by Robert Brady
Vedeen took a worried look at him, then focused on Dagi and I.
“Earth and Weather are focused on this point in space,” she informed me. “Even Water stirs in her muddy bed. I should have smelled your touch on this, Emperor.”
Dagi pulled her sword, but I put a hand on her shoulder and she sheathed it.
“What can you tell me about that pass?” I asked her.
Vedeen regarded it, and then me.
“What would you have me tell you?” she said.
“He wants to know what the North Men are doing,” Kvitch shouted. We turned to see him and two other Dwarves walking down the path out of the mountains. “Because he knows that they will be doing something soon.
“And he’s right,” the Dwarf continued. “The North Men are tunneling through the mountain where the path once was – and they will be through tomorrow I think. Maybe the day after.”
I nodded.
The Dwarf lowered his head to Vedeen, the others with him. “Holy one,” he said.
From her horse, Vedeen raised her hand and blessed them. She had no blessing to spare for my daughter and me.
They would have been wasted.
“Would you have me weaken their tunnel?” Vedeen asked me? Her luxurious blonde hair was plastered to the sides of her head, her face streaked with dust from the road. They’d pushed her horse to get here in time – it showed a few ribs from hunger.
“I’d ask you to dismount and to let your horses graze,” I told her. “There’s been enough suffering without visiting it on loyal animals.”
She gave me a queer look but dismounted, Jack with her. He began the process to tack down their horses – with no trees here, he placed their saddles on the largest rocks he could find.
“We can still counter-mine the tunnel,” Kvitch informed me. “When they finish, they can bring half the mountain down-“
I shook my head and he stopped. They wanted to keep up the fight – I was done fighting. Fighting was going to give War what He wanted. That included the deaths of all of them.
Too many had died. More importantly – too many had died because of me.
“We’re going to let them come through,” I said. The only one who didn’t react was Jack, who was hobbling the Druid’s stallion with a long, soft rope. The rope, tied between the horse’s front legs, would let it graze at a walk, but keep him from running off.
“You’re aware that they’ll kill us all,” Kvitch said. “As like as not, they’ll actually eat me and mine.”
I nodded. “You should leave,” I informed him. “There’s nothing more you can do here.”
He frowned. “I should just go wait in our mountains for this enemy –“ he began.
“They won’t be coming,” I said.
“Another rider coming in,” Dagi informed us all.
We turned to the south and saw the dust cloud from a single rider. I couldn’t help thinking, “Took you long enough,” but I didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t tell Raven to be here, I could only hope that she came to that decision on her own.
We waited quietly as she approached. I could see the Andaron kirruck on her back, carrying her son. Shela had to have helped her with that, or Lee.
She reined in on another tired horse, and dismounted. Her brown eyes swept the lot of us and finally rested on me.
“I know what you think you’re doing,” she informed me.
I nodded.
“Are you sure?” she asked me. “Are you really positive this is going to work?”
“I have faith,” I told her.
“Because I have it on pretty good authority that it won’t,” she told me. “I mean really, really good authority that you’re going to die inside of 48 hours, and then it’s going to be up to me to pick up where you left off.”
She’d been talking to a god, I thought. Probably Eveave – that’s who Glynn thought sent us the prophecy.
“Consider the source,” I told her.
“Dust,” Jack said, pulling the saddle from Raven’s horse. “We return to the dust from whence we came.”
Kvitch frowned at him. “What is wrong with that old man?” he asked.
I smiled. “Of all of us, the least is wrong with him,” I said.
Seeing the truth was a hard thing.
***
The Dwarves ate with us that night and we bedded down, setting up a guard, just as I had when I had first come here. I hadn’t really stood a watch in a decade – just checked in on those who do. There was something quiet and calming, sitting on a boulder, overlooking those who were sleeping, waiting for nothing to happen.
Dagi relieved me. I woke her a few minutes before her turn – like most Andarons, when she was awake, she was awake. They were unlikely to roll back over if you didn’t watch them.
Nantar used to do that. You had to actually sit with Nantar to make sure he didn’t go back to sleep.
She rose, took care of some personal business and joined me at the rock where I’d been overlooking the rest. We were quiet for a moment, she looked up at the plain, white moon, and then at the side of my face.
“You’ll face them tomorrow?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I informed her.
“But you won’t fight?”
“No,” I said. “Fighting is pointless.”
She absorbed that. “They’ll kill you,” she said, finally. “They won’t listen to anything you have to say – they’ll just attack.”
I nodded – that was a distinct possibility that was troubling me. It would be tempting to kill enough of them where they would pause and then listen, but that would already put us too far down the wrong road.
“I don’t want you to die, father,” she informed me. “I just found you.”
I smiled, turned to her and kissed her forehead.
“OK, then,” I said. “I won’t die.”
She punched me. Who the hell taught all of the women to do that here?
I stood. I couldn’t explain this to her – not in the time we had. It had taken me too long to get it, if indeed I had.
I was running on instinct now. I shucked my new, lighter armor, laid my sword down where I could pick it up easily, and laid down to sleep out the rest of the night. I had barely closed my eyes, it seemed, when light from the eastern sunrise pried them back open. The Dwarves were already awake and packed to leave. The horses had spread out a little on the plains, looking for more graze.
