by Steve Vera
Their perseverance was rewarded. Despite the sharp angles of the sheer mountain faces surrounding them on all sides, light and fresher air tugged them forward.
They were getting close. They might even get out today if it weren’t for Donovan.
“Go ahead of us then if you’re in such a rush,” Donovan said, though nobody had said a word. “If not...shut up.”
That would be Donovan, reading minds again.
When at last Sir Taksony signaled to stop, Gavin had to fight the urge to collapse. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so much walking after so much fighting. What was I thinking, I was in shape? Back in the first war, Gavin could have hiked thirty hours straight backward.
And then they stopped.
“Behold, brothers—The Stairs of Almitra,” Sir Taksony said with flourish.
It was nice to see no more bones or scraps of rotting cloth littering the floor. Even the constant reverberation of the Valley of Chaos was gone. All there was here was silence—thick, but no longer heavy. Empty.
“Beyond that mouth is a flight of stairs carved into the mountain itself. It is both long and arduous. Perhaps we should rest first and gather our strength—” Sir Taksony said.
“Screw that,” Skip said. “I say we take five, grab a swig of water and march up those bitches right now.” He looked around at the rest of them. “I don’t wanna spend a second longer down here than we need to.”
Gavin’s sentiments exactly. He appraised each of their fatigue levels and was concerned only for Donovan of all people. No ordinary human being would have made it this far after those injuries.
“You’re up for a climb, Donnie-boy?” Skip asked.
“Of course,” Donovan whispered, though it seemed dryer than usual. Raspier. “Everett.”
Skip smiled. “Right on.” He then pointed at Taksony and winked, showing yet again his uncanny ability to make friends wherever he went. “Lead the way, Captain. It’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.”
Chapter 31
Amanda had never been so happy to see a grasshopper. It was a big one, too, munching casually on a plump, maroon-trimmed leaf attached to one of the unfamiliar shrubs making their first appearances. It swiveled one of its long antennas in her direction, peered at her with one buggy eye and continued with its lunch.
“Anything?” Tarsidion asked Noah, who was kneeling in a monk’s stance in a circle of stones, listening to the wind. She shook her head.
“We’re still a far ways off,” Gavin said far more optimistically than he felt.
“I’m sure that’s it,” Noah said. Her eyes were as cloudy and distant as the horizon she stared into. It was their second day out of the Pass. The view before them was no-joke spectacular. The bleak and grim landscape of Almitra’s Pass had given way to tufts of green grass sprinkled with tough little flowers budding in pastel blue and pink. On one side of the sky, closer to the mountains they’d just left, the air was brooding and ominous. In the middle swirled a serpentine band of cloudless, cobalt sky, reminiscent of a ship’s wake. Amanda recognized the formation from her meteorology classes seventeen lifetimes ago—orographic clouds—most often seen at the end or beginning of a mountain range. The meeting of two air masses. On the other side of the aerial divide the sky was a pale, powder white wisped with vaporous high-level clouds.
Color. Life. They’d made it.
“What exactly are you guys listening for, anyway?” Skip asked.
“Other Magi,” Noah answered. “Signs of home.” She stood and brushed off her knees.
The three Cavaliers kept close to each other, talking in low voices as they absorbed a landscape five hundred years older than last time they’d seen it. Amanda imagined it would be like finding the United States empty and overrun by nature. Donovan sat by himself on a patch of bare ground and unraveled his arm to investigate. The bandage was crusty with pus and blood. She hoped he didn’t get gangrene or something. Or did she? Now that they’d made it to the other side of the pass, he’d relinquished the katana back to Gavin and in doing so, resumed imperial status over her. And was in rare form.
“Think there’s anybody out there?” Skip asked.
“Of course,” she said. “There has to be.”
Skip raised his eyebrows and returned his attention back to his tea.
