“Everything.”
Fes looked at him, saying nothing. The priest was mad.
Fes stood and left the fire. Every so often, he would glance over, and he would see that Alison still held onto his dagger. If what the priest said was true, then he was descended from the Settlers. The Dragonwalkers. He should be pleased by that knowledge since the Dragonwalkers had once been honored.
Had Azithan known?
Maybe he had. That might be the reason Azithan had pulled him away from the slums, giving him a chance to be something more. An opportunity to show that the empire still prized those who had that ancient connection.
Maybe there was nothing else to it other than the fact that Fes was skilled.
He eyed the priest a little longer, knowing he shouldn’t let him get to him.
There was a reason the emperor banned the priests from Anuhr. They were a cult, crazy people who believed that the dragons were worthy of worship rather than something to be feared. It was better that they were gone. The dragon relics had saved the empire.
More than ever, he wanted to finish this job, but seeing the way the priest looked at him, he wondered if it would be even harder than he had thought.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, Fes stopped them atop a hillside and looked back. In the distance, there was movement. It wasn’t the same movement they had seen when the merchants were attacked, but there was still enough activity to tell him that dozens of riders were behind them. They were near enough that he could make out the colors on their cloaks.
They were all brown. Leather.
That had been the same color of cloak that he’d seen on the man with the merchant wagons. Maybe they were rebels, but he feared they were mercenaries. Either way, they couldn’t linger for long.
“It looks like we have company,” Fes said.
“We need to stay ahead of them,” Alison said.
“I’m aware of that,” Fes said. “What exactly are we after that’s so valuable? And how do so many know about it?”
“Others search for the same thing as your friend Azithan,” the priest said.
“Like the rebels?” When he didn’t answer, Fes pressed. “What kind of relic is this? How powerful an item are we talking about?”
“To the right person? Incredibly powerful.”
“The priests?”
Talmund eyed him a long moment. “If what I’ve been told is correct, we might find an item that will help with a thousand-year-old task.”
“The dragons.” The priest nodded. That was what Azithan must have hoped he’d find—and return to him.
“Have you changed your mind about helping?”
“I’ve already told you what I require to do this job.”
“At least you’re honest,” the priest said.
“Yes. That’s our Fezarn. He’s nothing if not honest,” Alison said.
“I was never dishonest with you.”
“No? You weren’t ever terribly honest with me, either. You could have worked with me. You used me. We could have both gotten out.”
“Will your history together cause a problem?” the priest asked.
“Fezarn decided he didn’t need the people he’d worked with his entire life. When a different offer came along, he bolted. He was more interested in gold. That’s all he’s ever been interested in. He has no interest in anyone other than himself.”
The priest looked over at him, and Fes said nothing. He wasn’t about to reveal anything more, even if it might appease Alison. What did it matter? She was right—he had left. It was the only way to get out.
“We need to get moving and get ahead of these soldiers.”
They turned their horses and headed north, moving quickly. The priest, a skilled rider guided them. His skill became increasingly evident the longer they went. Fes was saddle sore, uncomfortable from the days spent riding, and stiffened up each night. The priest showed no signs of that, though neither did Alison.
“They’re gaining on us,” he said late in the day.
“So it appears,” Alison said.
“I think we need to try to lead them off.”
Alison shook her head. “By that, you mean splitting up?”
Fes shrugged. “Split up, take the priest. One of us needs to create a different trail. If they continue to follow, we need to distract them.”
“Fes—there’s only the two of us with him. If one of us goes off, he’ll be left in danger. That wasn’t the job.”
“The job was to get him to the dragon fields and let him acquire whatever it was that he wanted to acquire. We can’t do that if we don’t survive. We have to keep him alive.” Fes looked back. It was easier to get a better count of their pursuit now. Maybe a dozen, maybe less. Still more than they could manage.
“I’ll stay,” Alison said.
Fes shook his head. “You’re the better rider. You need to go with him and move as quickly as possible. Besides, you’re lighter than I am, so your horse should be able to go faster.”
“If you’re trying to protect me—”
“I thought you said I didn’t care about anyone.”
She frowned and studied him for a moment. “You don’t. Which makes this all the stranger.”
“Just go. Let me try to lead them away, and then you two can continue north.”
“What happens if they capture you?”
“Then I have to use the abilities Horus prized me for.”
Alison studied him. Would she remember how much he hated Horus using him for his fighting prowess? She said nothing.
He held his hand out. “I’ll need my dagger.”
Alison glanced over to the priest, and he nodded slightly.
Fes almost swore at her. What was she doing, looking to the priest for permission to return his dagger? When she pulled it from beneath her cloak, she handed it over hilt first. Fes sighed, running his thumb along the blue sphere at the end of the hilt. There was something that was always comforting to him about that. He slipped it into the sheath as the priest watched him, saying nothing.
