She looked over at Athala’s tent and considered peeking in to make sure the wizard was still inside, even though Elise knew it was just the lingering thoughts of her dream that drove her paranoia.
Elise froze.
Had that tree just moved?
Elise peered at the shadow, willing it to shift once more. She knew her night vision was bad, and her eyes loved to play tricks on her.
But this was no shift of the light.
It moved again.
Elise’s heart leapt into her throat. She had no weapon, no armor. If the crouched being was human, Elise could do nothing but wrestle it while in her nightshirt. If it was a creature, natural or not, she was likely dead.
She tried to not let the panic show in her movements as she strode forward and opened Athala’s tent. Elise groped around in a panic until she found Athala’s shoulder. She shook the wizard roughly, drawing her from her sleep.
“What?” Athala asked, drawing out the word in a sleepy confusion. “Go ‘way.”
“Shh.” Elise leaned down close as she started to draw the wizard from the tent by her shoulders. “Something’s coming. You need to move.”
Athala made a confused sound somewhere between a grunt and a whine. She tried to push Elise’s hands away, but Elise gripped her tighter.
With a jolt, Elise’s instincts screamed at her to move and she yanked on the wizard, drawing her from the tent as a sword pierced the cloth from above. It sheared through the tent as if it were parting water, and the tip landed between Athala’s splayed legs.
The wizard took one look at the weapon and screeched.
Elise let go of her friend and watched as more shadows in the woods emerged, each brandishing a sword or axe of its own.
Elise did the only thing she could think of.
“Ermolt!” Elise screamed. “Ermolt, help!”
Chapter Six
Ermolt was on his feet before his mind registered that Elise was shouting his name. He threw his blanket aside as if it were a cape that threatened to tangle his feet. In two large strides he was able to collect his hammer and a battle cry was surging from his throat.
Elise’s cry for help didn’t just wake him.
It awakened the deep part of his mind that had pushed him to become the best combatant in Neuges. The part of him that wanted to protect people. To be a hero.
The nightmare he’d been having still clung to him. He expected to find his friends missing or dead, and an ever-shifting abomination of life and death waiting to devour him with rotten teeth.
But the dream was just that—a dream.
Ermolt was able to locate Elise and Athala quickly. Elise was backing away from the ruined tent that used to belong to Athala. The wizard was pushing herself to her feet.
There was someone crouched at the other end of the tent. Their sword was embedded in the ground, and they were struggling to retrieve it.
Ermolt could make out three more figures—one was a bit further back from the tent, and the last two were still near the tree line.
He stalked forward, putting himself between the attackers and his retreating companions. Ermolt tried to bellow some threat to scare them off, but sleep still clung to his thoughts and so he just voiced another battle cry.
They came in at him, weapons at the ready. The nearest one shouted a battle cry of his own as he charged, but next to Ermolt’s it was almost adorable.
Ermolt swung his hammer in an arc before him. The first attacker tried to dodge, but he moved too soon and Ermolt easily corrected the course of his attack. The head of his hammer struck the man full in the chest. There was a momentary shout, and then nothing as the man was flung away.
The attackers wore all black with bit of cloth covering most of their faces, which made them blend in with the night’s darkness well.
What they didn’t wear was armor, which would have made it harder for Ermolt’s hammer to cave in the man’s chest.
Everyone stopped to watch the man sail away, his chest horribly deformed by the force of Ermolt’s attack. Ermolt knew the man was dead. But he felt nothing but the sharp desire to make the man’s companions follow.
These people had tried to harm his friends in the middle of the night, and so they were all dead. They just didn’t know it yet.
The second attacker backed away once her companion hit the ground. Ermolt stepped forward to close the gap between them once more. She swiped her sword at Ermolt from outside of his reach, as if she thought that would ward him away while she waited for her allies to arrive.
