“Do not worry about the crossbowmen on the wall,” Thyss had said, a familiar gleam in her eye.
The bigger problem that Cor saw was that their group was comprised mostly of children. Keeping them on horseback at a gallop would be difficult for some of the younger ones. Also, should any fall or become separated, there would be no time to save them; they must reach the gate before the alarm went up, then eliminate the guards and open the gate within a minute at most. Hopefully then they could slip into the darkness of night in the pass and make their escape. Traversing that rocky terrain at night presented another problem altogether, but one he would worry about later.
Cor opted to tie all the horses together with Thyss’ rope; she had no doubt that it would withstand whatever stresses the horses put upon it. He left his own palomino and Thyss’ horse off of the train to give them the freedom that would be necessary. The four oldest would be responsible for keeping track of the others, for they would be riding fast to reach the wall.
The guards on patrol represented another problem, and both Cor and Thyss knew it. They could hope with such a large area that they would not be seen by one of these men, but there was little doubt that the guards would hear them ride in. Cor did not plan on trying to be silent; if he had, he would have discarded the horses altogether. No, speed was needed here. The guards would most definitely hear some commotion, but they would try to investigate the noise before raising any alarm. Hopefully by the time they knew what was going on, Cor and the Dahken would be at the gate.
They ate a cold meal shortly before the sun began to set, and Cor forced his group to remain as still as possible and rest. He knew they would need the rest, for the hardest part of the journey was yet ahead, but requiring children to reign in their boundless energy was not so simple. As the sun dipped below the horizon, the air’s temperature dropped substantially, and this helped calm even the younger children. Eventually, they all began to huddle close to each other for warmth and drifted off to sleep, except for Cor. He could not calm his nerves, and he noted disdainfully that even Thyss had stretched out languidly and slept.
Cor woke them up before midnight, starting with Thyss and the older Dahken. He and Thyss tied the horses together and made other preparations while the teenagers aroused the younger children. He noted with satisfaction that it took little effort to get the entire group up and moving quickly. The infant remained asleep, and Cor hoped he would stay that way for some time. He did not look forward to having a screaming infant adding to the din of battle and confusion that was sure to come, but Cor had little faith that the child would sleep through the mad dash for the Loszian wall.
The horses were tied into two rows; he and Thyss would each lead one. Once their few belongings were collected, Cor had the Dahken mount the horses two to a horse. He had several dismount and move to different horses, trying to find the best mix of older children with younger and so forth. After a few minutes of this, Cor gave up with the realization that this was an at best imperfect solution. At worst, it was downright foolhardy, and they would all be killed. Finally, he declared that they were ready, and he mounted his palomino. He was glad that the moonlight was partially obscured by clouds so that he could not see the fear he knew would be on the children’s faces.
Cor set a slow pace at first, just walking the group toward the Loszian fort. According to Thyss, they were only a few miles away, and even at a slow pace, they would arrive at the outskirts of the fort in about an hour. At times they would top a hill, and Cor could see glints of moonlight reflecting off of objects in the distance. While he could not see any torches or distinct shapes from this far away, Cor was certain that the reflections came off of the Loszians’ black stone. The buildings emerged from the gloom as they approached, first as indistinct shapes, but then more clearly. A few flickering torches cast a constantly shifting orange light in the paths between the black buildings. Cor halted the horses; he could not see any of the patrolling guards, but there were several forms moving on top of the wall.
“This is it,” Cor said to those behind him. He turned his horse about so they could all see him, and spoke in a loud whisper. “We’ll be riding as fast as we can. The horses are tied together so just hold on and don’t fall off. Once we get the gate open, we’ll ride through and into the mountains as fast as we can.”
They started towards the fort at a walk, and Cor slowly urged the horses onward, faster. He had the group almost to a full gallop as they reached the first out buildings. Cor risked one look over his shoulder to see how his charges were handling the rough gait and decided that he dare not push the horses any faster; many of the smaller children were holding on only with the aid of the larger. The baby, strapped to the wet nurse’s chest, had begun to cry, awakened by the terrific bouncing motion of her horse. Cor pushed it from his mind as he focused ahead.
