“The council can go and—!” Raz began in a raspy yell, but Rhen cut him off again.
“What?” she demanded. “Can go fuck themselves? Kill themselves? I don’t disagree after today, but without them the city falls to pieces, at least for now. I told you, Arro, there are more bad men out there. But there are more ways to deal with them than a knife in the throat, too.”
Raz watched her with narrowed eyes. Then he shrugged, looking at the horses.
“Can you take Lueski and Arrun for a minute?” he asked her quietly.
Rhen’s face fell, and she nodded sadly.
“Hand them over,” Raz ordered Tern. “Then get up.”
The Chairman did as he was told, allowing the Doctore to take Lueski and her brother’s head from his arms, then moved to the closest of the two horses as Raz guided him by the hair.
Getting the Chairman into the saddle was an ordeal that required no small effort from Raz, and left him pained and aching once more, wheezing in the cold. Taking the reins before Tern thought of making a run for it, he led the horse to stand beside the other, then hauled himself up onto the back of the gray stud.
“Can you ride?” the Doctore asked hesitantly, glancing at his clawed feet.
Raz nodded. “My family had horses, growing up,” he said, resting Ahna across his lap and reaching down to grab the end of his cloak again. “I learned with the best. Now give the children back to Tern.”
As Rhen passed Lueski and Arrun up carefully to the Chairman, Raz ripped long strips of thick fur from the mantle with his teeth, bending down to wrap them around his bare feet. They might already be numb, but hopefully this way he would avoid losing them to the cold.
This done, he looked down at the Doctore again.
“Rhen… You’re sure you don’t want to come?”
The woman nodded. “I’m sure,” she said with a smile that tugged at the scar on her face. “And call me Alyssa.”
“Alyssa,” Raz said with a nod. “If I come back, Raz will do as well.”
He paused.
“Thank you,” he said after a moment. “For everything.”
“And the same to you,” Alyssa replied. “Now go. They’re coming!”
Sure enough, the crowd had reached them, billowing out of the snow from beyond the curve of the Arena.
Wheeling his horse around into the alley, Raz looked at Tern.
“If you drop them, your head hits the ground next. Is that clear?”
The Chairman blanched, then nodded. Satisfied, Raz kicked his horse into a gallop. Together the pair made their way west, heading for the closest city gate, iron shoes thundering across the cobblestone of the alley.
XXXIX
NIGHT HAD long fallen by the time Raz pulled them to a halt, not nearly as far from the city as he would have liked. Other travelers and their carts had left paired divots in the west road, but still the snow choked the way, the storm making it impossible to move at more than a plodding trot once they’d made the forest paths. With his hood up, Raz had been able to press them forward an hour or two more than men would have dared, his keen eyes working better with what limited light the setting Sun had offered behind its shield of clouds.
Now, though, it was becoming too dangerous for even him, in the snow.
“This way,” he said, turning his horse into the darkness of the trees to their left, leading Tern’s behind him.
The Chairman had barely said a word once he’d ordered the guards to open the west gate and let them through, so intent was he on making sure Lueski’s body and Arrun’s head didn’t fall from his grasp as they rode. Raz had expected him to complain, expected him to demand release, but the man had been surprisingly quiet.
It was as though being outside the walls of his city had suddenly made Tern realize that there really was no one left to help him now.
Beneath the trees was easier going, with much of the snow caught in the canopy above. Raz was able to pick their way through the pines with some effort, his way only lit by scattered beams of dim light that made it through the branches. For another hour he walked them, twisting the horses hopelessly this way and that, though he was careful to judge the position of the Moon above so he would know which way they’d come.
He had his doubts Tern knew enough of the world to do the same.
“Here,” he said at last, coming to the edge of a hill beneath the jutting lip of a great rock outcropping.
