The Ossard Series (Books 1-3): The Fall of Ossard, Ossard's Hope, and Ossard's Shadow.
Page 83
Passing it all safely would be a challenge. And that was an understatement.
Time passed as the clouds skidded by overhead. Not once did Sef notice anything significant in the sky or hear anything more than the gurgling waters of the rushing stream. The cloud cover grew for a while, but as the sky began to brighten in the east, the clouds thinned and broke up. For that last part of the night, as the world lightened, Sef looked at Anton, who slept peacefully alongside Matraia.
The winged woman occasionally stirred, but never woke as she snuggled deeper into her blanket while also bringing her great wings around herself ever tighter against the predawn cold. Sef took the chance to look upon her features that didn’t have much in common with Flets, Heletians, or even Middlings.
No, not at all.
If there was a comparison to be made, it could only be with Lae Velsanans.
So what were the Dagraun?
Obviously not gargoyles, but perhaps winged Lae Velsanans, as if angels born of that form?
If so, what did that make gargoyles – devils born of the same seed?
He shook his head as he turned over his thoughts; Lae Velsanans were a curse upon the world!
Forgive me, Felmaradis.
And why was it that both such-winged races had been born at the heart of a fallen Dominion? There were so many mysteries here and more questions to ask. And some of those questions needed answers lest Sef and Anton’s quest fail through their ignorance.
In all this, despite her struggle with the journey, Matraia was important. She wouldn’t merely be an advisor to them in Kalraith but also a guard against the unseen dangers they would face in getting there.
Getting there...
Firstly, they needed a solid plan on how to cross the mountains, a plan that had more to it than chance and caution. How they currently tackled the problem could suffer greatly just by a couple of days of overcast weather leaving them marooned in a cave to hide.
The loud solitary call of a bird from out on the plain interrupted Sef’s thoughts. He shifted his gaze from their shadowed overhang and his companions back to the wasteland that lay in front of him. The stream still tumbled and bubbled with water grey and brown, and the new day’s light had grown, the sun rising unseen from where they huddled in the gorge.
With the sun so intense, he figured he’d be safe to leave the gorge and stand clear. The light should be too bright for distant gargoyles to spot him, so he threw back his blankets and got up, stretching out his stiff muscles before moving to have a look around.
A few steps brought him to the edge of the stream. The water, fed by the spring thaw and capped by dirty foam, moved quickly. Standing there, he noticed that all wasn’t dead and barren. Between his boots, the scarred soil spread ragged and sodden, if softened by the water, so much so that he noticed a few places held stunted shoots of green.
Here and there small plants worked to colonise the stream’s bank, nothing large, just grasses and clovers, little more. The sight of them made him smile.
Life’s seed strove for a foothold, even here!
Behind him, Sef heard Anton begin to stir as he awoke.
“What are you looking at?”
“Grass and clover?”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Making you hungry?”
Sef looked up to meet Anton’s wry smile. “Yes, but I’m happy to leave the feast to your good self.”
Anton pushed his blanket aside and got up, stepping forward and throwing back his arms to stretch. Behind him, Matraia stirred, though as yet she still seemed more asleep than not, her form cocooned by her wings and blanket.
Sef looked around them, noting that too much of their view was blocked by the gorge wall, which loomed about three paces high in places. He’d have to climb it. “I’m going to go up and take a look around. I don’t want to find any surprises later. Coming?”
“Yes, but what of Matraia?”
The winged woman continued to stir, but not quite to wakefulness.
“I’m not planning on going far, more so just to make sure that nothing’s close by that we can’t see.”
“Fine.”
Sef walked to the gorge wall made of layers of clay, gravel and rock. It slumped in places where it’d been worked at by running water, but left enough of a gradient for them to climb out of the cradling gorge the stream had spent the past few seasons digging.
Head down, Sef climbed the steep bank, Anton following in his wake. They both had to use their hands to steady themselves. Sef only slowed as he reached the plain, so as to carefully peek over the edge from cover.
Ahead, under the dawn sun, lay nothing but the broad barrier of the wasteland.
And that’s exactly what it was – a barrier to stop Flet settlers or hunters and woodsmen – and the Wildings – from going north. The wasted land lay as a warning, one that was not only a challenge to cross with no good water and less in the way of food to hunt or forage, but all of it was also watched over by a line of as yet unseen mountain pass forts; the Pandike.
And, of course, the gargoyles.
Anton crept up beside him, also rising to look upon what lay ahead. The Outleaguer whispered, “What a terrible thing has been done here. I hope we have food enough to get us to where we need to be going.”
Sef gave a nod. “Stale bread and jerky will be our lot for days to come, just as will sleeping in mud and in the caves and crevices of not just the plain, but the foothills and mountains, too. We can do it, but it won’t be easy, and we’ll be taxed and ruined at the other end.”
“Yes, but it looks clear for now, so let’s wake Matraia and get underway. We’ve still got most of the road ahead of us.”
