Students of the Order

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Yeah, I'm real sorry about that," said Wit.

  Gondorf shrugged. "It is what it is. Nice to see you fellows."

  Misty Mountain Slim nodded. "Likewise. You shoot a beautiful game, Gondorf."

  "You too, Misty Mountain, you too."

  Wa'llach's room was clean and relatively orderly, with the exception of a collection of empty bottles that put Haniel's to shame—until Wit realized that he had had eighty years compared to her four. His possessions consisted of some clothes, an extra pair of boots, a few papers, some tools and chemicals, a bow and arrows, and three daggers.

  The rune expert glanced over the papers and a few symbols scratched in the wall; decided that when it came to runes Wa'llach was functionally illiterate; and went home.

  Searching more carefully, Wit and Misty Mountain Slim found two concealed knives and fifteen gold coins. Misty Mountain bundled up Wa'llach's things and left, dropping off the coins with Gondorf.

  Wit was alone in the room of empty bottles. He could not shake the feeling that there was still something to uncover in the dwarf's room. While he knew that the rune expert was woefully underestimating his old companion, he also didn't think that rune magic was what Wa'llach would use to hide his secrets.

  He found himself looking at the bottles. Haniel's had all been cheap grain alcohol, bearing the marks of only three or four different distillers. Wa'llach's collection was far more diverse and pricier—because, Wit suspected, the dwarf was better at stealing. Still, most of the bottles had contained rum or brandy; there were also some jugs that had contained ale; and relatively few bottles of wine.

  One of these caught his eye: Unicorn Grove, a vintage that Wa'llach had spent much of their journey disparaging as the kind of flavorless swill that was emblematic of the weak and heartless nature of magicians. The bottle was very new, perhaps the newest in the room. Wit picked it up; something rattled inside it; he smiled, and smashed it on the ground.

  Inside was a roll of papers. The top was newest; Wit unrolled it and read:

  Prince Tyntagyll Arguys,

  I have been told just now that I am to depart on a journey with you tomorrow. I am concealing these papers here on the chance I do not return, as they could be the key to the preservation of your people. These are a set of plans for a contraption that I copied off of the desk of Grand Wizard Cardozo. The device, as you can see, is meant to be carried between two griffins and used to drop fire on the ground—or water—below. With the plans was a set of tables used to calculate the position of the Aubrey fleet. So I think there can be no question that the boats of your people are the intended target of Cardozo's device.

  Best luck,

  Wa'llach

  The papers were what Wa'llach had described, and Wit felt cold. He had tried to convince himself that Crane's warning about Cardozo had merely been an effort to drive apart him and his teacher; and lately he had pushed his concerns for the Aubrey out of his mind. But here was absolute proof that Crane had been right and that his mentor's plan was the destruction of Wit's people. The truth was that Cardozo had been plotting against him all along, and the only ally he had was a mad, escaped dwarf.

  Wit put the papers in a pocket and left. It was only when he was a few streets away from the building that he realized that in reading Wa'llach's note he had, for the first time, learned his own name.

  41

  Joti was afraid they'd have to push the arrow all the way through his leg, but as the wagon rattled down the rutted road, Nod gave him a dose of alarmweed, told him to look away, and did something clever with her knife. It still hurt, but the alarmweed made it feel more like surprise than pain. The stitches she put in him registered as perplexing jabs.

  They drove the wagon away from Youngkent as hard as they could. Some of the others were prying apart the vehicle's walls, shaping them into crutches and stretchers. Joti nodded off for a while. Next thing he knew, they were stopped and the others were piling out. Brakk was prancing around in the snow, pretending to be helpful while in actuality doing nothing at all.

  Joti grabbed him by the sleeve. "Why are we stopped? Did Nod suddenly feel bad about stealing their wagon?"

  Brakk smiled mockingly, showing his thin Krannish fangs. "Marshal Nod thinks their horsemen will track the wagon down. Marshal Nod thinks this because she's right. So we throw aside the wagon."

  "We have wounded. How are we supposed to get out of here?"

  "Brakk is but a simple servant. But Brakk imagines that we use our legs."

  Nod cut the horses loose and smacked their flanks, sending them back in the direction of Youngkent. She guided the others down an escarpment where the wind had ablated the snow and they would leave no trace of their passage. Joti's leg wasn't half as bad as he feared, and with the help of a makeshift crutch, he kept pace in the middle of the troop.

  For a long time, all he did was walk. Through snow. Up hills. Down draws. Walking became so normal that when Nod finally called for them to stop, Joti looked up with something that felt oddly like disappointment.

  He was bedding down when a lantern lit at the edge of camp. Nod was kneeling beside Shain. Knives and tools gleamed on a blanket beside her.

  Joti crunched through the snow to join her. "How can I help?"

