War of the Fathers: War of the Fathers Universe: Volumes One - Three Box Set (War of the Fathers Series Box Set Book 1)

by Dan Decker

  The skin of this Hunwei corpse was drenched and cold to the touch. Adar guessed that the beast had died sometime before the tower’s weapon had gone off. That meant it wasn’t the work of Tere or Karn.

  “Somebody else is trying to kill you?” Kura asked. “What have I gotten myself into? I suppose they will want to kill me by association as well. You aren’t somebody that stirs up trouble just to have something to do, are you?”

  “Feel free to leave anytime you want,” Adar said, swinging the Hunwei’s blaster onto his back. It looked functional. He had two spares again. More importantly, somebody else couldn’t pick it up and use it against him. “I'm not keeping you here.”

  The cold Hunwei corpse made him feel a sense of relief as well as chagrin. Relief, because he hadn’t yet found proof that he’d reached the outer limit of the tower’s range. Chagrin, because Jorad and the others had been in the thick of the battle when they were supposed to have been hiding in the Arches.

  He looked around, but there weren’t any other dead Hunwei on the street. The towers had limits, otherwise, why had so many of them been built? He needed to know what those limits were.

  Vigorock had been far larger and taller than the tower here in Zecarani. He assumed the bigger tower could kill Hunwei at a greater distance away. That meant at some point the tower here in Zecarani would lose its ability to destroy the Hunwei. It also meant Vigorock was the site of an ancient city that had been rather sizable. Why else would such a large tower be located there? He wondered if the people of Neberan were descendants of those that had lived in that city. What other secrets might be hidden in the surrounding woods?

  So many questions...

  Adar approached a nearby human body and was relieved when he didn't recognize it as somebody from his group. He was turning away, but something about the man's face tugged at his memory and made him look again.

  He did know this man after all. It took Adar several seconds, but the name came to him.

  Gorew. This was the man that Erro had accused Jorad of killing. He'd been a Neberan town guard.

  “Let me guess,” Kura said, “you know him. Another foe? Or have we found one of your friends.”

  Adar cast his eyes about, wondering if he would find Thon’s body here as well. The nearby human corpses were not the right size for Thon’s big frame.

  “This man was no enemy of mine.” Adar didn't feel like elaborating any further.

  After fleeing Neberan, Jorad had mentioned something about Gorew, but Adar couldn't remember what it was. It had something to do with the lies that Erro had been spreading about Jorad.

  Hadn't Gorew been one of the guards that had torn up the Gartel place while arresting Jorad? Or had he been the guard that Jorad had assaulted to escape? One of those guards had been killed by the Hunwei, but Adar didn’t remember what had happened to the other.

  He frowned as he examined Gorew’s remains. It was a shame that Gorew had survived the Hunwei's attack on Neberan only to be killed here in Zecarani.

  If Erro hadn’t been lying again, Jorad would be beating himself up over this. Adar decided to avoid thinking about it until he could talk to Jorad. Perhaps Neare and Erro had stumbled across Gorew after he’d been killed by the Hunwei and later seen Jorad using a blaster.

  It was too bad that things with Neare and Erro hadn’t gone differently. Adar would have wanted to tell Wes that others from his hometown had survived. It would have made his day.

  The gawky kid had a knack that helped people feel happier even though there wasn't much to smile about. Their circumstances hadn't stopped him from being one of the more upbeat members of their little traveling party. Perhaps it was a talent he'd developed because of the personal tragedy he'd suffered. If anybody would be happy that Neare and Erro had survived, it would be Wes.

  Tere might be talking with Wes and the others right now, waiting to see if I’m about to come through the arch. His hands will be hovering over his blaster, ready to fire. Or he could have already slipped away. Adar tried to remember if Tere had been nearby when he had shown Jorad the closest working arch to Rarbon.

  Nine bleeding burning fires, Adar thought when he remembered that Jorad had carved a notch into the archway so that he wouldn't forget.

