Now, as cool mountain air filled his lungs once more and the coming squall blew drifts of powdery snow across the icy path before him, Gûlraht found that lost sliver of his soul again. The higher they went, the more he reclaimed, and by the time half the climb was behind them the Kayle felt what could only be described as the will of Them of Stone coursing through his veins. It was an enthralling excitement, the sort of thrill that usually came only before battle.
When the shapes in the clouds above them changed, suddenly becoming something more than jagged cliffs and the outline of the path crisscrossing along the mountainside, the thrill spiked.
“Hold,” Gûlraht said calmly, bringing his left hand up into a fist as he quit his endless climb. At once he heard the word repeated behind him, borne down and along the path a thousand times like some strange echo.
“You’ve seen it, my Kayle?” Agor Vareks asked, coming to stand beside Gûlraht. The older man was dressed for battle, as was every member of the Kayle’s entourage. He had matching swords strapped to each hip and a round shield thrown over his shoulder. In the true tradition of the clans he wore no helmet, but a studded leather band had been wound tight about his head, keeping the beads and metal in his greying hair out of his face. Like Gûlraht, the upper half of his arms were bare, hardened and worn by a lifetime spent in the elements, and—despite his age—beneath the hide-like skin, thick muscle pulsed and flexed as the man moved.
“I’ve seen it,” Gûlraht answered, not taking his eyes off the shapes that vanished and flickered in the shifting sky above their heads.
Nature did not breed straight lines…
“Are the Gähs still above us?” the Kayle asked at last, still not looking down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Agor nod.
“Elrös and his clan are likely to be in the outcroppings there, further west.” Agor pointed upward towards a jagged line of jutting, snow-covered stone. “They were to get as close as could be dared without being seen.”
Gûlraht nodded. “Send a runner to call them back. Tell them to meet us along the path.”
Agor stepped away at once to do as instructed. As Gûlraht heard the man give orders to one of his subordinates, he finally took his eyes off the outline of the Laorin’s High Citadel far above, turning around.
The mountain below appeared almost afire, shifting and flickering with the writhing darkness of twenty-five thousand souls.
Since dawn Gûlraht and his generals—along with a small party of a hundred or so more—had led the slow ascent along the worn stairs that had been carved like a scar up the faces of the mountains. Others had followed behind when space and opportunity permitted, but the mere fact was that most of the path did not allow more than one or two abreast, much less what it would take for the army as a whole to climb in a timely fashion. As a result, the greatest part of the common warriors had been left to devise their own paths.
The result was a sea of steel and dark fur, seething and rumbling above and below where Gûlraht now stood, strong hands and a life among the cliffs making steady work of terrain the men of the false-god would never have dared attempt.
After several minutes a lone figure could be seen breaking off from the army’s edge above them. By the way it moved, dashing and vaulting through the crags as though the bluffs were nothing more than a precarious ladder, Gûlraht could tell it was one of the Goatmen. He watched until the Gähs vanished among the layered edges of the bluffs.
Then he turned back to where Agor, Erek Rathst, and Rako the Calm stood awaiting his command.
“Start the drums.”
Not long after, the army was on the move again, pressing ever upward. This time, though, they were accompanied by the slow, rhythmic beat of half-a-hundred heavy wood-and-hide drums, each slung about the thick neck of a Kregoan warrior.
Gûlraht did not call for another halt when Elrös of the Grasses dropped down from the snow banks above them half-an-hour later, landing on all fours some twenty feet before his Kayle as a dozen others fell similarly around him. The chieftain of the Gähs stood and waited for the march to meet him, the greyish-white pelts slung about his shoulders for camouflage flourishing in the wind as he fell into step beside Gûlraht.
By the graveness of his face, it was easy to guess that the man did not come bearing good news.
“Speak, Elrös,” Gûlraht said quietly, not bothering to look at the man as he moved.
“My Kayle,” the Gähs started up at once, his voice hoarse from the dry chill of the air. “A figure awaits you, at the top of the path. Behind him, a hundred men of the fortress stand along the gates. They prepare for us, I think.”
Gûlraht was surprised by this, though only mildly. He had guessed the hateful powers the Witch and her ilk wielded would have a way of informing the Citadel of his coming. It was why he had started the drums. If surprise was of no advantage to them, fear might as well be.
On the other hand, he had expected the false-prophets might retreat behind the relative safety of their walls, not prepare to meet his army in open battle. Unless he was misinformed, there couldn’t be more than two or three thousand within the keep, and only a fraction of them men and women capable of defending the place.
“Perhaps they seek to meet us along the path?” Elrös asked, falling in behind Gûlraht as they started up a narrow set of carved stairs. “They hope to gain the tactical advantage, assuming we will only be able to launch our attack from the steps.”
