At this distance, Adriel could just make out the procession making its way toward the gate. Black-armored soldiers rode from the mouth of the valley, leading a caravan of wagons and carts. A line of people shuffled behind, their clinking chains just audible at this distance.
“We think it goes on for miles, to the east and west,” Espen whispered, unable to keep some of the awe from his voice. “Maybe even along the entire border with Erias, or near enough anyway. That may be their goal.”
She clenched her fists, her breath catching in her lungs. How could Vanthe let people be treated like this? “How could this have happened under our noses? It would have taken years to build something like this, decades, even!”
She knew the answer. King Vanthe was a snake. A venomous, wretched monster. He’d turned on the Alliance and given his country to Iscarius, just like Branim had done with Inveira. He’d allowed his people to be kidnapped and forced into labor for the Acedens. Deep down, she knew it in her bones. Vanthe had betrayed them all.
Maren and Kari exchanged an uneasy look. For once, Adriel didn’t care what they thought of her. Let them see her anger. Let them know her wrath.
“All the slave caravans we’ve been tracking must have come here; that’s the only possible way they’ve managed to build it up so fast. Which means that the people of Erias are down there. And far more than just them. Tens of thousands even…”
The gates creaked open and the caravan entered Charun. A retinue of Acedens guarded horse-drawn wagons in the middle of the procession, tarps drawn over what were likely cages. She frowned as she watched the gates shut behind them.
“Maren,” she turned to the shorthaired woman. “Take a company of your finest and scout east along the wall for any weaknesses. Kari, take a company as well and scout west. Espen, stay here on this hill and watch the gate and its comings and goings. Report to me each night. If any of you run into trouble, make for our camp back in the mountains of Nimithy Valley.”
Espen nodded and gave his slight, courtly bow. “We do as you command.”
“We will free every slave.” Adriel gazed out at the wall once more. “And kill every last Aceden.”
Cain threw himself against the valley wall, sucking in air between pants. Nearby, Mithaniel wiped his sword on an arzec’s corpse and sheathed it.
“We have to keep moving,” the Iscara said. “There are more of them out there.”
“Easy for you to say.” Cain pushed off the wall and gathered his breath. The man looked like they’d been sitting at a tavern table, not running for two bloody days. Barely a drop of sweat beaded his face.
Cain heeded the Iscara’s advice and followed him into the darkness. They jogged around twist and bend, up and down undulating hills, stumbling over rock and root.
Pressured by their admittedly dire situation, Cain had stopped earlier in the day and finally managed to strike a spark large enough for Mithaniel to use. True to his word, the Iscara had cupped it in a hand, and a faint light had trickled from between his fingers. He now led the way with a fist of pale yellow, a pitiful light to combat such crushing dark. Still, the light was practically a beacon, and that meant the arzecs could sense them even easier.
They’d rung the dinner bell.
“How much further?” Cain breathed as they scuttled down a switchback.
“I don’t know. No more than I knew—” a cascade of stones overhead cut his next wearisome lecture short. His sword was free of its sheath before Cain could react.
An arzec plunged over Mithaniel and was tackled away to fall into blackness with a yelp. Another fell over him with a spray of rocks, and he tossed it off with his sword through its face. “Keep running!”
Cain drew Ceerocai with a hum and dodged a falling arzec. He clubbed his sword into his attacker’s chest and sent it tipping over the edge of the path.
The clinking and grinding of claws on stone sent a chill down his spine as he ran. He swung his sword and cut arzecs down like reeds as they dropped around him. Cain trampled over the bodies and continued down the path, howls rising behind him.
The path ended. Cain skidded to a stop, dirt shooting from his boots and over the edge. He cursed and jumped over the edge to land in a gulley. Running at a breakneck pace, he jumped over cracks and boulders and dodged flailing beasts.
The ground slipped out from underfoot, and he found himself waving frantically in open air. He crashed down to the earth, the wind hammered from his lungs. And he rolled. He tumbled over rocks and roots, slipping through shrubs and trees. Arzecs rolled past him, some limp or lifeless, others scratching for him. He scrambled for a handhold, arms scraping sharp rocks and solid dirt.
