Chronicles Of Aronshae (3 Book Omnibus)

by J. K. Barber

  “All set?” Captain Damon asked, his voice and stature the only way Katya recognized him under all his furs. His question was posed to the twins and Jared.

  “I believe so,” Sasha said happily. “If we forgot anything it won’t matter anyway.” Jared and Damon laughed at her comment.

  “Very well, please follow me to your boat,” Damon spoke briefly before heading to the stern of the ship, dodging about his busy crew and trying his best to keep out of their way. Over his shoulder he added, “Mala will board your vessel just before we lower you down to allow her to finish her task with the supplies. I’ll be personally steering you ashore.”

  Arriving at their longboat, the three young people looked over their vessel, which sat ten people comfortably on three benches with a fixed stool at the rear for the captain. Katya was fascinated by the rope and pulley mechanisms that attached it to sturdy metal braces bolted into the main deck. Great hooks at the end of the ropes attached to brackets in the longboat’s rails and kept it secure for now, dangling above the waves. A mere two men manning the mechanism, one on each side, would lower the boat into the ocean. A team of four well-muscled crewmen moved off and made their way between the remaining boats, swinging the small crafts over the sides like Damon’s longboat so that they could then be loaded. Captain Damon nimbly leapt aboard the gently swaying craft, where five of the King’s men already sat waiting patiently, and extended one hand to help the three of them across while grasping the larger ship’s rail steadily with the other. The girls went first without too much trouble; Katya’s robe had caught in one of the hooks when the wind had picked up, but Damon had nimbly freed the cloth before it tore. Jared’s face was green and he held back. Damon grinned, the woodsman’s sea sickness always a source of perpetual amusement to the crew.

  “Look at me, Jared,” the Captain shouted to be heard over the wind. “Looking at the waves will only make your stomach roll as they do.”

  Jared nodded, fixing his gaze on the Captain, knowing that to fall into the ice-cold water would surely mean a quick death. He took the Easterner’s extended hand, but his feet went out from under him as he mounted the slippery rail. Damon pulled him hard into the boat so that he would not fall to the freezing ocean below, and they fell together back into the boat with Jared sprawled on top of the tall man. The woodsman got off of the Captain with an apology and sat down on a bench with the girls, his face an odd mix between red from embarrassment and green from his roiling stomach. Damon just laughed as he stood and patted him on the shoulder.

  Distracted by Jared’s struggle to get aboard, Captain Damon and the others were jolted with no small amount of shock as Mala leapt aboard with more grace than even the Captain. The woodsman was too sick to comment and the girls had been hushed since they came above deck, but Captain Damon eyed Mala curiously.

  “What are you staring at Captain?” Mala asked. “You have a full ship to navigate to shore.”

  The tall, lean Easterner hesitated a moment longer like he wanted to ask her something. However, he seemed to think better of it and went about the task of unlashing the tiller and calling to his men to lower the boat to the waves below.

  “Expect to get a little wet,” Damon yelled over the wind. “The chop will come overboard here and there. I can’t eliminate us getting wet entirely in this weather, but I’ll do my best to limit it with my steering. Hold tight, and do NOT stand up for any reason.”

  The boat lurched down about half a foot, which caused them all to hold tight to their benches, but then it was lowered smoothly to the water the rest of the way. As they descended, Damon unfastened oars that had been secured to the rails on the underside of the benches and passed them to four of the soldiers. He showed the men how to set them into the oarlocks, while unhooking the boat from the mechanism above. They shoved off and the men began rowing. The Captain of The Isabella was true to his word; they got splashed once or twice by the rough chop that sprayed overboard, but they did arrive with their clothing and gear still mostly dry.

  Captain Damon aimed for the least rocky part of the shore, which was a stretch of beach made up of dark-colored, smooth palm-sized stones. He instructed the soldiers to keep rowing as he fixed the tiller and moved steadily to the bow where he leapt off with a rope, its other end fixed to a cleat. Mala jumped off as well and helped Damon haul the boat onto the beach. More of their longboats landed similarly soon after them, and the process of unloading began with soldiers standing in a line from the boats to the upper shore passing supplies from one set of hands to the next. The sun was high in the sky before the boats were finally empty. The skippers of the longboats took one ship back and returned with several crewmen to help row the rest back. Only Damon remained with two crewmen already at the oars and two waiting patiently by their captain to shove off. His eyes were fixed on Mistress Mala as she finished making sure all their supplies made it safely across the water. Leaving her lieutenants to the task of organizing the men for their trek across the Frozen March, Mala approached Captain Damon with a large bulging leather pouch in hand.

  “You have held up your portion of the bargain well,” the Sword Mistress said, handing the pouch to Damon. “Here is the remaining half of the coin for our passage along with our thanks.”

  Captain Damon pulled aside his fur coat and deposited the pouch into his jerkin with a sly smile and laced the garment up more tightly. “My humble appreciation, Mistress. May your travels always bring you safely ashore.” Damon bowed low and then straightened, scanning the barren land of white behind the seasoned warrior woman. “I do not envy the next leg of your journey. Will you require us to return for you?”

