Guardian Queen: Epic Fantasy Romance (Hardstorm Saga Book 3)

by Dana Marton

  I believed him. Atter, Hartz, Lison, and Fadden had been with me almost from the beginning.

  “Marga noticed first that you were missing,” Hartz said. “That tiger raised a right ruckus, she did. She tore up and down the beach, then jumped into the water, swam in so far, we thought she would drown. She was half-dead when the waves washed her back ashore.”

  “Did she recover?” Marga was as dear a friend to me as any man or woman.

  “Aye, my lady. But she is on a tear and make no mistake. Nobody dares go near her.”

  “Batumar will calm her.” I had no doubt he could. Marga liked him almost as much as she liked me.

  Hartz grimaced. “The warlord is near as bad as the tiger.”

  “Worse, my lady,” Valen put in. “And Prince Graho not much better.”

  “Tomron took your disappearance hard too.” Hartz spoke again. “As your general, he blames himself for not protecting you well enough.”

  “I had protection. I sent them off. Tomron is not to be blamed.” I paused as I looked south. “The army is not waiting for my return, is it?”

  “Nay. The warlord said the enemy was taking you either to the Gate of the World or Karamur, if they held the city. He ordered the army to move out at once, taking the manyinga with them, going up the North Road.”

  I hated saying the words, but they had to be said. “Khan Verik does have Karamur. He holds the fortress city.”

  The men’s expressions clouded. They had been through enough battles to know that defeating an enemy protected by fortress walls would be a hundred times more difficult than engaging them in battle out in the open.

  Hartz found his words first. “We must take the news to Prince Graho and Lord Batumar. Our orders are to take you to the North Road as soon as we found you.”

  The thought of joining Batumar filled me with longing. I wanted to march alongside our army. And yet…

  In a few days, we would all be standing outside Karamur’s walls, preparing for a siege. Our army had provisions, but we had no siege engines. And with more and more Kerghi pouring through Dahru’s Gate daily, we would be badly outnumbered. Worse, we would be caught between the enemy forces in the city, and those coming down the mountain, fresh from the Gate.

  How many of our people inside the city walls were still alive? Were some in the dungeons? The Guardian had said the khan kept all his captives by the Gate, ready to be transported off the island. Yet there must be a few Kadar who remained within the walls. If only I could reach them. If only they could help us from the inside. I could see no other way that we might succeed.

  We had come so far, had sacrificed so much already. I could not bear the thought of failing now, of dying in sight of the walls of Karamur without ever being able to enter our city.

  The only possible solution that came to mind weakened my knees. I shivered as I turned the idea in my head this way and that. Dark fear filled me like thick fog coming off the sea. A plan formed slowly, a plan that might not work, that might yet bring me death, but nevertheless, a plan.

  Spirit be strong, heart be brave.

  “I shall not go to the North Road,” I told the men, ignoring my doubts as I ignored the pain of my blisters. “One boat shall take me up the coast. Atter, Lison, Hartz, and Fadden.”

  As they lurched into protest, I continued. “The other boat shall be left behind here, its crew marching to Batumar on foot to let him know you found me and I remain well. Tell the warlord the Kerghi now hold Karamur. Tell him that I shall meet him there. I shall pass through the mountain.” Then, since Valen and his men were foreign to the island, I added, “Once you enter the forest, keep straight west.”

  “My lady, the warlord…”

  “My lady, the prince…”

  “My lady, our orders…”

  They all protested. But they did not naysay me in the end. They considered me the leader of our army. I silently swore I would never take them and their loyalty for granted.

  “Aye, my lady,” Hartz said at last.

  Valen gave a quick bow. The men acquiesced.

  I smiled my gratitude. “Let us hurry, then.”

  The crew of the second boat—the prince’s men—grabbed their provisions and headed into the forest at once with Valen in the lead. Hartz, Lison, Fadden, and Atter pushed our boat into the water, and we climbed in. I was soaked to the waist once again. For once, I did not feel the cold. My mind was thoroughly occupied with other matters.

