Mortal

by Ted Dekker

  Ten Mortals fell, then thirty. The line from the north was in full retreat.

  Smoke boiled into the sky along the western flank. The ground was ablaze, set fire by the archers to cover their westward retreat. Fire lapped at the air, cutting off his cavalry. A full two-thirds of his thousand horses had been cut down by their deadly swarms of arrows, and those who remained were cut off from pursuit by the flames roaring from what could only be trenches filled with fuel.

  The enemy had jabbed before going into full retreat.

  The Nomadic Prince had proven himself a respectable tactician in his first blow, but Saric now knew the truth of their numbers. They’d shown less than two hundred. Even with the archers to the west, their numbers surely could not be more than two thousand. If they had more they would have used them in this first assault.

  Now Saric would bring to bear his hammer. There would be none to flee. The division he’d sent west on a flanking maneuver would descend on the plateau soon enough, and his numbers would prove overwhelming at close range. Today, as over previous generations, attrition would be the Nomads’ downfall.

  Feyn may well have cut her tether and led him into a trap, but by day’s end he would stand over her body… as Sovereign.

  And then he would hunt the boy down and drain him of his precious blood.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  SOME TIME AGO, Jonathan and Feyn had retreated to the ridge at the clearing’s perimeter to speak the business of Sovereigns. Jordin hung back, replaiting her horse’s mane, if only to keep her fingers busy while keeping her promise to never let Jonathan out of sight.

  She saw the way they stood together looking out over the eastern hills, speaking in tones that didn’t carry back to her even with her Mortal ears. They were making arrangements, no doubt. The first of many discussions she would not be privy to.

  She watched the way he looked out over the hills as though with new eyes—a Sovereign’s gaze, surveying all that he would rule. Feyn nodded intermittently, seeming to do the same, though Jordin saw the way she glanced sidelong at him while he was talking.

  Jonathan might see more in her eyes, but to Jordin Feyn appeared cold and distant. Calculating. Perhaps it was that way with Sovereigns.

  Was this to be her life, then? Standing by as he stood by Feyn’s side? It wouldn’t matter—Jonathan loved her as a woman. Nothing else mattered.

  He would have her loyalty forever. And for his compassionate heart and eccentric ways, he would have her heart as well. He was all that Jordin had ever known to be beautiful and right…

  The only truly beautiful thing in this world.

  And so she would stand by and protect him regardless of the cost to herself, filled with the awe of having heard those words. I love you. The revelation that he could not marry her changed nothing.

  She glanced up and saw that he was walking back, leaving Feyn seemingly to her own thoughts on the ridge. She straightened, aware of the butterflies in her belly. She was ready for the days ahead, whatever challenges they brought. For the move to the Citadel—shored up already against the pervasive smell of Corpse in the city.

  Jordin gave him a small smile as he approached the horses, but his mind was either lost on his discussion with Feyn, or distracted by whatever task lay ahead of him.

  He flipped open one of the saddlebags on his horse. “Never underestimate the cost of sovereignty, Jordin,” he said quietly.

  He said it as one who had taken a great weight on his shoulders. The look she saw so often on Rom’s face. Roland’s. And they were coleaders of only twelve hundred. What would become of Jonathan the day the world descended upon his shoulders?

  “Jonathan…” She came round her horse and saw that he’d withdrawn a length of old bridle leather. “However I can serve you, I will. I will be there. I will never leave you.”

  When he looked up, sorrow was pulling at his face.

  “You said that you would follow me always,” he said.

  “Yes. Always. What’s wrong?”

  “Even if where I go is difficult to understand?”

  “Yes!”

  He studied her for a moment, then turned the leather length in his hand. “Then bind yourself to your word. Join with me.”

  Her heart stuttered. It was the way the Nomads bound themselves to one another on the day they made pledges and took their mates.

  “Bind myself to you? Now?”

  “Put your hands out,” he said gently.

