“Many spells require a physical catalyst,” he told his students. “And all materials, no matter how small or seemingly useless, contain mystical properties. Take granite dust as an example. The particles are tiny and barbed, and there have been many a man and woman whose lungs the Wardens and healers have had to set right because of the bleeding sores the dust can cause. And yet the granite that forms that dust is only created through pressure and time, and represents the purity of the land on which we live. When using the correct words, it is the one element that can distill the water we might wish to drink, removing salt, sediment, bacteria, fungus . . . and animal waste.”
Azariah worked his fingers together above the bucket, dropping dust particles into it while his lips mouthed the spell. Just as with every time before that Ahaesarus had seen this process carried out, he was enthralled by its simplicity; something magical made to seem ordinary. There were no bright lights, no eerie sounds carried on the wind; only the water, slowly brightening as the granite dust and Azariah’s words did their work.
Soon the water was clear, the putrid odor that had infused it gone. Ahaesarus looked down at the shorter Warden, and noticed that although the expressions on the four humans were awash with wonder, Azariah did not look satisfied. Ahaesarus placed his hand on his shoulder and dismissed the others.
“I need to speak with your teacher in private,” he told them. “Gather several other Wardens at the well near the manse, and have them wait for us to come purify the water.”
The others bowed to him and filed out of the throne room, Astin’s young eyes glancing at the empty wicker throne on his way by. Ahaesarus’s frustration with Benjamin bubbled anew. The boy could be a huge help if only he would cease being a sniveling little child and become the leader he was chosen and trained to be. Picking up the discarded cloth beside the throne, Ahaesarus made his way back to Ashhur’s side and resumed wetting the god’s scalding flesh. All the while Azariah stood there in silence. Ahaesarus realized how silly it was that he should berate Azariah for attempting to heal Ashhur while he himself sat there and bathed him for hours on end. At least Azariah was attempting to be proactive.
“Why aren’t you out on the wall with your brother?” Ahaesarus asked as the quiet stretched on. “You have never struck me as one to remain still and away from a conflict.”
The Warden’s shoulders slumped. “You have me confused with someone else,” he replied, and he sounded so tired, so broken down. “Before our world ended, I was a quiet man. I loved books and working with wood; adventure was something that belonged to the bards who traveled and sang their tales.”
Ahaesarus watched steam rise from his god’s chest, the moisture from the cloth evaporating almost as soon as it touched him. “What changed?”
“Ashhur and the goddess saved us,” Azariah said with a shrug. “We witnessed the end of our world and the birth of a new one. It seemed a chance to become someone new as well. My older brother was always the brave one, so why not behave as he did?”
Azariah reached out and touched his hand, and Ahaesarus released the wet cloth. The smaller Warden took over bathing the god, seeming to find catharsis in the simple act.
“The young man. Roland Norsman. You miss him.”
“I do. And it makes it worse that I killed him.”
Ahaesarus cocked his head and stared at him, confused. Azariah let out a bitter laugh, not taking his eyes off his god.
“Jacob Eveningstar was my friend. At least, I always thought he was. I had a chance to kill him, Ahaesarus. At the Wooden Bridge, before we crossed, we were attacked by a group of soldiers from Neldar. We all would have perished had I not sensed Ashhur’s wolf-children lingering nearby and called them to our defense. During the skirmish, I struck Jacob with a maul. He was unconscious on the ground before me, and I could have ended his life right there, but I did not. Even though he swore Jacob Eveningstar was dead, even though he had tried to murder Roland, I hesitated. I couldn’t kill him. Instead, I fled, taking Roland with me. That’s when the arrow pierced his back. If I’d been stronger, if I’d done what needed to be done . . . ”
Ahaesarus shook his head. “Life ends, it always has and always will. Think of how much of our own brethren we have lost since Karak began the march west.”
“You don’t have to tell me that, Ahaesarus. They died by my side. Just as Roland and Brienna did while I was unable to help. I am tired of it. I want to be helpful.”