I stood and smelled for breakfast. There was no fire, however, and our rations were cold. Raven was actually dividing some out, mixing ours with hers. She’d brought more, but then, she planned on returning back somewhere after this.
Jack was holding her baby and looking off into the distance. I squatted down next to Raven who, by the time I had my armor on, was done with her task.
“You’ve figured out the purpose of your little one?” I asked her.
“Jeffery,” she said. “His name is Jeff – I always liked that name.”
“Jeff,” I said. “You understand –“
She sighed. “Yes, I get it,” she said, and looked into my eyes. “He isn’t born ‘of Life,’ his parents are from our world. I’d imagine that, next, you and I should give him a sister to start a new race of people with.”
Kind of sick, but yeah.
“And those people can rise up, and they can talk to the gods, and they can rule here –
“But it’s not just that,” she continued. “There are the weapons – the swords, the shield, the spear, the dagger.”
“The people who hold them now, my kids,” I said.
“The people,” Raven repeated. “I knew those people, you know. I travelled with them, I loved them.”
It was kind of obvious now, after the things my kids said. Chessa, Lupennen, Eric – they received ‘advice’ from their weapons, like I understood languages because of mine.
The people became the weapons, the weapons came back to me. The weapons made my kids more powerful
than I could hope to be. Chessa humbled Shela without a thought.
Follow the so-called prophesy out, and in the battle to a stand-still with the Great North, these give us the push we need, to ‘win despite the odds.’ After years of devastating war, with Raven and her chemistry, the weapons and their advice, the people – my kids – who fought invincibly alongside of me.
A race of people who talk to the gods, and all of the other races so depleted that War couldn’t do what he needed to with them, because there weren’t enough left.
Because, to a god, wiping everyone out and starting again was a completely viable, realistic option.
“It’s a whole, big mess,” I told her. “These so-called gods wrangle, and then the people suffer.”
She nodded.
“And you have a better way,” she told me.
“And you know what it is,” I answered her back.
She was quiet.
“Vedeen says they won’t be through today,” she said, finally, standing. “But I can fix that.”
I nodded. “I thought you might,” I said. “Let the Dwarves get out of here first, though.”
She nodded. We called everyone in and we ate a light breakfast, and we said good-bye to the Dwarves. Kvitch took my forearm in his hand, and I his.
“Don’t die,” he told me.
“Do what I can,” I answered him.
He simply turned around and took off at a jog, the other Dwarves behind him. It took them an hour to get out of our sight, amidst the rolling hills at the base of the Great Northern Mountains.
As they disappeared, Raven turned to me, and I nodded. Jack loaded Jeffrey into her kirruck, and Dagi picked up her sword and shield.
Vedeen looked monumentally worried and the worse for wear, her robes dusty and her face still streaked, her hair flat from dirt and sweat.
The sun was two-thirds to its apex in the East, the air dry and dusty. I smelled ozone, rank and sharp in the air, as Raven raised a hand white with power, pointed a finger at the mountain side, and then twisted her wrist and fingers as if she were opening an invisible jar, lying on its side above her.
The mountain trembled, a circle opened up on its side, the dirt and rock cascading down its side. Finally a new tunnel in the mountain was revealed, curious-looking Men standing inside of it, blinking.
They saw us, and one screeched a war cry. Another leapt into the open air, hitting the eroded earth down the mountain side, forty feet above us, and tumbling to the hills where we stood.
He didn’t survive the effort. I don’t see how anyone could have.
“Into the dust,” Jack informed us. “From the dust.”
The tactician in me told me that we could hold them here almost indefinitely. In fact, this wasn’t as good of a plan as it seemed. Even with no magic, this severely restricted their entrance into the south, and we could match men-to-arrows indefinitely.
So this wasn’t likely the whole plan. Either there would be more tunnels, or this tunnel would be a diversion while they moved even more warriors in through another path that we didn’t know of yet. The latter seemed more likely. While Law would mark the end of the War months for us, they would likely press on until Life or Power, if not the entire winter. Set this up, set up a small fortification to guard it, draw us here and then appear en masse somewhere else. I’d be suspicious of the passes by the Dwarven Kingdom if I didn’t know those were already sealed.
Certainly somewhere between there and here. It didn’t matter. They were here now.
In their tunnel, peeping out like angry moles, I waited for the equivalent of Vinkler to rear his head, and then someone like Maree to come speak for him.
I didn’t have to wait long. Another tall, blue-eyed blond like Vinkler stepped out in heavy, black armor, a woman by his side. They threw a rope over the embankment from there tunnel, which they were busy clearing and buttressing to match their existing tunnel, and a dozen North Men lined up to slide down it.
“Kill them?” Vedeen asked me.
“Why?” I asked her, not looking at her. “They have plenty more.”
The North Men slid down the rope and made a defensive half-circle at its base, waiting for our attack. When it didn’t come, this new warrior and his woman slid down.
Then another came after them, a man in a brown over cloak and white robes, with high-laced sandals and an oak staff slung over his shoulder.
