“Jak, her very last act tells us so. She was out of hope. She was turning into something she did not want to be, so she gave herself to slow the corruption in others. To spare us a while longer. You should honor her sacrifice, not second-guess it.”
The argument was sound, but Jak could not fully convince his heart the way he could his mind.
Yet he was ready to move on, and there were happier things to discuss, as Kluber pointed out.
“That was the difference between the two. Calla still has hope. You gave it to her.”
“How badly I want to see her, Kluber. Do you think she’ll be up when we get there?”
“The cave is only a few miles away, Jak. We’ll be there soon, but she might be napping through this heat.”
In his mind, Jak pictured her sleeping face. Not the one of recent times, troubled and restless, but the one from earlier days, peaceful and serene. Lost in joyful memories and imaginings, the way dreams ought to be. So beautiful, and such a comfort to him.
It was a mix of the two that greeted them at the cave entrance. She stood there, hands cupped over her heavy belly, watching them descend the last stretch of trail. Smiling, radiating contagious excitement.
Jak ran the rest of the way, kissed her once, then took her hands in his own. Just reminding himself that she was real.
“You should be resting,” he told her.
“How could I rest, silly? I was worried about you.”
Kluber dropped heavily onto his sleeping roll. “Did you worry about me, too?”
“Not at all.” She giggled. Looking into Jak’s eyes, her own asked the question before the words came out. “You two did it, didn’t you?”
He fought to keep his grin under control. “We did, but it’s not over.”
“Can’t you spend just a little time to celebrate the present? The future will come soon enough.”
“We have more work to do.”
“Jak, you’re tired. You need rest.”
“Well, perhaps this will make you more eager… I need to ask a favor.”
“Oh?”
He had looked forward to this moment, ever since deciding to destroy the one item that got him this far. After all, he would not be much of a thane if he could not read.
Everything would come harder now, but at least he could look forward to the effort.
Jak nodded. “I promised to hurry to Cormona. I’m going ahead, so you and Kluber can take as long as you need. Be careful, because I need you in good health and spirit. As soon as you get there, and we have time…you and I need to begin my lessons.”
12
Sea’s Pass
“We’re close,” Yohan said. “Very close, I think.”
“How do you know?”
“You have better eyes than I. You tell me.”
“What are those lights?”
Miles ahead, the night sky flickered and shimmered with color. Starting as a few faint white flecks, the lights shifted to pale blue and began to swirl in odd patterns, blooming to a subtle red, then slowing as they faded to a golden yellow.
The sight might have been beautiful had circumstances been different. But in this place, at this time, the lights could be nothing but Chekican sorcery that signified evil.
“Tricks and deceptions at every turn, Soldier Yohan. Let’s hurry.”
The harpa’s determination was becoming an ever-greater source of momentum, for Yohan’s was nearing its limit. Neither had slept in over a day—not since well before coming across the bodies at the rapids, when the elevation increase coincided with plunging temperatures. Though they had taken furs from the corpses, Patrik and Yohan dared not risk stopping. The only way to combat the freeze was to keep moving.
Unlike the exhaustion he felt before Threefork, Yohan’s battered body was just as bad off as his tired mind. He had never had time to recover from the fight with the demon and still could feel every blow and cut as though the fight had just happened.
The two men pushed on as snow began to fall more heavily, slowing their pace even as it soothed Yohan’s mind. He remembered a whole winter in the snow, when he met Jena. He had not fully understood then the events unfolding in the empire, but had known they portended oncoming chaos. Yet the snows had also given them a tiny place of their own, shrouding him and her in a colorless bubble with its own dangers and beauties, shielded from the world’s incessant turbulence.
How that season had changed his life. He began to think of other times, other events, that had shaped his character.
And so the long, lonely story of child and man played out around him, images birthed from the trail ahead, passing through memory faster than he wanted, then discarded behind like so many footsteps in the snow.
“Mum, why do others whisper that Da was a bad soldier? Is that true?”
“Nay, he was a good soldier. He just made enemies. It is simply easier for those who remain to believe a falsehood than admit to a mistake.”
She never told him as much, but Yohan knew they had left Parca because of those whispers. Perhaps not exclusively—she was, after all, a Vilnian by birth—but the oppressive existence of the untrustworthy outsider was one he himself had been forced to become inured to. Injustice was one of many crimes Imperials unnecessarily committed upon each other, and he and his mother were hardly its worst victims. Nevertheless, there were times that it wore down the spirit harder than the longest march, and he felt only relief that she had been able to spend her last few years with kinsmen who treated her as one of their own.
Yohan’s father had been right about many things, but he had never taught his son the truth of companionship. Inconstant it may be, full of misunderstanding and hardship—but it filled an absence of the spirit that nothing could replace.
This lesson came only at the end, after a lifetime of shielding himself from its complications and difficulties.
The attempt to remain protected was, ultimately, a futile one. Jena had broken through with the meekest of efforts. And would he have not been better served to lower the shield with Summer? If their time together was destined to be limited, was it not preferable to make the most of it?
