“I see them,” Skagi replied. “We’ll get to them before they make a move.” He held his falchion at his side.
Kaibeth teleported behind Cree-to buy time, Ashok thought, but she had to know she was beaten. Ashok calculated how many blade swings she had left before Cree got past her defense. She became solid, blocked another strike, and spun, putting her body directly in Cree’s blind spot. Cree saw the move coming and tried to compensate, but the sellsword pivoted in a burst of speed that shouldn’t have been possible, given her weariness. She put her katar to the back of his neck and pressed down lightly. Cree flinched when he felt the blade kiss his neck, and a trickle of blood slid down his throat.
“You’re dead,” she said.
“So I am.” Cree sheathed his weapons and wiped the blood from his throat. He seemed disgusted with himself. Kaibeth, instead of gasping for breath, as she had been a moment ago, appeared barely winded from the fight.
It had been an act, all of it. Even her companions hadn’t seen it coming. Or had they? Maybe they had worked in tandem to create the illusion that the battle had turned. If so, Ashok had to admit he was impressed. The sellswords had obviously fought together for months or years to know one another so well.
“You would have beaten me, but you were too worried about your eye,” Kaibeth said.
Cree nodded. “I forgot all the other rules.” He held out a hand. “My thanks for the reminder.”
She clasped his hand and turned to Arveck. “Well?”
Arveck looked at Ashok. “Whenever the emissary is ready,” he said in a tone of mock formality.
Ashok wondered if Arveck’s ineptitude was all an act as well. He would find out soon enough. Ashok didn’t hesitate but whipped his chain out at Arveck’s head. The sellsword dodged the blow only by throwing himself backward. He lost his footing and went down on one knee in the snow.
“I’m ready,” Ashok said.
Arveck let out a furious cry and jumped to his feet. He lunged in with his scimitar. Ashok teleported back a step, then charged forward onto the blade and passed right through Arveck’s body. The sellsword spun around and half lunged again before he remembered that his blade couldn’t hurt Ashok.
“There’s no training in this,” Cree said. “Finish him, Ashok, and be done. He’s too hotheaded.”
“Agreed,” Kaibeth said. Arveck shot her a hateful glare, but the woman just laughed. “You’re not ready for this fight. Accept it, and you won’t be humiliated.”
Ashok felt his body start to take on substance. He timed the strike, counting the breaths as the shadows coalesced into flesh. He struck out with the chain underhand. When Arveck blocked, the spikes wrapped around his weapon and his sword arm, tangling his curved blade and burying the spikes in the back of his hand.
Arveck snarled and clawed at the spikes with his other hand. Ashok didn’t try to pull the chain taut. He just held the other end and watched Arveck struggle until he freed himself. In a blind fury, he charged Ashok.
Ashok readied his chain again, but Kaibeth stepped between them.
“Enough!” She absorbed Arveck’s charge against her body and shoved him back. “This is done for today. The sun will rise soon, and I’ll not have you riding unconscious, Arveck.”
But Arveck was too enraged to listen. He made as if to charge again when Skagi stepped forward and thumped him on the back with his falchion hilt. Arveck went down on his knees again, but this time he stayed there, panting. Slowly, reason seemed to return, and he nodded at Ashok.
“Your battle,” he said. “Enjoy the victory, whore of Tempus.”
Kaibeth helped Arveck to his feet, and without a word, the sellswords left the clearing.
When they were alone, Skagi sheathed his falchion and sighed loudly. “Everyone gets to play but me.”
“It was a humbling game,” Cree said. He touched the katar cut on his neck. “She was right about the eye. I wasn’t thinking of anything else.”
“We’ve all made that mistake,” Ashok said. “Fight as you’ve always done, with your speed and instincts, but don’t discount the success you had with the slower, sustained approach. Skagi and I will watch your blind side. We should have been doing it before.”
“We couldn’t keep up with him before,” Skagi muttered.
“That was a mistake too,” Ashok said. “Kaibeth’s warriors fought as one, even when they weren’t in the battle together. That’s what we need to become.”
Cree shook his head. “And you a chainfighter. I never thought I’d hear you say such things.”