He ignored her warding swipes and swung his hammer down in an overhanded attack. She shoved away before it could crash down on top of her, but he reversed the momentum before she could counter him. He managed to clip her thigh with the second swing. She cried out, and even though it was a glancing blow at best, the heavy weapon threw her to the ground. Ermolt brought the hammer around again for the finishing blow, but her allies swarmed him.
One of them yelled a wordless challenge at Ermolt.
Ermolt answered it with a cry so ferocious he saw the first snowflakes flutter across his vision.
It was a cold, uncaring snow. And it felt good.
He swept his hammer side-to-side, warding the newcomers away and forcing them back. They danced from his swings like fish from the ripples of a cast line.
Ermolt took the moment to look back at his friends. Elise and Athala were safely behind him. None had circled around to approach them from beyond the safety of Ermolt’s massive reach. Elise was brandishing an uneven length of wood with a glowing ember at the end of it. She seemed to be standing guard over the wizard in an attempt to not appear helpless, rather than because of a direct threat.
Athala was sitting at Elise’s feet, rubbing her eyes. The wizard looked disoriented more than afraid.
A surge of pride filled Ermolt. His friends were ready to back him up if he needed it, but they knew he could hold his own, half asleep or no.
He returned his attention to the attackers. They had taken advantage of his momentary distraction to close in on him. Ermolt danced around their attacks, letting them cut empty air. He circled the trio as he moved. His hammer came around again, slicing through the air with a whistle.
The head of the weapon landed between a pair of shoulder blades. The attacker he struck was thrown bodily into the dirt. The man’s choking gasp was muffled by the ground before he finally lay still.
A hot line of pain lanced across Ermolt’s arm. The pain faded, quickly buried under the blistering cold of the fury of the falling snow. He lashed out with a back-handed swing, but they deftly moved away.
Ermolt pressed forward, advancing on the retreating figure.
Something under his feet squished and then snapped.
The man was already dead, so no cry of pain followed. But a burst of thick blood shot from his nose and mouth, arching through the air at his retreating companions. One of them cried out, a sobbing gasp that bit through the cold snow only briefly.
Ermolt howled and stepped forward again, alleviating the pressure of his form on the corpse.
The attackers were cowering. They were struggling to deal with him effectively, as his weapon outreached theirs by a considerable margin. They tried to separate to flank him, but Ermolt brought his weapon around with a snarl, corralling them back together. He refused to allow them anywhere near his friends.
As he closed the distance, one of them decided to be boldly impatient and lunge at Ermolt. He could respect the move. If the man was able to get inside the reach of Ermolt’s hammer, he could stop the massive swings from threatening them. But he underestimated Ermolt. The would-be assassin instead found his weapon blocked by the haft of the hammer. Ermolt twisted his weapon like a baton and the shortsword was quickly torn from the attacker’s grasp.
Ermolt brought the hammer around, driving the head of the hammer into the chest of the disarmed figure. Another down.
The final attacker cowered.
Snow
fell freely now, turning the last attacker to mere shapes in the swirling winds. He launched himself forward, bringing his hammer up to engage them before they could react.
They didn’t fight.
They didn’t flee.
They just watched their death come charging.
The low-to-high swing of the massive hammer caught the man across the chin. The man’s skull deformed as his jaw shattered. His body was lifted from the ground with the force of Ermolt’s swing. It was not a strong enough hit to separate the man’s head from his neck, but it was a close thing. The body fell limply to the ground and Ermolt howled with victory.
Far away, some nocturnal creature matched the note of his call.
The snow continued to fall and Ermolt willed it away. It went slowly, dragging its feet. The blizzard had barely begun to swirl and it wanted more. It wanted another chance to fully spread itself across the lands of his mind. Like it had when he fought Sirur.
But there was no one left to threaten him. All had fallen by his hand.
And so the snow was useless.
Ermolt walked back to his companions, taking care to walk around the bodies of the fallen this time instead of walking over them like they were no more than the ground to him.
