“Oh, poor baby,” Fahtin said, pouting her lips in a perfect imitation of a child who was not getting its way. “‘If you train when you’re tired, then you will get more benefit from it,’” she said. She was quoting something he often told her when she tried to get out of training hard.
Aeden laughed. “Fair enough. We can spend an hour, I think. What do you think, Raki? A little sparring?” The boy had just reached them.
“Yes. I need to move around. I was cramped up on the seat of the wagon all day.”
Aeden rolled his eyes.
They only stayed there for two days, just enough time to repair some of the wagon wheels and rest up. When they started moving again, it was not to the south or to the west, as Aeden thought it would be, but to the east and north. Toward Croagh lands.
“Why are we not taking the path we took before, the last time we were here?” he asked Fahtin after they had stopped the next day. The two were walking along the line of wagons. It was an area Aeden remembered well.
“My father says that he has some trading to do with the Crows.”
“I didn’t know you traded with the clans,” Aeden said, his voice a bit strained.
“Sure,” she said. “We’re allowed into the highlands to bring trade goods and to give news of the western lands. We didn’t do it last time because it would have been…awkward. With you in our family, still healing and all. It was one of the sacrifices my father made for you. Trade with the clans is usually very profitable. They always buy all the knives we have, and much of what we have acquired in other parts as well.”
Aeden thought about that for a moment. Darun had given up a chance at profit because of him. He had always thought the man to be caring, though the caravan leader insisted that he was gruff and selfish for some reason. This, though, nearly brought tears to Aeden’s eyes. Payta’s comments about having a store of unsold knives and a dozen additional comments by others in the caravan fit nicely into a picture of the selfless nature of Fahtin’s father.
“Your father is one of the kindest men I have ever met, Fahtin. It makes me ashamed of myself. I would never have thought of sacrificing so much for someone I didn’t even know.”
She looked into his eyes and hers softened. “Oh, Aeden, it is our way. We are wary of strangers—we have to be, for our own protection—but for friends of the family, and family members themselves, there is nothing we would not do. My father recognized in you something of our own people and acted accordingly. He will deny it if you ask him, for he more than anything wants to depict himself as strong and uncaring.
“You are truly part of our family, and there is nothing any of us would not do for you. We hope you see it the same way.”
“I do,” he said. “You took me in when I was near death, healed me, nurtured me, and gave me a place to belong. A family. I don’t know what I would do without all of you.”
They walked along in silence for a while, each with their own thoughts to keep them company. Though he was heading toward a land filled with memories that saddened him, he allowed a small smile to creep across his face. Those memories could not harm him, not when he was with his family. Not when he was with those who loved him.
The wagon rumbled along the narrow, pitted dirt roadway Aeden hadn’t been on in over five years. He knew there was something wrong before they crested the rise sheltering the village he was born in. There was smoke—but there was always smoke. Still, there seemed to be too much of it, even though the day was chilly. It occurred to him in a rush that what bothered him most was the color: black, thick smoke, not the simple gray plumes of well-tended cook fires. As they gained the hill and he could see into the little valley, it all came crashing on top of him, staggering him with the weight. His knees buckled and he almost fell.
Half of the village had burned. Some of it still smoldered. Even at this distance, he picked out shapes that appeared to be piles of clothing and furs scattered throughout the area. Along with them, there were other shapes, black and twisted. These Aeden couldn’t identify, but the first he knew to be bodies.
“No!” he yelled, jumping down off the wagon and rushing to the village. As he reached the first of the bodies, too shocked to look at its details, he drew both his swords from the scabbards on his back and scanned the area for enemies.
Nothing moved.
He found Fahtin next to him, panting from the exertion of keeping up with him. The wagons continued to rumble along the road. They would catch up in a few minutes.
“What happened?” she asked. “Did another clan attack?”
