by Aldrea Alien
And if I don’t want to? The question whispered through his mind, chilling all thought. Everything he’d been fighting for was gone. The army was the only purpose left to someone with his abilities. Or run. And be hunted by other hounds, if not Tracker himself.
The elf took up Dylan’s hand, entwining their fingers and tucking Dylan’s forearm against his leather-encased chest. “Come, there are still more levels to check, yes?”
Dylan nodded. “It’s where the children live,” he whispered, his stomach quivering as he spoke. Large dormitories took up much of the space. Segregating the children in the middle was the majority of the guardian sleeping quarters and the room where children learnt basic academics before moving on to magic. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see what had happened there.
They made their way through the corridors to the stairs in silence. There seemed to be far more bodies here than on the last flight of stairs. Guardians, mostly, with a few of the elderly spellsters who aided them in teaching. They piled around the bottom of the steps.
Tracker gave a considering hum as he gently made a path through the corpses by pushing them aside with his sword. “You know what I have not seen?”
“Any sign of life?” He didn’t ask what the elf had found in his search, but he could guess by the lack of enthusiasm, what the man hadn’t discovered.
“That and the marked lack of aggressors. The garden was littered with those who fell in a counterattack, but up here?” Tracker shook his head. “A small group should not be able to wreak this much destruction. It is as if everyone had been taken by surprise. It suggests a stealth not seen in the attacks below. Or…”
“Or what?”
“They did not perceive the group as a threat. Take them for example.” The hound pointed his sword to the group of guardians he’d piled to one side. “The wounds are all in their backs. They were attempting to flee downwards. That suggests the attacks started at the top of the tower.”
“Or that they were missed on the upward pass,” he countered. “Maybe whoever attacked took out all the spellsters first and cleaned up the guardians later.”
“If that is the case, then these attackers were sloppy.”
“Sloppy?” Dylan echoed incredulously. “They slaughtered everyone.”
Tracker closed his eyes and sighed. “My apologies. They did, yes. I meant only that there may be a chance some escaped this fate.”
He peered at the man, trying to determine whether Tracker was the sort to feed him false hope. “How?” This building was a trap.
“I spied something peculiar with the outer walls through one of the windows,” the man said as he started up the stairs. “As well as what must have been quite the scuffle in the garden, part of the wall has seemingly collapsed without natural cause.”
Frowning, Dylan followed the elf. There were few who’d be capable of such a feat. It would take an immense amount of control to not let all that stone crumble before it was time. “Do you think the Udyneans are responsible for this?”
“I would say not. They do not strike me as the type to leave a building like this standing. Nor have I seen much in the way of magical wounds on any of the victims. In truth?” He sighed. “I wish I had a proper answer to give you. There is so much here that makes little sense.”
The children’s dormitories were mercifully empty as was the school, although there were hurried signs of people fleeing. He supposed most of the children would’ve been herded up the stairs at the first sign of danger.
Scorch marks decorated the walls, a terrified child’s retaliation. Dylan stared at the strange outlines each blast had made. Some of them almost looked like impressions of people, but there were no charred corpses or ash to correlate with such an attack.
They passed a small room tucked under the stairs leading up. He remembered it being a storage room for the school. The door that had always been locked when he was a child now hung open and a dark red puddle pooled just inside.
Tracker crept up to the doorway, peeking around the edge of the door. A faint gasp left his lips. Before Dylan could utter a word, the man lunged backwards, pushing him away from the room and closing the door in one swift move. “You do not need to see that.”
“And you don’t need to protect me,” Dylan snapped back.
“Unleashed spellsters are always under the immediate protection of the nearest hound.” The man spoke as if reciting an oath, his voice carrying a dry, passionless note.
Dylan made a show of straightening his robes. “I’m a unique circumstance, remember.”
Tracker bobbed his head. “However, you are still under my protection. That means I am responsible for your mental wellbeing as well as your physical.” He halted at the base of the stairs leading to the adult dormitories. Dozens of guardian bodies lay strewn across the steps. Swords of all lengths littered the pile.
Dylan tried not to see them, to ignore the perverted call to pick out familiar faces amongst the mass. If his guardian had fallen here, he didn’t want to know. “What is it?” he whispered. “Did you hear something?”
“Hmm? Sadly no, I…” The hound removed an unlit torch from its sconce and held it near enough to Dylan’s hand to ignite it. “I think the next level might be too much for you. It would be best if you remained here.”
“You said there was a chance someone might’ve escaped. What if some were missed? What if you find them?” Would a frightened child trust the hound? Would they even trust another spellster?
A grin, seemingly made of a little more bravado than it should, split the man’s lips. The elf rolled his shoulders. “Oh, there is no need to worry about me. I will be fine. I am rather more concerned on what might happen to you if I let you venture any further, especially if we fail to find anyone.”
“In other words, you think I won’t cope.” It was perfectly understandable. Besides today, the only time the man had seen his reaction to carnage was the rather one-sided fight with the bandits outside Toptower. “I coped when finding the main army camp was destroyed and the front line before then and when my scouting party was ambushed. I won’t fall apart here.”