They were now moving quickly through the clusters of buildings, and Cor could see the gate clearly. It seemed that the huge stone doors were each opened and closed by large upright wheels interlocked with some sort of gear system below the ground. Cor hoped they would not be difficult to operate, though he realized he only needed to open one door. One man guarded each wheel, and he counted four more upon the wall’s walkway, just as Thyss had reported.
It was then that the alarm went up, not from in front, but from behind them. A black mailed guard, likely on his path patrolling through the buildings, shouted in Loszian that intruders rode through the compound, and Cor looked over his shoulder to see the man running for a large building he assumed to be one of the barracks. Cor pushed his horse faster, causing some of the children behind him to bounce dangerously close to losing their holds on their mounts, but he saw little option. At any moment, Loszian soldiers would come pouring out of their barracks.
The guards in front had turned their attention to the oncoming group, and the first volley of crossbow bolts were loosed their way. Cor could not look to see if any of his charges had been hit by the attack; he charged his horse in a full gallop towards the men guarding the gate mechanisms. To an observer, it would have looked as if the Dahken intended to ride by the man, but just as he was about to pass the guard, Cor half leapt, half fell from his saddle. The impact jarred both men as Cor landed on top of the guard in a heap of arms, legs and steel.
The Loszian received the worst of it as Cor’s helm slammed into his face, breaking his nose and splintering his teeth. Cor quickly scrambled to his feet, drew Soulmourn and ran the man through while he was still fighting for breath. A weak blow clanged off the back of Cor’s hauberk; the other guard had attacked him poorly from behind. He quickly glanced to his left to see one crossbowman screaming, arms flailing as he fell of the wall fully engulfed in flames. Another lay burning, still on the wall, while the other two frantically reloaded their weapons. Thyss charged up the steep stone steps, curved sword in hand. Thinking Cor’s attention diverted, the guard launched another attack with several high, broad, sword strokes. Cor easily ducked the first two, before parrying away the third. The poor man had no chance of regaining his balance before Soulmourn rent its way through his left arm near the shoulder and into the man’s midsection.
Cor looked around and knew his situation was about to deteriorate quickly. Thyss had torn through the third crossbowman, and the fourth had closed in on her with twin daggers. He felt twinge of fear and wanted nothing more than to run to her aid when he saw the fletched end of a crossbow bolt jutting from her left thigh. But he could not afford to help her, for only a few hundred feet away the first Loszian soldiers were charging toward the group.
Dropping Soulmourn, Cor gripped the spokes of the closest wheeled device. He heaved his weight into it one direction and found it completely unmoving. He shifted the other direction, and the massive wheel began to turn, spokes interlocking with a large gear set into the ground. He could hear a great clicking as the gear teeth interacted with metal, no doubt other gears beneath the ground, and there was a mild vibration as one black stone doo
r began to swing open. He pushed the wheel until the door had opened perhaps three feet.
“Keth, Geoff, get them through!” he yelled at the two older boys while sheathing Soulmourn, and nodding they began to herd the horses out the great door. “Thyss, we leave now!”
The fourth crossbowman dispatched, Thyss lithely jumped from the top of the wall, landing in a roll. She screamed once in pain, clutching the crossbow bolt imbedded in her leg, as she made impact with the ground, but she forced herself to her feet and limped to her horse. Cor looked back at the oncoming soldiers, counting that he had mere moments before they were upon him. As the crowd of horses quickly filtered through the open gate, Cor saw the shape of a small girl lying face down in the dirt two dozen paces away.
“Dahken Cor,” Thyss shouted, now on her horse, “leave her!”
This girl was here now only because of him, and he ran to her unmoving shape without hesitation. Behind him, he could hear Thyss swearing eloquently in her native tongue. Scooping the girl up, he noticed a large knot forming on the side of her head. She must have fallen off her horse when they came to a stop. Something whizzed by Cor’s left ear, and as he turned to run to his horse, white hot pain lanced through his left hand. His palomino anxiously awaited him, her eyes wide as her tail swished back and forth.
