His mind raced as his eyes roamed the soldiers under his command. Fourteen still stood, leaning on their knees, gasping for breath, or—in Belthar and Corporal Rold’s case—finishing off the wounded barbarians. The Rakki dead numbered close to forty, nearly half of them feathered with arrows loosed by Skathi, Noll, and Zadan.
But not all the corpses belonged to the enemy. Three masked, leather-clad figures lay among the mound of barbarian dead piled in front of their shield wall. Draturr’s mask had been sliced in half by the axe that crumpled his face inward and shattered his skull. The other two, Aravon didn’t recognize until Corporal Rold removed their masks to reveal the faces of Nacil and Heap.
All of the Legionnaires still standing bore injuries—even Captain Lingram bled from a shallow gash across the back of his sword arm—but at a glance, Aravon could see none were too serious. Painful, certainly, especially in the case of the deep gash on Tark’s left shoulder, but none would die outright.
“Bind up your wounds,” he commanded the Legionnaires, “and see to your fellow man. We move out in two—”
A groan sounded behind Aravon. He whirled in time to see Colborn slumping against the stone wall, doubled over and gasping for breath.
Aravon raced toward the Lieutenant and crouched at his side. “How bad is it?” he asked.
“Just…a little…tap…winded me.” Colborn waved him away, groaning at the movement. “A few seconds…and I’ll be…just fine.”
Aravon gave the Lieutenant a quick once-over—his armor bore a deep furrow across the torso just above his solar plexus, but otherwise he appeared unwounded. With a nod, he turned to speak to Captain Lingram.
The Captain knelt at Tandel’s side, his head bent. Sorrow twisted in Aravon’s gut. A pool of blood stained the rocky floor around the slumped Legionnaire’s crushed legs. The shattered bones must have severed an artery or vein, and he’d bled out while his comrades fought.
“Lingram.” He spoke in a quiet voice. “We need to move.”
“I know,” Captain Lingram answered without looking up. “Just giving him his final farewell.”
Aravon nodded understanding; as Captain, Lingram owed Tandel at least that much. The same thing owed to Draturr, Heap, and Nacil. The four of them had fallen in battle, fighting as Legionnaires in service of the Princelands. They deserved a proper burial and a solemn ceremony.
But that would have to wait. First, they needed to get to safety.
“Wrap the fallen in their cloaks,” he instructed the Legionnaires. “We leave no soldier behind.”
It took less than two minutes to bundle the four Legionnaires in their heavy furs and strap them over their saddles. Yet, as the surviving soldiers mounted up and fell in behind Captain Lingram and Colborn, their eyes had grown grim and shadowed by sorrow.
Aravon felt the same sorrow, though perhaps not as keenly. He’d traveled with these men for two weeks, but they’d marched side by side for months. They had become friends and family as only fighting men could. Bonded by shared loss and united in purpose, these soldiers would fight for each other until the end.
Let’s just hope we don’t meet that end today!
Chapter Twenty-Four
We’ve got to find somewhere to lose them! The thought pounded over and over in the back of Aravon’s mind with a driving urgency. The Rakki pursuing his company would be coming fast—they needed to get out of sight before the enemy caught up.
For the tenth time in the last five minutes, Aravon shot a questioning glance at Captain Lingram. The Legionnaire riding at his side never took his eyes from the rocky cliffs, the winding trail ahead.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Aravon spoke in a voice low enough for only the Captain to hear. “You never said—”
“An old mining trail,” Captain Lingram answered without looking at him. “Leading up to an abandoned mine.”
Aravon’s brow furrowed. “A mine?”
Captain Lingram nodded. “My father once told me that the early Princelanders only pushed so far south because they expected to find gold and silver in the Sawtooth Mountains. The whole mountain range is riddled with old mine shafts and adits where our forefathers dug deep and wide.”
“And did they?” Aravon asked. “Find gold or silver?”
“Yes.” Now Lingram turned toward Aravon. “Near Highcliff Motte.” Beneath his mask, the anguish of his painful memories clouded his eyes.
Aravon’s brow furrowed. None of the official records of the Legion-held fortress had mentioned a mining operation. Then again, given how secretive the other mines around Fehl have been, should I really be surprised? Perhaps that had been the reason behind the initial assault on Highcliff Motte fifteen years earlier. To cut off the Princelanders’ access to gold and capture the pass through the Sawtooth Mountains.
