The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  Chapter 33

  Pellin listened in the dark, his ears straining for some sound that might indicate Mark’s approach, but the sounds of his own labored breathing and the cries of the dying villagers mixed with the howls of those who remained alive frustrated his efforts.

  “Eldest,” Allta said at his side, “we have to abandon our fire. It draws them to us like moths to a flame.”

  “We cannot abandon Mark to them.”

  Allta shook his head. “We can and will, if necessary. If you fall here, the northern Vigil is all but dead.” He stooped to gather the rest of the branches they’d gathered, placing them on the fire so that they created a cone. Instantly, the blaze intensified and the circle of light grew. “Come,” he said as he pulled on Pellin’s arm.

  They led all three horses higher up the hillside by the light of the flaring fire.

  Screams punctuated the darkness, fewer than before, and none of them carried the timbre of Mark’s voice. Pellin stumbled over a rock, so fixed was he on listening. His heart labored in his chest with the exertion, its rhythm broken and unsteady. He shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d grown old. Even with centuries to live, decrepitude had taken him unaware. With a sigh, he stopped. “How many arrows do you have?”

  “Two, Eldest.”

  “Then do what you must to save Mark,” Pellin ordered. “I can’t go on.”

  Pellin’s head rocked back as Allta bent and lifted him from his feet, throwing him over one shoulder as he led the horses with his free hand. “The protection of the Mark is not my duty. Here, the ground is not so steep.” He deposited Pellin on one of the horses and gripped all three sets of reins in his fist. “I will put as much distance between us and the villagers as I can, but beyond the light of the fire, I will have to feel my way.” He steered toward a scraggly, weathered tree, its branches bare.

  Handing all the reins to Pellin, he paused to grip a branch as thick around as his forearm and as long as he was tall. “We may find some use for this,” he said, but he made no move to break it loose from the tree.

  “Why do you wait?” Pellin whispered in the silence.

  “I’m listening,” Allta said. An instant later a chorus of screams, the cry of insanity thirsting for blood, rent the night air, and in that moment Allta snapped the limb loose, the wood splintering free with the sound of bones breaking.

  Each time a cry split the air, Allta broke wood. Finally, he handed pieces a bit more than half a pace long up to Pellin along with his cloak while he retained the longest branch for himself. “If you can fashion these into torches, it may give us some protection.” He sighed in the gloom, but Pellin couldn’t read his expression. They were too far from the fire. “Though there is much remaining of the night.”

  Allta turned and led them into the darkness, feeling his way forward with the longest branch. Howls shattered the silence again, but they seemed no closer. Perhaps it was just imagination, but the cries seemed to carry as much frustration as bloodlust this time. He hoped so. Perhaps Mark still evaded them.

  An eternity later his horse crested the hill and started down the far side. Allta probed with his branch, stopping whenever the slope became too steep for the horses to hazard forward in the darkness, turning to search out a safer path. Pellin held onto the unlit makeshift torches he’d fashioned, but sleeplessness and fatigue left him dozing in his saddle.

  Allta stopped, jerking as he drew back with an oath, and Pellin heard the clatter of rocks tumbling a great distance directly in front of them, then all around them.

  “Call my name softly, Eldest.”

  “I’m here, Allta,” Pellin said.

  He sensed the presence of his guard in the darkness, then felt strong hands feeling their way up his right leg.

  “I’m going to light one of the torches, Eldest,” his guard said. “Dismount on your right. Stay very close to your horse.”

  The tenor of his guard’s voice held a subtle shift, less resonant. Pellin set himself on the ground and felt Allta groping for his arm before the reins of all three horses were placed in his hand. There was a scrabble at his feet before Allta gave him a final admonition.

  “If the horses bolt when I light this torch, Eldest, let them go. Do not try to hold them if you value your life.”

  A moment later sparks jumped from flint and steel onto the tattered strips of Allta’s cloak, the miniature flares of light bright in the darkness. The horses jerked their heads but made no effort to run.

