by Bruce Blake
They’d already have done what they were bred for if not for me.
“What will you do, Your Highness?” Perdaro asked.
“I’ll go to Achtindel. Not all of the king’s army resides in the fortress. After that--”
“But what about the Archon?” Hu Dondon interrupted.
“Tell her I had urgent business at the capital.”
Emon Turesti nodded. “A kingdom has many issues requiring the king’s attention, especially during times of war,” he said, his long fingers fiddling with the clasp of his ankle-length green cape. “I’m sure I could find a convincing task to take you to the capital. At the very least, disbursement of the crops must be handled.”
“She’ll see through such an excuse,” Perdaro insisted. “Remember the plan: do as you’re told.”
Therrador stopped short of the stable entrance and faced the others.
“I may have made a horrible mistake, Hanh,” Therrador said, his mouth pulled down in a frown, “but I am the king. The kingdom is at risk and my son is being taken to Kanos, if he still lives. I won’t sit back and wait for your whispers to take hold, all the while shivering in fear of a woman. If I’m discovered, I’ll live or die with the consequences. If I’m not, then maybe Erechania will have a chance.”
Sir Alton and Emon Turesti nodded while Perdaro and Hu Dondon remained pensive. Therrador entered the stables with its smell of manure and hay, a familiar odor that brought calmness to him like it did any career soldier. Dozens of stable hands moved about, feeding and grooming horses and swamping out stalls. Therrador went to the closest stall reserved for the king’s steed and called to the nearest stable hand, a boy of about twelve years.
“Ready my horse, boy. I leave as soon as possible.”
“Yes, my king.”
The stable hand bowed and dropped his shovel, nearly tripping over his feet as he rushed to do the king’s bidding. Therrador stood back while the youth swung the gate open and went to work saddling the big bay.
“I should go with you,” Sir Alton said. “The king doesn’t travel alone. It would raise suspicion. You should--”
“He’s right, your Highness,” Dondon agreed. “The king does not travel without a guard.”
“Just so. But not you, Sir Alton. It’s your job to command the fortress in my absence.”
“I’ll collect a guard for you, my Liege,” Emon Turesti said.
“We should tell the Archon you’re going,” Perdaro said. “Perhaps there would be fewer repercussions if we gain her agreement.”
“No. The excuses can be made after I’m gone.” Therrador turned to Turesti. “Gather ten men. We leave within the hour.”
Three of the men turned to leave, but Hanh Perdaro hesitated, looking like he wanted to say more on the subject. Therrador shook his head, letting the Voice of the People know the conversation was finished before he parted his lips again. Perdaro bowed his head in deference and Therrador watched him leave while he waited for the stable hand to finish saddling his horse.
What will she do when she finds I’ve left?
His hand throbbed, reminding him of her ruthlessness. He ignored it and stroked his horse’s muzzle as the stable hand threw the saddle over its wide back.
***
How I’ve missed that sound.
Reins jingled and leather creaked as the group of men made their way down the avenue toward the main gate. Two men rode ahead of Therrador, two on each side, and the other four close behind. People watched from windows and doorways, clearing the street as they passed, but no one genuflected before the king. Instead, they stared, many of them glowering with displeasure at him for what had come to pass. Therrador shifted uneasily in his saddle.
Can’t blame them.
Horseshoes clopped on flagstones, echoing off the walls of the close-set buildings; none of the men spoke. Therrador knew many of them were happy to be headed for the capital, but they kept their comments to themselves. An air of suppression had hung over the huge fortress since the Kanosee entered as unwelcome guests in the eyes of the soldiers manning the stronghold and the civilians there providing services. He also knew about the grumblings among the men. Soldiers would always keep their opinions from their commanding officers, but happily shared them around the dinner table or over a game of cards, and none of them understood why he’d allowed the enemy into the fortress. If Turesti hadn’t chosen Sir Matte Eliden to lead the escort, Therrador might have been worried for his safety, but Sir Matte was trustworthy to a fault.
