by Jayden Woods
*
Sean and his father lived on one of the most dangerous mountains in Vikand other than the Great Volcano itself. For generations, members of the Wolven bloodline had lived here, for who else would want to? The so-called Wolven mountain was notorious for its sharp granite spikes, its walls of white and gray foliated slate, and its jagged talus of broken obsidian around the base. The small mountain held a plethora of fatal falls, flat unscalable surfaces, and mazes of black glassy stones that could distort one’s vision and trap him forever in illusion.
Sean knew the path to his home because his father had trained him to traverse it as a small boy, and Sean had practiced it many times since. The only other person who knew the same path was his sister, Shora, and she had left this continent for another long ago.
Sometimes, Sean looked forward to the climb homeward more than home itself. The act of climbing helped clear Sean’s head of the noise of civilization. He loved the sound of the wind against the bluffs. He loved the solidity of the stone under his fingertips. The path home would never change, unless the earth itself willed it. Only an earthquake could morph the path, or perhaps an eruption of the far-off volcano, which had not erupted for centuries. But no matter how often mortal men raged wars or built kingdoms, this mountain would stay the same.
That’s what he told himself, anyway, as the powdery slate rubbed the blood from his fingertips.
The simple shack of his home, unlike the process of climbing, sometimes required a harsh adjustment from city-life. At first, he would begrudge the long trips to the stream to collect water. He would also hate the taste of old meat, packed and salted for his return. The silence within the wooden walls could be deafening. The heat of his own hearth-fire would stifle him, yet he would curse the long trek back down the rocks to gather timber. He knew that it was neither the simplicity of nature nor the loss of civilization that bothered him most. The hardest part was adjusting to his own irksome company.
Eventually, the adjustment would occur. He would feel peaceful in his home, and he would not have a care as to what happened next. Perhaps he would anticipate the day his father returned, sometimes with dread, sometimes with excitement. Other times, he might look forward to—or apprehend—his next inevitable assassination contract. Until then, he would dwell in a lengthy and peaceable span of solitude.
This time, however, he had not even had time to adjust when the sound of a trumpet blasted over the mountain and awoke him from silence.
Normally, Sean would ignore such a sound. Every once in awhile, people desiring the services of the Wolvens would blast their trumpets up the mountain in an attempt to lure one of them down. Sometimes, Sean or his father would answer the call. Most of the time, they did not.
This trumpet played a certain melody, however: one Sean recognized with a profound sense of dread. It was the tune of the royal Polemarch, Leonard Khan himself.
He walked from his shack to the edge of the mountain bluff. Far below, amidst the obsidian talus of the mountain, at least a hundred soldiers in their furs and plated armor awaited the Wolven’s attention.