by Shae Ford
“And on top of all that, winter’s rushing down to meet us. Winter, Gwen. We’re going to be trapped at the top of the mountains with no shelter and no way home.” He jabbed a finger up at her and said, as loudly as he could muster: “The next time I hear the word fun escape your lips, it had better be because Titus is lying dead in a bloody pool at the bottom of the mountains. Otherwise, I’ll crack your skull across my knee. Got it?”
Any ruler across the six regions would’ve had his head for that. Had he spoken to Captain Lysander in such a manner, he probably would’ve spent the night in the brig.
But instead of ordering him to his death, Gwen only smiled. “All right.”
“Well … good,” Kael muttered. “Now help them up.”
She dragged herself to her feet. “If you insist.”
“I do.” She raised both fists, and Kael suddenly realized what was about to happen. “Wait —!”
But it was too late. Gwen’s fists came down and shattered the cliff’s jutting edge. Bits of crumbled rock rained down among the craftsman. Miraculously, only one man got hit: a rock bounced smartly off his head and sent him plummeting to the ground. He cracked a rib, but Kael still considered it lucky.
The craftsmen climbed to the top of the ladder and the warriors pulled them up the gap left by Gwen’s fists. They moved in a steady line, one behind the other. Once they got moving, it was amazing how quickly they worked. If he could only get them to focus, there was no telling what they might accomplish.
Kael was the last one to make the climb. When he reached the top, Gwen pulled him up by the hand. Even after he was on solid ground, she didn’t let go. “Sorry, mutt.”
Calluses roughened her fingers and her grip was often too tight. For some reason, the pressure of her hand was gentler that day — present, but not painful. He knew it was probably killing her not to crush him … and yet, he saw no struggle in her eyes.
He tried to mask his surprise with a frown. “We need to get moving.”
She nodded once before she released him. She strode to the wildmen and crouched on one knee. They sat cross-legged before her, their painted faces open and waiting.
Kael stood back and watched as Gwen pressed a thumb between her eyes. She grimaced, rolling her head this way and that. All the while, not a word passed among the wildmen.
Finally, she looked up. Her eyes wandered all about them, meeting each of their gazes in turn. “Now, for the rest of the day, I don’t want to hear anymore foolishness. I want you all to shut it,” she jerked her chin at Kael, “and do as he says. Understood?”
“Yes, Thane,” they replied.
Then all eyes turned to Kael.
“I … the warriors will travel at the front,” he said, thinking quickly. “Figure out the best way through the woods and lead us on — and when I say best, I don’t mean the most exciting, or the most dangerous,” he added with a glare. “I mean the easiest.”
With no small amount of grumbling, the warriors set out.
Then Kael turned to the craftsmen. “Your bodies are weak.”
“Don’t you think we know that?” one of them moaned. “I’ll be sore in places I didn’t even know I had tomor —”
“Listen,” Gwen growled, snapping her fingers.
He shut his mouth.
“Your bodies are weak,” Kael went on. “So you’re going to have to use your minds. If there’s a log in your path, don’t try to jump over it, don’t waste time going around it — just cut through it. Use the tricks I’ve taught you to make climbing easier. If anybody gets hurt, let me know. Now get moving,” he waved them ahead, “follow the warriors.”
The day went surprisingly well after that. The warriors chose simple paths and the craftsmen made them even simpler: they carved ladders into the rock, turned boulders into steps, and slashed through the undergrowth with ease.
When they came to the banks a rushing river, the warriors knocked a tree down across it and helped a few of the craftsmen to the opposite side. They worked quickly from either end, stretching and molding the wood under their fingers. By the time Kael arrived, the fallen tree had become a full, arching bridge.
“Well done,” he said when he saw it. “Keep moving, now. We ought to make it back to the road before nightfall.”
Though he tried to stay severe, it was difficult not to grin when as he watched the wildmen go about their work. If only Roland could see him now — traveling with a band of men who could shape the mountains at will. They were coming along even better than he’d hoped.
They were near the end of their sunlight when they finally made it back to the road. Gwen ordered them to make camp immediately. “Never again,” she snapped at the warriors. “No more shortcuts.”
“Yes, Thane,” they mumbled when she glared.
The craftsmen shaped a number of small lean-tos for them to sleep under, using nothing but logs and bits of rotted wood. They got the fires roaring and the coals were piping hot when the warriors returned, their shoulders laden with game.
Kael drew the craftsmen aside. “Before you start cooking, there’s something I want to show you.”
“More tricks? A way to turn water into fire?” one of the craftsmen said — drawing a round of excited tittering from the others.
Kael shook his head. “Not quite.”
He gathered them into the circle and began to show them how he’d used the dragonscale armor to win his caddocs. He’d hardly gotten through the first bit of his explanation when the circle broke.
The craftsmen were totally, completely against it.
“We aren’t warriors!”
“What use could we possibly have for armor?”
“Even if we could use it, we wouldn’t know how.”
Kael had expected this. In fact, he’d planned on it. “If the Man of Wolves attacks us, that leather isn’t going to do you any good,” he said, gesturing to their shirts. “His swords and arrows will go straight through it.”
