The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

  “I… I don’t understand,” the high priest muttered. “We have waited so long, why wait any longer?”

  “You? You have only waited forty years, Grobahn. I have waited the entire age of man. The end of the old world was a long time coming. Ever since man learned to produce electricity and weapons that could kill with no effort, the end was written.”

  Varan stared at Freya. Nothing she said made sense to him.

  “When you get to the Hole, the healing of the world will begin. Fresh grasses and fruit trees will spring forth in the wastelands. The burning rain that plagues the plains will cease. Rivers and lakes that no longer support life will teem with fish. The lands far from here, separated by the big waters, will begin to return from the chaos. All of this will begin on the Winter Solstice.”

  She took a ragged breath. “Man must never forget that they have been given a second chance. There will not be a third.”

  Freya collapsed backward over the sofa table and Varan rushed to her side.

  FIFTEEN

  Garrett Traxx shifted in the saddle to ensure that it was seated properly on Champion’s back. It seemed secure enough to carry him into battle. He was as ready as he could be for what he was about to lead his men into.

  When the call went out for volunteers to attack the Vultures and break the lines so the king could rescue his daughter and granddaughter, more than five hundred men and women showed up. Garrett was shocked at how many people wanted to end this siege and help him reunite his family. They had to pare it down to only fifty mounted men, a small enough force to be able to fade into the mountains beyond Homelake, but large enough to have a fighting chance against the savages.

  Garrett nodded to the boy holding his spear and accepted it from him. He held it aloft and shouted to the others in his small force, “We ride for the hills to the west. Kill every one of those bastards that gets in front of you. If you get separated, the rendezvous point is the Anderson farm.”

  The assembled men and women cheered for a moment and then he signaled the gatekeeper to open the gate. It creaked slowly as porters rotated the giant cogs that controlled the opening mechanism.

  The gates creaked in protest, but finally broke apart. Garrett cursed at the engineers who’d designed the damn thing. He didn’t remember it taking that long to open before the siege set in last winter. They haven’t been opened in over a year, no wonder so many people wanted the opportunity to attack the Vultures.

  Beyond the wall, he could already hear the shouts of the savages, alerted to the opportunity to get into the city through the opening gates. The king watched as Lieutenant Rylan’s bowmen began firing from the walls. Several of them fell from the battlements with arrows protruding from their bodies as the Vultures shot back.

  He glanced behind him to where Nicholas stood with the militia on the ground. Their job was to fill the gap in the gates after the cavalry charged through. They were the lynchpin to keeping the residents of the city safe. Without their shields and spears standing in the way, the Vultures could pour into the city—especially considering how slow the damn gates moved.

  The bowman began screaming for more arrows and children scrambled up and down ladders all along the wall, resupplying them. Garrett wondered what in the hell was happening outside. He’d been up on the battlements twenty minutes ago, the plains surrounding Homelake seemed quiet. The only things breaking up the open area where his men would charge through were the skeletal remains of a few burned homes.

  The gates cracked open a few more inches, allowing Garrett a view of the outside world through the sliver of light. A slight fog hung low to the ground that hadn’t been there before. He knew that the fog would deepen as the sun warmed the ground and then eventually dissipate once the sun got high enough in the sky to burn it off.

  The shadows from the buildings helped to hide most everything immediately in front of him and he couldn’t tell what the archers were shooting at. It was maddening. Somehow, the Vultures had moved around to the back gates and it seemed they were waiting for them. Was he leading his men to a quick death?

  Finally, something gave way in the gate mechanism and the two massive doors separated rapidly, as they’d been designed to do. They opened a full ten feet across and he spurred his horse forward. Behind him, the other horsemen screamed their battle cries and charged out behind him. The pent up frustration of being trapped behind the walls of the city poured forth.

  Directly into a line of Vultures.