The trek up the Stairs of Almitra had taken a toll, had bludgeoned their already exhausted bodies with merciless winding. By the time they’d emerged—sweating, gasping, on the verge of collapse, they’d made camp right there. It wasn’t like the area had any natural predators roaming. From there it had been downhill, literally.
“Got a sec?” Gavin asked Amanda, suddenly by her side.
She turned. “Sorry, I got this grasshopper to watch.”
“Well, I’m breaking in,” he said and took her hand. “No hard feelings, Mr. Hopper. Shall we go for a walk?” He looked more like Gavin than she’d seen him in a while.
“Right now?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He held the crook of his arm out to her. After a quick adjustment of her crossbow, she slid her hand through said crook with a demure nod and took her first stroll on another planet with a full-fledged, bona fide knight in shining armor.
“Something on yer mahnd?” she asked in her best southern drawl.
He smiled but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Uh-oh. She knew that look. Her chest tightened.
“There is, actually,” he said though he didn’t face her. “But first things first...how are you, Amanda?” His voice was neutral but warm. Low.
“Fine, now that there are no zombies trying to gnaw on my face and the Lord of Death is in the rearview mirror... What’s up, Gavin? You’re making me nervous.”
He gave her a nod and a tight smile but didn’t answer her question. “Good,” he said. “What you’ve been through would have broken most other people—soldiers included,” he added meaningfully. Some strange bird called in the morning air and was promptly answered by another. There were a lot of birds out here; she liked that.
“C’mon, talk to me. What’s on your mind?” she asked, sliding her hand into his and stopping their stroll. His fingers felt good, warm and strong. He stopped with her, glanced back at the camp which was a good two hundred feet behind them. From this angle, the World Ridge dominated the horizon and sat like infinity—brooding and sullen. They weren’t out of this yet.
“I don’t really know how to ask this, Amanda, so I’m going to just say it.”
“Good.”
He turned to her then, took her gaze into his own, gently but firmly, leaving her nowhere to go. “Has Donovan touched you in any other way?”
Amanda jerked her head back. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”
“Yes. I mean exactly that.” His eyes were so serious, so intent.
“No, Gavin. He hasn’t.”
Gavin swallowed and let out a slow, measured breath. Only now did she see the accumulation of his feeling on the matter. She tried to put herself into his shoes—which was damn near impossible—but she gave it a shot anyway; Donovan had certainly thrown a wrinkle into the whole situation. What was the right call to make on him? He was both threat and savior.
“Has he hit you, struck you since back home?”
The memory of him grabbing the back of her neck and making her look at the willow tree in flames by the river popped in her head. Of him cauterizing her back with a glowing knife. “No. He’s probably the world’s biggest dick, but...God’s truth, Gavin, I would have died without him.”
Another deep breath and a wrinkling of his face that was smoothed immediately by a following nod and another glance over his shoulder at the camp. They could see Donovan from here, alone, on his back, propped against a stone. Red glint of sunlight off his shades. Was he looking at them?
There was something else Gavin wanted to ask, she could feel it, but even as they studied the camp side by side, Amanda got a whiff of something nasty. Something rotting. Gavin caught it too. After the putrid assault on her olfactory senses during their ordeal at the Pass, she’d probably be able to smell carrion a mile away for the rest of her life. Gavin turned his head and sniffed more vigorously, put the edge of his hand to eyes to block the sun coming from a break in the clouds and narrowed his eyes. Amanda followed his line of sight and immediately saw what he did. On the other side of a rounded, grassy hill were circling crows and below them...bodies.
Gavin sighed. “Looks like break’s over.”
* * *
Nobody deserved to die like this. Not even hobgoblins, and for Gavin to even consider such words was a testament to the nature of their demise. Gavin hated hobgoblins.
“They’re wearing armor,” Noah observed.
“Not that it did them any good.” Tarsidion studied the injuries of the butchered corpses carefully.
“And were riding horses,” Noah added.
“Hobgoblins wearing armor and riding horses. Soon we’ll be seeing pigs ride at tournaments,” Cirena scoffed.
