Garos kicked out and set his staff to spin, sending licks of flame toward the feet of the bronze fighter, who leapt. Balsheer’s staff was waiting for him, chopping down in an arc that he could not hope to dodge.
Only he did, twisting away and somersaulting over the Ember’s head. He landed in a crouch and tensed to spring, but Talmir’s slash had him rolling. Garos moved to join the fight once again, but a Sentinel cut him off and forced him back, heedless of the flames that ate at it.
Brega leapt for Talmir, faking high and cutting low, but the Captain parried and the two resumed their dance. Talmir was clearly the more practiced sword, but he knew he could not counter his opponent’s speed for long.
One gauntlet flashed out to the side while the other drove straight in with its wielder behind it. Talmir sidestepped and brought his sword down in a chop that should have separated Brega’s head from his shoulders, but again the other was away in a flash of spinning tattoos and yellow tassels, and the two came up eye-to-eye once again, the jungle warrior flashing a smile.
“Whom do you call master?” Talmir shouted over the tumult. “Who sent you?”
The warrior circled, cocking his head to the side like a dog.
“Slave,” Talmir said, spitting in disgust. The warrior grimaced, his smile disappearing.
Around them, each pack of soldiers was locked in their own section of chaos, a series of miniature battles adding up to one bloody whole. Above it all, Garos’s bellows rivaled the roaring of the black bear while Dakken’s screams echoed down from the broken gate.
“Dark Kind nothing,” the warrior said in halting speech, surprising Talmir. “Landkist needed. Ours.” He nodded toward Garos Balsheer, who spun with his fiery staff, a deadly maelstrom at the center of the press.
“You’ll have trouble convincing that one to join you,” Talmir said. “You come on behalf of the White Crest? Has he betrayed us, truly?”
The warrior laughed heartily.
The Eastern Dark, then.
Talmir parried an attack the warrior timed with a bolt of lightning, but he lost his footing, sword flying from his hand as he tried to recover. The other was on him, but Talmir heard Dakken’s shout and saw him leap from the stair, charging for Brega’s back. His attacker’s eyes went white as he froze, and then emerald leaked in from the corners to match the eyes of the thrashing bear in the background.
Brega whirled and caught Dakken’s slashing hatchet in one of his claws, turning it aside as he twisted away. Dakken recovered and brought his lead back around, and then he disappeared in a hail of black fur and red blood with an audible crunch. The bear pinned him under a furious assault that had him screaming and hacking from his back.
“No!”
Talmir gained his feet and his sword. He charged Brega and the two dropped all pretense, chopping and slashing with abandon. The Captain’s heart caught in his throat as Dakken’s screams ceased while the rending and snapping of bone and sinew continued.
The beast’s roar sounded like victory until Talmir saw a flash of black and white clutched to its reeling face—Reyna’s hound tearing like a weasel on a hare.
Brega turned, eyes losing their glow as he witnessed the charge of a host of reserves. Talmir recognized the black-armored guards of the Merchant Council, but there were more streaming in, many of them armed only with torch or buckler. Karin Reyna was at their head and Creyath Mit’Ahn shouted at their backs. Talmir rewarded Brega’s momentary lapse with a deep score across his chest, and the Landkist darted back, wading right into the path of the First Keeper.
The two Landkist came together in a tangle of violence that left Talmir wondering how he had managed to stand for so long against one.
Talmir shook his head and ran for Dakken, who had been dragged away by fresh troops. The fighter’s fingers still twitched on the grips of his blades, but his eyes were unseeing, skin turning the pale complexion of death.
Karin intercepted a Sentinel that was angling straight for Talmir, tackling it to the ground and rolling away as the crowd set to hacking at the shrieking thing.
Talmir stood and swallowed the lump in his throat. He nodded to Karin, who nodded back, and the two turned upon the melee in the courtyard. The violence had slowed and the odds seemed stacked in their favor. The bear had managed to dislodge its passenger, but the spears had done their work. It soon sank down to join the dispatched flesh littering the ground, the emerald light fading from its eyes and leaving bloody moons in their place.