  Garrett had a split second to register battering rams, ladders and siege towers that rested on their sides for concealment. It looked like this was the culmination of the attack that started a week ago on the night that Jade was taken. They’d used the cover of darkness and the growing fog to mass on the back gates. Too many! There was no way his archers could stop that many of them. They were going to breach the walls. He lowered his spear, bellowing his own rage at the animals that ringed his city and murdered his subjects.

  The riders behind him adjusted and followed their king. The horses built up speed as the Vulture archers began to fire amongst the cavalrymen. The king didn’t hesitate. He was supposed to sneak away into the hills, but this threat before him would destroy the city he loved. The remainder of his family lived behind those walls. After seeing what the Vultures had planned, he couldn’t abandon them.

  For now, Tanya’s quest would need to be her own.

  The riders spread out in a line on either side of him. They were well trained and knew what they had to do. The distance between the two groups closed impossibly fast and then the battle was upon them.

  The cavalry smashed through the unprepared Vulture lines. Men and equipment went flying in every direction. The riders’ spears grew heavy with the bodies of their enemy skewered upon them. Garrett had to drop his weapon because he couldn’t hold the weight and risked being unhorsed amongst the savages.

  In seconds, they were beyond the line of fighters and into the archers. The king pulled his sword free. He hacked into the neck of a woman on one side of his horse and then took the head off a man fumbling to pull a dagger from his belt on the other. The line of archers broke quickly and the horsemen rode them down, slaughtering them by the handful.

  “Turn!” Garrett shouted to his riders.

  They wheeled about and got on line, preparing for another charge. He allowed the horses a moment to breathe and checked his line. Of the fifty he’d left the city with, it seemed like there were less than thirty left. Down below, between the cavalry and the city, the Vultures were reforming.

  Their lines had been broken, but they were far from beaten. Garrett tried to estimate how many of the savages were before him. It seemed like they hadn’t done anything to thin their numbers, however, losing their archers would help turn the tide in favor of Homelake tremendously.

  Garrett looked longingly toward the west. They were beyond the lines. They’d achieved their goal and could travel unhindered now. He could still go to the Seers and find his daughter and granddaughter, leave the fighting behind him… And then what, old man? All the people of Homelake are your family, not just the Traxx.

  “Ready!” he called to his riders.

  They responded in kind, shouting the battle cry of the city, “Aaah Uhh!”

  Garrett nodded. They were ready. It was time to meet their destiny. These thirty men and women would sweep across the fields of Homelake and ride into legend. He raised his arm to signal the charge, but stopped.

  A horn blasted from the walls and the call of the city’s infantry echoed across to them. The Vultures turned in dismay as row upon row of dismounted militiamen poured forth from the gates. Nicholas marched forth with the army of Homelake.

  ”Aaah Uhh!”

  The gates closed rapidly behind them and Garrett watched as they molded into the phalanx formation. Once they were set, they began moving forward. They would crush the wild men between the two forces.

  “Charge!” the king shouted.

  His men s
urged forward and the Vultures turned in fear toward them, exposing their backs to the archers from the city walls. Arrows fell among them and then stopped moments before the king’s cavalry hit the savages.

  He lost visibility of the larger battle, focusing on his own individual fight. Men and women appeared and then fell before him. Garrett was injured in multiple places, cuts and scrapes, a blade in his calf, nothing stopped him. His sword flashed up and across, terminating the animals who’d slaughtered his people.

  Then the riders were through the enemy lines once again. “Right!” he roared, the bloodlust taking hold of him.

  The remaining horsemen wheeled right. They would harass the edges of the enemy formation while the phalanx attacked the center. He spurred his horse faster to reach the far right where the Vultures were already beginning to break formation. The thundering of Champion’s hooves rang loudly in his ears and drowned out the sound of the ensuing battle behind him.

  His men made several passes among the deserters, cutting them down. He reigned in his horse to catch a breath. Fourteen riders remained.

