Nestled deep in the rocks under the cover of dense foliage and creeping darkness, Nero’s imagination ran wild. The 9th Regiment reported all manner of abominations ruling the night in the Greimere during their first counterattack with General Tiberius. What if the Greimere brought those monsters with them, monsters like the ones they used at Duransk? What if the cloaked figure recognized them from Augustus and sought revenge?
“It’s best not to dwell on it.” Vandenberg rustled next to him, laying down to rest. “You obeyed procedure; you couldn’t have expected what happened with Halverd. I can barely make sense of it myself.”
“Whatever did that… it’s still out there.” Nero stared into the empty black before him. They lit no fires or emberstones that night, relying on the darkness to throw their stalker off.
“It?” Vandenberg asked.
“We don’t know what’s out there. It could be a man or it could be a beast.”
“You forget the Greimere are mostly women.” Vandenberg spit into the night. “The fucking cretins have no sense of civilization; makes it impossible for me to feel sorry for them.”
“How could any of us run the risk of sympathizing with the Greimere?” Nero thought of his friend Flavius dying alone and scared beyond the Hell Cliffs. “Eradication is all they will receive from me.”
Screams woke Nero from a dreamless sleep. He heard the others around him waking, as well, though he could not see any of them in the pitch black.
“It’s in my shoulder. Fates, what the fuck is this?” Nero tried to make out the voice, but a thousand thoughts bombarded his mind just then. “It’s barbed and… attached to something.”
“Cover him! Shields up!” Nero fell back on his training. He still couldn’t think of who was screaming. “Tulan, get an emberstone. I can’t see shit.”
In the distance, Nero could make out a strange, two-toned zipping noise. Something about it seemed familiar, but he could not concentrate on it right then. He had to get to this subordinate and protect him.
Nero found the injured Paladin and felt along his shoulder until his hands touched a wooden rod with a fierce double barb on the end, like an anchor from the ships in his homeland. He ran has fingers over the shoulder and to the other end, where he felt rope.
Tulan retrieved an emberstone and ignited it.
As soon as light spilled over Paladin Dolan, a loud crack pierced the air and something huge began to fall out in front of them. Nero realized what the zipping sound in the distance sounded like.
Someone was using a tree saw.
As the massive pine crashed to the ground, the rope attached to the pike in Dolan’s arm snapped taught. In one moment the terrified Paladin stared into Nero’s eyes. In the next moment the rope ripped him from within the group, right out of Nero’s arms, and into the sky.
Dolan’s screams sailed overhead as dozens of crisp snaps signaled his collision with tree branches. The falling pine landed to the side of them, nearly crushing the left flank and the cries of their comrade stopped moving.
“Dolan, hang on,” Nero roared, climbing the rock formation in front of them. “We’re coming, Dolan, hang on!”
The Paladins abandoned their gear on the rocks and charged in the wailing man’s direction. Tulan darted ahead with the emberstone, lighting their path.
“Second squad, with me.” Vandenberg bellowed into the night, breaking off from the rest and heading directly toward the base of the downed tree. “Nero, get to Dolan. I’m taking the stalker.”
Nero clenched his jaw at the sudden change of command, but he pushed forward. Vandenberg was right; they needed to end the threat just as badly as they needed to free Dolan from the stalker’s trap.
“No. Get away. Get the fuck away from me.” Dolan’s voice became even more frantic as Nero drew near. “Fates above, what are you?”
Nero heard something above him move, quick as a squirrel, darting from branch to branch. For a moment, he thought he saw a pair of green orb-like eyes.
Something cut through the wind and then through flesh. A sickening gurgle filled the air where Dolan had been crying out. Something dropped, breaking through the pine needles and bouncing off a lower branch before thudding against the ground.
The warm glow of the emberstone swept over Dolan’s head. A second later, large, black globs rained down on them, followed by a steady drizzle from the twitching body overhead.