Gûlraht shook his head, his brow creasing as he thought. “Were that true, then they would send their men as far down the mountain as they could, so as they were pressed back they would still hold the advantage. Meeting us at the top defies that purpose…”
He considered the possibilities, for a time, shifting his ax to his other hand so he could balance himself against the wall to his right as the stairs grew slick.
This struck him with a thought.
“Elrös,” he said sharply, looking back at the man as soon as he was on sure footing. “Tell me of the terrain. What sort of place is it that they wait for us?”
The Gähs’ sharp eyes peered up at him from beneath his wolf-skull helm. “A plateau, my Kayle. An outer courtyard, like a flattened half-circle, clearly carved out of the mountain by man. It is the space before the walls of the fortress itself, one edge—the north’s—walled in by stone, the other sheer as a cliff.”
“How large is it? Is it snow-covered, or has it been cleared?”
Elrös squinted as he made to recall.
“It is of great width, and what little snow covered the stone seems to have built up since a recent clearing. In fact—” he sounded suddenly surprised “—several of the men were set about doing exactly that…”
Gûlraht nodded, but said nothing more, thinking. After a minute or so of further contemplation he dismissed the man with a word, listening to the Gähs scamper back along the path to where the rest of his pack likely waited.
Agor joined him again almost at once.
“What news?” the older man asked under his breath, as though he didn’t want the others to hear. Gûlraht rather thought it was Rako’s ear he was avoiding, and didn’t disapprove.
Despite this, as he answered, he kept his private thoughts to himself. “They wait for us at the top,” he told the man truthfully. “Tell the men to prepare for an ambush, but do not attack without my command. If it is words they wish to share, I would hear them.”
Agor looked surprised at this.
“Words?” he asked in a tone that bordered on frustration. “What words could blasphemers have that would sway your judgment?”
“None,” Gûlraht told him, fixing the man with a burning glare to put him back in his place. “But we can ill afford to risk spending the next few months wasting time on a siege while the valley towns strengthen their defenses and bolster their armies. If words allow me even a few minutes more to surround the fortress without resistance, then I. Will. Have. Words.”
He injected every enu
nciation of this last statement with a fierce promise meant to tell Agor all too clearly that he was toeing a line with his questioning. In truth, Gûlraht cared little and less what terms the Laorin might present him, because he had other suspicions as to why he was being met at the fortress gates. If he shared them, though, he suspected his generals would do their best to convince him of the folly falling for such a trap could mean, and he was in no mood to be hounded as the Citadel became more and more distinct with each passing step.
Agor, for his part, did as he was commanded, falling back to relay the orders. As the general did this, Gûlraht reached into the side of his leather breastplate—like he had every few hours for the last four days—and wrapped his gloved fingers around the silky bundle of braids he kept there, close to his heart.
He smiled, fingering the hair in anticipation, feeling the bloodlust begin to rise within him. Not long after, Gûlraht couldn’t help but allow a shiver of pure excitement work its way up his spine, because he’d taken a bend in the path and found himself looking up, towards a flat edge not far above.
With rising exhilaration, he started up the last of the path’s steps.
CHAPTER 50
The High Citadel, to the eyes of a man of the mountains, was nothing short of a wonder worthy even of Them of Stone. It was a castle carved from the living rock of the cliffs, suspended in many parts—by what Gûlraht could only imagine was both man’s ingenuity and the devilish magics of the place’s current residents—over open air and slick bluffs. Towers and walls jutted from the mountain in layers, until the fortress looked almost a city lost among the peaks. Gûlraht had been—to his chagrin—impressed by the mass and breadth of the valley towns he had descended on over the first weeks of his campaign, taken aback by the truth of their size as he saw them up close for the first time. In comparison, the home of the Laorin was a small thing.
And all the more magnificent for it.
It existed, like some great beast, almost untouched by the endless assault of winter and wind. Here and there light could be seen against the grey and white of the carved granite and mortared slate, peeking through narrow arrow slits like dozens of fiery eyes. Its mouth lay below these, directly across from where Gûlraht and his generals stood at the top of the stairs, a gaping entrance to a long tunnel, flanked by paired bastion towers that loomed almost like arms overhead. For a moment the crenellations of the walls seemed claws, and the Kayle could just imagine the Citadel as a whole rising up to crush him like he were nothing more than a flake of snow amid ten-thousand others beneath its paws.
When the fleeting vision left, Gûlraht found himself swearing by his life, his army, and the Stone Gods themselves that he would have this place for his own.
The figure that awaited the Kayle was, in comparison, a disappointing sight. Gûlraht had anticipated a regal reception, likely the richly dressed form of whatever master this fortress might currently suffer, or perhaps even the White Witch, come to goad him within safe reach of her friends. After a moment he realized that the Witch was indeed present, but stood some twenty yards away, glaring at him with one pink eye from the front of a group of some two hundred men and women all armed with silver staffs, their white robes whipping about them in the wind.
