by Morgan Rice
Erec was grateful that they were charging to meet the enemy face-first, instead of waiting with trepidation within their own gates for the enemy to approach. He did not know if they would live or would die, and in some ways that didn’t matter. What mattered most was that they have a chance to meet the enemy with honor, with courage, and in a clash of glory.
Erec felt a sense of assurance this time knowing that Alistair was safe in Savaria, behind the Duke’s gates, secure in the castle, hundreds of miles behind the front lines. He could throw himself into battle with peace of mind, knowing he would not have to worry about her.
They rode and rode, the only sound that of the trampling of their horses, the ever-present clouds of dust in Erec’s face, his hair, his nose, until the sun grew high in the sky. Erec lost himself, as he often did, in the great cacophony of hundreds of horses’ hooves, of spurs jingling in his ears, of swords rattling in their scabbards. It was a sound he had been accustomed to since his youth. It felt like home.
As the sun grew long in the sky and Erec’s legs began to ache, the road elevated and they reached the top of the Eastern Hill; they paused, and from this strategic vantage point they were able to look down at the eastern countryside spread out below.
As they all came to a stop, the Duke and Brandt beside Erec, he pointed.
“There!” Erec said.
Before them lay a huge mountain range, stretching as far north and south as the eye could see. It created a natural barrier, blocking East from West, and there was but one way through: a narrow gulch, a slice of a divide, large enough to fit maybe six men side-by-side, and perhaps a hundred yards deep, amidst the mountain range. It was the only way those approaching from the West could reach Savaria without scaling the steep mountain. It was a passageway for travelers. And a chokepoint for soldiers. It was the quickest and most direct way for an army to travel—that is, if an army had nothing to fear. A cautious army, in the midst of a conflict with a strong enemy would not attempt it; but a huge army, with nothing to fear, just might. It was the perfect place for an ambush.
They could not see beyond the mountain range, and had no idea how close Andronicus’ army was—or if they were even traveling this way.
Erec was invigorated; they had beat Andronicus here. Now, they had a fighting chance.
“FORWARD!” Erec screamed.
As one the Duke’s men screamed and kicked their horses, and they all went galloping down the hill, covering ground quickly.
Soon, they reached the base of the gulch.
“What now?” the Duke asked Erec, breathing hard, as they all sat there on their horses.
“We must split our men,” Erec answered. “Half on one side and half on the other. Then we must split these groups again, half taking positions high atop the mountain, and half down below. Those up high can create an avalanche on our signal. Then, when the fighting is thick, they can join us down below.”
The Duke nodded in approval.
“We must also stage archers along the way,” he added. “Every twenty feet, at every elevation, to cover all the angles.”
Erec nodded in approval.
“And spears and pikes below,” Brandt chimed in, “to create a wall of blood.”
The Duke screamed out orders and as he did, his men all dispersed with a great cheer, galloping and taking up positions up and down the mountain face, all along the edge of the gulch, and down below, right at its edge.
Erec dismounted and took the opportunity, before the storm, to walk inside the empty gulch, Brandt and the Duke joining him. Erec went slowly, looking up at its walls, feeling its rock, examining it. It was darker in here, and his footsteps echoed. He craned his neck, looked hundreds of feet high, and saw their men beginning to take up positions. It was a steep drop from there, and even the smallest rock cast from that height would be deadly.
Before Erec was the long and narrow tunnel formed by the gulch, and in the distance, the sunlight shone from the far end, perhaps a hundred yards off. As of now, all was eerily quiet; Erec saw no sign of Andronicus men. He wondered how a place could be so peaceful that would soon be filled with bloodshed.
Apparently, Brandt and the Duke, beside him, were feeling the same way.
“Maybe they shall not come this way,” Brandt said, his voice echoing in the silence.
“Maybe they will take another route,” the Duke added.
But Erec stood there, hands on his hips, feeling the smell of battle in the air, a smell he had known since childhood. The hairs on his arms rose just slightly, as they always did before a conflict. He had a sixth sense for battle, ever since he could walk.
He slowly shook his head.
“No,” he said, “if there is one thing you can be sure of, it is that war is coming our way.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Romulus stood on a high knoll north of Neversink, watching the horizon in a fit of rage. Commander of all Empire forces in Andronicus’ absence, number two general only to Andronicus himself, Romulus was known to suffer no fools. He stood just a bit shorter than Andronicus, but nearly twice as wide, with a stocky face, a wide jaw, and shoulders so large that his neck nearly disappeared. He had wide, brutal lips, blazing black eyes, huge ears, and smaller horns than Andronicus. He did not wear a necklace of shrunken heads, like Andronicus did. He did not need to. When he encountered his enemies, he snapped their heads off with his bare hands, and was known to hold them in the air and stare into the corpse’s eyes long enough to memorize each face. He branded the face of his enemies into his mind that way, and he never forgot a single one. He held in his head a vast catalog of all the faces of the men he had killed, and sometimes, in the middle of the night, he would lay awake for hours picturing the contours of their faces, and he would smile wide. It gave him a warm feeling inside, and sometimes it helped him fall asleep.
