Heirs of the Fallen: Book 03 - Shadow and Steel

by James A. West

  “The test is over,” Leitos said, his mind concentrating on how to beat Ulmek, a man who had spent more years in the thick of battle than Leitos had been alive.

  “Is it … or has it just begun?”

  “You saw me. I failed.”

  Ulmek gave him a wry smirk. “Secretly finding and taking any of the treasures, while commendable, is only a part of it. More importantly, striving until the coming of the dawn, even in the face of certain defeat, is the only action required to succeed. In that, you have won your sword and dagger, and a place amongst my Brothers.”

  Leitos felt off balance. He had been sure Ulmek meant to provoke him by waiting for him on Zera’s grave, but instead the man was blathering about the test. More, he had just told him he had passed, and was now a Brother of the Crimson Shield.

  Ulmek fixed him with a hard gaze. “You see, it is vital that our brethren fight until the end, even when death is certain. How would you chose, little brother, if faced with the choice between life and death?”

  Leitos spoke the only truth he knew. “I have given myself to defeating the Faceless One—even if that means my death.”

  “Indeed?” Ulmek said. “I am most curious to learn the truth of your conviction … with a final test.”

  Before Leitos could respond, Ulmek’s staff cracked against his ribs and knocked him to the ground. Fighting for breath, Leitos rolled to his feet. Staff flashing, Ulmek battered his shoulder, and then his opposite knee. Leitos hobbled clear, searching for a weapon—a rock, a stick, anything—but the only weapon available was in Ulmek’s hands.

  “You had better fight,” Ulmek advised. “Our order can ill-afford sniveling weaklings to fill its ranks.”

  Leitos tried to work the feeling back into his bruised limbs. Does he mean to kill me? The thought seemed absurd, but another look at Ulmek’s face told him otherwise. The man’s animosity was evident in his scowl and the hard, merciless set of his mouth.

  With no great effort, Leitos mirrored that expression. Grow strong and cruel. Those words echoed in his mind, words spoken by his father, advice given as a means to survive a vicious world.

  Ulmek attacked again, holding nothing back, and Leitos ducked under the whistling staff. “Come on, boy, prove your worth, or be cast down.”

  Leitos dredged his soul and found a lifetime of buried fury. Once touched, that wrath scorched away any fright or doubt. His menacing smile gave Ulmek pause. “If you want to fight to the death,” he said, “so be it.”

  “ ‘Death?’ ” Ulmek repeated. As he considered that, his eyes narrowed, and then he lunged, aiming his strike at Leitos’s neck.

  Leitos twitched out of reach, then swiftly crowded the larger warrior. Backpedaling, Ulmek reversed his strike. Leitos caught the shaft against his palms, spun in a tight half-circle, and slammed an elbow against Ulmek’s temple.

  Eyelids fluttering, Ulmek staggered away, dragging the staff behind him. Leitos brought his foot down, splitting the seasoned shaft, and hastily caught up the staff’s broken end. He whirled it in a defensive blur.

  “Ba’Sel and Sumahn claimed you showed promise,” Ulmek grated. “All the Brothers have said the same.”

  When Ulmek came again, Leitos defended himself. Wood cracked against wood. The jarring blows stung Leitos’s hands, sank an ache deep into his shoulders, drove him back a step at a time. Where Leitos faltered, Ulmek advanced, sure of foot, confident, deadly.

  Leitos feinted a strike at the warrior’s head, then dropped below Ulmek’s guard, and struck him across one knee with all his strength. As Ulmek danced back, Leitos somersaulted over the ground, coming up slightly behind his foe. He rammed the point of his elbow into the back of the man’s unhurt knee, then pivoted, one leg extended, and swept Ulmek off his feet.

  Leitos scrambled up and away, gathering himself to finish the contest, but Ulmek was already on his feet again.

  “You’ll have to do better than that, boy,” the warrior taunted. “Or, perhaps, you would rather me leave you to weep over your dead mistress? Who can say concerning changelings, but it could be that her breasts are yet plump with a weanling’s milk? Your love for her is sickening, not worthy of our order. You are weak, boy, pathetic….”