“Yohan.”
Patrik’s voice brought him back to the present. To trouble.
The two were passing through an open stretch, wider than any number of tight, confining turns they had passed in recent hours.
Yet the tribesmen had chosen this spot, rather than any of those others, for the ambush. That alone spoke to the confidence they felt in the certainty of its result.
The snow had stopped falling, so the four figures emerging from cover ahead were perfectly visible. As were the four behind.
And all the others. Ten, twelve, perhaps as many as twenty. It hardly mattered, for there was no fighting this…though Yohan intended to, anyway. He had made this decision long ago. There were no compromises in this quest; there was only success or failure, rescue or revenge. No turning back, no surrender.
Revenge it would have to be, then. How many, before I fall? Four, like the bodies at the rapids? Five? Ten?
“Yohan.”
He was not alone, of course. That was a shame…but Patrik had chosen, too.
“Drop everything but sword and shield.”
Unhurriedly, the barbarians fanned out in a circle.
“Take three breaths. Tell me when you’re ready.”
For some reason, the enemy did not seem eager to attack, to overwhelm, to get this over with. If they did not, he would.
“Ready, Yohan.”
“Remember, don’t stop for a second. Move with me. Try to keep them off my back.”
He stared back at a dozen of their faces. Dirty, tired, determined. No different from him. Murderers, every one of us.
A stillness had fallen, without sound or motion.
Then an excess of both.
Ahead. Into the tide.
Yohan sought to inflict as much damage as he could, as quickly as he could, for fatigue and injury would come so
on enough, and with them the end.
He sidestepped one blade, turned another with his own, blocked a third on his shield, each followed by a quick counter thrust of varying effectiveness. One enemy fell, dead. Another staggered. Another missed the target entirely.
He wondered why they moved in slow motion. Was it the cold? If so, would that not affect him, as well?
Whatever the reason, he took advantage. A feint raised one barbarian’s eye level, and with it his axe, only for Yohan’s sudden slash to slice through his calf. The man tumbled back, and Yohan longed to finish him off—but he dared not slow his step, and the tempo of the fight carried him past.
Twisting, turning, lunging, blocking. Expecting to feel blade or bludgeon at any moment.
None of them used shields, which gave Yohan a decided advantage against one or two. But he constantly found himself facing more, and spent more time than he wished moving away from untenable positions. Every moment not used in attack was wasted energy.
So he pushed himself forward, ignoring the risk. For all their uncoordinated tactics, they were competent warriors as individuals, more than capable of seizing an opening if he gave them one. He moved in endless anticipation of a crippling blow in every exchange.
He feinted left and slashed right. His blade swung beneath the attempted parry and across the thick fur of a rotund belly. The tribesman howled in pain and clutched the wound with both hands. Yohan dismissed the foe from his mind, for that one was out of the fight. Whether he lived or bled out made no difference for now.
Next Yohan focused on a maceman, half-blocking, half-turning the powerful weapon with his shield. The follow-through left the man exposed to a quick thrust beneath the arm pit. The tribesman recoiled and pulled back, but would have trouble lifting his weapon again.
Yohan moved on, flowing between enemy soldiers as a river past stones. They were moving much more quickly now, and his attacks assumed a new desperation.
He took his first wound a moment later, a searing gash into his right forearm that split the meat but stopped short of severing muscle. The back of Yohan’s mind knew the injury would become incapacitating in time, once the pain outlasted his battlelust. For now, the front treated it as only a nuisance that made every swing a tolerable agony.
Slide, slash, parry, thrust…block.
He lost the shield then. An axe blade split it down the center, then a mace blow finished the destruction. Yohan left behind the broken pieces as he pushed forward with his sword in a two-handed grip. But his left arm had been deadened by the mace, while his right continued to bleed.
For the first time, he stepped away from an opportunity to strike, resisting the fatal urge to rest on a knee. His chest heaved, lungs aching, while two quivering arms barely held up the sword.
For a split-second, he waited to feel that blow. The one that would kill him, or stagger him, or sever a leg or arm—which all amounted to much the same end.
A second is all you bastards get. One gasp of breath and he pushed himself forward again. The blow would come, but he would keep fighting until it did.
He caught one swordsman off-guard, driving him back with a slash to the thigh.
But the momentum had shifted. Now he moved slower than they. His body felt heavy, his muscles as tired as only combat could make them.
The enemy was still all around. Had he thinned their numbers at all, or were his memories of fallen foes simply the product of an exhausted mind?
They were waiting for him to collapse, no one of them eager to risk the next attack. Not when victory was inevitable.
They were as certain of his death as he was himself. And so he asked himself a simple question: Of what did he desire his last thoughts to be?
It was a question he had never considered before, and the asking made him feel strangely calm. The answer was music—come not to his ear, but to his heart. Summer’s song, played on a familiar fiddle, unexpected, but not unwelcome.
It was a different sensation from the pure battlelust he felt before, but it still restored enough strength to go on fighting. How long had passed? A few seconds, no more. He might still find a hero’s death, after all.
