Word of Traitors: Legacy of Dhakaan - Book 2

by Don Bassingthwaite

  “Bear and Boar,” breathed Geth. He was out of time. He couldn’t go up, he couldn’t go to the side, and certainly couldn’t stay where he was. He looked down at the knotted tail of the rope and loosened his grip.

  He dropped just as the guard below raised his crossbow to his shoulder and let the bolt fly. The missile spanged off the stone where his back had been just an instant before. Geth squeezed his hands tight again and jerked to a stop. There were loud grunts and curses from above as the sudden force yanked the guards pulling on the rope off balance. Geth sucked in a rasping breath. The tail of the rope pressed against his belly.

  Only about fifteen paces below, the guard with the crossbow was rearming his weapon. The other guard stood beside him, hand on the hilt of his sword, waiting for his own chance.

  Geth reached inside himself and shifted. The familiar feeling of invincibility burned through his veins. The pain in his ropeburned hand and his aching shoulder seemed to grow distant, then to vanish altogether. His skin felt like hide, his hair like thick, coarse bristles.

  And he pushed himself further, pouring everything he had into the shifting. Hide, hair, flesh, bone—he was as hard and dense as the heaviest oak. Wild power flooded him and thought vanished. This was how a charging bear or a rampaging boar felt. Geth drew in his legs, pressed himself against the wall, and kicked out with all his strength, roaring as he unleashed the coiled power.

  He let go of the rope just before it snapped taut. The plaza rushed up at him. So did the guards. He had the briefest glimpse of two terrified faces and of a crossbow snapped up toward him.

  Black pain stole his sight, but there was no blocking out the sounds that came with the moment of impact. The clash of metal on metal. The hollow thump of flesh on stone. Moist crunches and wet tearings. A cry that ended in bubbling gurgles.

  Light returned like thunder, and with it came the urge to vomit. Geth held down his gorge. He felt numb, almost separated from his body. He lay on his side, stone under his cheek. He sat up slowly—or tried to. His left arm buckled when he tried to put weight on it. He looked at it and saw an unnatural bend between wrist and elbow. He rolled over instead, felt a burst of pain in his side, ignored it, and pushed himself up with a right arm that wouldn’t bend properly but at least wasn’t broken.

  Khaar Mbar’ost towered over him, an angry giant. By Geth’s legs lay the guards. Both looked as if the fortress-giant had raised a hand and swatted them like flies. Both were sprawled with the joints of their limbs at odd angles. One lay still and silent, his skull broken against the stones of the plaza, while the other twitched and gurgled, his rib cage crushed.

  A few dar stood around, not too close, staring at them and at him. Geth looked up to the rope, still swaying against the wall, and the distant window of his chamber. The red-brown faces of hobgoblins gaped at him for a moment, then pulled back and vanished.

  Daavn and his guards were coming. Geth stood, slowly and carefully, the worst of the pain kept at bay by the shifting, though he no longer felt invincible. Left arm broken. Right arm bent—his gauntlet was dented and locked. Pain in his side—broken ribs. Something ground against his left hip—the final bolt from the crossbow, deeply embedded. Wrath still hung at his side, through one of the leather loops fastening scabbard to belt had been torn free. He suspected that later he’d find an imprint of the sword’s length stamped into the flesh of his leg. His right knee pulsed with every step. One side of his face felt strangely soft, and his head was buzzing. He could feel a loose tooth wobbling in his mouth.

  The staring dar jumped away as he turned, putting his back to Khaar Mbar’ost. The fortress Haruuc had built was no haven for him anymore. The maze of Rhukaan Draal lay before him. Limping and weaving, he fled for it. Ramshackle buildings swallowed him up, a mob concealing him from the gaze of the giant behind him.

  When the grinding of the crossbow bolt in his hip threatened to stop his flight, he found a niche and thrust himself into it. Clenching his teeth tight, he wrenched the crossbow bolt out of his leg and pressed his left hand against the wound as best he could. Bright sparks danced in his vision. Greater pain was coming, though. Geth braced himself and pushed back the shifting.

