The land had steepened considerably as the their travel wore on, but Nathan had kept them to the easier, level ground of valleys that slowly became surrounded by ever-growing peaks into the southeast. Sorin guessed it was the middle of the day when they entered a flat meadow that stretched into the gray distance and around the next bend. In its middle, several twisted black sticks rose from the grass—stark, unnatural things that did not belong to the meadow. The rest of the area was empty.
As they grew closer, Sorin saw they were not sticks but a series of burned out shells of wagon caravans, their skeleton framework all that remained after having been set afire. It had been there a long time.
Tem brought the company to a halt and returned to Thomas’s side, the rain running down his cloak in rivulets. “Gypsies, by the look of the wagons. Long dead.”
“How much farther before we come to the place we are to meet Henrik on the morrow?” asked Thomas.
“Not far,” the Ward said, shielding his eyes from the downpour. “I believe it to be the next valley around the bend.”
The company trudged forward and navigated several more valleys when Tem reined his mount in and froze in his saddle. The rest of them stopped as well, and Sorin peered through the haze to determine the Ward’s reason for halting.
A figure wearing a mud-splattered black cloak was face down in the grassy muck of the glade, its limbs curled into a fetal position. There was no movement. To either side of the meadow, the forest leered at them with dark intent, its periphery draped in deep shadow. Eyes not of his companions crawled over Sorin like worms into a rotting corpse.
Creek snorted, his disquiet matching his master’s. Thomas dismounted and drew his sword, the rain running from the blade’s tip in a miniature waterfall as the old man’s eyes scanned the scene for ambush. Tem stood a few kingsyards away after getting off his own horse. With eyes alert, both men moved to the body.
Sorin also dismounted. Drawing his own sword—the grip unfamiliar in his untrained hand—he approached the body with the hulking mass of Relnyn behind him. The scent of thick mud and crushed wet grass assailed his nostrils. Thomas bent and moved the fold of the cowl away from the body’s head. The face was slick and white and contorted in a fearful grimace even in death’s peaceful embrace. A gaping slash across half of his neck still leaked the remnants of his heart’s blood into the grass.
It was Nathan.
“Remount,” Thomas commanded through gritted teeth.
It was too late. The forest exploded then from either side of the meadow, a conflagration of noise, water, and movement. A dozen soldiers wearing cloaks the color of damp ash burst from their concealment to attack the company in a surge of sharpened steel and furious intent. The whistle of arrows cut through the damp air from a group of archers who hid within the folds of the forest, but the only target the shafts found was the ground in front and behind the company. Sorin almost lost his grip on his slippery weapon, but he soon grabbed the long grip with both hands and prepared for the inevitable.
Thomas and Tem charged into the ranks of those ahead of the group, roaring frightfully. With practiced, broad strokes they cut down the initial soldiers and took the brunt of the enemies’ charge while holding them back from Sorin and Relnyn. Tem moved fluidly, his sword a living entity, discovering holes in the thin chain protection the soldiers wore with an ease that belied his lanky height. Two men were dead before the ring of their steel had left the air.
At Tem’s side, Thomas was crazed, his unkempt white hair released from its cowl and defiant even to the downpour. Whereas Tem was young and skilled, Thomas fought like a cornered crag cat, with powerful swings and deft footwork that outmaneuvered his opponents and left three more of them dead in the mud.
Then another group of men detached from the forest, their weapons drawn, coming straight at Sorin’s back.
Sweat sprang to life all at once over Sorin’s body, and heat emanated from him in waves. Death had found them. There were too many and no amount of valiant heroics could hope to overcome the dozens of armored men.
“Relnyn!” Sorin yelled.
The Giant turned and stepped between Sorin and the new threat, wielding the staff in wide arcs that cut through the air with intimidation. The archers had ceased their attack as the addition of the newcomers complicated matters, leaving Relnyn with dozens of men to contend with. He struck out with his staff’s metal-shod tip and crushed a man’s chest. In the same movement, he sent the staff in a circle at the enemies’ feet, and the deadened sound of splintered shinbones added to the misery already on the air. The staff was like a small tree trunk possessed of its own violation, a live thing with a vendetta against the Reach’s soldiers. Howls of pain erupted from the ranks, but more men came on bearing long spears with deadly iron heads, an angry sea no dike could ever hope to contain. Even for the Giant, the odds were teetering toward the brink of his destruction.
