by Remi Michaud
But Twin Town, only days away from the Abbey, straddled the Eastern Caravan Route. And it was only a few days to the South Caravan route that connected Grayson City to Oceanview on the western flank of the kingdom. Anyone based in this small, unremarkable town had, given a little time, unlimited and direct access to any point in the kingdom via the main highways, as well as the empire of Kashya by both road and sea.
With dawning horror, Thalor understood something else. This town should have thrived. It should have been wealthy. Why was it not? Why was it a forgettable dump, a miserable backwater, even though it was in such an advantageous location?
Salosians. They were adept at hiding, had been doing so, in fact, for generations. Could it be? Could this entire town be a staging area for the Salosian infestation, an access gate into the rest of the kingdom, and the world? Had it been kept intentionally poor to keep unwanted attention away? Had the damned Salosians spent the last two thousand years hiding right out in the open under everyone's noses?
As it all fell into place, he gripped Major Reowynn's tabard in one claw-like hand, and spun the Major to face him.
“Bring the army in. The whole lot of them. Bring them into town. Now. I want this entire garbage heap locked down in an hour. I don't want even a fly to get in or out without my knowledge.
“And I want every single local arrested and questioned for heresy.”
His mind spinning with realizations and implications, he clambered back up the rickety steps of the ladder, calling as he did for his horse. Much as it galled, Maten was still his superior and the old man would need to be made aware of this.
The Salosians had penetrated farther than anyone in the prelacy could ever have conceived, but forewarned was forearmed. Thalor would see them burn.
Chapter 42
The day was cold, crisp, carrying the scent of the slumbering earth on the wind. The sun cast a brilliant glow that illuminated the land with crystalline clarity. Except for the tramping of boots and hooves, all was silent; there was a sense of breath held in waiting.
For weeks, the king's army had marched north at a brutal pace. If King Threimes had forced this pace at any other time, for any other reason, he knew reports of men flagging, falling between one step and the next, exhausted, would have been rampant. But, to a man, they'd heard of the atrocity visited upon Killhern. They had all heard of the butchery, the massacre. There were no reports of men faltering in their stride. There was only a sea of grimly determined faces.
And each day that passed deepened the determination. For, with each day that passed with neither hide nor hair of the murderous army that had caused the atrocity to be found, each and every soul strove a little harder to suppress the unease that grew. With no knowledge of where such a large force could have disappeared to, Threimes's army began nervously glancing behind as though expecting ambush at any moment.
Ignoring the advice of his retinue, Threimes rode in the van. Thus it was that he was one of the first to spy the devastation that was all that remained of Killhern. The feeling of anticipation was released as all who saw the ruins gasped. Many fell to their knees and wept openly. Some wailed their grief to the sky.
Killhern City, jewel of the north, first defense against the hordes of Dakariin, was no longer recognizable. The duke's tower that had once sparklingly proclaimed the wealth and power of this great city, that had proudly reached to the sky in hope, now grasped brokenly, desperately.
At its base, spread for a mile in all directions, the city was a charred wasteland. The walls were little more than crumbled rock which afforded a view of what lay beyond. Charred rubble where once stood homes and shops, ruined gardens of bare, twisted trees where children had romped and amorous couples had strolled hand in hand.
Threimes sat his horse, fighting to retain his stone-face expression, fighting to keep his composure. He surveyed the scene ahead, purposely staring unflinchingly to engrave the image of his dead city firmly in his mind.
He would find the Dakariin savages. He would find them and make them pay.
As if he did not have enough to worry him, no one had heard a word from the Sharong garrison in weeks. He had commanded Thiessen to pass orders that Sharong was to march. The last he had heard was that the garrison had set out for Killhern. And now, seeing Killhern ahead, he knew there was not a living soul anywhere within what remained of the walls. The Sharong garrison was not there.
With a few quick words to Thiessen, scouts were dispatched to travel the north road back toward Sharong in hopes of finding something, anything. Then he signaled and the army broke formation, tents and bedrolls coming out of their packs while pits were dug for fires. Meanwhile, his detachment of bodyguards surrounded him as he made his way toward his jewel in the north.
