The Ranger's Sorrow: The King's Ranger Book 4

by AC Cobble

  Rew and the others ran, but they’d spent themselves over the last day and a half walking. They’d subsisted on bad food and quick sips of water. Even he, used to long, arduous journeys, wasn’t equipped to run hard after so long on his feet.

  “Hurry!” he called to the others. “Hurry!”

  One hundred paces. The soldiers behind them had closed within one hundred paces. Scimitars bounced on their sides, and their copper breastplates looked dull in the shadow of Olsoth.

  “I can—“ cried Cinda, her voice hollow and gasping.

  “Copper, lass, they’re wearing copper. It will shield them from anything you try. With enough power, you could crack that shield… but there are a hundred of them, and we can’t stop for you to summon your strength.”

  She didn’t respond. There wasn’t a response.

  A quarter league ahead of them, they could now make out the giant gates of Olsoth. They were closed.

  “Keep going!” cried Rew, hoping the proximity of Olsoth would encourage the others to move their feet quicker, because if they didn’t…

  He glanced behind them and saw the simulacrum of Valchon grinning maniacally, the company of soldiers strung out behind him as they couldn’t match the man’s pace. A spellcaster that could run?

  Rew ached to reach for his longsword, but against so many, he knew it would be suicide, but if it would save the others… Maybe he had no choice. If only the gates of Olsoth would open, if only he knew they could get inside…

  A great reverberating horn called mournfully from the walls of the city. It sounded as if it was shaking the very foundation of the place, though the cry was lost in the open plains behind them. The horn’s wail rose again, rolling like thunder over them, and Rew’s heart leapt as he saw the gates of the city crack open.

  He didn’t need to shout for the others to go faster. They were putting everything they had left into a last, desperate sprint toward those opening gates.

  Rew glanced back and saw that it was not going to be enough. The spellcaster was just two dozen paces behind them, and his men another two dozen beyond that. At their speed, they would catch Rew’s companions well before Olsoth.

  There was a streak of darkness and a huge boulder smashed into the turf on the flank of the soldiers, rolling by them, flinging heavy clods of soil.

  Nearly everyone stumbled in surprise. A breath later, another massive rock landed in the midst of the copper-armored soldiers, and that time, half a dozen went scrambling away as the rock rolled through their midst, crushing several of them beneath its weight. More huge rocks came falling from the sky with varying degrees of accuracy, but it was enough to force the soldiers to scatter in different directions.

  Rew slowed and took time to draw his longsword.

  The spellcaster, who’d pulled just a dozen paces away, slowed as well then peeked over his shoulder where his men were fleeing out of range of Olsoth’s catapults. He glanced at Rew’s longsword then up to the walls of the city. Giving a curt, mocking salute, the spellcaster turned and darted away, weaving a jagged, random pattern over the grass, dodging clear of a hail of boulders that whistled down around him.

  Stumbling, staggering, Rew and his companions tottered the rest of the way to Olsoth and ducked through the slender crack in the gates. Zaine slumped against a wall. Raif collapsed in a heap in the center of the opening that led into the city. Cinda fell to her knees next to her brother, her head bowed, ragged breaths exploding from her open mouth. Anne looked to Rew and offered him a tired smile.

  An armored soldier stood in a long, stone hallway. He was the only one there. He whistled, and the huge gates creaked and then clanged shut. The man surveyed them before gesturing for them to follow. His voice, echoing in the hallway, boomed, “I hope you have a good story to tell.”

  Rew stood straight from where he’d been leaning over, hands on his knees. “We appreciate the shelter, but there’s not much to say.”

  His eyes flicking to Cinda’s crimson robes, the soldier grunted. “We’ll see, but all the same, if it’s not too much of an inconvenience, my superior would like to have a word with you.”

  Rew nodded agreement. What else could he do? The city was obviously on war footing, and they were strangers. Refusing to meet with the man’s supervisor would get them kicked out the gate, at best. More likely, they would be clapped in irons, and then the supervisor would come to them with pointed questions and hot pincers with which to pull out the answers.