  She lifted her hands in front of her, wrists together. Jonathan wasn’t given to convention—he was the son of the unexpected. It was one of the things she loved about him, trusting that he had a purpose even in his most erratic actions.

  She watched as crossed the tether and looped one end twice more, and then the other, twice more. But he was binding her arms together, not him to her. With a soft, confused laugh she looked up at him.

  But this time, his face was twisted with emotion, lips pressed together in an effort to control them. She’d seen Jonathan cry many times, unbeknownst to so many, and knew the expression well.

  “Jonathan?”

  A tear coursed down his cheek as he finished with the leather, tying it in a hard knot.

  “What are you doing?”

  Tears wet on his face, he took her neck in his hands, leaned in, and kissed her.

  “I love you, Jordin,” he whispered. And then his arms went around her and he lifted her off her feet.

  Was it possible that he had changed his mind? Was this what he and Feyn had spoken about? Was it possible he had gone back to Feyn to discuss terms, to say that he loved her and could not marry another?

  “Jonathan?”

  He carried her to one of the closest trees, a bent and gnarled olive. Eased her down by the trunk, which hadn’t grown but a couple feet around. Pressing her arms up over her head and against the tree, he produced another length of cord and began to bind them to the trunk itself.

  Her first impulse was to jerk away, but she could not defy Jonathan. He had his purpose and she would simply trust him. Hadn’t she just sworn to follow him regardless of where it took her? Then this was a test…

  From the corner of her vision she saw Feyn returning from the ridge, eyes on them. A bell of alarm attempted to shatter her resolve. What was happening?

  “Jonathan… Please.”

  He seemed not to hear her. She began to twist, to try to pull her hands free, but they were bound too tightly by the first rope.

  “Stop, Jonathan. Please!”

  But he was fixated, working quickly with the rope until her bound hands were coiled to the tree trunk above her.

  He stepped back, eyes pleading with her to understand. “I love you, Jordin. You will soon understand, I promise you. Follow me always.”

  Feyn stopped beside him. “It’s time,” she said, laying her hand on his arm. Then Jordin knew…

  They were leaving her!

  Panicked, she jerked against the rope, but it was bound too tightly.

  “Jonathan!”

  He took one last look at her, eyes filled with longing and sorrow, and then turned.

  “Jonathan!” she screamed, feeling the veins in her temple throb with the effort. She watched helplessly as Feyn untied the black stallion and swung into the saddle. As Jonathan returned to his horse and did the same.

  They left her bound to the tree, with only Jonathan’s own tears as consolation.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  MICHAEL, knife!”

  Roland approached Michael at a full gallop, sweeping by her left side as she snatched a knife from her belt and flipped it over her back—all without turning from the two Dark Bloods bearing down on her with slashing blades. Their Mortal senses might prove challenged in such a crowded battlefield, but their acute hearing could easily identify directions and distances on all sides.

  A Dark Blood on horse—one of the few left—angled in at a dead gallop, eyes on Michael. Her knife flew lazily through the air within easy g
rasp as Roland thundered past. He snatched it by the hilt and hurled it at the approaching horseman in a single, unbroken movement.

  His aim flew true. The knife slammed into the mounted Dark Blood’s neck with enough force to slice clean through to the spine. The rider went limp; his horse galloped by, aimless as the Dark Blood slowly toppled to one side and fell heavily to the earth.

  All but a handful of Saric’s cavalry were now dead.

  Michael took advantage of the momentary distraction, plunged her sword up under one of the Dark Blood’s chins, then spun in a crouch with a wide slash that cut deep into the other’s hip. Another thrust put the warrior out of his misery.

  Roland swept around and slowed so that Michael could swing up behind him.

  “Thank you,” she panted.

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  It was all he needed to say; the battle was far from over.

  The events of the last hour and a half ran through Roland’s mind.

  His archers had delivered five thousand arrows before setting their trench on fire and retreating behind a wall of flames and smoke. They’d cut the Dark Blood cavalry by two-thirds in that opening strike.