“No.” Heat filled Nero and he howled into the night. “Berg… to me! Form up!”
The bear-like Paladin and his squad rushed back to the others as the group formed into a turtle formation.
“What happened?” the Light Hand snarled.
“It got Dolan,” Tulan said with a tremble in his voice. “For fuck’s sake, we didn’t even see it. This is no man that hunts us, but a spirit of the forest. We should not have come here.”
“Fuck the spirits. We have the Fates.” Nero pulled his shield aside and stared in the direction he remembered the “spirit” moving. “Our gear.”
Nero moved the formation forward at a rapid but careful pace. They kept their shields up and swords ready. It took less than a minute to reach their camp, but they had taken too long to realize the full scale of the trap.
Their stalker had dropped into the rocky outcropping, snatched more than half the packs, and vanished.
…
The Paladins all sat along the rocks, bleary-eyed and silent as the sun rose behind them casting light on the woods. Before them, the tall pine sprawled against the ground. Further out, Dolan’s damp, stained legs dangled through the canopy. Below, his head sat amidst the pond of blackened grass.
“Tulan…” Nero spoke just above a whisper and did not move his gaze from Dolan’s legs. “…how far until we reach the area High Paladin predicts the mine to be?”
“It’s supposedly three days from the river,” the Twileen replied. Nero could hear the twinge of defeat and fear in the scout’s soft words. “But we crossed well past noon the day before yesterday and moved at a careful pace after Halverd. I estimate at least two more nights of this, unless…”
“Unless what?” Nero asked. He continued staring at the dead Paladin.
“Nero, this mission is compromised. The Greimere have clearly known about our presence since we stepped foot in their territory.” Tulan squirmed behind him. “And if this isn’t the Greimere, then it’s something much, much worse and not something we can fight.”
“Does your faith rest with the Fates or the lesser gods of your people, Paladin?” Nero turned to face the scout. “Remember who you are. The Fates aren’t going to fight this battle for us, but neither will they abandon us.”
Nero pulled the hammer from his side and held it before him. “I don’t care if it’s a Darkling or if it’s a spirit or if it’s the very manifestation of Nature. The Fates are stronger and through them, we are stronger. This mission is still on… and we are reaching that mine before we lay our heads down again.”
Chapter 43
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Nero roared as he pulled the hammer from his side and slammed it into the trunk of the tree.
“Why would it do this? I don’t understand this creature.” One of the other Paladins wondered aloud as the group stared up at the pair of lonely legs nailed to the tree above them.
Nero leaned against the tree and closed his eyes, flirting with sleep as he did so. “Bury me in armor.”
Vandenberg glanced at him and then back up to where they had expected to find Dolan’s intact corpse. “The Greimere know our soldier’s customs. This stalker is denying us.”
“At least we know who we’re dealing with now.” Nero slid his hammer back into the strap and turned away. He passed by Tulan without making eye contact. “Nature spirit my ass.”
The Paladins marched hard. Nero placed all his bets on the Greimere stalker relying on the night. If there were traps set for them, they would have run right into them.
Their resting breaks lasted o
nly minutes. Vandenberg heaved with mighty breaths, but kept pace with the others even with his cumbersome barricade shield. They split the remaining rations and ate while they walked. At a clear spring, the Paladins refilled their dry water skins without dropping their packs. As the day stretched out, Nero struggled to keep his legs from going spongy. His mind clouded with exhaustion and uncertainty. They could be marching right into a Greimere settlement and with the pace he set, none of them would be able to lift a sword once there. Behind him, the younger Paladins groaned and huffed. Not even their rigorous combat training had prepared them for such an arduous trek.
“Arbiter, you’ve got to call a rest,” Tulan said, popping up beside him. Only the Twileen out of the rest appeared unburdened by the pace, but as he drew close, Nero saw the beads of sweat and redness in his angular face.
“How close are we? We just rested a moment ago.” Nero looked for the sun overhead but found it way out to the side.