The Sentinels were dead or dying, the men taking torches to those that still writhed. A shield wall had gone up before the shattered gate, stemming the flow of the Corrupted as the emerging sun lit their backs and set their skins to burn.
“How soon we forget the protection the sun affords us,” Karin said. “We call months Dark, but we’ve never lost the sun completely.”
“The Dark Months are named for what they bring,” Talmir said. “We’ll rename them later. For now, I want to know how the Eastern Dark has managed to add Landkist to ranks that have only ever counted denizens of the World Apart.”
And many eyes, including the Captain’s own, now turned in toward the duel in the center of the yard.
Talmir stepped to the edge of a wide circled made of standing men and women. The circle had been made absent thought. The Emberfolk had been brought up on tales that theirs were the most powerful Landkist in the World. He supposed they would see now.
Watching the flaming hurricane before him, the fire fighting as a thing both of and separate from the Ember who birthed it, he had no reason to doubt it. It stood to reason that Brega was something special, else the Eastern Dark would not have bothered with him. The warrior of the Emerald Road had been intent on the First Keeper of Hearth. Now he would have him.
Talmir smiled.
Garos was a jovial spirit—a kind and gentle soul. But the being before them now was the Balsheer that had earned his place at the small table of Valley legends alongside the likes of Tu’Ren Kadeh and Sarise A’zu. Even Creyath, for all his poise, could not wield the flames so.
Brega knew he was outmatched. He moved like a tiger in the pit, lashing out desperately, unsure whether to dodge the metal spites on the end of the Ember’s staff or the jets of blue fire that streaked from it in deadly crescents. He scored his hits, eyes widening as the Ember’s blood burned away whatever poisons he had set to work.
Talmir looked down, examining the slashes in his armor and sighing in relief when he found no fresh wounds apart from scrapes and bruises.
He was about to give the order to advance and finish the trap when Reyna’s hound started barking furiously. Sounds of abject terror went up in the back and Talmir saw the great black bear rise like a great shadow framed by Garos’s flames.
Brega had been stalling, his eyes glowing bright green as they had before. He smiled and lashed out with a combination that put Garos on his heels, and the bear sent up a shower of bodies as it crashed into the circle, blood leaking from a hundred wounds.
The clatter of hooves sounded like thunder fast closing, and Talmir whirled to see a stampede of horses—most without bit or bridle—flying down the center avenue toward the courtyard, their eyes showing the same emerald sheen, mouths frothing with wild effort.
Talmir dove to the side, pulling another solider with him as the charging animals made the yard a sea of churning. He shielded his face with an arm after seeing Garos lay the bear low with a swipe that cracked with thunder all its own.
When the maelstrom passed, the animals scattered and reared, many coming up lame. But their eyes now showed red, white and brown. There was no sign of Brega Cohr.
As if on command, the sun beamed down in merciless intensity, lighting the macabre scene before them as the dark clouds melted away and revealed the startling blue behind.
Talmir was pulled to his feet.
“We won,” Karin said.
“We survived,” Talmir said, moving toward Garos, who leaned precariously on his s
moking staff, the ends of which still glowed like fresh-doused matches.
“What do you reckon he was about?” the Ember asked as Talmir came to stand beside him. They looked through the yawning gap where the gate had been, over the mountain of black fur that once made up a giant of a bear and past the ruins of rock and stone in the fields beyond. The Corrupted were weak. Those that did not burn to a crisp fell to the renewed swords of the Emberfolk.
“Who knows?”
The Ember grunted as if it did not matter after all.
“You know,” he said, “I’m loath to admit I actually thought we might escape the bastard’s notice, here at the edge of it all.”
Talmir only nodded.
“But why all the pretense?” Garos asked and Talmir looked at him quizzically. “Why not do this from the start?” He swept his hand out, but Talmir did not want to look just now.
“I suppose we have our protector to thank for that. The White Crest.”
Another grunt.
“And who do we have to thank for that?” the Ember pointed up at the blue skies above, where the sun shone bright and beautiful.
Talmir smiled.
