Trail of the Gods ms-4

by Brian S. Pratt

Then suddenly, one of the two soldiers bearing a crossbow cries out as a slug erupts from his belly, spraying blood and gore on those ahead of him. The leader of the group shouts commands as the other crossbowman is taken out with yet another slug.

  Jiron tackles the one with his knives and quickly retrieves them. A quick slash across the man’s throat and he’s taken out of action. Rolling, he moves away from the soldiers just as another crashes to the ground, a gaping hole where his chest used to be.

  The leader throws down his torch as he and the other remaining soldier flee down the street into the darkness. Just before they leave the area illuminated by the torches on the ground, another slug flies out, taking out the soldier. The leader disappears into the darkness, the sound of his running feet and shouts echoing as he flees for his life.

  James appears out of the darkness and asks, “You okay?”

  “Fine,” replies Jiron. “You? I was worried when you fell.”

  “Just had the wind knocked out of me was all,” he assures him. “We better get out of here.”

  From further into town, a horn begins blowing. Other horns from all around them sound in reply. “That tears it!” exclaims Jiron. Turning, he leads them back to the collapsed building.

  Lights can be seen moving along streets in the distance as soldiers make their way toward their location. Horns continue to sound, making it seem as if the entire city is mobilizing to hunt for them.

  Arriving at the structure, Jiron steps out upon the beam and begins to make his way across to the next when it gives out with a groan and collapses. James reaches out and catches hold of him just as the entire structure gives way and collapses.

  James falls to his knees as Jiron’s weight pulls him to the ground. Jiron falls hard against the wall of basement just beneath James and grabs hold of the edge. Pulling hard, James hauls him quickly back to the street.

  “Thanks,” Jiron says as he gets to his feet.

  “Don’t mention it, let’s just get out of here.”

  The total collapse of the structure has blocked off their escape route. If they had time maybe they could dig their way through it, but not with soldiers on the way.

  “Come on!” Jiron yells as he begins running away, sure that any pursuit will begin in this area. They’ve got to get out of here fast. Racing off down the street, they don’t get far before they see a mob of soldiers enter the street three blocks away from them. The soldiers turn and begin making their way toward them.

  Coming to a quick stop, Jiron grabs James and pushes him down an adjacent alley before the oncoming soldiers have a chance to spot them. Moving quickly they race for the other end of the alley.

  As they draw near the end of the alley, it’s suddenly lit from the light of torches held in the hands of more approaching soldiers. Pressing themselves against the side of the alley, they wait until the squad passes and then enter the street behind the marching soldiers, running the way the soldiers had just come from.

  More lights appear ahead of them. “In here!” Jiron looks back to see James at an open doorway, motioning for him to follow. Running back, he moves through the doorway right after James and shuts the door.

  They move quickly through to the back of the house, the light from the torches moving out on the street giving them ample light with which to see by. Before Jiron opens the backdoor, James grabs his arm and stops him.

  “What?” he asks, turning around to face him.

  “We need to figure out just where we’re going to go,” he insists.

  “There’s only going to be so many ways out of Saragon,” Jiron says. “And you can bet they’ll have them all covered with as many men as they can spare.”

  “So how are we to get out?” he asks.

  “Hopefully we can find a gate that’s not too well manned and force our way through,” he explains. “With all the commotion going on, we’ll not be able to sneak our way out.”

  “No, you’re probably right,” he agrees. “We should head for the part of the city where they’ve set up camp. I doubt if they’ll think we would head in that direction.”

  “As good as any way, I suppose,” replies Jiron. “Have you felt anything that might indicate a mage in the city?”

  Shaking his head, James says, “No, not yet.”

  “That’s good,” he affirms.

  Moving to the back door, he opens it a crack and finds the alley outside to be dark. Slipping out with James right behind, they head toward the Empire’s camp within the city.

  Light from the search parties and soldiers hollering out to one another can be seen and heard on neighboring streets. The bulk of the searchers seem to be heading back toward where they were first spotted. Horns continue to sound throughout the city.

  Jiron takes them down another side alley which ends at a major thoroughfare. Peering around the corner, he sees search parties down both sides of the street. “Not this way,” he says to James. Turning to go back the way they had come, they see light approaching the end of the alley.

  Stopping and pressing themselves to the side of a neighboring building, they watch as the light continues to approach the alley. Suddenly, the soldiers appear at the end of the alley and turn into it, coming straight for them. “Run!” exclaims Jiron as he bolts back down toward the thoroughfare with James right behind him.

  At the sight of them running, the men behind give chase as one of them sounds a horn, alerting the city that they’ve been found.

  Bursting out onto the thoroughfare, Jiron sees men running toward them from both directions. Not even pausing, he crosses over to the alley on the other side and continues to flee.

  Crumph!

  The end of the alley bordering the thoroughfare suddenly explodes as the buildings facing it begin collapsing, effectively blocking the alley and preventing their pursuers from following. As they exit the far side of the alley, a billow of dust belches forth from the collapsing of the buildings behind them.

