Lies of Descent

by Troy Carrol Bucher

  Riam climbed to his feet. His ears rang and his hand burned from the reins tearing free. Nothing felt broken, but his foot and hand throbbed. Nola lay nearby.

  He pulled her to her feet. “Come on!” She stood blinking behind a mask of dirt and blood from sliding face-first on the ground. “We have to run!” He used his hand to swipe away as much of the blood and dirt from her face as he could and tugged on her arm. She began to move, following him in a slow, limping jog.

  The other riders caught up with them. Riam glanced over his shoulder as one of the riders stepped from his horse in mid-gallop. The tribesmen timed it well, and he leaped through the air, tackling Nola and pulling her away. The second prepared to do the same to him. Riam cut to the left in front of the horse, barely escaping being trampled, and the tribesman misjudged his jump. The warrior landed and rolled. Coming to his feet, the Esharii charged after Riam.

  Riam ran as fast as he could, but the tall grass tore at his arms and legs. There was no way he could outrun a full-grown man. When the tribesman caught up to him, Riam dropped to the ground and curled himself into a ball. The tribesman, still running at full speed, tripped and went sprawling. Riam darted off in a different direction.

  He heard a horse behind him and changed direction several times, dodging through the grass. He expected the rider to do the same thing as the previous two, but this one anticipated his movements. A hand grabbed him by the back of his shirt and lifted him into the air. He swung his arms and squirmed, trying to break free. His shirt tore, but not enough to escape.

  “Stop it, boy!” Gairen yelled. The Draegoran lifted him up over the front of the saddle and sped up, racing toward the woods. Riam did his best to hold on and keep the saddle from digging painfully into his side, but each bound of the horse slammed the saddle horn into his ribs.

  They galloped into the trees with the Esharii behind them. Wind whipped Riam’s clothes, and pine needles slapped his face and legs. He could only hang on limply, bouncing like a sack of vegetables, while the saddle jabbed into his side over and over again. His ribs were on fire, and each step of the horse was pure agony that made him whimper. Finally, when Riam thought he could take no more and would pass out, Gairen slowed the horse to a walk and then stopped.

  “They’ve turned back.” Gairen slid Riam to the ground and dismounted. He carried Riam to a bed of needles under a tree. “I’m going to water the horse, and then I’ll take care of your hand.”

  Riam tried to sit up and stopped when pain shot down his side. His left hand was raw and bleeding, so he wiggled up against the tree trunk and used his other arm to lever himself into a sitting position. He panted from the effort, taking short breaths to ease the pain. One of his old leather shoes was torn open, and his foot was bruised and scraped. He could feel dirt and pine needles inside. He lifted his shirt gently. Dark bruises were already forming from his armpit to his hip. He touched one and winced. Gairen returned, carrying a saddlebag and a waterskin.

  Awkwardly, Riam pulled off his torn shoe with his good hand. “You’re not going back for Nola?”

  “No use.” Gairen dug around in one of the saddlebags and removed a small glass jar sealed with wax. Whatever was inside was thick and brownish yellow in color.

  “What do you mean, no use? We can’t leave her.”

  “We didn’t leave her. She was taken.” Gairen drew a short knife from his belt and carefully cut the wax around the edge of the jar. “Best hope now is that they are caught before they get back over the mountains.”

  Riam didn’t like Nola much, but that certainly didn’t mean he wanted to leave her with the Esharii. “Why didn’t you stop them? There were only a few more.”

  “An Esharii warband has twenty to thirty warriors. This one had the spirit-taker with it, so there would be another ten or so pachna as his bodyguards. I’m good, boy, but not that good. I killed two and wounded a third. It was a close thing saving you.”

  Riam hadn’t realized there were so many. “There must be something you can do.”

  “There is. We’ll ride on to the outpost. Dying or getting captured won’t get her back.” He had the wax out now, and he laid it carefully on the pine needles. Using the knife, he stirred the pasty substance.