“You need to be strong,” said Ahaesarus, taking hold of his arm. “We’re needed, each and every one of us. Every morning I walk that wall and try to keep spirits high, even as death looms in the valley below. You have a gift, Azariah, an understanding of humankind surpassing mine. You know what to say, how to say it. Your presence would be much better served out there with the fighting men than in here wallowing over your loss and teaching humans religious rite. Let Daniel Nefram perform those duties. When Karak’s Army finishes their siege weapons, we will need all hands to help hold them off, especially if our god remains . . . indisposed.”
Azariah shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. I have lost my taste for violence, if I ever had it in the first place. This world needs healers as much as it needs warriors, perhaps even more so.” His eyes glanced back down at his prone god. “I will indeed be out there with the warriors when Karak comes at us again, but I will honor Ashhur by saving lives rather than taking them. Now excuse me; I have water to purify.”
With that, the short Warden tossed the cloth back into the bucket, turned, and walked away. His flowing white clothing billowed behind him like a ghost’s tail. Ahaesarus wanted to call out for him to stop, but held his tongue. He is right, he thought, gazing at Ashhur. Perhaps he is the most right of any of us.
Yet despite it all, he could not shake the doubt that clung to his chest, gnawing.
CHAPTER
3
It was dusk, and Patrick DuTaureau was busy demonstrating to a group of youngsters how best to parry a sidelong chop. They practiced in a small field to the left of Celestia’s giant tree, where Mordeina’s outer-wall gate had been smashed by Karak’s fireball from the sky. The gate on the inner wall, positioned seventy feet to the right of its demolished sister, was still intact. They’d been at it for over an hour when the muted sound of a blaring horn sounded. His students were young, greener than grass in the middle of summer, and their reaction to the horn showed just how green they were. They dropped their practice sticks to their sides and glanced around, confused.
To Patrick, though, its meaning was clear, its sound painfully familiar. Karak’s Army was launching another attack.
Someone tugged on his shirtsleeve, and Patrick glanced down to see one of his students staring at him, eyes bulging with fear. The boy was no older than twelve, and stocky, with red-blond hair and dark freckles. The rough-spun shift covering him was filthy, appearing to be splotchy black in the murk of the setting sun. He was the only of his class who remained; the others had already fled away from the wall, most likely searching for someplace to hide.
“Mister Patrick, what do I do?” the boy asked, his voice quavering.
Patrick knelt down, the hump in his back sending shooting pain up his spine and his knees popping. “Vinsen,” he said, “have you been practicing your archery like you were supposed to?”
The boy nodded.
“How many targets did you hit this morning?”
“Six.”
“Out of how many?”
Vinsen’s lips curled up, and his brow furrowed in thought, before he replied, “Thirty.”
Patrick let out a deep sigh. No way good enough, but it will have to do.
“Go there,” he said, pointing through a gap in the rushing bodies to where one of the Wardens stood behind a stone barricade at the base of a hill, handing out recently strung bows and quivers filled with crudely fletched arrows. “Grab a bow and join the others on the line. You will be our last defense. If Karak’s bastards get through . . . ”
“Put an arrow in them?” asked Vinsen, a blank look on his face.
“Yes, that would be better than dying. Now go.”
Patrick rustled the boy’s hair, and Vinsen sprinted off through the throng of dirty and scampering people. Patrick ran in the opposite direction. His every muscle ached, and his misshapen head throbbed. The burgeoning evening was cool, and without his armor on, his light clothing did little to protect him from the onset of cold, making him shiver. For the millionth time in his life, he wondered why he, the son of Ashhur’s first daughter Isabel, should feel so much pain. What good was agelessness if each day was filled with physical torment? It just didn’t seem fair.
Blame your father, the voice of his inner hatred said. He made you this way, so heap that responsibility on his head.
He shook off his impure thoughts and hurried behind a group of five Wardens climbing one of the slender stairways. The Wardens were each a full head taller than him, and their long, elegant legs were able to scale two steps at a time. In a matter of moments, they were far above him, nearing the top of the wall, while those behind Patrick urged him to pick up the pace. At one point he nearly lost his balance and fell, but he righted himself just as he was about to slip off the edge, even as bodies collided with his backside.
