DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga)

by R. A. Salvatore

  “We will,” Tanalk Grenk promised.

  “What foolishness is this?” Paroud demanded, the weight of it all sinking in. “You will forsake us in our hour of need?”

  “Forsake you?” Brynn asked incredulously.

  “You feign friendship with Yatol Wadon to get that which you desire, but when that friendship is tested—”

  “Friendship?” Brynn interrupted. “I have never feigned friendship, nor claimed friendship, with Yatol Wadon.”

  Paroud stammered and nearly fell over himself, gesturing protests wildly. “When Yatol Bardoh was at your gates … when you were in need … was it not Yatol Mado Wadon …”

  “Who recalled the Jacintha garrison and stood down the army because he dared not risk another costly fight?” Brynn finished for him. “Understand me in this. I am no enemy of your Yatol Wadon. But I understand, as do you, that his decision to forgo the battle at Dharyan-Dharielle was for his benefit and the benefit of Behren.”

  “He let you keep the city!” Paroud screamed at her. “A Behrenese city!”

  “Because his choice was either me or Yatol Bardoh, who he knew would soon enough attack him,” Brynn replied. “No, my decision is made, and it is for the good of To-gai.” She looked to Tanalk Grenk and nodded for him to go, and he gave a deferential nod of his chin and swung his pinto pony about, organizing the warriors for the ride home.

  Paroud started to protest again, but Brynn walked right up to him, eyeing him coldly.

  “I will not ask the To-gai-ru to shed blood for the sake of the Behrenese,” she said with complete calm. “Not when the memories of Behrenese cruelty remain so keen in their minds. If Yatol Wadon desires a true alliance between our peoples, even a friendship, perhaps, then it is his responsibility to foster that friendship.”

  Paroud stood very still for a long while, digesting her blunt retort. “It will be a difficult course for Yatol Wadon to take if he is dead.”

  “That would be most unfortunate,” Brynn replied. “And I will try to help prevent that where I might.”

  Paroud’s look went to one of confusion. “You just said …”

  “That I would not ask my kinfolk to bleed for Behren,” the woman explained. “For me, this feud with Yatol Bardoh runs much deeper.”

  “One woman?” Pechter Dan Turk dared to say with obvious skepticism. “A warrior, to be sure, but hardly an army.”

  “One woman and one Jhesta Tu,” Brynn replied, looking to Pagonel, who nodded grimly.

  Off to the side, Agradeleous gave a roar.

  “And let us not forget,” Pagonel added.

  It started as a trickle of fleeing refugees, desperate and desolate, wandering up the road from the south. Soon it built to a flood, filtering about the ramshackle buildings of the slum outside of Jacintha proper and marching to the wall. These were the people of Avrou Das and Paerith, the main cities of Yatol De Hamman’s domain. Before the questioning of those on the leading edge of the refugee line had even begun, Yatol Mado Wadon understood the implications.

  De Hamman’s province had been overrun by the combined forces of Bardoh and Peridan. Now there remained nothing between that joined army and the walls of Jacintha.

  The refugees poured in all through the day and night, in a line that showed no signs of ending. Finally, Yatol Wadon ordered the gates closed. But still they came, wandering to Jacintha because they had nowhere else in all the world to go. Thousands milled about the brown fields beyond the city and the shanties beyond Jacintha’s strong walls. They were desperate people with little to eat and drink, and with no hope left in their dull eyes.

  On the second night after the grim procession began, scouts returned to the city with word that there was a distinctive and bright glow in the sky to the south, and Mado Wadon understood that Avrou Das was burning.

  Soon after, one of the refugees was brought to see the Yatol of Jacintha, and so battered and dirty was the man that Yatol Mado Wadon at first did not recognize him—not until he spoke.

  “I expected the loyalty of Jacintha,” he said, his voice heavy with grief and pain and simple weariness.

  “Yatol De Hamman,” Mado Wadon said, and he moved near to the man and reached up and placed his hand on De Hamman’s dirty cheek. “We did not know.”

  “You knew that Tohen Bardoh had assembled a great force, and knew that he had turned south,” De Hamman argued.

  “But to what purpose?”

