fashioned their legs and hips into powerful tools to keep them going. They’d also learned that the empath’s healing came at a cost to her. Their own pain may be lessened, but it was because Anne took it into herself. The empath sometimes seemed an endless well that could be filled with untold suffering, but they’d grown to love her and would spare her that burden when they could.
The children—he shouldn’t call them that anymore—had grown. They accepted that the journey would pain them and that they didn’t know what lay at the end, but they persevered. They trusted Rew and Anne to lead them to something worth their effort and that the ranger and the empath had their best interests at heart. It was a new stage of development, of maturity, but it wasn’t the final stage. They’d learned to work and to trust, but eventually, they would learn their work might not mean success and that trust could be broken.
Would it be? Rew adjusted his pack so the leather straps wore on a different section of his shoulder. He hoped he did not fail them. He didn’t want to, but in that long, dark night, he had to admit that he might. Rew would ask much of Cinda in the end. He would ask it all of her because that was what it would take to face the king. She would do it. She’d said she would. She would do it, but it was asking much of Raif as well to allow his sister to take those final steps. The cause was just, but the cost… The cost would be terribly high.
With such thoughts weighing on his mind, a counter to the weight of his steps, Rew greeted the sun. For an hour, they’d been traipsing through the murky pre-dawn gloom, wondering if it was getting lighter or if it was just their imaginations. Rew had trained his body for years in the wilderness to keep going, but the others did not have that foundation. He could see it in their eyes as true light finally spilled over the horizon. They were moving, but their minds had slipped into a sort of purgatory between wakefulness and sleep.
Except for Cinda. Her eyes flickered with ethereal green. She smirked at him when she caught his look and shrugged, as if to say that there were some positives to her nocturnal restlessness. A few hours’ sleep was all she needed on a normal night, and Rew wondered how far she could push herself if she tried. Her body would need to stop soon, but she was growing to the point she didn’t feel that need. He could see her weariness in her footsteps, but it would take time for her to recognize how she’d changed. No matter who you were, walking a day and a night took its toll, even if you didn’t notice it.
They turned, letting the sun bathe their faces as it crested the distant grasslands, but no one spoke. They kept walking.
When they reached a small rise in the hills, Rew told them they could catch their breath, and he trained his spyglass behind them. The way back looked much like the way ahead, just gently undulating grasslands. And two hundred of Prince Valchon’s copper-armored men, led by two men in purple robes. Rew studied the spellcasters, but he didn’t have Zaine’s eyesight. He knew without seeing, though. He could feel it. Those purple-robed men were the spawn of Valchon.
“King’s Sake,” snapped Rew, thrusting the spyglass back into his pack.
“We keep walking?” asked Anne.
Rew was silent for a moment, thinking. The soldiers were still about an hour behind them, but they’d doubled their number in the night. How had the two companies found each other in the black, and how many more of them were wandering the empty terrain? How had they kept on the party’s trail? Rew, confident in his abilities but self-aware enough to admit the truth, didn’t think he could have done the same.
Retrieving his spyglass, the ranger turned a slow circle, taking advantage of the slight height their hill had over the rest of the land around them. There was a smudge, which he thought might be the air above the city of Olsoth, and nothing, and then a glint of copper. He could barely see them, as the sun was rising behind them, but another company of Valchon’s men were out there. There was nothing else. The land was empty. The men had to be searching for Rew and the others.
“North, and we need to make good time,” said Rew.
Leather creaked as they adjusted their packs and the harnesses which held their weapons and then the low thump of boots on soft ground.
The sun was rising slowly off the horizon, and Rew was constantly looking behind them and to the side at Prince Valchon’s men. His heart fell when he saw the group to the east adjust course and take an angle that would cut the party’s lead in half.
“They walked all night?” complained Raif, tugging at his armor. “Pfah. Who does that?”
No one answered and pointed out that they’d also done it. Raif, through his sour mood, was voicing an insight that must have occurred to all of them. Who did march all night long? How could the soldiers behind them even know who they were, and if they did, how had their captain motivated them to continue the slow and steady pursuit for so long with no rest?
