Child of Fate

by Jason Halstead

  Alto’s eyes widened. “I vote for no rain, too.”

  The others chuckled until Tristam bade them mount and head for the northern gate. He led by example, climbing into his saddle and guiding his steed through Highpeak. True to Tristam’s words, there was less destruction the farther north they went. When they reached the gate only a few minutes later, the portcullis was down.

  “Put those muscles to work, boy,” Tristam called out.

  Alto led Sebas over to the gatehouse and dismounted. He tossed the reins over a fence and stepped to the wheel that would raise the iron bars. He put his back to it and started hauling on the spokes of the wheel, raising it steadily but slowly.

  “This proves they came in from the south gate,” Drefan noted as Alto labored.

  “Proves no such thing,” Kar said. “It only proves that this morning the portcullis is down.”

  “Bah, it was down last night, too!” Drefan said. “We seen it!”

  “You saw it,” Kar corrected. “And I’ll grant you that. But a cunning invader might have come from the north and destroyed the city, and then made it look as though they pillaged it from the south.”

  “You’re digging deep holes, wizard,” Tristam cautioned.

  Kar shrugged. “No deeper than our light-fingered friend,” he said. “Accept nothing without knowing the facts of it.”

  “Quit your badgering,” Tristam said. “And mind your tongue; we’re into the wilds now.”

  Drefan and Kar turned to see that Alto had set the brake on the wheel. The portcullis was raised high enough for them to ride through. Kar nodded appreciatively. “We’ll have you pulling wagons by yourself in no time.”

  “Kar!”

  Kar waved Tristam’s rebuke away. Alto mounted Sebas and took his place in line at the rear, next to Karthor. They rode through the gate and on to a wide stone bridge that spanned a gorge. Alto looked over the edge as far as he dared and saw a river below.

  “Mind your balance,” Karthor suggested. “It’s not a hundred feet but that’s not a dive many men could hope to survive.”

  Alto nodded and straightened on Sebas. He felt lightheaded just from looking at the edge and beyond. He didn’t want to think of what falling from the bridge would be like. Staring straight ahead, he saw the Northern Divide rise majestically ahead of them. It looked like he could touch the clouds if he could climb the highest peaks. Of course, then the river would be an even farther fall if he should slip. It wasn’t until they crossed the thirty-foot span of the bridge that his chest opened up to allow a full breath.

  The terrain turned immediately into rugged and rocky landscape. The road branched off, with a smaller and less used path following the northern edge of the chasm to the west. The main road continued into the mountains, heading up an incline that soon turned into a valley between rising ridges that blocked the morning sun.

  Alto stared about as they rode, hearing the echoing sound of their horses’ hooves. Other noises of nature joined them, the tune of a songbird and the cry of squirrels that scampered between the evergreens on the rocky hills. The trees grew thinned as they climbed higher into the mountains. A small stone skipped off the path on Alto’s right, startling him and Sebas.

  The falling rock drew Alto’s attention to the ground, rather than the mountains around and ahead of them. He cocked his head and, without thinking, pulled Sebas to a halt. Alto climbed down from the horse and knelt to get a closer look at the disturbance in the ground.

  “Alto!” Karthor hissed. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure,” Alto admitted.

  “Tristam, hold a moment,” Karthor called up, though his voice was pitched so it wouldn’t carry.

  Tristam and the others stopped, each turning to see what was amiss. The leader of the Blades rode back and kept his shadow away from Alto before asking. “Forgot you’re a tracker; what’ve you found?”

  Alto let the part about being a tracker slide. Sure, he could track a wounded animal through the woods but his father had told him stories of real trackers. He had none of their skill or patience. “Rocky ground,” Alto said with a glance around them. “No real way to track much on this, but the ground’s been scuffed up here and many rocks turned over. Maybe something was dragged or fell down?”

  “Or maybe someone,” Kar said. He stepped past Alto and plucked out a tuft of fur wedged in the crack of a rock.

  “People don’t have fur,” Alto said.