-
Again they made progress, crossing the broken, scorched and barren ground. Sef and Anton marched on, not used to such travel, but in better shape for it after their initial trek across Fletland. So, as they neared the foothills, the true challenge of succeeding – or not – centred on Matraia.
She was struggling, as she now had to rely on her feet. For her, her grounded progress was slow, awkward and left her legs cramping in the afternoon and stiff at dawn. While she held great stamina, courtesy of all the flying she’d formerly done, she merely wasn’t used to exclusively carrying herself along on her legs for such long distances. Simply, her leg muscles had never developed to work this hard.
Matraia didn’t complain or try to draw attention to her plight, but none of that changed the fact that she was beginning to slow them down, and, anything that lengthened the time they’d have to spend on their crossing added to the risk. Yet, they needed her, needed not just her guidance and knowledge of what they walked into, but also her introduction to Dorloth.
Every time Sef looked for her, he’d find her lagging behind, at first one or two steps, then increasingly further back. Her steps were awkward and uneven, making her seem clumsy, but he realised two truths lurked there; one that she was simply not used to walking such distances, the other was that she wasn’t in the best of health. Her wounds hadn’t fully healed, and she had tried to hide it.
On their second night out in that barren waste, one that should have had them reach the first of the foothills on the morrow, he became only too aware of another force in play. As he sat his watch, again with their small party tucked away in a small crevice, he could hear her breathing. The sound was shallow and sometimes rasping.
Two days out, with her health already failing, Sef knew that Matraia shouldn’t be travelling. Worse still, he felt she knew it, too. The winged woman was being motivated by duty and was determined to get them to the heart of Kalraith, regardless of what the cost might be.
Sef cursed under his breath: Like so much that was touched by Ossard’s shadow, the cost was likely to be high.
Chapter 2
-
Waking In Marco’s Ruin
-
Marco’s Ruin, The Northcountry.
I lay in bed, the bed I’d sh
ared with Pedro, which now seemed so cold and bare. The afternoon sun streamed in through the windows to warm the room, as the world outside began to come alive with spring. Yet in my mind I could only picture what I’d last known of Pedro; him slumped against a wall in Ossard’s streets, unconscious, an arrow in his side, blood running from a wound to his temple. If ever he had needed me, it had been then.
I’d tried to help by touching the celestial to bless him and his followers, but I’d been overwhelmed by my dark hunger.
I shook my head, trying to extinguish the sour memory, but nothing would ever be able to absolve me of my guilt. Still, Pedro’s death wasn’t all that had come to pass. Thousands had died.
Perhaps tens of thousands.
The horror of it left me trying to piece together what had happened from my jumbled memory.
This seemed to be the first day I’d woken with a semblance of coherent thought. As comfortable as my bed was, I was determined to get things underway.
I needed to know what had happened after the battle.
I moved to rise, feeling how stiff my limbs were, but managed to pull myself up. Much of my body felt numb, the only real pain coming from my stomach, from where I had strained myself as I had watched Ossard at war while I wretched and threw up, lost in the upheavals my addiction used to weaken me.
“Juvela,” Baruna’s voice sounded from nearby.
I turned as I sat up, mostly propped up by the pillows behind me. There she was, sitting on Maria’s bed, watching over me. “Baruna?”
She was already getting up and coming forward. She called to someone out of sight in the corridor, “Tell them she’s awake.” And then she was beside the bed, dropping to her knees. “Do you need anything?”
For a moment I’d felt a relieved smile come to my face, but it faded with the realisation of all that was to follow. Now would come talk of tragedy, death and loss. And what of her love, Kurt? I didn’t know what his fate had been.
The little I did know for certain was almost entirely of death.
Slowly, as tears welled in my eyes I started to shake my head.
“Juvela, Fel returned you to us, but he said that none near you survived.” She hadn’t voiced the question, but I could see it in her eyes. She was desperate.
What of Kurt?
“Oh Baruna, it was terrible. We arrived too late. We saw the attack begin as we watched from the northern ridge overlooking the city, but the cultists knew we were coming.”
Finally, with a lip that trembled, she asked, “What of Kurt?”
“I sent him another way. He wasn’t with us up on the ridge and may yet return. He wouldn’t have been with them in the city either, as I doubt he could’ve reached them in time.”
Hope glimmered in her eyes watered by tears of relief. I was pleased I could at least offer her that, even if all else I’d delivered was tragedy.
In the pause that followed I remembered what she’d said earlier, so asked, “Did you say Fel brought me here?”
“Yes, yesterday. After Fel had given you into our care, the Prince came and said that you just needed rest. Grenda has also come to sit with you, but she seems greatly saddened by all that’s happened.”
“What has happened?”
“The attack failed. Fel told us of what he knows – the Inquisition’s forces were defeated and scattered, as were our own. Fel said he watched the battle and eventually went to the ridgeline where he said he found you, but there were no others survivors, though he didn’t think the battle had come that far.”
I looked down, breaking eye contact with her. “No. No, it didn’t.”
“Juvela, what happened?”