As suspected.
He touched the ground and turned toward me, the brown cloak spinning open and revealing the green question mark, turned upside-down on his breast.
Everyone wondered where the Cheyak must have gone. Some even thought that the Swamp Devils were what the Cheyak had become, but I knew better. As soon as I’d spoken to Dilvesh months ago, I’d figured this out.
Someone had to be giving them inside information, and someone had to be pulling the strings for all of these coincidences that made the invasion possible. I’m sure that Dilvesh had arranged for the Confluni to know of our movements to the south, for the King of Trenbon to know about Central Communications, and for him then to just leave it alone.
Dilvesh faced me with a big, wide grin. He pushed the hood back from his green, curly hair.
Only a Cheyak would have had the power to insert himself into the Free Legion so convincingly. I’d smelled this betrayal since the battle of Tamaran Glen – it just never behooved me to take it to this conclusion. If I’d spilled the beans back then, all we would have done is pushed the Druid underground. At least, for the last 16 years, I’d been able to keep an eye on him.
To make way for the One.
The One, who walks upon the Earth
The One, who is of War.
The One, who others wait upon
To fight forever more.
The last of his kind, whom the gods waited upon to bring back the Cheyak nation and its heartless violence against anyone who wasn’t them.
Some Druids knew about him, but the gasp from Vedeen told me that she wasn’t one of them. Recreating the Druids had been Dilvesh’s way back into the Fovean lands, where the Cheyak’s ultimate ambitions lay.
“I like your new armor and sword,” the Druid informed me.
I nodded.
“Your daughter is beautiful, as well,” he said. “If you’ll give her to me to marry, I’ll let you live.”
Dagi pulled her sword.
“But that she would do the same for you,” I informed him. He smiled even more widely.
He turned to Raven. “Thank you for saving us two days’ work,” he said.
She didn’t smile or frown. She didn’t know him like I did – she had no need to.
Dilvesh stepped past his warriors and went out of sight behind one of the hills between us for a moment. He reappeared at the top of one closer to us all, his warriors and his general (or whatever the man in black was) with him. I didn’t see the warrior’s woman, meaning she was getting herself a better striking position. It didn’t look like she’d taken anyone with her, but based on what Maree was capable of, that was no comfort.
We were probably 40 feet apart now. If his warriors came at us at a sprint, we’d be in it at a real disadvantage, which is likely what he was counting on.
“I don’t sense more of your warriors,” Dilvesh informed me. “Don’t tell me this is all you have?”
“This is more than I need,” I informed him. “In fact, I sent some away.”
“The Dwarves,” he said, nodding. “Have I mentioned how much I dislike Dwarves?”
“Enough to teach your people to eat them,” I remarked. “What did the Dwarves ever do to you?”
“You wouldn’t know it,” Dilvesh said, “but they engineered the Blast. Back then, the Dwarves were more like Men, and they worshipped Law, not Earth. When we couldn’t overcome the Men of the North, we sought their alliance, but they saw we were of Power, and they destroyed the Passes of Deception, and created Tren Bay. Power thought us weak, and He abandoned us.”
I nod
ded. Wouldn’t have guessed that.
“But enough history,” Dilvesh informed me. “It’s time to kill you.”
He turned to his warriors. “Don’t harm the female with the sword and shield.”
I heard the scrabble of soft leather shoes on loose dirt behind us. That woman moved pretty fast. Clearly Dilvesh had just been biding his time until she got into position.
“You really should have brought Shela with you,” Dilvesh chided me.
Dagi spun on her heel and her steel shield caught the sword-strike that would have taken me between the shoulders. I didn’t move as she parried the follow-up attack with her sword, and drove the attacking woman off. I felt her back pressed against mine.
Dilvesh frowned, then the hill beneath him wavered and collapsed in a cloud of ultra-fine dust. His warriors fell gasping into what was left of it, Dilvesh with them.
Instinctively I think, he struck out at the source of the attack – Raven.
Big mistake. Raven naturally absorbed the energy and reflected it back at him. Dilvesh flew back out of the dust and into the mountain that he’d climbed down, resembling a cartoon character as he struck the mountainside spread-eagle, then slid unconscious to its base.
Jeffrey screamed in surprise. Raven’s eyes widened. I think that was more power than she’d channeled before.
“Dust,” I head Jack say. “All is dust.”
The woman behind me lunged at Dagi again, and Dagi parried her off again. Whatever magic was involved in that sword and shield, the two were a pretty-much invincible pair.
More warriors were sliding down the rope to come to Dilvesh’s aid. Vedeen raised a hand toward them.
“No!” I shouted to her. She looked toward me, keeping her hand raised.
“No,” I repeated. “It’s what War and Power want. They want a fight. If we give them that, then we lose, no matter what happens.”
Vedeen closed her fist. I could see the turmoil on her face – she’d been a Druid, she’d been let down by Dilvesh time and again. Her world had been turned upside down and shaken.
I turned around and faced the woman who’d been attacking Dagi. She had a couple small scars on her face and arms. Dagi didn’t have a mark on her, but she was breathing hard.