  “Is that not obvious?” De Hamman countered. “My land is in ruin, my cities burning. So many of my warriors were already weary from their long struggle with Peridan, and so many more were siphoned off from Avrou Das to aid in Chezru Douan’s foolish war in the west.”

  “But I had no way of knowing Tohen Bardoh’s plans,” Yatol Wadon protested. “He could have just as easily thrown in with De Hamman as with Peridan.” If not an outright lie, the Yatol’s reasoning was certainly porous and suspect—and obviously so to everyone in the room. Yatol Bardoh had made his designs on Jacintha quite public from the beginning of the insurrection, and given that, turning his forces southward would have obviously prompted an alliance with Peridan, who was fighting Jacintha-backed De Hamman.

  Still, for whatever reason, the desperate Yatol De Hamman did not press the point any further.

  “We could not resist them,” the defeated man remarked. “They arrived unexpectedly on the field south of Paerith, and with the reinforcements of Yatol Bardoh, Yatol Peridan’s line was five times that of my warriors. Many broke ranks and fled, and those who remained were slaughtered to a man. Paerith was in flames that same day. I tried to organize some defense of Avrou Das, but …” He just shook his head helplessly, then closed his eyes and cried, his shoulders bobbing.

  “We will stop them,” Yatol Wadon promised. “We will turn them back and pay them back for this atrocity committed against you and your flock. And I will help you to rebuild your cities, my old friend. On my word!”

  That seemed to comfort Yatol De Hamman somewhat. He sniffled away the tears, looked at Mado Wadon, and offered a hopeful nod.

  The Yatol of Jacintha motioned to his attendants then, to take Yatol De Hamman to a private room where he might clean up and find some rest. Then Wadon himself went to his bedroom, followed by images of battle and Jacintha burning.

  He slept not at all.

  And the next morning, when the scouts returned with a better assessment of the disaster just south of the city, Yatol Wadon realized that he might not be sleeping well for a long, long time.

  “Avrou Eesa, Pruda, Alzuth, Teramen,” Rabia Awou recited, the list of towns—nearly all of the major cities of western Behren—that had thrown in with Yatol Bardoh in his march against Jacintha.

  Yatol Wadon closed his eyes as the recital continued, including the southeastern stretches of the kingdom, Yatol Peridan’s domain of Cosinnida. Given the source of this information, Rabia Awou, Wadon couldn’t dismiss it at all. Rabia Awou was the best scout of Jacintha, a man of disguise and intelligence, who could transform not only his appearance, but his demeanor, as well, and infiltrate the most secretive of societies. Once long ago, Chezru Douan had used him to infiltrate a ring of thieves working the docks of Jacintha, and the small, slender, brown-skinned man’s work had been nothing short of brilliant, and his information nothing short of perfect.

  “Pruda?” he did ask doubtfully, for Pruda, the former center of learning in Behren, had always remained neutral in the ways of war.

  “The folk of Pruda resent the fact that you allowed Brynn Dharielle to keep the contents of the library she stole from their beloved city,” Rabia explained.

  Yatol Wadon looked at him incredulously. “How was I to get them back?” he asked. “Would the good people of Pruda like to lead the march into Dharyan-Dharielle against the Dragon of To-gai?”

  Rabia Awou just shrugged, as if it did not matter to him. And of course, it did not. “They seek one to blame for their great loss,” he explained. “They blame you.”

  �
��Yatol De Hamman said that the combined army that took the field against him was five times his number—”

  “Then that was less than half of Bardoh’s army,” Rabia Awou said grimly, and the weight of that statement nearly knocked Yatol Wadon over.

  He knew at once that Jacintha was surely doomed.

  Hardly thinking, the man turned to the side, to the room’s eastern window, and gazed out across the bay at the tiny specks on the horizon.

  In the early-evening twilight, Brynn and her companions could see clearly where the line of refugees ended and the wave of pursuing warriors began. Agradeleous put the woman and her three companions down on a high dune overlooking the north–south coastal road. The flames of Avrou Das were clearly visible in the south, and even more poignant than that tragedy were the screams of terror rolling over the flat sands.

  “Take your beast and go to them!” Paroud insisted to Brynn. “Are you to stand here and watch while people die? Have you no conscience or concern?”