“No,” Aeden said. She had apparently missed seeing the black, twisted things on the ground between the bodies of his clansmen. They were grotesque, things out of nightmares. Monsters. He had never seen such things before, nor heard of them. Except in song. “No clan is strong enough to do this to Tannoch. It’s these foul creatures.” He kicked one and found it hard as wood.
“Help me search for survivors. There must be some.” He ran into the center of the village to look.
Everywhere he went, he found only the dead. There were at least three dead people for every one of the dark things. It didn’t make sense to Aeden. How could these monsters be so strong that they each had killed three of the finest warriors in Dizhelim?
All thoughts of why and how left his head when he saw his mother. When he saw what was left of his mother.
Miera was splayed on the ground near the center of the village. She looked to have been nearly torn apart by something, but half of her beautiful face remained untouched. The cuts were not clean, as a sharp weapon would make. They looked more like wounds from…
“Claws,” Darun said. The family head had come up beside him. “This is the look of someone torn by wild beasts. Do you know her, Aeden?”
“Yes.” He could hardly get the word past the lump obstructing his throat. “She’s…she’s my mother.”
His need for more words was interrupted by a soft grunt. Aeden wheeled, swords at the ready. It was his father, several feet away, propped up against a post. He was torn as well, but the blood was no longer flowing from him. It appeared to have already soaked into the ground around him. He coughed weakly and his eyes fluttered to Aeden.
“Father!” Aeden cried and ran to him. He pulled up short, afraid to touch him, afraid to harm him further. “Father, what happened? How could this be?”
Sartan’s half-lidded eyes locked onto Aeden.
“Aeden? Is that you, lad? Codaghan be praised, you did survive.”
“Father,” Aeden said. “What are these things? What happened?”
“Foul, black beasties. They do not die easily. We found out, too late, that only the blood magic can hurt them. They took the best sword slashes and kept coming. Until the magic. The magic works. The only thing.”
That would explain why there were so many dead from the clan and so few from the attackers, Aeden thought.
Sartan seemed to notice him suddenly, as if he had just appeared. “How did you survive, boy? Where have you been?”
“I was helped by a caravan of Gypta,” he motioned toward Darun and Fahtin. “They nursed me back to health, invited me to their family.”
“Ach,” Sartan made another weak coughing sound and let some reddish fluid—blood mixed with something else—drip from his chin. “Good. That’s good.”
“We will get you fixed up, father. You’ll heal and we can talk about it.”
“No, lad.” He looked toward the remains of his wife. “I’m ready to go. Without Miera, I have no life anyway. It does my heart good to see you, though. I had hoped, but dared not to dream that you survived.”
“Father, no. Just hold on. We can heal you.”
“Nah. It’s fine. I struck as precisely as I could, to fool the others. I knew you were not dead, but could not come back for you for two days. When I did, your body was gone. I had hoped. Hoped.”
The tears burned Aeden’s eyes as he looked at his father. “I have learned to use the magic. You can be proud
of me, father. You can finally be proud of me.”
“Ah, lad, I have always been proud of you. Always. What I did, I had to do out of duty. I deserve to die if only because of it.” His eyes lost focus, but slowly came back to lucidity. “Show me, Aeden. Show me the magic.”
Aeden did. He called it up easily, just as he had practiced. It was not strong yet, but it did come.
A smile crept onto his father’s face. “There is one thing left for me to do, then.” He tried to sit up straighter, but failed. With a look of concentration, he motioned with his right hand, barely able to lift it, and spoke words of power Aeden had never heard.
A burning circled Aeden’s right wrist. As he watched, the lines and colors of the clan tattoo appeared there, magically affixing itself to his skin.
“You are now a warrior of Clan Tannoch,” his father said weakly. “Use the magic and defeat these foul creatures. They cannot be allowed to remain in the world. Promise me, my son.”
“I do, Father. I promise.” He wiped the tears from his eyes with his forearm. “Now let me help you. We will bind up your wounds, and you will be better in no time.”
