Wen gritted his teeth and shoulder through where he could, barged when he couldn't. He'd never realised so many people lived in the city. Old and young and somewhere in between, seemed like everyone was on the streets between him and the castle.
Fit and strong, he was still covered in sweat by the time he reached the gate. Others were thinking the same thing, maybe, or just trying to get through the gates to find whatever safety they could. There wasn't anywhere to hide, though, and the guards on the gate weren't doing the greatest job of getting their point across. They were panicking when they should have been calm. The people were agitated, ready to begin hurling fists or cobbles, might be a dagger or two between the rabble, even. Five guards, armed, with only rudimental armour, stood at the gates to the castle. Maybe forty angry, frightened people were pushing and shoving.
It was, Wen saw, just a matter of time before blood flowed.
It wasn't like words were going to calm things, either. The wailing from the plains outside the city had grown so loud it drowned all speech, drowned the clamour from the crowd. Even shouting, Wen didn't think he'd be heard.
He needed to find some way to talk without the need for words. A way to calm things without shouting or drawing Cruor Bract, his great, hungry blade.
Was there a way?
Maybe.
The guard noted Wen at the back of the crowd and bellowed something at the man next to him. They both looked at Wen, no doubt seeing the handle of his double-hander over his shoulder. Probably thinking it might be time to bump this up a notch, call down the Captain, reinforcements, those shiny Sard bastards, too, maybe.
Which was what Wen wanted. He desperately needed the city folk gone and the Sard down here. Only that would save him fighting his way through the dumb guard and the frightened people. He put on his fiercest face and let out a great roar. Even with his might and fury behind the shout, nothing but the dreadful wailing of the rent in the air in the distance could be heard.
But communication wasn't all about words. Two guards who watched him saw his display, figured they didn't want any part of him. They turned and ran. Either away, or to get help. Wen stalked forward, like a man with a purpose, and even in their panic the little people in his path sensed a predator among them. Something about the smell of his sweat, or the way other's sudden sense of self-preservation was catching. An animal thing, deep-seated inside man, still.
He strode forward and reached the remaining three guardsmen. Those that hadn't seen his approach couldn't miss him, now.
Thankfully, he didn't have to kill anyone.
The screaming noise seemed to abate. Gradually, as though the worst of a storm passed. Wen saw the reason for the sudden quiet and the growing calm and awe. The five surviving paladins of the Order of Sard were horsed, and their mounts cantered toward the gates. At their rear was the priest Drun, on a black horse. Drun seemed pale, and tired. The paladins, however...they were a sight that gave even Wen Gossar a chill deep in his spine.
Wen Gossar had lived a good many years, and seen battle and proud men. He'd faced bad odds, and once, even, wore fine armour like the men before him. He knew the effect such a sight could have on a crowd, or an enemy.
He smiled and crossed his arms in front of him, waiting for the entourage to reach him, without having to argue pointlessly with the guardsmen at the gate.
'Thought maybe you'd all slept through the din,' said Wen, to Quintal, who rode at the head of their small force.
'Been a day of surprises, Wen Gossar,' said Quintal, reining in his horse and stopping beside the big man. 'Renir and Tirielle are...gone. Caeus, too.'
Wen grimaced. 'The most powerful wizard in the world...our only hope...gone?'
Quintal didn't seem over pleased about it, either. 'We put so much hope in the Red Wizard and he just...went. He left last night, and left us nothing more than a word with a servant. He spoke to Carious and came back...different. I fear he is broken, or insensible...he's definitely insane, but then war does that to a man, does it not?'
'It does. What did the servant say?'
Quintal's lined, tanned face screwed up with distaste, rather than fear.
'That the Elethyn are here. The Return has happened.'
'You think this wailing...this is the Elethyn, come for war?'
Quintal shook his head. 'No. I think when they come to this land...it will be as fire. If Caeus cannot stop them...'
'Then neither can we...' finished Wen, sniffing. 'Ah well, death is just another journey, no?'