Past what had once been the city's south gates, Threimes tried not to sick up. As bad as seeing this desolation had been from a mile and more away, seeing it this close was much worse. For one thing, the extent of the damage was more visible. For another, the bodies were not visible from a mile away.
A little over a month had passed since the Dakariin had fallen on this town like a pack of hyenas. Bone glistened wetly through corrupt, black flesh of the remains scattered through the streets like garbage. Rictus grins laughed macabre jokes at Threimes. Open, unseeing eyes, shouted recriminations.
He kept a tight rein on his emotions as he continued forward; he needed a clear head. His guards kept a close watch on every avenue and alley and building. Threimes tried very hard to not look too closely at the heaping piles that spilled from the mouths of the alleys.
They marched on slowly, like a funeral procession, toward the duke's palace, passing horror after horror. The scent of death, light and ignorable when they passed the crumbled wall, now hung heavy and cloying, tainting the air. Burnt timbers rose from the ashes of ruined buildings like skeletal fingers. The twisted dead lay blackened and bloated, mocking him. Every way he looked was illuminated to stark clarity by the vengeful sun. It was hard to ignore the eyeless stares that were wreathed in a halo of mid afternoon light.
After an eternity, they reached the duke's compound. The gate was shattered. The wall was more rubble sprayed onto lawns that had been lush and well-tended when last Threimes was here but now were weed-choked mud. The palace itself was like a skull bleached in the sun. Empty windows stared at him, each one broken and shadowed. The main entrance gaped like a beast's maw awaiting its next victim.
A handful of his guards broke away and disappeared into the once splendid palace. Threimes waited, felt the bite of tension in his shoulders begin to grow with each passing moment. He blinked.
Dakariin, dozens, hundreds, of them vomited forth from the maw. Greasy hair, burning eyes, gnashing teeth; serrated swords held overhead, they shrieked their war cries in their guttural language. Threimes's breath caught in his throat. He tried to shout the alarm. He blinked.
The courtyard was empty save for his company. Exhaustion, he told himself. Exhaustion and unbearable tension and sick sorrow. He shook his head and wiped stinging sweat from his eyes. Odd, he thought, that he should be sweating on such a cool autumn day. In the distance he heard the raucous call of a vulture.
When his men reappeared through the broken doors, their swords were in their sheaths. Their faces were ashen, their eyes wide and sick. Captain Viks approached and made his report.
“Your Majesty,” he said. His heavy tone was as telling as the nervous tic in his left eye. He was a man with many years of service. He had seen too much in his long career. Threimes had the distinct impression that none of it had prepared the captain for what he saw in the palace. “Only the dead are in residence.”
Threimes sighed deeply, closing his eyes. “Any sign of the duke?”
“No, Sire. We searched, as you commanded, behind the duke's throne. We found the bolt-hole that you told us of. The door is broken in but the tunnel leading beneath the palace is empty save for three dead Dakariin.”
Where was everyone?
The duke missing, the Dakariin force missing; where in the name of the gods were they? He needed answers and he needed them now. He turned his horse and passed a weary eye over the incinerated remains of his jewel in the north. In the far distance beyond the city's limits, he saw the churned earth of the farm fields that had fed this city. And beyond that, the impenetrable looming presence of the Great Central Forest.
As much as he needed the duke's input, he needed to know where the Dakariin had gone more. His eyes lingered on the dark stain of trees to the north. He did not believe for even a heartbeat that the butchers had turned tail and fled for home. There was no sign of them on the northern route. There was no sign on the Caravan Route. His eyes narrowed as he continued to stare at the forest. There was no sign of them anywhere. Except...
Except maybe Threimes had made a terrible mistake. But it was impossible. They could never have navigated the dense trees and thick, clinging underbrush. Could they? Where else could they be? Where else?
With dawning horror, he knew where the Dakariin had gone. He raised a finger and pointed, his mouth dropping open but no sound emerged.