  Comforting numbness vanished, laying bare his injuries. A scream tore out of him and left him gasping. His entire body ached and nausea hit him in waves. The end of the shifting brought a gift, though. Sharp pains pinched him here and there as the very worst of his injuries healed themselves—which wasn’t saying much. Arm, ribs, and face still hurt, but his knee throbbed a little less and when he lifted his hand, the deep hole in his hip had become a paper-thin, paper-smooth scar.

  The wound Chetiin’s betrayal had dealt to him didn’t seem likely to ever close.

  He wanted to sit. He wanted to sleep. He didn’t dare. Daavn would be hunting him. Geth stumbled out of his hiding place and on through half-familiar streets, trying to stay in the shadows. He turned the scraps of his attention to going unnoticed and let his feet guide him away from Khaar Mbar’ost. Once, he thought he heard the commotion of searching soldiers and dived into a stinking alley, then hastened along its crooked length to emerge onto another street. He pressed on, the sense that hunters were close behind raising the hair on his neck and arms, until the city became a string of streets and alleys.

  Icy cold seemed to creep into him. Some part of his mind recognized the shock that descended on a body after great injury. Even if he found some hiding place where Daavn wouldn’t find him, his own body might kill him. He needed help. He needed refuge—but his only allies still in Rhukaan Draal were behind him in Khaar Mbar’ost. Ashi. Midian, redeemed now. Vounn. Senen. Munta.

  He didn’t think he’d ever felt more alone, a fugitive in a city where he had been a reluctant king. He tried to laugh but it hurt. He stumbled and spat blood as he rose. All of his friends, practically everyone he knew in Rhukaan Draal were in Tariic’s power.

  No. Maybe all his friends, but not everyone he knew. Geth looked around himself at buildings that leaned on each other like drunks and realized where his staggering footsteps had taken him. He turned around and found the low stone building that had once been a barn, though for some reason, it and the rest of the world insisted on spinning around him. He reeled up to it and banged his gauntlet against the double doors.

  There was no response.

  It took the last of his strength but he hammered his fist on the wood a second time. His legs gave out from under him and he slid down to lean against the stone wall. It was enough, though. The door opened and Geth managed a smile as he looked up into Tenquis’s startled gold-eyed, black-skinned face.

  “You wanted to have another look at the sword?” Geth said.

  Then the tiefling, his door, the street and all of Rhukaan Draal blurred together and he squeezed his eyes closed to shut them out.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  25 Sypheros

  Away from the city, the number of stars visible in the sky multiplied ten-fold. By turning her back on the few campfires that had been lit, Ekhaas could see far up into the depths of the night. Only a few of the moons had risen and most of those were thin crescents, bringing even greater life to the stars and, drawn like a veil across the southern sky, the bright band of the Ring of Siberys. She drew a deep breath of cool night air, so much fresher than that of Rhukaan Draal—except for the lingering stink of cold, wet ashes.

  The burned shell of Tii’ator clanhold clawed the sky above the camp. Around the hill on which clanhold and camp stood, burned fields scarred the gently rolling landscape. In the eastern distance, the dead gray mists of the Mournland rolled under the starlight.

  Ekhaas tried to fix the scene in her memory, a beginning to the story she would take back to Senen Dhakaan and to the Kech Volaar. Burned clanhold and shifting mists, pale starlight and bright campfires. Forty warriors drawn from Dagii’s army to accompany their commander forward to a scouting position.

  No sign of the Valenar raiders save for rui
ned clanhold, fields turned to ash, and bodies—dar and animal—left to rot. When they’d reached the hill around noon, Dagii had ordered two pits dug below Tii’ator, one for people and one for beasts. The unfortunate soldiers conscripted to the duty were only just now heaping soil back on the mass graves.

  Ekhaas put her back to the stars and the distant mists and looked over the well-ordered lines of the camp. After the games, a swift boat had borne her and Dagii—and Keraal—down the Ghaal River from Rhukaan Draal to a point closer to the village of Zarrthec. With some hard riding, they’d caught up to the bulk of the army. The Valenar hadn’t tested Zarrthec yet, but raiders had been seen from the walls, watching and studying before riding away. The town was filled with refugees from clan- and farmholds like Tii’ator; the tales they carried told of swift strikes, slaughter, and miraculous survival.