Quintal smiled at the burly warrior. 'No stranger, either. A journey through familiar lands, for men like us, perhaps...but yet Caeus puts great stock in Renir Esyn. He is our charge. Everything is...'
For a moment it looked like Quintal's stony reserve was about to crack, but the paladin clenched his teeth and said no more.
Wen shrugged. 'Doesn't matter much, does it? This thing? If it turns out it is these Sun Destroyer bastards, we'll fight anyway. Live or die, don't suppose a wizard, or ten wizards, or and a king in his shiny crown would make a hell of a lot of difference.'
Quintal nodded. 'There is truth in that, friend,' he said. 'Climb on. Save a bit of energy. Looks like might be a busy day. Might be worth another swing or two to save some energy now. I think...every blade will be made to count...and soon.'
Wen didn't like to ride. But he wasn't a fool. He had already broken a sweat just getting to the castle. People would move aside for a horse, where they wouldn't budge even for a man like Wen.
He took the paladin's proffered hand and leapt up behind him.
*
Bourninund Maltern wasn't a commander. He was a soldier, though, and a damn fine one, even when he was still drunk from drinking from sundown to sunup.
'Is he drunk?' said Cenphalph, as Quintal drew his horse to a halt beside the rest of his brothers. Drun was there, and perhaps by his magic a hush travelled with the Sard. Cenphalph's words were audible only thanks to that hush.
'Very much so,' said Wen, hopping from Quintal's tall mount.
'He seems to be...castigating that young Captain...'
'Yes. Yes, he does.'
Wen thanked the Sard, and strode toward Bourninund before the Captain could do anything rash.
Rash, thought Wen. Stupid, more like.
All around them people were watching, open-mouthed, and a foul-smelling old drunkard told a rather young guardsman wearing a Captain's helm what was what.
Wen grinned, reassured now he could hear Bear's words. The old mercenary might be very drunk, but he could still run rings around some guard Captain who looked wet behind the ears.
'Young man, I may well be drunk, but you are stupid, and evidently sober. Which of us is the worse?' Bourninund, wiry, old, was right in the man's pale face.
'Help?' said Wen.
'I'm fine,' snapped Bourninund.
'I was talking to this fine example of Sturman bravery standing before you,' said Wen, still with a giant grin on his broad face. 'Brave men, Captain, we have dire need of. Soon, I fear, thousands, perhaps millions of strange, powerful creatures will pour forth from that black hole out yonder and tear into this city, ravaging women, and possibly men...who knows the minds of the savage outlanders?'
The Captain turned toward Wen for a second and his face fell to see the man who spoke, taller than himself, and twice as broad. Wen's sword, pommel leering over his shoulder, looked to be an evil thing.
The Captain then looked back to Bourninund. Old drunk man with two swords. The handles wrapped in worn leather. He looked out at the black hole maybe a mile distant.
Wen noted two things - the hole was noticeably larger, and the Captain was, in fact, not entirely stupid. The young man snapped a smart salute at Bourninund, wavered a little, and kind of half-saluted Wen, too.
'I'll have the men start digging out immediately...er...'
'Sir will do just fine, Captain. Good man,' said Bourninund graciously. The Captain - perhaps his superior had died drunk, or
old, or maybe the man just had unfortunately rich connections - made the wisest choice and left.
Either way, thought Wen, rich lad or unlucky, the young fellow will earn his salt today.
'Wen, see you brought reinforcements. Where's the wizard? Thought he'd...you know...do something?'
Wen shook his head. 'Bit of bad news. Caeus has left. Renir and the Lianthrian girl, too...Tirielle. All gone.'
'And we've lost Shorn, too. Brindle's hairy balls, man! Anyone else decided to scarper before the good bit?'
'Well, I'm here, and so are you. We'll make a go of it, I reckon. Got the shining ones, too. And Drun. He's alright, for an old man.'
'We're all old men,' said Bourninund.
Wen nodded. It was true enough, after all.
'Still got our teeth, though, right?'
Both men shrugged at that, and turned to stare out at the hole in the landscape. 'Funny thing, isn't it?'
'Magic. Gods,' said Wen with a passion. 'I hate magic.'
