Heirs of the Fallen: Book 03 - Shadow and Steel Page 16

  It took a moment for Leitos to comprehend that the girl on his shoulder was Nola, the same girl who had battered him unconscious the night he met Belina.

  By then, Damoc had turned to glare at him.

  “What have you done to my daughter?” he demanded, drawing his sword. Before Leitos could answer, he commanded, “Put her down, and move away.”

  More than happy to be rid of his burden, Leitos did as bidden, and saw that Nola suffered from the same shock as her fellows.

  When he turned back, Damoc had closed the distance. Rage shone in his eyes.

  “I am not your enemy,” Leitos said, hesitant to use Nola’s blade to cut down her father. Damoc did not suffer the same hesitancy. His sword whickered through the blue light, and Leitos threw himself out of reach. “Can none of you see that I am your ally?” Leitos shouted, backing away.

  “I see only a walking corpse,” Damoc growled, slashing his blade at Leitos’s face.

  With no other choice, Leitos caught the elder’s blade against his own. The clang of steel rang through the corridor, and Belina screamed. Damoc pressed the attack, forcing Leitos to fight for his life.

  In moments, one or the other of them would fall, and Leitos did not intend to lose any more blood.

  Chapter 30

  Leitos settled into the hammering rhythm, thinking to lure in Damoc as he had Nola, and dispatch him in the same way. “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said, offering a taunting grin.

  Damoc refused to answer, driving Leitos back with every vicious sword stroke. Leitos parried a sudden thrust, twisted hard to one side, and slammed his forearm into the elder’s jaw. The Yatoan staggered, even as he swung a backhand slash at Leitos’s belly. Keen steel whispered by, parting fabric an inch above his belt.

  Leitos danced back, his concern growing.

  “Cease this madness,” he said, wasting precious breath.

  Damoc answered with another thrust, his blade shrieking down Leitos’s, until it collided with the cross-guard.

  Leitos pressed in hard, twisting his blade in a tight circle around Damoc’s. When the elder’s sword swung high, Leitos drove his boot into the man’s chest. Damoc floundered back and crashed against the wall. Leitos rapped the flat of his blade against the man’s wrist, and Damoc cried out and the sword flew from his numbed fingers. Before the blade struck the floor, he had drawn his dagger, and stabbed it at Leitos’s throat. Had Leitos not expected the tactic, he would have died.

  “You cannot win this,” Leitos warned, giving Damoc room enough to realize that he did not mean to kill him.

  Damoc refused to accept the chance to reconsider, and came on in a rush. He lunged and slashed, parried and thrust, always seeking to bury his blade in a part of Leitos that would mean certain death.

  Leitos avoided the strikes, ceaselessly looking for an opening to put the man down without taking his life. He scored a few blows—a fist to the temple, one to the nose, and a chopping blow to the man’s neck—but Damoc, bloody and dazed, failed to yield.

  Sensing that he was growing too weary to take any more chances, Leitos reversed the momentum of the struggle and went on the attack.

  Belina had come to her feet, and Nola stood at her side. “Father, stop!”

  “Stand away, girl,” Damoc answered, narrowly missing an opportunity to sever Leitos’s neck.

  Leitos scampered back. “One chance more I give you,” he snarled, as much for himself as for Damoc.

  The elder laughed. “I will gut you where you stand!”

  “Your daughter made the same threat,” Leitos said, feinting a thrust at Damoc’s unprotected middle.

  The elder’s dagger swept down, blocking a strike that never came. Before he could right himself, Leitos abruptly whirled his blade down and around. What had been a thrust toward the belly, became an overhand attack against a bowed and undefended neck.

  “No!” Belina screamed.

  Somehow Leitos checked his strike, but could not avoid crashing against Damoc, one of his knees crunching against the elder’s cheekbone. With a stunned grunt, Damoc collapsed to his back, his dagger skittering across the opal floor. Leitos came up at once and, chest heaving, poked the tip of his sword against the elder’s throat.

  The rest of the Yatoans, who had shaken off the horror of the Mahk’lar, stood ready to attack. Belina jumped between her people and Leitos, beckoning for calm with upraised hands. Neither Leitos nor the Yatoans relented, and the rising tension became oppressive.