“Arbiter, we haven’t rested in hours and the Light Hand struggles.”
Nero turned to see Vandenberg lagging behind the others. The big man would never admit the pain he suffered, but he didn’t need to. His face twisted as if some invisible force whipped him from behind. The other men resembled walking corpses with no life in their eyes. All of them had shifted into a sort of trance to keep moving forward, just as he had.
“Even if we reached the mine, what good would we be in this condition?” Tulan hopped over a downed branch without glancing downward and Nero nearly stumbled onto his face. “It’s not as if we’ll be any safer there than we would be right here.”
Nero called the men to a halt. “Take time. Drink your water. Inspect your feet.”
Leaning against a tree, Nero felt the full weight of their trip and he struggled to keep his eyes open while peeling the soaked wool from his feet. The skin on his toes wrinkled and split. Red spots stained his socks. One of the Paladins across from him growled and clenched his eyes shut as he pulled a dark red sock away from the skin.
Nero rubbed his face. He had not been thinking straight. Reaching the mines had consumed him and now his men suffered for it. The stalker had driven him into another mistake.
“Tulan, find a stream or something; we need water. Longinus, get a fire going.” Nero stood, letting the dirt below him soak up the moisture of his feet and the air cool them. “We’re going to clean our feet, wash our socks and let them dry while we rest.”
“That thing is still out there,” Vandenberg said.
“I haven’t forgotten, Light Hand.” Nero felt the pangs of doubt. This was a bad decision and once again, he would fail his men.
He shook the doubt from his mind and continued. Indecision would kill them faster than a bad call. “The stalker isn’t going anywhere, but if we’re too injured to fight or too exhausted to wake up, what’s the difference? It’s driving us to make mistakes. We have to stay focused and ready.”
The only pot they had left barely boiled two pints of water, but they managed to clean the blood and grime from their feet before washing out their socks and draping them over rocks. Tulan dispensed gauze and those with the worst sores wrapped their feet. As they waited for their socks to dry, Nero munched idly on a wafer and thought about what they would do once they found the mine.
A sound jolted Nero awake. He could not remember falling asleep, but the darkness around him instantly chilled him to his spine. All around him, his men snored. A sliver of dusk shined against their armored shoulders. They had all fallen asleep and lost the day.
Nero realized as he looked forward that something seemed out of place. His eyes landed on a crouched form, as still as the trees around them, right in the middle of their group. The woman wore tight-fitting, dark blue clothes. The neck of her tunic reached halfway up her face, covering everything below her crystal blue eyes. Her white hair hugged her scalp into a braid that she tucked into the neck of her tunic. She stood just feet from Tulan, a thin, curved knife in her right hand.
The two stared at each other as the seconds dragged out between them. Nero grabbed his hammer and rolled to the side. The blade of the Darkling’s knife thudded into the trunk of the tree a split second after he moved.
“Form up! Close it in!” Nero got to his feet and called out to his brethren.
The entire camp came alive in a burst of armor and weapons. In the time Nero took to roll away from her attack and reach his stance, the Darkling woman bolted into the woods. She moved quicker than Nero could follow with his weary eyes and in seconds it was like she had never been there.
“Fates, she was right here, wasn’t she?” Longinus asked.
“She nearly had Tulan,” Nero replied. “Everyone get your socks on. We’re moving through the night. I’m not giving her enough time to rig another trap like the one that got Dolan.”
His men took longer than normal to get in gear, but so did he. Darkness closed about them and they had only Tulan’s lone emberstone to guide them. Longinus tried to get some torches going, but without oil the sticks simply burned out.
As the Paladins waited anxiously below, Tulan climbed one of the trees to get a glimpse of the stars and mark where the mountains stood. After a few moments of stillness, Nero heard Tulan descending. The Twileen dropped to the ground inside their formation and went to Nero.
“I saw a clearing stretching out in a line. It’s likely a trail or even a road, but I have no idea where it leads.”
