by Devon Vesper
Chapter Twelve
The long nap did help to erase a good bit of Valis’s exhaustion. When they woke, he let Tavros lead him into the bath to scrub away the dirt and sweat from their fight in the arena. Neither of them wanted to subject their friends to their stench after such a vigorous spar. And he had to admit as he lowered into the steaming water that the bath was a great idea. His muscles all turned into putty as he submerged up to his neck and cuddled to Tavros’s side. It was almost relaxing enough that he wanted to go back to sleep, but Thyran’s worry that he’d nod off and drown rose in his mind and made him chuckle.
“What are you laughing about?”
Valis shrugged. “I’m still tired, and the bath feels good. I remembered Thyran’s worry about drowning in the bath.”
Tavros let out a snort and shook his head. “No sleeping in the bath. We need to get clean and get to lunch. Your stomach is getting noisy.”
It really was. He rubbed it as it roared again. “Okay, so that’s a good idea.”
“All my ideas are good ones,” Tavros muttered.
“Yeah. We’ll go with that.”
Tavros glared at him. “You think differently?”
Shrugging, Valis dunked under the water to wet his hair and started soaping it when he rose again. “Well, there was that time you had the idea to send me to prison for bearing the Mark of Qos. And when you thought I was evil because I wield black magic. Then there was the time—”
“Okay! Okay, I get it,” Tavros groused. “I’m sorry.”
“Long forgiven, my heart.”
What was supposed to be a quick wash in the bath took half an hour because neither of them could make themselves stop soaking. Only when the water started to cool did they reluctantly get out and drain the tub so they could get dressed and change their nasty bedding.
At lunch, Valis glanced at Seza and bit his lip. The clarity that had come during the spar still shrouded him in its brightness, and he remembered the plan that had started forming in his mind after his confrontation with Brother Bachris. And that plan formed anew in his mind and grew with every breath.
“Seza, what do you and Zhasina have planned for after lunch?”
She chewed what was in her mouth and swallowed, then pointed her fork at his chest. “No more spars today.”
Valis lifted both hands in a placating gesture and laughed. “Promise.”
“Then nothing that can’t be set aside, why?”
With a soft sigh, Valis looked down at his plate of food and tore apart his bread roll to butter it. “I want to have a meeting with the mercenaries and the Kalutakeni caravan.”
She shrugged. “I’m in.”
An hour later, Valis looked around the caravan. Mercenaries of all skin tones from fair to deeply tanned mingled with the darker-skinned Kalutakeni warriors. All of them looked to Valis with questions in their eyes.
“What brings you out?” Jintas, the leader of the mercenaries, asked. “You look… serious.”
“This is serious,” Valis said, squaring his shoulders. “It’s a matter of life and death, and I need your help to get everything in place.”
“What is it?” Venabi asked. The livid pink scar down her dark cheek pinched when she narrowed her eyes, pulling the corner of her lip up into a snarl. She was lighter than most of the Kalutakeni, but that scar was still a huge contrast, and made looking away difficult. “It is someone close to you, yes?”
Valis nodded and sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “My father. Or, one of them. One of my fathers, Kerac, arrived home during the Autumn Festival. He was emaciated beyond belief, hanging onto life by a mere thread, and he’s been tortured. I’m not at all sure how he made it home at all after what he’s been through. But, my other father, Darolen, is still in that awful place. He’s in a dank cell, sitting in his own filth. He’s severely malnourished, and they’re keeping him barely alive for some unknown reason while they’ve apparently killed all the other Aesriphos who were captured with him.”
Jintas’s face turned into a hard scowl and Valis’s stomach clenched. “You mean to rescue him.”
“You’re damned right, I do.”
The man raked his hands through his short red hair, his beard bristling with his frown. His grass green eyes stared into Valis’s for a long moment before he nodded. “How can we help? Is that why you brought us all that gold?”