  Saric had quickly mounted a counterattack using the brute strength of his full army, killing nearly a hundred Mortals in his first unrelenting sweep across the plateau, leaving only three hundred Nomads to defend the high ground while the reserve force of three hundred waited south for the signal that would begin the third phase of engagement.

  For the next half hour they’d battled on horse against an infantry that was fast and strong but no match for Nomads on horseback. Saric had stood his ground on the southern end of the plateau, surrounded by a thousand warriors.

  And then the Mortals began to fall. One by one, and only after taking down more than their share of Dark Bloods each, the vast imbalance of numbers began to take its inevitable toll. By the end of the first hour, the ground was littered with dead, making movement difficult.

  Nearly 150 of his warriors had fallen before the scouts reported Saric’s flanking maneuver from the west—at least a full division and another three hundred cavalry. They’d stockpiled two hundred bows and three thousand arrows in anticipation for a second wave of cavalry, and this time every able-bodied fighter had taken up with the archers and laid down a fusillade of screaming projectiles that had felled half of the rushing cavalry before they could scatter.

  Roland had made his case clear: they would descend to the valley for the third phase only when the Dark Blood army had been cut by a full third or when the Mortals had suffered losses exceeding two hundred.

  Over the last half hour Roland had lost another fifty fighters.

  Two hundred dead. The thought shortened his breath.

  To make matters worse, dark clouds had gathered at an alarming rate, covering the sky with a thick layer of gray like a lid. The wind was starting to pick up and would compromise the work of his archers. A storm would not bode well for them.

  He pulled his mount up on the rise and wheeled around to where Michael’s horse waited. She dropped to the ground and swung up into her own saddle. Rom rode in hard from the west, tussled hair whipped by the wind.

  “Too many!” he shouted, reining his mount back sharply. “We have to go now!”

  Roland’s attention was to the south, where Saric’s guard defended against a dozen Nomads firing into the Dark Blood lines from horses on the run. Every minute twenty or thirty of Saric’s warriors fell. He had lost four thousand men, leaving him with roughly eight thousand, but the toll on the Mortals was mounting. Only a hundred and fifty remained to fight on the plateau, waiting for the three hundred in reserve to be called into the third phase of the battle.

  Impossible odds.

  “I heard from the runner,” Rom said, breathing heavily. “They wait for your signal. The Dark Bloods are cut by half, maybe more. We have to go now.”

  Roland nodded. “Pass the word. We transition to the valley. Follow hard on my heels.”

  Rom spun, whistled and then took off, leaning over his mount, cutting the air with another whistle, which was picked up by another, and then another. The sound would be picked up even from this distance by Mortal ear, but Roland wanted to be sure even those in the din of battle would not mistake the call as planned.

  He watched as fighters broke off their attack and swept north from across the plateau.

  “Send the signal for the reserves.”

  Michael pulled out a thin metal whistle that issued a high-pitched tone typically heard only by dogs and other animals with broader auditory ranges. Mortals could easily pick out the distinguished note from a significant distance. A runner half a mile south would pick up the sound and send another. Within seconds the signal would reach the reserves waiting to the south, and they would move toward the Seyala Valley at full speed.

  She pressed the whistle to her lips and blew three long notes.

  “Even with the reserves we’ll only be five hundred to their six thousand,” Michael said, shoving the instrument back in her pouch. “We’re down to a handful of arrows. Once we enter the canyon, we’ll be caged. If they don’t follow us—”

  “I know the risk,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “We could still break off and escape north. We could return later with guerilla tactics.”

  “Saric will rebuild quickly and be twice as wary. He knows our strengths now. No. We fight to the end. If they don’t follow, we retreat north.”

  “It’s not the retreat I’m worried about. It’s the battle into the valley. How many more will we lose, drawing them so close?”

  “Do you want to lead? We knew the price of freedom would come at great risk. Don’t forget that the lives of those who’ve died today are on my head!”