  When the torch caught fire, Allta stood, raising the flame overhead, and Pellin’s breath fled from him. They stood on the tip of a promontory—a splinter of rock that seemed to hang in the air—overlooking a sheer drop on all three sides. Pellin turned, careful to keep his feet directly beneath him, and saw the path they’d taken to their extremity. A handful of steps left or right and they would have plunged to their death in the darkness.

  Howls split the air from the top of the hill behind them—no more than a handful but shocking in their proximity and focused on their light. They sounded again, closer, no longer frustrated but gleeful. The sound of dislodged scree accompanied them out of the darkness.

  Pellin took a step toward the sound, halted when he saw Allta unmoving, staring into the darkness. Bile filled his throat when his guard turned to hand him the torch with a terse command. “Keep another close to you as well, but keep the light hidden until the opportune moment. Then hold it as high as you can.”

  The earth spun in a swirl of vertigo as he turned to look into the pitch black of the abyss surrounding them on three sides, open and yawning, beckoning him to flight and death. “You can’t mean to fight them here,” he breathed.

  “Better here than anywhere else,” Allta said, his voice flat. He drew his sword and advanced to put space between himself and Pellin. “Be clever with your light, Eldest,” he reminded.

  Pellin used the nearest horse to shield the light, but the glare kept him from making out any detail farther away than a handful of paces. The sound of footsteps flying over gravel reached his ears a fraction of a heartbeat ahead of Allta’s cry.

  “Now!”

  Pellin thrust the torch into the air, its hiss matched by those of the villagers. By flickering light, he could see Allta bounding forward, striking with steel and wood to knock a pair of men off the side of the promontory. Wailing cries came up from the darkness to be cut off a few seconds later. The rest of the villagers retreated beyond reach of the light.

  He strained his ears for some hint of attack, but nothing beyond the roar of blood in his ears and his own labored breathing came to him. “Have they given up?”

  Allta shook his head before answering. “Does the madness of the Darkwater allow surrender?”

  Out of the darkness, with a crunch of impact that brought gorge to Pellin’s throat, a rock the size of both hands together crashed into the foreleg of his horse. The scream of the wounded animal sliced through him like a dagger against his ears. Without transition, Allta spun, his sword whistling through the air to cut through the arteries of the horse’s neck. The animal’s scream faded to a gurgle as it lurched from side to side before falling to the ground.

  The two remaining horses reared, shifting Pellin’s foothold, and for a moment the chasm yawned at him as he teetered. His knees buckled as the horses started to rear again, but their efforts were ill-timed and they dragged him across the thin splinter of rocky earth to the edge.

  Instinct greater than their fear of blood stopped them at the last moment from pitching into the darkness, but Pellin’s feet slipped from beneath him as he tried to rise and only the reins wrapped around one wrist kept him from falling. His vision narrowed to a flickering point.

  “Allta!”

  His guard appeared, kneeling to grip him by the shoulders, and Pellin felt himself not so much lifted as thrown to his feet. In the flickering light of the fallen torch, his guard appeared to shift without transition. Even in the midst of terror, Pellin marveled at his gift.

>   He heard rumbling. “They’re trying to knock us from the cliff. What do we do?”

  Allta darted to his side to grab the torch. Then he tucked Pellin under one arm and deposited him behind the dead horse. “Stay here. Keep the other horses from falling off the cliff, if you can.”

  Allta moved forward until he stood no more than five paces from the point where the promontory joined the side of the hill. Pellin gripped the reins of the other horses and tried to light the remaining torch, but the horses whinnied and shied, keeping him from striking his flint.

  The rumbling increased in intensity, and boulders came rolling out of the darkness like phantasms from a child’s nightmare. Pellin watched as Allta met the avalanche of stone and scree. Twisting and dodging, he attacked the boulders, timing kicks that Pellin could barely follow to send the threats off the edge of the cliff to either side. The retort of his boots striking stone might have been the breaking of his bones, but he rebounded each time, leaping toward his next target.

