“Ada gave us reliable information then. What of the rest of the names on the list?”
“We’re still trying to find them. I believe they must have fled once they got wind of what was happening.”
“Have you learned what they planned on accomplishing here?”
“No, but we’ve found notes on our numbers, supplies, and troop movements. Many of them are in some kind of code; it will take us some time to decipher them.”
“You’ve done well, Shara. Thank you.” She nodded in dismissal.
Shara stepped back with a salute. Rainwater dripped down her angular features, her dark eyes stark in the dim gray dawn. She turned and met Silas’ gaze. Had she just smiled at him? Wait, what did that mean?
Adriel straightened in her saddle and looked out over the group of Vilant. “General Dralmond will be in charge until I return. I can’t say how long that will be. It could be days, or weeks. Serve her well, and don’t forget your purpose here.”
Shara dipped her head at their salutes then turned toward the camp before pausing to look at Silas. “You. Meet me in the training grounds tomorrow morning.” She stepped out into the rain.
“My name’s Silas!” he called after her. “We’ve actually met before!” The nearby Vilant sniggered.
Fifty others soon appeared, riding packhorses and sturdy palfreys and leading several other remounts. Bell boots ringed their feet and calkins studded their hooves; the added bits of iron gripped the sucking mud like teeth. At least they worked, he’d made his fair share of those over the past few days.
Kari guided a packhorse into the arch and handed the reins to Isroc who checked over the horse’s tack before saddling the shaggy beast.
The riders gathered in the archway, hooded in their capes and yet looking as if they’d swam across the camp. They very well may have. Cramped before, now the archway was bursting at the seams, packed with human and horse flesh practically stacked atop each other. Breath misted from every mouth, and the air grew stifling from the heat of bodies pressed together.
Chains groaned into motion and the heavy oak doors swung open, straining in the banks of mud. The fifty or so riders made for the opening and streamed out into the rain.
Adriel rode up beside Isroc and Silas with a brisk nod. “Silas, thank you for staying. I know it’s hard for you to sit here while the war is outside these walls. But I need you here. The Vilant need you here.”
Silas shrugged. “I don’t see how I’m much use.”
“You’re one of the few true smiths in this camp. Not to mention a soldier, an Outrider, a Warrior. They need someone like you to help lead them. Will you do that?”
Silas sighed. Did he even have a choice anymore?
Adriel took that as acceptance and nodded. “It pains me deeply, letting Ada go. I know you don’t care either way, but I believe he was genuine. That look in his eye… I’ve seen it many times before. He—”
“I know.” Silas knew the look well. Hopelessness, despair, regret. That darkness that came with wanting to slit your own throat. But was that enough to justify letting the man go, to not punish him for his crimes?
Adriel turned and urged her horse through the gate.
Isroc frowned down at him, his eyes weighed down with sadness.
Silas reached for words, anything to help bring a spark back to his friend’s empty eyes. “Take care, Isroc,” he said. Isroc nodded and followed Adriel out into the rain.
Silas watched the doors close behind his friends.
The Faeran was peaceful. At times, anyway. It was like the winds of a great storm, rising and falling to some unknown rhythm. There was peace, and there was chaos.
It was all in Cain’s mind, of course. Those screams, those helpless pleas. But he was beginning to understand this place. Everyone faced their fears beneath these trees, but it was how one handled it that truly mattered.
Cain rested beneath the trunk of a tree, nestled in its wide, curling roots. He whittled away at a small piece of ash he’d found in Erias, methodically etching into the smoothed wood. The screams were there now, but in this moment, there was peace.
It was late into the night as confirmed by Mithaniel’s latest excursion into the treetops. The Iscara was asleep, or at least quiet in his own nest of roots. He still wasn’t sure if the man slept or not. They’d reached the Aceden path earlier in the day, and now it was only a matter of following the winding trail out of the Faeran.