“Yes,” Valis said. “It’s to buy non-perishable supplies you’ll need for the journey. The destination is somewhere east of the center of Aspar where they were captured. We’re not sure about the exact location, but we’ll no doubt find Qos nests along the way, and there are ways of extracting that information the closer we get to that country.”
“Torture.”
Valis glanced at Venabi and shook his head. “No. That isn’t how I run things. But there are still ways to get that information, even if I have to enter their minds to dig it out.”
“You can do that?” Vodis asked with wide eyes, the whites of his eyes stark in the midnight skin of his face.
Valis shrugged. “It came to me during a lesson with my mentor. He taught me how to block mental attacks, and I kind of learned that if I can block them, I can instigate them. And that leads me to believe I can create telepathic links with more than just my mentor if I try. It’s something I have to ask him to teach me, since I believe I’m quite capable.”
Valis sat on one of the newly made rough-hewn benches that surrounded a well-used fire pit in the center of the circle of caravan wagons. Since it wasn’t raining, the tarp wasn’t set up, and he looked up at the clear blue sky as Tavros sat beside him. Seza and Zhasina sat on his other side, Seza looking at him with a grim expression.
“You’re thinking of doing this without a sanction?”
“If I can get this mission sanctioned, I’ll be ecstatic,” Valis muttered. “But after my meeting with Brother Bachris, who called it foolish and gave my father not a single extra spare thought, I don’t have any hope for that at the moment.”
She sighed and looked down at her clasped hands. “I’m with you,” she whispered. “Just keep trying for a sanction, okay?”
“Definitely,” Valis promised. “I want it sanctioned as bad as anyone because I’d really like to have help from more Aesriphos than just the four of us.”
He sat back and looked around at the mercenaries and Kalutakeni as the leaders and most knowledgeable of the two bands of people filed into the circle and sat on the other benches ringing the fire pit.
“So we will be going into the heart of one of the enemy compounds?” Jintas asked. “Perhaps more than one?”
“Yes.” Valis glanced from one set of eyes to the other and noted the seriousness that had descended. There was no more curiosity. Now, it was all grim intent and focused attention. “I plan on infiltrating this place, rescuing my father, and if the lost god jar is anywhere near this compound, we’ll add that objective to our mission.
“If we’re extremely lucky—and I say this with a good amount of internal groaning—we’ll run into several Qos nests on the way, and that will lead us to extracting an exact location to meet our primary objective which is rescuing my father. Anything else will be a bonus. I want to get Darolen to safety, get him into a condition where he can travel without further compromising his health, and get him home to his husband.”
“We may need a bit more gold,” Venabi said. “If we’re leaving as soon as I think you mean to, we will be traveling in the heart of winter all too soon.”
“You will have it,” Valis vowed. “I’ll make another withdrawal from my cache and bring it to you tomorrow or sometime within the next few days.” He glanced to Jintas. “I’ll bring yours here as well. I might as well just bring an entire crate. You can all divide it up how you wish. I don’t expect any of you to fund any aspect of this mission from your own pockets, and I will pay you for your help.”
That got the bulk of the mercenaries’ attention. “Pay us?” one woman asked in a heavy
Noldworian accent. “Truly?”
Valis perked a brow. “You didn’t think I meant you all to go into danger for free, did you?”
“Well… we had, yes.”
Valis gawped at her. “And you were willing to go, anyway?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Blowing out a heavy sigh, Valis shook his head and fought back grateful tears. “Thank you. That means much. So much.”
“We have lived a comfortable life within these walls,” Jintas said kindly. “We have enjoyed our time here. And we have made friends with some of the city’s layman forces and a few Aesriphos. It has come to feel like home, lad. We have been offered permanence here with the provision that we join Cadoras’s laymen forces, which we are more than happy to do since they are accommodating our strengths in war as assassins, scouts and warriors. And we owe it all to you and the kindness you showed us of letting us join you instead of throwing us all into prison where we rightly belonged.”
Valis scoffed. “You didn’t belong in the prison. You had no idea that Qeraden was a Qos adherent!”