  From behind the man, Agradeleous gave a low, rumbling growl, and Paroud slowly turned about to regard the dragon.

  “If you call me a beast again, I will eat you,” the dragon promised, and the ambassador from Jacintha seemed as if he would faint dead away.

  “Tohen Bardoh knows how to fight Agradeleous,” Brynn replied, and she was speaking as much to clarify her own thoughts as to explain her actions to the others. “I dare not reveal the dragon before his forces are fully engaged.”

  “I will eat them all,” Agradeleous declared, and when Paroud pointed to the dragon and looked back at Brynn, as if to acknowledge the dragon’s agreement with his logic, the dragon added, “Starting with Paroud.”

  Again, the man seemed as if he might just fall over.

  “We will go to the south,” Brynn decided. “If I know Tohen Bardoh, that is where he will be found, hiding behind his lines until victory is assured.” She looked to Pagonel as she finished, and the mystic nodded his approval.

  When darkness fell the dragon was off again, swinging back to the west, then banking south, only gradually making his way back to the east to complete the circuit behind the rear position of Bardoh’s lines.

  From on high, Brynn marked the campfires well.

  “You would make me come out here personally?” Yatol Wadon said, trembling with anger. For not only had he been forced to climb into a small boat and travel all the way out to Rontlemore’s Dream to meet the abbot of St. Bondabruce, the man would not give him a private audience. Duke Bretherford and Master Mackaront were on hand, sitting at either side of Abbot Olin, while Wadon had only been allowed to enter the cabin alone.

  “Consider yourself fortunate that there is a ‘here’ to come out to,” replied Abbot Olin, wearing a superior grin as he glanced left and right at his two underlings.

  A frustrated and frightened Wadon turned his eye on Mackaront. “You told me that the provisions were already being made! You told me that Abbot Olin was already aiding Jacintha. Where are the soldiers, Master Mackaront? Where is the help we need when Yatol Bardoh’s army is within a day’s march of Jacintha’s southern gate?”

  Mackaront, wearing a grin to match Olin’s, turned deferentially to his abbot.

  “Our reach is greater than you understand, my friend,” Olin explained. “But why would I place Honce-the-Bear soldiers into battle on behalf of Jacintha, without even knowing if Jacintha truly desired our help? I do not so willingly send my countrymen to die, nor am I thrilled at the prospect of telling good King Aydrian of his losses after the war—the war to which we have not yet been invited.”

  All energy seemed to flow out of Yatol Mado Wadon at that moment, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “Would you have me beg?” he asked somberly.

  Abbot Olin scoffed at him. “Your begging is of no practical use to me.”

  “Then what, Abbot Olin?” Yatol Wadon asked. “What am I to offer in exchange for your aid? Surely you understand that your position will be stronger if I rule in Jacintha than if Yatol Bardoh conquers the place.”

  “Truthfully, Yatol, I know of no such thing,” Olin replied. “I have known Yatol Bardoh for years, and ever have we held a fondness for each other. He was much more tolerant of Chezru Douan’s arrangement with Entel than many in Douan’s own palace of Chom Deiru.”

  Yatol Wadon couldn’t help but wince at that last remark, for the reference was true enough concerning him specifically.

  “But still you are here, and I have Master Mackaront’s words as a guide,” the desperate Yatol reasoned. “You are prepared to step in against Yatol Bardoh—you have said as much. So please spare me the cryptic games, Abbot, and speak that which you desire.”

  Abbot Olin came forward suddenly. “I will fend Bardoh’s forces and save Jacintha for you,” he said bluntly. “And as a reward, I will be seated in Chom Deiru beside you.”

  “There is always a spare room …”

  “Not as your guest, Yatol,” Abbot Olin clarified. “But as your equal!”

  Yatol Mado Wadon blanched and blinked repeatedly.

  “Together we will forge a relationship between Abellican and Chezru,” Abbot Olin explained. “You and I will seek the common ground of our respective religions and we will use that ground to build a new religion.”

  “You wish to bring the Abellican Church to Behren!” Yatol Wadon accused, seeing the coy words for what they were.

  Abbot Olin slipped back in his seat into a comfortable position and looked again to his two commanders. “I offer you a place beside me,” he said. “One of luxury and comfort.”