South into Charun, then to Kaanos to find Iscarius. In the quiet of the trees and alone with his thoughts, he’d rarely felt so at ease before. They were on the right trail, and at its end, waited Malecai. He knew where his fate lay.
So, when the chaos came, he was ready for it.
It came first in a wave of horrible cries, the piercing highs of anguish and the rattling lows of weeping.
Then, he heard his friends. Silas and Isroc. Joshua and Aren. They screamed and cursed him, filled his ears with their hatred of him. Cain closed his eyes, fighting to calm his shaking hands and uneven breaths.
Something rose beneath the screams. Soft and feeble. He strained to hear it. Adriel.
He stood at this, dropping his knife as he searched the darkness. She knelt across the path from him, her face cupped in a hand and tears streaming through her fingers.
This was the Faeran, he had to remember. But why did it seem so real? He’d wanted to keep her safe, keep her away from the danger and heartbreak that would inevitably come from following him. Is that why she cried? Had she learned what he intended to do?
He took a hesitant step forward, arm outstretched. She was gone. In her place was a lily covered with… was that snow? No, ash. He stooped and plucked it from its bed of white.
Light erupted from the tiny hole it left behind. Brilliant white illuminated the black and sent the trees shying away. Cain fell back, shielding his eyes from the blinding rays.
The lily fell from his hand and the light vanished. In its place, a warmth that comforted like a blanket on the coldest of nights. He stood, body wrapped with a familiar heat like that of Ceerocai.
The trees fell still, and there, in the distance, he heard laughter. Not a cold or spiteful laugh, but the kind laugh of genuine happiness. It was the laughter of his friends and family and everyone he’d ever loved. And Adriel. Her laugh was there above all others, embracing him with a warmth all on its own.
In that moment, he knew peace. He thought he’d known it before, but like the man who had known the kiss of the candle only to discover the blaze of a wildfire, Cain now knew what it meant. That was the kind of peace he fought for. That was the peace he would win upon killing Iscarius.
Cain smiled. Now more than ever, he knew what he had to do.
Silas rubbed at his chin. He needed to shave; he hated stubble, it itched something fierce. He’d worked his hands to the bone the last few weeks trying to fill Adriel’s extensive work orders. He’d barely had time to piss, let alone shave. Still, it felt good. He had missed the soreness in his muscles that could only come from a hard day’s work.
Maybe he should go back to his room and shave first. No, that was stupid. Why was he so worried about it? He cleared his throat and entered the tent.
Shara looked up at him from a stack of papers. “You were standing out there for some time. Are you alright?”
Silas cleared his throat again. The soft glow of a brazier warmed her face with yellows and oranges, her smoky eyes watching him from the shadows cast across her cheeks.
“Well?” she asked. “Anyway, have a seat. Have you eaten breakfast yet?”
Silas turned to the tent flap. It was still bloody dark outside! “I’m a soldier so I’m used to shitty hours and all that, but why did you need to talk to me this early? Did you even go to sleep?”
“Are you just going to stand there all day?” She waved a knife at the camp chair across from her.
Silas dropped into the chair and watched her over mountains of maps and papers and plans. A trencher of br
ead and cheese and jam sat before him. He ate quickly while the Vilant studied him, calmly picking at her own food. She handed him a pewter cup and he sniffed at it. Brandy, this early in the morning? He grinned and downed the strong drink.
They sat in silence for a time, sipping their brandy while the rain tapped on the canvas above. “I need you to train my recruits,” Shara eventually said.
Silas suppressed a groan mid-sip, nearly choking. He’d been expecting this conversation. “Why me?”
“Because you are the most experienced soldier we have. You’re an Outrider, and before that, you were a soldier for some ten odd years. Not to mention a Warrior. They’ll listen to you.”
“Adriel made the same observations.” He poured himself more brandy from a nearby cask. “What about my work as a smith? I can’t just leave the boys in the forge, the work orders that Adriel has us working on is brutal. Two thousand axes!”