“Boy’s got some bones, going up to them peaks,” Garos said. “Suppose he’s the one to thank.”
“Some bones,” Talmir said, and felt another twinge for having said it in such still company.
Kole did not know how long the duel had been raging, but judging by his physical state and the set of his shoulders, Jenk Ganmeer had pushed far beyond his breaking point already.
Everwood clashed against Everwood as sword deflected spear in another desperate parry, and Kole tensed from his place next to Misha Ve’Gah. They hid behind an outcropping just a stone’s throw from the steep ground on which the Embers lunged and flared. Scorch marks scarred the ground beneath them, sodden mud and gravel turned to cracked char and glass.
The party’s path had taken them by a circuitous route to the Sage’s keep, which sat like a red-topped pearl in its black cloister below them, its shadowed door looming open. A winding pathway had been cut into the vertical slope to the west, and the Embers danced atop the precipitous shelf. The golden pools in the fields merged into the white clouds in the distance, lazy invaders that had come to dispel the pall hanging over the Valley skies.
Kole had wanted to rush out the instant he saw the yellow glow of Jenk’s blade, but Baas Taldis held him back, motioning for patience as Jenk attempted to fend off the demon that had been Larren Holspahr. Kole looked to his right, frantic, where the hulking Riverman directed his compatriots. A dozen warriors snaked their way down the jagged cloister. They would set a perimeter around the White Crest’s abode, but it was too long coming for Kole.
“So that’s Ganmeer, eh?” Misha asked. She fingered the bright tassels below her spearhead, careful to keep it down.
“He was the second-youngest Ember in the Valley,” Kole said. “In the World. Now he’s the youngest. And I’m soon to be.”
“He’s got stones,” Misha said approvingly. “He’ll last.”
“Last,” Kole mouthed the word. He winced as Jenk let out a small cry, the burning shaft of Larren’s spear slapping him in the temple and sending him reeling.
Much as he tried to stay focused, Kole could not help but glance behind the battling Embers to the figures on the shelf. There was Linn, her clothes hanging in tatters, dried blood covering arms and legs. She shielded Nathen Swell like a mother over her babe. Baas had spoken true: there was no sign of Kaya Ferrahl.
“Honestly,” Kole said, shifting his eyes back to the duel, “I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.”
“That’s not the true Larren Holspahr he stands against,” Misha said, sounding less impressed than she had before.
Kole nodded, searching the rocks below for signs of the Rivermen. They had vanished and the Embers twitched as they waited for Baas to receive his signal. The rock under Kole’s palm began to steam, and Baas glanced over worriedly. Kole took the hint and tried to reign in his blood. The sun, which he had not seen this clear in weeks, imbued him with something close to the power he had felt in the fields of Hearth. The northern skies turned from yellow to burnt orange as the great orb neared the end of its slow descent.
“Whatever’s driving Larren now,” Misha said, “it’s burning up all of his stores. He’s using fire too fast, burning too hot, and against another Ember. Useless.”
“It’ll last long enough to kill them, if we don’t make our move soon,” Kole said.
As he said it, Jenk drove the Sentinel back in a furious press. His advantage, however, was temporary, and he was soon back on his heels, ducking and dodging far more often than attacking. Misha was right about one thing: if that were the true Larren Holspahr, Jenk would have been killed three times over.
Still, Kole had to admit he was impressed. Some men, he supposed, are not who they wish to be. And some men are just what they claim to be. It was now apparent that Jenk was one of the latter.
Kole wondered if one could be both at once.
Misha shifted, dislodging a sheet of rock so thin it broke apart like paper and twirled in the breeze.
“Calm,” Baas intoned, and Misha shrank down with a grumble.
The Riverman appeared the very picture of calm, but Kole could sense the need dripping off him. He wanted nothing more than to join in the fight, to right whatever wrongs had been done in the cave. If he could wait, so would Kole.
They had learned little of the Rivermen on their walk, though they seemed cut from the same cloth as Baas. Kole could pick out which of them were Rockbled by the stone bracers on their wrists. Baas did not wear them, but he carried the stone in the set of his shoulders and in the shield he bore on his back.