  The battle in front of the gates raged. The phalanx had pushed forward, using brute force to separate the Vulture lines. Members of the Traxx Guard used swords to slash and stab into their enemy. It was carnage.

  “Far side. They’re trying to flee on the far side!” one of his men yelled.

  Garrett grunted in acknowledgement. “Far side. Go!”

  His men gave a weak battle cry and they cantered the horses back across the line. They ran down a few retreating Vultures and continued circling to finish off the threat to their city.

  The king’s heart leapt for joy at the sight of the enemy, broken and dead upon the field. This day could have gone very differently. Normally, during the siege, the militia worked in shifts to cover both the day and night instead of everyone present for duty as they were this morning. Nicholas had massed the troops around the gates as a safeguard for when they were opened. If he hadn’t led the force outside of the walls, foiling the Vulture surprise attack on the back gate….

  Garrett sat back heavily in the saddle, his injuries protesting the movement. He ignored them as best as he could. All of the events of the past week led them to this moment. If Jade hadn’t been kidnapped, they wouldn’t have changed anything in their defensive routine. Tanya’s subsequent escape and Nicholas’ inability to get a search party beyond the walls… Everything happened for a reason. Those things are no coincidence. What does that mean?

  He flicked Champion’s reigns softly and the big horse started walking toward the gates. As they crossed the battlefield, the king pondered the implications that it had all been interwoven to culminate in this fight. Finally, he met Nicholas in front of the gates. “You’ve saved the city this day, Nicholas,” he praised.

  “Aaah Uhh!” the militiamen standing nearby shouted exuberantly.

  Nicholas grasped Garrett’s hand, saying, “If it hadn’t been for your cavalry’s bravery when they chose to charge out of the city with you, My Lord, the Vultures would have attacked in the dark before our troops were ready. We’d be stuck behind the walls trying to repel them instead of celebrating our victory on the fields surrounding the city.”

  “No, Captain. The infantry won the day!”

  The men cheered his praise. “Aaah Uhh! Aaah Uhh! Aaah Uhh!”

  Garrett stood in the stirrups and shouted, “You have won a great victory this day. Be proud! Because of your glory, the city of Homelake is saved from these animals!”

  He waited until the cheering militia quieted down before continuing. “There is still much to do. We must tend to our wounded and hunt the remaining Vultures who escaped. We can’t afford for any of them to live to spread their message of irrational hatred of our people. We must eradicate them from the earth!”

  Champion stamped his hooves impatiently and the king turned him toward the city. “Nicholas, meet me at The Keep in two hours. I’m still going after my family.”

  *****

  Scratch ran headlong through the underbrush, heedless of the clinging limbs and catch-a-fellow vines as he held his hand against the massive wound in his side. He’d taken a spear during the initial Traxx charge from the city and now he leaked like a pierced rain barrel.

  The Vulture leader shrieked his frustration at the wilderness around him. It had been a perfect plan. They’d successfully built enough ladders and contraptions to breach the walls and maneuvered them into place in the night. They’d given them enough time to think it would be an extended siege. The Traxx should have been caught totally unawares, but they’d charged into his lines, disorienting his troops who’d been led to believe that they would be the attacker, not defending against a suicidal cavalry charge.

  The ground rushed toward his face as he fell into the snow. He grunted in pain and grabbed a handful of slush to pack against the wound. The bitter cold shocked him awake and he surged to his feet. He had to get farther away from the city before he could attend to his injuries.

  Nearby, the sound of men shouting startled him. Are those my people or Traxx? Soon, the voices became distinct and he knew it was the Traxx; they were hunting his people in the forest and slaughtering them like dogs.

  “The blood trail, she heads this way,” a rough, weather-hardened voice called. “Come on, boys!”

  “Rolf, slow down. You don’t get yourself separated from us.”

  Scratch twisted around at the sound of a breaking branch directly behind him. A bear appeared and he screamed in fear. The giant grinned at him and said, “Got you, I did. You left a trail wider than a demonbroc’s ass.”