Shara held her cup out for him to refill. “Yes, I know your work in the smithy is important, but we’ve picked up a few more qualified smiths from our latest wall runs. We have twenty thousand new recruits to outfit and train, with more joining us every day. If we’re to have a chance of fighting back against Iscarius and his Acedens, then we need to prepare these men and women for the battles to come.”
Silas sighed and took another sip of his drink. His head was already feeling light. “Fine, I’ll help. I don’t know how much use I’ll be though. I was never a very good teacher.”
Shara smiled at him. The woman never did seem to smile enough. “They need you, Silas. We need you. You’re doing more good here than you realize.” She stood and beckoned him to follow. Silas took a final gulp from his cup before following her out of the tent and into the sprinkling rain.
Men and women, young and old, gathered in the field before them in row upon row. They waited, facing the wall, hands behind their backs at attention. Silas suppressed another groan. He knew that formation. It meant training drills and a whole lot of them.
“You’ll start now,” Shara informed. “Classes will start here every day at this time, and they’ll go until sunset. You’ll receive a fresh batch of recruits every other hour and you’ll teach each class the same topic. Topics will change once a week. Your first lesson will be on the basics—sword forms, body positioning, the usual bullshit.” She clapped him on the arm and pressed her cup into his hands. “And you’ll need this, I’m sure.” With that, she slipped back into her tent.
Silas stood there for a moment, unsure why he’d gotten himself into this mess. That bloody woman!
Rain. Always with the rain.
Isroc sighed and pulled his cape closer. Not that it did much good of course, he was sufficiently soaked to the marrow. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be dry. The rain beat down in gray sheets over the column of horsemen as they worked through the hills of foaming, churning, bubbling mud.
This time spent in the saddle had helped pull him from his dark thoughts, if only a little. He needed to be doing something, he was a soldier after all. He knew that laying in a bed and staring at the ceiling wasn’t doing him any good.
Perhaps Adriel knew that as well, and why she’d asked him to come along. He had to keep away from those memories; that train of thought left only one possible outcome. He pulled his hand from his knife and forced back the darkness.
Isroc wasn’t sure how long they’d been riding; the days blended together in a muddy mess. He thought three. Maybe four. They would have been miles farther than this, but the endless mud and rain reduced their pace to barely a crawl. If it weren’t for the bell boots and caulkins, they would have lost many more horses to broken legs already.
Rivers rushed between the hills and crashed through trees and buildings. Treetops poked from the murky waters, bits of timber walls and roofs drifting past. To go in a straight southward line, they had already gone west, east, and even north, and a hundred other directions besides to cut a path through the flood waters.
Of course, the cold never relented. The very air would have been frozen if not for the rain. To compensate, the rain froze them anyways.
And so they went, fifty riders slogging through the rain and mud to pluck the head from a king’s shoulders. A grand tale. The stories always seemed to leave out the dirty parts. Not to mention how the heroes found the bad guys in the first place!
How did Adriel expect to find Vanthe? If Ada could be believed, the man was tucked away in some palace tighter than a swallow in a snowstorm. Not to mention his guards. They could be wandering Charun for years before they sniffed out the king.
Isroc suspected Adriel knew something he didn’t, she wasn’t a fool. She had an army to lead now, mouths to feed, lives to protect. She wouldn’t run blind into revenge and let it stab her in the chest, she’d bring her own knife and watch her back as well. Which is why, despite their seemingly aimless wandering, he suspected she had a plan. Perhaps it lay with who she’d brought.
There were ten Charunite men and women with them. They were new recruits, which seemed strange that she would request their presence. But she’d chosen the ten who displayed the most promise, and she needed others who knew the terrain, after all. Two among the chosen were former farriers—the horses would need attending to and the long days of trudging through mud would not be kind on their hooves. There were ten hunters and trackers in case they ran out of food. Eighteen among them he’d learned were seasoned Vilant that had fought under Jiran for years. Another eight were the scouts out screening their perimeters. Their use was obvious. The last two he couldn’t figure out a purpose for, though knowing Adriel, she didn’t choose them for their looks. The first had a hatchet face and a beak-like nose and looked ready to peck at anyone who so much as glanced at him. The other had a giant mole right in the middle of his forehead.