“But your laws wouldn’t have seen it as such without you coming to our defense. Your own Duty Captain said as much. Your voice carried the weight of our punishment from our shoulders and gave us a home. We owe you greatly.”
Jintas shrugged and scratched his red beard. “And, you often come out to train with us. You didn’t just abandon us the moment we were out of your care. Having you and Tavros come to train with us almost daily shows your true personalities and goes a long way to making us feel even more welcome here.”
Valis shrugged. “It helps us learn different techniques than what we were taught, so it makes sense. And your group is fun.” Then he grinned. “And I get to learn Noldworian better, so there’s that, too.”
Half the mercenaries laughed at that, at least those who understood Arlvorian did. Valis grinned brighter at them. “At least I’m honest.”
“That you are, lad,” Jintas said when he stopped chuckling. “Now, let us start planning. When did you want to leave?”
“That, I’m unclear on,” Valis admitted. “While I want it to be soon, I also want to keep trying to get it sanctioned through the priesthood as an official mission. Father would be pissed if I did this without an official sanction, and frankly, as I said before, I want other Aesriphos to go with us to not only bolster our numbers, but to help in the fight against the Qos adherents since they’re more skilled in fighting against black magic than I assume your men and women and the Kalutakeni are.”
“You’re right,” Venabi said. “Our only Aesriphos is Zhasina. We came with her because we want to strengthen alliances with Cadoras and perhaps form a trade route to Arlvor in our country. We are unused to fighting against black magic, but we are skilled in war.”
“Then yes. I’d definitely like to get more Aesriphos on board. We shouldn’t go into this blindly, no matter how much I want to start our journey today. But I may need you all ready to ride at a moment’s notice.”
Vodis nodded and his deep, booming voice rose over the crackling of the fire that one of the other Kalutakeni had just fanned to life. “We can do this. But we will leave our wagons behind. They will slow us down. They are useful for traveling long distances at a slower pace, but with what you seem to be planning, speed will be paramount, and our wagons will do poorly in the snow.”
“Then we’ll need plenty of pack horses,” Valis mused.
“That is taken care of,” Vodis said as he motioned to their milling herd. “From all that have gone home, their horses still linger. They are strong and fast, and will be able to carry what we need.”
Valis nodded. “Good. I’d also like you to ensure there is enough gold in our possession during the journey, so each pack horse should have a small stash, as well as the horses we ride. I don’t want to be in a snow storm near to a village without enough gold to ensure our horses are stabled and we have warm beds and hot food in our bellies.”
“You mean to travel as light as possible, then.”
“Yes.” Valis cracked his neck. “I want us to have food enough to reach the nearest city, clothing for both autumn and winter, bedrolls, tents, and the bare necessities. Anything else, my plan is to buy as we go. Though, if we do end up adding a band of Aesriphos to our numbers, that plan may change based on their input. If that’s the case, we’ll be hitching a few wagons to horses. That shouldn’t slow us down much.”
“No, it shouldn’t,” Vodis agreed. “The more provisions we take, the better prepared we are if we’re caught in the open without a city when we most need it. We can prepare for this. Leave it to us.”
“Thank you,” Valis said with a sigh. “Truly, the journey back from retrieving your caravan was the first time I traveled with so many people. I admit that I’m unused to planning for this many people.”
“We will get it done.” Vodis glanced back as a stiff breeze kicked up, sending the fronds of the weeping whiptails to rustling loudly. He sniffed the wind and motioned to a group of the Kalutakeni. “Put up the tarp. Rain is coming soon.”
Valis glanced at the sky. The bright blue held very few white, fluffy clouds. The sun shone bright, warming Valis’s face even as the cold autumn breeze gusted, seeking the cracks in his cloak and chilling his body. It didn’t seem right that rain would come soon, but he trusted Vodis’s weather prediction skills more than he trusted his own.
“What do you know of the location?” Venabi asked as the Kalutakeni began raising the tarpaulin. “You sound as if you know more than you have told us.”