“Relnyn!” roared Thomas, his clothing splattered with the blood of his assailants as he and Tem gave ground before the mass of sharpened steel that surrounded them. “Call the fire!”
Sorin took one look at his friend, and he knew the Giant was paralyzed, unwilling or unable to call forth the power that had protected them several times since they had met. It was the choice he had made. Nothing but the angry protestations of Relnyn stood between Sorin and the dozens of men who now swarmed from the land. Fear of dying finally gripped his heart; angry fear that Nathan was dead and the rest of the group would soon follow.
Darkness closed about Sorin, and the gray light of the afternoon disappeared and was replaced by warmth that sprang from within. Just like at the monastery of A’lum and later in the Sentinel Glade, it began in his chest and flowed out through his extremities and into the world around him. He could feel his heart beat, echoing with need in his ears. Blackness swept over his vision, and the pounding of his blood drowned out the shouts of his companions The thudding reverberation overcame his entire being until it took on a life of its own—a sound Sorin now knew was irrevocably linked to him.
The sound of powerful hooves.
Still clutching his sword, Sorin looked up from his muddied prostration to see Artiq enter the northern end of the valley. The horse emerged from the gray gloom like an obsidian knife, slicing his way through the downpour toward the conflict, blackness as defiant to the weather as the night was to the sunset. The rumble of Artiq’s hooves echoed in Sorin’s chest, and their power shook even through the grassy muck that oozed around his hands. The animal was huge—larger than any horse he had ever seen—and its chest was wide and rippling with muscle that lay directly beneath its glossy coat. Sorin had not seen Artiq attack the city walls of Aris Shae, but Relnyn had said it was a powerful demonstration of what the beast was capable of and how tied he was to Sorin. Artiq was not Creek; Artiq was a force of nature—created from nature—and like the land he was shaped from, he could never be wholly tamed.
Within his clearing head, Sorin knew the horse had come to protect him at any cost.
As Artiq grew closer, a link shared with the horse deep inside Sorin strengthened and gave him hope; the animal was strong and somehow had lent part of that strength to Sorin as he pushed himself up out of the mud to gauge the scene around him.
Rather than prevent the beast its path, the soldiers retreated away from the group; the attack on the company having ceased and the valley’s occupants grown still. Artiq came on a line directly toward Sorin and slowed from a gallop to a trot as he grew closer—gouts of steam blowing from his nostrils—until he pulled up short of the group and whickered in annoyance at the men surrounding them. He tossed his head at Sorin, his wet, black mane flinging water. Then he rose on his hind legs in challenge, his hooves dancing on the air, awaiting the danger that had confronted his master.
That’s when pandemonium struck, and the new, tenuous link Sorin had with the horse dissipated like smoke on a strong breeze.
Nets and ropes flew from behind the enemy lines in
a dizzying coordinated attack at Artiq. The horse took several steps back and reared again, a terrified whinny escaping the beast that shattered the silence. He bucked, every second his freedom becoming less and less. Sharp hooves cut through several of the thick ropes but still more poured onto him, wrapping around his neck and back, the tan netting swallowing Artiq’s glistening coat.
With the horse unable to flee, and at the command of their leaders, soldiers swarmed the infuriated stallion, pushing him to the ground while more rope ensnared him. He toppled under the soldiers’ weight. Panic rolled inside his eyes, and the animal’s fury and fear—suffocated and trapped—rolled off of him into Sorin in waves. Tears came unbidden to Sorin’s eyes, but he was powerless to help. While the Reach’s soldiers were all but focused on the animal, all Sorin could do was watch.
“Get out of here!” Thomas roared at the others of the group, realizing they were not the center of attention and slipping on the rain-soaked ground as he ran.
But it was too late; archers stepped into the midst of their fellow armed companions and pointed a multitude of arrows and spears at Relnyn and the others. The circle of the trap closed tight. There was no escaping it.