He lunged at the closest leg, knowing the target would pull back, then shifted his aim to the next man in line. His sword connected with the kneecap, sending the brute sprawling.
Having learned their lesson, they came at Yohan quickly now.
The nearest tribesman on the left moved first, seizing the opportunity while Yohan still recovered his balance. The blow was coming down toward his shoulder.
And was easily turned aside. A counter-thrust through the neck and the man fell. Another took his place, only to fall in turn.
They were moving slowly again, dancing a beat slower than the music while he kept time, the fatigue ebbing away, replaced by a sense of elation.
His feet moved again of their own volition, in time with the song’s living pulse. He clung to the music, clutching each note in his heart, wanting to hold it there for his last breath.
Why did they not strike him down? Hurry, you cowards, before I lose the song.
He moved toward them and amongst them, faster and faster, desperate to feel that fatal blow. Instead, all he felt were cuts and slices, painfully annoying but thoroughly inadequate.
Enraged, Yohan struck back with twice the force of before. He beat back their blades bit by bit, and when the blades were no longer there he lashed out at anything else in range.
Yet the harder he pushed them, the less they seemed capable of fulfilling his wish. Rather than crowd around and strike him dead, they began to shy farther away.
He yelled at them, gesturing with impatience and disgust. And one by one, then pairs and groups, they disappeared from his sight.
Yohan stared at the last two fleeing figures, struggling to understand what had happened. The song faded, then so too his resentment. Awareness took its place.
They had fled, back down the trail.
The song was over, and Yohan felt the wounds now. And the weakness. His chest heaved, his lungs ached, and his muscles trembled. But he dared not sink to his knees, for he might not ever stand back up.
He blinked, then stabbed his sword into a drift of snow. The enemy would be back.
Not all of them, however.
He scanned the ground—the battlefield—and saw too many bodies to count just now, lying in unnatural positions. Yohan stood alone, for the moment.
Alone. Where is Patrik?
Yohan found him near the center of the field, not far away from the splintered halves of his shield. The caravaneer had not been able to keep up with Yohan, because of course he had not. It had been unreasonable to ever expect him to.
He was not dead—not yet—but his abdomen was sliced so far open that it could not be closed, and the surrounding snow was a wide circle of red.
It would not be long before he went. Minutes, not hours.
Yohan did not attempt any empty banalities. There was no point, for the deathblood already flowed from the mouth, and the staring eyes showed perfect awareness.
Patrik’s lips moved, but the sound was garbled.
Taking one knee, Yohan leaned close.
“My bow,” Patrik whispered.
Nodding and numb, Yohan went back to the gear they had dropped before the fight. His own pack he kept, for he would go on. Alone. Again.
Patrik had managed to shift into a sitting position, where he could lean against the nearest rock. He accepted the bow into his trembling fingers.
“Can you fire?” Yohan asked. I can end your pain now, if you prefer.
Patrik nodded, so Yohan laid the leather quiver within easy reach. Four arrows remained.
He looked down the trail, where there were still no signs of activity. Then up the trail, where he would be going. As soon as he could pull himself away from his friend.
Patrik whispered again, unintelligibly.
“Save your strength,” Yohan suggested.
Patri
k coughed the dark liquid out, then repeated the word. “Promise.”
Yohan nodded. “I promise.”
Patrik looked away, saying something else, though the voice was garbled again. It might have been, “Hurry.”
But Yohan was already standing, staring up the trail once more, feeling his hatred come back into focus, pushing the weakness and pain aside for the time being. In the distance, the lights continued to dance not more than an hour’s walk away.
Enough.
As he resumed the march, Yohan bound the worst of his wounds. He wrapped a torn stretch of cloth around his bleeding swordarm, letting it soak as much as it could. Then he replaced that cloth with another.
“Tricks and deception at every turn, Soldier Yohan,” he said aloud. We can all play that card.
He tied the first bloody rag around the bicep of his throbbing left arm. Then he took a much longer piece to fashion a sling. Flinging it over his neck, he slid his left arm inside, and winced.
Too tight. He loosened it slightly and tried again.
It’ll do.
The sun was beginning to set and the temperature to drop once more, giving him even more reason to quicken the pace.
He did not wish to have this confrontation at night.
Yet as Yohan reached the place that gave Sea’s Pass its name, he could see that he was too late to avoid that result. The last vestige of daylight faded behind him, though still potent enough to reveal the wide valley and its contents.
He watched the falling snow, casting the scene in pristine innocence. He viewed the frozen lake, and what was beyond, and knew he was in enemy territory.
Then he started down, a single insignificant figure on a canvas of white and gray.
As the path descended, the sun soon disappeared entirely. Moon and star and magick illuminated the rest of his way, bright enough to reveal the cave opening long before he reached it.
He wondered how he would see inside, then dismissed the concern. There were no trees along this stretch of the trail, the ice of the lake provided no useful alternative, and he was not about to turn back for even the short time it would take to fashion a torch. He would make do.
Empire Asunder BoxSet Page 74