  The others stood slowly, clearly struggling to regain their feet and move their bodies again. The soldier, clad in a steel-studded leather brigandine, led them from the corridor to a gated stairwell cut into what looked like a mountain.

  Open-mouthed, the children stared past to where the corridor they were in curved out of sight. Rew knew it was designed so that if an attacking army breached the outer gate, they didn’t have a clear shot at the next one. If they’d used rams or other engines to batter their way inside, they would have hell twisting the things through the winding passage to the next gate, and all around it was solid stone, except for a handful of narrow exits which during a battle could easily be blocked by dumping piles of rubble down them.

  Before they entered the stairwell, Rew glanced up and saw another opening in the ceiling of the tunnel. A murder hole where boiling oil or other terrible substances could be unleashed on attacking forces. It was dark up there, so he couldn’t tell if they were being watched, but it felt like it. He sighed. Whatever was happening in Olsoth, it had to be better than being chased across the endless plain.

  They climbed the stairs to another hallway, walked down two dozen paces, and found another doorway. There were several in the hall, but none had identifying features. All were shut. The soldier opened the door and led them in. It was a tight tunnel that climbed up inside of the mass of Olsoth, taking steep stairs, cutting through dark passages, and then finally exiting onto the exterior walls of the city.

  They were standing on a battlement that rose in a ramp, spiraling around the monolith. There were few soldiers there. Farther up the ramp, a catapult platform protruded from the side of the structure. Rew looked straight up, and fifty paces above the battlement, he could see the next loop of the spiraling fortification and more of the catapult platforms. They must have trained all of the giant engines on Valchon’s men to frighten them off their pursuit.

  Down below, the grasslands extended out from Olsoth in a broad, gentle plain. From above, they could see the scars streams cut through the land, a single stand of trees far in the distance, and several masses of men. The soldiers who had been chasing them and maybe more? Without his spyglass, it was difficult to see details, but Rew could guess well enough.

  Closer to the city, there were long trenches plowed through the turf by the force of Olsoth’s catapults. Some were recent. Others were older. It looked as if they collected the boulders after firing them, but they’d left the bodies of Valchon’s men. Scores of them lay crumpled and smashed in the tracks from the rocks, only visible from so high up because the glint on their copper armor contrasted so sharply with the green grass.

  The soldier they were following was already several dozen paces up the battlement, so Rew and the others hurried after with just a quick look around and out. The soldier led them to a catapult platform, and a broad-shouldered man turned at the sound of their arrival.

  He was plainly armored, just like the one who’d greeted them. All of the soldiers they could see wore similar gear, with no designation of rank. This man wore dark brigandine studded with steel, and a simple sword hung from his belt. Unlike the other soldiers they’d passed, he had no gauntlets over his hands, and Rew saw a golden signet ring there. The baron? In case the man was the baron, Rew proffered a deep bow, and the children followed his lead.

  The man grunted. “You recognize… Ah, the ring. I should have taken that off.”

  Rew frowned.

  “Not for you, for them,” said the baron, gesturing out toward the plain w
here groups of Valchon’s men were moving about.

  Rising to meet the man’s gaze, Rew nodded. “I thank you, m’lord, for opening the gates for us. You did not have to do that, but it saved our lives. When I heard that horn, my heart nearly fell to my boots. May I ask…”

  “I didn’t do it to save your lives,” responded the man matter-of-factly. Then, he turned to look out over the plain. “My name is Barnaus, Baron of Olsoth.”

  Unsure whether they’d been dismissed or invited to stay, Rew joined the baron at the battlement. “If it was not to save us, then you recognized who was chasing us?”

  “Aye, I figured if you were enemies of Valchon’s, then you might be friends of mine,” responded the baron, his armored elbows resting confidently on the stone of his fortress. He glanced at Rew, studying the ranger’s face, as if wondering about a stranger who was comfortable enough with nobility to question him, but after a long moment, the baron nodded as if deciding something. Baron Barnaus continued, “The horn wasn’t a warning, it was a calling. Unfortunately, they’re getting smarter, and the bastards understand now. See how they’ve scattered?”