  The words made sense, but, somehow, they felt wrong. What if the Esharii had taken me instead of her? What if they had taken both of us? Would Gairen have ridden away and left us to be . . . to be. . . ? He didn’t know what the Esharii did with children.

  He turned his attention back to Gairen. “What will they do with Nola?”

  “Take her home and make a wife out of her. Trade her to another tribe. Make her a slave. Sacrifice her. I doubt even Sollus knows. You can never be sure what the tribesmen will do, but it was the Ti’yaks that took her, and they aren’t the worst tribe as far as the Esharii go. At least they don’t believe in torturing or eating people like the more remote tribes.” He withdrew the knife. It was coated in the paste. “This will dull the pain and speed the healing. It’ll also keep your hand from getting the rot. Don’t let any get in your mouth. There’s a fair bit of deathroot in it. It won’t kill you, but it’ll knock you out faster than a horse kick to the head.”

  Gairen spread the thick salve on Riam’s side. He used only the flat of the knife and was careful not to touch the stuff with his hands. Riam caught a whiff and coughed. It smelled worse than a cage full of hens after a downpour, but everywhere the man applied it tingled and went numb.

  Riam replayed the escape in his head. If he hadn’t paused on the hill, or if he’d attempted to make it by the last two Esharii instead of barreling into them, Nola wouldn’t have been captured. It’s my fault she’s gone.

  Gairen seemed to read his thoughts. “Don’t blame yourself, boy. You did as much as anyone could. You make the best choices you can, and then, right or wrong, you live with them. That’s part of living. Worrying about ‘what ifs’ will only make you hesitate and fail.”

  “But it’s my fault. I’m responsible.”

  “Maybe you are. Maybe you’re not.” He lowered Riam’s shirt and took his hand to examine it. “I made a choice today, too. It was save you or her, but not both. You were still running, she was caught, so the odds were better going after you. If you need to blame someone, blame the Esharii for taking her, or blame me for dragging her from her home or for rescuing you instead of her.” He turned Riam’s hand palm up. “Open and close your hand while I wash it off.”

  Wincing, Riam did as he was told. Gairen uncorked the waterskin and used it to clean the wound. The cool water burned like a hot coal on Riam’s palm.

  He wasn’t sure what Gairen was saying about who was to blame and who was at fault. His grandfather always blamed everyone else for his problems. He didn’t want to be like that, but Gairen was nothing like the old man. It was confusing. He didn’t know what to think.

  “Good. Nothing damaged but the skin.” He used Riam’s shirt to blot away most of the water and blood. Picking up the knife again, he used it to spread the paste on Riam’s palm.

  “I still feel like I failed and that it was my fault.”

  “What you’re feeling is guilt that you’re here and she’s not. That’s normal. But you didn’t make the Esharii come over the mountains. You didn’t make Nola come with us. You ran like I told you to, and when it was obvious you wouldn’t escape, you attacked by charging into them—hold your hand up.”

  “You saw that?”

  Gairen pulled a small cloth from the saddlebag and tore it in two. With one half he cleaned the knife, careful not to touch the paste.

  “It was both brave and foolish and lost a good horse, but the mere fact that you attacked when trapped tells me your grandfather didn’t ruin you. You will do well when you reach the island.” He tossed the dirty rag aside.

  He picked up the other half of the cloth and wrapped Riam’s hand. “I’m not telling you that you�
��ve no responsibility for what happened, far from it. What I’m telling you is that you didn’t put yourself in the situation, you had the right intentions, and you made a decision. Can’t ask for much more than that, and there’s no changing what’s done. You can only come to terms with it and move on.” He finished wrapping the cut and handed Riam the waterskin. “Drink as much as you need, but make sure you piss before we leave. We have a day’s ride ahead of us once the horse is rested.”

  They ate a small meal of dried meat and hard bread. Riam sat with his stomach knotted, unable to stop thinking about the last words he’d spoken to Nola. He kept hearing her say she was sorry for talking so much. She didn’t deserve the things he’d said, and—just like with his grandfather—he’d never be able to tell her what he truly felt. He’d been stupid and selfish.

