Edge of Destiny

by J. Robert King

  “About what?”

  Rytlock grunted his disbelief. He nodded horns toward the steep canyon walls. “You’re heading into a trap.”

  “To the animal mind, all is a trap,” Korrak hissed, though he, too, scanned the upper canyon. “Where’s your courage?”

  “It doesn’t take courage to march into a trap,” Rytlock snorted, eyes narrowing beneath black brows. “It takes idiocy.”

  Korrak snapped, “Watch your mouth, soldier!”

  “Don’t you see the rubble fields up there?” Rytlock gestured with pointed claws. “If I were trying to stop a charr legion, that’s where I’d be.”

  Korrak whirled on him. “Is that what you’re trying to do, Brimstone—stop a charr legion? Trying to stop me!”

  “Heh heh,” Rytlock chuckled. “If I wanted to stop you, Centurion, you’d be stopped.”

  Korrak seized Rytlock’s armor and planted the barrel of his axe-rifle in the upstart’s throat. “What are you doing here, Brimstone?”

  “I told you, warning you about the trap.”

  “No! I mean what are you doing here, a thousand miles from your own legion?”

  “I go my own way!”

  “Only because they wouldn’t have you! They drove you off—your own legion—not because you couldn’t fight. I’ve seen you fight. No, it’s because they couldn’t stand you!”

  Brimstone’s eyes blazed, and his nostrils flared as if he had heard this speech countless times. But a slow smile spread across his lips. “You’ve got it wrong. I couldn’t stand them.”

  “Or anyone else.”

  “I don’t suffer fools.”

  “Insufferable!” Korrak roared, jabbing the barrel of his rifle deeper into Rytlock’s jaw. “Why shouldn’t I empty that hateful head of yours?”

  Rytlock’s eyes still blazed, unflinching. “You Iron Legion cowards are all alike, hiding behind your guns.”

  Korrak Blacksnout lowered the axe-rifle, and his voice became a deadly growl. “If this is a trap, Brimstone, you’re going into it first.” He waved his rifle toward the defile. “March!”

  The Blood Legion rogue stared at him for a moment, then marched ahead of the column. He trudged into the narrowest section of the canyon.

  Behind him, Blacksnout walked with the rifle aimed ahead, his dewlaps stretched in a smile. “Why do you fear humans, Soldier Brimstone? They’re cowards in caravans. They’ve lost Ascalon, and they’re losing Ebonhawke. You have nothing to fear from them.”

  “I don’t fear them,” Rytlock replied thoughtfully, looking up the rock wall. “I know them.”

  A few more steps brought Korrak and a dozen other charr through the choke point. “You even think like a human.”

  There came a boom like a mallet blow, and the crackle of rocks.

  The charr looked up.

  Sound lagged sight: A huge rockslide was scouring the slope above. The tumbling chaos of boulders poured over the edge of the cliff before the roar of it reached their ears.

  Rytlock, Korrak, and the command corps turned around, shouting to the warriors behind them in the choke point. Their warnings were drowned out.

  The first boulder smashed down atop a charr axeman. Another slab hammered a whole warband. Then stones pounded down in such numbers that the soldiers were lost in a crimson cloud of dust.

  Korrak, Rytlock, and the command corps fell back as rocks cascaded into the canyon. Stones spun in clouds of dust and hurled out shrapnel. They mounded in the gap—thirty feet and sixty feet and ninety feet high, filling the canyon. At last, the final stones slid over the cliff’s edge and clattered to a stop on the huge pile.

  It was more than a pile. It was a cairn. Warbands lay interred there.

  “A trap!” Rytlock shouted.

  “Shut up!” Korrak snarled.

  “I told you it was a trap!”

  “I said shut up!” Korrak swung the axe end of his weapon in a wide arc.

  Rytlock rolled away and came up in a crouch. A fierce smile ripped across his face. He grasped the hilt of his sword and drew it slowly from its stone scabbard. A fiery blade emerged, forged of two sharpened strands of twisted metal. Its name was Sohothin. Long ago it had belonged to a human prince of Ascalon. Now it was Rytlock’s.