They rounded a curve in the avenue and the lead riders slowed. Therrador stood in his stirrups to see over the men. At the end of the street, where the buildings stopped and the flagstones ended at the fortress gate, a group of mounted soldiers milled about. Even from this distance, he easily picked out the woman with long blond hair in their midst. The lead rider looked back at Therrador questioningly.
“Keep going,” Therrador said and the soldier urged his horse on. Sir Matte guided his steed to Therrador’s side.
“Are you sure, my Liege?” the old knight asked. “We can go back.”
“It would do no good. Better to deal with her now than later.”
Therrador flexed his right hand. After a week and a half, he often felt like his thumb was attached, like he’d be able to wield a sword better than most men, but he knew it wasn’t true. He’d been practicing swinging a blade with his left, but felt as awkward as a novice. He gritted his teeth and concentrated on allowing the gentle bounce of the horse’s gait to calm him.
The lead rider halted his steed a few yards from the Archon’s party. Therrador looked at the men surrounding her—twelve of them, a mix of Kanosee soldiers and the hideous undead creatures, easily identified by their black mail splashed with red paint. The Archon spurred her horse to the front of the group.
“And where do you think you are going?”
“The king has urgent business in the capital,” Sir Matte said before Therrador could answer. The woman looked at the old knight, a bemused smirk twitching her red-painted lips.
“I know your king has lost his thumb,” she said. “I did not know he also lost his tongue.”
Therrador cleared his throat. “It’s as Sir Matte says. The harvest is in and it must be disbursed.”
“And none but the king can say who gets how many ears of corn?”
“It’s my job to take care of my people.”
“Hmph.” The Archon glanced around. “Perhaps the people closest to you should have been the ones you took care of.”
Anger twisted in Therrador’s stomach. “Move aside so I can complete my duties,” he said, struggling to keep the rage he felt from showing in his voice.
“You go nowhere.” She snapped her fingers and three of the men raised from the dead trotted forward. “Seize Therrador. Take him to the dungeon.”
The three moved for him; Sir Matte and the lead rider bared their steel.
“You’ll be doing nothing of the sort,” the old knight said steering his horse to allow a clear swing of his weapon.
“Matte,” Therrador said, but it was too late.
One of the dead men surged forward, his sword coming out of his scabbard and slashing toward Sir Matte in one smooth movement. The clang of steel on steel rang down the avenue and Therrador unconsciously reached for his sword; his wounded hand banged against the hilt, sending a jolt of pain up his forearm.
Sir Matte had once been a powerful and skilled warrior, but his time had passed some fifteen years before. The undead soldier swung again, knocking the old knight’s sword out of his hand, and a third stroke sent him to the flagstones, blood gushing from a wound in his throat. The other soldiers pressed forward, but the Archon clapped her hands with a resounding smack that stopped everyone in their tracks.
“Enough,” she said. “If you choose for your men to fight, they will all die here.”
Men and undead soldiers milled about, horses dancing, awaiting the command to dart in and join a fight. Therr
ador hesitated, looking first at his old friend lying on the ground, his life draining from his neck, and then up at the decayed faces of their enemy. His shoulders sagged.
“Sheath your weapons,” he said. His men looked at him, unbelieving. When they didn’t immediately react, he spoke again. “Put them away.”
As they did, Therrador slid out of his saddle and went to his fallen friend’s side. Sir Matte’s watery eyes were glazed, but he still gulped shallow breaths through the bloody froth on his lips.
“Therrador,” he whispered.
“Shh. Don’t speak.” Therrador propped the old knight’s head on his lap. “I’m sorry for this, my friend.”
“Enough sentiment. Seize him,” the Archon commanded. Two of the dead soldiers grabbed Therrador by the elbows and dragged him from the dying man. “Take him to the lowest, darkest cell, but treat him well. He is the king, after all.”
Therrador glared over his shoulder at the woman’s smiling face as the two dead men hauled him away.
