“Who are you?” asked the older man.
“What are you?” asked one of the younger ones, obviously louder than he’d expected to since he blushed and moved behind one of his mates. The older man scowled at him.
Patrick squinted, appreciative of the elder’s reaction but not showing it.
“My good man,” he said, “I am from this land. Ashhur made me and my family. You are the trespassers here. If any has a right to demand a name and a story, it is me.”
The older man removed his helm and inclined his head. Drawing his sword from the scabbard on his hip, he drove the tip into the dirt and dropped to one knee. The eight others scrambled to follow his lead. Chainmail jingled as they each tried to find enough space to mimic him. It was truly a comical scene, and in any other circumstance Patrick would have broken down laughing.
“My name is Preston Ender,” the older man said with a tone of great respect. “I come from Felwood, a village in the northern part of Neldar. Until two weeks ago, I served as a soldier in Karak’s Army under the leadership of Lord Commander Avila Crestwell.”
“Ender?” asked Patrick. He snapped his meaty fingers. “I thought you looked familiar. Any relation to Corton?”
Preston smiled softly when he nodded, and the similarity was locked in stone.
“Corton was my older brother. I have not heard that name since he fled to the delta twelve years ago after being accused of bedding Tomas Mudraker’s wife. How could you know his name?”
“I spent some time in the delta,” Patrick replied, feeling dangerously at ease given the man’s similarity to Corton. “Months, in fact. I helped defend Haven and that damn temple when Karak’s forces made their attack.” He patted the dragonglass crystal on Winterbone’s handle. “Your brother taught me everything I know about swordplay. He was a great man. I called him friend.”
“You speak of him in the past.”
Patrick nodded, his smile faltering. “I’m sorry, Preston; he died in the battle at Haven.”
“Did he die a good death?”
“Is there ever such a thing as a good death?”
Preston shrugged.
“Fighting for a cause you believe in? That’s a good death. Protecting someone you love? That’s a good death. Running like a coward to die hungry and alone? That’s the farthest from.”
Patrick chuckled.
“Then consider me privileged to tell you your brother did indeed die a good death, a very good death.”
Preston looked pleased, but seemed at a loss as to what to say. Patrick pointed behind the older man, hoping to get things moving.
“Now enough about good deaths and old friends,” he said. “It saddens me, and I just met new friends, so I don’t wish to be sad any longer. Tell me about the rest of you. I’m guessing you all are—how should I put it…deserters?”
Preston stood and stepped to the side, allowing the younger soldiers to line up behind him. He worked his way down the line. “Deserters indeed, all of us. These two are my sons, Edward and Ragnar; this meaty lad is Brick Mullin; the skinny whelp is Tristan Valeson; the white-haired nymphs are Joffrey Goldenrod and Ryann Matheson; and the two bald behemoths over there are twins, Big Flick and Little Flick.”
“Big and Little, eh?” said Patrick. He was almost eye level with the both of them, even though he sat astride his mare. “How do you tell the difference?”
“It ain’t obvious?” Big Flick asked.
Patrick blinked.
“Uh. No?”
The two laughed as if his comment were hysterical, leaving Patrick bewildered.
“And your name is, my good man?” asked Preston. “If you are indeed our new friend, I should have something to call you.”
“Other than ‘freak,’” Ragnar whispered from the corner of his mouth.
Preston silenced his son by setting the flat edge of his sword to his chin. The youth collapsed, cursing.
“Patrick DuTaureau,” said Patrick, swinging his stunted leg over the horse and jumping from the saddle. “Only son of Isabel and Richard.”
“DuTaureau,” said Preston. The man paused, looking unsure of himself. The others seemed to feel the same way. “So that means you’re from one of Ashhur’s First Families.”
He nodded. “And you know this how?”
Preston shrugged, still seeming uncertain. “We studied all the First Families when we were younger. It’s a tradition that seems to have gone by the wayside over the last forty years or so, but I’ve tried to instill the same quest for knowledge in my own boys. It’s healthy to learn our own history, even if it’s a short one.”
