by K. J. Coble
“And yet they’d allow a man into their midst who’d already slain three of their kind.”
“Two. Vengess fell of his own accord.” He tried to make the words light but Varya’s hardening features stole their humor. He gave his days-old stubble a scratch to avoid looking at her. “It’s the strength to which they pledge, and the man who has it. They’re not much for any kind of Cause, but they take their oaths seriously...” he shrugged again “...to a point.”
He looked out across the falls into the night, felt a prickle of spray-dashed wind on his face as a plan crystallized.
“...to a point...”
***
“Wake up, my son...” Mother’s dead face stared from the Eternal Dark, netherlight of the Beyond glinting off a single tear. “Anzo, wake up.”
Anzo’s eyes jolted open from the dream. Varya was screaming. He lunged for his sword.
Something crashed onto his chest, pinned his outstretched arm to the ground. A knee ground down into his ribs. Sobbing for breath, Anzo looked up through spots of oxygen starvation to see Destan with a dagger trembling over his face.
Stupid...I’m fucking dead...
But the triumph of an easy kill cooled from Destan’s eyes as surprise and pain bulged them out. A huge forearm fastened around his throat while a second hand went to the wrist and squeezed. The dagger fell from trembling fingers with a clang. As Anzo watched, stunned, a monstrous figure pulled Destan off his chest and dragged him backwards into the fluttering light of their campfire. Destan’s surprise became terror as the giant whipped him about in its grasp like a carcass thrashed in the fangs of a wolf and clutched his throat in a two-handed grip.
“Just like Vengess,” a no-longer-stricken Heathen rumbled into the other Vhurr’s face. “Cowards.”
His face darkening to the color of a bruise, Destan flailed against the giant boy’s grip. “Traitor...” He pawed for the lad’s face. “Turn against...our gods...turn against...your people...”
“My people?” Heathen snorted. “You’d have let Vengess finish me.”
Varya screamed again. A panicked glance about showed Anzo she wasn’t in their curtained-off site. He staggered to his haunches, wobbled and labored for the cool rush of air in his lungs. Heathen shouldered ahead of him, carrying Destan one-handed now, the free hand balled into a fist the size of a skull. Anzo scooped up his sword and lurched after them.
In the cavern proper, Heste, the last of Vengess’ ill-fated group, had Varya pinned to a boulder with her hands bound. A pair of feral-faced women was in the process of gagging her. Heste paused to loosen the ties of his leggings while one of the women cackled, promising the Initiate worse when Heste finished.
Alarm spread to the rest of the Flinarr like a shockwave, folk scurrying from their fires to the source of the disturbance, cries and shouts echoing to the vaulted heights of the cave. Others remained at their camps, huddling closer together, casting haunted glances towards the altercation, suggesting that such occurrences were neither new nor unexpected.
All froze at the sight of Heathen and Anzo emerging from behind the curtain.
Heste jolted back from Varya, one of his crones knocked aside by the sudden motion. Varya met Anzo’s gaze, tears about her eyes but determination in them, not fear and never defeat. A lot tougher than I gave her credit for. Anzo offered her a sharp nod that he hoped gave her courage. Have to tell her that...if we live through this...
“Throat-cuttings and rapine...” Heathen bellowed. He gave Destan a shake and vertebrae parted with a rotten stick crack. The man twitched but Anzo could tell it was the nerves firing through a corpse’s slackening frame. “This is the Path of Heroes? This is what your Orkall asks of you?”
Heste shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, hands falling from ties he’d never have the time to tighten. Panic slackened his face for a moment. Beady eyes flashed to the club he’d left a few feet away and the fear began to evaporate, was replaced by the first flare of courage Anzo had seen from the man. His women tensed, feeling what was approaching, one of them scampering back.
Heste lunged for his weapon.
Heathen threw Destan’s body with a roar that could rattle boulders loose. The corpse slammed into Heste while he was half bent to grab the club. Impact snapped him backwards, catching one of his women with an out flung arm to drag her into the tangle of his dead comrade’s limbs. They floundered together. Heste pulled free, scuttled to his feet with blood pouring from a shattered nose. Eyes white with terror glimmered as he spun and rushed for the nearest cave, letting out a forlorn shriek that matched the bawl of the crone still trapped under Destan’s body.