  “Oh really?” Kar turned to stare at the rolled up wolf pelt stored on Sebas. Alto got the message and clamped his mouth shut.

  “Kelgryn then,” Tristam grunted.

  “Again with the Kelgryn?” the wizard muttered. He shook his head in disapproval. “What about mountain men? Or normal men—hides are cheaper than clothing sewn from wool, cotton, or silk.”

  “Aye, but there’s a lot of things that keep pointing to the Kelgryn.”

  “A lot of convenient things,” Kar corrected.

  “Be silent!” Drefan hissed from the front of the companions.

  The others fell silent and stared at him. One at a time, they looked around and then cocked their heads, listening to the wind that brushed the mountains and the animals and insects that lived there. The animals, Alto quickly realized, had gone silent.

  “What’s that?” Gerald asked.

  Tristam and the others moved forward, straining to try to pick up whatever it was Drefan and Gerald heard. One by one, they caught occasional bits and pieces of it. High-pitched, it sounded like faint chirps and calls from a bird, but it sounded like no bird they knew of.

  “Let’s go,” Tristam said. “But be silent and slow. At the top of the rise ahead, we might see this strange songbird.”

  Alto waited for the others to ready themselves. He saw William readying his crossbow and realized he should do the same with his longbow. He pulled the bow free from Sebas and bent it to fit the string in place. Gripping it tightly, he mounted the stallion and knocked an arrow. He rode after them, taking care to keep Sebas on the quietest route he could find up the path.

  The path descended into another valley. Smaller trails climbed up the side of the hill on their right but to the left the ridge ended. Iron bars were driven into the edge of the path and a rope had been strung between them along the makeshift road. They could see, a few hundred feet down the path, the entrance to a mine shaft on the righthand side.

  Fresh pebbles bounced down the steep hill to their right. Alto stared up, searching to find the source of the dislodged rocks. He saw movement just as he heard the tones again. This time, rather than a short chirp, it sounded like a partial melody. “Did you hear that?” he called out to the others.

  “Hush, lad!” Drefan hissed.

  Alto glanced and saw everyone was looking up. William had his crossbow raised, prompting Alto to raise his own bow, though he had no cause to draw back the string on it. He scanned the hillside, looking for a target, but found nothing.

  “Drefan, check it out,” Tristam snapped.

  “Sure, send the little guy,” Drefan muttered as he climbed off his horse. He pulled a rope out of his pack and looped it over his shoulder and then moved to the steep hill. He selected one of the goat paths and started hiking up it, using both hands and feet to allow him to make it up the steep grade.

  Drefan made the climb look easy as he moved from one rocky outcropping to another. Pebbles and small stones rained down as he dislodged them. He stopped at one point below the base of a vertical expanse of rock; Drefan looked down at them and pointed up. Tristam waved him on.

  Alto watched in disbelief as Drefan worked his way up the sheer rock face. His arms and legs stretched out, finding nooks and crannies that were invisible to those below. By the time he reached the top of it and pulled himself onto a ledge, the sun was beginning to peek over the ridgeline above them.

  A few moments after Drefan disappeared, he tossed one end of the rope over the edge and it landed less than a dozen feet up the hillside. Alto saw his
companions looking at him and felt a dread grow inside him. Tristam flashed him a grin. Alto heaved a sigh and dismounted from Sebas. He slipped the bow over his shoulder, grabbed the quiver that was secured to Sebas’s saddle and slipped that over the opposite shoulder.

  Alto slid back down the hill twice before he managed to reach the rope. He grabbed on, clinging as his feet slipped again. With his fall arrested, he heard Gerald chuckling and then being silenced by Tristam. Alto drew his feet up and got them under him. Rope in hand, he wrapped it around his other wrist and began to pull himself up one footstep at a time.

  Sweat was streaming down his face by the time he reached the rock face. He paused, catching his breath, and then studied the wall of rock ahead of him. He shook his head to keep the sweat from running into his eyes and then saw the small cracks and holes caused by weather and erosion over the years that Drefan used. He scowled, knowing he could have never done the same, and then tightened his grip on the rope. He put his boot against the rock and started up, ignoring the burn in his arms and shoulders.