  “Not miraculous,” Dagii had muttered to her. “The Valenar are letting enough live to spread fear and become a burden on Zarrthec.”

  “I know,” Ekhaas had told him in return. “The strategy appears in stories of war preserved by the Kech Volaar.”

  He’d given her a slightly mocking smile. “Ban—and now you’ll get to be a part of those stories yourself.”

  At Dagii’s command, the body of the army had established its camp about half a day’s ride east of Zarrthec—the better part of two days’ march back from Tii’ator. Small squads of scouts, mostly goblins and bugbear ambushers, had left the forward camp at dusk, fading into the long shadows. Some had gone north toward Baar Kai and Lyrenton. Others had gone south. Most would be back by dawn. Elves saw as well by night as dar, but elf bows would be less deadly in the shifting shadows. Darkness was be a fickle ally in this conflict.

  Back in Rhukaan Draal, the coronation should have taken place. Tariic would be sitting in the throne, Ekhaas thought, or more likely presiding over a great feast, all with the false rod in hand. She wondered what Geth and Ashi were doing: joining in the well-deserved revelry or standing nervous guard over the true rod?

  A figure detached itself from the firelight and came to her. She recognized Dagii easily from his stance and the limp in his walk. He’d set aside his ancestral armor for plain scalemail—there was little point in letting the Valenar know that the commander of the enemy forces had left the safety of the army. Dagii’s lhevk’mor, the warlord who served him as a second-in-command, had suggested he remain at the main camp, but Dagii wouldn’t be persuaded. He insisted on seeing for himself what damage the elves had wrought on Darguun.

  Ekhaas suspected his motives weren’t so noble as he claimed. He wore detachment as he wore his armor, but she knew his blood stirred at the call of battle just as much as any hobgoblin’s.

  For a moment, another figure followed him from the fires, but Dagii waved him back. Ekhaas waited until the lord of the Mur Talaan was closer, then said, “Keraal has attached himself to you.”

  “More tightly than he needs to,” Dagii muttered, ears flicking. “I took his pledge as a warrior, not a servant.”

  Ekhaas looked back to the camp. Keraal had moved into the firelight and the flames glinted on the armor he now wore—and on the chains that still swung from his hip. He had adopted the makeshift weapon as his own. “Legends of the Koolt Dynasty,” she said, “tell of the Marhu Dresin Koolt, who was sold into slavery as a child but fought his way to freedom when he grew and seized the throne of Dhakaan from a wicked cousin. Yet even when he was an emperor, he still displayed his slave brand openly. The expression ‘I would rather be the sum of what I endure than of what I deny’ is attributed to him. Keraal has been your enemy and your prisoner. Now he’s trying to be your ally. Give him time to find his own pride again.”

  “I am,” said Dagii, “but I don’t need him at my side constantly.” He glanced at her. “Walk with me a little ways. There is … something you should know.”

  She kept her face and ears still, but her heart and belly trembled a little bit at his words. An instant later, she felt like twice a foolish girl as Dagii’s strong face turned dark with embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry,” he said with a stammer. “That came out poorly. I meant that there’s something I need to tell you, but not in front of Keraal—” He winced and his ears went back. “Just come with me.” He walked past her, around the hill and down its slope.

  Ekhaas followed, embarrassment turning to secret amusement at the thought that Dagii was as flustered as she was. They passed a sentry and Dagii’s was so curt, the warrior ended up saluting her instead. There was something odd about the cuff of leather he wore on the hand that remained still at his side. It seemed thick and strangely knobby. It took her a moment to realize that the thick leather was sewn with soot-blackened bells. She caught up to Dagii and fell into step behind him as they strode through tall grass. “Your sentry is wearing bells,” she said.

  “All of them are,” he said. “It’s my idea. A knife or an arrow might kill silently, but even if a sentry falls, he’ll make noise.”

  “Clever.”

  His ears flicked. “I still have the reliquary of Duural Rhuvet. I sleep with it near my bed. I like to think it inspires me.”