Their armor, a rather impressive ensemble of brown studded leather fitted with high quality scale, had done nothing to stop Asmodeous’s talons from tearing them into tatters. Armor or flesh, it made no difference to a Drynn.
Like a bird had wings to fly, a Drynn had talons to burrow. Gavin had once seen a single Drynnian Soldier go through a six-foot-thick slab of granite in ten minutes. And then kill everybody inside.
“Just how big is this beast?” Sir Taksony asked in a disturbed whisper.
The Cavaliers had never heard of the Drynn before, had no idea who Asmodeous the Pale even was. Before their time.
“He’s not a beast, Tacks,” Skip said, examining the wounds like a detective. “Asmodeous is a fully thinking, strategic, bloodthirsty monster whose soul existence is to enslave, pen up and feed upon the whole world. So I’m told at least.” Skip turned the head of one of the victims and wrinkled his face. “Ugly bitches, kind of a cross between a walking hyena and a bear.”
“Look at the style of this helm,” Cirena observed. She nudged open a visor with the tip of her boot. The creature beneath had bitten its own tongue in half, its eyeballs were bulged, but the style was unmistakable.
“And note the uniformity of their armor,” Noah added. “I’d say they were scouts.”
“For who?” Gavin asked.
“An army of course.” Noah went to another body. There were plenty to choose from—eleven slaughtered creatures.
“No hobgoblin has ever fielded a professional cavalry,” Sir Taksony said with a disbelieving shake of his head. “Perhaps they’re mercenaries—”
“No,” Dwensolt said. Both of his eyes were focused and in one direction. With the end of his new staff—a gift from the treasure room—he lifted the right saddle bag of one of the dead horses. “Look.” And there, in the Common tongue, was 4th Alae. 21st turmae. Venetor.
“That mean anything to you?” Skip asked.
“Only that they’ve been trained by Nu’rome.” Tarsidion stood and put his hands on his hips. He panned his head the full length of the horizon. “It would appear much has changed in our absence.” He sniffed the air. “Maybe this time, the world will listen.”
Chapter 32
Asmodeous the Pale wasn’t very hard to track. Just follow the dead bodies.
At first Skip took it like another day at the office, like driving past road-kill on Interstate 90. Just keep driving. Besides, it was beautiful out there, mystical even; there were people back on Earth who’d sell their first born to get even one day here.
But road-kill didn’t get tortured or get its wings ripped off, didn’t have its entrails strewn around its body like party confetti. It was like Deos was leaving a message, daring them to follow. Showing them their future. Toying with them.
And dammit, it was working. Each death that they stumbled on, each massacre that they were forced to confront was like a coat of soot on Skip’s soul, another layer of creosote that choked out a little bit more light. Maybe it was the contrast of such pristine enchantment, the waist-high prairie grass the color of an Aruban lagoon, against the backdrop of such a horror show—blood, guts, carnage. In the daylight. Yeah, the daylight made it worse.
In the open for all to see. Just like Joanna Blackburn back at Rolling Creek. And her son, Matthew Blackburn. Seven years old. And all the others he’d killed back home.
Skip was no stranger to death. He’d smelled the charred body parts of his fellow airmen and soldiers in the streets of Kabul, had stabilized countless victims in the back of HH-60 Pave Hawks over Afghanistan, some who’d died even as he’d worked on them. He’d been the one to discover the body of that two-year-old Ecuadorian girl stuffed in an unplugged freezer in the back of a dumpster in South Philly—Skip had seen more than his share. Enough to blacken a heart. But there was the other side of such atrocities. A clue could be found, an arrest made. A rescue operation could be planned and executed, an air strike called in, something could be done. With Deos...
The thought shot through his mind quicker than a pulse of light.
What if Asmodeous couldn’t be stopped? What if this was all for nothing?
Skip blocked the thought out, pretended he’d never had it, but it would have been easier to ignore a welding torch. It was right there, flaring behind his eyes.