  As Ulmek continued to berate him, Leitos’s anger became uncontrollable, scorching away carefully constructed barriers against memories he would rather leave buried. He saw again Zera’s radiant emerald eyes before him, burning with the fiery light that he had stolen when he plunged his dagger into her heart, an accident born of a fear for everything the Faceless One touched. Even as she died in his arms, Zera had pleaded for Leitos to speak his love for her.

  Her blood spreading over his hands burned as hotly in memory as it had on that terrible night. Ulmek had made him remember those things, and he hated the man for it.

  “There we are,” Ulmek said softly. “Come for me, boy!”

  Silent and grim, Leitos charged. When Ulmek stumbled on a jutting stone he should have seen, Leitos stabbed the splintered end of his staff at Ulmek’s neck. The warrior blocked the blow without effort, one moment fighting to regain his footing, the next poised and sure. A trap!

  Before Leitos could catch his balance, Ulmek thrust his heel behind Leitos’s and struck him on the point of the chin, his fist falling like a slab of granite. Leitos slammed against the ground, numb all over.

  Ulmek knelt at Leitos’s side. “I know Ba’Sel warned you about letting anger take your heart—he taught me the same, many years gone. I’ve never believed it, and still do not. The trick, boy, is to master that fire, use it to your advantage. Your failure to do so has cost you a victory. When you feel you are ready to try—”

  Ulmek looked up sharply. “Do you hear that?”

  Leitos, only now catching his breath, sat up and cocked his head. Beneath the hooting song of the island and the breeze whispering through leaves, he heard a rhythmic thrumming.

  “Drums,” he said, doubting his ears. “It sounds like drums.”

  Just then, a closer sound of breaking limbs came to them. Both leaped up, brandishing their broken staffs.

  Ba’Sel burst out of the trees a hundred paces away, his faded robes flapping.

  “We must return to the sanctuary,” he panted. Sweat sheened his dark skin, and his eyes were wild with a fear that no leader of warriors should reveal.

  Leitos had never seen him like this, and it left him unsettled.

  Ulmek caught Ba’Sel’s shoulder before he could bolt back the way he had come. “What is wrong?”’

  “Sea-wolves,” Ba’Sel blurted, jabbing a finger to the west.

  Ulmek and Leitos spun. Far out to sea, seemingly ushered up from the south by massing storm clouds, a pair of sleek ships propelled by dozens of sweeping oars and square sails plowed the sea toward Witch’s Mole. The drumming had grown louder. Less than half a turn of the glass remained before they would make landfall.

  “Why has no one sounded the alarm?” Ulmek demanded.

  Ba’Sel looked more flustered than ever. “We were preparing to raise our newest Brother. There was a feast that needed making, the honing and oiling of his sword and dagger—”

  “I know about the ceremony,” Ulmek said. “None of that matters now, save that Leitos will need his robes and weapons. I trust you have given orders to destroy these scum?”

  “Gods good and wise,” Ba’Sel breathed, “are you mad? We cannot fight them. I have cautioned the men that we must avoid confrontation. Even now, they are preparing to return to our longboats, so that we can escape. We make for Geldain. Perhaps it is safe to return to our last sanctuary or, maybe, we can vanish into the Fire Mountains.”

  Leitos glanced at the closing vessels. Their drums had grown louder still, and their rams carved furrows through the turquoise waters.

  “When will you tire of running and hiding?” Ulmek asked.

  “We must preserve our order,” Ba’Sel said. “Lest you forget, we are not an army, but a meager company whose survival demands th
at we strike from the shadows.”

  “What if the Kelrens capture us? Would you have us accept their chains, or would you then allow us to fight?”

  Ba’Sel looked offended. “You know the answer to that.”

  “Do I? Do any of us? We creep and cower, as a matter of course. Truly, what purpose do we serve any longer? We are the Brothers of the Crimson Shield, yet we are Brothers only to ourselves and shields to nothing, save our own lives.”

  “Do you so eagerly seek death?”

  “No, Brother, I seek life—a better life, a free life—for myself and our kindred of this fallen world. That is all I have ever sought. If we destroy these slavers this day, how many innocents will we spare from chains on the morrow?”