My mother died in these passes.
The thought crept up again. It was growing more difficult to suppress the higher they climbed. And now, at the zenith of the Valley that may as well be their world, it was impossible to shake.
Had she made it this far?
My mother died in the dark.
Had she felt any pain?
My mother died.
Kole’s heart caught in his chest as Jenk bent back awkwardly to avoid a streak of flame he had mistaken for the spearhead, his heel slipping on a loose stone. The tongue of flame carried through, sweeping around the Sentinel and masking the approach of the serrated tip. Jenk cried out as the jagged edge tore into him, catching on some bone in his chest and spinning him viciously like a harpooned fish.
The Ember rolled when he hit the ground, dodging the deadly follow-through and narrowly avoiding being rooted to the mountaintop. He kicked out, his sword flying from his grasp and extinguishing as it did. The smoking matchstick clattered with finality at Linn’s knees.
Jenk was a lamb and his blazing butcher sprang like a wolf with mange.
Embers were fast when they wanted to be—hot blood made hot muscles—but Kole and Misha were barely a third of the way down the slope when it looked certain Jenk’s life would be extinguished along with his blade.
And then a bow sang in a baritone, a silver arrow half the length of a spear trailing on the echoes and shooting like a daystar from the northern spurs. The lightning shaft tore through the air and would have torn right through the Sentinel’s spine had it not altered course at the last second, planting and leaping over the fallen Ember, tails of fire spinning in its wake.
The archer, a Rockbled male who stood half again Baas’s height, emerged from his alcove and made ready to fire again, a great war bow standing tall as his target’s spear planted in the shelf on which he stood. The Sentinel wheeled and shot in his direction as Kole and Misha continued their descent.
The Ember pair leapt and darted around jagged spires, sliding as often as running, a hundred tiny avalanches of chipped slate flowing in their wake like obsidian rivers. Kole was shocked to see Baas’s black hair dipping in and out of arches ahead; it was as though he rode the mountain rather than traversed it.
; Three Landkist hit the ground running, a handful of Baas’s warriors emerging from their places and joining in on the chase as the Sentinel closed in on the Rockbled archer.
“So much for waiting on the Sage,” Misha said, huffing as she ran.
Kole put an extra burst in and shot ahead. They rocketed over the dirt road, passing within a stone’s throw of Jenk, Linn and Nathen. Kole did not chance a look at them, though he could feel their eyes on him as he passed.
Ahead, the Rockbled warrior let fly another silver missile. The Sentinel dodged in a spin that make it look like a comet, and the shaft dug a trench a stride deep and three long, bits of earth ricocheting off of the shifting black scales of Kole’s armor.
The leap had the Sentinel hurtling toward the archer’s perch, but the Rockbled watched his approach stoically, making no move except to fall, crumbling with the spur beneath his feet and sinking in a cascade of black stone as the monster’s spear carved the space his head had occupied moments earlier.
It was as if the spur itself had broken apart to avoid the demon’s attack. Perhaps it had, as the Rockbled archer came up in a roll, unscathed as the stones tumbled around his feet.
Kole, Misha, Baas and the warriors of the Fork formed a semicircle around the rockslide on which the crazed Sentinel now stood, the last of the Rivermen emerging from their places, weapons trained on their quarry. The Embers flared their blades to life and nothing moved but for the flames dancing along Everwood blades of hunter and hunted.
Kole saw the red eyes shift imperceptibly toward his left; Misha must have seen it too, for the two of them darted to intercept the Sentinel’s retreat. Their mistake cost the Rockbled archer his life.
Kole caught the ruse too late and the Sentinel slammed his spear into the ground, sending up a wall of flame that blinded his pursuers momentarily. He saw the dark form transfer the energy of its slam into an incredible jump that took it up and over. The archer let loose another singing shaft, but it made a tunnel in the shelf behind the demon. Larren Holspahr’s spear, however, made one of its own in the archer’s throat, and the big man went down in a choking spray, his bow clattering to the ground beside him as the party sprang into violent chaos.
Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) Page 32