But his father’s eyes had gone glassy. Aeden saw with one look that the clan chief had died, but shook him and listened for his heartbeat, tried to feel his breath on his own cheek.
“He’s gone, boy,” Darun said, putting his arm on Aeden’s shoulder.
Aeden shrugged the arm off and put his forehead to his father’s. “Give me some time,” he said. “Please.”
Darun moved off, checking the ruined village for other survivors. Fahtin looked to Aeden and took a step toward him, but then dropped her eyes to the ground and shuffled off several feet to watch him from a distance. He hardly noticed.
“Father,” he whispered. “Mother.” He had no words. He sat, cradling his father’s head, thinking of his family and his life with the clan. His tears mingled with the blood on his father’s face as the sun made its way across the sky toward the horizon.
An hour before dusk, Aeden stirred. He had fallen asleep, exhausted from his grief, still holding his father’s head in his lap as he sat cross-legged on the ground. He blinked the crust away from his eyes and looked around.
Bodies lay in heaps on the ground, and smashed and trampled items had been taken from the homes and strewn about as if the creatures had been searching for something. Or someone. There were the smoking remains of homes he had visited, including the one he had lived in. And there were the corpses of his mother and father, the latter right in front of him and the former just a few feet away.
One of the shapes nearby moved and Aeden started. It was Fahtin, still sitting almost motionless where she had retreated earlier. How long had she been sitting there waiting for him? Hours, surely.
He stood and shook his legs out. He stamped them to regain circulation and while he did so, she stood as well. Her liquid eyes met Aeden’s seeking ones. He put both arms out and she rushed to him, enfolding him in a hug, squeezing him tight. Though he thought he had none left, tears began to fall again, dripping onto her shoulder and wetting her hair. She made soothing noises and stroked his red-brown hair. Some of the tension left him as he clutched her.
They stood like that for a long time, his tears finally drying out. He took a deep breath, catching the scent of her wet hair mixed with the smell of death and the smoke from the village. Lifting his head, he pulled away from her and smoothed her hair back from her face.
“I seem to have gotten your hair wet,” he said. “Sorry.”
She sniffled, wiped the wetness from her own eyes, and shrugged. “It needed washing anyway. It was dirty from travel.”
He kissed her forehead. “Thank you. For being here, for letting me be earlier, for the hug.”
She nodded. “I wish I could take the pain from you, but I don’t know how.”
“It’s fine, Fahtin. Warriors are used to death. The pain reminds us of those we lost. It was a precious privilege to speak with my father again, one last time.” He looked down at his right wrist and the tattoo there.
She eyed him warily, as if unsure if she should speak. “Aeden, what is that? Where did it come from?”
He forced a sad smile. “It was my father. He, as an elder and clan chief, could declare that I had passed the Trial of Magic. Finally. He cast the spell and gave me the marking. I am now officially a warrior of Clan Tannoch. Maybe the last one alive in the world.”
“You have had your questions answered, then?”
“I had the one that is more important answered,” he said. “My father spared me, defied the laws and traditions of the clan, because he loved me and believed in me. He was not weak and he was not an incompetent warrior. In fact, he saved me by his actions, in two ways. First from death at his hands and second from this,” he motioned at the scene around him, “death at the hands of these creatures.” He kicked one of the monstrous bodies.
“Let’s go, Fahtin,” he said. “There is nothing here for me now.”
Darun and other members of the family helped Aeden and Fahtin drag the bodies to a pit, in which they had put as much wood as they could find in the village. After they were all laid on the tinder, the fire was lit, and a massive pyre burned the bodies. The black creatures they left for the scavengers to tear apart as they rotted. With a backward glance as they headed down the road, Aeden saw the fire that consumed the people of his village. The flames etched themselves into his memory, a final, fitting monument to the finest warriors in the world.