“Your Majesty?” General Thiessen asked, concern clouding his eyes.
But still no words came forth.
Theissen followed where he pointed. At first confused, he scanned the distance to the south and west. Then he gasped. With a burgeoning horror, Theissen turned back to Threimes.
“But that would be impossible. The Great Central Forest is impassable. It's too dense. It would take even a single skilled woodsman a week to travel just a few miles.”
Yes, and it should take an army far, far longer. But Threimes trembled nonetheless. For if he was right—and he felt to the very core of his icy bones that he was, that the savages were somehow managing to do the impossible—then while most of the kingdom's remaining combined might stared at a dead city far to the north, a horde of Dakariin were spilling south, completely undetected and undeterred, toward his largely undefended capital city.
Chapter 43
The tunnels had low ceilings, just barely high enough for a man of average height to walk without stooping. The uneven floor was treacherously slippery. Torches flared at distant intervals—almost useless pinpoints of light scattered in the vast warren of tunnels. A light haze of bitter pitch smoke burned Gaven's nostrils as he hurried, limping slightly. Footing in the tunnels was treacherous; he had twisted his ankle farther back on a jutting rock.
He caught up to Kurin and Mikal, cursing under his breath after negotiating a particularly nasty zag in the tunnel, one that nearly left him with a bloody nose.
Behind him, chasing him like wolves, came the echoes of the Soldiers of God who had found their way into the tunnel.
“How far?” Mikal growled.
“Maybe a few hundred paces. Maybe a little less.”
“And you're the last?”
Gaven nodded. “Aye, sir. I made sure there was no one left.”
“How many Soldiers?”
“I'm not sure. The echoes make it hard to pinpoint. I would guess a thousand interspersed throughout the tunnels.”
Kurin chuckled. The old priest had not entirely recovered from his captivity. His eyes were sunken and hidden in shadows. His usually lean frame was emaciated. When he walked, he still teetered and often accepted Mikal's arm for support. Yet his voice held as much power as it ever did. But it was cold now. Always cold. The quiet chuckle was enough to give Gaven a shiver.
“You did well, Captain,” Mikal said. “Go join your troops ahead. Get them moving toward the Abbey end. And double time it. Anyone in these tunnels in the next fifteen minutes is going to be in for a very nasty surprise. When you reach the exit, deploy your men around the adit. Wait for us there.”
“Sir!”
With a salute, Gaven hurried on, squeezing against the wall as a handful of Salosian priests rushed past on their way to join Kurin. Reaching his men in short order, Gaven relayed their orders, and took his place at the front.
A short time later, they broke free of the gloomy cave three miles distance from Twin Town and into late afternoon light that, though dimming and shadowed by the thick trees surrounding them, still made them squint. They had been in the warrens under Twin Town for days though it felt like weeks; as happy as he was to be free of the dank, dirty network of tunnels and rooms, he still winced as the weak sunlight pierced his eyes.
Barking a few orders, he set his men up in a tight defensive circle around the mouth of the cave. Then they waited.
His men shifted their weight anxiously from foot to foot as time passed and silence reigned. All held their swords ready; none knew what Kurin had planned. None save Gaven and those still down in the tunnels. And probably Metana who had returned to the Abbey as soon as they arrived along with most of the survivors and the defected Soldiers of God. A corporal cleared his throat, spit a wad into the underbrush and Sergeant Tak growled for silence.
Beneath the earth, there came a deep rumble. The groans of tortured stone began to fill the chill air and clouds of dust began to puff out of the cave entrance. The rumble grew louder, stronger, until the ground began to shake. Just a light tremor at first, a vibration like a plucked lute string, it quickly grew until Gaven's men were shouting in dismay as they fought to keep their feet under them.
As the ground bucked underneath them, and Gaven's troop began one by one falling to their knees, Kurin and the priests, followed in the rear by Mikal emerged from the billowing cloud spewing from the cave opening like bolts from a crossbow.