'With you there. Give me a stand up fight any day,' said Bourninund.
Quintal and Disper strode toward them. The Sard's mounts remained motionless, almost like a trained dog might. Wen had never seen such horses...and they weren't even the Sard's own horses. He could only imagine what these paladins were capable of, given enough time...
But time, they did not have.
'We'll make them work for the city, right?' said Bourninund to Quintal, figuring he'd have some kind of plan.
'Make them fight for every inch,' said the Sard, and Bourninund realised that the paladin wasn't a young man, either.
'All those people behind us, I get their fear. I understand it. Hells, I feel it. But Caeus, Renir, Tirielle...everyone's gone. The people we fought for...' Bourninund shook his head, disappointed, rather than confused or angry, even. 'I thought Renir, at least, had some balls. What, exactly, are we fighting for?'
Quintal smiled, and in that smile Bourninund understood some simple truth about the man. For all his pride and his shining armour, for all his prowess, the paladin was just a man. 'That's what we do,' the man answered. 'Until we can't fight anymore.'
Wen nodded. 'True,' he said.
Bourninund turned from the paladin and spat over the low wall toward the black spot ahead, now maybe half a mile wide.
'Aye. You might be a bit shiny for this land, paladin. But you're not wrong,' he said.
*
Chapter Thirty-One
Renir's wasn't sure if his legs hurt, or if they'd simple died on his while he walked down the endless succession of stairs that led deep beneath Rythe. For what must be hours now, Roskel Farinder had led him, and Tirielle, deeper than he imagine man could travel. The people who built these pathways, these endless stairways and by-ways...such things were beyond even imagining. Downward, straight. No meandering or twisting, always straight. At one point the builders of this dark wonder had encountered an underground reservoir, thick lush black water that Roskel bade them drink, telling them they were not likely to taste purer. Renir and Tirielle both drank their fill, tired and aching. The builders of this vast underground world, too, must have tasted the water...and then simply built an immense walkway straight across, in that smooth black stone that sucked all the light from their torches. No deviation, at any point. Other pathways, stairwells and staircases, bridges that spanned across the air with immeasurable drops to either side...everything was straight, or branched at perfectly cut right-angles, as though the world they travelled in was merely intersecting triangles and squares, as though the rock and dirt and water under Naeth was no impediment at all.
What tool could cut the rock? What manner of genius could bring so much of the black stone so deep? Had men died in the creation of this place...were they men? Or, instead, old ones, like the Elethyn, or maybe something even older still?
Renir never tired of wonder. Tirielle, either, it seemed. Both of them strode on carefully behind the thief. Silent for a time. Occasionally someone would speak, but when Roskel insisted he knew little more of the history of this place than they, and refused to enlighten them with talk about himself or his strange Queen, conversation dried.
Tirielle's breath was ragged, but she did not complain. Renir watched her face, saw determination and strength there, and no fear. If she could bear the fire in her legs and lungs, then so, too, could he.
He was hungry, and at some point the water he drank from the black, deep pond needed to come out. He felt bad, splashing around lavishly around in the dark, wondered if they'd slip over his piss on the way back, but the builders, it seemed, had no bodily functions.
He shrugged, a little sheepishly, at Tirielle as he returned to them after relieving himself.
When they finally reached their destination, Renir was hungry, tired, thirsty. His legs were afire. But the long, tiring journey had not been without purpose, for there, at the end of their path, was the body of the last king of Sturma.
*
'A man in death is a ragged thing, is he not?' said Roskel, after a moment of silence beside the corpse. The thief spoke quietly, though his voice reverberated around this central chamber within the impossible square through which they had somehow travelled...maybe even the centre of a cube...which made Renir wonder, for an instant, just how far downward the furthest reaches were, if they were in the centre, as he suspected, rather than at the very bottom.
'My Queen said he should have been interred within the King's Chamber, or in the castle, or even in the dirt, like the Kings of old. But...'
'He was your friend?'
Roskel Farinder looked into Renir's eyes, saw no mockery there.