The shadows in Captain Lingram’s eyes darkened. “Truth be told, when I last came this way, I was half-dead with fever and thirst.” He shook his head. “But I will never forget the paths I traveled through the deep darkness. Or how it felt to see the light after seemingly endless days trapped beneath the earth.”
After that, a gloomy silence descended over Captain Lingram, and he seemed to withdraw into himself. Into the dark memories of his desperate retreat and flight from Highcliff Motte, fleeing the Eirdkilrs howling for Princelander blood.
The rocky footpath wound deeper and deeper into the mountains, carving a sinuous trail between sheer cliffs, along dizzying drop-offs, and around boulders large enough to crush an entire Legion Company. An endless expanse of dark grey and brown stone surrounded Aravon and his companions, with barely a hint of highland sedge dotting the jagged slopes bordering the crude trail. With every step upward, the cold around them deepened, the chill wind biting sharper and cutting through their leather armor and heavy cloaks with more savage ferocity. Only the worry rushing within Aravon’s veins kept him from feeling the cold—he was too busy worrying about the pursuing enemy to have time for shivering.
He glanced back to where Noll and Skathi trailed twenty yards behind their column, the rear scouts to listen for any hint of the Rakki’s presence. Quivers refilled with arrows they’d cut from their enemies’ corpses, they could pick off any Rakki that pulled too far ahead. And, if the Swordsman smiled on them and led Captain Lingram aright, cover their tracks.
Yet, as five minutes gave way to ten, then a quarter-hour, the worry within Aravon mounted in tandem with his frustration. Captain Lingram hadn’t yet found the path for which he searched. Aravon dared not push the pace—after what happened to Tandel and his mount, they had to keep it to a trot for the horses’ sakes. But that meant the Rakki pursuing them would catch up sooner rather than later. There had been easily two or three hundred occupying Kaldrborg. If even half of those had come hunting, the Grim Reavers and Legionnaires would have a bloody fight on their hands.
The path suddenly curved to the right, cutting between two overhanging boulders and meandering down a short incline before ending abruptly in a bowl-shaped hollow nestled in the cleft between three rising slopes. The bowl neared a hundred feet in diameter, encircled by steep, impassable walls. The footpath they’d been following ran straight into the hollow, but Aravon could see no way out.
He whirled on Lingram.
The Captain spoke before he could. “I remember this.” Tension lined his eyes beneath his mask. “But…” He hesitated. “There was a way out last time. I swear it!”
With effort, Aravon bit back a growl of frustration. There was no mistaking the hint of panic in the man’s voice, the creeping doubt that tinged his words. He didn’t have to remind Captain Lingram of the stakes, of what would happen if his plans to find the mining path failed—the man had just helped wrap four of his comrades’ corpses in their own cloaks. And, given the pain he wrestled with at the memories of what happened the last time he came this way, he deserved compassion and understanding.
“Spread out!” Aravon called to the soldiers around him. “Look for anything we can use to get o
ut of here.”
As Captain Lingram and his Legionnaires fanned out to search the hollow, Aravon glanced back at the two archers stationed at the entrance of the bowl. “Anything?” he signed.
Skathi shook her head, and Noll answered, “Not yet, but they can’t be far behind.”
Aravon gritted his teeth. He had to trust Captain Lingram—they had come too far to turn back now. And with the Rakki behind them, turning back meant fighting an impossible battle. A battle for which they had no time.
Twelve days had passed since Skyclaw delivered the Prince’s message. Twelve days gone, which left only nine until the sun rose on the day the Eirdkilrs called the “Feast of Death”. On that day, Tyr Farbjodr would unleash his hordes on Fehl. Again, Lord Eidan’s words flashed through his mind. “Summon his true strength”, the traitorous nobleman had said. Aravon had come to the conclusion that Tyr Farbjodr intended to harness the ghoulstone to strengthen his forces. Yet something about Lord Eidan’s tone forced him to re-think his assumption. The nobleman had spoken almost as if Tyr Farbjodr had called upon new allies, or found a way to bolster his forces beyond the Eirdkilrs he commanded.