  The street the alley opens on is wide and currently unoccupied. “Head to the wall!” James cries to Jiron.

  Taking but a moment to check which way lies the shortest distance to the wall, he turns to the right. There ahead of them, the wall looms high over the tops of the buildings. They can hear the screaming and shouting of soldiers from behind them, as they pour into the street from a junction further back. Glancing behind them, Jiron guesses there must be a hundred or more soldiers back there.

  Ahead of them in the street is a large square with a fountain that had seen better days. At one time it used to have four tiers where water would rain down from one to the other. Now, it lies all but broken, only a small section of what used to be the top two tiers remains.

  As they come toward the square, four soldiers enter from a side street and charge. A slug takes one out before they even have a chance to close the distance. Jiron moves to intercept as a second slug takes out another.

  The first to engage Jiron strikes out with his sword. Jiron deflects it to the side as he follows through with a thrust using his other knife, taking the soldier in the chest. Kicking the dying man off his knife, the soldier flails into his partner, throwing him off balance.

  Jiron moves in quickly and takes the remaining soldier out. As the last dead body hits the ground…

  Crumph!

  …the street behind them explodes upward. Looking back, he sees a dust cloud in the torch light as bodies rain back down to the street. Pursuit momentarily halted from that avenue, they turn and continue toward the wall.

  “How are you doing?” he asks James, worried that the magic may be making him weak.

  “So far I’m doing alright,” he tells him.

  “Good, I’d hate to have to carry you out of here!” he says with a grin.

  “I wouldn’t care for that either,” he replies.

  They race further on, horns still sounding behind them, but are eerily quiet before them. James figures most of the pursuit has been directed back behind them before he started doing magic
and letting them know their whereabouts.

  The wall now looms large before them. The street they are on comes to the base of the wall and they are forced to either turn left or right. Both ways look the same, so they turn to the left and race along the wall, hoping to find a way out.

  Out of the dark ahead of them, they begin to see light as they approach the gates. Coming to a stop, they see arrayed before them, over a hundred men as well as a dozen or more crossbowmen. Five other crossbowmen man the walls above the gate.

  “Man, what are we going to do?” Jiron asks him.

  “I don’t know,” he admits. “The magic I would need to use to clear that away would leave me unconscious if not outright kill me.”

  They make to turn around when from behind them, the force that had been stopped by the exploding street now boils into view behind them. When the soldiers see them standing there, a cry goes up and horns begin to sound as they charge.

  The force at the gate, now aware of their presence, forms into ranks as they make a wall of iron across the street. The crossbowmen ready their crossbows.

  Crumph!

  The ground behind them erupts, throwing the leading edge of the charging men in the air in the hopes of slowing them down. It does, but only momentarily.

  James readies a spell for the group by the gates when their lines begin to buckle and he sees the crossbowmen on the walls turn and appear to be firing at their own forces. Whatever the reason, he changes his tactics and begins peppering the crossbowmen on the walls with slugs and they begin to fall.

  “Look!” cries Jiron as he points to the force in front of the gates.

  James turns his attention to them and sees them fighting with men in slave rags. The slaves!

  “Come on!” Jiron says as he races to the gates and the fighting going on there.

  James runs behind him as he sees a group of twenty slaves bearing nothing but makeshift clubs and scavenged weapons, race toward the gatehouse. The crossbowmen on the ground see them and a flight of bolts cuts down half before they make it.

  The ten or so left reach the gatehouse where they overpower the two guards there and are soon inside. Two of the slaves lay dead at the gatehouse door.

  James glances down the street behind him and sees the force there that had been stopped by the erupting of the street now making their way around the blasted area and continuing the pursuit.

  Hundreds of slaves pour into the ranks of the defenders by the gates. The group of crossbowmen, who had so recently mowed down the men on their way to the gatehouse, are now chopped to pieces or bludgeoned to death by men bent on revenge.

  Suddenly, the gate opens up just as the last remaining soldier before the gate falls. A cry erupts and is quickly dampened by a man, an old man. Shouting out orders, he forms them into a line to meet the oncoming soldiers.

  James looks his way and for a moment their eyes lock. He gives James a grin and a nod before resuming the marshalling of his forces.

  “James! We’ve got to go now!” yells Jiron, trying to be heard over the noise of horns and men shouting.

  “But they’ll be killed!” counters James.

  “They know that!” replies Jiron. “They’re not doing it for their freedom. They’re doing it for revenge on those who destroyed their town and killed its people.” Grabbing him by the shoulder, he propels him toward the widening gates. “And one is doing it so you can get out of here! Don’t let them have died in vain.”

  Before passing through the gate, he glances back just as the two forces meet. The slaves are no match for the soldiers, but have the numbers in their favor. He sees the old man out in front of his men, sword held high and time seems to slow as he engages with the nearest soldier.

  He runs the soldier through and pulls out his sword to ward off the blow of the next, but isn’t fast enough. James watches as the soldier’s blade strikes off the old man’s left arm. Before he has a chance to strike the old man again, the old man runs him through the chest where his sword becomes lodged. Then he passes out of sight as another slave comes to take his place in line.