  “Should an arrow pierce me,” Leitos warned, “I will end your leader—I do not wish it, but I will.”

  “Lower your weapons,” Belina ordered, her voice cracking.

  Damoc blinked, clearing the glazed look in his eyes. “Do as she says.”

  One by one, the archers lowered their bows, but all seemed ready to raise them again at a moment’s notice.

  “Throw them aside,” Leitos commanded.

  Only after Damoc nodded did they acquiesce, if reluctantly.

  Feeling somewhat safer, Leitos withdrew his sword, thought about how many times mercy had gotten him into trouble, then offered Damoc a hand. “If I had wanted to kill you, I would have. But—and I hope you finally believe me—that was never my intention.”

  Damoc gazed at the proffered hand, covered with dried blood and angry welts from the biting worms, and grudgingly accepted. Leitos hauled him up, but took the precaution of putting a few feet between them.

  “He … he could have left me,” Nola said, her previous fury replaced by bemused wonder. “Had our positions been reversed, I would have left him. But even after I tried to cut him down, he carried me from that awful place and … and away from the Faceless One and his hordes.”

  Leitos held his breath a moment, certain she would mention that the only way he had been able to take her away from danger had been to strike her. Even knowing there had been no other way, it troubled him to have struck the girl who looked like Zera.

  She is not Zera, he told himself forcefully, still finding it difficult to separate the image of the woman he had loved, from the girl who now stood in his defense.

  “I cannot trust you, not yet,” Damoc said slowly, “but I do trust my daughters. On their word alone, I grant you peace. But know this, outlander, it is not finished between us.”

  “It is over,” Belina said with a exasperated snort, “or there is no reason not to let you two start chopping at one another again.” She eyed Leitos. “He may be young, but you are a fool if you believe he could not have killed you a dozen times over—had he wished to.”

  That seemed to sting Damoc’s pride, but he abruptly laughed it off. “As well, I could have gutted him where he stood, more than once.”

  Belina favored Leitos with an imploring look. After brief consideration, he decided no good could come from humiliating Damoc in front of his daughters and his clan.

  Leitos fingered the cut in his robes, and put on a humble grin. “This one did come very close.” It was the best he could offer, and that seemed enough. The Yatoans began chuckling, as if they found brushes with death amusing—in that, they reminded him of the Brothers.

  While the others were distracted, Damoc’s wry mirth fell away, and he leaned close to Leitos. “This trust you have earned is thin. Betray it, and I will dip your naked shanks in waters brimming with fangfish.”

  Now I know where Belina learned her manners, Leitos thought, holding back a weary grin. “Just so.”

  After a time, the elder asked, “What did you see beyond the corridor?” His tone spoke of an interest in something other than the Faceless One, and considering what Belina had told him about stealing women to breed changelings, Leitos thought he knew the deeper question.

  “I saw nothing of humankind,” he said.

  Damoc considered that in brooding silence, then turned to his people. “Mahk’lar do not idly wander these islands, for there is nothing here for them to seek. Let us find where so many went with such haste. In knowing that, we m
ay learn why they have abandoned the Throat.”

  Chapter 31

  The Fauthian guard returned, his gaze devoid of emotion. Of the captives only Adham, Ba’Sel, and Halan remained kneeling amongst the hall’s central pillars. After looking between the trio, the guard dragged Halan to his feet. Adu’lin seemed to take a perverse pleasure in allowing Adham to watch the Brothers being led to their doom.

  The guard walked Halan into the other chamber, from which screams would soon echo for a short time, before a heavy silence fell. The big man did not protest, as some of the others had, nor did he fight, as fewer had. He walked with his blindfolded head hanging, resigned to whatever fate awaited him.

  Adu’lin met the guard at the doorway. “We are nearly finished,” he called to Adham, and ushered Halan out of sight.

  Like a sheep to the slaughter, Adham thought, his churning insides sour.

  As the guard took his place beside the doorway, Adham looked to Ba’Sel, whose eyes were blindfolded, and hands bound behind his back. Sweat coated his skin, and an occasional tremor shook his limbs.

