Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1)
Page 17
Three Days
Gryphon arose to a blustery dawn, a sheltered shining of the sun upon the cold, dewy grass. The early sky was overcast, cluttered by feathery trails of clouds floating westward, the vanguard of a coming storm. Heavy rain seemed inevitable, the first of the season, though hardly the last.
Just outside the last ring of Gryphon’s streets, the warriors of House Gryphon toiled to gather what provisions were needed for their journey. Men stuffed saddlebags full of oats, topped skins off with water, and burnished their blades to gleaming. They were an impatient lot, for they awaited Rellen to appear and lead the way to Mormist. With no sign of the young lord, they had only their work.
Battlestaff in hand, Saul meandered amongst the men of Gryphon. He was familiar with scenes such as this, having lived them a dozen times over in the far fields of Elrain. The men marched from the nearby stables to a long line of wagons in the grass, heavy bags over their shoulders and bundled blades tucked beneath their arms. He watched over them like a father crow, eyes snapping across the faces of men too eager for the taste of battle. He knew they carried the last of the steel Gryphon had to offer. From Lorsmir’s abandoned workshop, a final array of weapons had been extracted, a selection of wickedly sharp blades, toothy spears, and just enough armor and shields for each man to choose one from. In the low, windblown grasses between the city and Grandwood, the men made a line, one by one approaching Marlos and Bruced, who stood beside a wagon, appraising each weapon as it came to them.
“Just one blade and one shield per man,” Bruced rumbled again and again. “One’ll be all you need. Except for Master Garrett, the Mormist folk bleed easy. They’re like to run at the mere sight of Marlos and his sour mug.”
The men laughed at that. One by one, they passed the wagon, and in the end each was satisfied with his armament of choice. Saul was last to arrive. He wore no mail, carried no shield, and had no weapon but his iron-shod staff. He glanced with great disinterest at the dwindling pile of short swords, bucklers, and daggers, and he turned away.
“That stick of yours, it’s enough?” laughed Bruced. “Not likely, says I. No man I know is strong enough to drive a splinter of wood through a steel hauberk.”
“It’s enough for me.” He hefted his weapon over his shoulder.
“If you say so,” Bruced chuffed. “But seems to me even these fists of mine would better break a helmet than a twig plucked from a Grandwood cherry.”
He opened his mouth to crack a reply, but was interrupted when Marlos stepped between him and Bruced and dropped a huge, heavy rucksack into his arms.
“Open it,” said Marlos.
“What’s in it?”
“Just open it.”
Bending from the weight, he knelt in the grass and unwrapped the rucksack. You suggest swords, he thought with a wry glower at Bruced. But you give me bags.
He undid a last strap and threw back a flap of leather, revealing a pile of steel within. “Armor?” he marveled.
“The best.” Marlos smirked.
He laid it out in the grass, the suit of mail bright and shining, the golden crest of house Gryphon emblazoned upon its breastplate. The vambraces, greaves, and shoulder plates were as elegant as any he had seen, and the lot of it lain over a fine mesh of mail.
“What’s it for?” He looked to Marlos. “Surely not me.”
“Take it.” Marlos grinned. “A gift from Lord Emun.”
Bruced and Marlos helped him put the armor on. The pauldrons fit his shoulders nicely, the mail ringing as it collapsed to just the right length along his sides. He marveled at the fit. “I don’t deserve this,” he told them. “I’ve done no service for Emun.”
“You have. And you will,” replied Marlos. “He thanks you, as do I, for bearing the warning all the way from King Lumaur. He’s also pleased you so willingly joined his son’s expedition. Though Bruced and I do wish you’d take a blade instead of that twig of yours.”
Retaking his battlestaff from the grass, Saul regarded it like he might an old friend. “It’s the only weapon I know. I’ll part with it when I die.”