  “A place for a stooge to give you credibility, you mean!”

  “And if I do mean exactly that?” Abbot Olin retorted. “Your religion is in shambles, and you know it. All the pretense of Chezru died with the revelations of Yakim Douan’s deceptions. You scorn the sacred gemstones of the Abellican Church openly, and yet your leader, your God-Voice, used those very stones to seek immortality. Do you really believe that the religion of Chezru will survive this?

  “And so I offer you an alternative,” Abbot Olin went on. “Together we might rebuild the trust of the Behrenese people. Consider your options before you so readily dismiss my offer, Yatol. If I defeat Bardoh for you, Jacintha will survive. If I remain out here … well, I wonder how high the flames will leap over Jacintha.”

  Yatol Wadon glanced all around, seeming like a cornered animal. But again, he suddenly seemed to deflate, as if all the fight had been taken from him. “Stop him,” he begged Olin, his voice no more than a whisper.

  Abbot Olin’s smile widened nearly to take in his ears. “I am fighting for a seat in Chom Deiru,” he explained to the Yatol. “I fight well when the rewards are so great.”

  Abbot Olin turned to Bretherford and nodded, and the duke rose and left the room. He paused at the door and glanced back at the abbot, his expression ambiguous, as it had been since the rise of Aydrian, and all along this wild and unexpected journey.

  “Go back to your … to our, city, Yatol Wadon, and instruct your archers to hold their shots as the warriors of Honce-the-Bear cross along your western wall,” Abbot Olin explained. “Muster your own forces along the city’s south wall alone.”

  “The south wall and the docks,” Yatol Wadon replied. “We have information that Yatol Peridan has assembled a great fleet.”

  Abbot Olin and Master Mackaront both began to laugh. “Along the south wall alone, Yatol,” he reiterated. “Your docks will not see battle.”

  Yatol Wadon stared at the man hard, not understanding.

  But Abbot Olin merely laughed again, not explaining.

  Screams erupted among the ramshackle buildings just outside Jacintha’s southern wall, and flames quickly followed.

  Yatol Mado Wadon and his assistants watched the beginning slaughter from the bell tower of Chom Deiru. The legions of Bardoh and Peridan—many of them wearing the colors of the Jacintha garrison!—marched among the buildings, wantonly slaughtering the dirty peasants as they
tried to scramble out of the way.

  A huge host of frightened commoners, peasant and refugee alike, swarmed the city proper’s southern wall, beating their hands against the soft stone and pressing hard against the gate, so hard that several fell dead, crushed by the weight of the terrified, frenzied crowd.

  “Tell them to fight back!” Yatol Mado Wadon yelled at those around him. “Prod them on! Pour burning oil on them from the walls if you must to turn them back into the fight against Bardoh’s dogs!”

  “Yatol, they have no weapons to use against the soldiers,” one of the attendants tried to explain, but old and angry Wadon slapped him across the face to silence him, then said through gritted teeth, “Tell them to fight back.”

  The screams grew louder, as did the press on the wall, which was exactly what the enemies of Jacintha desired, Yatol Wadon knew. Bardoh the merciless was using the peasants as fodder, forcing the Jacintha soldiers to waste arrows on their worthless hides, or to pour oil on them. Using their fear, Bardoh had turned the hundreds into a human battering ram.

  Yatol Wadon turned to gaze out to sea, where a fleet of warships was gliding into clear view. These were not the low-running sleek pirate boats that Peridan had reportedly used, but the greater warships of Honce-the-Bear. From his high vantage point, Wadon could see signalmen on the prows of those approaching craft, waving large red flags.

  The Yatol glanced back to the north, to the mountains. “Hurry up, Abbot Olin,” he muttered under his breath.

  South of the city proper, the screams began to diminish, and Yatol Wadon heard the call of his parapet battle commanders. In seconds, the fight was on in full, with the city defenders firing their bows over the wall and artillerymen launching their catapults, sending huge balls of burning pitch soaring out to the south. But Bardoh and Peridan had not come unprepared, and the returning fire, including a barrage from a high dune far away that almost took down large sections of the wall in a single volley, was no less devastating.