Beyond the melee, three giant wolves moved from the shadowed woodland, their baleful eyes shimmering in the pale haze of the afternoon. Strapped upon their backs with elegant leather saddles rode two men and a woman. The wolves were larger than any Sorin had ever seen; they did not growl or bare their teeth at the company, but their very presence ran shockwaves of dread and subdued panic through everyone in their midst. Large hairy paws padded toward Artiq and those of the Kingdom, and the wolves’ gray-and-black shaggy fur repelled what the dismal sky poured on them. Fear punctured the air.
The foremost of the wolf riders, a man wearing a hooded crimson cloak, moved his mount close to the ring of men. He was large, with wide shoulders and wider chin giving rise to a short-cropped red beard that shone like flame. Blue eyes absorbed the light as they discerned. He rocked back and forth in his saddle to the gentle rhythm of the wolf’s stealthy movement, ready to pounce as the animal was.
Near the pommel of his saddle, two sword handles curved from beneath his cloak, easily accessible should there be a need. The soldiers around him gave him a wide berth and deference. His two companions—a thin, middle-aged woman with lank black hair and white skin, and a man near Thomas’s age—rode their wolves nearby, their eyes alert and their hands free of their cloaks, prepared for action. To Sorin’s eye, they carried no weapons.
“What a vile beast,” the man said in a thick accent that could not disguise the disgust he had. Artiq continued to fight the bonds that held him securely. “It fights the inevitable. Don’t make the same mistake, old man.”
Thomas took a deep breath, his eyes as hard as granite and his sword still rigid in his hand. “What do you want?”
The man’s sneer changed to a barely adequate smile. “I want what my liege wants. Her wisdom and foresight saw your attempt at assassination. She has gotten quite used to delaying the death that seeks her out from the Kingdom.”
“We have not come here to murder anyone,” Thomas said.
The smile disappeared and was replaced by ice. “Tell that to the men you killed at Morliun Tower. I highly doubt your intentions are honest.”
Artiq pounded his neck into the mud, matching Sorin’s desire to be free.
“And you, Giant,” the wolf rider said. “My companions will take your staff. Can’t have you setting fire to our world like you did at Morliun Tower, can we?”
The leader’s female companion rode her wolf into the group’s midst and took the staff from Relnyn. Conflicting emotions crossed the Giant’s face—a part of his soul had been taken from him but he also softened as though a curse had been lifted from him. The rest of Sorin’s friends were disarmed by the soldiers as well.
“You have come to the Reach of your own choice,” the red-bearded man said. “You will never leave.”
“Where do you take us?” Thomas asked, but Sorin already knew the answer.
“To Keslich ’Ur. The Woman King awaits.”
Chapter 31
The summer storm was finally abating, but the misery it had brought Sorin and his companions continued without relent. The afternoon sky had lightened—the dark shroud of heavy rain giving way to overcast skies and a tickling drizzle—but the land remained mired in a gray gloom. It matched the dark depression swirling inside Sorin. As he walked with wrists tied behind his back by thick, coarse rope, he could not help but feel they had failed completely; every step he took brought him closer to Keslich ’Ur and the Woman King. Once within her presence and in her control, escape would be impossible and no outside aid could come to their rescue. No one in the Kingdom would know of the group’s predicament—only Henrik Mattah, and what help could he possibly be now?
Artiq was paraded in front of the small army like a hard-won prize, dozens of nets and ropes crossing his back in an overwhelming menagerie of imprisonment. After securing Artiq’s nose, neck, and hooves—and the nets were firmly in place—the red-bearded leader had ordered the horse brought back to standing for travel. At one point, in a flurry of aggression, the great horse had bucked hard, sending several men holding ropes flying into the air. A soldier close to Artiq had drawn his sword and struck the horse against its head with the flat of his blade to bring it under control, but the sword had broken in half as though hit against granite.
Sorin tried to keep in view of the creature that had saved him once and tried to come to his aid twice, wishing he had been given more time to solve the riddle of the horse.