  When it came time to ride, the two mounted and followed the river downstream. The journey took them the remainder of the day, and it was dark by the time they arrived at the gates of the outpost, or at least what had once been the gates. Along with most of the wall, they’d been burned to the ground.

  The Dark Gods did not return at once. The hole that opened was a fluke, created when two massive stars collided. Even with so much power released, the way back was no wider than a grain of sand, but it was enough for the dark ones to slip back into the universe.

  When Parron, greatest of the Gods of Light, discovered the rift, it was already too late. There would be no tricking the enemy this time. The millennia outside the cosmos had made the Dark Gods insane, and only the destruction of all creation would sate their vengeance. There was but one solution to preserve the worlds of man.

  The gods would have to fall.

  —Edyin’s Complete Chronicle of the Fallen

  Chapter 6

  Riam and Gairen reached the end point of their long ride, but by the damage, the outpost didn’t look much safer than facing the Esharii on the plains. The front wall, originally built from timber, was nothing more than charred stumps lined up like the short, broken teeth of a bare-knuckled fighter. Sentries, spaced ten paces apart for the length of the missing wall, stood watch with soot-stained faces. All that remained of the gate was a set of twisted iron hinges that hung limply from the ruins of the frame.

  Two men stood guard before the missing gates. They held spears instead of swords and, like the others manning the wall, wore leather vests over red undershirts. Riam and Gairen rode between them, and the men stood up straight and saluted, each touching the fingers of his right hand to his opposite shoulder and dipping his head.

  Inside, the outpost was lit with iron pots of burning oil. Smoke drifted above the remains of at least two of the inner buildings, and it made Riam’s eyes water and sting. A large warehouse on the far side of the compound looked as if it might have been damaged by fire as well, but it could have been a trick of the shadows in the dim light. Beyond this, the rest of the outpost, composed of nine or ten buildings besides the warehouse, appeared to have escaped any damage. The compound was roughly square around the buildings, and the stripped-timber of the remaining walls narrowed to sharpened points at the top. Ladders were spaced evenly around the walls to allow men to climb to a walkway that ran the length; here and there, a lookout peered into the darkness. Overhead, the stars looked hazy through smoke that lingered like a blanket of fog.

  Riam and Gairen wound their way between the buildings to stop before a narrow, two-story structure. A green-and-white pennant adorned the top of the building, but it hung limply in the still air so that it was impossible to tell what was depicted on the fabric. A guard stood on the building’s porch, and he ducked inside when he saw them.

  “Wait here.” Gairen slid from the saddle, leaving Riam mounted.

  That was fine with Riam. His foot and side ached, and he had no desire to stand or try and walk.

  An old Draegoran came out of the building, followed by the guard and a third man who carried a sword instead of a spear. The swordsman’s blond hair was cut short on the sides and back, but it was long enough to form a nap of curls on top. Thick but neatly trimmed stubble ran from ear to ear that matched the yellow of his hair. Young and muscular, the man walked with the confidence of someone who was highly skilled at his duties. He was nearly as intimidating as Gairen.

  The old Draegoran, however, made them both look soft as cubs. He had skin like wrinkled bull hide with tattoos faded and blurred with age, although Riam could still make out the owl on his neck that mirrored Gairen’s. His long gray hair was tied back in the same manner most of the Draegorans seemed to favor, and the deep wrinkles in his cheeks made him appear withered and callous. Dark circles hung beneath his lower eyelids, but the eyes themselves were sharp and alert, and there was a power behind them that left no doubt he was in command. He didn’t carry a sword, only a longknife, and for some reason this made him appear even more dangerous.

  The two Draegorans met at the edge of the porch and clasped hands. Not like the handshake men used in Nesh, but palm to palm, fingers up, like two men arm wrestling or helping each other up. They pulled close and used their free hands to slap each other on the back. The guard went back to his post, and the blond man positioned himself nearby with his hands behind him at the small of his back. He stared straight ahead as if he were alone.

  The old Draegoran was grinning when he and Gairen separated. “By Sollus, it’s good to see you.”