  “The prince was hale the last you saw him?” I asked as we cleared the breakers. “I was lured to the beach with a tale of his grave injuries.”

  “The prince is hale, my lady. But Commander Durak is dead. As are the dwarf and the chronicle keeper,” Hartz said, adjusting the sail.

  I leaned out of his way. “The Kerghi killed Durak. Boscor was the khan’s assassin. Urdy saved my life.”

  Stunned silence followed my words, the only sound the waves slapping against the boat.

  “How far up do we go?” Lison asked while the others stared, then offered me food and water, along with a dry blanket.

  “We go all the way to the northern tip of the island,” I told him, falling on the chunk of cheese and bread. “To Barren Cove.”

  “A Kadar port? If it is taken, we might be able to sneak in at night. We are but a small boat.”

  I kept chewing as I looked to the north, into a gray, threatening mist. I swallowed, then looked back at Lison. “We go to a hidden cove of pirates.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  (The Cave)

  The spirits sped us along. The wind stayed steady, no storms on the horizon. The only difficulty we met along the way was passing Wid, late in the evening.

  “The northernmost Kadar port,” I told the men, wrapped tightly in a blanket against the wind. “This is where the skiff would have brought me had I not escaped. Then from here, they would have taken me to Karamur, the rest of the journey over land.”

  We lay low in the boat, our sail darkened with mud, a trick I had learned from my kidnappers. The wharf was crawling with Kerghi, the enemy loading their spoils of war by torchlight. We watched them and the dozen Kadar warships in harbor, hulking, giant shadows in the night.

  We gave the harbor wide berth but did not dare sail far out to sea. We had to keep the shoreline in sight. We did not want to sail past Barren Cove. I worried about that all the way until we spotted the great white cliffs the following day.

  Birds circled high above, the bay empty, the narrow beach not much more than rocks and scraggly weeds. At the farthest end, a stream cascaded down, splashing into the sea.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “No pirate ships.”

  “My lady,” Atter argued once we disembarked and I pointed out the cave opening high up on the cliff, the Mouth of the Mountain. “You cannot mean to climb up there.”

  “I climbed down once. Lord Batumar and I did together.”

  “With ropes, my lady,” Hartz protested.

  They had heard the tale. During our long march through the mainland, every part of my journey had been told and retold many times—to distract ourselves from impending death and all our other miseries.

  “It cannot be done.” Atter backed up Hartz. “The climb is too dangerous.”

  Lison, however, merely shrugged. “A hard climb, make no mistake, but it will not put me off. I was a roofer before the Kerghi came.”

  Fadden, the youngest of the four, agreed. “Not near as chancy as climbing the mainmast in a gale, and I did that enough when we came through the hardstorms.”

  Little did they know that the climb was not even the worst part of what awaited us. I had to tell them all of it. Time to finish the tale.

  I turned to them and made sure to look each in the eye, one after the other. “The caves are dangerous. Some of caverns are filled with sulfur, and the ones that are not…” I drew a deep breath. “An ancient god dwells within.” I would not say his name. “He is not a kind god.”

  “You escaped him onc
e. We shall escape him again,” was Lison’s immediate answer.

  I smiled at him before turning to Hartz. “I shall take Lison and Fadden with me.”

  Because I did agree with Hartz and Atter on one thing: this was not a climb for men unused to climbing. Both Hartz and Atter were farmers before the war. Sending them up the steep cliff would be the same as sending them to their death.

  “Where you go, we go,” Atter protested immediately.

  Hartz would not be outdone. “Our orders are not to let you out of our sight.”

  I could not let them sway me. “I am changing those orders. Lord Batumar could not have foreseen this. We adjust our battle tactics to the battlefield. Is that not how we have always fought?”

  Both were scowling, hardly convinced.

