The ring of angry Furyons was closing in. Marlos slid his arms beneath Rellen’s shoulders, despairing at so much dead weight. “We can’t get out,” he said. “Look how many there are. The way’s too thick.”
Garrett tore Lorsmir’s blade from Daćin’s fingers and leapt back atop his horse. “Follow me. We will make a path.”
Garrett turned to the river, where an onrush of Furyons moved to slaughter him. He reared up on his stallion and charged, and as he neared some twenty Furyon fighters, he held Lorsmir’s sword high. He did not know what to expect. He knew only what he had seen, a flame bright as an evil sun, a violet fire hotter than a hundred hearths. He felt the fire course through his blood. Flames began to ripple, burning hotter than even in Rellen’s hands. In Garrett’s grasp the burning was hellish, a spoke of magma, destroyer of rain and darkness.
Garrett met the Furyon line headlong. He whipped Lorsmir’s blade in wide, furious swaths, burning his enemies away like twigs from a sapling tree. The Furyons were unaccustomed to such things as fire-toothed swords and fearless, maniacal men. They leapt aside and hurled themselves face-down in the mud rather than face the molten heat.
Marlos came screaming right behind him. Rellen’s body lying across his saddle, he sped through the Furyons scattered by Lorsmir’s flames. He rode through wave after wave of flailing swords and stabbing pikes, and yet survived to see the other side with little more than a punctured shin. He and Garrett raced for the deep shadow of the valley, but were trailed by a storm of crossbow darts. Scores of bolts pierced the ground before and behind them, littering the earth with black Dageni shafts. He and Garrett twisted and turned, evading the deadly blizzard by the shadows’ grace. Before the Furyons could launch another volley, they steered around the cliff wall. There were no Furyons lagging, nor any who dared give chase.
The sounds of the battle died at their backs, the flames from Furyon pyres already rising.
They never looked back.
They never spoke.
They rode until they could ride no more.
Jaded
The first time the voices came to her, she was standing in an empty courtyard of Castle Verod.
When Rellen had gone to war, Andelusia had been distraught, her sadness like a sickness hollowing out her heart, but by the third evening the fieriest of her emotions had drained out of her.
She sat in his tower and wept the hours away.
She haunted Verod’s highest windows, her heart banging away like a galley’s drum.
But in the end, all her feelings were replaced by numbness.
Come the third evening after Rellen’s departure, her heart was cold. She felt as though it were winter, the snows falling upon her insides. She hated to be alone, and she began to question whether leaving Gryphon had been the best of her ideas, or the worst.
But worse than the coldness were the voices.
She heard them in her sleep and while awake, unearthly whisperings at the edge of sensation. They uttered rash things to her, dark things, and though she tried to shake them out, they lingered. After a few nights of suffering the voices’ torment, she sensed nothing would ever be right again. She began to dwell on the past, on things that were no more. She thought too often of faraway home, of how even though Cairn held few promises of happiness or friendship, at least there had never been a threat of war.
What is left for me? She wondered hour after hour, night after night. Maybe I should listen to the voices. Maybe I should leave. I could find the lowest valley, the most hidden town. I could live there from now until the war is over.
She went to bed each night, hopeful that tomorrow might be different, but in her dreams she heard the whispers again, compelling her to dangerous, reckless action. Run, they tell me. Fly into the night. If the sadness becomes too great, slip a dagger into your breast. If the world of man is too troubling, leave it behind.
After many nights of dreaming and dying inside, she decided she had to act. I will take my meager possessions and leave, she thought. I must. To stay here will drive me mad. At first, it was only a cloudy idea, a plan half-hatched, but soon her misery hardened it in her mind. She murmured hints of it to Dennov and those few that were willing to listen, but they did not take her seriously. They told her no woman would ever be so foolish and asked why she would not flee westward instead. She heeded none of their advice. To go home is to be a coward, the voices told her. To take to the forest is the only thing to do. She felt foolish to think such rash things, and yet something within her compelled her to listen.
On the morn it was to happen, five days after Rellen’s departure, she climbed slowly from sleep, the whispers still echoing in her head.