Ulfun was hurrying to the confrontation with the pair of his spearmen. Heste rebounded off the larger Vhurr’s armored chest and landed on his back. He tried to get up but Ulfun’s boot planted on his chest arrested the motion. Ulfun looked up to take in the scene, eyes meeting Anzo’s for a fiery instant. His face contorted as he glared down again and Heste began to squirm.
“Wait...you don’t—no!”
Ulfun’s blade winked coldly in the firelight, plunging through ribcage and organs to ping against the stone under Heste’s thrashing body. The dying man’s hands pawed up the bloodied steel, nearly reached the sword hilt. With a grimace of disdain, Ulfun drew the blade free and Heste’s struggles quickly ceased.
“How long, Ulfun?” Anzo roared into the gruesome silence that filled the aftermath of the fight. He limped to Varya’s side and knelt, began working at her bonds. Heste’s other crone, still lingering near, saw the hate blazing in his face and fled with a scream.
Ulfun approached, naked blade black with Heste’s gore. He paused to glare at the other Flinarr thronging behind him to get a look. The crowd shivered and began to break up. The woman trapped under Destan moaned and reached for Ulfun’s boot. He stepped aside to avoid the touch and kicked her in the head the way one chastises a beaten dog.
“How long would you have let it go?” Anzo rasped, his voice failing him as adrenaline faded. He got Varya’s wrists free and glared at the man. “Would you have let them finish us? Is that your way?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ulfun smote his chest, a touch of hurt pride in his stiffening stance. “You have tasted from the chalice. You are one of us. All are protected.” He pointed the tip of his blade at the tangle of Destan. “These dogs have forsaken that fellowship and Orkall’s judgment is upon them.”
A derisive snort from Heathen drew Ulfun’s attention. The huge youth leaned against a rock pillar, still towering, but a bit of sag to his mass now as a hand went to his abdomen.
“And you...” Ulfun’s grip on his weapon tightened “...you have made a recovery nothing short of—” his lips twitched “—magical.” A glance flicked Varya’s way.
“Maybe,” Heathen shot back, “I don’t need your god for miracles.”
Ulfun ground his teeth at the other Vhurr in what could not be called a smile.
A pitiful squall tore through the cavern. On its far side, Heste’s other crone stumbled and fell with a small pack of women trailing her. Rocks filled the air, some connecting as the woman tried to rise, knocking her back to the stone floor. The pack closed in and her screams were lost in the rising clamor of her pursuers’ outraged howls. Rocks and fists crashed home. Then silence.
Varya leaned against Anzo, shivered. She worked the gag free and put her head into the crook of his shoulder.
“It is finished,” Ulfun said. His spearmen, his enforcers, nodded at his flanks. He took out a rag and began wiping his blade clean nonchalantly. “No one else will disturb you.”
“You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not reassured,” Anzo growled.
The Vhurr’s nostrils flared with a moment of challenge. “I said no one.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” Anzo scooped Varya up in his arms and started for the corner of their little camp.
“Get some rest,” Ulfun called at his back. Anzo paused to look at him. “I will call
on you at dawn. Our numbers are now quite reduced—” touch of sardonic smile at that “—and our provisions are short. We will be to the hunt.”
“Dawn, then.”
Anzo carried Varya to the fire and set her down. She began to shake as he fed kindling into the blaze. “I’m sorry, Anzo. I know you told me not to, but it happened so fast. I couldn’t manage my craft before they...” She trailed off as Heathen joined them.
Anzo watched the boy sag into his blankets, hands tight at his belly, pain that had been invisible as he pulped a man’s neck with his bare hands returning in lines at the corners of his eyes. “Go on,” Anzo told Varya. To hell with giving away things—the kid’s with us now, like it or not.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’m all right.” It sounded like a denial.
Anzo put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Heathen rumbled.