“Neither did I,” Ashok admitted. “I have things to relearn, as well. I’ll teach my arm where to strike and keep the chain from stinging you two.”
“Good to hear,” Skagi said. “I don’t need any more scars on my pretty visage,” he said, his crooked lip warping in a smile.
“We had to relearn how to fight together, Brother,” Cree said, turning serious. “You remember that?”
His humor faded, and Skagi looked away into the trees. “You don’t have to remind me of it.”
“I was as much at fault. Skagi and I didn’t always fight as we do now,” Cree said to Ashok. “In fact, we used to hate each other more than any shadar-kai.”
Ashok couldn’t fathom it. He knew well the hatred that could exist between brothers, but he couldn’t imagine such emotions between Skagi and Cree.
“We were born to two of Ikemmu’s Sworn,” Skagi said tersely. “That’s what caused it, but the hatred’s forgotten.” He redrew his falchion and toyed with the end of Ashok’s chain. “Damn you, will someone fight me now? You promised me a sparring match, and I’ll get one.”
Ashok glanced at Cree and brought his chain up, holding it in both hands. Cree drew his katars. “Will the both of us be enough for you, Brother?” Cree said.
Skagi snorted. “If not, I’ll go and fetch Arveck.”
They shared a laugh but never let their guards down. One thing Ashok had always respected about Skagi and Cree was that they appreciated the deadly natures of the sparring matches. There was room for competition and jests, but a single lapse in judgment or control could result in death. Therein lay the challenge and the thrill-to beat the warriors who knew his skills so well and yet never yielded to the battle lust, to the need to kill.
Cree came at Skagi with his katars, deliberately leaving his left flank exposed. Ashok let his chain fly. The spikes struck the ground and kicked up lumps of wet snow. The move forced Skagi, who’d been trying to move in on Cree’s exposed flank, to retreat and get back on the defensive.
“Is that why you want to become Uwan’s Sworn,” Ashok asked, “because your father and mother held the rank?”
“We never knew either of them,” Cree said. He teleported behind Skagi, and Ashok, following his lead, teleported to the space he’d just vacated.
Skagi turned in a circle, swiping at their shadowy forms, forcing them to keep their distance so they couldn’t rush in and attack him when their forms solidified. “The woman who bore us wanted the pain, nothing else.” He shot his brother a warning look. “Close your mouth, and keep your mind on your blades.”
Cree ignored him. “Females have the power to bring forth life-new souls-while risking death,” he said. “I’ve heard there’s no experience like childbearing.”
Ashok remembered there had been women in his own enclave with similar desires. Some kept the children they birthed. Others passed them on to the fathers or to those in the enclave who wanted the experience of raising and training sons and daughters but for whatever reason could not conceive. No matter their parentage, shadar-kai children were often left to fend for themselves at a young age, when their parents grew tired of their roles and sought new experiences.
“As the children of two Sworn, we were assumed to have great potential,” Cree said. “Skagi was the elder. After he was born, several shadar-kai offered to buy him from our parents.”
Cree’s form solidified. Skagi came in hard and slapped his br
other’s flank with the flat of his blade. “Enough!” He pointed at Ashok. “I told you this was forgotten. If all we’re going to do is flap our tongues, I’m finished here.”
Cree started to argue, but he fell silent when he saw the anger in his brother’s black eyes. Ashok said nothing. He gathered his chain and let Skagi lead the way back to camp.
Cree let Skagi get ahead of them, and when they arrived, he pulled Ashok aside. “I shouldn’t have brought up the past,” he said. “Skagi will tell you the tale someday-you might have to drag it from his lips-but he has reasons for his anger.”
“Whatever his reasons,” Ashok said, “Daruk knows them too. He knew just where to strike at Skagi to bring out his anger.”
It made Ashok uneasy. Why had the bard made such a point of learning the brothers’ histories? And what might he know about Ashok? Ashok had no more secrets to keep from Ikemmu, but he knew nothing about Daruk or his motives. He thought about asking Tatigan, but the merchant had been absorbed with watching after his cargo for most of the journey, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was deep in conversation with the other merchants.