  What is he thinking? Why does he not dispute the poor treatment of his men? The temptation to despise the man for his weaknesses fell over Adham, but he resisted.

  “Can you guess what they are doing?” Adham asked in a low voice.

  “I barely know where I am,” he admitted, sounding tired, out of breath. “The last clear memory I have is the first morning after coming to Armala. After that, all is as dreams seen through smoke.”

  “That bloody fruit wine stole your wits,” Adham growled, thankful once more that he had not partaken of the filthy Fauthian drink.

  Ba’Sel nodded slowly. “I remember it, a ghastly nectar, like spoiled honey and rotten fruit. But after a few swallows it … it took away cares that had been with me for so many years.” In a whining tone that Adham found unnerving, he said, “I felt free for the first time since that repugnant princeling strode from the crumbling temple in the marshes, his eyes gone white, and his skin hanging like a man suffering from a wasting sickness. Little did we know that many of us had been changed.” He paused again with a shudder, then went on hollowly.

  “That boy changed inside the temple, gained dark powers. He laid waste with strange fire, burning my kindred to ash in a blink. He summoned a serpent from the mud, a creature of wood and bark and flesh. Kian ordered us away, and so we fled … even knowing he could never survive alone. But he did survive. Kian was not man to die easily. He was a true leader, a king.”

  “My father never chose to wear a crown,” Adham said with fierce pride, “but he did serve his people.”

  Ba’Sel did not seem to hear him. “Some days after we regrouped, Kian returned to us. Ishin, our leader then, gave him a bowl of snakefish soup. All but Ishin gagged on the taste. Kian fared no better. Ishin was offended, which was nothing novel.” Ba’Sel went quiet again, then spoke in a fearful hush.

  “That night, my cousin Fenahk came from the forest … but he was my kin no more. He had become something else, and the creature inside him—the demon, the Mahk’lar—tore him apart from the inside, like a moth emerging from a cocoon, ripping his flesh and bones to shreds. Kian and my brothers fought the beast, as did Ishin. In fear, I remained apart, using my bow. Kian destroyed the creature, seemingly with his voice alone … but not before it had killed Ishin.

  “After that, it fell on me to lead the Asra a’Shah. It was a task I never hoped for, but it was mine to do. Perhaps I was too young, or maybe I was never suited to lead. A madness came over the world in the early days after the Upheaval. It broke some part of me that has yet to heal.”

  Uncomfortable with the revelations, Adham set himself to planning a way to escape, or at least a way to kill some few of his captors. Until my last breath and drop of blood, he thought, taking solace in the stark and unbending ways of his ice-blooded kinsmen.

  Try as he might to turn his thoughts, a question kept arising in the forefront of his mind. Would I have behaved any differently than Ba’Sel? He wanted to believe that he would have shouldered the task as his father had, but was not sure.

  Kian’s entire life, from his time as a displaced orphan scrounging for crumbs on the deadly streets of Marso, to his rise as a coveted mercenary, had shaped him into the man he needed to become in order to defeat a depraved princeling with the stolen powers of a god, and to cast Peropis back into the Thousand Hells. Even his later rise to rule over the fractured kingdom of Izutar, and his unceasing resistance against the Faceless One, seemed preordained.

  Adham shook his head, unsure if he could have prevailed, had he stood in place of his father or Ba’Sel.

  Halan’s sudden howl destroyed Adham’s brooding counsel. Fresh beads of sweat showed on Ba’Sel’s brow, and he began muttering to himself.

  “Unless you want to suffer whatever nightmare Adu’lin has planned for us,” Adham urged, “you better find the strength that made you the leader of the Brothers of the Crimson Shield.”

  “To what end?” Ba’Sel pleaded. “We are as good as dead—the same fate that has befallen all my brethren these long years.”

  “I should wring your coward’s neck,” Adham snapped.

  “What cowardice is it to accept that which we cannot alter? Better to make your peace with the Silent God of All, and pray for a sleep of serenity to fall over you before … before they begin.”

  Loathing churned in Adham’s throat, and for a moment he thought he might scream in rage. Somehow, he kept his voice low, and asked, “How can you go willingly to your doom? You were an Asra a’Shah, a man born and bred for battle. Is there none of that man left inside you?”