The mist wafted into her window, sprinkling her skin as surely as the rain. The greyest, wettest predawn in her life’s memory settled atop her world. Her satchel, stuffed to the brim with stolen food, sat right beside her. Without second thought or deliberation, she gathered her things, snuck out of her room, and breezed past the dozing men in the hallways beneath Rellen’s tower. She neither felt her footfalls nor understood completely what she was doing. She felt driven by last night’s whispers, compelled to leave Verod the same as she had left Cairn. The castle gates were unsealed. Those who watched her seemed unconcerned with her passing. She glided under cover of the early morning haze and slipped into the wilderness, treading where few stars cut through the clouds to let down their guarded light. Her steps were too light, her ease of movement in the dark almost preternatural. Wearing a cloak atop the dress Garrett had given her, she drifted off the common paths and into the dripping trees, passing under all sights until Verod was gone and Tratec at her back. Without any true sense of where she wanted to escape to, she wended through a thousand-treed thicket and into the deep, damp valley beyond. She knew it was foolish. She hardly cared. The farther she was from the rest of humanity, the more alive she felt.
Her next decision came too easily, too rashly. She looked once in the direction of Verod, but turned away with shadows in her gaze. A stream trickled beside her, bright and babbling, and in her clouded, whisper-filled mind she pretended it would lead her to a city hidden in the deeps of Mormist. I will follow you, little stream, she thought. And why not? Nothing remains for me here.
For three days and three nights, she followed the little stream.
When most would have turned back, she persisted. When thoughts of a clean bed, fresh food, and dry clothing came calling, she willed herself to continue, no matter her instincts screaming at her. The stream was endless, or so it seemed. It curled and wound around the hills like a serpent without head or tail, its waters bound for the sanctuary she knew must exist. For a certainty, the trek was not easy. The days were lonely and drudging, the nights often terrifying. At all hours the trees loomed like giants over her, disguising the sun, moon, and stars. Sleep was a rare luxury, for at night the wolves were howling, the bugs biting, and the darker, drearier nocturnal creatures creeping too close for comfort.
Her journey grew harder still.
Her forth morning out, she awoke to find that her food was well beyond halfway gone. The bread she had stolen from the cupboards of Verod was hard as stone, and her wine sour in its skin. Last night’s rain dripped relentlessly from the leaves, pelting her brow and sticking her garments to her sides. She felt ragged, thin, and frayed. Her fiery hair and emerald eyes felt faded in the dawn’s sullen greyness. It was here at last the utter madness of her journey struck her. She began to realize just how unfit she was for the wilderness. She was no ranger like Garrett, no traveler like Saul. She had to go back. Stupid, stupid girl, she cursed herself. What kind of plan was this? .
Should have gone back to Gryphon.
She stood and sloughed the rain from her cloak. The truth of her situation knocked her back to her bottom. She was well beyond the sight of Tratec, far from any hope of help from Verod. She would have to walk all the way back and face the life she did not want, and the voices she knew would return. What was I
thinking? Some kind of dreams I have. Telling me to run alone into the woods.
Stupid.
Her sandals were ruined, her dress and cloak sodden and frayed, but both seemed nothing next to her shame. After a breakfast of brick-like bread and a bath in the stream, she sat and stretched her legs over the water, dipping her bare feet beneath its cool, inviting surface. The clear, shallow stream was her only companion anymore. The water ran like fingers between her naked toes, soothing her so much that she leaned back upon the bed of soft grass behind her. One last respite, she told herself. And then back to Verod.
Much later than she knew, she snapped awake.
Her stomach gnawed and her bottom ached. The morning is gone, she fretted. How long did I sleep? The temperament of the day had changed, and the valley brimmed with dense, billowing mist, a soupy bowl of wet, unpleasant air. The hillsides were grey and brown, and the trees looked down upon her like the iron bars of a dungeon. All was dismal, as though twilight had come early.
She looked ahead and back, seeking a clear path through the fog. She saw nothing past a few paces. The thick, humid air weighed upon her, her hair hanging in lank strips across her pale face. She thought to call out for help, to cry out for forgiveness from the wilds, but thought better of it and sank to the ground again. This waiting will be the end of me. She drew her knees up beneath her chin. Another day, and my food will never get me back to the castle.