“I don’t see how it’s your fault,” Anzo replied. “In fact, without you we wouldn’t be here to care.” He regarded the massive youth and couldn’t help the way his palm itched to be at the grip of his sword. “Makes me want to ask, though: why didn’t you just let them have their way? You could have.”
He shrugged. “You could have let Vengess slit my throat.”
Anzo exchanged a glance with Varya, who smiled a little. “It’s that simple?”
“No.” Heathen grimaced as he lowered himself onto his back. “But it will do for now.”
Anzo’s hand stayed near the saber but he smiled. “All right, then. But I’ve got to know something. Heathen’s not your given name?”
The boy threw a blanket over his shoulders and rolled away from them, suddenly looked so much smaller, like a child scared awake by nightmares. “You heard them. There was this priest, an Aurid we captured in one of our sweeps. I liked what he had to say. The others—” his mass twitched “—didn’t. One morning he was gone. But I never returned to Orkall and they’ve called me that ever since.”
“So, what do we call you?” Varya asked.
“Heathen will do,” he answered after a pause. Moments later his snores shook the blankets.
Anzo chuckled. “I think he has the right idea.” He patted Varya’s arm. “You should rest.”
“I’m...not sure that I can.”
“Try.” Anzo rose and went to draw the curtains backs across their campsite.
On the far side of the cavern, now swathed in gloom again with the Flinarr returned to their huddles and fires, a glimmer shone from the cave mouth of Greaus’ fire hall. Anzo froze, hand falling from the curtain to his sword.
Greaus’ swollen, misshapen form stood silhouetted against the light of his hall. At his side Henna pranced and fondled and shook. The pair seemed terribly pleased.
Anzo drew the curtain with a savage swipe. Sleep, he knew, would not be easy coming.
Chapter Five
Siege of the Stone Folk
Anzo trudged down to the stone bridge by the falls with dawn lightening the sky to gray. The aches of two fights for his life and more years than he wanted to admit gave his strides a stiffness he struggled to hide. Fog billowed from the gorge, mixed with the spray of the falls and the bleariness of his fatigue. He’d spent the remainder of the night watching Varya toss in her sleep and listening to Heathen snore while the fire simmered down to a nervous glow.
A troop of older men was making their way across the bridge in the feeble light, nets and fishing poles fashioned from sticks over their shoulders. Ulfun waited on the near side, watching them with something that might have been wistfulness, perhaps a desire to be with them instead. Four men waited with him, seeing to weapons and bits of armor, his enforcers among them. Spying Anzo, one of them grunted to Ulfun.
The Vhurr turned to Anzo as he joined them. “The Slayer from the West arrives.”
Anzo managed a half smile and tightened his sword belt. “I’m not much of a hunter.”
“They’ll be heading down into the gorge to see what they can pull from the creek.” Ulfun nodded after the fishing party. “We, on the other hand, will after a different kind of prey.” Chortles passed darkly amongst the others and Ulfun pointed at Anzo’s blade. “Your kind of talent will be just the thing we need on this kind of hunt.”
The patter of a drum lilted from above. Anzo glanced to the cave openings, noted the glitter of campfires beginning to be stoked to new life, tendrils of smoke worming blue-black into the brightening air. There was no sign of Greaus’ creature and Anzo couldn’t help a sense of relief. Glancing at Ulfun’s tightening visage, he picked out dread in the creases of the man’s face.
“Let’s be at it.” Ulfun unstrapped the much-abused helm from his broad belt and patted it onto his skull. The other Flinarr scrambled out onto the bridge ahead of him, enveloped in the mists and gone as quickly as wraiths. Ulfun and Anzo followed.
The party scampered along the spine of the great hill, passing as shadows among trees sagging under the weight of their autumn-tinged canopies. The Flinarr moved with silence that impressed Anzo, men clearly used to the woods. With the sun blazing at the tops of the Bulwarks, they followed gulley and gorge south, away from the site of Anzo’s camp the first morning, winding their way deeper and deeper in the dark of the foothills.