Just as he reached her, a wave of immense heat nearly knocked him off of his feet. Thyss sat on her horse, arms raised to the heavens, and a wall of orange flame over twenty feet tall and twice as wide separated them from the oncoming horde of soldiers. Crossbow bolts were shot into the flame, only to be incinerated. Cor slung the girl’s limp body over his left shoulder as he stepped into the saddle’s right stirrup. Soldiers with crossbows flanked the wall of flame by climbing the stone wall’s steep steps, but just as the first men reached the top of the wall for a clear line of fire, they fell, suddenly punctured by long Western arrows.
Cor did not have time to wonder about this; he kicked his horse into action and shot through the open gate. The heat subsided, and he saw Thyss charging after him clearly having ended her spell. Cor expected it to be dark in the ravine outside of the fort, but there were a number of lit torches in front of him. He saw the Dahken still mounted but behind a dozen men who fired arrows towards the Loszian fort. One stopped firing and approached, and Cor recognized him as Thom, the commander of Fort Haldon.
“Dahken Cor. Queen Erella commanded me here to provide you aid. We must make haste,” he said.
The rangers continued to fire arrows at the Loszian wall, and the opposing soldiers could do nothing but stay under cover as they were out of range with their crossbows. Thom’s expert marksmen neatly skewered the few who were brave enough to venture through the small opening, but the gates were beginning to open wider. Shouting for everyone to follow him, Cor spurred his horse deeper into the mountain pass. The archers remained behind for just a moment to loose a few more arrows before following.
They traveled the pass at a dangerous pace, considering they had nothing but intermittent moonlight and a few torches, but they had no choice. Cor could occasionally hear a large Loszian force on the move not far behind them. They were well beyond crossbow range, and the rangers from Fort Haldon did not stop to blindly fire their own longbows. More than once a horse stumbled or someone fell due to the treacherous ground. While he could not afford to dwell on it, Cor was amazed at the dexterity of these men who had saved them, and when someone did fall, the rangers seamlessly picked the child up and kept them moving. The men ran alongside the horses, keeping pace almost effortlessly.
“We must keep this up for a bit longer,” Thom would say to him over and over, raising his voice over the sound of the horses’ hooves. “Just a bit longer.” Cor wanted to ask the man just how long a bit longer was.
He tensely rode through the pass, and he could feel his muscles begin to protest with exhaustion. He could only imagine how the other Dahken, the children, were handling the pace. The girl had not moved in his arms once, and he was afraid she was not breathing. Cor looked over his shoulder and saw most of the rangers ran with steadying hands on small forms. These men were truly astounding.
Cor shook his head to keep his wits about him; they had been at it for hours, something he could judge by the moon’s passage across the sky. The group tired, having already been through so much, and even the rangers seemed to be wearing down. The sound of the Loszians was not as far away now as the group’s pace continued to slow, and one of the rearguard announced that the Loszians were gaining. Thom implored Cor to keep the group moving, and he sprinted into the gloom ahead, saying he would be back soon. Cor watched the man disappear ahead, surprised at the commander’s sudden departure and that he had such energy left in him.
Their pace had slowed to almost a walk as both horses and riders were exhausted from both the forced march and the uneven ground. There was little more Cor could do, and he readied himself to turn and fight. He would die, holding off the entire Loszian garrison if necessary, if it bought enough time for the rest of the group to escape. He continuously looked over his shoulder and more than once caught Thyss’ gaze. She looked ragged and exhausted, and her leg no longer bled though the crossbow bolt still jutted from her thigh. Watching him, the corners of her mouth turned up in a slight smile, and Cor could see the immutable fire burning in her irises. He knew she was with him, and he knew together no one would defeat them.
The Loszians would not expect him to turn and attack, and he was just formulating his plan when he heard an odd sound. Cor stopped his horse suddenly, straining to hear the sound of a hundred tiny whistles as they passed overhead and behind them into the distance. And then men screamed in the gloom from behind, closer than he realized, as hundreds of arrows found openings in armor. A shout came from the darkness ahead.