Athala was watching him with wide eyes and Ermolt felt a small pang of regret at the joy he felt in his rage. But Elise nodded in approval and tossed aside her now ember-less log. She dusted her hands on the hem of her nightshirt.
“Thank you,” Elise said with honest gratitude.
“Let no man think they can take us unaware just because we slumber,” Ermolt replied with a vicious grin.
Elise snorted with laughter. She untangled the wizard from where Athala had been wrapped around her leg. “Come. Let’s try to figure out who our recently departed friends are. Athala, set a fire.”
Ermolt followed Elise’s direction while the wizard went to restart their campfire. He cast aside his hammer and set about dragging the corpses closer to the freshly cast light. The corpses were deformed from their run-in with his weapon, but Elise seemed to not notice. She immediately began shuffling through the pockets of the dead.
“What are you doing?” Athala asked in a small voice.
“I’m investigating.” Elise tossed a few small items from the pocket of the first corpse out on the ground. There was a pouch of coins, a used handkerchief, and a tin of tobacco. She moved on to the second. “Bandits don’t usually attack in the night like this, and they’re usually better prepared for the wilderness than thin black cloth.”
“You think they’re from Jalova?” Ermolt asked as he fetched his hammer once more.
“Either that or Lublis.”
Ermolt looked to Athala. At the mention of the city, the wizard went pale as a corpse. “It can’t be Lublis. We stayed really far from the city.”
“Lublis has an extraordinarily high number of mercenaries for hire,” Ermolt said. “Could be someone from Jalova or even Khule hired them.”
“Jirda.”
“What about it?” Ermolt looked to the Conscript. In her hands she held a small bit of metal.
“They’re from Jirda.”
Ermolt grimaced. He took a step forward and retrieved the item from Elise. It was a badge. A badge that proclaimed the holder was a City Guard of Jirda. “Oh.” There was defeat in his voice. “This isn’t good.”
“I was expecting a religious symbol of Numara,” Elise said with a shake of her head. “The City Guard is somehow worse.”
“So the Guards are just hunting people on the road?” Athala asked, her voice cracking with confusion. “I don’t understand.”
Ermolt handed the metal badge back to Elise. “Not likely. City Guards often hire out as mercenaries when money is tight. Having access to training and weapons make them pretty decent at it, too. If the actual City Guard were coming after us, they likely would have approached in full armor and tried to arrest us.”
“So the Temple could have hired them, then.” Elise looked down at the badge, drawing her fingers over the markings.
Ermolt shrugged. “I suppose so. Doesn’t make it much of an improvement, though. Means we’re going to face opposition ahead, instead of just waltzing in like in Jalova.”
“How does this change our plans?” Athala asked. She looked a lot less afraid, but she still watched the corpses as if there was a chance they could rise up and attack once more.
Like the one from his dream.
Ermolt shivered, and not from the crisp autumn air.
“I don’t think it changes much,” Elise said after a moment. She looked between her two companions with resolve firm in her eyes. “Even if they have descriptions of us from the other two Temples, they won’t be useful if we’re not together. It isn’t plausible that they would detain every barbarian in the city. Or every dark-skinned girl who might be a wizard. Or even every Conscript with an olive complexion.” She paused and looked at the handful of items she’d fetched from the corpses’ pockets. She didn’t seem concerned with the two remaining corpses. “We just need to be aware. And careful. Discuss where we’re going and travel separately. Disguises might be smart, too.”
“For now, though,” Ermolt said, looking at the bodies of their attackers.” I have a hole to dig.”
“Right. We shouldn’t leave them like this.” Elise frowned. “It could start a panic. Or get us labeled as murders.”
“It’s also disrespectful,” Ermolt said as he turned to fetch the small trowel from his packed supplies.
“Right. That also.”
“Um, are we going to go back to sleep after?”