She knew again. Maybe she is a devil.
Chapter Twenty-One
Following their rescuers along the twisting, turning tunnels left Khirro unsure what direction they might be traveling and made his head spin. With no moon, sun or stars overhead, no wind blowing or moss growing on trees, concepts like direction and time seemed ridiculous and impossible.
How do they find their way?
The light Athryn conjured from Callan’s death had followed the magician from the cell, but it faded after what Khirro guessed to be an hour. Perhaps another hour passed as they traversed the maze of tunnels led by the smooth-faced man. They set a swift pace and Khirro felt the effort in his aching lungs—the air below ground was not what he was accustomed to above.
“Do you know where we are?” Khirro asked over his shoulder.
“No. I cannot tell.” Athryn sounded short of breath, too. Knowing so made Khirro feel a little better.
Khirro’s grip tightened on the Mourning Sword’s hilt. Once, in the Necromancer’s keep, it had glowed with what Athryn called ‘the Light of Truth’, showing Khirro the secrets of all it touched, but he didn’t know how it happened. If he could choose a time he wanted to know someone else’s true thoughts, it was now as they put their trust in people they didn’t understand leading them through caves and tunnels their imaginations couldn’t fathom. It led the same thought to turn over in his head again and again:
Are they truly helping us or leading us to our doom?
The sword in his hand reassured Khirro somewhat, but what good would it be if they were led into a trap or fed to voracious worms?
But why would they give us back our weapons if they were going to kill us?
The unease in Khirro’s gut distracted him so that he nearly walked into the man ahead of him sword-first when he stopped without warning, his knees bent and body tense. Khirro slid to a stop behind him, the soles of his boots skidding on loose stone strewn on the tunnel floor. The smooth-faced underground-dweller turned to him, finger pressed against his lip, and Khirro nodded. Their language was incomprehensible to him, but some gestures spanned all cultures and races.
Khirro held his breath, listened to his pulse beating in his head, the rush of blood in his ears. He heard nothing else. Shifting his gaze to Athryn, he raised a questioning eyebrow; the magician shook his head. The light of the worm torch pulsed as the grubs writhed beneath the cloth forcing them to stay in place and light the tunnel around them, its illumination falling on plain, rough walls and a ceiling seven feet above. The passages were clearly formed by the hand of man.
Or something man-like.
A minute passed and Khirro looked at the fellow ahead of him, the torch’s glow washing over his smooth cheeks like waves lapping on a lake shore. His finger remained against his lips as though he thought the act of holding it there was what kept the others quiet and, without it, they would begin making noise again. His dark hair fell limp over his forehead and spilled in front of his face. In the torch’s strange glow, his eyes glimmered green.
Somewhere in the darkness—ahead or behind, Khirro couldn’t discern—a sound echoed along the stone walls. Soft, quiet; like a drop of water falling to the ground. Khirro tensed, remembering the worms falling from the ceiling like they attacked with one mind, but this sound wasn’t quite the same.
The muscles in his sword arm tightened, the cut on his palm throbbed beneath the dirty bandage. The smooth-faced man remained still, as though living underground had taught him how to become one with the stone of the cave. After a moment, the sound came again. Then again, and Khirro realized what it was they heard.
Footsteps.
The leader of their procession leaned past Khirro and Athryn and whispered to the woman behind the magician, who passed his words to the next of the underground-dwellers, then the next. The man at the far end nodded and disappeared back down the tunnel, his bare feet silent on the stone floor. Khirro’s brow furrowed.
They move so silently. He remembered how they simply seemed to appear at the door to the cell. So why do we hear footsteps?
The fellow returned after a few minutes, breathing hard, and pushed his way past the others to the smooth-faced man, jabbering at him with little regard for his voice’s volume. The smooth-faced man’s eyes widened and he barked a command to his fellows then began moving more swiftly than before.