Gûlraht stared the woman down as she met his gaze, turning to the figure before him only after the Witch had paled and looked away.
The man standing no more than ten feet in front of them was a strange sight. He carried no staff, and his robes were grey and ratty. One sleeve was loose and flapping, and by the bulge along his chest the arm looked to be strapped about his torso, like a healing break. A dark cloth covered the lower half of his face, hiding his nose and mouth, and a wide hood billowed and cut low over his forehead, almost blocking his eyes from view.
When Gûlraht finally made them out, though, he knew there was more to this man than his worn clothes let on. These were eyes that did not fear him—or at least not nearly as much as they should—their clear blue shining against the somberness of the cloth about them. They took the Kayle in with something less than respect, but more than hate. They took him in with confidence, despite having to look up into his face to meet his gaze, and did not flinch away even as the Kayle took a step forward.
“My Kayle—” Rako the Calm started from behind Gûlraht at this motion, his voice almost lost to the growing wind, but Gûlraht stopped him with an aggravated wave of his hand, not looking over his shoulder. He had eyes only for the man before him, and was peering down at him carefully, trying to make out the detail that had made him curious enough to approach even a little.
Then he saw it again. An odd scar, formed by two smooth, straight lines crisscrossing over the man’s right eye, disappearing beneath the hood and mouth cloth. Gûlraht had no idea how such a wound could be suffered, and had only enough time to gauge that the lines were far too perfect to be made by any blade, when the man spoke. His voice thundered out in practiced mountain tongue from behind his wrappings.
“I seek audience with he who is Kayle of the mountain clans!”
Gûlraht snarled, then replied in the rough Common he had had his slave girls instruct him in every night over the last few months.
“Cease butchery of mountain language, little man. Befouling the tongue of the Gods, you are.”
The figure before him—who by any accounts but Gûlraht’s was not at all “little”—looked surprised, then almost impressed.
“I seek an audience with the Kayle of the mountain clans,” the man repeated, reverting to his own speech. “Are you Gûlraht Baoill, of the Sigûrth tribes of the Vietalis Ranges?”
At that, Gûlraht smiled wickedly.
Then he looked over the stranger’s shoulder. Syrah Brahnt had gathered courage from somewhere to meet his stare now, and her scowl did not flinch away this time even as his eyes settled on her.
“Better to trust one of your own to tell you, you would like?” he asked in a playful tone. “Bring the Wyth within my reach and ask her who stands before you, you should.”
The man didn’t bother acknowledging the words, only repeating his question. “Are you Gûlraht Baoill?”
Gûlraht frowned, seeing that this was a character unwilling to play his game. He set his face into a searing glare that would have withered any of his own men to nothing.
“Gûlraht Baoill, I am,” he said fiercely, taking another step forward so that he was practically towering over the man. “Chieftain of the Sigûrth, conqueror of the Gähs, the Kregoan, the Amreht, and the pitiful tribes of your own mountains. Slayer of Emreht Grahst, who was chieftain before me. Son of Tarruk Baoill, who was chieftain before Emreht. Born of Them of Stone, carved of the winter storms, and your end, bringing behind me.”
At this he stepped partially aside, indicating the mountains east of him with his ax, along the path he had been climbing since that morning. Like a black flood his army overran the cliffs, blotting out the snow and ridges as they moved to surround the Citadel. The drums continued their endless beat, their hammering echoing ten-fold with every strike.
The grey-robed man before him didn’t so much as blink.
“You seek to bring war down upon the faith,” he said calmly, his eyes following the dark mass of the army edging its way north and west, surrounding them. “The Laorin are a people of peace, of sincerity. By seeking their destruction, you move against those that have never sought you ill will.”
“Seeking their destruction, I move to wipe false-god from the stories of past and future,” the Kayle snapped back, flexing his powerful arms as he stood looking down upon the stranger. “Your ilk are blasphemers, heretics and prophets of wickedness. Your Wyth alone—” he raised a hand to point a finger at the woman near the back of the courtyard “—spits on old ways and tramples tradition under boot.”
“She sought only to save your people,” the man said, still eerily calm. “She sought only to better your lives through peace, to strengthen your weak and allow your children to grow old.”
“No place amongst the mountains for the weak, there is!” Gûlraht thundered. “No place for children not strong enough to survive the storms on their own. You and your kind are frail kind, dependent on vile sorceries and strength of others to survive. Blight on this world, you are.”
The man’s scarred face twisted into a grimace. “Then you will not parley for peace?” he demanded. “You will not allow us to seek terms, that we might avoid the madness that is this war you so desperately seek?”
The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1 Page 128
