Heirs of the Fallen: Book 02 - Crown of the Setting Sun Page 5

  He squinted against the sheeting pour. Upstream, through a nearly opaque curtain of rain, lightning flashed and thunder rolled. The river’s voice strengthened, and the sensation of quaking underfoot became a steady throb. Leitos blinked water out of his eyes, unsure what he was seeing. Out of that rain-soaked gloom raced a seething mountain of mud and raging waters, its boiling face riddled with deadly debris. He waited no longer. Leitos shouted as he threw himself into the river, but his voice could not contend with the raging fury racing toward him.

  The powerful current snatched him from the air, eagerly, forcefully, as if it had been waiting these last days for just such a chance. He tried a few strokes, but swimming was useless. It took all his effort to keep his head above water. More than once, his feet scraped or slammed over rocks. Backward churning waves rolled him under, whirled him about, then vomited him farther downstream. He was at the mercy of the river as much as all the pummeling, water-black branches floating with him. After going over a low waterfall, he found himself facing upriver. The mountain of muddied water chased after him, falling over itself in great, exploding waves, gaining slowly; its immense power pushed him before it. He turned, doing his best to stay afloat.

  The sides of the gorge narrowed at one point, flashing by, the river’s rage amplified by towering cliffs. Up ahead, the river took a sharp turn. In the outer curve, the waters crashed against the wall of the gorge, rising high before collapsing back over on themselves in a continuous, churning fall thrice the height of a man. All Leitos had taught himself about swimming fled his mind, and panic consumed his wits. He began clawing at the water, trying to get to the inside curve of the bend.

  His efforts were in vain.

  Thrashing and kicking, he flew into the base of the towering wave. Spray hit his face, and the river dragged him under. He struck the rock wall, the force crushing the breath from his lungs. All became a spinning, tumbling confusion. With malicious intent, the flow slammed him against the base of the cliff, set him free, then punished him again. Caught in an inescapable eddy, Leitos banged repeatedly against the wall before a squeezing force pressed in on him from every side. He shot up and up, feeling at once weightless and caught in a giant’s fist. Then, with stunning abruptness, he soared free. He pinwheeled before splashing into the river.

  Bruised, scraped, and disorientated, he struggled to the surface and drew a sodden breath. All was a deafening roar, as the river thrashed him. Leitos fought as long as he could, but rapidly grew weaker and more desperate for a deep breath. His chest burned, but he dared not draw the river into his lungs. A part of him felt sure he was going to drown, but another part refused to accept the possibility. He had survived too much to let mere water destroy him. His anxiety gave way to his own fury, and he cursed the river and the storm, elements so much greater than he.

  His anger gave him some little, momentary strength. He paddled and splashed with all the vigor he could muster, but his effort was short-lived. Far too soon, his arms and legs became leaden, useless. He sank again. This time, he failed to rise.

  Knowing he had lost the battle, Leitos felt an unexpected acceptance surmount his fears. Lost in the swirling reddish murk, he went still and let the river take him. He drew in the extinguishing coolness of the river, quenching the fire in his chest. A suffocating pressure filled his lungs, but he soon moved beyond such physical concerns, as if his spirit and body were no longer one.

  His consciousness drifted, rendering all previous apprehensions impotent. No more would he fear the bite of an Alon’mahk’lar’s lash, no more would he suffer hunger or thirst. In the wake of this release he found true freedom, and a sense of expectancy filled him, birthed a surreal peace in his soul. Only the sharp understanding that he had failed his grandfather haunted him. Yet even that concern evaporated, as points of light began dancing before his eyes, multiplying, until he floated upon an undulating sea of pearl white. As the white went to black he decided, with no small measure of relief, that death was nothing to fear.

  Chapter 9

  Sharp, red pain drew him out of the serene dream and into a raucous nightmare of thundering waters, torrential rains, and driving winds. Something had caught the hair on his head in an iron-grip. It was pulling him from the river, carelessly dragging him along like a carcass over rounded stones, then through sandy mud.