  Pellin stared openmouthed as Allta bounced in the dim light of the torch like an acrobat. But for all his gifted prowess, stones piled up against the other side of the horse, creating a shallow ramp that would allow larger stones with greater momentum to roll up and over.

  The sound of Allta’s labored breathing fell against Pellin’s ears, threads of desperation in the darkness. His guard’s kicks no longer carried their previous force, and his efforts were barely enough to shunt the larger boulders off to the side.

  Twin behemoths of rock came at them out of the night, one behind the other. Time slowed as he saw Allta launch himself through the air, spinning and twisting to land with his feet against the side of the first rolling boulder.

  The rock twitched as if shrugging off his feeble attack, but the change was enough. It struck other stones that guided it off the cliff three paces to Pellin’s left. But the second boulder came at him undeterred. Allta’s struggle had taken him out of its path, and he lay within a span of the edge of the cliff.

  Pellin watch the boulder come, trapping him. It hit the scree on the other side of the horse with the crunch and crack of breaking stone, slowing. When it hit the dead horse, the sound of breaking ribs filled his ears and . . .

  It stopped. Pellin hung his head, filled his lungs with dust-laden air and tried to talk his heart into resuming its duties within his chest.

  Perhaps the scree beneath the massive boulder shifted, or possibly, the horse’s body compressed beneath the pressure of the stone, and slowly, inexorably, the boulder started rolling toward him again.

  “Push, Eldest!” Allta cried from the other side. “To your left.”

  Groans of exertion poured from them as they fought to move the massive rock from its intended course. Allta appeared beside him, his feet set against the debris of the hillside, the vessels in his forehead bulging as he strained.

  With a last crying shove, they shifted the stone just enough to send it crashing down the hillside, grazing one of the horse’s shoulders as it went past.

  Pellin dropped to his knees, heedless of the dirt and blood that matted his trousers. Allta lay prone on a bed of shattered rocks next to him. At first he heard nothing past the sound of his own desperate gasps and those of his guard, but after minutes passed, he became conscious of his surroundings again, and he clutched Allta’s shoulder, a move that brought a gasp of pain from his guard.

  “Listen,” he whispered. “The rocks have stopped.”

  Allta mustered enough energy for a weak nod. “Look to the east.”

  “Dawn.” Pellin breathed the word as a prayer. “Thank Aer.”

  His guard made no move to rise. Placing a hand on the dead horse, Pellin levered himself to his feet, his motions as steady as a drunkard’s. In the dim morning light the precipitous fall to either side of the promontory beckoned to him and he reeled. Ten paces away the spit of earth they rested upon joined with the rocky hillside, promising security. Fishing through one of the packs on the horses, he found a bit of bread and a waterskin. There was no wine.

  Without ceremony, he tore the bread in half and handed it down to Allta, who took a bite where he lay. Pellin knelt and placed the bread and water on the rocks in front of him, his hands shaking with fatigue. Looking east, he closed his eyes and breathed in the air of morning as he lifted his arms into a wan beam of light.

  “The six charisms of Aer are these: for the body, beauty and craft; for the soul, sum and parts; for the spirit, helps and devotion. The nine talents of man are these: language, logic, space, rhythm, motion, nature, self, others, and all. The four temperaments of creation are these: impulse, passion, observation, and thought. Within the charisms of Aer, the talents of man, and the temperaments imbued in creation are found understanding and wisdom. Know and learn.”

  He paused, breathing with the effort of keeping his hands aloft.

  “For the justice and protection of the people, we thank you for your gift of domere.”

  He let his hands fall before reciting the liturgy that went with the rest of the haeling and then added a prayer for Mark. He would speak to Allta about searching for his body before they continued.

  After they’d consumed the bread and emptied the waterskin, Allta rolled to his knees and pushed himself to his feet, the motions of a man who carried a mountain on his back. They led the horses back to safety, picking their way with high steps across the rocks.

  “We need food, water, and rest,” Allta said.