Marlos and Bruced’s reactions were one in the same. Both looked amused, but somehow unwilling to crack any more jokes. Bruced uncrossed his burly arms and pulled a canvas cover over the remaining weapons in the wagon. Slapping the dust from his ruddy hands, he looked to Gryphon Keep with a squint. “And where be Rellen today? Not seen him. Still out in the woods snogging his new sword? I’d hoped he and I would spar a bit before we set off.”
“I’ve no idea where he went,” said Marlos with a frown. “I’ve faith in the lad, but I wonder about him sometimes. We should depart today. Let’s be done with this little quest.”
“Aye. The sooner the better,” Bruced agreed.
Saul knew the real reason for Rellen’s absence. Garrett had told him yestereve during supper. Keeping the secret unsaid, he glanced over the warriors all around him. They played with their new weapons as though they were toys, slashing and stabbing the air as if gutting some number of ghosts. His gaze wandered from face to face, seeking one in particular.
“Looking for something?” Bruced mimicked his search.
“Everyone’s here save Master Croft.”
“Garrett left for Mormist,” said Marlos. “He’s one of the mountain men, you know. He’s to see to the locals’ mood and make sure not everyone wants to kill us. He rode away at dawn with one other rider. No one told you?”
“No one said a word.” He turned toward the far prairie, hoping to see Garrett still riding upon the horizon, but no one was there. He only saw the thunderclouds approaching, the swell of a thousand globs of grey in the sky. “Rain’s coming,” he said absently.
“Aye. Rain sure enough. Maybe war too.” Marlos clapped him on the shoulder.
He thanked his new friends for his armor, and then clattered alone into the eastern meadows. It seemed the same as Marlos had said. War might be coming. The thunderclouds seemed to reek of it, looking less like harbingers of rain and more like smoke from some grand conflagration. While everyone else plodded off for the city, he stood alone in the pale grasses, transfixed upon the sky. Hope for peace, he said to himself as a damp breeze blew past his cheek. But plan for war.
For each of the next three evenings, he and the warriors of House Gryphon assembled in Emun’s great hall.
The union was Marlos’s doing. Each night the captain ordered them to arrive in full battle dress, swords and spears and gold-blue tabards at the ready. There were no feasts these nights, only modest sums of bread, wine, and flanks of salted beef. Marlos strode like a king between the tables, regarding his men as sternly as a shepherd over his flock. Saul noticed the soldiers of Gryphon were increasingly sullen and bored. Like me, they wonder where the young lord of Gryphon’s hiding, and whether he’ll be ready as promised.
On the first night, the men were content enough to drink and joke, but on the second and third their eyes looked hollow with doubt.
The third night came. The silence in the hall was overbearing, the men quiet in their concern. Heavy rain slapped against the stones outside the keep. Thunder boomed from somewhere in a sky gone long dark. As the men hunkered over their plates, scraping every bit of food from their platters, footsteps echoed from a dark stairwell in the back of the hall. Saul sat up in his chair and nodded to Marlos, watching as a shape appeared in the archway of the passage to Rellen’s tower. At last, he thought. And none too soon.
Rellen came, issuing out of the darkness and into the light, dressed as if for war.
His greaves were polished, the bracer of his left wrist gleaming, and his glorious sword swaying in its scabbard. A murmur spread throughout the hall. Marlos’s men lifted their chins from their cups and saw their lord as ready for battle as they. For one so late, Rellen’s mood seemed as good as ever. A wry grin brewed on his face, and his shouts filled the hall like a trumpet blasts. “Come on now! Wake up! Get yourselves together! I’ve made my peace! Tomorrow we leave!”
“Well then…” Marlos was last to his feet. “Here you are. In the middle of the night, no less.”
Rellen clasped Marlos’s hand, squeezing hard enough to make the captain wince. “Sorry for that. I needed the time. Father’s command was…surprising.”
“No matter,” Marlos cut the apology short. “You’re all dressed up. Are we to ride at first light, or now in the rain? In all that steel, you might rust before the sun rises.”
Rellen laughed. “In the morning of course. I said three days and I meant it.”