“They knew we were coming and were ready with their own feint. They waited until they had our forces entrapped and then unleashed ritual magic on the Inquisitors and Sankto Glavos. In the chaos that followed, they slaughtered the rest. Our people were lost and leaderless. There will be survivors, but they will be few.”
Her eyes were wide with the horror of it all, and at first she hesitated, but then she asked, “And Pedro?”
My breath caught, and a moment later I heard myself answer, “He did not make it. He fell trying to save his volunteers.”
Baruna gasped as she leaned forward and put her arms around me. “I am so sorry!”
I endured the embrace, my guilt making me feel as though the restriction of her arms was like the iron bars of a prison cell.
After a while she broke the embrace and straightened, taken aback by my numb acceptance of my husband’s death.
I said, “Many people died. Too many.”
She frowned and then said, “So, now it will be up to Lae Wair-Rae?”
I looked back to her, feeling a terrible and rising truth. “Perhaps it was always up to Lae Wair-Rae, we just didn’t want to believe it. Only they have the power to destroy what lies at the heart of Ossard.”
Baruna begged me to offer some sign of hope. “Oh Juvela, what can we do?”
Her question was further proof of the crumbling ruin of my world, a world I had begun to destroy as surely as Kurgar worked to lay waste to the innocents left in Ossard.
The thought – that comparison – also hurt. It made me wonder if Kurgar had somehow started his own strange ascent to godhood, also innocent of any crime until he was overwhelmed by his rising power and the hunger it stirred. As I knew only too well, once tasted, feeding upon souls became an addiction too hard to deny, and one that ultimately would consume the doomed sufferer.
The sufferer...
I listened to my own voice as I began to speak; it sounded shaky and weak. “Baruna, I need time to heal. For now, please go and see about the needs of our people. Please, that is the best you can do for me.”
Reluctant, she gave a nod, slowly rose, and then withdrew from my room.
I turned to look out the window to the view of the sound. Drained by the tragedy that seemed so determined to swamp me in these bleak days, I whispered a prayer, “Sef and Anton, please hurry back. I need your comfort, strength and guidance.”
My gaze then switched back to the doorway as little Maria ran in.
I winced to see her despite my relief, her grinning form so alive and unlike her dead father.
“Mother!” she called, as she ran to me.
I could hear movement behind her, and as she reached my bed, jumping up and onto it while reaching for me, I saw my parents enter the room.
My arms closed around Maria tightly, as she asked, “Where is father?” At that point my vision blurred with tears.
I cried for the rest of the afternoon as I told them what I could of the battle.
-
Late that afternoon, I ate a broth while Baruna reported what had been happening at the ruin while I had been gone. She spoke of an accident that had killed two people when an unstable wall had collapsed, a sick family, and our dwindling food stores. In all of it, as she went on, I could tell all she wanted to hear from me, more than anything, was that I’d suddenly remembered that Kurt was safe.
And I wondered – how many others in Marco’s Ruin were likewise waiting for such news of missing loved ones?
Looking at her and knowing how much she’d done, not just for me, but for the whole of the Ruin’s community, I finally had to stop her meandering report as we waited for a planned visit from Grenda and the Prince. “Baruna, please, you must stop and take a breath.”
She looked at me for a moment before turning to the window now barley lit by the last light of the dying day. “While I’d love to stop, as there are so many things I’d rather do, the truth is that there are too many chores yet to be attended to.”
“Baruna, tell me; does our community continue to run in an orderly way?”
“Yes, I suppose, though our stores are low.”
“Spring will help with that.”
“Yes, but only with much toil.”
“So we’ll toil.”
She looked at me for a moment and gave a curt nod.
Her manner softened. “How can I help?”
I raised a hand to still her words. “You can help by beginning to arrange for some riders to go out tomorrow to see what news they can gather, as well as to search for survivors, including Kurt.”
She looked hopeful, her face softening somewhat, but then she grimly shook her head and said, “Surely there is too much to do here?”
“No, this is important. We can help all of our people by bringing back some joy to this place, a diversion that will help banish some of the gloom.”
After a pause, she half-heartedly insisted, “Are there no other priorities...”
“No, Baruna, none as important.”
Thankful, she gave in with a single nod.
“You’ll need to gather a reasonable number of riders and see they are armed. There is a sizeable camp of bandits at the foot of the path where it comes down from the ridge and into the sound. Any riders we send will need to look that they are not worth bothering.”
“Bandits?”
My mind went back to them, to that camp of intimidation and fear. “Yes, scum who’ve been harrying those trying to flee Ossard and get into our vale. They’re thieves and murderers who’ve been preying on the weak.”
“And what if the survivors try and come back that way without the benefit of numbers or our guard?”
“Then they will be endangered, and that’s all the more reason to send some riders to bring them home. In truth, we should be working on a real solution against the bandits, such as how to clear them away, once and for all.”
Baruna was at first wide-eyed at my news, but her resolve grew as she considered the threat the bandits posed. Her jaw set like stone, and her eyes shone. “Yes, we will have to clear them. I will take a force of whatever I can gather, as long as it is enough. We will ride out to take the measure of this bandit camp and then go to meet and escort any survivors from the battle.”