Edward rolled his eyes. “Short and boring,” he muttered
“Quiet.”
“Yes, Father.”
“That’s right,” Patrick chortled. “Keep that boy in line.” He wobbled across the short expanse separating him from the nine easterners. He extended his hand and Preston accepted it. Throughout their shake, the older man could not keep his eyes off Patrick’s massive forearms.
“Those are mighty impressive,” he said, a look of awe on his face.
“Your brother thought the same.”
Patrick worked his way down the line, shaking each hand in turn. When he took the hand of the sandy-haired youth named Tristan, the youngster seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but he kept his lips sealed, his eyes averted. In fact, all but Preston and the two Flicks refused to truly look at him, which made Patrick moan inwardly. When he was finished, he stepped back, taking them all in. Part of him thought they looked like a group of guilty children lying to their parents about stealing a loaf of bread.
“You know, you said that until two weeks ago you served in Karak’s Army, but I don’t think you ever said why you stopped. The pay not very good? Perhaps the food was terrible?”
The group fell silent, and Preston cleared his throat before he continued.
“Every person standing here was conscripted into service months ago,” he said. “None of us wished it. My sons and their friends here were guards for the Garland family in Gronswik, and I was second guard master. A convoy came to Tod Garland’s estate, demanding men, and he offered them half his regiment. Not even the high merchants were exempt from paying their dues to the realm. Already having been trained as fighting men, we were shipped off to Haven to join the Lord Commander’s battalion.” The older man swallowed hard but kept his composure. “They made us help clean up the bodies. That’s a hard duty, Patrick, especially when every blackened face might be your brother’s. After that, they sent us south, into the swamps.”
“To do what?” Patrick interrupted.
The others looked away, even Preston.
“We were ordered to leave no survivors,” Big Flick offered. “And so we didn’t.”
The news sent Patrick back a step. He felt stupid for being surprised by it, for hadn’t Peytr Gemcroft sailed to the Pebble Islands to avoid such a fate? Still, part of him had hoped Karak would focus on marching west instead of seeking petty vengeance. He gestured for Preston to continue.
“When word came from Veldaren, we crossed Ashhur’s Bridge into Paradise,” the older man said. “We went from village to village, and each time it was the same. Those who bent the knee lived. Those who didn’t, plus the Wardens, well…” He shook his head, and when he looked up at Patrick, tears made his crow’s feet glisten. “It was horrible. I was trained to fight, but it was always to protect the innocent from bandits, thieves, and the like. What they made us do? We were burning homes with people still in them. No one was safe. Not the elderly. Not the women.”
“Children,” Little Flick said, and the conversation halted once more.
“Yes,” Preston said, wiping at his face. “Children. That bastard Gregorian was the worst of them. He beat Ragnar one day for not running through a child of four, then forced him to hack the young one apart with a sword at his back. I have never seen my boy so defeated.” Preston grabbed his son’s arm and yanked up his sleeve, showing P
atrick a jagged slash across his wrist that was crusty with scabs and leaking pus. “He tried to kill himself that night. That’s when I decided we would leave that fucking place and disappear into Paradise. These boys are young, Patrick. Edward’s the oldest at eighteen. Even the Flicks are still teenagers, big as they are. They don’t deserve this life. They aren’t killers.”
“And yet they’ve killed,” Patrick whispered. “How many?”
“What?”
“How many? How many helpless souls have your lot put to the sword?”
Preston shook his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t know. Too many.”
“I…this…fuck…” Patrick rubbed his hand over his nose angrily, as if he were going to rip his face off. “I really don’t know what to say.”
“Just let us go on with our lives,” Brick said. “We just want to get away from all that…butchery.”
“No one has to know we’re here,” Preston added. “You can move on, pretend you saw nothing.”