  “You would raise your blade against me?” Korrak Blacksnout growled. “I will put an end to—”

  The centurion’s threat was cut short along with his neck, severed and cauterized. The head toppled, and the body crouched and fell.

  Soldier Rytlock Brimstone turned to the dozen Iron Legion warriors standing with him on the near side of the rockfall and said, “Guess you’re going to need a new leader.”

  One by one, they dropped to their knees and nodded their loyalty.

  “We acknowledge you as our centurion—for the moment,” snarled Sever Sootclaw. “Shall we clear the passage?”

  “Let the charr behind the rocks clear it. We’ll hunt down the humans who did this!”

  Sootclaw’s brow rose. “Humans? Here?”

  “Yes. Here.” Rytlock glared toward the cliff top. “They’re cannier than you realize, but they’re also cowards. They’ll be fleeing now. We must be faster.” Rytlock unclasped his breastplate and let it clank to the ground. “Take no needless thing. We have a long climb and a longer run and a battle afterward.”

  One by one, the kneeling warriors stood, their breastplates falling to the ground around them. They had given up their defenses. Now, they would fight to the death.

  Day was dying as Logan Thackeray and his scouts reached a high pass above the timberline. They were about to descend into a new valley, but Logan lingered on a rocky overhang and peered back the way they had come, watching for movement. So far, only the shadows had moved, lengthening as the sun quit the world. The route they had taken would discourage any but the angriest pursuers.

  Of course, these foes were furious.

  At first, there was nothing. The mountain was silent, the air still. But then he glimpsed it. Five miles back and half a mile downslope, the saplings shivered with their passage.

  The charr were coming.

  Logan scrambled back from the overhang and went to his scouts. “They’re closing on us. They’re only five miles back.”

  The scouts stared at him, their faces white. They were light scouts trained for merchant caravans—not even part of the Ebon Vanguard. None of them had faced a single charr, let alone a dozen.

  “The mountain and the darkness are our allies,” Logan said. “We’ll set traps as we retreat.”

  “Where? To the west? Those are ogre lands!” objected Wescott.

  “Maybe we’ll get past the ogres and the charr won’t,” Logan said simply. “Let’s go!” He led the others down into a new valley.

  Beneath a staring moon, Legionnaire Rytlock Brimstone bounded along a trail, dragging the air into his lungs. “They’re close now. Can’t you smell them?”

  In the blackness, Sever Sootclaw crashed his foot on a stone. “Draw your sword. We need light.”

  “And show them where we are?” snarled Rytlock.

  “We can’t see. We’ve lost two already to their traps. How many more?”

  “It wasn’t the darkness that killed them. It was their own stupidity, and the cleverness of these humans. Their leader knows this land. He knows how we fight.”

  Sootclaw’s brow rumpled. “You sound as if you admire him.”

  “Yes, like the hound admires the fox,” Rytlock said, his eyes flashing. “Fall in! After me! They went this way—south and west.” He grinned in the darkness. “We’ll catch them within the hour.”

  “This way!” Logan hissed in the darkness as he ran along the rocky bank of a mountain stream. It was the only sure path through the forest. On all sides, moonlight showed thickets of pine that they couldn’t navigate. Behind them flashed glints of horn or fang or steel.

  The charr were converging.

  Logan and his scouts pelted along the stream, fighting to keep their footing on
water-smoothed stones. They were bunched tight, prey running from predators.

  The stream dropped away before him in a sudden waterfall.

  “Hold up! Hold up!” warned Logan.

  The other scouts halted behind him, stopping just on the brink.

  “How far down?” asked Wescott.

  Logan kicked a stone over the edge and counted to five before he heard it hit. “Too far.”

  “What now?”

  Logan smiled grimly. “Now we wade the stream and find another way.”

  “They’re closing,” Everlee noted.

  “Yes, they are,” Logan replied. “We’ve killed two or three, but their leader is a wily one. We’ll kill a few more before they corner us. Come on.”

  He stepped into the frigid stream. Water rose to his knees and hips before it grew shallower. Sodden and shivering, Logan and his team rushed up the far bank and away into the darkness.

  But there was no stream to guide them now, and little moonlight. In minutes, they had blundered into a thicket. Swords came out to hack through. At last, they broke into a high glade and ran beneath the moon.

