by Glynn James
“With every light comes a shadow.” - Dustfall
The saga continues...
The Valk swarm and the Cygoa assault the Elk in a violent attempt to wipe the T’Yun descendants from the land. Jonah must find his family and unite the clans as Seren returns with a technology that could decisively end the war.
From bestselling authors J. Thorn and Glynn James comes Dustfall, a new post-apocalyptic series chronicling one man’s challenge and his epic quest to save what remains of humanity.
Dustfall, Book Four - Sons of the Lost
By J. Thorn and Glynn James
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Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
Table of Contents
Dustfall, Book Four - Sons of the Lost
First Edition
Copyright © 2017 by J. Thorn and Glynn James
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Edited by:
Andrea Harding
For more information:
http://www.dustfall.uk
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
Chapter 1
Jonah kicked at the pile of rubble, sending a cloud of grey dust into the air and scattering burned splinters across the ground. The building had once been large, big enough to house many carts and dozens of people. Jonah remembered a few times when its roof—when it had one—had protected the Elk from freezing weather or a storm on their journey to Eliz. Now the ancient timbers were little more than charcoal and broken fragments. It had been a barn and one of the two dozen buildings that made up the settlement of Rocky Mount. It had stood there for centuries before his people had come, but now, as he looked around at the immolated, blackened shell and collapsed roof, he realized that it would not provide shelter for anyone ever again. Its existence would fall into the void, a memory lost among countless others.
Not a single building stood intact, such was the lack of respect the Cygoa had for a place old and revered. It had been a waystation his whole life, and over the centuries to hundreds of clans, and now it was gone forever. Even the fields where crops grew—one of the few places they did, because of the shifting of seasons across most of the lands—were scorched.
That, he thought, could be fixed in a year or so, when the ashes had been ploughed back into the soil, but without the buildings to store the crops, no one would use it. Rocky Mount would soon become just one more of the numerous abandoned and forgotten places that covered the land.
Jonah sighed and turned away from the ruin. It was one problem of many, and it was the least of his, right now.
“How far away are they now?” he asked the young warrior standing a few feet away.
Jonah realized that he didn’t recognize the man and frowned, taking in the markings the man wore. He was from one of the new clans that had joined the six clans of Wytheville over the last few weeks. Most of them had broken apart during the collapse or the exodus of Eliz. Many clans had been decimated in the days that followed, and those that had survived were much weaker, in both numbers and power. Many had clung to the Elk and the other Wytheville clans, desperately hoping to survive, and he couldn’t turn them away. His father, Judas, would have sent them to their fates, but he was not his father.
“Chief, they are about a mile from here but moving quite slowly. Reports from scouts suggest they have not seen that our people are watching them yet, but they are heading directly here.”
Another warrior arrived, jogging through the soot and ruins. Jonah recognized this one as one of his own clan warriors. He reached out his arm and gripped the other man’s in greeting. “Tell me,” he said.
“Chief, they are down in numbers, hugely, maybe even only half, and those that remain look fit to drop,” said the warrior.
“Good,” said Jonah. “We can take advantage of that, if it comes to it. What of Solomon? The clans? Have they taken refuge?”
“They are in the forest, as you suggested, and Solomon has instructed them to build the circle with the carts.”
Jonah nodded his approval and looked across the charred field and down the hill toward the direction of the low hills and the forest from where the Nikkt approached.
A mile. Walking slowly, so we can expect them in maybe a half of an hour.
“We will make our stand here,” he said. “I want hunters in the low ruins along this way.” He pointed to the row of destroyed buildings that lined the crop field fifty yards away. “I want them ready to strike the Nikkt at long range before we engage, but to hold on my command.”
The warrior nodded. “Yes, Chief.”
“And I want every able warrior up here, in line, this side of the field. Everyone but the camp guards with Solomon.” He looked across the field at the uneven ground. If the Nikkt truly were exhausted but still wanted to fight, he would make them cross the uneven ground. It would slow them.
“How many, you say?” Jonah asked the first warrior.
“Maybe two hundred folks, but I would say no more than fifty or sixty warriors.”
Jonah nodded. “We outnumber them nearly ten to one, then,” he said, looking up at the fading light.