Patrick grumbled and shuffled from foot to foot, trying to channel Bardiya’s penchant for forgiveness, if nothing else.…
“You’re in Ashhur’s land, the part ruled by Bardiya Gorgoros. Clumsy and numerous as you are, you won’t stay hidden forever, which means we need to figure this out here and now. Look, I’ve killed before, but those men were armed, and if I hadn’t killed them, they would have killed me. What you’re talking about is different. You’re talking of the murder of innocents. Ashhur preaches tolerance, love, and forgiveness, but I also watched him storm onto the battlefield and tear Karak’s soldiers to shreds when he saw innocents destroyed. Why do you deserve different?”
Tristan stepped forward and dropped to one knee. Patrick could see a no forming on Preston’s lips as the youth opened his mouth to speak.
“Because we’re sorry,” he said, head bowed. “Because we want to make amends. We all do.”
In his peripheral vision, Preston visibly exhaled in relief.
“Is that true?” asked Patrick.
Mumbles of confirmation followed, accompanied by nods and sniffling. Patrick felt his heart break at the sight of them. Young men, burdened with such acts, and there was still something they weren’t telling him. What could it be? He couldn’t imagine what could be worse than cutting down children with a sword. To do such things must make a man less than human.…
“If you truly seek atonement, then I know of a far better way than hiding in the middle of nowhere,” he told them. “And if you do as I propose, I promise you we will indeed be friends. Good friends. And together we just might find a way to have ourselves a good death.”
“Ten good deaths,” Big Flick said, and he clapped Patrick on the back. “A good number.”
“Good indeed,” Patrick said, allowing himself to smile.
CHAPTER
23
The first sounds of combat pulled Ahaesarus’s mind back to Algrahar. He remembered his bright world growing dark, saw the sky tear open as if it were a thin sheet of black cloth ripped through by an invisible knife. He watched fire rain down from the sky, looked up in terror as great winged demons swooped down on his people. He heard thousands of innocents wail as they were put to blade and spear, heard the sickening thud as the demons dropped them from great heights, their bodies breaking when they struck the unforgiving ground. He felt the last breaths of his wife, Malodia, released in ragged gasps. He gaped at the wrecked bodies of his children as he was forcefully ushered away by the demons and rounded into a pen with his fellow survivors, where a vicious death surely awaited them.
He experienced the memories all at once, and tears welled in his eyes.
Fighting the dirge of sadness and terror, he squeezed the reins tighter and slapped them against his charger. The steed picked up speed, careening forward at a reckless pace. A litany of pounding hooves sounded from beside and behind as his brother Wardens, fifty of them, did the same, all in a desperate rush to arrive before it was too late.
The burning heat of early summer did not seem to reach the far north of Paradise. With the sun now set, a distinct chill hung in the air, and a breeze came from the east, gusting over the raging Gihon from the destitute Tinderlands beyond as if carrying the dead land’s message of hopelessness. Hopelessness. Even the hope he had felt as he watched Geris and Penelope disappear into the forest fled him. With the memory of his own dead world fresh in his mind, Ahaesarus struggled to not let himself fall into that miserable pit.
The land around Drake was rocky and harsh. If not for the abundance of great pines that grew on the ever-rising mountains, it might have looked just as lifeless as the elves’ old homeland. As it were, with the half-moon partially concealed by wayward clouds and the mountainside forests shrouded in darkness, it looked to be a land of ghosts. The fact that the town of Drake itself had been abandoned, as Isabel had warned them, only served to heighten that impression.
A pack of grayhorns grazed in a wide field of sparse grass as he and his brothers raced by. A bright flash of white lit the horizon, like lightning without thunder, and soon a faint red glow began to rise. The Wardens pushed their mounts all the harder, stampeding onto a path that led around a looming cliff face. The waters of the Gihon were close now, only twenty feet away, forcing the Wardens to form a line as they circled the cliff. Ahaesarus could feel the cold sting of mist from the rapids against his cheeks.
Once they rounded the bend, heading away from the river, the land opened up before them once more, revealing a sprawling camp of hundreds of white tents erected in a gravel-strewn meadow. There were many people visible by the light of the cookfires. They were nearly all women and children, and they glanced up as Ahaesarus and his fellow Wardens passed them, their expressions containing only the faintest touch of hope. They seemed resigned to their likely fate. Again the sky brightened, momentarily blinding him and forcing him to slow to a stop. When his vision returned, he was surprised to see that the people were still going about their business, pausing only for the occasional wary glance at the ridge.