The thought seemed impossible—who else could he summon from the icy Wastelands? The vast tundra was as cruel and treacherous as it was cold. The Eirdkilrs had invaded north across the Sawtooth Mountains for that very reason. They had chosen a hundred-year war to reclaim the lands of plenty rather than continue their harsh existence in the frozen lands of the south.
But what if the Eirdkilrs weren’t the only ones living beyond the Sawtooth Mountains? Again, it seemed an impossibility, but could he really dismiss the thought? No Princelander or Fehlan had ever mapped the farthest reaches of the Wastelands—they had little knowledge of the Eirdkilr-held Wastelands, for every spy sent south died before returning with concrete information. The crude animal hide map Harlund had given Aravon was the first any Princelander had ever seen of the land beyond the mountain range.
Aravon’s mind raced, his imagination running wild. Every child of the Princelands had heard the legends of ancient Fehl—alongside every tale of the Serenii and their magic was told a story of the hideous monstrosities that once roamed the continent. Creatures with skin of stone, the tails of serpents, wolf fangs, and eyes of pure darkness. Massive beasts that could tear an ice bear limb from limb—or flay the flesh and suck the marrow from the bones of fractious children.
He’d left those stories behind as he’d aged, matured, and joined the Legion. After fifteen years of battle, he had seen the horrors men inflicted upon each other in the name of power, wealth, and control. He had no need for monster stories—humans could be far crueler and more savage than any beast.
And yet, a part of him couldn’t shake the primal fear rooted deep within his mind, instilled by those stories told to him as a child. Stories that had spoken of mythical creatures like griffins, hippogriffs, even mighty dragons larger than any warship. Tales of the Serenii, who he knew had existed—he’d seen the proof with his own eyes. Those same legends had spoken of Enfields, creatures believed lost to time. With all Aravon had seen over the last few months, could he truly write it off as nothing more than myth and fable?
Let’s damned well hope we can! After the story Rangvaldr had told about the Farbjodr—a bloodthirsty monster so unstoppable that Gunnarsdottir and her fellow Tauld warriors had no choice but to bring down a mountain atop it—he couldn’t help being glad that the Eirdkilr commander that had taken the demonic creature’s name was nothing more than an Eirdkilr. A giant, a fierce and savage warrior, certainly, but still human. Flesh and blood rather than some unkillable monster.
As were the Eirdkilrs that marched at his side. If he’d found reinforcements somewhere, they, too, would be human. Warriors of the Myrr, Bein, and other clans of southern Fehl, perhaps, the Fehlans that had sided with the Eirdkilrs against the Princelanders. With the southern clans united, they vastly outnumbered the Legionnaires and the now-reduced warbands of the Deid and Fjall. Perhaps Tyr Farbjodr had even turned the Smida, Vidr, Eyrr, and Jarnleikr to his cause as well.
Much as he wanted to, Aravon couldn’t dismiss that fear. After the attack on Bjornstadt, what were the odds that the cowardly Chief Ailmaer would resist the Eirdkilrs’ attempts to cow them into submission? And with the assaults on Icespire, Rivergate, and Anvil Garrison undermining the perceived strength of the Legion and safety of the Princelands, could Tyr Farbjodr have convinced the allied Fehlan clans to turn against the invaders?
The thought sent a shiver down his spine. Images danced through his mind: the united warbands of Fehl joining the Eirdkilrs in battle against the Princelands. Legionnaires outnumbered and surrounded, fighting for their lives in once-friendly territory now gone suddenly hostile. Every fortress and stronghold along the Chain torn down and set ablaze beneath a wave of joined Eirdkilrs and Fehlans.
His eyes strayed to where Rangvaldr sat on his horse, still silent and brooding. To Colborn, who had ridden back along the trail toward Noll and Skathi to help keep watch for the Rakki. He couldn’t imagine them—men who had become as his brothers—taking up arms with the Eirdkilrs. Facing him from across a field of battle, their faces, shields, and swords stained with Princelander blood, the howling Eirdkilr war cries issuing from their throats. Yet they were just two among thousands. Tens of thousands of Fehlans that would do whatever it took to protect their homes and families.