“Hey, snap out of it,” Noah said from his side. He blinked. Her unconcerned grin and wind-flushed cheeks shooed some of the dark wings from his thoughts. They didn’t go far, though, just perched right there across the street on the next tree over.
We’ll be back, they said. Just wait ’til you go to sleep.
“Why so glum?” Noah asked.
“What are you talking about? I’m like a Care Bear over here, sunshine and happy rainbows.”
He really liked her smile. Effortless, genuine and a little cryptic, like she knew something important that the rest of the world didn’t.
“You’re a pretty good liar,” she said.
“No, he’s not,” Donovan said from behind.
Skip turned and blew Donovan a kiss. “Good to have you back, sunshine.” Now that there was a vast plain of endless grassy hills around them, they didn’t have to walk single file. Their group had turned into an shapeless, malleable configuration that shifted from double-file, cluster to whatever served at the moment. Right now they were broken off in twos and threes with Donovan, as usual, in the back.
“He’s turning into a little bitch is what it is,” Donovan continued.
“Somebody’s feeling better,” Skip said.
Even though Donovan was a far cry from being whole, he had healed remarkably fast in just three days. His color had returned, no longer looked like he had a film of wax shining off his face, and the stiffness of his strides had loosened. Become more fluid.
Skip let out a yoga-style breath and cracked his neck to both sides. All I gotta do is not deck him and everything will be fine. Skip could feel Noah’s approval of his suppression of violent desires, the why-do-we-have-to-put-up-with-this-dick? look screwed on her face.
“What was that?” Donovan asked. “Not even a denial?” He scoffed. “Special Forces my ass. This little girl college student here is holding up better than you. Keep your shit together, Walkins.”
Could that bastard really read minds? Can you hear this, Donnie-boy? It’s all fun and games ’til somebody gets a magical crossbow bolt up their ass. How ’bout that. Out loud, however, Skip gave Amanda a little wink and a smile. “That’s because she’s made in the USA, right, Amanda?”
She smiled back and pom-pommed her hands. “Gooooo Huskies.”
Nobody was speaking bu
t they all were watching. A crow called in the distance.
“Because I’m not feeling tip-top, Skip,” Donovan said, the right side of his mouth curled in amusement, “you might get away with one, maybe two centimeters of movement before I take away your new toy from you and beat you death with it. I’m leaning toward one centimeter.”
Skip laughed. “If only you weren’t such an asshole, Donovan, that was a good one. I think I’ll write that one down.” Skip pat his body down for a pen and paper.
“Hey, enough of the death threats,” Gavin said. His eyes were on the horizon. “I think we have a situation here.” Everybody’s eyes went forward.
The Sea of the Southern March was really that—a prairie that mirrored the moods of the ocean. Much of it was flat and expansive, like the calm waters of an intercoastal or bay. Other times it rolled with round, cheerful hills thick with swaying grass and gentle valleys. On occasion sometimes it got a little stormy, shooting sudden formations of mineral-rich stone through the ground, curling over like frozen, breaching waves. Postcard worthy.
It was on just such a wave that Gavin was standing, scanning the horizon. Nobody said anything until all of them were side by side, doing the same.
“Is that good news or bad news?” Skip asked.
Gavin’s eyes were hooded against the sun, his expression half hidden by the flat of his hand. “Most likely bad.”
* * *
It had been a long time since Gavin had stared down at the face of his mortal enemy.
He knew intellectually that he should be disturbed, that seeing human beings so wantonly slaughtered should move him in some way, but Gavin felt only numb acceptance.
You deserved it.
The thought rose up from inside him like a bubble from the bottom of a lake. He kneeled beside the dead wizard and turned the bloated, stinking, brainless, wispy-haired skull to the left. Even in death he looked cruel. Thin lips, beaked nose with white, sudsy foam bubbling out of his nostrils. His blackening mouth seemed to be twisting into a sneer.