Ahaesarus glanced to his side, where Olympus sat high in his saddle, his black eyes intense, his smooth raven hair falling to his waist. The Warden held a stone ax in one hand and his horse’s reins in the other. He jutted his chin at the hill and the ever-growing red glow radiating from behind it. Ahaesarus wheeled around to gaze on their forty-eight brothers.
“We ride into battle!” he shouted, though the strange behavior of the women in the camp robbed his statement of a bit of its potency.
Toward the hill they rode, and as they went, Ahaesarus noticed something strange. A huge black lump blotted out the rising glow, a portentous obelisk that reminded him of the portal the demons had descended from in Algrahar. They are not here, he told himself. These are only men. It is a trick of your eyes in the darkness—that is all.
Only it wasn’t. What he saw was a round tower, built close to the riverbank, rising seventy feet into the air. Ahaesarus and his brethren gaped up at the building, bringing their horses to a sudden halt. Isabel had informed him that her daughter’s husband had overseen the construction of four towers, but he’d had trouble believing it, even though Judarius had seen one of them with his own eyes and described it in detail. Even if he had believed it, he never would have pictured this. Given that he had watched the spellcasters Potrel, Limmen, Martin, and Marsh for much of the last two months, he should have had more faith in the casters’ abilities.
Windows lined the whole length of the tower, most of them facing northeast, and men hung from each of them, some firing arrows, some throwing spears, and others hurling small fireballs or bolts of lightning from the palms of their hands. Still others stood on the rocky riverbank, making the same assaults. The opposite side of the Gihon was too awash in flames for him to see the opponents. They were surely there, however, as he watched a volley of arrows rise high into the sky. The men on the banks hunkered down, some lifting their hands and chanting, while others held wooden shields above their heads. Th
e arrows bounced off invisible walls and plunked into the heavy wood. Twelve men were struck, three multiple times, and the injured were dragged by their mates to be tended by men in white cloaks, who had gathered a hundred or so feet away. The white cloaks bent over the wounded, whispering familiar prayers to Ashhur. Their hands glowed blue, but the illumination was faint.
“I don’t believe it,” said Judah, trotting up beside him. “This is…unreal.”
“Dismount,” Ahaesarus said, raising his voice so the rest could hear. “Mennon, Florio, Grendel, Ludwig—assist their healers in tending to the injured. The rest of you—with me to the tower!”
They ran toward the lofty structure as another torrent of arrows fell from the sky. The shafts landed mere feet in front of them, forcing them to shift directions. They sprinted, their long legs allowing them a preternatural speed, until they reached the broad base of the tower. Once they reached the cover of the mountain of stone, they changed course again, heading straight for the huge western-facing doorway cut into the tower. They could clearly hear the voices of the men standing on the banks now, shouting insults and provocations at the unseen enemy. A few swiveled to watch the Wardens, and they raised their weapons in surprise. Ahaesarus lifted his palms to show he meant them no harm, and a few moments later the humans returned their attention to the other side of the river. Ahaesarus looked on in wonder as the line of them, at least a hundred in total, nocked their arrows like experts, launching them at their enemies. He spotted swords hanging from the belts of more than a few of the men. He blinked twice, thinking that it was an illusion, but it was not.
Before he could process everything, the tower door swung open. A heavily bearded man came stumbling out, with long red-brown hair and a tattered leather jerkin worn over beige cotton breeches. His expression was frantic as he met Ahaesarus’s gaze.
“You came,” he said, and from the skittish sound of his voice, Ahaesarus could tell the man was very young. “Turock wasn’t sure if Abigail’s letter had reached Mordeina. Getting her lady mother to respond has been…unreliable.” The young man offered him a tired yet optimistic smile. “But she did, didn’t she?”
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