Soldiers were used to training and brutal conditions, but Valchon’s soldiers were also used to the barracks. It’d been since the last Investiture when full-scale war had broken out, so none of the men following them would be veterans, used to the punishing toll forced marches took on their bodies or the alternative when fleeing after a losing battle.
But somehow, those men had kept coming. Eagerness for a reward? Fear? Rew didn’t know. All he could do was to keep looking back, which was why Zaine was the first to spy a th
ird group of soldiers in front of them.
“King’s Sake!” barked Rew, adjusting course to head away from the soldiers in the distance.
“Rew, aren’t we…” began Anne.
“Walking directly toward Olsoth now?” responded the ranger. “We are, but what else is there to do? If we turn any other way, these men will be able to cut a diagonal and stay in front of us. They’re far enough away that they can’t break into a run and make it a proper chase, and we have to keep that distance. There are three groups of them now, and we don’t know how fresh they are. I don’t want this to turn into a sprint. There’s nowhere for us to run to. If it becomes a fight… We’re finished.”
“If it’s going to be a fight, maybe we ought to pick our ground and give them our best. Another few leagues, and we’ll be crawling on hands and knees,” growled Raif. He punched a fist into his open hand. “Can you see how big their packs are? If they’ve got something good to eat, I’ll tear through the lot of ‘em. I’m right tired of our rations. No offense, Anne.”
Zaine snorted, and the others laughed. It was a poor jest, but as worn down as they were, they appreciated the attempt.
Until midday, the slow motion chase continued, the three companies of Prince Valchon’s men coming at them from different angles, staying apart enough to prevent the party from turning and skirting around between them.
Rew’s blood was boiling. Out on the open plain, with all of the groups in sight of each other, there was little they could do. The low folds of land offered no chance of a good hiding spot. Even the streams that wound across the plain were shallow, and while they might be able to duck down and crawl along one for a bit, it would be slow going, and their pursuers would have little difficulty guessing what they were doing. If he was alone… but he wasn’t. And with three different groups on their heels, there was no maneuvering to get a jump ahead of the others. Any direction they turned would give someone an angle to close the gap. He cursed. If the night before they’d taken a completely different direction, they might have shaken their tail.
But which way? They were headed to Iyre, and it lay on the other side of Olsoth. Any other direction and they would have put more distance between themselves and their goal, and given they’d already run into three groups of the copper-armored soldiers, taking another direction might have just put them into the path of a fourth. King’s Sake. How many men could Valchon have put out in the middle of nowhere?
It wasn’t worth thinking about. Maybe trickery would have helped them the night before, maybe not, but it wasn’t going to help them now, and before darkness fell again, they would be beneath the walls of Olsoth.
“Should we…” began Anne. Then, she trailed off.
“We have to try the city,” declared Rew. “It’s still some hours off, but I think we can make it if we keep pushing. I’d thought about evading them under the cover of darkness, but I don’t think that will work.”
“Why not?” wondered Cinda, too tired to think of the answer.
“The spellcasters in the purple robes,” responded Rew. “What are they capable of? Can they see in the dark or sustain those men beyond their mortal limits? I can’t even begin to guess, but I know something doesn’t feel right. Common soldiers deciding to march for over a day now? They’d only do that if Valchon himself was spurring them on, but if Valchon knows where we are, why not come himself? I’ve got to admit I wouldn’t want to face the prince without a good night’s sleep. And there’s some way they all stumbled across us. Perhaps they’re communicating or can sense us. Pfah! Spellcasters with unknown abilities. We might be better off with Valchon himself. At least I know what he’s capable of.”
“I agree. The city, then,” surmised Anne. “With the king himself looking for us, I don’t like it, but what else can we do?”
“Exactly. Unless Valchon took the city, Olsoth owes fealty to Heindaw. He’s no ally of ours, but we know he’s the enemy to the men who are chasing us. If we can get inside without anyone learning who we are, at least Olsoth’s soldiers will defend us against those behind us.”
Grimly, they continued on, and their pursuers seemed to increase speed.
“Is it my imagination…” murmured Zaine, looking behind them.