Marlos’s men rose all at once. Rellen went out amongst them, recalling each of their names with a smile and a pat upon the shoulder, vanquishing any fears they might have had. Saul could not help but be impressed. The lad has charisma, more so than even his father. He is young, but not entirely a fool.
As Rellen strutted between the tables, he showed the strength of a leader, of the man spoken so highly of by every soul in Gryphon. Where he glanced, men bowed, and when he smiled, Marlos’s soldiers looked as though the sun were shining over them.
“Tomorrow we go,” Rellen shouted over the thunder. “But tonight, I have a last command. You will, all of you, take a last evening for yourselves. Go home to your wives and children. Marlos would have you sit in the barracks til the sun comes up, but his heart’s only half in it. Even he has a taste for more than sour wine and smelly men. He agrees you should all go home. Climb atop your wives, polish your swords, and come back at dawn, refreshed and ready to ride.”
The men’s approval felt powerful enough to shake the hall from its foundations. In moments, they forgot their suppers, abandoned their cups, and left their tables behind. Striding past a sour-faced Marlos, they shouted, “Hail Gryphon! Hail Gryphon!” as they streamed out of the hall.
Saul was among the last to leave. He shouldered his battlestaff as he made for a far door, wanting to smile, but unable to. I wonder if they’ll hail Gryphon a month from now, he thought as the clamor of men faded.
The lad is brave enough.
But if war awaits us, no one will be cheering.
Treading Lightly
Andelusia’s breath fluttered in her throat.
This is the farthest I have ever been from home.
From the hilltop she and her mare halted upon, she glimpsed the rippling grasses of a meadow that seemed more a painting than a landscape forged by nature. Swept by the afternoon breeze, the grass made for a sea of green and gold, a suntouched ocean stretching north and south as far as a bird might fly. In the far east, at the edge of the grass, she spied the beginnings of a great forest lying in the shadow of the hills. The trees were mantled by leaves as green as her eyes, and the wall made by their trunks looked more formidable than any castle she had ever walked beneath.
Of all the places she had seen since leaving Gryphon, this was the most impressive.
“The grass goes on forever north and south,” said Garrett from atop his black destrier. “The hills and trees are the beginning of Mormist.”
“So far away,” she breathed.
Garrett shook his head. “Not so far. A half day’s ride at most. We trot through the grass and sip from a few streams, and by dusk the leaves will be our roof.”
She saw the first of the streams he spoke of. Like a clear-skinned serpent, a slender river twisted and turned through the meadows, joining with several willowy streams snaking nearby. She followed the widest of the waterways with her eyes, spotting a tiny village in the distance, whose houses watched contentedly over the crystalline water. The little grey-stoned dwellings were as inviting as those of Gryphon, with whitewood roofs and wide-open windows, surrounded on all sides by grass and herds of grazing livestock. “It looks so peaceful.” She inhaled deeply. “I think I could live here.”
“This is the end of the Dales,” said Garrett. “Five days from Gryphon. We are making good time.”
“Maybe I could convince Rellen to build me a house out here,” she marveled.
“He loves the city,” said Garrett. “But for you, he might live anywhere.”
A last breath before trotting down the hillside and into the grass, she glanced to the sky above the distant forest. From what Garrett had told her, the Crown Mountains lay not so far beyond the trees, but I cannot see them today. The distant summits were invisible, disguised by the haze looming above the woods. There, just above the treetops, she glimpsed a line of dark clouds, a line so long and bold against the sky she could make it out even though it was likely many days’ ride away. A bit of rain, she thought little of it. Why should that worry us?
Trotting down the green hillside on the back of her mare, she beckoned Garrett to join her in the meadow below. “Come on!” she called. “We are so close. I want to see this Mormist of yours.”
Garrett remained on the hilltop a while longer. She hardly minded. By now she was used to his brooding, and the long evenings when he retreated into bottomless thought no longer troubled her. While he sat atop his destrier and gazed skyward, she patted her mare’s mane as it sipped from a cool-watered stream. She looked to the clouds once or twice more, the line graven of ash and shadow, and then cast the idea of rain from thought. What mattered to her was that the skies over her head were as blue as a Gryphon lake, cloudless and serene as clear water. What Mormist’s weather is does not matter, for we are not yet in Mormist.