The snow was all but clear beneath the boulders, and he eased himself down from his saddle, still careful to keep ahold of the reins of Tern’s horse, and onto the forest floor. He grit his teeth against the shock of pain that ripped through him as his body moved in ways it hadn’t for several hours, pulling at wounds he was starting to worry weren’t about to heal on their own.
“Give the children to me,” he said, resting Ahna against the trunk of a nearby tree and reaching up with one hand. “Then get down.”
“Are we making camp?” Tern asked, speaking for the first time in several hours as he slowly eased the Koyts into the crook of Raz’s good arm.
Raz didn’t respond.
Once Tern had slid his weight down the horse’s side and onto his feet, Raz drew his gladius from over his shoulder and pointed to a spot beneath the rocks.
“There. Move.”
Tern did as he was told, hands up and head bowed as he hurried over, clearly not upset about getting out of the snow. Raz could feel the cold get to him now that they had stopped. Riding hard had kept him tense and warm, and if he didn’t keep moving he knew the winter night was going to be the end of him.
Still… he would take the time for this.
Thrusting the gladius into the ground by his fur-wrapped feet, he pulled his knife from his belt and tossed it to Tern. The Chairman eyed it suspiciously.
“And what,” he asked in a wavering voice, “am I supposed to do with that? If you think I’m going to fight you—”
“What I think you’re going to do,” Raz growled, “is dig.”
Tern blinked. Then he looked at the knife, then at the body and head in Raz’s arms, then back at the knife. Finally, with a sigh that said he had given up all hope, he lifted the blade in his gloved hands and started at the earth.
It was long, hard work. The ground was cold and solid, and even the looser soil beneath the frozen top layer was marbled with rocks and roots. It was a time before Tern made much of a dent in the space below the outcropping, the knife thunking and pinging dully through the night, any echo swallowed by the thickness of the trees. For half an hour he toiled before saying a word.
“This is your fault, you know.”
Raz blinked, jerking into a full wakefulness. He was almost happy Tern had said something, because the chill had definitely started to make him sluggish. The statement, though, brought on a rush of fury that chased away all fatigue from his body.
“What did you say?” he demanded in a hiss.
“This. Is,” Tern said again, punching every word in with a stab of the knife. “Your. Fault.”
“And how do you figure that, Chairman?” Raz asked sarcastically, shifting to get his body moving again.
“We had a deal,” Tern told him simply. “We made a contract. I even had the paperwork drafted, fulfilling every irritating condition you required. The Koyts had their freedom, had their debts cleared. The Arena stopped drafting from the dungeon and prisons. I sent the birds, built the demand, gave you your chance to fight your demons on even ground.”
“You did,” Raz said with a nod. “You did do all that.”
“Then why,” Tern huffed, a note of annoyance building in his voice as he continued to hack at the earth, “did you have to fuck it all up?”
“I didn’t.”
Tern stopped at that, looking around. He frowned.
“You did. You changed the deal. If you’d left with the Laorin, it would have—”
“I wasn’t going to.”
There was a second of icy silence.
&nbs
p; “What?” Tern hissed, staring up from his hole in the ground.
“I wasn’t leaving,” Raz said. “Whoever your informant is didn’t give you all the facts. I was asked to leave, yes. Brahnt and his friends and I had been speaking for weeks, trying to figure out how to drag your fat ass out of the false throne you’d built for yourself. When they got called away, they asked me to go.”
“And you said what? ‘No, thank you’?”
“Essentially.”
For a time Tern only stared at him. Then he started to laugh.
“What’s the joke?” Raz asked in a deadly whisper, pulling his gladius from the ground.
“You!” Tern chuckled, returning to his work. “To the world you’re the great beast, this mythical Monster of Karth! Even the North sees that now! But you’re not, are you? You’re given a chance to leave, to get out of my city, and you don’t take it? You had to know the Arena would claim you eventually! You had to know one day you would die there, if you didn’t leave!”
He stopped only long enough to look over his shoulder.
“You’re no Monster. You’re a fool.”