  “Master Iwynd.” Gairen saluted and made an exaggerated look around. “You’ve been busy.”

  “They hit us two nights ago. Rode in fast and threw some sort of explosive pitch before disappearing into the darkness. Burned so hot that more than one man lost his hair trying to douse the flames. Timed it right, too. I have only one taulin, and it is currently escorting the supply wagons up to North Pass. The regulars here are only foot soldiers—unsuitable for chasing mounted men.” He looked to the swordsman. “No offense, Harol.”

  “None taken, Master Iwynd.”

  “Harol is the commander of the regulars assigned here. They’re out of Thae and only arrived this past spring. Harol, this is Gairen. As you can see by the glyph, he’s Owl Regiment. You can trust him.”

  “Warden.” The man brought his feet together and his fingers to his opposite shoulder in salute before returning to his previous position, his eyes remaining fixed straight ahead all the while.

  Gairen acknowledged Harol with a nod. “It was the Esharii, then?” he asked Master Iwynd.

  “Well, they looked to be tribesmen and carried Arillian blades, but the Esharii have never attacked the outpost before—at least, not since the last invasion nearly sixty years ago.”

  “The boy and I were jumped by a band of Ti’yak at dawn, near where the river skirts the plains before turning northeast. It could have been the same warband. I spoke to a patrol that was following their trail, but they expected them to be farther west, deeper into the Dry Plains.” Gairen paused a moment. “They had an okulu’tan with them. I didn’t see him, but he was there, suppressing my vision with some new trick they’ve learned so that we rode straight into an ambush. I had two of the blood with me. I lost one, a girl. It’s too bad. While the color of the crystal was a bit off, she tested quite strong.”

  “Most strange.” The old Draegoran’s forehead wrinkled even more than it did naturally. “That’s the first spirit-taker to come over the mountains in years, and it’s the first time the Esharii have gone after the children. Pity you lost one of the blood. We’ve gathered less than usual this year, and with how many are failing the tests these days, a single loss makes a difference.” He turned to Harol. “I’ll need another messenger for the pass, a fast one if there’s to be any chance of getting the child back.”

  “Yes, Master Iwynd.” Harol saluted and moved off at a run.

  The old Draegoran rubbed his chin. “Something odd is going on. Doesn’t make sense for the Esharii to attack the outpost. They don�
��t gain anything. They barely damaged the warehouse, so there won’t even be a delay in supplies for North Pass.”

  “Maybe they did it to make us waste more men guarding the supply route.”

  Master Iwynd shook his head. “No. That’s not it. They don’t gain anything from that either. Like I said, it’s odd, even for Esharii, and that’s saying a lot.”

  “What about this new high landowner in Mirlond, this Lion of West?”

  “We’re a long way from Mirlond. Lots of places closer to cause trouble.”

  “True, but it’s in his favor to keep us focused here in the east.”

  “You don’t really believe he’s made some kind deal with the Esharii, do you?” Master Iwynd said.

  “No. Just grabbing at thoughts in the wind.” Gairen waved toward the burned gates. “It’s far more likely the Esharii are softening your defenses for a larger raid or distracting you from their real target—whatever that is.”

  Master Iwynd nodded in assent. “My thoughts follow the same logic. I sent a request to the commander at the pass for another company of regulars and a second taulin. Until I get them, I’ve hired men from the town to clean up this mess and rebuild the wall, and I have Harol’s men building a palisade around the gap until the wall is repaired.”

  “With the Wolf Regiment in charge of North Pass, you won’t get any help.”

  “I’ve been outmaneuvering the Wolves for a long time, Gairen. I sent a copy of the request back to the council, and I made sure that the copy that went to North Pass said as much. If that idiot Renlin at North Pass turns me down, the council will overrule him. He’ll look like a fool.

  “He’ll send me the reinforcements I asked for. He’ll use it as an excuse to send me his problems and to get rid of those he doesn’t trust, but he’ll send them. In any case, I’ll be sleeping with one eye open until I get the new wall up.”