Less than an hour passed her by. Sitting dolefully beside the stream, she heard an echo in the distance, a clamor too loud to be imagined. Closer and closer the rhythmic rumbling filled the valley, sending slight ripples across the shallow water of the stream. Horses. She leapt to her feet. I am saved. Her wish was that the sound of hooves meant that riders were coming, men that could help her return to the castle. As the pounding drew nearer, her mood lifted like a break in the clouds. “Hello?” she called out into the valley. “Hellooo? Over here! I have no food! Please help me!”
She called out again and again, but they who approached were not whom she hoped. Sent out by the warlord Archmyr, the Furyons appeared like wraiths from the fog, fourteen riders locked in ebon mail. She knew immediately her danger. Like a tower crumbling, she sank into the grass, her skirts pooling like dark water all around her.
The Furyons slowed at first sight of her. They seemed to think at first they had found a lost child, a girl misplaced in the mountains. They wheeled and closed in around her, grunting in the harsh Furyon tongue.
“What luck!” the captain of the soldiers laughed to his men. “Archmyr sends us looking for easy prey and here we find the easiest. I wonder if she knows her way home.”
A tall, cruelly scarred Furyon answered, “Does it matter? We should take her to him as a prize. Such a pretty thing. She’ll fetch a reward, yes?”
“Why should the Pale One have her?” a third soldier interrupted. “This is Fury land, not a Thillrian brothel. It’s we who deserve the spoils, not he.”
The captain raised his hand and silenced the others. She saw anger flash like lightning in his eyes, and she wished she understood. “Make no insult, lest the Pale Knight’s scorn come to you!” His language was guttural, his spittle showering the grass. “He’s is favored by Chakran, and we are bound to him. This girl doesn’t know us. I’ve never seen her like, nor have any of you. We’ll take her to Archmyr as a prize. Perhaps he can draw information from her, something useful for the war. Yes, the Thillrian will know. He speaks the native language of this place. He will reward us.”
With a crooked sneer, the captain turned to the two soldiers nearest him. “You and you.” He pointed. “Return to the camp. Deliver this creature alive to our master. If you’re are lucky, he will grant you his favor. Go now and wait for my return. Do not spoil her, else your necks will know my blade.”
She looked fearfully on, certain the riders had concluded an evil fate for her. She swallowed her tears, thinking that to display cowardice would only provoke them to torment her. Rising slowly, she walked up to the one she thought might be captain. “Please…” She turned her palms upward as though she were a beggar. “I beg you, ser knight. Spare me. I have nothing. Let me be on my way.”
None of the Furies understood her. A flick of the captain’s gauntleted wrist, and one of his soldiers leapt down from his horse and locked his steel fingers around her upper arm. Her flesh froze where he touched her, her skin burnt by the cold of his gauntleted grasp. She tried to tear free, but he ripped her mercilessly toward his mount, nearly snapping her in half. “Unhand me!” She flailed. “I have nothing, please!”
The brute hauled her onto his saddle and pulled himself up behind her. She elbowed his ugly face, but her blow was nothing to him. Smirking, he jerked her hair back and clamped his hand atop her mouth. With the last of her courage, she tried to throw herself from his horse, but when she felt his hand closing around her throat, she knew he would kill her if she continued to resist. “I yield,” she choked. “Please…I yield.”
Down through the hollow vale two of the soldiers took her.
Crushed between the horse’s mane and the soldier’s twenty-tined carapace, she was helpless to resist, powerless to do anything but breathe. The ground sped past at a dizzying rate. Her hunger was ravenous, her pains many, but it was her thoughts injuring her worst of all. As she went, a hundred gruesome fates spun in her mind, each worse than the one before. I am a fool, she told herself. I deserve this. They will kill me, and before it they will savage me…
Her captors spoke little as they rode. They tore through the valley as though anxious to escape its confines, as though fearing some pursuit by the Grae. After four hours, they trotted out of the dank, claustrophobic valley and emerged into a quiet wilderness, a spacious expanse of forest cooled by the coming of twilight. Tall, pale-barked trees climbed toward the sky like blades of moonlight shining up instead of down. The forest floor was gilded by the glow of the swiftly falling sun, the leaves quivering in the breeze as though laughing at her. No one will rescue me here.