  None of his troops were around, they wouldn’t know that he surrendered. “Mercy! Mercy, I beg you,” Scratch pleaded. “I’m the leader of the Vultures. I deserve to be treated with respect and you need to treat my wounds.”

  The man stepped closer and kicked him in his injured side. Pain exploded across his body and he threw up as the edges of his vision went dark.

  “Old Rolf don’t need to do nothing for ya, savage,” the bear whispered hoarsely. He pulled a wicked, hooked-end fisherman’s dagger from his belt.

  Scratch screamed more than he thought he would before he died.

  SIXTEEN

  Water. It’s all she could think of. Drinking it, bathing in it, swimming in it. Instead, grime covered Tanya from head to toe. The fine, powdery dust of the desert floor infiltrated every crevasse and irritated her skin in a hundred places.

  Three days ago, they’d passed the remains of a large city on the edge of the giant lake. The buildings seemed intact, without evidence of damage from the massive weaponry of old or from fire, but it was abandoned nonetheless. Tanya wondered how anyone had ever lived out here in these conditions.

  They thought the lake that the Mistress had annotated on their map would provide much-needed relief from the dry, dusty climate, but the water had been contaminated, too salty to drink, so they’d been forced to look elsewhere. After a few hours of searching along the lakeshore, they found a small tributary where they were able to drink and to fill their canteens.

  The horses were doing much worse than the travelers. Frederick’s had stumbled badly a few hours ago, splitting one of its rear hooves. It wasn’t bad enough that they had to abandon the animal, but they had shifted all of the saddlebags to it while Frederick rode double with Tanya—which only added to the heat, sweat and filth plaguing her.

  She’d never been in the desert before, none of them had except for Darci, so they relied on her experience. Luckily, they were crossing in the beginning of winter, so the archer told them that the weather was the best they could have hoped for. They wouldn’t have lasted more than a day in the summer heat with their limited water supply. However, in the dead of winter, the winds were dangerously cold and stirred up giant clouds of dust, which disoriented travelers. The spring was no better as the snows of the surrounding mountains melted and the rains came, creating massive flash floods of deadly mud.

 
Tanya pried her lips apart. Darci may have told them that early winter was the best time to cross, but she was still miserable. “Water,” she croaked.

  She felt Frederick shift behind her and then the plastic green canteen appeared beside her face. “Here,” he replied as hoarsely as she had.

  The princess fumbled with the cap, unscrewing the lid, careful to keep hold of it, lest it fall to the ground. She wasn’t certain that she had the energy to retrieve it if it did. A tiny trickle of fluid tumbled out of the canteen when she tilted it up. “More?”

  “Gone,” he stated. Their attempts at conversation had long ceased. Opening their mouths seemed to further dehydrate them, so they spoke as sparingly as possible.

  Tanya screwed the lid back on in frustration. They needed to find a source of fresh water. They wouldn’t last much longer without it.

  *****

  Water! It’s all she could think of. She drank it, bathed in it, and even swam across the little pond. She stood and ducked her face into the water, drinking deeply beside the horses. She didn’t care that their slobber mingled with the life-giving fluid. Her friends back in Homelake would have been horrified to see her this way, soaking wet, drinking water like an animal. Quite unbecoming of a princess.

  Tanya pulled her head out of the water and laughed. She hadn’t known that something so simple as a little pool of water could make her so happy. She’d always taken it for granted that there’d be enough water. Never again.

  “We’re going to camp here for the night,” Darci announced.

  “But it’s only mid-day,” Frederick protested. “Every moment we delay means that Jade is with that monster longer.”

  “I understand your concerns,” the archer replied. “But, we need to hydrate our bodies for the next leg of the trip across the Skull Lands.” She paused, then hesitantly said, “And... Something has changed. I can feel it.”

  “What do you mean?” Tanya asked, splashing across the water as she made her way to the edge of the pool.