  “So many years,” Ba’Sel sobbed. “Four lifetimes of men have I trod the face of the broken world. I have seen the death of thousands at the hands of Alon’mahk’lar, and those who bent their knees to the Faceless One. Longer than you have been alive, I have fought, when I would have rather raised good, tall sons, and tilled the soil of my homelands in peace.”

  “ ‘Tilled the soil?’ ” Adham snarled, losing all patience.

  The guard glanced their way.

  Adham bowed his head, and said from the corner of his mouth, “You are a man of war, and have been all your life. There are no crops for you, and there never has been. The only soil to till lies in the black hearts of all who would destroy humankind at the behest of a soulless demon. If there is any hope for those who come after us, you must resist the Faceless One.”

  “What do we know of souls, I wonder?” Ba’Sel mused, head turning one way and another, as if looking at a world behind his blindfold that only he could see.

  For a long time Adham stared, understanding coming slowly.

  Abruptly Ba’Sel laughed, a giddy, childish squeal of delight. “Mother?” he cried. He nodded his head eagerly, and began rocking on his knees. “Oh, yes, I am hungry.”

  “May Pa’amadin grant you peace,” Adham murmured, his scorn fading. The fabric of Ba’Sel’s will had torn, and the delusion that now held him might never relinquish its grip. In that moment, Adham felt pity in his heart not for a vanquished warrior, but for a simple man forced to a path he had never been suited to travel.

  But how many of us are suited to stand against those who would destroy us for no more reason than that we live? Adham was not sure anyone, even himself, could stand against the enemies of humankind, but he had to try.

  He glanced at the guard, now staring straight ahead. All the other guards had gone elsewhere, ordered so by Adu’lin, who no doubt believed that he had cowed his unruly prisoners to absolute submission.

  Soon that lone guard, confident that he would meet no resistance, would come for Ba’Sel. When he did, Adham intended to make him pay for that confidence.

  Chapter 32

  Damoc’s clan, some three score strong, marched quickly through the night toward Armala. With dawn still an hour off, the forested path to the black city lay under a dewy pall of darkness and impregnable quiet. Leitos wished that sa
me calm would settle over his heart.

  After learning from the Yatoans who had been held in reserve outside the Throat of Balaam that the demonic swarm had made for the Fauthian city, all Leitos could think about was the safety of his father and the Brothers.

  The doubts he had stubbornly nurtured about Belina’s account of the Fauthians had vanished. With the Throat of Balaam and the Faceless One so close to Armala, Leitos could not believe that Adu’lin was unaware of the place, or the dark entity that sheltered within its depths. He found it troubling that all the Brothers, himself included, had believed that the Fauthians were a decent, peaceful folk.

  How could we have trusted them? Leitos’s only answer was Ba’Sel’s assurances. Disagreeable as it was, their leader had led them into a terrible trap. It pained Leitos to admit that he could never allow Ba’Sel to make such an error again. Once the Brothers knew the truth, they would turn from him, and join swords with the Yatoans. What happened to Ba’Sel after that, Leitos could not guess.

  Coming to the edge of the forest, Leitos spied the road he had taken up the mountain the night he crept from Armala. The city slumbered nearby. On its wall, no movement attracted any eye. If not for the lights brightening the palace, Armala might have been a bone-town.

  “How will we attack?” Leitos whispered to Damoc.

  “There,” the elder said after a time, pointing at a section of wall that projected in sharp angles around a cluster of buildings with tall, pointed roofs. “We have watched Armala for a season, and the Fauthians never post a proper guard along that part of the wall. Our archers will cover two or three climbers who, once they reach the battlements, can make it safe for the rest to follow.”

  “If the Mahk’lar have gone to Adu’lin, then he will know we are coming.”

  “There is nothing for it. We must attack.”

  “I need weapons,” Leitos said, glancing at Nola, who crouched next to Belina. “Unless Nola wishes to lend me her sword again.” He meant it as a jest, but the girl scowled, much the same as she had just before she tried to murder him. It seemed her gratitude for hauling her out of harm’s way had diminished. Belina, however, flashed him a shy smile, which he found disconcerting. Yatoans, he decided, were a strange lot.