The caravan made its way to the next village, one belonging to the Ailgid clan. It was two days away on the road they took, and as they traveled, they saw signs of the monsters that had left his own village. The shredded carcasses of sheep and cattle littered areas that had been grazing land, and the occasional human corpse was also seen.
Aeden noticed that none of the dead seemed to have been eaten, other than when they spotted a few feasting ravens. These black things killed but did not kill to eat. They slaughtered whatever they found for another reason. But what was it?
When they made it to the village of the Ailgid, they found a similar sight to what they had found at Aeden’s Tannoch village.
“We are turning back,” Darun said. “We can’t continue to go into Crow lands if these creatures are going about killing all the clans. If whole villages of clan warriors can’t survive battle with them, we surely can’t.”
Aeden understood. Trade was one thing, but it was obvious the monsters had infested the highlands. “I understand,” he told the caravan leader. “You owe them nothing. Nor do I. My own clan was slaughtered. These,” he pointed toward the village from where they had stopped on the road, “are at best distant cousins. I don’t fancy meeting an army of the black creatures.”
The caravan turned back, heading west again, out of the highlands, the lands of Aeden’s birth. He gave a mental goodbye to his family and the life he had known when he was a child and fixed his sight ahead.
Two weeks later, the creatures found them.
23
The caravan had stopped to camp for the night. They had not halted for more than one night at a time since they had seen the effects of the slaughter in the highlands, and they traveled long hours each day. It was obvious that Darun wanted to put as much distance as he could between himself and the monsters that had slaughtered entire clans of warriors.
They had settled down and were beginning preparations for the evening meal when a scream broke the air. Looking toward the source of the noise, Aeden saw a flash of black. Seconds later, a small group of the same type of creatures whose corpses he had seen in his village ran through the camp, attacking everyone in their path.
Their forms varied, though they all shared the dark color. Some were dark gray, while some were the deepest black. Some had hair bristling all over their bodies and some had very little. Large and bulky, small and thin, it seemed their forms were as different as those of people. In general, they were all humanoid, though some ran o
n all fours like animals.
What they all shared was speed and a savagery that shocked Aeden. He stood there, transfixed, as passing attackers tore several of the men of the family almost in two. They all seemed to be coming straight at him.
One of the monsters stopped and looked into Aeden’s eyes. It screamed something in a language he didn’t understand and pointed right to him. The others turned from their grisly work and galloped toward him as well. They seemed to have picked him out as the biggest threat.
Fahtin was there next to him, a knife in each hand. Aeden caught the shadow of Raki skulking around off to his left. When the first creature got close, it suddenly sprung two knives, one in each eye. It dropped to the ground. As Aeden drew his swords and started to engage the others, he saw out of the corner of his eye that the thing got back up, pulled the blades from its head, tossed them aside, and started lumbering toward him again.
He dodged a clawed hand and struck out with his swords, removing the claw from its arm. The bulk of the monsters had reached him, and he began methodically dancing through them, dodging strikes and attacking at each opportunity. His blades were a blur as he cut and slashed at the creatures. When he emerged from the other side of the charge, he expected to find only bodies where his attackers had been.
Instead he found creatures, with wounds that should have killed them, turning to attack him again. Two of their number had vanished, simply disintegrated. The others were still there, though, and coming at him.
Aeden dove in again, dodging and attacking in turns. What had he done to the ones that disappeared? What type of wounds had he inflicted on them? Was it only certain wounds that would destroy them, perhaps taking their head or striking some vital area? He couldn’t remember. He would have to pay attention and figure it out. If he could survive these attacks.
Despite the few that disappeared, the number of creatures grew. A gash to his left shoulder brought his mind back from his musings, reminding him he was in a life-or-death struggle. Luckily, they were concentrating on him. Those creatures attacking other family members were slaughtering the Gypta without much effort, though the men—and in some cases women—fought bravely. He had to do something, or the entire caravan would be killed. Even he would be overwhelmed soon if he could not figure out how to kill the monsters.
Wanderer's Song Page 15