Garrett soon joined her in the meadow. Seated so quietly atop her mare, she hardly noticed when he trotted up beside her. His destrier snorting, he led the way deep into the last field of the Dales, where the grass was tall enough to touch the bottoms of her feet, and the sunlight turned everything into gold. She hardly believed how contented she felt. Rellen was far behind her, Saul the same, but her heart sang nonetheless. She felt freer than ever in her life, willing to wander in any direction Garrett might take her.
“Strange,” Garrett said as his destrier splashed across a shallow stream. “These fields are usually teeming with caravans and riders. There was a path here, but now the grass grows over it.”
She gave no thought to it. She desired only to reach the far side the prairie and rest in the shadow of the trees. “When do we stop?” she asked. “My bottom is numb.”
Garrett flushed at her bluntness. She rather liked the way her words sometimes took him off his guard. “Not until dusk.” He nodded. “By then we will reach Tratec. We will set up camp in the hills above the city.”
“Outside again?” she asked. “The fresh air and the stars are all well and nice, but one night in a soft bed would do me well.”
He shook his head. “No inns. No beds. At least not for a while. We will keep to the woods at night and go into Tratec by day. In fact, until Rellen arrives, you may even be of use.”
She scrunched her brow. “Me? How?”
“You have your charms, your wiles. As we roam Tratec, perhaps you might find yourself in the company of men who talk of things they should not. If rumor of the Three Lords should slip any man’s tongue, you might hear it and bring it to me.”
She slowed her mare and searched his face. “You are serious? Did I come here just to be bait?”
He betrayed the slightest smile. “No, I am but half serious. I would never use you like that. But know this, even though you may do as you like in the city, not everything is as it seems. There are servants of the Three Lords in Tratec, and such men are not to be trusted. Tell no one you are from Graehelm. If they ask, say that you are from the southern forest, from a town called Trebidal. Trebidal was my home. I will tell you about it.”
“So you do have a home,” she joked. “Rellen made me think you fell out of the sky, sword already in hand.”
He shrugged. “Everyone in Gryphon has their own story of me. But Rellen’s are always the most colorful.”<
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He led the way across into the meadow, nearing the little village by the stream. The closer she came to the grey, moss-sprinkled dwellings, the more she saw of the meadow folk, who were busy sowing seeds, shearing sheep, and collecting water as though no other work could make them happier. She looked at them with curious eyes, waving to several who looked back. Despite all Garrett’s warnings, there seemed to be no uneasiness amongst them.
After she and Garrett trotted past and the village lay behind her, she rode up beside him. “Why must we be so cautious? If the Three Lords are gone, why should we fear them? Those people…they did not seem worried.”
Garrett slowed his steed. “You heard it for yourself when you listened at Emun’s door,” he cautioned. “It is not the Three Lords alone who trouble us. Saul’s message told of the other enemy, the foe whom Graehelm had no knowledge of before now. Their agents may lurk here, and that is why you and I must be on our guard. I brought you here for Rellen’s sake, but the rest of us are here for another purpose. Keep your eyes open and your ears keen as knives. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She sank into her saddle. “How did you know I listened at the door?”
“I saw your shadow,” he said. “Do not fret. Only Rellen and I know.”
The lushness of Velum Forest was soon at hand.
She came to it with a wide, wonderstruck gaze.
Once so far away, the forest rose up around her, drowning out the world of the Dales. A warm, damp breeze rustled every leaf and blade of grass. The sunlight turned the forest floor silver, and the air was cut with the voices of a hundred varieties of birds. Garrett halted at the hundredth tree, then took her to a wide, well-beaten road. The Crossroad, she knew from what he had told her. Biggest road in Graehelm. Four wagons wide, ruddy as rust and hard as stone, the road wound between the trees and up the hillside into forever.