  Adar’s heart rate increased as Tere's confession came to mind again and he forced himself to take calming breaths. How different things would have been if Adar had followed his instincts all those years ago when Tere had found Adar while he feverishly fought to save Nelion's life.

  The thought of Tere meeting up with Jorad and the others made Adar tighten his hands around the blaster. He walked forward again and checked to make sure that Kura was keeping up with him.

  Adar brought up his blaster so he was ready to handle Hunwei, turncoat, or anybody else that might wish them harm. When they went into an alley, they startled an elderly man with a cane that had been coming from the other direction. The man hesitated when he saw Adar's blaster, he eyed Kura and the baby. Adar navigated around the man without bothering to stop. This wouldn’t be the last person to give him a strange look because of the weapons.

  When Adar had first come to Zecarani with a blaster slung onto his back, nobody had given it a second thought because they had no idea what it could do. That had changed when the Hunwei had invaded the city.

  Adar was a quarter of the way down the alley when he stopped and listened. It sounded like a Hunwei ship was about to land. He turned about and looked up as the sound of rushing wind got even louder.

  He grasped his blaster when he saw that one of the Hunwei ships was indeed headed down, but instead of descending vertically like all the others, this one was coming in from an angle, and it was tilted to the side. If it were to continue on its current path, it would slam right into—

  “Run Kura, run!” Adar bolted back the way that he’d come, praying they weren’t too late.

  Kura had apparently heard it before him and had already turned about, she was staring at the descending ship. Her mouth was open as if she'd been saying something. Had she tried to warn him about the ship? Adar couldn't remember hearing anything. At his words, she burst into action, darting back out the alley faster than Adar was capable of running.

  Twenty years ago, I might have taken her. Pain twinged in his knee, but he ignored it.

  The roar of the ship was louder now, and he was surprised to see it was bigger than any he'd seen land on the ground.

  Come to think of it, the sound of the ship’s descent had been there in the background for some time, gradually getting louder. That was why it had taken him so long to recognize it as a source of potential danger.

  Some ships had been in the air when the weapon in the tower had been activated, but those had disappeared after the tower had done its thing. Adar had assumed the only damage the tower had done had been to individual Hunwei on the ground, but now he wondered while he ran if it had done something to the ships in the air. The off-kilter way the ship approached seemed wrong, even with his limited experience with the things.

  As the volume of its approach continued to increase, Adar pounded his legs against the ground, nearing the entrance of the alley. A large portion of the sky was blotted out by the mass as it hurled towards his location.

  He sprung over the remains of a Hunwei he'd passed earlier, its blackened skull staring up at him through its ash-covered helmet. The visor had yellowed from the flames of its death.

  Mud splashed when Adar landed, and he could feel the moisture on his legs as some of it clung to his pants. He spotted the elderly man as he hobbled down the street to which the alley connected.

  In the next moment, Kura made it to the man. He turned to face her as she shouted at him. Confusion crossed his face, but she didn’t slow. Kura disappeared as she ran down the street, leaving the old man quite alarmed.

  Gritting his teeth, Adar pushed himself to run faster, his knee flaring up again. The roar of the engines was now deafening, drowning out all other sounds. He couldn
’t even hear the sound of his boots hitting the ground. He cleared his throat, sputtered into a cough, and spat, all the while hearing none of it.

  It looked like the ship was going to hit a house across from the alley exit. The old man’s face was finally turned to the sky. He hobbled towards the home while his eyes were still on the ship. His mouth was open as if he were yelling, but it was impossible to make out what he was saying.

  A woman appeared on the front porch of the home, holding an infant in her arms. The man waved his cane in the air. Whether she could make out the old man's words or not, Adar couldn't tell.

  She came forward until she could see what was coming. Her mouth opened, screaming. Adar had escaped the alley by that time and closed the distance between himself and the man. If it hadn't been for the people that were within the ship’s path, Adar would have turned to the side and sprinted away after Kura.