The man laid his hand on Dylan’s chest. “This is your home. I would not expect you to remain detached from all this. But I also do not see how anyone further up could have survived and I would rather not expose you to what we may find there.”
“You want to coddle me? I’m supposed to be a weapon. They don’t coddle my kind in the army.”
“No, they do not,” the man quietly agreed. “They just forget you are still a person.”
Dylan frowned. He didn’t recall seeing the elf there and the lieutenant acted as if Fetcher had been the only hound in the entire camp. “What would you know about that?”
“What? You think us hounds do not talk to each other? Fetch is a dear friend. She has never liked the way the army treats her spellsters.”
He recalled his arrival at the main camp, of the man who’d knocked him to the ground with one swing of his hand. “You wouldn’t have been able to guess it. They struck me on the first day. Enough that I bled.” Fetcher must’ve known, she had looked right at him lying in the dirt. “And she did nothing.”
Tracker nodded. “Once you are in the army’s command, there is little she could have done.”
“I thought hounds were above all but the king?” That was always how the guardians made it seem.
“We used to be, but not for some time now. Some of the hounds of old had conflicting interests in what a leashed spellster should be used for. Now, we rank lower than the crown’s lieutenants.”
“That still doesn’t explain why, if Fetcher didn’t like what was happening, she kept bringing us. Why not apply for another position?”
“The life of a hound does not work that way. I told you we are named for what we are good at, yes? That is our job. We are trained to improve on our natural abilities. They assign us a task based on that and it is our lot in life. You do not question it. Not twice.”
> “Why? What happens the first time that’s such a deterrent?”
Those honey-coloured eyes swung Dylan’s way. They’d gone brassy in the torchlight and soul-achingly hollow. “It might have changed since I was a boy, but they flogged me.”
“Actually…” he spluttered. “With a whip?”
“No, of course not,” Tracker scoffed. “They only use the whips on adults. I was… seven? Maybe eight years of age. Children that old are made to cut their own switches and bring them before their trainer.”
“Then they used it to beat you?”
“Only once the other hounds have gathered. They like to make a big show of it you see. Sometimes they will tie you down. Other times, you are allowed to protect yourself to a point. I was suspended from the ceiling by one arm.” He rubbed at his left shoulder. “They had to pop it back in once they were done.”
“And you continued to train as a hound?”
“We are born to this duty. There is nothing else I can become.”
“You said that before.” It’d been a week ago, when he learnt the man’s true name was a birth date, but he didn’t think he’d forget. “Exactly who decides you’re born to it?”
The elf shot Dylan a puzzled look. “The tower does. Most hounds are born here.”
“You’re a guardian’s child?” He’d only ever seen a few pregnant guardians and they never seemed to tend babies who weren’t spellsters. “Or possibly those of servants?” He supposed that was just as likely, although he couldn’t see a family giving up their newborn as easily as a guardian might have. “What do you know about your parents?”
“Mine?” Tracker frowned. “Well, my mother died trying to keep me—she fled the tower a day or so before having me—but it is possible my father was still here.”
Dylan gnawed on his lip, trying to make sense of the man’s words. A servant wouldn’t flee. A guardian might if she wanted to keep her child, but they weren’t bound to the tower if they had no charge to care for. “Your father. He was a servant, then? A guardian?”
The man’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Why would he be—?” Tracker shook his head. “No, he was a spellster. As was my mother. She fled and went into labour not long before the hound stationed here found her. My mother died giving birth to me.” A mirthless smile took his face. “A suitably fitting tale of becoming a hound, yes?”
It did sound rather like a rumour he’d hear circulating the tower gossips. “They told you both of your parents were spellsters? That… that can’t be true.” The only thing born of a spellster was another. No one said anything about hounds having the same origins.
Tracker hummed. “Do you know why hounds are so good at capturing spellsters?”
“Because you’ve been trained in it.”
The elf nodded. “Partly true. I told you, a hound is born. We are not like soldiers, choosing or being conscripted to fight. There are tests done on spellster babes and hounds are those who fail them. The crown claims us and we are trained as soon as we can hold a weapon. They teach us to enhance our natural talent and there are many trials to pass before we are allowed to hunt. Not everyone makes it through.”
“How can you be born as…” He waved his hand to indicate all of the man. “This?”
“The same way you were born a spellster. Only you cast magic and I… am unaffected by it.”
He stared at the elf. Tracker looked serious. “That’s impossible. Magic affects everyone.”
The hound shrugged. “I can show you sometime, if you like. It does not hurt and I do not mind.” He patted Dylan’s chest. “I am serious about you remaining here, though. Actually, it would be best if you waited for the others by the main entrance.”
“If there’s something up there and you get injured…” The words trailed off. “You didn’t actually need me with you for protection, did you?”
Tracker grimaced. “Not exactly, no. I had you come with me for your own safety.” He glanced over his shoulder. “But this is not what I expected. If you are concerned for my wellbeing, then go and wait for the others. If I am not back by the time they are, you can return for me. I would prefer to not have you doing it alone.”