Ermolt paused and looked to Athala. The wizard was still watching the corpses. “I don’t know about you, but I’m wide awake now,” he said. “And sooner we get moving, the sooner we can deal with whatever lies ahead.” Ermolt knelt and grabbed one of the corpses by the shoulder.
Elise grabbed a second by the feet. “I wasn’t sleeping well as it was.”
Chapter Seven
They packed up camp and were traveling again before the sun rose. Ermolt’s boar had been abandoned to draw predators away from the makeshift cairn he’d made for the guards. Athala’s ruined tent and blankets were sacrificed to clean as many of the signs of a scuffle as possible, and then were burned in the firepit. Elise had doused the flames and scattered the cooled ashes to reduce the chances someone was drawn to that place.
Once on the move, Elise took point and they walked the road to Jirda as a tightly coiled ball of paranoia.
Under Elise’s suggestion, they all wore their hoods up, and they traveled farming trails and hunting paths whenever possible. It stretched out their travel, but for once neither Ermolt nor Athala complained. Instead they walked in silence, heads down.
Elise fretted about what they’d find in Jirda. Someone had hired City Guards to kill them. It didn’t matter if it was the Temple of Numara or something impossible, like the scattered remains of the Temple of Teis. What mattered was that they were walking into a situation that was potentially bad. But they had come too far and were too unprepared to go anywhere else. Athala was firm in her need to go to Jirda as well, and so they stuck to the plan.
But it made Elise uncomfortable. She didn’t like the idea of walking into a city who hunted her, for good or ill.
The sun was high in the sky by the time they got within the last few kren of the city of Jirda. They were all exhausted. The night of interrupted sleep was catching up with them.
When they crossed the last bridge before the city and the walls finally came into view, Elise led her companions off the road again.
They rested as if picnicking, to draw attention away from themselves. Elise spread her blanket at the foot of a tree and Ermolt and Athala rested in the shade while Elise scoped out the city.
Jirda’s economic problems were obvious at first glance. Instead of the solid stone walls and gates that surrounded most other cities—a layover from the early Ages when they were kingdoms instead o
f just cities—Jirda was surrounded by a simple wall made of sharpened logs that stood upright and were bound by some sort of thick rope.
The gates themselves were open, but there were wooden barriers placed to narrow the entryway. There were Guards posted in clusters and they seemed to be stopping and questioning every person who tried to enter the city.
Because of this development, and the earliness of the afternoon, there was a line of folks at least fifty people deep. And more were passing by Elise and her friends along the road, lengthening the line.
Elise returned to her friends and they sat in the shade together. When she was sure no one was paying attention to them, Elise spoke up. “The Guards are screening people. Questioning them before they enter the city.” Elise ran a hand through her hair, pulling the short mess away from her face. “They must be looking for someone in particular. Could be an escaped prisoner, or some smuggler at large. Or—”
“Or us,” Athala said with a shiver.
“Right. Or us.” Elise raised her hand to halt conversation. “But possibly not. We’ve been avoiding everyone on the road, so we haven’t heard any news from the city. Not everything has to be about us.”
“What larger news could there be, besides, er...” Athala trailed off and watched a man who passed by them. “You know. The thing that happened in Jalova.”
“Could be something local,” Elise said after a moment. “Something of more immediate concern. Maybe it’s not even something that worries the whole city. Just the Guards.” She shrugged and plucked a blade of grass from the ground beside them. “The badges might not be connected to this.”
“We should still be cautious.” Ermolt looked between Elise and Athala. “Someone in that city wants us dead or captured. No use ignoring signs just because it’s unlikely they’re related.”
Anger filled Elise for a brief moment, but she dismissed it. “You’re absolutely right. And it doesn’t hurt to be careful.” Athala sighed with relief and Elise bristled once more. Anger wasn’t useful though, so she swallowed it again. It hurt the second time around. “Any suggestions for how we can get into the city?”
Destiny (Heroes by Necessity Book 3) Page 4