  Beckoning to the woman, Adar yelled for them to run. The ship crashed through the top of the woman's home. Shingles and wood flew everywhere. The woman was hit in the head by a piece of wood and knocked off balance. She fell as Adar ran to her aid. He ducked to avoid a large broken beam, it almost took him in the chest. The wind of it rushing overhead pulled on his hair.

  The ship passed as Adar reached her. Its long body blocking out the cloudy sky. The old man went to ground and covered his ears.

  Adar had thought the sound from the ship had been bad before, but now he wondered if he'd ever be able to hear anything again. The heat from above forced his eyes shut, and he hoped it was not hot enough to hurt any of them. He could open his eyes only after it passed overhead.

  The baby's mouth was open, and its eyes were shut, its face scrunched. The mother tried to get to her feet, but the squirming mass in her arms made that impossible. They were both covered with dust and various pieces of shrapnel from the roof of their home. Adar was relieved to see that neither of them were bleeding.

  He had expected the ship would pull up, but it careened into a three-story building across the street. The home was laid flat in a blink of an eye as the ship went through without seeming to slow down.

  Wood, rock, and cement flew everywhere as it smashed into the next home. The ship continued to destroy all that lay in its path. It finally came to a stop in the same area to which Adar had been heading. With the ship knocking flat everything between them and it, Adar could see it slam into the two buildings that he knew where on either side of the entrance to the Arches.

  Bleeding Melyah! Adar thought. Once Tere realizes my way to the Arches is blocked, he won't need to run. It would take Adar almost a full day to get to the next closest entrance. Tere and the others would beat him to Rarbon long before he could catch up to them. Adar wondered if Tere would turn Derren's tablet over to Abel or keep it for himself.

  Suppressing a growl so as not to further distress the woman and her baby, Adar shook off the dust and stooped to help the struggling mother to her feet. After he had checked to see that the old man was all right, he took off at a run in the direction Kura had gone.

  Chapter 13

  The breeze blew against Soret’s face, but she didn’t notice as she stared into the fire beneath the pot while taking deep, steady breaths.

  She had tried to sit at first but had been too antsy to rest and had paced for a while after that. It was a matter of time until Adar came back. It might be safe to look for her father when Adar returned. She wouldn’t take Jorad with her, of course. The two would need to be kept as far away from each other as possible. Maybe after Barc had a chance to calm down, he would be more open to reason, and she would be able to prevail upon him to join them on the trip to Rarbon.

  The others in her group spoke of Rarbon as if it was a great city that would be able to withstand the Hunwei. She hoped they were right but was trying to not let herself count on it. If Rarbon turned out to be the haven it was purported to be, then the smart thing for her and her father to do would be to go there. It would grate on Barc, but she might even be able to convince him to apologize to Jorad. It wouldn’t be a real expression, to be sure, but given how everybody in the group either feared or respected Adar, it would be best to have both Adar and Jorad as allies.

  Barc’s face came to mind, the fear and the betrayal ripping through her as though it was a knife. She sighed as her heart raced and she returned to pacing. Even after reminding herself that Barc had already survived one Hunwei invasion, it was a struggle to stop worrying about him. To calm down her nerves, she focused instead on what she could have done differently.

  A hundred different scenarios danced around her head, but it all came back to an inescapable conclusion. She had let others have too much influence over her. Originally, she’d felt like the men in her life were controlling her but she had decided that was the wrong way to look at it.

  Shouldn’t she be able to make her own decisions regardless of what others were doing? Nobody had held a dagger to her throat and made her do something that she hadn’t wanted to do. The situation had made the outcomes inevitable.

  No, she thought, that’s wrong too. There isn’t anything that can’t be changed, if something seemed like it had to happen, that didn’t mean that it should happen. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t have stopped it. I was going along because I was afraid and lacked the skills to survive. I turned off my brain and trusted somebody else to use theirs. Well, she was done with that and wouldn’t let that happen again.

  “That water boiling yet?” Karn poked his head out of the arch. His calm demeanor had returned, but had his eyes narrowed slightly when he looked at her?