“Go,” he said.
“What do you intend?”
Fes shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m going to try to make enough of a path to convince them to follow. Find dry ground, anything that will mask the passing of the horses. It needs to be difficult for them to trail after you. I’m going to do the opposite.”
Fes watch them angle slightly easterly, no longer heading directly north. From here, he could tell the ground would be rockier in that direction, but it also had sweeping hills that might conceal their passing.
How could he guide the mercenaries away without them realizing that he was doing so? They had to think they were still together but concealed just enough to draw their attention.
Fes veered his horse in the same northeasterly direction and headed toward the rock. When it started to slope upward, he wound around it. There was no sign of Alison and the priest passing, which he thought was good. Hopefully, the soldiers following him didn’t have some other way of tracking them.
He continued to head in the same direction and reached a peak. He looked out from here, searching for movement, and found the soldiers down below. Fes made a show of trying to get behind the rock, trying to conceal himself, and then began heading west.
Would that work?
If they were trailing after the priest, it might not matter. It was possible the soldiers knew which direction they would be heading and would try to head them off, especially if they knew what they were after. Fes had to find some way to lead them astray.
He slowed the horse to draw them to him.
He meandered around the rock, going slowly and looking back every so often. When he did, he occasionally caught sight of the soldiers. There were fewer now than when he had first seen them.
Maybe that was only his imagination.
Now they were close enough that they should see him. He had to be prepared to take off and keep them from going after Alison a
nd the priest. He wasn’t sure it would work, and even if it did, he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to outrun them. Not on horseback.
There was something he could do.
Fes led the horse around a bend in the path and looked for a way to tie him up. There was a strange rock formation, and he used that to secure the horse.
Fes unsheathed his daggers. It felt good holding both of them again. It felt good that he was once more in control of them, and it felt good having both in his hands. There was something right about it. He had felt off without the second dagger, and he knew that he shouldn’t, knew that it shouldn’t matter, but somehow it did.
It was a part of him, the same way that the anger he often felt was a part of him.
That anger had saved him. Had given him a purpose when he’d been younger. Horus—and others like him—had taken advantage of it. Used it. Become a fighter. A killer when needed. And had made him into something he had wanted to escape.
Now he would need to use it again.
Calling on the anger was easy enough. All he needed was to think of the caravan burned and destroyed, and the anger simmered beneath the surface. It was these men who were responsible for what had happened to the Bayars.
There came a flash of dark leather and Fes leaped at it, slashing with his pair of daggers, leading to a spray of blood and a grunt. He rolled past the fallen man, coming out into the open, and saw two other soldiers. Where were the others?
Fes jumped at the nearest man as he was attempting to ready his bow, but the man wasn’t quick enough. Fes jabbed one dagger in his stomach and twisted as he pulled out, already moving off to the last man.
This man he needed to keep alive. He needed questions answered.
He yanked on the man’s leg, pulling him from the saddle, and jabbed daggers into each shoulder. “Who are you?”
The man looked up at him. “You made a mistake.”
“No. You made a mistake.” The image of the burned caravan came to mind again, and he kneeled on the man’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him. “Why did you need to destroy those people? Why did you need to kill everyone?”
“You don’t understand. There is—“
An arrow sunk into the ground near him and Fes rolled off to the side, kicking the man in the head as he did so that he could keep him from following. He popped to his feet and looked around. Another pair of mercenaries approached. One had his bow out and was nocking another arrow, and the other had a sword in hand.
Fes sprinted toward them. Anger boiled within him, the same sort of anger that sometimes caused him to lose control. The same anger Horus had loved to take advantage of. It was that anger he had wanted to get away from.
This time, he embraced it.
Fes jumped and slashed at the nearest man. The man brought his sword around, but Fes was quicker and carved through his chest with the twin blades. He split him apart and, in that motion, he blocked the oncoming sword and then climbed on top of his saddle, launching from there to the other soldier. He landed with his knee crashing into the man’s head, and they tumbled together from their saddle, with Fes coming to land on top of him.
Catching his breath, he looked around, searching for signs of other attackers, but there were none.
Fes wiped his blades off. He made his way back to the man he’d stabbed in the shoulders, but he was either unconscious or dead. With the way his head twisted off to the side, it was possible he was killed.
That wasn’t Fes’s plan. He hadn’t intended to kill the man, but he didn’t feel guilty about having done so. With what they were doing, the way they were coming at them, Fes couldn’t allow himself to feel guilt. They wouldn’t need to keep him alive and would have done the same to him as they had to the merchants.
He climbed onto the rocky point, looking to see where the other soldiers were. If they were behind him, he needed to be ready. He had taken out five, and thought that he’d seen at least a dozen, but where were the rest?