“As if you can stop me.” He went to step past the elf and suddenly found himself flattened face-first against the wall with his arm behind his back. Pain shot through his shoulder.
“I do not want to have to tie you up,” the man grated, his breath heating the nape of Dylan’s neck. “Just in the off chance it is not safe to leave you here like that.”
“It’s my home,” he snapped over his shoulder. “I have a right to know what happened.”
Sighing, Tracker stepped away from him. The movement of light suggested he had retrieved the torch. “You do. But judging by the stairs, it is a slaughterhouse up there. I have no desire to subject you to that if I do not have to.”
Dylan rubbed at his shoulder, certain that something popped back into place as he rolled it. He’d had a shield up. He was sure of it. The hound must’ve gotten inside the perimeter before it could fully form.
The man eyed his actions, the torchlight throwing odd shadows over his face and turning his apologetic grimace into a ghastly thing. “Sorry. I am not used to doing that on someone quite so tall.”
He snatched the torch from the man’s hand. Tracker objected to this action slightly less than Dylan thought he would, which turned out to be not at all. “I’m going up there.” If anything, he might be able to retrieve some spare clothes from his old room. Providing the servants hadn’t gotten around to clearing it of his things.
“If that is your wish,” the man murmured as he followed Dylan up the stairs. “But I reserve the right to haul your arse out of here if I think it is too much.”
“Duly noted.”
Tracker was right, all the adult dormitories were overflowing with death. The children had fled up there with their guardians, their bodies covering the floor in a tangled mat, piled in places that made it almost impossible to check some of the rooms.
The man grasped his hand, once again linking their fingers. “Are you certain you want to continue?”
Dylan nodded. He had to be completely sure.
They searched each level to the last door, finding only more death. He reached the room he had shared with Sulin. Although two beds still filled the space, one side had been stripped of anything that didn’t belong to the alchemist. He turned from the sight before his resolve could falter.
The rooms of his friends were in a similar state, which led him to believe the attacks had happened during the day. Nestria would’ve been in the gardens, assisting the older children with learning to make shields and how to attack. He wasn’t sure what Henrie did most days, but if Sulin wasn’t in the alchemist’s quarters below, then he must’ve been in the gardens as well.
Perhaps they had escaped. Would any of his friends be capable of breaking through the wall? Let alone enough to leave the damage Tracker had spied? Maybe altogether. He wasn’t certain if he’d be able to do such a thing alone. The important thing was he hadn’t been able to identify them from the corpses, which meant there was a chance.
By the time they were ready to descend the tower, he rather wished he’d heeded Tracker’s advice. Seeing cribs cradling tiny broken bodies was an image that would be etched in his mind for some years. The first sight had left him angry, but now…
Now he was just tired. His thoughts ran in a seamless loop, unable to stop picking apart the reasoning behind it all.
Had the king gone mad? Had Udynea really found an alternate route and slain everyone who didn’t surrender? Or was there some fanatic group of Talfaltaners roaming the land, slaughtering whomever they saw as unclean?
They reached the tower entrance to find the women already waiting on the steps. By the look on their faces, their search had been just as fruitful.
“Well,” Authril said as she stood. “The pigeons are gone.”
The hound grunted. “No doubt slaughtered to make su
re no one could alert the king.”
“So, I guess that means we’re leaving?”
Tracker turned his gaze to the sky. The bright, cloud-strewn blue of the heavens was slowly turning dark. “We will be hard-pressed in finding a suitable place to camp before nightfall. I do not fancy sleeping in the open when we have no idea who did this.”
“I’d rather not paint a target on my back,” Marin agreed. “Why don’t we rest here for the night? I don’t think anyone’s coming near here.”
“Are you truly suggesting we sleep in a place full of dead?” The hound grinned. “You have just made yourself a little more interesting, my dear hunter.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
Tracker rubbed at his chin. “There is a whole level in the tower where most of the rooms remained untouched. We could sleep in them. I doubt anyone would search so high even if they do venture beyond the gates.”
Dylan’s stomach churned. He knew precisely which level the man spoke of.
“It’s settled, then,” Authril said. “We camp here tonight and make for Whitemeadow in the morning. The king must be informed as quickly as possible.”
One night. He could do that. It wasn’t as if the corpses were going to harm them. And, at the very least, it would give him a chance to say goodbye.
The measly glow of the single torch he’d lit illuminated just enough of the children’s dormitory for him to see. He recalled this place from his youth, where he’d been packed in with the other young boys.
Rows of beds filled the vast room, their mattresses naught but straw. Dylan sat on one and couldn’t help but smile. Just as hard as I remember. He bounced a little, trying to convince himself that he was merely testing the firmness and not attempting to block out all thoughts of the children who’d last roamed these rooms.
It was harder than he thought.
He was alone for now, the women having chosen a similar room further down the hall. Where the hound had vanished to, he didn’t know. For the first time ever, there was silence. No laughter. No chatter. What a senseless waste.