  A small chuckle rose in the back of her throat, and she was unable to keep it from surfacing. He frowned as she burst out into a fit of laughter. Karn looked weird with his head sticking out of nowhere. It was as if he was coming from a door to another world and looked as though he was standing in a hole in the air.

  The arch on this side—she didn’t have the slightest idea where the arch had opened—was located in the remains of an old brick wall that was covered with vegetation.

  While she'd been waiting for Wes and Leron to get the fire going, Soret had walked around the brick wall and found that every other part of the wall had fallen to the spongy ground except for those bricks that were associated with the arch. The broken piece of wall looked like it could have been easily pushed over from the other side. She’d quickly stepped back from it, afraid that if she got too close it would fall and she’d lose her way back to the others. She was concerned that if the wind picked up, it might blow over.

  Now that’s just silly, she thought, if the wind hasn’t toppled it by now, this slight breeze isn’t any danger.

  At one time, it had been part of a much larger structure, but there was little other than rubble to prove its existence. Here and there were large moss covered boulders, but she couldn’t be certain if they had been part of what had stood here before.

  Karn grunted.

  “Sorry,” she swallowed down another chuckle and looked away. “It’s just so funny, seeing you suspended with your head sticking out. Like you’re a spirit or something.”

  When Karn didn’t even crack a smile, Soret looked at the small pot that Leron had propped up over the fire before he and Wes had gone exploring and was surprised to see that it was indeed boiling. She’d gotten lost in her thoughts again.

  “Yeah, it's ready.” Not only was it boiling, but the water level was noticeably lower. Using several rags she'd scrounged up, she picked up the steaming pot and walked it over to the arch.

  When Karn saw the water, he looked surprised at the water level and opened his mouth as if to say something. Soret threw him a glare, and he snapped his mouth shut. It felt good to stand up for herself, even if she was a little late in showing her backbone today.

  A small victory, she thought. Hopefully the first of many.

  Karn stepped out of the arch to allow her in. The temperature within was more than several degrees warmer, and with all the bodies pa
cked in the narrow hallway, she immediately felt as though she was on the verge of suffocating.

  She had expected with the difference in temperatures there would be a slight breeze coming from outside the Arches, but that wasn’t the case. The air was still and smelled of sweat, blood, and body odor. She resisted the urge to smell herself to see if she was contributing to the stench. She was certain she did and didn’t think proving it to herself was going to do her mental state any good.

  After Leron had opened the arch, he and Wes had tried to get several of the other refugees to follow them out, but they'd all refused. Whether it had been fear of the unknown or they were just too tired to entertain the idea, she didn’t know. It would have done them all some good to not have the place so packed. She knew there were empty hallways not far from where everybody had congregated. She would have thought the refugees would want to spread out. Perhaps there was some comfort in remaining near one another.

  Not many of the people took notice of her as she passed, but the few that looked up didn’t try to move out of her way. Never mind this scalding pot of water! She thought. Go ahead and make me trip. She arrived at the man with the baby right as she finished the thought and stopped to take several calming breaths before navigating past him. Of all those that had joined them in the Arches, she felt sorry for them the most. She hadn’t spoken with the man but had overheard Wes mention the baby was his younger brother. Their mother had been killed by the Hunwei.

  The baby was asleep again, and the young man had his eyes closed as well. She tiptoed by while holding her breath and carefully monitoring the pot. Once she was clear, she let out a sigh, glad that she hadn’t awoken either and that she had managed to not spill the water onto them.

  Soret knelt as she placed the pot next to Xarda and touched her lightly on the shoulder.

  When Xarda looked up, Soret wasn't surprised to see that Xarda's face was covered with sweat. Soret was taken off guard by Xarda's red eyes and the streams of liquid on her face that made it look as though she'd been crying. For a long surreal moment, Soret was unable to move, everybody cried, even men, though they always did their best to hide it. For some reason that Soret couldn’t identify, she’d believed that this was something Xarda wasn’t capable of doing. Xarda didn’t look ashamed as Soret looked away, thinking that even in her tears there was something regal about Xarda’s appearance.