“The warriors will protect us!”
Kael shook his head. “There are too few of them. They can’t hold off Titus and protect you. If you want to survive, you’re going to have to learn to defend yourselves. This armor will protect you against fire, iron, and steel. Even the claws of his beasts will be no good against it.”
They bickered amongst each other for a long moment. Their resolve had lost some of its edge, but it was still there. Finally, they seemed to reach an agreement: “Half of us will return to the village — then the warriors will be able to protect those who remain.”
Kael smiled. He gestured at the dark, winding path that stretched behind them and said: “Have at it.”
Not one of them so much as shifted in his boots.
“Could some of the warriors —?”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t spare them,” Kael said as he strode away. “If you want to go back, then you’ll go on your own.”
After how they’d balked at the thought of swinging Harbinger, he knew getting the craftsmen to even consider thinking like warriors was going to be no small task. They could do it, though — he had a plan. But first, he needed them to believe. He needed to give them a reason to try war. And so he’d given them the best reason he could think of:
He’d given them no other choice.
Chapter 34
The Fiddler and the Hawk
With Crow’s Cross smoldering in ruin, word spread quickly: there was an army marching through the Valley — and it meant to topple Grognaut the Bandit Lord.
“Our reputation precedes us,” Lysander said as they passed another abandoned camp.
Its occupants must’ve left in a hurry: bone ornaments were scattered, tents lay half-packed on their sides, and a large pot sat directly in the middle of a still-smoldering campfire, its contents burnt to its bottom.
Morris crouched to look at the trample marks left in the dirt. “Aye, even their footprints look panicked.”
“They are right to panic.” Nadine jabbed her spear among
the prints, glaring. “They will answer for what they have done to these people.”
The pirates and the giants traveled for days, following a disheveled path of abandoned camps. The Unforgivable Mountains grew ever closer in the distance: the jagged spires of its peaks loomed before them like the wall of a monstrous castle. The closer they got, the grayer the sky became — as if the gloom of the mountains had seeped into the Valley.
Elena spent most of her days riding out well ahead of the main camp, occasionally returning with some news of what lay before them. On one particular day, she brought them a gift: the severed head of a forest bandit, mounted onto a spear.
“Look what I’ve found!”
She flung the spear towards them and Jake leapt back when it landed at his feet. “Why have you always got to kill everything so … dramatically?”
“I didn’t kill him. He was like that when I found him,” she said. Braver trotted off to drink from a nearby stream while Elena stepped in beside Jake. “There was a whole line of them pinned up around a camp to the east of here — all weepy and rotting in the sun. I rather liked the effect. Maybe that’s how I’ll decorate my next inn.”
“I don’t doubt that, not for a breath,” Declan murmured when Elena left to join Braver. “She’s got eyes like Death, that one.”
“I’m sure she was only joking,” Lysander said. He pulled the collar of his white tunic over his nose as he leaned in to inspect the bandit. “Gah, good Gravy!”
“Got a reek on him, don’t he?” Morris had the lower half of his face buried in the crook of one stocky arm. His eyes seemed to be watering more than usual. “What do you suppose it means, Captain?”
“It’s good news for us,” Jonathan said. The cheeriness of his voice was a bit strained from having his nose pinched shut. “Only the mountain bandits do their heads like that. Oi, dead-eyes! Were all the headless blokes from the forest?”
“From what I could see through the goop —”
“There’s no need to be so descriptive,” Jake cut in from around the sleeve of his robes.
Elena stared at the green tingeing his face, and her brows became slightly less severe. “Yes. As far as I could tell, they were all forest bandits.”
Jonathan let out a whoop. “They’re fighting amongst each other — I’d bet it on the back of my fiddle! And while they’re frayed at the edges …”
“We’ll step in.” Lysander’s sudden grin made the shirt slip off his nose. He gagged immediately. “Excellent. Now let’s — gah — let’s press on, shall we?”
By mid afternoon, they were able to smell the camp Elena had spoken of — and they took a wide path around it. Soon the green began to fade from the earth and the rocks grew more numerous. The dirt path was swallowed into the terrain, leaving them no choice but to map their way by the mountains.
In less than a day’s time, Eveningwing began to circle above them, screeching at the tops of his lungs.
“What’s he going on about, Captain?” Morris said.
Lysander glared up at the sky. “Trouble.”
“I am beginning to think that is the only signal you taught him,” Nadine grumbled from behind them.
Declan laughed.
As they crossed the next hill, they saw immediately what Eveningwing had been so frantic about: at long last, they’d arrived at the Earl’s old castle.
It sat in the shadow of the Unforgivable Mountains — half in the Valley and half in the mouth of the Cleft. Thick stone towers squatted at each corner of its walls, their tops cut into squares like teeth. Behind the castle was the beginning of a road that carved its way up the mountains.
“That’s where we’re headed,” Lysander said, pointing it out. “Now all we have to do is leave through the back door.”
It was a task more easily said than done. For while the pirates and the giants stood watching upon the hill, a war was being waged for the castle. An army of forest bandits laid siege to the walls. They’d stripped a thick pine of its branches and sharpened its top into a dull point. It took dozens of them to lift it. They carried the tree across their shoulders and hefted it into the castle gates in a steady rhythm.