Valis leaned back, resting his palms on the back edge of the bench. “I’ve scried after Father. He’s in a cell, and I was able to communicate with him. All he knows is that he was captured near the center of Aspar, and that the Qos adherents had been leading them into traps due east. Another hint, is when he helped Papa escape, he said he saw they were at the base of some mountain, but he couldn’t tell where.”
“East of Aspar? There are a few ranges along the eastern side of the continent,” Jintas said. “One that comes up through Ptheras and into the far east side of Aspar, and two that trail from the south of Endyer up through Vaynai and into Mosvol and Qhin. The one that enters Qhin branches off into a smaller range that leads up into Nonsi and Auskil.”
Valis groaned. “Fuck.”
Jintas shook his head and waved a negligent hand at Valis. “Relax, lad. If they were leading the Aesriphos army east, they were most likely heading for the mountains in Aspar or Endyer. There are several passes through the range in Aspar as they’re smaller mountains and have carved roads throughout. The ones in Endyer are nearly impassible, however. We will narrow our choices down once we dispatch a few Qos nests as you had planned.”
With that information, Valis let himself relax, even if only a fraction. He took a deep breath to calm himself and leaned against Tavros’s shoulder for comfort. His husband wrapped his arm about Valis’s waist and kissed the side of his head, making Valis smile.
“Thank you all for helping us,” Tavros said. “We couldn’t do any of this without you.”
Venabi gave him a grin that looked almost sinister with the way the scar on her cheek pinched. “We’re happy to help. And, I see you two have bonded. It’s about time.”
Valis laughed. “Yeah. We had our joining night two days after Seza and Zhasina. I completely forgot to tell you all. I’m sorry!”
Congratulations for all four of them rose from the men and women sitting around the fire and standing behind the benches between the caravan’s wagons. When they all died down, Venabi waved him away. “Go now. When you have news of whether your mission is sanctioned or not, we will discuss this further. In the meantime, we will be awaiting the gold cache so we can begin preparations in the city proper.”
Valis stood with his friends, and after a round of goodbyes, they headed back across the lake to the city. With Tavros at his side, the first thing Valis did was head to the vault and withdraw one of his gold caches
, much to the surprise and scorn of the vault keeper. He chose the one he’d taken the bags of gold from earlier, leaving the full ones behind. Then, with the help of two passing guards, they got it outside the monastery and onto a cart.
“You’re not leaving anything to chance, are you?” Tavros asked.
“Not a damned thing.” Valis grunted as he shoved the chest farther back onto the wagon, then assured the wagon owner he’d be back with it before the rains came. “I want this mission to succeed and getting all the pieces on the board is the first step toward that goal.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with Jedai,” his lover mused. “You and that Harbinger’s Way game.”
Valis chuckled as he hauled himself into the seat at the front of the wagon and took up the reins. “Maybe. Now, get on. The sooner we get this chest to the caravan, the sooner we can get back and maybe have some time to ourselves before dinner.”
He gave his husband a playful wink, showing just how much innuendo he’d packed into that sentence, because he intended to show Tavros just how much he appreciated his support today in as many positions as possible.
Chapter Thirteen
The next day, Valis woke from another nightmare, but this time he only woke up gasping instead of screaming, and he was able to come back to reality much faster than any night previous since he had scried and found Darolen in the darkness. Apparently, hashing out a plan with the mercenaries and the Kalutakeni had helped his mind heal some of the tears that Kerac’s sudden appearance had caused. If he were honest with himself, hearing Darolen’s wheezing prayers probably caused him more damage, but he didn’t want to dwell on that. He was just grateful that he was able to get on with his morning without suffering through a grueling panic attack before he could start his day.
Tavros pulled him against his chest and kissed the back of Valis’s neck with a lazy purr. “Another nightmare?”
“Yeah,” Valis whispered. “It didn’t affect me as bad as normal, though. I’m okay.”