“They’re only about half a league back, now,” estimated Rew, shaking his head. “How they are coming faster after so long…”
In front of them, Olsoth broke the endless plain like a dagger thrust through a cloth. It was a shard of pale stone, incongruous with the land all around it. As they got closer, they saw it was not one solid piece of rock but concentric walls rising up in a spiral like a conch, and Rew knew from experience that inside of the monolith was an open well bound by the steep walls of the city. The interior of the place bled vegetation, with plants spilling from windows and the sides of the pathways that climbed from the bottom to the top. In contrast to the raw stone exterior, the inside was verdant, lush. The people of Olsoth relied on the growth. There was no farming outside of the city because of the land wyrms. Olsoth had no outside industry, the entire place was encased in the huge, hulking structure.
“The bones of Olsoth are deep enough that the vibrations of even thousands of footsteps don’t draw the attention of the wyrms,” explained Rew. “That’s what I was told, at least. I suppose even if the wyrms did come knocking on the gates, the city is sturdy enough to survive whatever they could do to it. It was carved from living stone, a pillar of it built on a foundation that goes far beneath the surface. Olsoth is one of the most secure places outside of Mordenhold.”
“Why?” wondered Zaine. “I mean, I understand you’d want protection from the wyrms, but why put a city out here in the first place? You said there’s no industry. Are they digging for gold in there?”
“Olsoth is old,” replied Rew. “It was here before Vaisius Morden’s time, before the western forest was harvested. Who knows what was here then. Perhaps these plains were a lake, but now, the people in Olsoth are there for the wyrms. Their bodies secrete an oil which sells for a fortune. It’s worth more than gold. It’s supposed to make an old woman look young and beautiful. You can imagine how much aging noblewomen would pay for something like that. They’re vapid, vain creatures who…”
Anne cleared her throat, and Rew decided he would leave it there.
“Does it really work?” asked Cinda. “Harvesting secretions from a land wyrm seems like an awful lot of work to stay pretty.”
Rew shrugged. “I don’t know if it works, but I know some, ah… I’m not talking about you, Anne, but some older women will go far to keep their man’s eye.”
“Worm secretions?” asked Raif. “I’m not sure a nobleman would like his wife or mistress slathering herself with worm secretions.”
Grinning, Rew winked. “Gross, isn’t it?”
“And I’m not sure if I’d like to be baron of a city with an economy built on that,” continued Raif.
Rew laughed. “Are you unsure? There are few things more certain than the vanity of a woman.”
Anne cleared her throat again, and Rew kept his eyes ahead on the towering city. Perhaps he should have kept his mouth shut.
“How many people live there, I wonder,” said Zaine after a long moment of silence.
“Tens of thousands,” answered Rew. “It’s not a bad place to live, really. Whoever designed the monolith had more in mind than its current use. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a real city even now, but Olsoth was built for two- or three-times today’s population. The lords of the Northern Province lure people here with the promise of free housing. A place to stay at no cost and a captive audience for your trade? People have made worse bargains.”
“I’m not sure about that,” grumbled Raif, looking around as if expecting one of the great land wyrms to rise up behind them.
“Hold your judgement until you see Iyre,” remarked Anne. “The northern capital isn’t as pleasant as Carff. It’s not pleasant at all, really. Dark stone, dank taverns, everyone crowded together.
I’d prefer Olsoth.”
“There’s something to be said for dank taverns,” chirped Rew.
“I don’t mean to sound panicked,” interjected Zaine, “but perhaps we should run?”
Rew frowned and turned back behind them.
A thousand paces away, a company of Prince Valchon’s men was jogging toward them, one of the purple-clad spellcasters leading the way.
“King’s Sake,” growled Rew.
He lurched into a run, and without instructions, the others started trotting after him.
Chapter Sixteen
Olsoth jabbed skyward, its shadow stretching long across the plain. They ran into the gloom. A league ahead of them, the city looked silent and cold. Behind them, the copper-clad men broke into a full sprint, and Rew and the party started a harried, stumbling run. The children and Anne had passed exhaustion and were operating solely on will.
Truth be told, Rew wasn’t much better. Behind them, he could see the grim, blank faces of the soldiers who chased them and the haughty expressions of the spellcasters who led them. One of the purple robbed men pulled ahead, and Zaine had been right. The spellcaster looked like a younger version of Valchon. Rew exhorted his companions to run faster.
The soldiers were a mere five hundred paces behind them, and then three hundred, and then two hundred.