  “I need you here, at the bottom of the cliffs,” I told them. “My plan is to get into Karamur unseen. I shall find a way to open the portcullis in the night for our troops once they arrive at the city walls. But should I fail, I will need to escape this way. I need you to keep the escape route open and safe. The enemy might know that we are here. They might come after us. The emperor has a sorcerer in his service who saw us arriving at Rabeen. The sorcerer might well see us arriving here and send other men.”

  At that, Hartz and Atter agreed to my plan at last and swore to hold the small beach at all cost. I thanked them, then moved on to the next step.

  “We need driftwood. And strips from our sail to wrap around the end. We need a couple of fatty little fish for the fish oil so we can make torches.”

  Hartz’s expression lightened. “Those we have, my lady.”

  He hurried back to the boat, dug around among the bags on the bottom, and produced nine fine torches indeed.

  I thanked the spirits for saving us the precious time. The sun was dipping behind the cliffs already.

  “We best climb if we want daylight for our ascent.”

  “The wind works in our favor.” Fadden turned toward the sea. “Coming from the east.”

  An east wind meant that we did not have to wait for the gusts to die down. Had it been a sideways, buffeting gale, ascending would have been a challenge. But a steady current of air rushed from the sea to slam into the cliffs. The wind would push us against the rocks and help us cling to the surface.

  I tied my cloak into a bundle on my back to carry my share of our supplies. Fadden, Lison, and I were taking all the food the men had brought in the boat. Hartz and Atter convinced us that they could fish for themselves.

  I pinned my gown up to my knees in the front, then climbed first, never looking down, my gaze searching for the next handhold and the next. I did not check on Fadden and Lison behind me but kept track of them by their grunts and heaves. I let my mind float back to my childhood when I climbed the numaba trees on our hillside every single day.

  When I reached halfway up, I stopped to rest on a wider ledge. Only then did I cast my gaze below. “How goes it so far?”

  Below me, Fadden scoffed. “At least the cliffs do not sway like a ship on the waves. ’Tis easier than climbing twisting rigging, my lady, for certain.”

  I turned to continue up, glad not to have my cloak freely hanging on my back. It would easily catch the wind and act like a sail, pulling me off the rock face.

  Here the ascent proved more challenging. Again, I kept my gaze on the next handhold, ignoring the bleached bones in the crevices, the remnants of ancient sacrifices thrown out the Mouth of the Mountain. I knew when Fadden and Lison reached the bones—could hear them murmur prayers for protection to their gods.

  Sweat trickled down my back. Every time I had a hand free, I wiped it on my dress, then dusted it with what dirt I could find in the crevices. I called down, advising the men to do the same. A wet palm could cause any of us to slip and plunge into the depths.

  Then I almost did plunge, reaching for a blind grip and encountering a hidden seagull nest, its feathery inhabitant taking noisy, frightened flight. My heart beat as fast as the outraged bird’s wings.

  I paused to catch my breath.

  “My lady?” came from below.

  “I am fine well.” To prove my words, I continued to climb, hand over hand over hand, until I reached the mouth of the cave.

  The damp, blind darkness that stretched endlessly in front of me filled me with relief and dread in equal measures. I pushed to my knees, then turned back to wave at Hartz and Atter, who stood sentinel at the foot of the cliffs. The two men waved back, a gust of wind swirling their capes around them. I could not make out their faces, but their movements were tense, as if they already regretted agreeing to my plan.

  Lison reached the mouth of the cave next. I helped him up. As soon as he was on flat ground, he murmured another prayer to his gods, even if he did not look entirely sure if his Selorm gods would be much good in the belly of the earth on Kadar land.

  “A day or two, then?” he asked, peering into the black cave. “Then we are out in the light again?”

  “Inside Karamur, the fortress city,” I assured him as Fadden appeared.

  Lison helped his friend up, then we sat right inside the opening to eat and drink, enjoying the last bit of sunlight we would have for a while. We did not talk. Lison and Fadden asked no questions. Perhaps they did not wish to show worry in front of me.

  After we rested, we tied up our bundles again, leaving out three torches. We lit them with flint and steel. The two men also kept their swords to hand.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Aye.” Their responses were sure and instant. “Aye.”