A cry broke out from somewhere and Isroc tore his gaze from the man’s mole to see a rider approach. The man reined up beside Adriel and dipped his head to her so they could exchange whispers. After a shake of Adriel’s hood, the scout adjusted his patchwork cape and urged his mount ahead of the column.
Isroc guided his gelding up beside Adriel. “I can help you, you know,” he said, not for the first time. “I’m not much use to you or anyone else if I’m left in the dark.”
Adriel glanced at him before returning her gaze to what might have been a road. “I know.”
“Oh, don’t give me that look. You think because of what happened to me that I’m not fit to lead.”
Adriel frowned. “I never said that.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
“And would I be wrong?”
Isroc turned away.
“Look, believe it or not, I know how you feel.” Adriel sighed, eyes growing distant. “I’ve made many mistakes and one that nearly destroyed me. I was in a very bad place for many years afterwards. It was only hearing about the Warriors and the chance to do something meaningful that finally brought me out of my misery.”
Isroc squeezed his reins, fighting off the sight of so many falling heads. “I feel numb. Like I’m not even here. I failed them, all of them. I got hundreds of good men killed. But I need something to do, Adriel. I can’t be alone with my thoughts.” His voice strained. “Please.”
Adriel nodded as if in understanding. “Alright, I’ll consider it. And just so you know, I didn’t bring you along just to sit around. I brought you because of your knowledge and your skills, because you are a Warrior, and my friend.”
“What is your plan here, then?”
“First, we’re going to meet with a possible contact to see if anyone knows where Vanthe might be. I’ve got a few ideas where he might be hiding. We’ll find him… and we’ll drive him out like the rat that he is.”
Isroc suppressed a shudder. The whole thing made him feel cold. Killing a traitor was one thing, but… “He’s your uncle. Are you really just going to kill him?”
“He deserves it for what he’s done to his people.”
“
There’s no denying that. But he’s still family.”
Adriel scowled. “He may be blood, but he has never been my family.”
Isroc understood her anger, but the whole situation still left a bitter taste on his tongue. “And what happens after we find him?” he asked after a moment. “We kill him, but then what?”
She pursed her lips. “We find Cain.”
“And Charun? What about your country, your people?”
“We march for Kaanos. Kaanos is as much my home as Charun. My scouts confirm what Ada already told us, that the majority of the Aceden force has moved south. Abraxas is now one of the only Aceden strongholds remaining in Charun, besides maybe some footholds in Aaraciel and along the Setlon. Once we are done with Vanthe, I believe the people will rise up and retake what is theirs. The ousted soldiers will certainly march on Abraxas. The Acedens, however vast their numbers, have spread themselves thin. They cannot defend everything that they’ve taken. The people won’t be broken forever. They will fight to take back what is theirs, here, and everywhere else.
“My Vilant will have cleared the wall by the time we return. As much as it pains me… we will have saved everyone from chains that we can without turning over every rock in Charun. The fighting left here will have to be done by others. Kaanos faces destruction, and if they fall, so will the last of us. The full might of Iscarius descends on Kaanos and Cain is strolling right into it. We have to help the blind fool before he gets himself killed.”
Isroc sighed and gazed out to the dark silhouettes of hills materializing through the rainfall. “You’re right, we need to be there for him. I fear he may be the key to ending this thing.”
“I fear it too. The fate of the world in his hands.” She chuckled, but soon fell silent.
The column slowed to a stop and the Vilant nervously watched the rain with hands on weapons. “We’re here,” Adriel informed them. “Espen and the other scouts have formed a perimeter. Kari, you have the command.” She bowed her head at the slender woman in the riding dress. “Find some shelter and wait for our return. We won't be long. Isroc, Jundhil, Weslyn, with me.”
The Shadow of War Page 25