This will be a slaughter if they are foolish enough to attack us .
He watched the field as the warriors from the different clans arrived and took up position. Some of the hunter clans, armed with bows, headed for the ruins as he had instructed, but most took their place alongside other clans that they had never stood with before, allied in such considerable numbers for the first time since the days of the T’Yun horde.
Jonah took a dozen steps forward and looked along the length of the line.
How many now? He had thought maybe four hundred, but there
seemed many more than that. There could be five or even six hundred warriors, truly the largest combined war host that had walked the Earth in decades, and they awaited his command.
He sighed again. With all these warriors came families, and with the fields of Rocky Mount burned, the crops that supplied the clans for their return journey to Wytheville and the valleys were gone. How was he meant to feed all these people?
Thirty minutes later, as he had estimated, the first of the Nikkt left the edge of the forest and started across the dead crop field toward them. More shadows turned into figures as they left the tree line, and Jonah saw that although there were a dozen warriors at the front, many walked in among the clan, with the women, the elderly, and the children. They were not in fighting formation, and they seemed, in his opinion, to lack the will to do so. When the remnants of the Nikkt clan came within fifty paces of the huge line of warriors that stood behind Jonah, he signaled for the hunters in the ruins to lower their bows. There could be no slaughter here. This was not the time for battle.
As if understanding the signal, a single figure broke from the huddle of Nikkt and waved his arm behind him. The Nikkt stopped as he paced across the field between them, some even collapsing to the ground. Jonah saw that it was the leader he had already met, pacing the distance alone without even an honor guard.
They must have been battered if they are reduced such, he thought.
The chief of the Nikkt stopped ten paces from Jonah and drew his hammer from his waist, sending a wave of tension along the line of warriors. Spears lowered, pointing toward him, and a few Elk warriors went to move forward, but Jonah raised a hand and sent them back into line.
The Nikkt leader placed the hammer on the ground, lifted his hands to show they were empty, and walked toward Jonah.
Chapter 2
Carlossa climbed the bank beside the road, treading over the rocks faster than the scout behind him. He was nearly a foot taller than the scout, and his muscular build made those around him appear small and weak in comparison, though the scout was a large man himself. The leader of the Cygoa expedition reached the summit of the hill and stood looking over the tree line at the sprawl of ruins that stretched for miles in the valley below. Ancient buildings slowly crumbling to rubble dotted the landscape among the multitude of smaller buildings. Many had fallen into complete ruin, but a few still stood as a testament to the vastness of the city that had once filled this area. In the very center of the dead metropolis stood half a dozen metal monoliths, giant buildings of the past that were little more than skeletal frames. Years of weathering and decay had stripped them of their outer skin and much of what may have been inside.
Carlossa had seen their like before but not as close as this. The massive giants were mostly avoided by men, their jagged and broken remains a marker of the curse upon the land around them. They could fall, he had been told when just a child, at any given moment. As it was, they stood fragile and creaking in the wind. He remembered how his own father had told him a tale of seeing such an event, many years before Carlossa’s birth.
“Tis where the Dustfall storms begin,” his father had said as they sat around the small campfire on the edge of Lake Eerie. The wind had been low that night, and the clouds clear, so that he could see far across the dark and poisoned waters, but never as far as the huge ruins that supposedly stood on the other side. No one ever saw those, for the taint was strong there. The taint was always strongest where the tall buildings were.
“When one of the ancient monoliths falls,” his father had continued, “all the ground shakes for miles and miles around, and the dust and bones of the dead is cast into the skies in a great angry cloud. Tis their way of reminding us, you know. The dead remind us each time a monolith falls. They remind us that they died in those places, killed by the great curse, the taint. They come sweeping along on the wind to choke us and fill our eyes so that it stings and bites us, and even after the wind and the dust have gone, some are afflicted with the sickness.”
His father had enjoyed frightening the children that would gather at his feet, Carlossa knew. But mostly he had enjoyed just telling his tales to anyone who would listen, and they would gather almost every night to hear his stories. Then, as he grew older, he travelled the Cygoa lands from one end to the other, and he had seen them—yes, he had seen these monoliths many times—at different places, but never a dozen in one place, still standing.
“What is this place?” he asked, turning to the scout.