Amazingly, he realized that was the first time his heart rate had risen above normal since the horn started blaring. Falling and breaking my neck scares me, but the possibility of death by sword doesn’t? He shook his head. Something isn’t right in this head of mine.
Once he reached the top of the wall, that fear finally came. He gazed across the valley at the army Karak had massed a mile away. The countless soldiers were like some black disease that had momentarily stagnated, hovering there atop a distant hill, seemingly still in the dimness, yet buzzing with frenetic energy. Patrick was so focused on the sight of them that he almost stepped off the plank connecting the inner wall with the outer. If not for one of the thick limbs of Celestia’s tree, which extended out over the plank, he would have fallen.
When he reached the ramparts of the outer wall, all frenetic energy seemed to die, and his nerves settled. Warden and human alike were behind the parapets, with bows at the ready, peering between merlons at the valley below, a sight that even a few short days ago would have seemed impossible. Warden Judarius had joined Karak’s former soldier Preston Ender in preparing the settlement’s defenses, and the discipline they inspired was a sight to behold. There had to be ninety individuals on the wall, and none of them so much as breathed or shook or whimpered, even when the warhorn sounded once more. Judarius paced behind them, pleading for calm, his long black hair bouncing with every step he took. It was a display of restraint, of order, that would have made even Karak proud. Patrick shuddered at the thought.
He placed his hand on the shoulder of a sandy-haired teen wearing tattered breeches. The youngster glanced behind him, visibly started as he gazed at Patrick’s ugliness, and then dutifully stepped aside. Patrick sighed and leaned between two merlons, peering at the dead land below him, squinting to adjust his eyes to the coming darkness. He heard the whine of wood scraping against metal as he watched a mobile mountain slowly approaching. It was more than halfway between the awaiting army and the protective wall, flanked on either side by at least a hundred armored men who marched with their curved shields raised high. The wheeled tower they guarded was nearly as high as the wall itself. Soldiers stood atop it, hiding behind shields as Karak’s banners fluttered above their heads. Patrick reached over his shoulder and behind his back, but his hand grasped at nothing. He wore no armor, and he’d given his massive sword, Winterbone, to one of the new, young stable hands for safekeeping when he’d begun his lessons. Stupid, he thought. Stupid, foolish Patrick.
The warhorn blew again, and the siege tower rolled ever closer.
“I’d give my left nut for a bow and quiver,” he called out, not taking his eyes off the approaching death tower, and a few moments later one was handed to him. He nocked an arrow and leveled it, feeling how unsteady the bow felt in his grip. Although he was a natural with a sword, he was a less than proficient archer, perhaps no better than even young Vinsen. He closed his eyes. Ashhur, please let at least one of my arrows find purchase in the flesh of my enemy. The contradiction of his prayer was not lost on him.
Someone nudged him, and Patrick glanced to his right to see Preston Ender there, grinning at him, his bowstring lax. The older man’s gray eyes twinkled in the coming darkness, his peppered hair and beard trimmed and proper. In that moment he looked like a stately version of his deceased brother, Corton, who had taught Patrick how to wield a sword in the swamps of Haven. Preston’s armor, which had once been black and adorned with Karak’s roaring lion, was now a shade of off-white, cured in an acidic mixture and repainted to show the man’s new allegiance to Ashhur. He had even stenciled a crude mountain to replace the old sigil on his breastplate. Preston and his band of seven young warriors, all formerly soldiers in Karak’s Army, had been lovingly dubbed the Turncloaks by their fellow defenders on the wall.
“Something amusing about all this?” asked Patrick.
Preston chuckled. “Of course. You don’t see it?”
“See what?”
“That whatever Karak has planned, it’s not going to work,” said a voice on the other side of him. It was Tristan, another of the Karak Turncloaks under Preston’s charge. The boy was only fourteen, but the confidence with which he carried himself while in armor made him seem much older.