“Dahken Cor! Do not stop now! You are very nearly safe!” the voice implored as another volley of arrows was loosed at the Loszians behind them.
3.
“However, Dahken Cor, Her Majesty did not inform me that you would be bringing a nursery with you,” Thom said. Cor and Thyss sat with Thom in his private quarters, eating their first hot and hearty meal in days. Though he was loath to admit it, Taraq’nok did set a fine table. The rest of the Dahken were eating in one of the mess halls.
Thom had explained to Cor the receipt of Queen Erella’s message and orders, and that he and his best men had come across the mountains. As it turned out, Thom was a fair strategist, and he had surmised that, though the Loszians would have been confused by the sudden attack from beyond their wall, they would not stay that way. He assumed they would pursue in force, and before leaving Fort Haldon, Thom had given orders to his second in command to follow with nearly the entire garrison. He had hoped to rendezvous with his garrison before the Loszians could chase them down. The children had caused him some grief however.
“Believe me Thom that when I left Aquis I had no idea that I would find them.”
“They are all,” Thom paused, not sure how to continue, “like you then?”
“They are Dahken, yes,” Cor answered, bringing a laugh from Thom.
“My apologies then! I thought your name was Dahken Cor, but Dahken is your? People?”
“I suppose Dahken Cor is my name as much as anything else. We spring from Dahk, the Blood God,” Cor explained. “We are a race, essentially, but we come from all over the world. As all people have blood, you have as much chance of having a Dahken son as I.”
“Dahk the Blood God,” said Thom, leaning back in his chair. “Sounds nefarious.”
“I thought as much myself when I first found out,” Cor replied. “How did the queen know I was coming back to Aquis?”
“Oh, Dahken Cor, don’t ask me such questions. As someone who cannot exist without a god, you of all people know the gods have their own wills in our lives. I am not a particularly pious man, but I know Her Majesty occasionally has words with Garod,” Thom explained with a shrug. He changed the subject without a second though
t. “What are your plans now?”
“If its all the same to you, Commander Thom, we’ll stay for a few days to let the children rest. Then I suppose we’ll make for Byrverus. I believe the queen and I have some matters to discuss. Is that acceptable to you, and can you can send a message to her?”
“Yes to both questions,” Thom answered, pausing before he continued. “What of the poor girl?”
Once the garrison had repelled the Loszians, the group had taken a few moments to regain their wits. Thyss allowed the Westerners to remove the bolt in her thigh and treat the wound. Amazingly, no one else was injured in the party with two exceptions. A crossbow bolt had shot through the flesh between Cor’s thumb and index finger on his left hand. He remembered it happening, but had paid it no mind. The bolt had continued on and into the back of the little girl he had scooped up off of the ground, and she had died at some point in their flight from the Loszians. When they discovered the cause of her death, it had taken several moments for Cor to fully realize what had happened. His vision turned red as rage consumed him, and Thom had to very nearly throw a bucket of cold water on him before he calmed down. Her name was Liya.
“In their history, the Dahken always buried their dead warriors together in catacombs under their strongholds,” Cor explained, to himself as much as to Thom. “But, we have no strongholds or catacombs anymore, and she wasn’t a warrior, just a little girl. Perhaps you have a suitable place for her here?”
“We will find her a resting place, Dahken Cor.”
* * *
On the southwestern coast of Aquis, a consciousness began to dream. In this dream, it had a body. It was male clearly, judging from its anatomy, and its arms were lean and strong. The body’s hands were agile and calloused from the use of tools, weapons perhaps. It floated, completely suspended in liquid, but the mind realized it did not have to breathe. It should have to breathe; it knew it had to breathe at some point in the past. It willed the body’s eyes to open, but it saw nothing but red. It was not sure it actually could see at all so it closed its eyes again. There was an odd metallic taste in its mouth.
The Cor Chronicles: Volume 02 - Fire and Steel Page 4