  He opened his mouth to shout a protest, but silty water dribbled past his lips instead of words. All the pain and fear he had so recently escaped crashed back down upon him, and he longed to return to that blessed void. He reached up with arms that refused to work as they should, and clawed with fingers that held no strength.

  “Quit fighting, you damned fool,” a man’s gruff voice commanded.

  Leitos’s arms fell, and his eyes rolled. A presence loomed above him, clad in dripping rags colored after the hues of the desert, all of browns, dirty reds, and fawn. In a lurching gait, the bulky figure brought him to higher ground, then tossed him down.

  Still unable to draw a breath, the blessed darkness began to fall again over Leitos. He let it, for in death he had known absolute peace, and he desired to know that nothingness again. As if alerted to Leitos’s thoughts and finding them unacceptable, the man turned, his face lost in the shadow of a deep, drooping hood. Without preamble, he jammed a sandaled foot onto Leitos’s chest and stomped down. Leitos’s eyes bulged at the offending pressure, and a gout of water sprayed past his teeth. The ragged figure mercilessly trounced him once, twice, again. Each time, more of the river surged from Leitos’s lungs, until no more came.

  A rattling wheeze assailed Leitos’s ears as his body, indifferent to the will of his heart, drew breath. Fresh air flowed, but after the gritty river water it burned worse than going without, leaving him coughing and retching. The agonizing fit went on until he was sure he had ruptured something.

  In time, his labored breathing evened out, and the fierce blaze in his chest subsided. When his coughing finally dwindled to nothing, everything inside him felt raw and abused.

  Leitos’s eyes fluttered open on a roiling expanse of clouds, their mottled gray-and-black underbellies torn by flicking tongues of white fire. The rainfall had begun to taper off. Head wobbling, he cast about and found that the walls of the gorge had fallen away to reveal a familiar desert landscape. At the river’s edge, thickets of lush green rushes bowed their heads away from the press of the wind. Farther up the bank, a few spindly trees swayed back and forth.

  Leitos rolled to his side to avoid looking into the depths of his savior’s hood. He closed his eyes on the world, his chest occasionally hitching with a weak cough.

  The dark figure hovered motionless, silent, ominous. “You will live,” the man growled.

  “Why did you save me?” Leitos asked weakly.

  The man cocked his hooded head. He remained silent for a time, then spoke words that sent a chill through Leitos. “I suppose one like you, an escaped slave, would rather die. No such luck, boy. You are worth more alive than dead.”

  “A Hunter,” Leitos gasped. On the rarest occasion a slave escaped the Alon’mahk’lar. When that happened, they employed Hunters, men renowned as much for their tracking abilities as their unfeeling treachery against their own kind. Being human, such men roved without suspicion, seeking and finding those they pursued. Often, they worked hand-in-hand with slavers who brought fresh captives to the mines. Adham had hated Hunters worse than he hated the Alon’mahk’lar, or even the Faceless One. “There are few betrayals worse than men hunting their own at the command of demon-spawn,” he had often said, always spitting on the ground to emphasize his contempt. “Nothing can ever redeem the soul of such a despicable creature.”

  Looking askance at his captor, Leitos collected himself and sat up, muscles quivering uncontrollably. He felt cold and gray-fleshed, like something dead. All that mattered was getting his wits and strength back, then planning his escape. He could not let himself be given again into the hands of the Alon’mahk’lar.

  T
he Hunter squatted on his haunches, his face still lost in the darkness of his hood. Nevertheless, the weight of his unseen eyes pressed against Leitos. He said nothing, only looked. What he saw besides a sopping and disheveled youth, Leitos could only guess. That continued study made him more uncomfortable by the moment. He imagined a mouse must feel the same, when facing an adder.

  The Hunter kept up his silent vigil so long that Leitos began to wonder if the Hunter really was a man. Adham had told that Mahk’lar, before they began breeding to humankind, and thus transferring their essence into a human womb, had gone about possessing men, women, and even children, transforming them into walking horrors. Such abominations did not last long, for with the loss of its true soul, the inhabited flesh perished and began to rot. Usually within a few days, the Mahk’lar would burst free, seeking new flesh to control and destroy. Although a long generation had passed since the emergence of the vile Alon’mahk’lar race, Leitos supposed it possible that stray Mahk’lar could still roam the world. I have to get away!