'Yes. He was. Selfish of me, perhaps, to leave him alone in this place...but I come here often, to think...and company is...'
Roskel shrugged, as though his own point evaded him. 'I chose this place. Here, a man can rest.'
'Farinder...' Tirielle spoke, but hestitantly. 'You do not tire...like...us.'
The man seemed surprised. 'You're tired?'
'And hungry, and thirsty...and not relishing or even sure about the climb back to the sun...'
Roskel shook his head, and to Renir it seemed so laden with sadness, that simple gesture, that despite his capture and being carried on the man's shoulder like a sack of vegetables, despite his wonder at this place and the Queen and the last king there before him, he felt some kind of kinship to the thief.
Felt like maybe they were both men bobbing along on currents they'd misjudged.
'Forgive me,' said the thief. For the first time, the man noticed the torches they carried - they were dangerously low. Renir was quite aware of the fact. With no light, travelling back along those endless bridges and walkways spanning air and water? They'd slip, fall, or simply be lost forevermore down here in the black.
'I'll happily forgive you,' said Renir. 'But...we're not like you. We can't walk back in the dark. Can't go forever like it's nothing. Coming down was damn hard, thirsty work and tiring. But climbing back up? In the dark, with no strength?'
Tirielle's hand brushed Renir's shoulder, and he was glad he wasn't the only one who felt their predicament so keenly. For some reason, there seemed little threat from the thief, other than some kind of absent-minded blindness where it came to people's needs. A blindness, Tirielle and Renir both realised, that came from not being quite people like they were.
Unspoken understanding; they both knew now that Roskel Farinder had no need of light or sustenance. Whatever he was...he was not the same as them.
Roskel Farinder shook his head sadly, yet again. In the firelight, the long moustaches he affected shook and seemed silver, rather than blonde, and his bald head reflected the waning firelight from the torch perfectly.
'I thought...I thought the wonder of this place. Of the king...I always find it invigorating...you understand?'
Renir thought about his friends, the strength he'd taken from them, and Shorn, in particular. He thought about the way a good man could bolster your own courage, give
you hope and the strength to carry on, even when you were ready to fail. He thought about the long road he'd known, and the things he held important. Those things were friends. Nothing else. Not steel, or gold, or women, even. Tirielle, perhaps she understood this, perhaps not. But Renir felt it keenly. He smiled, down in the blackness, remembering those who were dear to him. Shorn, Drun, Bourninund, Wen...
Men he was proud to call his friends.
He'd do anything to get back to them.
He understood Farinder well enough.
'Roskel, I get it. I do. It's a wondrous place. The king is...' In truth, the king could not be seen. He was encased head to toe in bright armour, a simple crown on his head above a simple helm. His face showed, yes, but it was a barren thing, black flesh shrunk into the man's dead skull. Not the worst case of dead man Renir had even seen...but certainly not a sight he found invigorating. 'Kingly. It's a pretty crown. But if we die down here...'
'Don't know what I was thinking,' said the man. Tirielle made a slight movement, as though she was about to step forward and comfort him. Thought better of it, then, had third thoughts and did cross the short space between them. She laid a hand, slightly unsure, perhaps, on the thief's shoulder.
'We came for the crown. You saw your friend. Now we need to get back. Not much help doing all the good stuff if we die before we see the sun again, is it?'
Her voice was light, but her words rang true.
'Last time I saw the light...he was...'
'You miss him?'
Roskel nodded. 'More than you can imagine.'
'Must've been a good man. A great man.'
Roskel shook his head. 'Adequate, perhaps. Good fighter. Wasn't king for long. But one thing he was...a great friend. Meet him. You'll see. You'll understand.'
Renir frowned. 'Meet? Ah...he...'
Roskel smiled, looking tired, though he had no need, perhaps, of sleep, even he might need rest. 'Put the crown on, Renir. Meet the man. It's a strange thing, this circle of gold. It has power. Maybe those that made this place...maybe they made this thing, too. Take it. It's yours now. Then we'll go back. You rest, I'll carry you.'
Rythe Falls Page 13