  An eternity later, Alto glanced up and was blinded by the sun. He blinked the spots from his vision and felt his leading foot slip. He crashed into the side of the rock, grunting and fighting to keep his grip tight on the rope no matter what else happened. A few gentle thumps and scrapes later, he came to a rest.

  He glanced down and weighed his options. He’d climbed nearly twenty feet up the vertical face. Starting over and trying to climb it again was more than he could bear. The agony in his arms, shoulders, and back notwithstanding, Alto knew if he couldn’t find a way to finish the climb now, he’d never manage it. He looked up, squinting against the overhead sun, and began the arduous task of hauling himself up hand over hand on the rope.

  “Took you long enough,” Drefan hissed when Alto’s hand scrambled over the edge of the cliff.

  Alto threw a leg over the ledge and pulled himself up, and then lay on the shelf, gasping for breath. He glanced over, unable to speak for lack of breath, and saw Drefan was slowly climbing to his own feet from where he’d laid with his feet against a rock. The rope had been wrapped around the boulder but Drefan had held onto the rope on the opposite side of the rock from Alto to keep it from slipping.

  “Get up,” Drefan muttered, flexing his hands and then rubbing his wrists. “There’s a trail that leads to the whistler.”

  Alto groaned as he rolled to his hands and knees and then slowly stood. He shook his arms and rubbed his hands, much the same as Drefan had. They burned from the rope and the lack of blood, not to mention the agony his muscles had endured. “Whistler?” he wheezed.

  “The minstrel playing the flute,” Drefan said. He gathered his rope and coiled it back up, and then slipped it over his head and shoulder again.

  Alto grunted, and then waved his companion ahead. Drefan drew his sword and tossed it back and forth between his hands a few times. He swung it around, restoring circulation, and then started down the faint trail that led off the ledge and back along the ridge wall. After only a few minutes, they rounded a rocky outcropping and were plunged back into shadows. Their trail ended at another ledge, but below them a few feet, another ledge led to a fissure in the rock wall.

  “Cave!” Drefan hissed, pointing at it.

  “Long fall,” Alto said, pointing at the half a dozen feet separating their ledge from the lower one.

  The sounds of a flute being played drifted out of the hole in the rocks below them. “Rocks don’t make sounds like that,” Drefan pointed out.

  Alto nodded. “How you plan on getting down there?”

  “We jump!”

  “You’re daft,” Alto muttered. He peered over the edge and backed away quickly. It wasn’t a straight drop but the angle was steep enough to promise more broken bones than spared ones.

  “Aye, no sane man thinks he can live a good life as a thief.”

  “I thought you gave that up?”

  “I did, mostly, but once you’ve got the thrill of it in your blood there’s no going back.”

  Alto sighed. “How do we get back up here once we go down?”

  Drefan removed the rope and looked around. He moved to some larger rocks and motioned Alto over. Together, they moved the rocks, with Alto providing much of the brute strength, and wedged the end of the rope between them.

  Drefan moved to the ledge and dropped the coil over the edge. He sat down on the edge and grabbed the rope, and then pushed himself off and twisted as gravity claimed him. Alto rushed over to the edge. Drefan was standing on the lip of the cave and staring into it. He looked back up and waved for him to come down.

  Alto made the mistake of looking past Drefan and saw the steep side of the cliff that descended into a very narrow point between {the} rocks. It was nearly two dozen feet. Alto staggered back, his balance shifting as the ledge beneath his feet slanted.

  Away from the ledge, he took several breaths to calm himself. The ledge hadn’t changed, only his relation to it. He reached down and grabbed the rope, and then turned around and laid face down on the dirt and stone of the shelf. He slid himself across it backwards until his feet hung over open space. Alto ground his teeth together and kept pushing, even closing his eyes as his hips cleared the edge and his legs dropped straight down. He inched himself back slowly using more and more of his own strength to hold onto the rope as gravity claimed him.