But Romulus was not one to sleep much. He lived for battle, for ambushing his enemies in the middle of the night, on their own turf, and he was famed, deservedly, to be at least as ferocious as Andronicus. Most people knew him to be even more brutal. And that was what irked Romulus: he was greater than Andronicus, he knew this in his heart. So did the people. There was not a single person in the Empire he answered to—except for Andronicus. And if it weren’t for Andronicus, he would be leader of the Empire.
Romulus hated being number two. He had suffered being number two only because he had been biding his time, because the time had never been right to stage a coup. Andronicus was too paranoid and kept too many spies, too many checks to save himself from his own men.
But now that Andronicus had left the Empire to invade the Ring, Romulus sensed an opportunity. For now at least, he, Romulus, was the de facto ruler of the Empire at home; now all the forces were looking to him while Andronicus was out there waging his silly war, following his obsession to dominate the Ring. It had been a foolish misstep, and Romulus was determined to make him pay dearly for it.
Romulus smiled wide: he was preparing his coup, and when Andronicus returned, he would have his head on a plate. First, he would make Andronicus kneel to him, admit his superiority. Admit for the entire Empire to hear that Romulus was the fiercer of the two.
For now, though, Romulus had more pressing matters on his mind. That stupid Sword, the ancient Destiny Sword that had been a thorn in the Empire’s side for centuries, had been so close to his grasp. He had sent a contingent of men to kill the thieves from the Ring before they could cast into the lake. But it had all gone terribly wrong. His men had caught them in time, but they had all been ambushed by the dragons. There was nothing Romulus had been able to do but to stand there, at a distance, and watch as the hideous beasts carried away his treasure, the Sword, flapping their wings, flying high into the horizon, the Sword gleaming in their claws.
As Romulus stood there now, in a rage, still rooted in place, he watched the dragons fly away, farther and farther north, their victorious screeches cutting through the air. Hundreds of men stood behind him with b
ated breath, all knowing better than to utter a word until he was ready to move.
As he watched the last of the flock of dragons disappear into the horizon, Romulus took a deep breath. It would be a long and hard march to follow them, deep into the Land of the Dragons, and he would lose tons of men confronting these beasts. He might lose them all. It had been centuries since the Empire had dared face off with the dragons.
Yet he had no choice. That Sword was what he needed to establish his legitimacy, to make all the Empire see that he, Romulus, was the one and only great leader; it was what he needed to oust Andronicus. With it in hand, he could make the case that he, not Andronicus, was the one; without it, though, he feared his people would not rally behind them. He had only chance to oust Andronicus, and he could not take any chances.
“MARCH!” Romulus screamed, and as soon as he did, his men began to follow, in unison, without question, on the long trek north to the Land of the Dragons.
The chanting began, the symphony of armor, of weapons, clacking their way down the mountain, as they all marched as one. Romulus searched the horizon as he went, watching the final vestige of dragons in the sky. He would find that Sword. Or have all of his men die trying.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Thor stood beside the shimmering waters of Neversink, the others beside him, staring at the corpses, and he wondered. Dragons. All of these men, slaughtered by dragons. The Sword, stolen, carried far away. On the one hand he felt relieved that it was not lost in the lake; yet he also felt an even deeper sense of dread knowing where it went. It was lost, just in a different way. The dragons were an indomitable force, and they lived so far away. How could they possibly wrest it away from them? Had their mission here failed? A part of him could not help but feel as if it had.
Yet, at the same time, Thor knew they had no choice. They were on a quest, and they had taken a vow to fulfill it. There was no backing down, their honor prevented it. They would have to do whatever it took to track the Sword and bring it home.
“So what now?” Reece finally asked, on behalf of all of them, who stood there, silent.
Thor turned to his old friend.
“We have no choice,” Thor answered. “We follow the Sword.”
“To the Land of the Dragons?” O’Connor asked, nervous.
Thor nodded back gravely.
“You are crazy,” Indra said.
They all turned to her.
“Crossing that desert was craziness. But this—what you propose—it is a guaranteed death sentence. Why not just throw yourselves off a cliff now and be done with it? The Land of the Dragons is a land of ash and fire. A land of death. You will never succeed in reaching it. And if you do, what will you do? Confront an entire nest of dragons? Even one of them will eviscerate you in the blink of an eye. Do you really presume you can just waltz in there and take back from them their most valued treasure? Dragons are greedy about their treasure, and they will not part with it without death.”
Thor sighed.
“You might speak the truth,” he acknowledged. “I do not argue with you. But it matters not. We are on a quest. We have taken a vow, and we must fulfill our vow, wherever it should take us. It is not about life or death. It is about valor.”
Indra shook her head again and again.
“There is a limit to your craziness that I can put up with. I came with you as you followed your silly map; I even followed you through the desert. But that is all. I value my life. I am sorry. I will not venture to a sure death.”
Thor nodded back.
“I understand,” he said. “We are not keeping you.”
Elden looked at Indra, and Thor could detect a sadness cross his face.
“Are you leaving us, then?” he asked. “Is that it?”