The realization crashed down like a boulder atop him. Whatever Tyr Farbjodr had planned, whatever “true strength” he intended to unleash upon Fehl, Aravon had to find a way to stop it from coming to pass. Even if it meant he died in the doing, he would make certain the Eirdkilr commander’s scheme failed.
A quiet cough snapped Aravon from his thoughts. He found Zaharis at his side, a strange look of mingled curiosity and amazement in his eyes.
“Those Rakki,” Zaharis signed, “you saw their faces, yes? The war paint they wore?”
Aravon nodded. “Black rather than blue like their Eirdkilr fathers.”
Zaharis leaned forward. “I believe it’s powdered ghoulstone.”
Aravon raised an eyebrow; something about the light sparkling in Zaharis’ eyes made it seem as if the discovery mattered, but its significance was lost on him.
Zaharis seemed to sense his bewilderment and explained with quick, sharp gestures. “Back in Steinnbraka Delve, when I spoke with Lord Morshan’s scholars regarding their research into ghoulstone’s properties, I was digging into what could cause the miners to believe the stones glowed.” Wry humor sparkled in his eyes. “This was before I knew that they actually could glow, of course.”
Aravon couldn’t help a smile; the Secret Keeper had been as stunned by the discovery that ghoulstone was the same mineral as the Eyrr holy stone Rangvaldr wore at his throat. “Of course.”
“Before I discovered the enhydro—” A name Aravon remembered: water droplets trapped within the stone, which had reflected the torchlight shining in the mine. “—I considered the possibility that it might be nothing more than a hallucination. Or, perhaps, a delusion similar to that brought on by opiates and other strong substances. Turns out I was partially right in that regard.”
Now Aravon’s eyebrows shot up. “What?” His mind raced as he tried to process the information. “You mean—”
Zaharis nodded. “My study of the stone indicated that ghoulstone has mind-altering properties not unlike certain mushrooms or Diviner’s Sage. While I have yet to crack the formula for mixing up such a concoction…”
“The Rakki might have,” Aravon finished the Secret Keeper’s train of thought. “You think they found a way to stain their faces with powdered ghoulstone, and it acts as sort of a drug?”
Again, a little nod of the Secret Keeper’s head. “If you looked in their eyes, you’d have seen the truth.”
Aravon couldn’t argue that point. The wild light burning in the Rakki’s eyes could only have been madness or the effects of a powerful hallucinogenic.
He opened his mouth to ask more, but a shout from down the trail shattered the quiet within the rocky hollow. A twang and a scream of pain echoed off the rocky cliffs, and a Rakki fell, Skathi’s arrow embedded in his chest. Before the body hit the ground, Colborn, Skathi, and Noll had turned their mounts and raced up the trail.
Aravon’s heart sank. We’re out of time. The Rakki had caught up. The fifteen of them couldn’t hope to hold this rocky hollow, and if Captain Lingram hadn’t found a way out—
“Aravon!” The Legionnaire’s voice echoed from the far end of the bowl-shaped clearing. “Here!”
Aravon whirled toward the call; Lingram stood before a section of cliff identical to the rest of the stony walls encircling the hollow. But as Aravon galloped over to the Legionnaire, he caught sight of what Lingram indicated: a five-foot-wide gap in the cliff face. Invisible from the entrance of the hollow, cleverly concealed by whoever had crafted the path up to the mine they doubtless intended to keep secret.
Lingram’s gaze locked on something etched into the stone, just above chest-height. His fingers traced the crude letters that formed a name. Koltun Blackhammer.
When he turned toward Aravon, his eyes were dark and filled with anguish. “This is the way we go.”
But before Aravon could speak, could even draw breath, the howling cries of their Rakki pursuers reverberated off the canyon walls. Scores of the black-faced, fur-clad barbarians surged around a bend in the rocky trail two hundred yards away and charged up the incline toward the hollow.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Aravon whirled toward the Legionnaires. “Get through the gap, now!” He leapt down from his saddle and snatched up his spear. He’d cover his soldiers’ backs until they got to safety.
The soldiers scrambled toward him, dragging their horses by the reins. The gap was too narrow to ride through, barely wide enough for the Kostarasar chargers to squeeze into. The Legionnaires could only enter one at a time—far too slowly for Aravon. The howling Rakki drew closer with every hammering beat of his heart. Even over the rocky ground, they covered ground at an incredible speed.
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