Unless they had split off.
Fes swore under his breath. Why couldn’t the soldiers make this easy?
Then again, he wouldn’t be easy. Not with this. It would force him to attack and to embrace violence that he sought to suppress. And it wasn’t even that he disliked violence—he was far too good at it to hate it—but he didn’t like the way the rage boiled inside him. It was a sensation that he tried to ignore, but he was never good at it, not nearly as good as he wanted to be. When that rage burbled up within him, bad things happened. People died. Sometimes too many people died.
Horus had used that part of him, and Azithan had rescued him from it.
There was no sign of the other soldiers.
He hurried down the rock and jumped into the saddle and directed the horse off. He needed to move quickly, but he wasn’t a skilled enough rider to make the speed that he needed.
As he rode, he tried to suppress the anger inside him. It was surprising how mad he’d been at the sight of the charred caravan. He hadn’t thought so at the time, but since then, he had felt a growing anger at what the soldiers had done.
Why would he have cared?
Because they didn’t deserve to die. That was all there was to it.
He let his mind go blank as he rode, keeping his focus on the rocks around him, searching for movement but seeing nothing. Riding quickly, Fes raced along, urging the horse for increased speed, and still didn’t see any signs of Alison or the priest. They couldn’t be that far ahead of him. He had delayed, but he hadn’t delayed that long. Then again, they were riding quickly. They weren’t waiting for him.
Near dusk, he saw a campsite in the distance.
It was smoke at first. There was nothing other than that, but it was far more substantial than what it should have been. It wasn’t Alison and the priest. He hadn’t expected it to be them because they wouldn’t have taken a break, not this early. There was still too much light in the sky, which meant that there was too much time in the day for them to be traveling.
That meant someone else.
Who else would be out here in the countryside? There weren’t many places this far away from the city for people to travel, not in this direction. There were other cities, and some villages, but he hadn’t come across any of them so far.
As he approached, he decided he needed to be careful.
Fes found a clump of trees and tied off the horse. He approached on foot, keeping his daggers ready, not confident whether these were other mercenaries or whether this would be something more benign.
It was a wagon.
Not just a wagon, but a merchant wagon.
“You can come out of the dark,” a voice said.
Fes frowned. He’d heard that voice before, but where?
He made his way forward, moving hesitantly at first until he caught sight of the person near the fire. It was the Toulen merchant who had been kind to him.
He reached into his pocket, fingering the figurine the man had given him, wondering again what it symbolized and why the man had thought to make a gift of it. There had to be some other reason, and he had thought that he would never know.
“I know you. You’re the man who helped stop the thief.”
Fes frowned. “What are you doing so far from the city?”
“I departed not long after you visited. My sales had been drying up, and it was time for me to return.”
“This way?” Toulen was more to the west, and they were heading far too north for him to think that the merchant was heading in the right direction.
“You must not travel outside of the city very much,” the merchant said, motioning for him to join him by the fire. Fes was surprised to see that the merchant wasn’t alone. There was a young girl with him. She couldn’t be more than ten, maybe twelve, and she sat with a knife in hand, carving a chunk of wood. Fes smiled to himself. Perhaps that was how the merchant had made so much.
“I don’t,” Fes said.
“If you had, you might be aware of activity al
ong the borders that make passing difficult. Certain places are better than others, and as we need to return to Toulen, it’s easier to head toward the northern pass and then back south again.”
“That would have to add quite a bit of time to your travels.”
“It adds time, but it is quite a bit safer than any other way that we could have gone.” The man looked at him for a moment. “You come on foot?”
Fes nodded to the darkness. “I left my horse tied up by some trees. I wasn’t certain what I would come across.”
“Why?”
“It’s not safe here, either. I’ve come across soldiers.” When the man arched his brow, Fes nodded. “Not empire soldiers.”
“There shouldn’t be any other soldiers in this part of the empire. Your emperor has kept these lands as safe as they can be.”
“I just ran across five of them not more than a few hours back.”
“Five? And what happened to them?”
“They won’t be following, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
The merchant stared at him for a moment, and then he stuck out his hand. “I’m Theole.”
Fes shook the man’s hand. “Fes.”
“Fes? That’s an interesting name for someone from the empire.”
“Blame my parents.”
The man smiled and motioned to the girl. “This is my daughter Indra.”
“It’s just the two of you?”
“Just the two of us. We left my wife and my younger son in Toulen. Trading is so good at the Great Market that we just had to come, but the timing was not ideal.”
“You came even though the journey was as dangerous as what you said?”
“What choice do I have? I need to provide for my family, and trade in Toulen isn’t what it is here. The people of the empire love their trinkets from Toulen.”
“Most think they have some sort of power imbued in them.”
Dragon Bones (The Dragonwalker Book 1) Page 10