They ran and the noise behind them grew louder and more frequent, noticeable even over the sound of their own footfalls. Khirro recognized that the sound was created by the footsteps of many, not just one. The underground-dwellers behind Khirro and Athryn pushed forward, urging them to go faster.
“Do you know what’s happening?”
“Only that we are being followed.”
The tunnel curved right, then switched back left before mounting a rise. The sound following them grew, echoing from wall to wall to ceiling until it multiplied to the sound of a soft-footed army at their heels. One of the women behind them cried out as she tripped and fell. Khirro slowed to help her to her feet, but the others grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him on.
“We can’t leave her,” he protested as they pushed him along the tunnel.
A moment later, the woman screamed, the sound piercing in the dark tunnel, then it was cut short. Khirro tried to look over his shoulder and back down the tunnel, but the underground-dwellers herded him along.
“They’re right behind us!”
“Keep going,” Athryn urged.
The two men in the lead began to outdistance Khirro. Their companion’s cry had quickened their pace to a sprint while pausing to help had slowed Khirro and his group. He pushed forward, begging all the speed out of his tired legs. He didn’t know what followed behind them, but if it put this much fear into their rescuers, he suspected he didn’t want to find out, not in a small, dark tunnel with barely enough room to move, never mind fight.
The men ahead disappeared. An instant of panic flared in Khirro’s chest until he found they’d darted over a small rise into a cavern that spread from the mouth of the tunnel. He skidded to a stop beside the two men, noting a pool of water in the middle of the cave and a slice of light filtering from high overhead; darkness hid the far side of the cavern.
The smooth-faced man discarded the worm torch and plucked a fallen cylinder of rock off the ground. He tapped it against a rocky outcropping to test its strength, hefted it in his hand, then wielded it like a short, sturdy club. Athryn and the remaining three underground-dwellers slid to a halt behind them and they all turned to face the yawning tunnel mouth.
Nothing at first. No sound, nothing to see. The woman who’d cried out had disappeared. The wound on Khirro’s hand gripping the hilt of the Mourning Sword throbbed and pulsed with the heavy beat of his heart. He resisted the urge to shuffle his feet nervously as they waited.
The sound of soft footsteps floated down the tunnel, bouncing along the walls and rolling into the cavern. Khirro tried to pick out how many different sets of fee
t might be following them, but with the multiplying effect of cave and tunnel, it was impossible. It might be a few men or an entire platoon. He glanced at Athryn. The magician’s face was tense, the sword in his hands quivering slightly with the tense anticipation of an impending fight. The sound came closer, echoing, multiplying, growing until footsteps filled the cavern, churning the air around them and punishing their ears. The underground-dwellers began hooting and hollering, kicking stones and clapping. Athryn joined in so Khirro did, too, adding his voice to the others.
The clamor they created did nothing to deter the creature that burst out of the tunnel. Khirro’s eyes widened at the sight of a hundred sets of legs, half a dozen eyes, scimitar-shaped mandibles the size of short swords.
The huge centipede took a hard right as it spilled into the cavern. The underground-dwellers threw rocks and debris they found on the ground at their feet, but the projectiles bounced off the creature’s thick skin.
Khirro felt the air crackle with the panic of the men and woman around him; he bit his teeth hard to keep it from spreading to him. Too many times he’d let panic and fear freeze him while others protected him or died doing it.
That will never happen again.
The huge insect lunged toward them, its mandibles snapping, and the group fell back, bumping and jostling Khirro and Athryn who stood their ground. Only the smooth-faced youth stood with them, brandishing his flaking stone club.
The creature zipped in and Khirro lunged aside. Its back stood as tall as his thigh; each of its legs was as thick as Khirro’s arm. He dodged and slashed the Mourning Sword down, its tip contacting the centipede’s back, but the steel bounced off without damage to the beast. He heard water splashing behind him—the others had retreated into the pool leaving the three of them to fight the monster on their own.
“Its skin is like armor,” he called taking another swipe. He dared a glance across at Athryn and the other man. “What do we do?”