“Do you think he could be the traitor, the one who signaled the brigands to attack?” Cree asked. “You heard how furious Tatigan was that he didn’t fight with the caravan against them.”
“If he is working with them, you’d think he’d try harder to hide it,” Ashok said. “But it’s possible. For now, we’ll just have to watch him. He hasn’t proven himself a threat … yet.”
Cree nodded, but something in the snow distracted him. He veered off the path abruptly and went into the trees. Curious, Ashok followed him. When they’d gotten several yards into the trees, Ashok saw the tracks in the snow, paw prints bigger than both his fists.
Cree squatted next to one of the pines. He brushed snow off the trunk to expose gashes in the bark. “Claw marks,” he said, “and I saw droppings just off the trail. A winter wolf-probably more than one.”
“Are they following the caravan?” Ashok asked. Tuva and Vlahna had warned them about the huge wolves that dwelled in this country, but Ashok hadn’t expected to encounter signs of them until they’d gotten closer to the Sunrise Mountains.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Cree said. “But we’ve invaded their hunting grounds. We’ll have to be cautious.”
“Let Tuva and Vlahna know what you found,” Ashok said. His gaze lingered on the huge tracks.
“Thinking about fighting one of them?” Cree said. He grinned. “We could use the sport.”
Ashok agreed, but he hoped Cree wasn’t tempting the gods by voicing the thought aloud.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By the time the caravan got underway, it had started snowing again, and the wind had changed direction, blowing directly into their faces. The horses and drovers bent their heads into the gale and pushed ahead, but by midday, their pace slowed to a crawl. The Golden Way, while not an actual road, was marked at intervals by the huge vertical stones, one always within sight of the next. But with the fierce wind and snow, the caravan crew was soon blind to even these markers. Rather than stop, Vlahna rode ahead with a torch and served as a marker between the stones to keep the caravan from straying off the route.
The snow and the wind harried them steadily for the next three days.
During those long hours of slow plodding on horseback, Ashok felt as if he’d fallen into a white void. The wind filled his ears with a hollow, painful whistling only barely broken by his cloak hood. He welcomed the icy needles of pain on his face, but all too quickly, the pain turned to numbness. To keep the frostbite at bay, the crew would have to wrap their heads with extra blankets, leaving nothing but the eyes exposed. Buried in darkness and numbing cold, Ashok felt real fear for the first time since he’d begun the caravan journey. The shadows of his soul stirred restlessly, even as his heartbeat slowed and his thoughts became sluggish.
A part of him railed against this, viciously berating his own weakness. He should be stronger than this. He’d spent a tenday in a dark cell in the caves of Ikemmu. This should not test him. But somehow it made the experience worse. He kept expecting to look into the snowbound wilderness and see his father and brothers beckoning to him with their corpse grins.
Another part of him-and this most frightening of all-welcomed the peace and solitude. At these times, his own body betrayed him. His mind drifted, floating in a dreamlike fog, and he had to resist the urge to slump forward against the nightmare’s neck and sleep. Even the jostling motion of the beast beneath him and the rutted, uneven ground couldn’t keep that sense of peaceful longing at bay. Absorbed by it, Ashok felt his fears start to ebb.
This was truly the most dangerous time. When he no longer felt afraid for his soul, he was the most in danger of it fleeing his body. Slowly, mechanically, he peeled his glove off his hand. The cold bit into his flesh immediately, and with it a bit of clarity returned. Ashok lifted his hand to his mouth, but he couldn’t make himself bite his flesh. He didn’t have the strength. What would it accomplish? Why break the peaceful stillness with blood? All he had to do was close his eyes and give in to the arms of the wind.…
In the distance, Ashok heard a loud pop and an explosive hiss like a fire suddenly doused. A breath later, a blast of pure energy hit him in the chest.
The force blew Ashok off his horse. The nightmare reared and screamed, but Ashok couldn’t move out of the way. He gasped at the sudden pain and awareness that flooded his mind. He looked down at his chest and saw a sunburst of black scorch marks on his bone scale breastplate.
Beside him, a similar blast knocked Skagi and Cree off their horses. The caravan halted as horses and passengers screamed. The drovers fought to control the beasts, but there was mass confusion as everyone tried to sort out where the attack came from.