“Greensboro, m’lord,” the scout replied, pointing in the direction of the towers. “Tis cursed in there, or so they say, so we sticks to the blacktop road all the ways around.”
“It’s always cursed where the towers lie,” Carlossa said with an impatient sigh. “Does anyone live there?”
“Don’t know,” said the scout. “Don’t fink so. Haven’t found anyone nearby or seen signs part from near the road. Though we haven’t ventured too far toward it. The old man remembers some of these routes and says that the cursed lived there when he was young, and we should avoid it lest we be cursed ourselves.”
Carlossa turned to look back at the road, where the long line of warbands waited, most of them now settled on the ground, eating or catching a few moments of rest. Eight warbands strong, not the two that Morlan had suggested only days before. Over three hundred warriors. Far more than Carlossa had ever commanded at one time. More news had been coming in from scouts that had travelled east, and Morlan had increased the force he was sending with Carlossa several times before they left. It was no longer a mission to hold the bridge; it was time to end the Elk and the other clans.
At the front of the line were the half dozen scouts that travelled with them in two groups of three. One group had been as far as the breach and back, reporting the vast number of refugees fleeing the crumbling eastern city of Eliz. The other scout group stayed mostly near to Carlossa and was headed by a grizzly old scout whose years must have been triple that of his own. The man could walk and even jog a little, and he slowed the whole group down, but Morlan had insisted that his knowledge of the old lands into which they now ventured was a knowledge that Carlossa would need.
“Still no sign of the Elk?” Carlossa asked.
“Only back at what they call Rocky Mount,” said the scout. “They haven’t come any farther yet, but they will, now that the land there has been torched. I’ve got nothing more on where they are headed, but we have a scout or two inside the camp now, taken in with the other refugees. Hopefully they will be able to tell us some news when they gets back this way.”
“We have infiltrated them?” Carlossa asked, surprised and pleased at the same time.
“Aye, but not any warriors like, so we’ve given up on the idea of taking that Jonah fellow out by stealth. The few that are in have been given instructions not to try to kill him unless they are sure of success—least not yet. If one of them can get close, mind, maybe they will, but for now they is just to gather as much to know as possible. They will move again soon—they have to, just to find food. Too many of them and no migrating going on.”
Carlossa nodded. “And when they move, we will find out where they are heading and make our plans to face them.”
Chapter 3
Jonah stood his ground and waited for the Nikkt leader to make his move. His hammer was paces behind him, too far out of reach, but a knife hidden in his belt would be all he needed if he chose to fight. However, the huge warrior merely stood there, waiting. Jonah noticed that he was covered in wounds that had not been treated. Patches of blood had dried in the fur and stained the leather, and on the man’s left shoulder there was a crusted-over wound that Jonah would have sworn went all the way to the bone. The man was a mess, and even at this distance Jonah could tell that the other people of the Nikkt clan looked no better. Some looked worse and would probably not last another day.
“You have come through challenging times,” Jonah said, taking his hand from the axe at his waist
.
“You mean we’ve been truly fucked over,” the Nikkt leader said, nodding. “Yes. That is how it is. Damn Valk followed us all the way from your old camp right to the breach. They attacked us day and night without rest. We’ve fought more battles in the last week than I can count us fighting in my life. All the way to that damn breach they chased us, taking my warriors, one at a time, and then we had to burn your bridge to stop them from following us farther.”
Jonah cringed.
“Apologies for that,” said the Nikkt leader, “but we had no choice. They were picking us off slowly, taking a few men in every battle, even when we took dozens of theirs. Their numbers, Jonah…” He shook his head and looked at the ground. “You would not believe it. They’re endless. Unless they somehow manage to bring the dead back each time. I lost more than half my warriors just getting to the breach. We had to stop them somehow.”
“You did the right thing,” said Jonah. “And you look exhausted. Do you come with a hand out for peace? We can help.”
The Nikkt leader laughed at that, a deep booming sound that echoed across the field, though Jonah could sense no real joy in the sound. “Hell, Jonah,” he said, with a weak laugh. “Peace?” The warrior lifted a hand to indicate the huge host of warriors behind Jonah. “Even at full strength I wouldn’t touch this. Have you taken in every damn clan from Eliz?”