Another drop. His stomach flipped in the brief weightlessness, and he struck solid ground. Pain surged through him like a hot knife that dug its way into every bone. Bodies pelted down around him.
An arzec smashed down beside him, inches from his face. He looked up to see Mithaniel yank his sword from its chest. “Nap time is over,” he smirked.
The Iscara turned to face a wave of arzecs. They dropped down from an unseen height and threw themselves recklessly at him as he swung with graceful precision. With his other hand he sent out small bursts of bright yellow light that sent the creatures stumbling back.
Cain shook himself into action and rolled over with a groan. An arzec gaped up at him, lifeless. Its body had cushioned his fall. He scanned the darkness, littered with bloody and broken arzecs. Ceerocai lay abandoned in the dirt at the edge of his vision.
The body beneath him stirred and snapped at him. He managed to knee it in the face between where its eyes should have been. It recoiled back with a growl and crawled after him. It pulled itself across the dirt with its talons, dragging its shattered legs behind it.
Cain crawled, throwing one hand before the other, ignoring the pain that screamed in his chest. He tried to stand but his knees collapsed from under him. The creature neared him as he fell among a pile of bodies. He pulled himself over a corpse and reached for Ceerocai. The arzec’s talons clutched around his ankle as he swung the sword around, severing the arm. The beast gave a reedy screech and rolled away into the black.
A familiar warmth seeped through him as his fingers gripped his sword. With it came a strength that filled the deepest part of him like a once dry well. He climbed to his feet, the great blade humming in his bloody palm. The ruby in the blade seemed to glisten black as if it absorbed the dense darkness.
Cain took up a defensive pose—knees spread at the hips, sword angled before him—and began the killing. Arzecs came from all sides, hurling themselves at him with rabid ferocity. He ignored the pain in his chest and laid about with wide, powerful swings, cutting down scores of the beasts. Still they came, and still he butchered.
Ceerocai seemed to surge within him. Such grace, such power. His pain vanished, his doubts and worries gone. It practically glowed within him, wanting to burst free from his every pore. He felt it there, its potential just beyond. If he could just reach out and—
“What are you doing?” Mithaniel cried. Cain shook himself and pulled Ceerocai from his victim. The great blade glowed with a soft perse light, illuminating the ravenous maws of dozens, if not hundreds of arzecs.
“There’s too many! We have to go!”
Cain climbed over the ring of bodies and cut a swathe through the beasts.
Claws tore at him from everywhere. He beat about blindly, hacking down arzec after arzec. Yet still they came, a solid press of snapping fangs. He pushed through the throng and swung, throwing bodies back in a spray of black blood. He’d reached the other side.
He turned to face the hordes, but his boot slipped, and he dropped over the edge of the path. He braced himself for yet another impact, and he struck a slope, half-falling, half-rolling his way down the rocks. Ceerocai shot from his hands as he slid to a stop. He laid there for a moment, gasping for air in the dirt. The pain returned in force.
“Damn it, man!” Mithaniel appeared in a sl
ide of stones. He drove his sword through an incoming arzec. “We have to keep moving, I think we’re almost there!”
“Ceerocai!” Cain fumbled through the dark for the sword and Mithaniel cursed, waving his small light source over the rocks. Arzecs scrambled down the slope overhead, some charging, some bowling toward them.
There! Cain grabbed for Ceerocai and freed it from a tangle of roots. It hummed softly in his hands as the two turned and ran. The familiar warmth trailed back up his arms and his pain dwindled, but where was that light? What had happened?
They ran as fast as they could over a rocky field. The horde of arzecs bit at their heels, their gruesome fangs just barely illuminated at the edges of Mithaniel’s light. Their roars filled the sky, echoes that crashed into each other to boom in every crack and crevice.