  “A calling… to the wyrms?”

  The baron grinned. “So you know some of the area, then? You dress like a stranger to Olsoth, and it’s clear enough it’s been some time since you’ve been here. No one from my city has braved the plains for weeks.”

  “It has been some time since I was in the region,” conceded Rew.

  “I want to hear your story, but first…”

  The man, and the other soldiers on the platform, all looked out over the plains.

  Rew could see that their pursers had scattered into smaller clumps, and now there were a dozen of them all moving away from Olsoth in different directions.

  “We haven’t figured out how they communicate,” murmured the man. “They do, somehow, to stay coordinated out there. Pfah. Even I’d get lost in those grasses with no point of reference. Men can walk for weeks on the plains without ever finding their way out or their way back here. Valchon’s men are strangers to this land, but somehow, they know exactly where to go.”

  “We noticed,” grumbled Rew.

  The baron held up a hand, raising one finger then, after a moment, a second.

  Rew gasped as half a league away, he saw the soil buckling, moving like a hand beneath a sheet, and then, it burst, and one of the clumps of Valchon’s men disappeared down the maw of a giant land wyrm.

  The wyrm bore some resemblance to the smaller creature with a similar name, but none who saw both would think they were related. This thing was no fish bait. It was massive, its body the length of a long merchant’s train, and it was as wide as two wagons abreast. Its front was all mouth. From what Rew could see, the mouth looked like a vast cavern, ringed in teeth or tentacles, and when it crashed down on the hapless soldiers, it swallowed them whole, driving them and itself down hard into the ground and then churning through the surface and plunging its front out of sight while its long, white body wriggled after it.

  It moved like a snake—or a worm, Rew admitted—propelling itself down into the ground, apparently going deep as, after two hundred paces, the buckling and sagging of the soil evened, and all was still.

  With a crash, two leagues east, another of the wyrms erupted into view, and the soldiers it pursued faced the same fate as the first batch.

  “Two of them is good,” murmured the baron. “The wyrms have been part of Olsoth’s protections for centuries. It’s been enough to dissuade any opposing armies ever since Vaisius Morden the First came down from Iyre two hundred years ago. But recently… We haven’t seen as many of the creatures. I haven’t found evidence of it, but I believe Valchon’s men are killing them. It’s dangerous if you don’t know the trick of it, as you can see, but it can be done.”

  Looking at the swathes of churned dirt where the wyrms had surfaced, where groups of men had vanished into the maws of the creatures, Rew nodded quietly.

  “Come,” said the baron. “The wyrms will keep feeding for another hour, but I’ve seen enough. The lass over there looks like she’s going to fall asleep and go tumbling off my walls. Your party needs rest, but I’m afraid I need to hear your story before you get it.”

  That gave Rew the span between the battlement and the baron’s throne room to concoct a convincing story. It wasn’t enough time.

  Cinda was still stubbornly wearing the robes of a necromancer. Raif, after so much time on the road, had the scruffy look of a mercenary, except for the enchanted greatsword slung across his back which was impossible to miss if one knew what they were looking at. Zaine’s lithe appearance might have signaled a number of professions, but her bow and twin daggers hinted at the truth. Rew had to admit he also had the look of a man who could not be trusted, and Anne didn’t look threatening at all, which would make the nobleman even more suspicious of her. Instead of letting the baron press them, Rew jumped into his own questions as soon as the man unstrapped his sword, leaned it against a heavy wooden throne, and sat.

  “The spellcasters wearing purple, who are they?”

  Baron Barnaus frowned back at Rew, not answering. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his throne, studying the party. His armor was the same design and quality of his men’s. He wore no insignia or decoration except for his signet ring. The baron was sturdy and looked as if he practiced regularly with his sword or at some other sport, but aside from his commanding demeanor, he could have been a simple captain rather than the ruler of the city.

  “You are strangers here. I’ll ask the questions. Why were you out in the plains south of Olsoth?”