Patrick frowned, his insides churning.
“Why not?” he asked, trying to keep himself in the moment. Ever since Tristan had told him about the murder of his beloved sister Nessa, he found it difficult to look at the boy without feeling dismay start to darken his soul.
Thankfully, it was Preston who answered him. “They aren’t ready for an attack. That single tower they’re pushing toward us is nowhere near enough to overtake these walls. Ten men at most can stand atop it at once, and they’ll be hampered, able to do little more than push forward. Even as raw as our defenders are, we can surely take out ten men at a time.”
“So why sound the horn? Why come at us at all?”
“Boredom, maybe,” Preston said with a shrug. “Or perhaps a way to test the strength of the towers they’re building. Who knows?”
Patrick leaned between the merlons once more. The tower was now only a quarter-mile away, and he could hear the clank and clink of the armored men marching beside it.
“Ten men at a time we can handle,” he said. “But what happens if Karak himself is one of those ten? You think we’ll still hold?”
Before either Tristan or Preston could answer, a commanding voice shouted from somewhere farther down the wall: “Everyone quiet!” Patrick glanced up, saw Ahaesarus was now on the wall as well, the Master Warden pacing alongside Judarius. The family’s all here. Patrick nodded to Preston, nudged Tristan without looking at the boy, and then hunkered down to await the inevitable.
It took a maddeningly long time for the tower to get within reach of their arrows, and by that time Patrick could hear the soldiers pushing the giant tower along, huffing and moaning as they strained against its hefty weight. Those marching chanted, “Karak! Karak!” with each step they took.
“Those to the left fix on the soldiers atop the tower; those to the right aim for the men on the ground,” Ahaesarus instructed when the tower was a mere hundred feet away, looming in front of them like an obelisk from the heavens. The whisper and creak of ninety bowstrings being pulled taut came next. The two Wardens continued to pace along the wall walk.
“Hold,” Judarius said, and suddenly it seemed the tower’s painfully slow progress was now far, far too rapid for Patrick’s liking. “Hold . . . hold . . . let loose!”
The arrows descended on the marching soldiers, slowing their approach, but those that pushed the tower were hidden behind its massive wooden frame. Arrows ricocheted off shields and armor, only a handful of the ninet
y or so loosed finding gaps and piercing flesh. As quickly as the first round was spent, more bolts were nocked, and at Judarius’s command the next volley launched. Patrick aimed unsteadily at an older soldier, of some importance he hoped due to the man’s lion-headed helm. His arrow plunked meekly into the ground just left of the man. Patrick grunted, reached into his quiver, and nocked yet another arrow.
The tower inched ever closer, now only twenty feet away and swaying. Those atop it stood from behind their shields and loosed their own arrows at the defenders. Others threw spears. Patrick and his brethren ducked behind the merlons as the bolts came flying toward them, arrows expertly crafted with sharp steel heads that flew with much greater accuracy than their own. Patrick groaned as an arrow flew through the gap and snapped against the inner wall. A spear wobbled overhead. Once more he wished he’d brought Winterbone with him.
“Archers back!” he heard Ahaesarus cry. “Spellcasters, forward! Focus on the tower!”
Patrick glanced to his rear, saw that during the confusion more defenders had gathered behind him, including a number of the spellcasters Master Warden Ahaesarus had brought back with him from Drake. Giving them room, he watched as they approached the parapet. Once there, all fifteen lifted their hands, words of magic on their lips. Small fireballs and bolts of electricity flew from their fingertips, and the crack and pop of the attacks striking the wooden structure sounded over the shouts of the soldiers below. A couple of stray arrows came flying at them, and one of the spellcasters—Bordo, if Patrick remembered his name correctly—took a bolt in the shoulder and collapsed moaning. Judarius grabbed him by his tunic and yanked him out of the way of the other defenders. The screams outside the wall intensified.
“Their archers are down! Finish them!” shouted the Master Warden, but it was difficult to hear him over the shrieking.
Blood Of Gods (Book 3) Page 4