I am days away from Verod, and Dennov has better things to do than chase fools into the wilds.
An hour’s more merciless ride, and her hunger distorted her senses. The new landscape looked surreal to her, tilting and blurring as though harvested from a long-forgotten dream. She tried to speak to her captors, hopeful they might spare her a sip of water or a wafer of bread, but one of them answered with a glancing slap from his gauntleted hand. The soldier’s slap jarred all meaningful thought from her mind. A hundred hooves rose and fell, and she drifted into the shadow realm of semi-consciousness.
When she came to much later, she cracked her eyelids open to the night. She found herself in a clearing, kneeling on wet ground with her neck wrenched backward. A faceless soldier loomed just behind her, his steel-fingered grasp holding her by the hair. She was far from all things familiar, she knew. All around her were Furyons, thousands and thousands of them. The hot, smoky fumes from their fires drifted into every seam of the forest, making every breath she took a labor. Her eyes watered, not from weeping, but from the ash.
She squinted and tried to stand, but her captor did not allow it. He forced her back into the loam, where a thousand blades of grass chewed at her calves and thighs. The way he held her allowed only the dimmest view of her surroundings. She saw five Furyons standing before her, looking down at her as though she were an infant. Four of them were weaponless, garbed in long, loose tabards. The fifth was clad entirely in red and black, his twin swords swaying from his belt as though hungry to take her life. He had a visage full of cruelty. His skin was the pallor of a full moon, his lips creased by an everlasting smirk. He is not like the others, she recognized. He must be the one Garrett spoke of.
The Pale Knight.
The Pale Knight saw her awaken, and with a lick of his lips gestured for the other Furyons to leave. The one behind her released her without warning, and she pitched forward, her cheek smacking against the ground. She spat out a mouthful of grass a
nd struggled to rise to her knees.
“Mercy…” was all she managed to say.
A ghastly light lived in the Pale Knight’s eyes, a hatred of all things. In this fell creature, she perceived the cause of uncountable sorrows. She assumed he must be the master of the Furyons, for she recalled the tales of death he had inflicted, the murders, rapes, and the mass enslavement. She could bear to look at him no longer than a glance, and then she turned her eyes away.
To her utter surprise, the Pale Knight cracked his lips and spoke at her in the Graehelm tongue. “Such a hapless thing,” he said to her in an accent she had never heard. “I pity you, you poor girl, and all the wretches you call countrymen. So alone and unwary, caught in our web. If the Grae have gods, you should pray for all you know. The life you knew is gone.”
“Please… I—”
“I’m Archmyr Degiliac.” He glared at her. “You will have heard of me. Your people call me the Pale Knight, same as all the others I’ve destroyed. My men say you were wandering on the empty path, alone but for your skirt and basket. Are you a common girl? A highborn? What were you doing so far from home? What’s your name? Tell me, and you’ll spare yourself some pain.”
So horrid was his presence she found she could not speak. Her voice crawled down into her chest, unable to escape.
“So you’ll say nothing?” He hovered over her, savoring her discomfort. “Then you’ll suffer until you break. Don’t think prettiness will save you. Beneath my hand, all prisoners learn to speak.” Grasping her by the hair, he hauled her to her feet. “Olyak,” he called out to a soldier hidden in the trees. “Ae secra lae vold. Bine ae, aek tommek du dae umrae. You smell of a secret.” He faced her again. “Piece by piece, we’ll pluck it out.”
Into the forest and past the fires his underlings took her, plunging her into darkness. All she could think of was how relieved she felt to be away from the Pale Knight. He was more loathsome than any man she had met, even the murderer Aramar. His chilling stare had penetrated her. His presence had made her feel fragile, like a petal rotting from a flower. She pictured his detestable countenance as a nameless soldier bound her hands and threw her into a dark, cold cage, and she hoped she would never see him again.
Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1) Page 30