  A slave comes up to them and says, “Get out now! We can’t hold them off for long!”

  “What was the old man’s name?” James asks the slave as he’s being pulled through the gates by Jiron.

  “Derrion,” the slave replies as he and others push to close the gates.

  With a resounding thud, the gates close and they can hear the locking mechanism secure the gates.

  “Now let’s run!” Jiron cries out.

  They turn to run and come to a stop when they see twenty horsemen arrayed before them. Without even a pause, James releases the power.

  Crumph!

  The center of the line of horsemen erupts upward from the force of the explosion. The horses not caught in the blast rear up, some unseating their riders. Jiron races forward to meet them before they have a chance to recover. James follows as slug after slug flies through the air, taking out more of the remaining horsemen.

  Jiron closes with one of the unhorsed soldiers and blocks his attack with both knives while kicking out and connecting with the man’s knee. Bones snap as the man cries out in pain. Leaving him there to writhe on the ground, Jiron moves toward two horses milling around without riders.

  Crumph!

  Another explosion erupts, throwing more men and horses into the air.

  Jiron almost reaches the horses before another unhorsed rider closes with him and strikes out with his sword. Catching it on crossed knives, Jiron pushes outward and throws the man backward off balance. Moving in quickly, he strikes out and scores two quick thrusts, one which punctures a lung. As the man falls, Jiron runs past and reaches the horses.

  Vaulting up onto one, he turns it around and sees James beset by three soldiers. A flare of light and one soldier is thrown backward as the other two continue their advance. James is beginning to look very tired.

  Taking the reins of the other horse, he kicks his into a gallop and rides directly at the men advancing upon James. They fail to see him coming in time and he rides right over them, bowling them over. “Get on!” he shouts at James as he brings the horses to a stop next to him.

  More soldiers are advancing upon them from all directions as James gets into the saddle. A sound of turning gears and the gates behind them begin to open as even more soldiers start pouring through.

  Once James is securely in the saddle, Jiron kicks his horse into a gallop again and they race away from the city into the night. Behind them, they see hundreds of soldiers pouring out of the gates but quickly fall behind.

  The road they find themselves on follows the river as it flows on their left. After getting his bearings, he realizes this is the same river they had followed on the way down to Saragon. And up ahead of them is a large force of men and a mage, perhaps even now waiting for them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As they follow the road in the dark, James can’t get the death of the slaves off his mind. A tear runs down his cheek as his emotions begin getting to him.

  “You okay?” asks Jiron after they’ve ridden in silence for awhile.

  “Just thinking of Derrion and the others back there, sacrificing themselves so we could escape,” he says sadly.

  “I wouldn’t think of it that way,” replies Jiron. “They were fighting for their freedom, whether in death or in life. No man who has known freedom can long suffer slavery, they are either broken spiritually and are no longer the men they once were. Or they fight and die.”

  James rides in silence as he thinks about what Jiron had told him.

  “How or why they came to aid us, we’ll never know,” Jiron continues. “I would expect something like this has been planned for some time, seeing as how they escaped their pens so readily. You just gave them the excuse.” When James glances over to him, he adds, “This was going to happen anyway, I expect. So don’t take it so personally.”

  Sighing, James says, “I suppose you’re right.”

&n
bsp; “Of course I am,” he insists. “If you take personally the decisions of others, you’ll be carrying the weight of an enormous amount of guilt. You didn’t ask them to fight and die back there, they volunteered knowing full well what their fate would be. I honor their choice to die as men, not slaves.”

  Taking a deep breath, James gets his emotions under control and replies, “Maybe Perrilin will make a song about them?”

  “Probably,” he agrees. “People like songs about hopeless struggles for a good cause.”

  “I’ll tell him all about it next time I see him,” he says. He feels better having decided a course of action with which he can honor their sacrifice.

  “Now,” says Jiron, “we have to figure out how to get back to Cardri.” Glancing to James he adds, “Providing of course we’re going back to Cardri?”

  “Yes,” replies James. “We’re going home.”

  “Good,” states Jiron. “By morning we should be at that town up ahead with the bridge we passed on the way down. Somehow, we need to cross it.”

  “Let’s push a little harder so we can make it before dawn,” suggests James. “Hopefully we can make it across before it gets light.”

  With that, they both increase their speed to a gallop. Over the course of the next several hours, they alternate speeds between a fast gallop and a trop for optimum speed while at the same time saving their horses’ strength. They could well need it when they get there.

  An hour into their ride, Jiron asks, “How far away can you sense magic?”

  “I don’t know,” replies James, “half a mile or so, maybe a mile. Why?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking of that mage you said you detected at the town north of the one we’re heading for,” he explains. “I was worried he may have sensed what you did back at Saragon.”

  “I doubt it,” James assures him. “I didn’t do anything very strong.”

  “That’s a relief,” he says.

  After several more hours of riding, the sky to the east has begun to lighten with the approach of dawn, and still the town has not appeared. Worried about not making it in time, they increase their speed.