  “Forgive me.”

  Roland looked away toward the line of Nomads just joining them along the shallow rise. “Today a new race rises, Michael. All along our people assumed victory would come under Jonathan’s rule. We were wrong. You and I, not Jonathan, will lead our people to victory. The world has never been reshaped without bloodshed. Today it’s our turn to spill what we must to ensure the place of our kind for centuries to come. We live or die for the sake of this race. These Immortals.”

  “Immortals?”

  “The zealots’ term. The Keeper says the power in our blood is strengthening, even as Jonathan’s weakens.”

  She looked at him with wide eyes. “Jonathan’s?”

  “Is now nearly dead. His blood has reverted to that of a Corpse.”

  She blinked, aghast.

  “Keep this to yourself, sister.”

  He spurred his horse and rode down the line of Mortals gathered along the small rise. A stream of Dark Bloods was already fast approaching.

  “Follow my lead!” he shouted. “We sweep west! Hold in the valley until they pursue. Hold your lines past the ruins until I give word. Today we prevail. Today we rise!”

  Without a glance back, he veered to the west, leaned low over his mount’s neck, and spurred it into a full gallop.

  The first thunder rumbled high above.

  “They run!”

  Saric spun to the cry of Varus, who’d held close at his demand. Nearly a thousand of his remaining eight thousand children had formed a thick wall of protection around his position, shielding him from skirting attacks as the enemy tore into his force with the fury of a lion rushing in to attack—only to retreat and attack again.

  As he’d known, attrition had been the Mortals’ downfall. He’d cut down a full half of their forces in the last hour while suffering massive losses himself, but they were losses he could afford for the sake of the victory before him. His army was still a full eight thousand strong.

  Meanwhile, Brack had fallen in the battle, taken by Rom Sebastian’s sword. The naïve artisan who had thwarted him nine years earlier had found a backbone and the skills to keep it intact.

  He followed his man’s line of sight in time to see the Nomad
ic Prince bent low over his mount, leading a growing contingent of his warriors as they streamed south along the plateau’s western edge.

  “They flee!” Varus said.

  Or they regroup, Saric thought, as Roland plunged past the southern lip and galloped down the slope toward the valley below. His men followed without hesitation, flying past formations of Dark Bloods outmatched by the horses’ speed.

  “Into the valley,” he murmured, narrowing his eyes.

  “They lead us into Feyn’s trap.”

  He considered the meaning behind Roland’s sudden shift in plan. Feyn intended to betray him; that much had become clear. The precision of their preparations could only mean that the Mortals had fully expected him to arrive and engage as and when he had. Something more than conjecture—or someone—had informed them. They had baited him and attacked with brutal efficiency.

  But he had prevailed.

  “The valley will only limit their movements,” he said. “A trap would involve more.”

  “The canyons beyond,” Varus said, stilling his shifting mount.

  “Yes, the canyons.”

  His gaze swept the vacated valley to his right. The ruins with their bloodied courtyard sat unoccupied along the eastern cliff near the mouth of the valley. The valley floor narrowed as it ran north, ending at the mouth of a gorge that led into a canyon with a river along one side. The sandy wash provided ample room for ten horses abreast to pass. Even twenty.

  By his count, the Mortals had initially brought only four hundred warriors to bear on the plateau and then replaced them as their own forces were depleted. But they were fewer than the seven hundred Feyn had reported, which meant the rest were either gone with those Mortals who could not fight or being held in reserve.

  “If they enter, we hold back,” he said.

  “More are coming,” Varus said. “Reserves.”

  Dust a mile south.

  “They intend to enter the canyons knowing we’ll be eager to pursue,” Saric said.

  “And so we hold here.”

  “No. They’ll advance slowly in order to draw us in. And so we will take the battle to them in the valley, but hold by the ruins and wear them thin. Patience will win this war. Give the signal. We descend in full pursuit.”