“It leads somewhere.” Nero hesitated for a moment, long enough for the doubt to launch its attack on him. “Take us to it. Marching toward somewhere is better than bumbling toward nowhere.”
The Paladins marched through the woods and eventually onto the trail. Grass broke up the worn path, showing its age. No one had travelled it since winter, at least. Overhead, the break in the trees allowed Tulan to keep the stars in target. Nero took a small measure of comfort in that.
Nero broke up their pace, switching from running to walking and picking their rests at random. He wanted to make it as hard as possible for the Darkling to anticipate them, but as long as they stayed on the evident trail, there was only so much he could do. He felt tired enough to sleep while walking, his head lolling backward a little too far. The night lasted forever and he fought to stay conscious during every extended break.
After an eternity of walking and listening for their stalker, the woods began to lighten ever so slightly. When Nero could see the path before him without assistance from the emberstone, he ordered them off the trail. The air felt thinner. Looking out to the west, Nero noticed they had been climbing all night without realizing it. The forest around them rippled and rose. Rocky cliffs jutted sideways from the sides of the gradual mountain slopes. Nero found one of these juts and made camp underneath it. With rock formations over their heads and to their sides, he narrowed the point of access as much as possible. If the stalker wanted to reach them, she would have to come right for them in the brightness of day.
If she had been following them all night, then she had to be at least as tired as they were.
Nero set the guard rotation and the rest dozed. They reeked in their sweaty, stained armor. Vandenberg snored loudly enough to alert the entire valley to their presence, but Nero would have to settle. His men needed rest before they began looking for the mine.
Nero came awake as Longinus shook him.
“Is she here?” Nero reached up and gripped the Paladin, casting about wildly to see who might be missing.
“No sign of her, Arbiter. Everyone accounted for.” Longinus nodded toward the front of their camp. “I thought I heard something outside, but I don’t want to investigate while everyone sleeps.”
“I’m up.” Vandenberg rose to his feet, stooping to keep from hitting his head against the rock ceiling. “Let’s check it out together, Longinus.”
The Light Hand pulled his battle hammer from its bracket on his shield and then he went toward the front. The two crept closer to the edge, until they were in the light. V
andenberg braced for attack as they cleared the rock, but nothing came for them. Longinus disappeared overhead, climbing up the jut as Vandenberg kept eyes on him. Nero rose and made his way toward them, rustling the others awake as he went. They all needed to be up and ready for a fight.
Nero heard Longinus call out to Vandenberg and his heart stilled. Vandenberg merely gave a puzzled look instead of springing to action and Nero relaxed. They were not being attacked.
“He says he hears shouting,” Vandenberg said, relaying the message from Longinus. “Battle sounds to the East, over this mountain.”
“Everyone up.” Nero grabbed his things and shook the sleep from his head. “I want to know who’s fighting out there.”
Chapter 44
“Well, we found the fucking mine.” Vandenberg leaned back against the tree trunk and dropped to his ass.
Tulan straddled a high limb at the crest of their mountain and scanned the scene in the valley below with his scope. “Sabans in Regimental armor… Gaia colors. None of them are moving. Looks like some Greimere corpses among them, as well, but not as many.”
“They just left the men out in the open?” Nero asked, trying to pick out the figures with his naked eye. “They didn’t strip the armor or carry off their dead?”
“Looks like they may have entered the mine.” Tulan dropped to the ground and looked around at the other Paladins. “I don’t know how many are in there, but it was enough to take out a platoon of soldiers guarding the entrance.”
“Does it matter?” Vandenberg’s voice boomed with excitement. “We can’t set up a base at the entrance with that Darkling out there harrying us at night. And if we allow the Greimere in the mine to leave, they’ll come back with more and our main force will wind up in a battle with Fates know how many warriors. We have to breach that mine. Best case, we end up backing the remaining Gaia forces inside.”
Wrath of the Greimere Page 34