  It was dangerous to make assumptions about nobility, but Rew guessed the baron was a practical man who cared for results and gave little thought to the frippery that ensnared most of his peers. It was likely why he’d been given the remote city of Olsoth, with its odd and uncomfortable trade.

  Rew gave a shallow bow and told the baron, “We’re adventurers looking to enter the wyrm oil business.”

  The baron frowned at him. He looked around the throne room and then called loudly for his men to exit. He gave his soldiers a pretense of checking the walls to see if more of the interlopers were coming close, but it was clear to Rew that he wanted to speak in private. Did the baron not trust his own men?

  Once the room was clear, Rew nodded discreetly to Cinda and claimed, “We’ve a few tricks up our sleeve which I think will bring us, and you after collecting your levy, a bountiful haul.”

  “The wyrm oil business is a bit slow at the moment,” mentioned the baron drolly.

  “Ah, yes,” said Rew, suspecting the man wasn’t buying a bit of his story, but having no choice except to continue. “We noticed. Who, if I may ask, were those men? You said they worked for… Valchon? The prince in Carff? I must admit, as soon as we realized they were chasing us, we did not stop to ask. Whoever they were, I’ve found that when soldiers want you, it’s best to be somewhere else.”

  “That happens to you often?”

  Rew shrugged and smiled.

  “Yes, they are Prince Valchon’s men,” said the baron. “He’s making war on his brother.”

  “I’ve heard rumors,” said Rew. He crossed his arms over his chest. “There was a spellcaster in purple robes. I’ve never seen one like that before.”

  “We’re calling them hunters,” responded the baron, leaning back in his chair. “It seems they command a new breed of high magic, though most of what we know of them is through investigations into the aftermath of their attacks. It’s been difficult to find survivors who can tell us anything. Because of that, I’m not certain of the extent of their powers or what spells they can cast, but it’s clear they’re endowed with some way of tracking prey, and they can sustain themselves far longer than a mortal man, even before they absorb the strength of their catch.”

  “That makes sense,” murmured Rew, stretching his sore legs. “They followed us well over a day. Ah, what do you mean, absorb the strength?”

>   The baron pursed his lips, his fingers still drumming a rapid beat on the arm of his throne. His gaze flicked toward Cinda before settling back on Rew. “You’ve a lot of questions for a man who showed up unannounced and in trouble at my door.”

  Rew rubbed his head. “Apologies. I just… I haven’t seen anything like these hunters before.”

  “They are new,” agreed the baron. “You’re familiar with how other talents, high magicians, draw their power?”

  “I am.”

  “These hunters seem to leech their strength from other people. They’ve been scouring the villages across the plain, draining my vassals of strength and leaving them weak and dying. I can’t even begin to count how many I’ve lost. I worry this same method is what is killing off the land wyrms, though we haven’t been able to prove it. If it is...”

  “Draining?”

  Barnaus nodded. “Draining. It’s like they suck the life out of their victims, and afterward, the hunters have grown in power.”

  “Oh my,” murmured Anne. “That man, back at the village…”

  “I’ve seen things, in my time,” said the baron. “Done things as well. I’ll spare you the details, but I earned this barony from the king during the last Investiture, and the toll was paid in blood. I was proud of that, for a time, but I no longer am. Still, what I earned, I earned facing men like myself on the field of battle with steel and fury. It was an honest fight, and they earned an honorable death. Afterward, the king helped rebuild what was destroyed, and we moved on. This new warfare?”

  The baron shuddered, and Rew shifted uncomfortably. The man’s comments were unusual for a noble. As a rule, they did not reflect on how they came to power and the price that others paid to help them make that climb. The bloody road to a title wasn’t a secret, but nobles did not speak this way to strangers. Rew tucked a hand behind his back to the bone hilt of his hunting knife. He was beginning to suspect that they were not strangers to this man.

  “The hunters are draining the life from my people. What will be left to rebuild when they are done? The villages are empty. If Prince Valchon prevails, the entire Northern Province could face the same fate. Blessed Mother, did you hear what he did to Stanton, to his own people?”