Covered in grit, eyes wide, Kurin motioned frantically to Gaven. The ground was making such a noise that Gaven could not hear all the words that Kurin yelled, but he got enough of it. As one, those that had just exited the caved dove to the side, most landing heavily and covering their heads with their hands, Mikal, of course, nimbly rolling to his knees before burying his own face in his cloak.
“Move!” Gaven shrieked. “Move away from the cave!”
Just as the last of his men crawled out of the way, a deafening racket exploded as stone and earth tore itself apart. A jet of dirt and stone erupted from the entrance, a thousand projectiles that could tear flesh from bone. After one last ear-shattering, bone-jarring boom from the bowels of the earth, all fell still.
Dazed, Gaven coughed and rubbed grit from his eyes. He sat up and with a glance, saw that no one seemed injured.
Men and women began picking themselves up off the ground, brushing dust and grit off their clothing, coughing it out of their lungs. With Mikal's help, Kurin rose to his feet. The old man shook, gasping for breath as though he had run a hundred miles but he wore a crazed smile, his eyes dancing with fiery excitement.
“We did it, Mikal! We bloody well did it!”
Mikal responded with a grunt.
His guts roiling, Gaven suppressed the urge to sick up. He had to concede, tactically speaking, the plan had been a good one. Lure the Soldiers of God to the various entrances leading into the ancient warren of tunnels that criss-crossed the earth beneath Twin Town, then collapse the tunnels on as many Soldiers as possible. It would have the double effect of killing many Soldiers while the Salosians suffered little to no casualties, and leave only one route open to the Abbey: above ground, through the dense forests and powerful wards that surrounded the Abbey and past the several platoons that waited at various strategic points in ambush.
The plan had been a good one, but still Gaven strove to keep his last meal down. He could not begin to imagine what it must be like to die in the dark crushed and suffocated by thousands of tons of earth.
He avoided looking at the adit, knowing that he would no longer see an opening to a cave but dirt and stone packed solid, as he gathered his men and prepared them for the final march home where they would waste no time in finalizing the defense of the Abbey. He avoided the thought that, amid the broken twisted bodies of the dead, there were probably men and women down there, still alive, calling piteously for help that could never arr
ive in time. Who was he kidding, he asked himself. Help would never arrive. He avoided thinking on it because there was a chance that he knew some of those men and women, that he had fought alongside them. Though he was no longer a Soldier of God, and, in fact, stood against them, there were those that, at one time, he might have called friend.
And ultimately, he avoided it because he knew there was much more, and much, much worse, to come.
“Damn it, Jurel,” he muttered to himself as they got underway. “Where are you? We need you.”
* * *
“I'm sorry, ma'am,” the sentry declared haughtily. “No one may leave the Abbey grounds. It isn't safe. Especially for a pretty young thing like yourself.”
“I said get out of my way,” Metana snarled. She raised a clawed hand to eye level and let crackles of energy play between her fingers.
He leapt as though bitten by an adder, squeaking apologies and she swept regally past.
Keep calm. Keep cool. That's it. You didn't mean to lose your temper. It's just that everything is so bloody wrong!
She strode away from the Abbey wall, and into the trees, cool as ice but with the urge to strangle someone, anyone, boiling just under the surface. She needed time to think, time away from Mikal and Gaven and the rest of them.
The Abbey was in an uproar. The refugee camp had been transformed into a staging area where those refugees who could fight were assigned platoons and those who could not where assigned other tasks, while Salosian soldiers, the new and the old, performed battle exercises in the hastily delineated training grounds. Inside the Abbey walls, defenses were seen to, supplies were being gathered and stored where they were most useful, three audience halls had been set aside for use as infirmaries—one of which Metana was assigned to. The smithy was a roaring, stinking inferno as those who had even the least knowledge in the area of metalwork were sent to the blacksmith. Hundreds of tasks and meetings and each one took a bloody room; there was nowhere anyone could go for a little peace and quiet. She had tried to stay in her room but there was so much noise in the hallways that she may as well have sat on an anvil in the smithy.