Cain could feel their warm breath, their spittle spraying the back of his neck. He ran for his life, exhaustion paling to fear, terror driving every footfall harder than the last. He ran without end in sight, only blackness. And death.
Cain nearly crashed into a tree. He tossed around it and almost tripped himself in his haste. Another tree rose up on him fast and he twisted away to slip and slide to a stop at the base of a trunk. He collapsed in its roots, watching the horde of arzecs descend upon him.
Then they stopped. The arzecs recoiled back, their lines rippling forward in a chain reaction that sent scores of them collapsing over each other. It was as if they’d run head first into a wall. They clawed at the invisible barrier, wailing and howling at their prey just beyond.
Cain slumped back against the tree trunk, perhaps in as much exhaustion as amazement. He blinked away the sweat and gulped for air. “Why did they stop?”
“I don’t know,” Mithaniel breathed, at last showing signs of exhaustion. “It’s something about this place, I’d wager. No one alive or dead would be dumb enough to enter it.”
Cain groaned as he looked around them. The trees were like nothing natural, as if born from the very darkness. They twisted high into the shadows, their sickly gray and black trunks like rotting fingers clawing from their graves. If it was dark before, now it was a depthless void—their glossy, ink black leaves absorbing all light. Mithaniel’s light seemed a candle in the pit of a vast cave. The air hung stale and weighty around them, lifeless and cold.
“The Faeran.” Cain suppressed a shudder. He’d wanted to avoid this place, of course, but his plan required him to take the path least expected. It was the last place anyone would want to be, and he’d found out just why that was the last time he’d passed through.
Mithaniel gave a shake of his white head. For all the man’s coolness, an unease seemed to flitter into his pale eyes, and it likely had little to do with the arzecs clawing for him feet away. “We couldn’t have avoided the Faeran. A thin enough chance to come out in the Knife Pass, though with Acedens occupying it, this may well be our safest option. I suppose this is part of your grand plan? Whatever that may be.”
Cain shrugged, rising to his feet. “It’s not much of a plan, but it’ll have to do.”
“Care to tell me what it is we’re doing, yet?”
“Let’s get moving.” Cain spared him a glance as he returned Ceerocai to its baldric. “We’ve a long way to go yet.” With that, he turned and led Mithaniel into the clutches of the Faeran.
Call of the Nighthawk
Adriel risked a glance at the sky, dark and ominous. There was that stillness that came before a rain, when the winds quieted and the clouds gathered. The night hung poised on a knife’s edge.
And she was the blade. She moved through the trees and hills, her small retinue of Vilant prowling behind her.
The men and women were little more than shadows in the near pitch black. The rare gleam of starlight shone dull on their weapons, smeared dark with damp soil. Their green and brown linens and leathers blended into the hills, their faces streaked with mud. They were hopefully difficult to see, but that still didn’t stop her from casting anxious looks at the nearby wall. Roaming packs of sentries paced the shadows high overhead.
An owl hooted from somewhere in the unseen hills. Adriel led her Vilant away from the road toward the closest slope. The nine others dove into the grass. Weapons poised, they watched a column of Aceden riders canter past, feet away.
Adriel and the Vilant slipped back onto the road, using the ditches and palisades for concealment. A nightingale called, and the group dropped flat against the ground. Sentries peered out over the wall before turning to their rounds.
And so, they continued in this manner, making for the hills at the owl’s calls and hiding when the nightingale sang. They’d been running for hours and hours. How long was this damn wall?
Adriel had set off west with her group at sunset, sending Maren and nine others along the wall east. It seemed like ages since they’d knelt in that copse, covering themselves in dirt and running over her plan a final time.
Kari had reported that the best location to attack—the closest place where the wall’s construction was not yet finished—was miles west of the gate, and Maren had confirmed the same in the east. Ten miles to either side. Ten miles of skirting through shadows unseen, and that was the easy part. How many hours had it been? How many miles had they already run?
Adriel rubbed the sweat from her brow as they rose up from their hiding place and continued down the road. She had to keep moving, one foot before the other. She couldn’t give up, she couldn’t afford to rest. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of people on the other side of the wall depended on her.
