After leaving the hellcat barn, we had headed back to the spot where I had last seen the Lonehill clan. From there I’d followed the direction they had gone when they left me.
Two days of traveling later, I found them.
When we first spotted the clan I wasn’t completely certain it was them, so Roddie and I climbed a mound of sloping rock to get a better vantage point. The weather had given way from rain and wind to a deep freeze, and I’d used two [fire] elementals casting chare to keep us warm the previous couple of nights.
As much as I hated using rare resources, casting chare had its benefits. Not only was it getting easier to cast my spell, but I had increased my [Fire] discipline rank from 7% to 12%, getting me ever closer to upgrading from the grey rank.
This left me with just 1 fire elemental, but why hoard them? Right now I was still in survival mode, and elementals wouldn’t be much good on my frozen corpse. Besides, it made my heart ache seeing Roddie shivering under the moonlight.
Now, kneeling on that hilly slope, I could see them. The Lonehill clan, maybe two dozen robed mages pushing on over the frozen ground. Man, winter had really set in hard and fast.
They were walking across a lake that had completely frozen over so that it was a long sheet of ice. Light and twinkling in some places, a darker blue in others. The mages must have trusted the ice way more than I did, because they even led their bison over it. The only concession they made to the fact the ice might crack and send them into frozen waters was that they fanned out a little, walking with six- or seven-feet of distance between each other.
From up high, I could see why they’d chosen to go over the lake. To be honest, it wasn’t so much a choice, then a necessity. For one, they must have really needed to head in that specific direction. I didn’t know the reason, but why else take the risk?
Pendras had already shown that he valued the safety of his people above anything else, even to the point of deciding that I had no value to them, and them banishing me. He wouldn’t lead them across the lake without reason.
Secondly, the terrain either side of the lake was either hilly as hell or covered in thick groupings of trees. It’d be hard to get through as a clan and with bison. The freezing weather offered them a short cut.
Whatever their reason for needing to go this way, I was happy to see them. Even though they’d cut me loose, I hadn’t seen a single friendly face for a week now. Except Roddie, of course.
Sure, they were asses and they didn’t speak English, but at least they weren’t giant ogres who kept humans as slaves. I was safer with them than alone.
“Better go,” I said, and rubbed Roddie’s head.
As we started scaling back down the hill so we could head to the lake, I heard a shout.
One shout became two, three, four, until dozens of voices were yelling. The volume was drowned out by a series of bellowing roars, ones so loud that nearby birds left their perches and flapped up into the sky amidst a chorus of squawks.
I ran down the hill as fast as I could, which wasn’t fast at all. The once-wet soil was frozen and slippery and almost begging to make me slip and break an ankle or something. That’d be just great, right about now. The only thing that can improve a frozen wasteland is a broken foot.
Roddie reached the bottom faster than me, and he disappeared from view, barking at something. When I reached him, I found him at the edge of the lake, his tail tensed, mouth open in a snarl.
“Holy hell.”
It was chaos. The Lonehill clan in the middle of the lake, with six ogres waiting on the other side. Not just ogres, though. Each giant was holding a metal chain, and each chain had something attached to the end.
Not naked people, this time. That would have been a relief, actually.
Wolves. Mean as hell, with thick manacles around their necks and chains stopping them from fleeing. Wolves with mouths set in snarls, eyes fixed on the mages. Wolves that looked ready, no desperate, to kill something.
Pendras had already called his people to a halt. To me, that was the worst thing they could do. They needed to turn back around and head toward me, away from the ogres.
Maybe he knew what he was doing. His clan seemed to trust him, anyway.
The chief mage performed a series of stances; four of them that he completed so fluidly that it felt like I was looking at a trick of the light. That Pendras had melted away and become a shadow.
This was how a guy with a golden forehead circle did things.
Light built up around him, a deep, red glow that looked like burning embers pulled from the bowels of hell.
An ogre pointed at him and shouted something. A word, probably. I don’t know. I don’t speak ogre.
Sometimes, though, actions translate words in a way nothing else can, and now the ogres unclipped their wolves from their chains and urged them on.
Six beasts tore across the ice and headed toward the mages, while the ogres followed, their steps slower, better placed.
Pendras performed a series of movements with his fingers, then screamed into the chilly air.
“Hrr-evabaraek!”
A gush of energy left him with such a boom that it sounded like a jet plane. The red light around him surged forth, scorching the ice ahead of the mages and melted all that it touched.
Six ogres ran away from the ice just in time. One was too slow, and the ice beneath his feet melted and the water claimed him. After that, he had no chance. He was too big, too heavy, and the water was way too cold. He sank deep into the lake and then, a few surface bubbles later, he was gone.
The mages turned and fled toward me, pursued by six wolves.
A wolf leaped at a mage and pinned her to the ground, tearing at her face, then wrenching its jaws skyward in victory, sending a spray of blood over the ice.
Another beast circled in front of two mages. These were the boys who had helped Kaleb guide the bison. Seeing the wolf blocking their path of retreat, they looked left and right for escape, but then two more wolves joined the first, and they knew they were done.