Tuva broke through the mass of rearing horses to get to Ashok and the brothers. “What did you see?” he cried. His eyes, when he got close to them, looked glassy. He shook himself as if waking up from a long sleep. “Where are they?”
Ashok shook his head. He pulled himself to his feet using Tuva’s stirrup. It wasn’t the energy blast, but his own weakness, that slowed him. “I couldn’t see; it came from nowhere.”
Cree and Skagi pulled themselves together. Their wounds were identical to Ashok’s.
“Did you see anything?” Tuva asked them. “What direction-”
“I’ve got her!” cried one of the guards. Tuva wheeled his horse away from Ashok. In the open space, Ashok caught a glimpse of Ilvani standing up in the back of the wagon ahead of them. One of Kaibeth’s sellswords had a dagger pressed to her throat.
Ashok pulled his chain off his belt.
“Let her go,” he said in a dead voice.
“She attacked you!” the sellsword cried. “I saw her hurl the magic at all three of them,” he told Tuva.
Kaibeth and Vlahna rode up from the front of the caravan, their faces swaddled in cloaks and masks. Kaibeth pulled hers down and barked at the sellsword. “Vertan, explain this.”
“She’s the traitor,” Vertan exclaimed. “Tuva said someone in the caravan was working with the brigands. It’s her-she sabotaged us from within.”
Some of the guards came to the back to see what was going on. When they heard Vertan’s words, they tightened their grips on their weapons. Ashok saw all this, but he ignored it. He took a step forward, then another. He couldn’t attack with his chain without the possibility of hitting Ilvani. But he could kill the shadar-kai with his own dagger if it came to that. He just needed to get close enough.
Tuva saw him and wrenched his horse around to get between Ashok and the wagon. “Everyone, stay back,” he barked at the other onlookers.
For her part, Ilvani appeared detached from the proceedings. She remained perfectly still. Her eyes skimmed over Ashok’s and the brothers’ wounds, but otherwise she seemed at ease.
“Explain your actions, Ilvani,” Vlahna said. “Is Vertan speaking the truth?”
“Yes
, I attacked them,” Ilvani said without looking at Vlahna.
The guards around them tensed, but Tuva snarled, “If anyone makes a move to violence, I’ll cut off his hands. Is that clear?”
Ashok’s body remained rigid to the point of trembling. He stood poised to strike if anyone so much as flinched.
“Why did you do it?” Vlahna asked Ilvani. “You knew someone would see you.”
“There wasn’t time to ask permission,” Ilvani said. Her gaze turned inward. “I felt the raven fly, and I couldn’t trap it. The wind was too strong.”
Uneasy murmurs went through the gathered crowd.
“You’re crazy,” Vertan said, “just like they said. You and your brother-you’re no prophets of Tempus-you’re just insane.”
Ashok prepared to make a jump for the wagon, but Ilvani spoke again.
“His soul was at rest too long,” she said. She spoke slowly, as if trying to sort out the words. “I felt it go, and there was nothing left to save. The shadows rose around the rest.” She met Ashok’s eyes. “I knew it wasn’t real, but the danger was real. I had to call you back.”
And suddenly, shaking off the rage and battle tension so he could think clearly, Ashok understood.
“Let her go,” he said again, but this time he was in control of himself. “She did it to save us. We were starting to fade. She brought us back from the edge.” He looked at Skagi and Cree, who nodded.
“I didn’t even know my own name,” Skagi admitted. “I was lost.”
“They’re lying to protect her,” Vertan insisted. “They’re all traitors-”
“You should look to your own,” Ashok said, addressing Kaibeth. “You heard the witch. A soul flew.”
Kaibeth’s black eyes widened as comprehension dawned. She wheeled her horse around and rode out from the caravan to find the rest of her sellswords. Ashok saw Tuva and Vlahna exchange grim looks. Vertan kept the dagger at Ilvani’s throat until Kaibeth returned, galloping into their midst with her hood thrown back and a haunted expression on her face. Her breeches were soaked, as if she’d been kneeling in the snow.
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