  “I can see your mind working, boy,” the man said, as if sensing Leitos’s last thought, “but you will not escape me. I can track a lizard up a bare stone cliff, even a soaring bird. It is not the tracks the lizard leaves, boy, or the feathers that fall from the bird’s wings, but the reek of fear they leave when they know they are sought. I can smell that fear on all creatures, great and small … and I can smell it on you, even in this damnable rain.”

  “And you smell like the piss of a leprous goat,” Leitos snapped with a flare of irrepressible malice.

  The back of the man’s rough hand crashed into Leitos’s cheek before he registered movement. His head rocked back, and a warm trickle of blood mingled with cold raindrops on his cheek. Dazed, Leitos righted himself. He peered at the man with narrowed eyes, a smoldering hatred searing away his entrenched humility, daring to imagine that someday he would seek out such despicable men, as well as all Alon’mahk’lar, delivering upon them the bloody justice they had earned—

  The Hunter struck him again. The blow, harder by far than the first, knocked Leitos sprawling. Stunned, he floundered about, eyelids fluttering. He did not know how long he wallowed in the gritty mud of the riverbank, but eventually his head cleared. Cunning, he thought. You must use your wits.

  Storing away that precious tidbit, schooling his features to meekness, he pushed himself up and bowed his head in a show of surrender. The Hunter laughed, a deep mocking rumble that made Leitos’s stomach clench.

  “You cannot fool me so easily as that,” the Hunter drawled. “I can smell defiance as well as fear—and the first is fairly dripping off your skin … at least for now. By the time I return you to your masters, you will be timid as a suckling babe.”

  “Where are they,” Leitos asked, “my masters?” He needed time to plan, and if any Alon’mahk’lar were close, time would be all the more precious.

  The Hunter lashed out again. Leitos made a show of trembling before the man, even as the tip of his tongue ran over his split lower lip. If the abuse kept up, he might have to act sooner than he would like, which could only be to his disadvantage.

  “First lesson, runt,” the Hunter said, “is to speak only when I give you leave to do so. The second lesson is that you do what I tell you, when I tell you to do it. Stand up.”

  Leitos got to his feet. Falling into the role of the compliant slave was easier than he liked, but he would use that to his advantage … somehow he must. His cheek and jaw throbbed from the Hunter’s blows, but those pains were the least of his concerns. What mattered was getting far away from the man, and the Alon’mahk’lar that he served.

  The Hunter stood as well, towering half a pace over Leitos, a creature of menacing power with broad shoulders, a deep chest, and fists seemingly carved from stone. The dark hollow of his hood turned slowly. Leitos felt as if he were looking into a yawning mineshaft that delighted in destroying anyone foolish enough to enter. This man was as dangerous, maybe more so, than any Alon’mahk’lar he had ever encountered.

  The Hunter struck Leitos again, a vicious backhand. He reeled, trying to stay on his feet. Blood ran freely over his face from many cuts, and his skull felt cracked. He stumbled and collapsed.

  “That, boy, was for speaking out of turn. This,” he said, kicking Leitos in the ribs hard enough to flip him onto his back, “is to make sure that you learned the first lesson.”

  Leitos retched, but felt detached from his agonies and the situation. All thoughts of planning an escape had soared away. He had to act, now.

  Groaning, he rolled to his belly. When he could see straight, he dared not look at his assailant, but rather focused on his fists sunk into the mud under his nose. Blood dribbled from his ruined lips in fat crimson drops onto the backs of his hands, staining his skin and mingling with the stinking mud. Below that, the fingers of one hand secretly clenched a river stone.

  “Had enough … or do you need another lesson?”

  Fury exploded within Leitos’s breast, threatening to drive back all his caution and sense. But if he gave in and attacked the Hunter outright, he would gain nothing, and more than likely lose any future chance at escape. Retaliate or bide his time? It was a difficult choice, left him grinding his teeth in frustration.

  Over long moments, a sense of dark calm invaded his senses. He had made his decision, for good or ill. He began crawling away, first on his belly, then on his hands and knees, and then he was up, wobbling along on unsteady feet.