  Aware, more than ever, how lucky I was to have guards as loyal as these two brave men, I said a silent prayer to the spirits, then led the way forward.

  The air tasted like blood and fear. The darkness that waited for us ahead made me shiver. For I knew it was not an empty darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  (Batumar)

  The manyinga beasts grunted their complaints as the unrelenting march in the summer heat wore them down at last. Their shaggy brown fur made them more suited for the northern tip of the island.

  “Looking at them, one would not expect them to moan and groan like old women,” Baran said, riding on Batumar’s side. He was one of the original six, the first group of warriors who had joined Tera’s cause on the mainland.

  Batumar did not remember meeting him. He had been a hollow at the time, without awareness or reason, kept alive only by Tera’s nearness.

  “The manyinga prefer Karamur halfway up the mountain,” he said. “They like the winter snows the best.”

  “Do they not mind having to dig for frozen grass under the ice crust, my lord?”

  “They use their trunks. They mind neither ice nor snow. They enjoy the cold.”

  Yet the manyinga could not have wished for Karamur half as much as Batumar did as he watched them, trying to judge if he could have any more out of them that day. The great beasts were hearty animals, but their strength was not limitless. They still marched, but they marched under protest. They should have been allowed to drink and graze at midday, should have been allowed to rest.

  The ragtag army too needed respite. The soldiers on the manyingas’ back were lucky, and so were the ones who rode the fifty horses Batumar had found in Kaharta Reh. But there were hundreds more men forced to march on aching feet. Batumar turned forward in the saddle. He was willing to sacrifice the manyinga—and every man—to have Tera in his arms once again.

  He could almost hear her saying, The day is about to turn to dusk.

  Yet what did dusk matter? He wanted to reach Tera as fast as possible.

  You will keep going and march through the night? she would ask if she were here.

  And he would say, Aye. If his manyinga collapsed, he would walk, and if his feet wore off, he would crawl.

  You cannot lay siege to Karamur on your own, she would point out next. And, damn it all, she would be right. So, Batumar rose in the saddle at last and turned back once again to the long
column of animals and men following him.

  “Halt!” He shouted the single word and hated it with every fiber of his being. Every step he would not take toward Tera tonight hurt him, a pulsing pain drumming through his blood.

  The other leaders of the army passed his order down the line like an echo.

  “Halt!” From Prince Graho.

  “Halt!” From Tomron then.

  “Halt!” From Lord Karnagh, whose men and tigers were bringing up the rear. He tried to keep as much distance between the tigers and the horses as possible.

  As the order to stop was passed down the line, some of the men dropped into the dust where they stood. Others pulled off the road and sat in the shade of the trees. Vast forests edged the North Road on both sides, blocking any breeze that might have brought relief.

  Baran glanced from one green wall to the other, shifting in his saddle. “Enemy troops could be hiding but a hundred steps in, and we would not see them.”

  “The scouts would have warned us.” Batumar too watched the forest. “And we have all the Selorm tigers.”

  “The tigers will not smell much with all the sweating men and manyinga,” Baran replied, but then relaxed anyway. “At least they will hear better once the army settles for the night. And the tigers can see as well at night as any man during daylight.”

  Batumar scanned the woods for Marga’s yellow hide, but she did not appear. “Marga has been gone since this morning.”

  “Probably caught a deer and fed. She’s sleeping in the shade of some bushes. There’s no rushing a tiger.”

  Batumar nodded. Maybe better to have Tera’s tiger at a distance, in any case. She had been too quick to growl since Tera had gone missing. She had even taken to snapping at the manyingas’ heels.

  Marga will catch up with us when she is ready, Tera would say if she were here.

  Batumar looked up the rising road that pulled him forward. No one else seemed to feel the urge to hurry. Behind him, empty water flasks clinked as the soldiers pulled them from their belts, eager for a break. He glanced back, catching a few unfamiliar faces.