  Behind them, charr blades battered through the thicket.

  Logan and his team ran between two stands of pine and into a narrow valley striped with moon shadows. Blindly they rushed forward and into a steep stone wall.

  “Find a way out!” growled Logan.

  “There’s no way out!” Wescott replied. “A box canyon.”

  “Try climbing! Find anything to grab hold of,” commanded Logan.

  The scouts fumbled in the darkness along the rock walls.

  Then a light dawned—a fiery light. The scouts turned to see a flaming sword sliding from a stone scabbard. The light sketched out a lionish face, grinning with fangs and eyes that smiled red. The charr stalked forward, towering over the man, and thrust his flaming sword high.

  Logan pulled his war hammer from his belt and stepped up. “Wedge formation behind me.”

  The scouts lifted their weapons and positioned themselves.

  The charr with the burning sword spoke. “At last, the rats are cornered.”

  Logan flashed a cockeyed smile. “We took out a few of you.”

  “And now, we’ll take out all of you,” the charr growled. Around him, more charr warriors marched up, slinging their axe-rifles down and pointing them at the humans. Their leader shouted, “Fire!”

  The rifles roared, hurling out a barrage of smoke and lead.

  LITTLE PEOPLE, BIG PROJECTS

  Hel-looo? Hel-loooo?”

  The black dire wolf raised his head from the warm blanket and blinked at the workshop door-way.

  No one was there.

  “Hel-looo? Heeeel-looooooo?”

  Eir shifted on her bed, lifting a tangle of red hair to look toward the door. She didn’t see anyone, either.

  The voice spoke again. “Nobody’s home.”

  Another voice answered, “Maybe they’re sleeping in.”

  “Sleeping in? Are you crazy? The greatest norn artist of her generation isn’t sleeping in.”

  “Well, she’s probably working. Famous sculptor and all. She’s probably off carving something.”

  “She’s not working. This is her workshop, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Eir Stegalkin, rolling out of bed and standing, “and her bedroom.” She looked toward the door and blinked. “Oh, there you are.”

  Garm quirked his eyebrows and stood also, seeing at last two little people standing in the doorway. They came up only to the belt of a norn, and they were gray, with giant ears swept back from their childlike faces. One was male, dressed in a greatcoat over a buttoned-up vest and brown trousers. He wore two large gauntlets with gems hovering over the backs of them. The other figure was female, decked in bluish body armor that looked jury-rigged, as if she changed its dimensions constantly. Despite their strange voices, they looked intently serious.

  “Oh, there you are,” said the slightly taller creature. “Eir Stegalkin, I presume. I’m Master Snaff of Rata Sum, asura genius. I’ve been told you’re the best.”

  “Told by whom?” Eir asked. Asura. Of course they would be asura. Short, smart, and irritating.

  Snaff smiled, bowing. “I cannot reveal my sources.” The younger asura shot him an annoyed look, as if he often revealed his sources. Unperturbed, Snaff continued, “This is my associate, Zojja, genius-in-training.”

  She also bowed, but her scowl only deepened.

  “We’ve come for a commission,” Snaff said.

  “I’m not accepting commissions,” Eir replied.

  The little man wandered into the workshop, glancing sidelong at the statues that towered all around. “Really? What are all these, then?”

  “I mean, I’m no longer accepting commissions.”

  Garm trotted up behind the male asura, who reached only his shoulders. The wolf snuffled the creature’s greatcoat, which smelled of swamp water and fern spores.

  Snaff seemed none too concerned with having a big black wolf hounding his steps. “Well, that’s a shame, an artist of your caliber no longer taking commissions. There are only three possible reasons: One, that you are retired, which clearly you cannot be, given your age and the bits of stone and wood all over your floor; two, that you’ve somehow gone haywire, which your hair does seem to indicate—”

  “I just got up!”

  “Or three, that you have found your subjects of late unworthy of your genius, which judging from this rogues’ gallery of puffed-up posers, I would guess to be the reason.”

  “You have guessed well, little master.” Eir stepped into a pair of trousers and drew them on beneath her nightshirt. “I am tired of watching fools go to their deaths.”