  Nod whisked a thin knife along a whetstone. "You should sleep."

  "You should stop telling me to walk away from my only friend."

  Nod grunted. "Go wash your hands."

  He did so—he'd never met anyone so concerned with clean hands as Nod—and returned to find Nod had cut Shain's bandages away from the wound. The death-stick's bullet had left a round wound that was still bleeding hours afterward.

  As Nod prodded around it with her fingers, Shain gasped and popped open her eyes. "Nine damns that hurts!"

  "Because you're moving. Stop." Nod turned to her things. She made two quick cuts, then held out to Shain a large hunk of smooth, off-red meat. "Eat."

  Shain sniffed. "Liver? Where did you get this?"

  "Hope I got it from a human."

  Shain snorted, then blanched in pain. She reached for the meat, eyes filled with a strange mix of uneasiness and anticipation. Her face relaxed while she was still chewing. Nod barely got her to swallow before she passed out.

  Nod worked in almost perfect silence. As she motioned for them, Joti handed her a knife, a cloth, another knife, a delicate pair of pliers. There was a lot of blood. The cold air stank of it. Pressing down on Shain's ribs, Nod dug the pliers into her side. She removed a hunk of metal. Whatever its original shape, it was now a distended lump.

  She set it aside, quickly probing the wound for splinters. Once she was satisfied, she rubbed the wound with an orange paste that smelled like mint, then beckoned for needle and thread. She sewed the wound with tight stitches, bandaged it, and got Shain into her blankets. Shain was asleep and smiling the whole time.

  Nod rinsed off her hands and the bullet, then hefted it in her palm. "She'll want this. Never been shot before. Not by a death-stick, at least."

  Joti scrubbed his hands with snow. "Will she live?"

  "Maybe. Lot of blood gone. But could be worse." The Marshal pocketed the mangled bullet and looked him in the eyes. "Good job holding the tunnel. Not many of us could have done that."

  "Then I'm lucky I didn't know that going in. What do we do now? Did we even stop them, really? The Orange Lady is still out there. Are we going after her?"

  "In time. For now, winter's here. We stopped them from tearing down the wall. It'll be spring before they can try again. We bought ourselves some time. That's the most you can ever do."

  "Yeah." Joti was suddenly very tired. "Yeah."

  Nod began to clean her instruments and put them away. "When did you know?"

  "What? You spend too much time alone in the woods, Nod."

  "That you had the Warp."

  Joti's blood seemed to coagulate in his veins. "A few days ago. At first, I didn't even know what it was." He furrowed his brow. "But maybe I should
have known for a long time. Ever since I was a kid, I could see things about people. Truths they wanted to keep hidden. Maybe that was the Warp, too."

  "Strange. Very. Tests at the Peak of Tears should have found this."

  "I failed them. The eyelock told me that to see the Warp, I had to hold my worst memory in my head." For a moment, he felt the cold water rushing past his legs, saw the leering faces of the raiders as they came to strike him down. "I tried to do what the eyelock said. But I kept making the same mistake. I thought I was remembering my worst memory—but it was the best one I've ever had."

  Nod cocked her head. "You have the Warp. Could still become a Marshal. Do you want to return to the Peak?"

  "After how I left, do you think Chief Loton would take me back?"

  "I think Shain will make him."

  A throng of thoughts rioted in his head. The embarrassment of returning versus the satisfaction of the challenge. His pledge to Dolloc Castle against his first promise to the No-Clan. Lashi, the Sum girl who might be waiting for him there, and Shain, the woman who'd rescued him from death.

  He had too many thoughts to know what to do with. But there was only one answer in his heart.

  "Yes," he said. "I will learn the Warp. And I will become a Marshal."

  ~

  They made their way through the forest where the shepherd had died, moving toward the border with all the speed they could muster. Shain stayed in a deep sleep. They carried her along on a stretcher. It was slow going. Wary of being hunted down, Nod sent scouts off at all times. Joti could tell she wished she could go herself, but with Shain down, Nod's responsibilities were to lead the clan.

  Joti's leg excused him from scouting, but as they neared the border, he told Nod he was healed up enough to rejoin them for duty. She didn't question him. The drifts in the pass were so deep they had to tunnel through them with axes. Once they were through and the worst of it was behind them, Nod ordered Joti to backtrack and make sure that they hadn't been followed.

  He hiked back up the trail. His leg hurt a little, but it hurt more to feel useless, and it was good to be back at the task. He ascended the pass, then climbed a short spur of rock for a better view.

  It was as empty as it had been when they'd come through it. Miles of rock and snow and pine. No humans, or dwarves, or dragar, or the little winged people that Joti wasn't quite sure if they were pets. He shifted so that he could see both the Alliance and the Duk Mak at the same time. The land looked the same on both sides. It was divided by nothing. Just a bit of rock. On one side of that rock, he was home. On the other, he'd be killed on sight.