  Brow furrowed, Ba’Sel turned his back on Ulmek. “Do as I command. We must be well away before the Kelrens drop anchor.”

  Ulmek hesitated, seemingly on the verge of adding more, then stormed down the slope.

  Leitos looked after him, stunned by what he had just seen and heard. Until that moment, he had never put much stock into the rumors about Ba’Sel’s growing fearfulness. Until now, it had not mattered to him, as all his energies had been on fashioning himself into a warrior strong and skilled enough to stand against the Faceless One. Now, with an enemy at hand, threatening their very existence, his leader had given the command to flee, never considering that his men knew every foot of Witch’s Mole, and could likely crush the sea-wolves.

  “Come,” Ba’Sel said, “we must make haste. By sunset, I mean to walk again upon the lands of my birth.”

  Chapter 4

  By the time Leitos and Ba’Sel reached the heart of the sanctuary, the dust of rushing feet had hazed the torch-lit cavern. Ba’Sel hurried off toward a central pool to help others fill waterskins. Leitos made for his father.

  Openings dotted the walls at intervals around the small chamber, from mere cracks to natural archways, which provided safe travel to places all over the island. The Brothers had fashioned bunk beds along one wall, rising four and five high in order to conserve space. Nooks and crannies held what few supplies they had gathered. In all, it was a tidy if stark home.

  Adham, stuffing supplies into a pair of haversacks resting on his bed of woven grass and lashed saplings, glanced up at Leitos’s approach.

  “You have made me proud,” he said, pushing a strand of iron-gray hair from his eyes. Long years, many spent in the Faceless One’s mines, had lined his brow, but not so much as to ever guess his true age. A hundred and sixty-seven years he had walked the world, but he looked less than a quarter of that. He had once told Leitos how Kian Valara and Ba’Sel had been present when the Well of Creation was destroyed. Exposure to the unleashed Powers of Creation had given them long life and a remarkable ability to heal, which they had passed down to their children.

  Leitos wanted to tell of his concerns about Ba’Sel, but decided to keep it to himself. Instead, he smiled in answer. “Apparently the sea-wolves are proud as well, and have come to celebrate.”

  Adham offered a cursory grin. “Well, such as it is, you had better put on your uniform,” he said, pointing to a bundle of folded clothes to color of dark sand.

  Leitos picked up the outer robe, a well-made garment of sturdy cloth. The linen inner robe lay beneath, and had numerous pockets sewn all over it. He donned this first, then drew on the outer robe. A plain leather belt would hold it closed.

  “I told them to make them a little big,” Adham said. “The menfolk in our family tend to come into our growth later than most.”

  “It is perfect,” Leitos said. Simple as the clothing was, he had never worn anything so fine.

  “I suppose you’ll want your boots,” Adman said, pulling them from under the bed.

  As Leitos put them on, his father produced something else. Leitos stared at the weapons. A short, straight-bladed sword in a leather scabbard, and a long, spike-like dagger. The Brothers often chose their swords by what they could scavenge from bone-towns and the like, but their daggers had been forged before the Upheaval for use by Geldainian mercenaries, the Asra a’Shah. That order of warriors had become the Brothers of the Crimson Shield, but their daggers, meant to inflict deep, nearly bloodless punctures, had not changed. Leitos had often wondered how many remained in the world, but supposed only Ba’Sel and a few others would know.

  “A pity we are not staying to fight,” Adham said, while Leitos secured his sword and dagger to his waist. Adham’s gray eyes shone with an eager wildness, something the Brothers claimed was common to ice-born Izutarians who were about to rain destruction upon their enemies.

  Before Leitos could agree, a laughing Sumahn and Daris burst into the sanctuary from a passage that led to the western shore. Everyone went still. Ba’Sel straightened from filling a waterskin, a shadow of concern spreading across his features. “Have the Kelrens landed?”

  “They have,” Sumahn answered. “Hundreds.”

  “To be fair,” Daris interjected, “we crushed a fair number of them with a rockslide after they found us. Doubtless, they are rethinking the plan to hunt us.”

  Ba’Sel slung the waterskin’s strap over his head and pulled it across his chest. “How did they find you?”

  “Strictly speaking,” Daris began, smiling as broadly as ever, “putting my arrow in that Kelren’s heart might have given us away.”