  Snaff smiled, spreading his hands. “We’re not fools.”

  “But she just said she liked fools,” said the apprentice.

  “I didn’t.”

  Zojja dragged a finger through a pile of shavings on the floor. “You said you are tired of watching fools go to their deaths. If you hated them, you would never tire of this. Ergo, you must like them.”

  “You may have something there,” Eir conceded.

  “Well, then I suppose,” Snaff replied, looking askance at his apprentice, “I would be wise to say that we are fools. Except that fools aren’t wise, in which case my apprentice’s inquisitiveness has once again landed us in a conundrum.”

  “Once again,” Zojja said almost pridefully.

  A grin was fighting its way onto Eir’s face. “Hypothetically speaking—”

  “I love hypotheses!” Snaff broke in.

  “—if I were taking commissions, whose image would you want?”

  Snaff’s grin grew from Eir’s own. “My assistant’s, of course.”

  Eir looked at the petulant young asura and asked, “Why?”

  Snaff shrugged. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders. And that’s all I want. A head and shoulders.”

  “Well,” Eir said, “that’s a pretty small statue. I’m a pretty-big-statue maker. Maybe you’ll want to find a smaller sculptor.”

  “Except that her head needs to be five times taller,” Snaff said.

  Zojja shot him a look of annoyance.

  “I suppose that is a commission worthy of my talents, but it’ll cost you. Twenty silver.”

  “A bargain,” said Snaff, reaching beneath his greatcoat to grasp a bag on his belt. “This will be a bust in stone, of course.”

  “In wood, of course,” Eir clarified. “It’d be twenty gold for stone.”

  “Ah,” said Snaff, reaching to the other side of his belt. “Then gold it will be. Twenty, did you say?” He opened the bag, a pile of coins shimmering within the burlap.

  Eir’s eyes widened as she peered at the bag.

  She snagged her leather apron, mallet, and chisel belt and led the way outside into the courtyard. The others followed. She guided them along her stock of boles and boulders. “This one is granite, which is very hard. This
one is marble—too expensive in this case. Here we have columnar basalt. This is limestone. . . .”

  “Basalt!” exclaimed Snaff. “That’s volcanic rock, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Eir, standing beside a large gray chunk. “And this one is particularly dense.”

  “Perfect for depicting my student!”

  Zojja hit him.

  Eir cocked an eyebrow at Zojja. “You should show more respect for your master.”

  Snaff rubbed the spot she had hit and smiled tightly. “Most asura assistants get browbeaten by their masters. With Zojja, it’s the other way around.”

  “Why do you put up with it?” Eir asked.

  Zojja glared. “I’m not sure if that’s your business, giantkin.”

  Eir stared back. “Your master might put up with your abuse, but I will not.”

  “Now, now,” said Snaff, chuckling lightly. “It’s quite flattering to have you two fight over me.”

  Both women gaped at him in amazement.

  “I think I understand,” said Eir to Zojja.

  Snaff just beamed. “Well, good then. All things are mended. Let’s get started. Zojja, why don’t you stand over there in the light? . . . Yes. Excellent. And, of course, Eir, you know where to stand. And I’ll step out of the way so that neither of you can hit me.”

  Eir stepped up before the block of basalt, drew a large chisel from her belt, set it to the stone, and lifted the mallet above her head. “Wolf, guide my hands.” She brought the mallet down, shearing off a chunk of stone.

  Basalt was a tricky medium, formed of cooled lava. The question was how it cooled—quickly beneath the ocean or slowly on land. Land was better. This particular stone had come from the throat of a long-dead volcano. It had cooled slowly, and it was amorphous, without striations. As Eir worked into the block, she sensed it had no hidden faults or fissures that could split her work. It was solid.

  As was her model. This annoying little creature had a solid will. She held her nose up and remained still, seeming to sense the importance of this moment.

  Eir worked the stone to bring forth Zojja’s features. That lemon-shaped head, those great eyes, her button nose, her small, determined mouth, her perky chin . . . but hardest of all were those ears—shaped like a rabbit’s, but swept back from her forehead so they seemed almost like small wings.