It was time to prove herself.
The short call of a nighthawk sounded in the dark. Kari appeared from the shadows and pointed ahead. Adriel slid down into the trench and worked her way carefully through the stakes to the slope on the other side. She hunkered down there and peered out to where the woman had pointed.
The wall did indeed appear lower here, a ragged band that looked as if it had been shaved by an unsteady hand. Adriel frowned into the distance. How many more miles until it lowered further? Surely the wall didn’t stretch the entire border with Erias yet, so maybe another mile or two would put them around it. No, that’s where they’d expect an attack. She needed surprise.
Adriel listened to the faint sounds above—the hum of voices, the rumbling of cart wheels, the grinding of chisels and stone saws and wooden gears. Even at this late hour, the Acedens had people working.
Another nighthawk sang in the night. Adriel shook herself from her thoughts and yanked open the leather scrip at her hip to fish out a coil of rope. Unwinding it, she spilled it out across her arm and counted the knots that joined the individual ropes to make the whole. Sixty feet. She hoped it would be enough. The rope’s end hung heavy with four flukes crudely beaten and shaped from chains.
Adriel climbed out from the trench to stand directly below the wall. She swung the makeshift grappling hook in a loop, gaining speed with each wide ring. Tossing it underhand, the hook shot into the darkness with the rope trailing after. Adriel forced an exhale as the rope tightened. First try! She gave a satisfied tug before motioning to the others to throw their hooks.
Adriel pulled herself off the ground and was feet in the air before she remembered to breathe. She threw an arm before the other, another foot up and another. She forced herself to keep her eyes open and watch the dark mass of clouds overhead. Her hands rubbed raw by the hemp rope, slick with sweat and numb from more than cold. She could practically feel the distance below her now, that long, long drop.
And then she rolled over the edge of the wall, panting for breath. She shook off her fear and pried the hooks from the jumble of stones. Vilant climbed down around her.
Soon, they were huddled in the shadow of bricks and scaffolding. To the west, specs of black buzzed, pulling hand carts and hefting bricks and barrels. Others worked great wooden cranes and gears, hoisting stones atop the scaffolding. Acedens walked among the workers, their black armor barely visible in the night.
Adriel turned away, sword gripped tight in hand. There was nothing she could do for those people. At least, not right now. She jogged east along the wall walk back in the direction they’d come.
Now inside this wretched place, a casual glance along the wall could spell doom for them. They were not too few or too many to be an Aceden patrol, and in this moonless night they were well hidden, but they couldn’t risk any chances. They had miles to run yet, as many as they had come.
The sounds of the laboring masses trailed at their heels. Before them, the endless ribbon of stone was cold and silent. Their boots reverberated like thunderclaps.
A watchtower jutted from the dark before them. Its crenellated top was empty save the black banners. Adriel and the Vilant slowed to a brisk walk, weapons extended as they neared the tower’s archway.
A single torch hung on either side of the arch beside a door. Their orange glow cut sharp lines along the stones and cast long shadows behind the Vilant. The door vibrated with the talk and laughter of men. Curses and cries followed the clatter of tankards.
The Vilant skulked by and exited the other end of the archway. The light of the torches brushed off their backs and returned them to the night.
Then, it hit them. The sheer sour stink of human sweat. The rot of midden heaps and waste. The reeking wall crashed over them, forcing them in their tracks as they pinched their noses.
The black blotches of tents covered the fields of Charun like anthills. The random torch or cookfire glowed in the distance, giving off rings of yellow light in the dark.
Adriel turned from the city of tents. Two sentries paced the top of a tower ahead, gazing out north and properly unaware of the Vilant below. Adriel beckoned her Vilant through the tower’s passageway, listening to the snores rising from inside before moving back down the wall.
And so, they continued in this way, the hours trickling by as they went. The sky seemed to be a little lighter now, the clouds drifting apart for the moment. It had to be nearing dawn. If she—
The Shadow of War Page 20