  “You’re down,” Drefan hissed, tapping him on the back. Alto opened his eyes and kicked his feet until they found the lip of the cave entrance. He dropped to his knees and clung to the rock, breathing hard.

  “Now head inside,” Drefan whispered.

  “Just like that?” Alto hissed. “We don’t know what’s in there!”

  “Aye, but we’ve got a rope!”

  Alto stared at the man’s grin and shook his head. “You first.”

  “You’re the new guy—you go.”

  Alto glared at him and then nodded. He grabbed the rope again and closed his eyes. He stepped into the darkness and lowered himself as slowly as his burning arms would allow.

  Chapter 6

  Alto could make out the walls of the cave as long he kept himself from looking up at the cave opening. He saw the wall of the cave slant underneath him, angling the chimney-like cave deeper into the side of the hill. Alto’s feet touched the angled rock until he was lying along the damp surface as he lowered himself.

  Teeth clenched with the effort of holding his grip in the darkness, Alto almost slipped when he felt his legs swinging freely. He kicked them about, frightened that he’d found a bottomless pit, and grunted when his shin bounced off the bottom edge of the chimney.

  He craned his neck to stare past his feet and caught glimpses of a rock beneath him, but it was still an uncomfortable distance away. He had plenty of rope beneath him so he continued his descent. It wasn’t until he’d dropped his entire body beneath the nearly vertical chimney that he realized he hadn’t heard the musical notes for some time.

  As soon as Alto’s feet touched solid ground, he let go of the rope and dropped to his knees. He sucked in breath and pressed both hands to the wet floor of the cave, stretching the burning muscles and trying to cool the fire in his palms. He looked up from the floor and away from the small pool of light beneath the chimney. He had to blink repeatedly to force his eyes to pierce the darkness. They adjusted in time for him to see a shape moving toward him.

  Alto rose up and staggered when something slammed into his chest. He stumbled back and reached for his sword, only to be knocked onto his back as the figure crashed into him again.

  “Darkness take you, Kingdom scum!” the figure spat in an aggressive female voice tinged with a strange dialect.

  Alto threw his hands up to block the pummeling the woman was delivering. In moments, his arms were numb from the assault and several times blows had glanced off his shoulders, face, and head. She continued to vent her rage at him and Alto was hard pressed to do more than keep her from bashing his face in.

&
nbsp; “That’s enough,” Drefan said from behind her.

  The blows stopped but Alto felt the woman’s legs tighten against his sides and hips. He risked a look and saw her struggling and using her legs to keep Drefan from pulling her off him.

  Alto raised himself up on one elbow and saw the woman fighting against Drefan’s grip. Her head was pulled into the light from the chimney and Alto forgot his aches and bruises. Her pale colored hair was pulled back in a braid, though he couldn’t be sure of the color in the poor light. Her face was twisted into ferocious snarls, but there was something about her that stopped his heart for a moment.

  “Enough!” Alto roared, shocking both of them into a moment of stillness. When they looked at him, he continued. “I don’t think I’m Kingdom scum. I was a farmer until a week ago. We heard a piper and came looking.”

  “Who—” The woman grabbed onto Drefan’s arm about her neck and yanked it free. She glared at him a moment and then turned back to Alto. She leaned forward until her face dipped out of the light and was only inches from his. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Alto,” he answered. “We’re—”

  “We’re looking for whoever destroyed Highpeak,” Drefan said. He drew his blade and rested it on her shoulder beside her neck. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “Kingdom scum,” she growled. “You won’t kill me; you’re not man enough! Your soldiers wouldn’t do it; why would you be any better?”

  “Our soldiers?” Alto repeated.

  “Get off my companion,” Drefan said. “And make sure your friend minds his manners.”

  She dug her hands into the leather of Alto’s chest and pushed herself off him. “Namitus, if they do anything stupid, kill them.”

  “Well, that’s better. You can be reasoned with. I know the boy’s name, but who are you, my lady?” Drefan asked with a grin. He turned and saw Alto still laying on the ground and staring at her. “Oh, get up already!”