  “No argument there,” Pellin said. “South. There are a couple of villages close to the Sundered Hills where we can find provisions.”

  Allta stopped, staring up the hillside. “We will need enough for three, it seems—and another horse.”

  Pellin lifted his eyes to see a thin figure running down the hillside toward them, his strides quick, but with the gangly movements of adolescence.

  Mark.

  Pellin stood, his smile breaking the layers of dust caked to his face, waiting until Mark joined them, dusty and dirty, but not nearly so much as they were.

  “I imagine there’s a story here.” Pellin smiled as he pulled the boy into his embrace. Subtly, he delved his apprentice, searching for signs of a vault within him and breathing a word of thanksgiving when he found none.

  Mark gave him a knowing smile. “I don’t think my story can match yours. In the urchins, the second thing you learn is how to throw a knife. The first is how to hide. I found a hole and a rock, and I stayed there until I saw sunlight. You should have heard them howling when they couldn’t find me.”

  “We did,” Pellin said. “Come, we can share our tales as we ride. I want to be away from this accursed place.”

  Chapter 34

  A week after leaving Gylden, I could tell Wag had grown stronger, but that presented a different problem. “We’re out of food,” I said. I looked down at our new companion. “How can you eat so much?”

  “There’s a sizable village five leagues south of here,” Bolt said. “Isenore, a mining town that’s seen better years.”

  I nodded. “I’ve heard of it. It’s older than Gylden.”

  Bolt sighed. “It’s been around for a bit over a thousand years. Gylden has surpassed it, of course, but it still does a decent business in mining equipment for prospectors who aren’t too concerned about the prohibition against delving the earth.”

  “Sounds like my kind of place,” Rory said with a grin.

  Bolt didn’t smile. “Normally, I’d agree with you, but Isenore is a rough place filled with unsatisfied greed and villagers who don’t like each other.” He barked a laugh. “They like outsiders even less.” He looked at Wag. “I’d suggest skirting it if we could, but a quick stop should be safe enough, so long as we don’t spend the night.”

  Four hours later we rode through a cut between two hills and saw the village of Isenore beneath us. Temporary, dilapidated wooden buildings, many of them obviously abandoned, surrounded a far older central core of stone edifices. Soot covered everythin
g, and as we rode closer, I could see ancient streaks of rust running down the granite blocks from ironwork that had long since been scavenged.

  “Not a very inviting place,” I said.

  Bolt nodded his agreement. “That’s by design. Keep your voice down. The second-most profitable industry here is robbery.”

  Rory’s eyebrows lifted in a look of professional interest. “There’s three of us and we’re armed from teeth to toenail. Would they really consider us a target?”

  Bolt shook his head. “Weren’t you listening? They don’t like outsiders. We stay together and we get out of here as quickly as possible.”

  I pointed along the sorry excuse for a road toward the south end of town. “If it were a normal town, the butcher and the tanner would be on the south end. The wind comes out of the north for most of the year,” I said. “This current breeze notwithstanding. It keeps the smell from the rest of the village.”

  Behind me, Wag gave a soft yip, then whimpered and growled. I reached back with one gloved hand and scratched him behind the ears and he settled.

  “I think the sooner we leave here the better,” Rory said under his breath. “I’ve seen a dozen villagers give us the once-over already.”

  Without looking, I became acutely aware of men and women, all of them armed with very functional-looking weapons, busying themselves with inconsequential tasks that allowed them to observe us as we passed. Most of them found some other spot for their gaze when Bolt sent a casual glance in their direction.

  Most, but not all.

  Somewhere in the back of my head there was a door waiting to be opened, the portal to whatever lived inside of my skull and woke me whenever someone was murdered while I slept. I hadn’t had a night walk since we’d picked up Wag, but there was something within me that put the sentinel on his guard. Injured as he was, I still didn’t want to chance having him see me as an enemy. I looked at Bolt. “I can’t spend the night here.”

  His mouth pulled to one side. “I don’t think any of us are willing to argue that. I’ve seen friendlier faces on the gallows.”