  Sumahn shook his head. “Don’t forget the one I poked into that ugly wench’s ribs—have you ever seen such brands as she wore? Gods good and wise, why would folk scar themselves so?”

  “You attacked the Kelrens?”

  Finally sensing trouble, the young Brothers fell quiet.

  Before Ba’Sel could browbeat the pair, Ulmek strode forward. “The folly of these idiots is the least of our concerns. My lookouts have brought word that the sea-wolves are sweeping across Witch’s Mole. If we do not hurry, this sanctuary will become our tomb—”

  The sounding of a gong cut him off. The three distinct tolls signaling that an enemy had entered one of the passages. Another peal burst from an opening a quarter turn around the cavern. Again, three sharp rings.

  The Brothers all looked to a frozen Ba’Sel.

  Before he could give any orders, deep, snarling howls filtered into the chamber from far away. Leitos had heard such voices before. The Kelrens had brought Hunters with them, Na’mihn’teghul, changelings, the wolves of the Faceless One.

  Ba’Sel’s distracted air shattered. “Block all the openings. Quickly!”

  “You mean for us to face the changelings?” Ulmek said, drawing his sword.

  “No! We flee through the east passage, and make for our longboats, and then the sea. Go, you fools, and block the ways.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, several Brothers vanished into the openings around the cavern. Before Leitos could join them, Ba’Sel caught his arm.

  “You stay with me. You and Adham. It’s your blood the Faceless One seeks, your blood we must keep out of his hands.”

  “And it’s the lives of your men that he wants to extinguish,” Adham said.

  The thunder of falling rock drowned out anything else he might have added, and dust began billowing from the many passages.

  “This will only slow our enemies for a short time,” Ulmek warned.

  Ignoring the warning, Ba’Sel called to the returning Brothers, “Gather all weapons, and enough supplies to last two days.”

  “Stay here,” Adham told Leitos, and rushed off.

  Ulmek glanced at Ba’Sel, then joined the Izutarian at the racks holding swords and hide bucklers, bows and quivers, spears and staffs.

  “I have seen it a hundred times and more,” Ba’Sel said, “yet always the pain our departure brings is as my heart’s first breaking.”

  “Then let us fight,” Leitos blurted.

  Ba’Sel turned. “A new-made Brother, and already so full of wisdom?”

  “Give the Faceless One the war he desires,” Leitos urged.

  “Were it so simple,”
Ba’Sel murmured dismissively.

  As the Brothers began to regroup, Leitos leaned close to Ba’Sel. “Someone told me once that there is no place for weakness and self-pity in this world. She said that we die or survive, that life under the rule of the Faceless One is struggle and pain and sorrow. She gave me a choice to fight and live, or to quit and perish. I chose then to fight, glad for opportunity. Then as now, I choose to fight.”

  “I would like to meet this woman,” Ba’Sel said absently.

  “You trained her, and took her as your own daughter.”

  “Zera?” Ba’Sel said in a stricken tone. At Leitos’s nod, he added, “I suppose I should have known. She was a woman of simple truths.”

  “Is there any other kind of truth?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not, but I cannot see how any truth, save fleeing, will help us now. We cannot preserve our lives by fighting. At best, we would wake on the morrow, chained and bound for a mine, such as the one you escaped. At worst, we will all perish.”

  “Flee this day if we must,” Leitos allowed, “but soon we—you—must begin to make ready for the war you told me was coming. If we continue running, the Brothers of the Crimson Shield may last out the year, maybe even the year after, maybe even a dozen more, but our order is dying a slow and certain death.”

  “Wars are fought with armies, Leitos,” Ba’Sel said, sounding tired.

  “Then it is time for you to raise an army. And if not you, then Ulmek would leap at the chance, and so too would Sumahn and Daris. Ke’uld and Halan as well. I would help, as would my father. All are willing, but you must allow it.” He searched Ba’Sel’s face, looking for any indication that his leader agreed, or was at least considering the possibility. He saw only indecision.

  Adham and Ulmek trotted up, each carrying extra weapons and supplies. Without a word, Ba’Sel took an offered haversack and a staff.