Meanwhile, bandits from the mountains had gathered along the ramparts. They hurled stones the size of skulls over the high walls and down upon the forest bandits — leaping up for a quick barrage before ducking to avoid an onslaught of darts and arrows.
One of the mountain bandits stood a head above the rest. His thick beard curled about his chin and he had a monstrous wolf’s head branded into the middle of his chest. A rock the size of a small child flew from his hands and onto the head of a forest bandit beneath him — reducing it to a red spatter.
“Get them, boys!” he howled, beating his chest. “Send those leaf-weavers back to where they came from. Crush them! Beat them down! Knock them —!”
An ear-piercing whistle cut over the top of his commands. Both armies stopped their fight and slapped their hands against their ears. The bandits carrying the pine tree let it slip — accidentally crushing several of their companions’ legs beneath it.
When they’d all turned towards the hill, Jake took his fingers from his mouth. “We don’t really have to kill them, do we?” he said as Lysander stepped forward.
“I’m afraid it’s going to come to that.”
“But what if they agree to go peacefully?”
Lysander snorted. “They’ll never go peacefully.”
“But can’t we at least …?”
They hissed back and forth for a moment before the large bandit on the ramparts reared back and bellowed: “What are you doing on my lands, scum? Leave before I mount your skulls on my spear!”
The bandits all thundered in agreement.
Lysander waved a hand at them. “See?”
Jake twisted his gloves. “I still think —”
“Move.” Elena shoved between them and walked until she stood alone at the crown of the hill. “Are you Grognaut the Bandit Lord?” she hollered at the ramparts.
The large bandit pounded his chest. “I am Grognaut, Lord of the Bandits!”
“I see. Well, my friends and I are rather peeved about what you’ve done to the Valley. So if you could leave these lands and never return, that’d be wonderful.”
“Why do I feel as if you’re mocking me?” Jake hissed when she turned around.
Elena’s dark brows arched high. “I haven’t got a clue.”
He frowned at her. “You’re still doing it, aren’t you?”
Anything she might’ve said in reply was drowned out by the sudden boom of Grognaut’s command: “Crush them!”
The forest bandits forgot their siege and sprinted for the hill, swords drawn. Behind them, the castle gates burst open and a horde of mountain bandits joined their charge. The pirates’ swords were hardly out of their sheaths before the giants were already thundering down the hill — led by a battle-maddened Declan.
Nadine raced after them with a frustrated growl. “They will crack their large heads open upon a rock before they even reach their foes!”
The pirates followed after her, led by Lysander, with Jonathan whooping and waving his sword somewhere in their midst.
Elena turned back to Jake, arms crossed over her chest. “I don’t think that worked, dove.”
“I knew it! I knew you were mocking me.”
“I would never mock you — I’m genuinely, utterly crushed that they didn’t accept our offer.”
He glared at her from over his spectacles. “Why can I never tell —?”
“We’ll have plenty of time to figure out who’s mocking who later. Right now we could use one of those spells!” Morris said.
When Jake hesitated, Elena’s dark brows tightened over her eyes. “Someone’s going to die today, mage. You can’t stop that from happening, but you can make sure that fewer of your friends wind up among the dead.”
“Aye, send one of those fiery balls out there, lad! Chase them off,” Morris croaked.
Below them, Declan had reached the first line of bandits. His eyes were black with fury; scarlet ribbons followed the sweeping trail of his scythe. It wasn’t long before his hulking body disappeared within the crush of bandits.
Grognaut stalked along the ramparts, howling for blood. As Jake watched the Bandit Lord, his eyes suddenly dulled. “I’m not a sword,” he said firmly as he raised a hand towards the ramparts. “I’m a free man … and I’ll make my own decisions.”
Something like a red spear shot from his palm and hurtled for the ramparts. It crackled like a thunder’s boom as it struck Grognaut in the chest. The bandits spun in time to see Grognaut’s flesh crumble away, fluttering into the wind like ash. His skeleton stood by itself for a moment, swallowed in the bulk of his armor. Then it toppled forward.
The battlefield quieted as Grognaut’s bones tipped over the ramparts. The clang of his armor striking the ground seemed to ring through the Valley — and the battle ended just as suddenly as it’d begun.
The bandits screamed and tore for the Cleft, trampling each other in their haste to get away from Jake. The giants followed at their heels. Their long steps swallowed the gap between them and their scythes worked quickly. Only a small portion of bandits managed to escape — the rest were hewed and split like wheat.
“Well, I suppose that settles that,” Lysander said. He tucked the Lass into its sheath with a flourish and led his men inside the castle gates.
There were chips of stone missing from the floor of the courtyard and char marks nearly everywhere else. Large strips had been carved from the mortar in places. They were deep and easily the width of a dagger’s blade.
Morris ran the toe of his boot along them and whistled. He shot a look at Lysander, who grinned.
“Blimey, this isn’t the work of bandits,” Jonathan said. He crouched and ran his fingers down a set of marks. “They look like … claws. What sort of creature leaves a mess this size?”