  Her tremble and her embarrassment returned. The reliquary—a sealed casket a handspan long and wide made of age-darkened iron bound with gold—had languished for generations as an anonymous trophy in a House Deneith memorial until Ekhaas had rescued it. In fact, it contained the brain and tongue of the last great strategist of the Empire of Dhakaan. Ekhaas had recovered it with the intention of placing it in the vaults of Volaar Draal, but on the day Dagii had ridden out of Rhukaan Draal to attack the rebellious Gan’duur, she’d pressed it on him. She hadn’t told Senen. Ashi was the only other person who knew of the gift.

  “I am pleased,” she said. “But no legend of Dhakaan tells of sentries equipped with bells.”

  Dagii smiled slightly. “The Dhakaani didn’t think of everything, Ekhaas.”

  A thick stand of trees rose ahead, remnants of an ancient wood long cleared but surrounded by a fringe of new growth sprung up since Cyre had abandoned this land to Darguun. Dagii led her into it, following a narrow game trail until the wood gave way to an open space cleared by the death of an old tree. He paused, gesturing for silence. For a long moment, they waited.

  Finally, a shadow stirred alongside the great fallen tree—and a huge black wolf rose to its feet. Her feet, Ekhaas corrected herself, and not a wolf, but a worg. She knew the beast. “Marrow?” she said. The worg’s tail swished once. Ekhaas looked at Dagii. “Then—?”

  “Yes,” came Chetiin’s scarred voice.

  Ekhaas turned to find the shaarat’khesh elder crouched beside the game trail as if he’d been there the whole time. And maybe he had.

  He stood and smiled at her, teeth flashing in a face stained dark. “Saa, Ekhaas.”

  “He revealed himself to me in Zarrthec,” said Dagii. They all sat or crouched in the shadow of the fallen tree, their voices low. “He told me not to tell you until we were here.”

  “You should have told me anyway,” Ekhaas said indignantly—and saw something like a smile pull on Marrow’s muzzle and creep into her coldly cunning eyes. She glanced away. The worg understood what they said, even if she couldn’t speak their language.

  Chetiin reached up and scratched behind his mount’s ears. “There was no reason to tell you,” he said. “You would have tried to seek me out.”

  “I wouldn’t have!” she protested. He just continued to look at her as he scratched Marrow. After a moment, Ekhaas flicked her ears. “Maybe I would have.”

  Chetiin’s dark eyes seemed to flash. “When you march with an army, you have little need of additional protection.”

  “Protection?” Ekhaas asked. She saw Dagii wince slightly and Chetiin’s ears twitch. She looked from one of them to the other. “What are you talking about?”

  “Geth asked me to watch over you during the war,” Chetiin said. “He wants to be sure you make it back to Rhukaan Draal to help d
ispose of the Rod of Kings.”

  “I hope you told him we don’t need watching over!”

  Marrow raised her big head at her angry tone and woofed softly as if in warning.

  “Ekhaas,” said Dagii. There was command in his voice, the sort of tone she’d heard him use with his soldiers. She closed her mouth. He nodded to Chetiin. “In war, there is a place for any aid that is offered.”

  Chetiin returned the nod. Marrow snorted and lowered her head back onto crossed paws. Ekhaas glowered. “When we get back to Rhukaan Draal, I’m going to take Geth up Khaar Mbar’ost and throw him off it.”

  “He was worried for you,” said Chetiin. “We spoke the night before the final day of the games. I think he was feeling powerless—a strange thing to say about someone who sat on the throne of a king, but still true. He needs allies. We should make sure we all return to him.” He left off scratching Marrow and reached into a pouch at his waist. “Marrow and I didn’t stray far from your marching route, but we had an interesting encounter today. We could have had more if we’d gone looking for them. You know you’ve been watched?”

  He held out two severed elf ears, fleshy and lobed like human ears but tapering to long tips. Marrow whined and thumped the ground with her tail. He shook his head at her, holding out the ears to Ekhaas and Dagii.

  “Know it?” asked Dagii. “I expected it.”

  Ekhaas glanced from the ears—both left ears, so cut from two elves—to him. “You expected it?”

  “It would be difficult to move a company of soldiers through territory controlled by the enemy without being noticed.” He sat back. “I’ve never fought the Valenar before. I’ve only heard stories. If we’re going to beat them, I want to see them fight firsthand. I want to see their tactics.”

  “I could tell you a dozen stories about battle with the Valaes Tairn,” Ekhaas said.