  Mala’s eyes hardened at the question, as if bracing for the journey and task ahead. “No, Captain. Here we part ways.”

  “Very well,” Damon bowed and then signaled to his men to push off. He hopped aboard, his cloak rippling majestically around his handsome form as he stood tall from the bow. “Fare thee well, Mistress” he called.

  Mistress Mala cracked a smile to herself behind her scarf at his grandeur, waved briefly, and turned to head back up the beach.

  Two weeks had passed, and yet they still marched over a landscape of seemingly endless, flat white. Their water was getting low, but luckily snow was ever present in great quantity to eat and stay hydrated. This division of the King’s Army was hesitant at first to follow a commander they had not met previously, but Mistress Mala’s cold climate training quickly gained their trust. As she led them successfully day after day through the deep snow, it became obvious why the King chose her to lead them through the Frozen March. Without her, they would have all surely perished in the first few days. Sasha also had extensive survival training in the frozen wild from routine scouting runs into the Frozen March, keeping an eye on the ice orc tribes in close proximity to Snowhaven. She helped direct them throughout the journey as well. It took a few days for everyone to adjust to the harsh cold. They kept warm by moving by day, and at night in their tents each person dug a bed in the snow down to the soil. These two crucial procedures had kept them alive. They rested often during the daily march but only for very short periods of time. It was imperative to their survival to keep their bodies moving and their muscles warm. The trek through the snow was arduous, and most of the troop rubbed at their sore calves when they stopped.

  They had only lost one man so far and that was simply to ill fortune; he had been assaulted by a wild animal in the night when he had gone to relieve himself. The scouts had found his gnawed bones easily in the morning, the giant smear of the man’s blood in the snow straightforward evidence of what had become of him. After that, everyone went in pairs to the outskirts of camp. There were howls of wolves at night and they had come across two giant winter bears. The sixty-some number of humans traveling together had dissuaded these animals thus far from approaching, but the wolves began following them according to the scouting reports.

  Despite Sasha urging him not to, Jared had split off from the rest of the s
oldiers, doubling back in an effort to contact the wolves following them. The swordswoman had insisted on accompanying him, regardless of his protests that her presence might make the wolves less receptive to his attempt to talk to them. Jared need not have bothered. The pack that had been following them, hoping to pick off the weakest members of the “herd,” were as unreceptive to the woodsman’s overtures as Sasha had been to Jared’s request that she stay behind. The wolves were far too hungry to listen to the hunter. Their overwhelming instinct to feed far outstripped their desire to communicate in anything other than the curtest fashion to Jared. The pack’s alpha had communicated to him in no uncertain terms that he saw Jared as a possible source of food, the same as the rest of the “two legs” that stumbled across the frozen landscape. The woodsman guessed that the winter bears would have reacted similarly had he been able to get close enough to contact them. It was only Jared’s affinity for wolves that had allowed him to contact the pack that followed from so great a distance as he did. Jared returned to the rest of the small army feeling tired and disappointed.

  There were no trees thus far, so there had been no wood for fires. Katya’s bones especially ached for the warmth of a hearth. She was moodily silent for most of the trip, only responding when a question was asked of her. Sasha and Jared would chit chat here and there, but he was mostly off with the scouts, enjoying the wide open of the Frozen March after being cooped up in Aeirsga and then on a boat for the last two months. Mala possessed a slightly larger tent than the rest of her troops that she carried alone without complaint. It was still low to the ground like the others to avoid being blown over, but it could sleep four people comfortably as opposed to the other tents that only slept two. Mala slept there alone, because they primarily used this tent at night to look at maps by candlelight, meticulously keeping track of their journey. Most of this region was uncharted, and Mala was determined to map it with the help of her scouts. She felt it would help Snowhaven better defend the border to have more details of this region. Jared especially was pivotal in her efforts to fill in her maps with his relay of the landscape and all its subtle landmarks.

  They kept their backs to the sun as they set out in the morning to ensure they were traveling due West. To also keep them heading in the right direction were the World’s Edge Mountains that were ever present on clear days to the South. A blizzard had them thinking they were lost after three days of zero visibility, but thanks to the scouts’ cunning sense of direction they had not wandered far and the storm had only minorly slowed their travel. The land, while seemingly flat, was actually sloping upwards as they headed inland. A large number of rivulets in the snowy ground that were increasing as they marched led Jared to believe they might come upon a ravine in the next few days. This was good news since the Illyander stories of the Ice Queen rumored her living in a Glacial Palace in a valley. Mala had seen a smaller glacier run closer to Snowhaven, and it had cut a deep ravine into the land. As for the stories, Mala knew them as well as any, told by parents as bedtime tales. Other, more gruesome, stories were told around caravan campfires about the Empress of Ice’s power and especially her experiments involving cadaverous flesh. Mala realized the stories weren’t much to go on. The troops were getting restless, seeing as they hadn’t found anything and wondering if this journey was a waste of time.