The Vhurrs allowed Anzo to linger to the rear of the group. Ulfun’s trust was certainly reinforced by the fact that Varya and Heathen would be easy meat for the rest of the Flinarr, should Anzo turn treacherous. Nothing about them suggested rage at the death of their kind at Anzo’s hand, affected them any more than the inconvenience of a misplaced tool. It was the Vhurr way: you’re strong enough to keep up, or you’re a corpse.
It was the way they’d bring to the whole world if they weren’t stopped.
By midmorning, Ulfun called a halt atop a low knob shrouded in undergrowth and thick pines. The sun-dappled surface of the Lydirian winked through breaks in the forest below. Nostrils flaring in the crisp air, Anzo thought he picked up the faint tinge of wood smoke and wondered in a queasy instant if their twisting course had brought them near the fortified landing of the Legion.
Ulfun hissed and made a few tight gestures at the other Vhurrs. A pair peeled off and disappeared into the green dark to the right. The others backtracked the way they had come and were lost to the woods in moments. Ulfun settled into the brush and pulled off his helmet to scratch at his scalp.
“What now?” Anzo asked.
“We wait.” Ulfun produced a carved bone comb and began working it through his beard. “The others will let us know what’s near.”
“A camp?” Anzo sank into the undergrowth at Ulfun’s side to hide unease.
Ulfun nodded. “Hopefully it’s nothing more than refugees, easy pickings.” A baleful eye and a sly smile flicked towards Anzo. “What did you think we were out here for?”
Anzo shrugged in feigned nonchalance. “It’s nothing I’ve not seen before. It’s just that there was some kind of disturbance to the north a couple nights ago. The Aurids were making some kind of landing.”
“I’m no idiot,” Ulfun grumbled. “Where there’s ten Aurids there are usually fifty more. I told that fool Vengess he would be prowling too close to the pretty-boys.” The baleful look returned. “That was when he happened across you.”
Anzo nodded and drew a hand across his brow to hide the speckle of cool sweat there. “We were trying to avoid a run-in. Naturally, they’d love to have their soft hands on someone like me.”
“Naturally.” Ulfun put the comb away and his free hand might have edged closer to his sword grip. “One with the mark of the Vrym Kyn and on this side of the river might find himself right back in the slave pens, or crucified.”
Anzo shifted to conceal the creep of his fingers to the pommel of his own weapon. “Well, with the Marovians out the way, that won’t be so easy for them anymore.”
“Yes...” Ulfun may have relaxed a bit at that, but something darkened his face. “Many things have changed.”
�
��Not that I care how the bastards met their well-deserved doom,” Anzo said, “but what happened to them?”
The darkness about Ulfun deepened. “No one is certain. I...happened across a few of them after it happened. It was as though a great battle had taken place, down near the river where they always kept their largest camps.” Blue eyes glinted with a wild light that echoed old panic. “But there was no other tribe. It was like they’d been fighting each other, attacking everyone in sight like mad dogs.” He shivered.
“No one saw anything else?”
Ulfun waved an irritated hand. “Speak no more of such things.”
Anzo relented. “Tell me of our Lord Greaus, then. How did you come to serve him?”
The other man’s smile returned with a sneaky flicker. “He has my loyalty, if that’s what you’re about.”
“And mine.” Anzo grinned. “You have the conspirator’s mind, my friend.”
Ulfun’s smile tensed. “And I can recognize it in another. You were Vyrm Kyn, you say. They were known for their treacheries, every bit as much as the Marovians were.”
Again, Anzo relented, thought of another way at the man. “I’ve no treachery left. I only seek to fill my chalice with a Hero’s Draught, for as much time is left to me.”
“As do I.” Ulfun’s voice went soft, tension leaving his bristling frame. “You would not question so if you had seen our Lord in his prime. Greaus gathered us together when the troubles began in the east. He kept us going after so much, after the Hamrak and the Erevulans began preying upon us. And the Faces—” he grimaced at some half-suppressed memory “—wild animals that hunted us to the ground.”
“So, what changed?”
Ulfun picked at a green sapling, wound it in his fingers and then snapped it off with a sharp, angry movement. “He got tired, I think. He found Henna.” The name came out a curse. “Battle and glory no longer filled his heart, only sitting in his cave...with her...rotting.”