  Two days later, they encamped in the trees to wait for the scouts to confirm there were no raiders ahead. Joti sat next to Shain's stretcher. She coughed, which she did sometimes, and he watched to make sure she wouldn't choke, but her eyes cranked open and fixed on him.

  "Shain?" His heart beat hard. "Can you hear me?"

  She reached out for something, hand shaking, then dropped her arm. Her eyes rolled and there was sweat dewing her forehead. "I told you. I told you to get out of there."

  Joti dabbed her brow with a cool cloth. "Shain, you've been asleep. You haven't told me anything."

  "Oh yes I did. You heard me. You turned your head and you favored me with that little smirk of yours that always made the girls blush. And then you went on right ahead."

  Joti glanced about in vain for Nod. It seemed important to keep Shain talking. To try to give her a road back to her right mind. "What did I do?"

  "Oh please. I know you far too well to be fooled by your 'Who, me?' bullshit. Everyone knew you just didn't go there. Even if you hadn't heard about it, I'd imagine all of the skulls on spears they'd planted out front would be your first clue. You actually patted one on the head as we walked in. I should have turned around then and there.

  "You know the worst part of it? It wasn't even that interesting. A lot of broken statues and toppled pillars. Dwarven runes, as if we could read them. But when I told you it was boring, that only made you spiteful, didn't it? Made you want to go deeper. To find something to prove me wrong."

  "I don't remember."

  "Convenient," Shain grated. Her words were fast and slurred. "I still don't know how you found the door. It was obvious no one else had. The chamber was so still it was like no one had been in it for a thousand years. The smell of it. Then you saw the skeleton of the dwarven king on his throne and you gave me that smirk again. You'd found your treasure, just like you'd told me you would. You were already boasting what you'd do with his axe as you walked to the throne. But you never so much as touched it, did you?"

  She lapsed into silence, eyes fluttering shut. Joti shook her by the shoulder. "Shain? Shain, you all right?"

  A tear leaked from the corner of her closed eye. Her jaw trembled. "You never even saw it. But I did. I didn't mean for you to get hurt. I just wanted to be right. For you to be wrong. And you knew that you were as soon as the floor fell away beneath you. You looked back at me—it was the only time I can remember seeing you scared—and then you were gone."

  Her chest rose and fell. Nod was still nowhere to be seen. Shain's breathing evened out. The sweat had dried from her face. Joti rummaged through his pack for the tincture Nod had put together to try to stave off infection. When he turned back, Shain's eyes were open and fixed on him.

  "Joti." She swiveled her eyes, taking in the snow-dusted pines. "Where are we?"

  "The Duk Mak." He leaned closer to inspect her face. "Are you awake?"

  "Are you daft? Do you spend a lot of time speaking with unconscious people? That might explain your conversation skills."

  "Don't waste all your insults on me. You'll want to save your strength in case Gogg trips in the snow again."

  "I'm injured!" Shain sounded as if she took her condition as a personal criticism. "That son of a bitch shot me. I knew we should have killed him when we had the chance. Even the wizards he's Bound to can't keep him in check."

  She shifted on her elbow, as if intending to get up. Joti thrust out his hand, keeping her down. "You nearly died. If Nod catches me letting you move around, Gogg will be carrying me home on a stretcher."

  Shain looked about herself, as if only now understanding the severity of her injury. Even that movement was enough to make her wince in pain, her green skin paling.

  "Was I that close?"

  "You've been out for a week. Nod wasn't sure you'd ever make it back."

  Her eyes fluttered shut just as they had earlier. Her jaw quivered. This time, she clamped down, then forced her eyes to open. "There's something I need to tell you, Joti. After you left the No-Clan to join Dolloc Castle, we sent a team into the south to gather information about the origins of the Orange Lady and the Faval Rusk. They only returned two months ago. Your father—his name was Odobo?"

  "Yes."

  "And your mother, she's Hako?"

  Joti's chest tightened like he was being squeezed within a dragon's tail. "What happened to them?"

  "We found them, Joti," Shain said. "Your parents are still alive."

  FROM THE AUTHORS

  With any luck, we'll have more for you in this series shortly. If you'd like to make sure you know when the next book's out, please sign up for Ed's mailing list.

  Ed has written several other books, including the epic fantasy series The Cycle of Arawn and The Cycle of Galand. He has a website at edwardwrobertson.com and a Facebook at facebook.com/edwardwrobertson

  Sam doesn't have any other websites or things, and his existence may in fact be an elaborate and very strange prank by Ed, but if you'd like to drop him a line, leave Ed a comment somewhere and he will pass it along.

  As always, thanks for reading.

 

 

 
= " -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share