The drizzle stopped and Sorin shivered under his wet clothing. The link he had discovered between him and Artiq was gone now. When Sorin closed his eyes and reached out to the animal, he could feel their disconnection. It was the same link that had been there when the Watchman hit Sorin and when the jerich had threatened him in the Sentinel Glade. When he was in danger, Artiq responded. If he once had questioned Oryn’s belief in his connection to the wondrous horse, he did no longer. Even now, fleeting emotions shot across the void, attempting to bridge that rift. The horse was panicked and frightened—only for Sorin and not for itself—the emotions mirroring the young man’s own. Artiq was angry it could not fulfill its role and keep its charge safe. It would continue to struggle until the threat was removed; Sorin wondered if that would ever happen.
The leader of the Reach’s troop had left Nathan to the scavengers of the forest. In the middle of the soldiers with no avenue of escape, Sorin followed his companions into the deeper wilds of Blackrhein Reach. No appearance or knowledge of Henrik Mattah materialized, and Sorin wondered what had become of the real spy.
The fog of the lowlands continued to dissipate until the group rounded an elevated bend in a small mountain pass, and the final light of the day’s sun broke through the murky canopy to highlight the stronghold of Keslich ’Ur.
It was still far from the group, a monstrous stronghold of spires, turrets, walls, and fortifications thrusting from the land like spears built from an ashen-black stone that comprised the jagged mountains behind it. At the castle’s base, a city had grown and spread across the valley, pushing up against the fortress as if in supplication of its walled safety. Smoke from thousands of chimneys hung lazily on the air, proof a large population lived in the buildings. The Kingdom’s enemies were born, lived, and died in the buildings and homes in that city, and Sorin could not help but speculate what differences truly separated the two nations and their peoples.
The woodlands around them were turning color, maple and alder trees morphing from summer green to the fiery reds, oranges, and eventual browns of the fall season. The green that had been so prevalent in the Kingdom was vanishing in the heights of Blackrhein Reach.
“The seasons are already changing here, Thomas,” Sorin said.
“Summers are shorter in the Reach, and autumn comes earlier than in the Kingdom,” he replied, keeping his eyes fir
mly on the rocky ground in front of him. “In a matter of weeks, the colors will disappear as well and snow will come to the higher elevations of the Reach. Soon winter will seize it entirely. You see those mountains in the far southern distance?”
With the fog gone, Sorin saw enormous peaks shining like burnished silver outlined against the darkening sky.
“Those are the Clennick Mountains,” Thomas said. “Winter has undoubtedly begun there already, although it will be a while before it halts all possibility for travel in their reaches. It is there the Pontifex believes our way could eventually follow if we fail here at Keslich ’Ur.”
If what Thomas was saying were true, Pontifex Dendreth Charl believed Kieren would climb the steep, snowy passes of the Clennick Mountains to destroy the Rune of Aerilonoth. Obtaining the Hammer of Aerom would end all of that. The mountains were remote and harsh; they reminded Sorin of the Krykendaal Mountains near his home—jagged, inhospitable, and death to anyone who entered their environs when winter struck. It would be nigh impossible to traverse the heights of the southern mountains and beat Kieren to the Rune if the Hammer fell into his possession, and Sorin now realized how important their success here was; everything hinged on discovering the whereabouts of the Hammer.
The captors moved down into the valley and onto a wide stretch of road that weaved through rough wilderness. The road was hard-packed dirt, compressed by centuries of use, and surprisingly, the deluge of the day had not produced much mud. Artiq continued to fight, taking the emphasis of the watchful soldiers off Sorin and the company. The smells of rich, wet soil, damp vegetation, and seasonal rot accosted the senses. Creek and the rest of their horses were somewhere behind. Sorin hoped his trusty stallion was being well cared for.
It was nearing dusk when they passed the first standing building and entered the outer realm of Keslich ’Ur. The travelers were on the very bottom of the valley floor, and the castle loomed over them ahead, a sentry built to protect Blackrhein Reach against its enemies. As the group trudged ahead, more buildings and homes littered the sides of the road until they were spread out as far as the eye could see.
Song of the Fell Hammer Page 43