She nodded back, and Thor could detect the same sadness in her eyes.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said. “You don’t have to kill yourselves.”
“We have to do this,” Elden responded. “It is our way.”
She looked at him long and hard, and finally, she said:
“I understand.”
Indra stepped forward, reached out a hand and touched Elden’s cheek, then surprised them all by leaning in and kissing Elden.
She let her palm rest on his cheek, then slowly pulled back, turned, and walked away. Within minutes she was lost in the woods, gone from view. She never looked back.
Elden looked crushed, and flustered from embarrassment.
Thor and the others looked away, giving him his privacy. They had all lost something on this journey; they all understood.
They each stood there, lost in their thoughts, the gravity of the final step of their journey weighing on them.
The Land of the Dragons, Thor thought.
He wondered if they could ever reach it. And if they could ever make it out alive.
* * *
Thor, Reece, O’Connor, Elden and Conven—just the five of them now—marched with Krohn at their side. With Conval dead and Indra gone, they felt their absence, and Thor could not help but feel as if there group was ever shrinking. He’d had an ominous pit in his stomach ever since they’d left Neversink, just the five of them, ever since they’d parted ways with Indra; she was as fearless a girl as he’d ever met, and yet even she was afraid to go this way. It did not bode well.
As Indra had instructed, they had headed north, following a rough trail through rolling hills; they had been marching for hours, heading ever north, the hills dipping and rising in ever-higher rows of false peaks. Each time they reached the top of another one, Thor was sure there would be no more peaks; yet always there came another on the horizon. They continued like that, rising and falling for hours, all of them breathing hard, exhausted.
At this point, Thor wasn’t even certain they were following the right trail. All they had to go on was spotting the occasional carcass by the side of the road. The road was dotted every so often with skeletons, whether of people or animals Thor did not know, and each one put another pit in his stomach. The farther they went, the more skeletons they encountered, and the feeling of ominousness deepened. With every step, Thor felt more certain that they were all marching towards their deaths.
The gloom lay heavy on everyone. Conven was distraught with grief, out of his mind, unlike Thor had ever seen him. His eyes were bloodshot from crying, and while his tears had finally stopped, now they were replaced with a silent sense of devastation. He looked like a man ruined by grief; he looked unhinged. Thor was scared when he looked into his eyes: Conven did not seem to be quite there with them anymore.
Elden was despondent, too, ever since Indra had left. Clearly, he had cared for her, more than he had let on, and he walk with his jaws locked, a frown on his face. He, too, seemed lost in another world. That left just Reece and O’Connor, walking on either side of Thor, gripping their sword hilts, on-edge. Their endless trekking had taken a toll on them too, their eyes sunken into their heads from constant fear and exhaustion, and they did not look like the same boys who had set out on this quest. They all looked aged. Thor wondered if he looked as weary as they did.
With every step they took, Thor’s knees shaking, he could not help but wonder if this journey would ever end, if it had been a mistake to venture to begin with.
The Land of the Dragons. He could hardly believe the craziness of the five of them, in their state, marching to confront an army of dragons, daring to somehow wrest the Sword from their grip. It was a mission not even an armored army could hope to achieve. How they would succeed, he had no idea. His honor, though, demanded that he see it through. Whether he lived or not, in his mind, that was not what mattered. He would not return a failure. And he would not return a coward. A lesson Argon once taught him rang in his mind, like a mantra: sometimes, it is harder to retreat than to move forward. Sometimes, the only way out is THROUGH.
The one thing that gave Thor solace was thinking of Gwen. He felt his mother’s ring, deep in his shirt pocket, and he reached
up and assured himself it was still there. He thought of Gwen constantly, more and more these days, and it kept him going. He wanted to be away from this awful place, from all these awful creatures and monsters and soldiers and slaves, to just be back in the Ring, back by her side. Now it felt, more and more, like a distant dream, like a fantasy that had never been real to begin with. He could hardly imagine being back in a world of peace, being together with Gwen, laughing, carefree, just lying there in a field of flowers and staring up at the sky. It seemed like another lifetime.
They all ascended yet another peak, this one steeper than the rest, huffing as they made it to the top, nearly climbing straight up as grass turned to rock. It had become more of an exercise in rock-climbing than hiking, and the higher they got, the stronger the gusts of wind became, and the colder the air. As they reached the top of this one, Thor prayed this would be the final ascent; he did not know how they could dip and rise one more time.
They reached the top and they all stopped, taken aback by the sight before them. They had reached the summit, and the view before them was astounding. The ground dropped off steeply below them at a sharp angle, plummeting hundreds of feet below. And down there, spread out below, was an entirely new landscape. There was no longer grass in sight—or rocks or mountains or hills or trees. Instead, the landscape was entirely, shockingly, white. It positively glowed. It looked like a desert, or beach, made up of tiny, white gravelly rocks, the light shining off it so brightly that Thor had to squint. It seemed to stretch to the end of the world.
The only variety in this endless landscape were massive holes in the earth, dotting it every hundred feet or so. Gaping black holes, scarring the landscape, like a minefield, making the landscape look like a giant game of checkers.