The mages couldn’t fight back; they could only run. To fight would mean stopping to perform their stances, and to stop meant death.
I ran to the lake edge. I urged them on, as useless a gesture as it was. I mean, what good was shouting at them? If a mage needed someone to encourage him to flee wolves and ogres, then he already had bigger problems.
I had to help them some other way. I had just one elemental, which was enough for the most basic of chare spells. I couldn’t even take my time, hold my stances and build my energy up; I’d need another elemental for that.
The air filled with a chaotic medley of sounds. Shouts, screams. Words that sounded like commands, and others that might have been pleads for mercy. The groan of the ice as it bore way too much weight. The air was thick with snarls and yells, and I felt my pulse pound in my ears as if my body was trying to drown the sound of the horror out.
The only mercy they had was that Pendras’s spell had melted half of the lake surface now, and the ogres couldn’t come at them. They were trapped on the bank on the far side of the lake.
Pendras reached the bank nearest to me. I ran to him, my poker in hand.
“Isaac!” he shouted. His face wasn’t as I had expected. Pendras was their leader, but I saw more fear in it than I had anticipated.
Maybe that was how things were. Even leaders got scared.
The wolves were having fun with the mages now, leaping from one fleeing clansman to another. Slamming into them, pinning them down, tearing at their throats. There were so many sprays of blood on the ice that it could hardly be called white now, and all too many clansmen lay on top of it. Some breathed. Some groaned. Most of them were still.
I rushed onto the ice, almost losing my footing at first. I looked around madly, desperate to help.
The wolves were fifteen feet away, keeping sport with an old clansman who was limping away from them.
Should I help him?
No.
The old
man was done for. No sense me rushing to help him. It was a horrible decision, but sometimes you have no choice.
I prioritized those close by, the clansmen running along the ice and who still had a chance to escape. I aided the mages who slipped and those who were injured. I grabbed hands and wrenched people to their feet. I let wounded mages swing their arms over my shoulders and I helped them back to shore.
“Isaac!”
Pendras was beckoning me, just as he had days before. Only this time he wasn’t curling a finger, and there was no look of derision in his eyes. He was urging me to join them, to get back to the lake bank.
I soon saw why.
It is a strange sight, that of a dozen green-skinned, bald-headed mages, all performing a series of stances. Even stranger when, not far away, wolves with blood-stained teeth and snouts, prowling toward us with the taste of death on their tongues.
Medallions lit up one by one. Lights gathered around fists and palms, and I was amazed at the speed in which they built their spells.
It took me only a second to grasp what they were doing, and even less time to forget any notions of helping the rest of the wounded.
I sprinted to the lake bank, joined the rest, and then I began the maneuvers of hrr-chare, making each stance and holding my form, letting the energy build in me stronger and stronger.
The wolves turned to us as one.
I think they knew. They were in a blood frenzy, but they still had some wits about them, and they knew what we were going to do.
With a serious of snarls, the pack ran at us.
Fireballs shot from outstretched palms. So many that the sky glowed and the residual heat felt like I was inches from a bonfire.
Finally, I felt my energy reach its peak.
“Hrr-chare!” I shouted and felt energy and flames blast from my hands.
Pendras caught my eye then. His eyes narrowed, and he said nothing before turning away.
My fireball smashed into a patch of ice. It was a small sphere of flames, the best a rookie mage with only one elemental could muster.
The collective flames ate at the ice, just as all the rest of the clan’s spheres of heat had. Ice groaned, cracked. Splinters formed.
One wolf put his front paw onto a weakened patch, and his weight opened a gulf and soon he disappeared into the waters, flailing his paws and snapping his jaws but finding no way to save himself.
More ice melted, more wolves drowned. One fireball followed another, more cracks appeared in what was left of the lake surface. I could only watch. Lacking any elementals, I ‘d played my part as best I could.
I caught my breath, and I watched the ice melt and the wolves fall and slip into the water and drown.
One by one the lake waters drew them in, until soon they were gone. No more wolves, no more ice.
Well, almost no more ice.
It was as I watched the wolves die, that I saw a Lonehill clansman still out on the ice. Not dead, but wounded. Limping and hunching his head, but still on his feet.
Wait. Was that…
Oh no.
“Kaleb!”
The young clansman gritted his teeth and ran toward us, but he had taken just a few paces before he grimaced in pain and he stopped, clutching his ankle.
The ice around him was too weak now. The mages’ fire had eaten through too much of it, and the last of it was melting away inch by inch.
Every passing second cut Kaleb off further from us, until there was barely any ice at all save for the rough circle he was standing on.
His fellow mages urged him now.
“Kaleb! Caim nae hier, Kaleb!”
“Hunury!”
“Kaleb! Caire!”
I took off my overcoat. I rolled up my sleeves and sprinted to the shore, my sights fixed on Kaleb.
When a hand grabbed my collar and yanked me back so strongly that I fell on my ass.
“Isaac, na,” growled a voice.
It was Pendras. His eyes were wide and wet. He pointed.
I followed his finger, to where I saw that Kaleb was gone. The ice under his feet had melted, and he had sunk beneath the freezing waters of the lake.
I got to my feet.