  “Where are you going, boy?” the Hunter asked in derision. He made no attempt to follow, and Leitos judged that the man’s self-assurance was too great by far.

  Grow strong and cruel, Adham’s voice intoned, swirling like a sweet poison through Leitos’s veins. He kept walking, fueling his strength of will with an image of his grandfather standing tall against the Alon’mahk’lar.

  “There is nowhere to go, boy,” the Hunter said, now sounding more irritated than mocking.

  Leitos did not respond, just placed one foot in front of the other. A little farther. Dripping mud concealed the stone held in his fist, just in case.

  He crossed the rising riverbank and scrambled up and over a sandy berm cut by the river when it flowed even higher than it did now. At his back, the Hunter had finally begun to drift after him. Just a little farther. To the fore, the desert stretched out, all sand, rock, and low-growing scrub made pungent by the rain. The only difference between when he had fled the mines and now was the storm had wetted the land, and clouds blotted the harsh sunlight. That last would soon end, for the storm had relented as it pushed farther north. Some many leagues south, dark clouds, having spent their wrath, were parting, showing patches of blue. Leitos trained his eyes on the west, and stumbled into a trot.

  “BOY!” The Hunter bellowed.

  With a fleeting wish that he had never encountered the Hunter, that he had been able to remain on his little island where there was food, water, and safety in isolation, he stepped up his pace.

  A moment later, he was running. His legs, stiff and shaky at first, soon found their rhythm; the muscles loosened, his stride lengthened. Hard breathing forced the last of the river water from his lungs, and he spat out the silty residue. The throbbing bruises from the Hunter’s blows faded. A single shout, incoherent for the rage it held, chased after him. Leitos did not heed it. Let him catch me! He laughed aloud, knowing a man so huge could not.

  The sound of pounding feet, closing fast, evaporated his mirth.

  Disbelieving, Leitos looked around. The big man was coming at a clip made all the more terrifying for its impossible speed. The Hunter’s hood still covered his face, but his motley garb streamed out behind him like the shredded wings of a bat.

  Leitos bowed his head and ran faster. Where a rock or patch of prickly scrub presented itself as a barrier, he leaped over it. On the flat, his feet splashed through puddles, or dug into mud.

  The Hunter matched his speed … then began closing the distance.

 
Leitos pushed himself into a flat sprint. He could not keep the pace long, but hoped he could outlast his pursuer. Heart thumping wildly, his blood pounded in his ears. Every breath came as ragged gasps, and still the footfalls at his back matched his, falling heavily, beating unceasingly at the damp desert floor, getting nearer with every step.

  The Hunter had no trouble catching a breath, and had plenty to spare. “When I catch you, I’ll peel the hide from your rancid flesh a strip at a time!” he roared.

  You will never catch me, Leitos thought, but he no longer believed it. He ran as far and as long as he could, fully aware that he was losing the race. There was nowhere he could go that the Hunter could not follow. Grow strong and cruel. His grandfather’s command was his only hope, his only choice.…

  Without slowing, Leitos rolled the stone in his palm until he had a secure and, he prayed, a deadly grip.

  The Hunter surged closer, growling low in his throat like a demonic creature released from the Thousand Hells. Fleetingly, Leitos wondered again if a man had pulled him from the river, or actually something born of Geh’shinnom’atar.

  With the Hunter right on his heels, Leitos pressed ahead with the last of his strength. His searching eyes locked on a jutting rock braced by a pair of scraggly bushes. He flew at it, imagining one possible outcome, and willing what he desired to happen.

  At the last possible instant, Leitos turned sharply, ducking the huge man’s grasping hand. The Hunter twisted in a wild bid to catch hold of Leitos, and then his foot collided with the edge of the rock, stopping dead his forward momentum. He flipped through the air, limbs spread wide in four opposing directions. On the far side of the rock, the Hunter landed on his head with a heavy grunt, and crumpled limply to his back.

  Leitos skidded to a halt, the stone raised in his hand, intending to hurl it if the man moved. The Hunter did not stir. He sucked wind until his heart quieted, then edged closer.