Then he looked back around and started at the earth again.
Raz watched him for a time more, feeling the anger burning inside him, feeling it bubble and churn. He remembered the jeering glee of the crowd, the delighted screams of thrill and joy as he murdered for them, butchered for them.
Those people he had saved from the pit. Those people he’d snatched from the greedy mouth of Quin Tern.
Raz felt the anger die, replaced by sadness.
“You’re probably right,” he said.
Tern didn’t say anything.
The hole was just wide and deep enough for a small body to fit, tucked up against itself. As Raz stepped over it to judge, he nodded.
“Get out.”
Tern hauled himself up at once, puffing and sweaty. He’d been at it for over an hour, which Raz mused silently was probably more hard labor than the man had ever done in his life.
“Now take off your cloak.”
At that, Tern stiffened.
“W-What?” he demanded. “No. You can’t—!”
“You can take off your cloak now, Tern, while you are willing and able to do so, or I can cut it from your corpse in about five seconds. I’m not fussy on which option you choose really, but the second one would warm me up more.”
“But I’ll freeze!” Tern yelled, taking a step back and clutching at his furs in the dark. “What am I supposed to do without it?”
Raz shrugged. “Have it your way, then,” he said, stepping forward and raising the gladius in one hand.
“WAIT!” Tern said, throwing his hands up.
Raz stopped, but kept the blade raised poignantly. Muttering curses to himself, Tern undid the fastenings to his heavy mantle and pulled it off his shoulders. It fell in a thick pile to the forest floor.
“Now what?” Tern asked through gritted teeth, clutching at his arms as the winter night bit immediately through the thinner cottons and wools of the decorative shirts he had on beneath.
“Now,” Raz said.“… I let you go.”
Tern looked surprised.
“G-Go?” he asked, almost hopefully. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you can go,” Raz told him. “I said I would do it, so I am. And if you think I didn’t notice you sticking the knife in the back of your pants, think again. Keep it. It might come in useful.”
The Chairman stared at him, shivering, obviously suspecting some trap. When Raz said nothing more, though, he started for the horses.
“Ah,” Raz interrupted, bringing the gladius up to block the man’s path. “No. I don’t think so.”
“You’re not going to give me a horse?” Tern spat in disbelief. “You can’t be serious!”
He quailed under the cold look Raz gave him then.
“Be grateful I’m giving you even this small chance, Chairman,” Raz growled. “You took more from me than even you realize. You ripped and tore and destroyed something I thought I’d never have again. I’m only giving you this chance because I think the freeze will find you before any of the search parties Azbar has undoubtedly sent out by now do. A blade to the heart is too quick for you, but I’m not going to dishonor the Koyts by torturing you to death beside their grave.”
He moved the gladius, pointing it north. “The road is that way. If you start now and run to keep warm, you might make it before you lose your feet to the cold. Maybe they’ll find you then, maybe not. All I know is this: if I still hear you by the time I’m done bidding farewell to these children, I’ll drag you far enough away to ensure their spirits can’t hear your screams.”
“Bastard,” Tern gasped, stumbling and tripping as he backed away. “Bastard!”
Then he was gone, running off through the dark trees faster than Raz would have thought the fat man was capable of.
For a minute Raz listened to him go. After a time, though, the snow and woods swallowed all sounds, and Raz was on his own.
Alone. Again.
Turning away from the trees, Raz kicked Tern’s discarded cloak closer to the outcropping, then moved to follow. Bending to seat himself on the cold ground—hissing in pain as he did—he set the Koyts down gently beside him. Picking the cloak up, he cut several feet of the extra material from its end with the gladius, then another foot’s worth as a separate piece. Setting the sword aside, he reached out, gently lifted Arrun’s head into his lap, and began wrapping it in the smaller of the fur strips.
Lueski was next. Raz’s fingers shook as he felt the stiffness in her tiny form, the rigidity of death, as he wrapped her up.