“Na, Isaac,” said Pendras, his hand on my shoulder.
I understood what he meant. It was a single syllable, but it meant so much more. It meant that Kaleb was in the frozen waters now, and jumping in to help would only add another death to the dozens of mages who had lost their lives.
Way, way across the lake, the ogres began to head east, to the hills.
Pendras pointed behind us. “Gae,” he said.
And just like that, the mages left their dead behind them and started moving.
A guy can’t feel the grief of disaster until the danger has passed, and he sure as hell can’t comprehend its consequences while the threat of more consequences still pursues him.
Turns out a friendly pooch can’t comprehend much about grief or consequences at all.
Yeah, as we fled the lake and headed south, Roddie went from mage to mage and he nuzzled their hands and he pressed against their legs, desperate for attention.
Then again, maybe he understood things better than most, and he knew what people - and mages - need when they’re down and they’re beaten.
Either way, nobody had the energy to spare for affection. Pendras led us south, east, then south again. We didn’t stop marching the rest of that afternoon, nor the night. We halted for a few minutes at daybreak, and it was when we stopped walking that my body decided it had held back its protests long enough.
Man, I have never felt exhaustion like it. If my body was another person, it’d be so pissed with me that it would come at me with its fists up.
Luckily, given it was my body, I would be some kind of disembodied spirit, and a punch would be useless against me. I’d stare at the bastard and I would say, “Bring it on, bitch.”
We’d face off against each other, my body and me…
What the hell was I imagining?
I stopped that line of thought. I wasn’t thinking straight. It was the exhaustion, and not just physical tiredness, even though that was the pits. This was mental, too. Every time I thought back to the ogres, the wolves, the blood, the screams…
…and Kaleb. Poor Kaleb.
I should have jumped into the lake.
But I’d have died too. You heard about it all the time; two people dying in frozen waters. Not just the person drowning, but their rescuer. Kaleb had sunk like a stone, and the water was cold enough to send someone into shock as soon as they dipped a toe in it.
“Isaac, trienk,” said Pendras.
He nodded to a young mage standing close by, who offered me a flask. The flask was dark and I couldn’t see the liquid inside, but it smelled of pinecones and shit. I got the feeling that if I was somehow able to ask these guys what was in it, that’s the answer I’d get. Pinecones and shit.
“Trienk,” said Pendras.
I noticed the mages were all staring at me. They did that a lot.
So I drank, and I felt the heat course through me then. My tiredness slithered away like a snake poked with a stick. I was ready to move again. Although my exhaustion was gone, I was sure I could still feel it somewhere inside me, lurking there. I got the sense that this potion, if that’s what it was, only delayed exhaustion, and the drinker would have a debt to pay when it wore off.
Either way, that was why we had stopped for a few minutes at daybreak. After everyone had drunk the potion we moved off again, marching over frozen ground that was starting to look more and more like a tundra.
It was insane how much the place had changed in a matter of days. The weeds no longer crunched underfoot; instead, they felt like blocks of ice. The bushes that once might have held berries were either withered or dead. The air seemed to whisper threats at us, and it appeared almost malicious in its attempts to sneak into my clothes and freeze my skin.
Pendras led us like a man possessed. I watched him a lo
t, and I thought I understood. He’d just seen half his clan slaughtered by wolves and water, and he wouldn’t let the bastards claim the other half. He’d lead them away for as long as it took for them to feel safe again.
Although I walked in the middle of the clan I couldn’t speak much with them save the occasional yap or na.
Most of them ignored me, but from time to time the teenagers who’d guided the bison with Kaleb would pat my shoulder and look at me quizzically and say “Va gid, Isaac? Va gid?”
I had no idea what to say to that, but the expression on their faces said they mean well, so I just nodded.
Since I could still only understand snatches of words, I had a lot of time to think about what had happened. Sometimes, time is the worst thing a guy can have when there are no good thoughts to be had.
My mind strayed to seeing Kaleb slip into the freezing waters and knowing that all the ice around him had melted. My memory twisted it so that he was standing right beside the lake bank, and I could have just reached out and saved him.
Bullshit. It wasn’t just my body rebelling against me; now my mind had joined him. I was gonna have to fight both of them.
It just wasn’t true. Kaleb had been at least fifteen feet away. I’d have had to swim through ice water to get him. Even Pendras had assessed things and come to the same conclusion; Kaleb was gone.
Rather than dwell on Kaleb, I focused on what the fight on the lake had told me.
The most apparent thing was that it wasn’t much of a fight at all. The Lonehill clan might have possessed powerful magic, but their method of casting made it ineffective in battle. Not many enemies would wait for you to twist your body in all sorts of weird ways.
Even when faced with ogres and wolves, the Lonehills hadn’t drawn any weapons. Not a single one. That meant they weren’t just incompetent fighters; no, there was something deeper than that.
I was new around here, but even I had grabbed a poker and I had used it when my life was in danger. It was like these guys refused to even try. As if there was something deep inside that meant they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, use weapons.
It made an opening for me, maybe. A role within them, just for a while until I started understanding this world. Maybe if I bluffed about how good I was at combat they would want me to stay around for a while.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 9