When he was done, Raz got to his feet and pulled what was left of the cloak over his own shoulders, welcoming the extra warmth. Bending down, he lifted the girl, hidden away in the swaddling cloths, carefully into his arms. Carrying her into the grave, he set her upon the cold, churned earth tenderly. Arrun’s head he tucked in the crook of her lap.
For a long time Raz stood over the pair of them, looking down through the dark at their bundled outlines. He didn’t think of anything in particular so much as he fought to find and hold on to the feelings and emotions he’d discovered again with the two of them, things he’d thought lost a long time ago.
He didn’t want to forget, this time. He refused to forget.
When he’d had his moment, Raz moved to the loose pile of dirt that hovered over the hole. Grunting as he got to his knees, he shoved it to spill over and cover the bodies, hiding them from view forever. Once he’d patted the mound down, flattening it until the grave was little more than a faint lump in the earth, he got to his feet again. This time he looked to the sky.
Though he couldn’t see Her Stars, he knew they were there, somewhere, eternal witnesses overhead.
Take care of them, he begged of the Arros, thinking of his mother and father. Then, bringing up the image of his little sister, he spoke to her privately.
You’ll like her, Ahna. I know you’ll be friends.
With that Raz turned, found the dviassegai and gladius in the dark, and made for the horses.
Once he’d wheezed and tugged his way into the gray stud’s saddle, reaching down to wrap the reins of the other around its pommel, he pulled Ahna up to set her back across his lap. Thumbing the white wood of her haft, he kicked the animals into a trot through the Moon-lit trees.
“‘The northbound road for Ystréd,’” he quoted under his breath, shifting the horses to head back for the road. “What do you think, sis? What are our chances of catching up before we freeze to death?”
Chuckling bleakly to himself, Raz allowed his hunched form, shivering in cold and pain, to be swallowed by the night.
XXXX
“To wage the game of war with success, one must garner and gain hold of all advantages. Most chief among them: surprise. There is an old saying in the Seven Cities, which we all know have had their fair share of blood and battle over the centuries. They say, ‘Defeat c
omes when you least expect it,’ which I find admirably sage. Even the greatest of warriors cannot see behind them, after all.”
—THE ART OF SWORD & SHIELD, BY KELO EV’RET
SYRAH RAN as she had never run before. Her white robes whipped about her, her sandled feet smacking the stones of the hall loudly, echoing ahead. She took the twists and turns at full speed, not bothering to excuse herself as she dodged around other residents of the Citadel out enjoying a morning walk or heading to breakfast. She ignored their exclamations of surprise and curses.
Jofrey was down in the furnaces. He’d told her as much last night, saying that Kallet Brern had wanted his opinion on a crack in one of the forges first thing in the morning. The heating systems of Cyurgi’ Di were an engineering miracle, rekindled and maintained by the Laorin since the great fortress had been first rediscovered by the faith. They required a lot of work, though, and a crack in the mechanisms could be nasty business if it meant shutting one of the forges down for repairs.
The letter in Syrah’s hand, however, held far graver news.
Syrah turned a corner, pounding the slanting ground of the ramp leading downward into the mountain. For a time it twisted and turned, one solid incline going back and forth through the stone. Eventually, though, the ramp ended, and roughhewn stairs, their middle slick and well worn by a thousand years of booted and sandaled feet coming to and fro from the forges, descended steeply into a tunnel lit only by candlelight.
Grasping the old iron chain strung along one side of the stairs, Syrah took them as fast as she could.
Old man couldn’t have found a worse place to hole himself up, Syrah thought bitterly as she moved. Typical. First Talo, now Jofrey. When you need them most, they’re always on the other side of the damn world.
The steps seemed to go on forever, down and down and down into the earth. In truth they were rather long but—as is so common when one is pressed for time—Syrah’s mind decided to drag them out eternally.
The Warring Son (The Wings of War Book 2) Page 34