  It would make sense that a glacier would be present to cut through the land and form a ravine. This was indeed good news. However, the scouts had also seen smoke on the northern horizon the day before. Few people chose to live in the Frozen March, and most of those were barbaric orc tribes. If they were entering ice orc lands, they could run into trouble very soon. Mala doubled the watch and scout patrols, knowing that being taken unaware by the orcs could surely mean their deaths.

  “I want Lucas and Zoe to scout out that smoke to the North,” Mala said to Jared as they sat just the two of them in her tent. She pointed to the map laid out on her bedroll and ran her hands above a freshly-inked valley the woodsman had discovered on his latest patrol. “Tell them to follow that valley you found. They need to keep out of sight and use extreme caution; I want to know what kind of settlement is there, but the last thing we need to do is alert the ice orc tribes to our presence. If we can pass by undetected, the better off we all will be.”

  Jared nodded and added, “I’d like to go with them. Those two are very young. There were a few patches of ice and loose shale I can guide them around. Also, they may need an extra blade if they run into trouble…”

  Mala cut him off with a wave and shake of her head. “No, Jared. The scouts, while young, are the best at their trade. Do not let their age fool you. The King sent his best with us, I promise.” She fell silent a moment looking over the map one last time. Jared, while disappointed, kept his mouth shut. He deferred to her judgment, knowing better than to cross the veteran at this point, especially since he was still trying to get back into her good graces after the fiasco in Valshet. Her voice drew his eyes to hers. “Besides, I need you here.”

  “Oh?” he flashed a charming smile, wondering at her meaning. “That is the first time I have ever heard you say you needed me.”

  Mala’s stern face did not budge as she regarded him. His smile faded. “Keep an eye on the girls tonight,” she said and turned to organize her maps. Jared gulped a bit. Was that worry he had seen flash across the Master Swordswoman’s eyes?

  “Where will you be this evening then, Mistress?” the woodsman asked.

  “I am going with the scouts.”

  “But you said they were exper…,” Jared began before Mala turned and stared him down with cold predator-like eyes. He began again, more cautious with his words and choosing them carefully. “It means a great deal that you trust me to watch after them.”

  Mistress Mala’s visage softened but was clouded with scorn. “I trust you not to repeat previous foolish actions. Am I clear?”

  Jared couldn’t help but scowl a bit himself. “Crystal,” he replied flatly.

  “Dismissed,” Mala stated. Jared, doing his best to stifle the heavy sigh that threatened to escape his mouth, re-wrapped his face with a wool scarf and hefted his heavy fur cloak about his shoulders. He tried his best not to drip the melted snow that fell from it as he did so onto the maps or on Mala’s bedroll. The swordswoman watched him moodily, anxious for privacy, but did not rush him; she did appreciate his efforts to keep her things dry. Finished bundling himself, Jared pushed open the tent flap and exited.

  Chapter 9

  Jared paced the camp in a circuit around the thirty or so tents. He had no choice in the matter; if he didn’t keep moving he’d freeze while outside keeping watch over the camp. Some of the tents still glowed with candlelight from within, but other than that the dark sky was only lit by stars. There was no moon this night. At least the white of the snow caught the starlight and would warn them of anyone approaching, making the interloper appear as a dark form against the powder. The woman circling with him, Latifah, was talking about her boyfriend’s carpentry business in Aeirsga, but the woodsman wasn’t really paying attention. He wasn’t trying to be mean, but his attention was on something else entirely. Katya and Sasha’s tent was one of the few still illuminated. Jared could make out Sasha’s shadow on the canvas as she was removing her armor to settle down for the night. He smiled to himself, knowing full well that he was completely distracted. His body grew warmer at the thought of the red-headed swordswoman. Being away on scouting duty had made him realize how much he enjoyed her company, so it was no surprise that his footsteps were lighter when returning from his missions. Being anxious to get back to camp was something Jared was not used to; so often he wanted nothing more than to be away from other people, yearning for the sounds of the wilderness, the trickle of a stream or the hoot of an owl, not the raucous laughter of men. There was a peace to nature that Jared loved, but now he found himself wanting also to be with her. It had become a habit of his as they had traveled together for him to brush those copper curls
away from her face, and the touch of her soft hair in his fingers was intoxicating.

  Jared walked several steps more, his eyes still glancing back to Sasha’s tent before he realized Latifah had stopped. He looked back and saw her eyes focused and calculating. He turned, following her gaze, and saw dots on the horizon. He prayed it was just Mala and the scouts returning but more and more were appearing, their large numbers screaming that they were not his three allies. His heart sank as he counted quietly to himself. There were easily over a hundred, a large hunting party perhaps.

  Suddenly, his attention shifted to a more pressing matter. The snow formed a crust of sorts after it had settled, and Jared heard the sound of it being trodden through by boots not from in front of him but from behind. Knowing that it was not Latifah that was moving, the woodsman whirled around, drawing his blade as he turned. Mistress Mala stood just behind Latifah, panting raggedly but drawing her own swords. Sweat poured from her brow and her left pauldron was missing. Blood oozed down her arm from four parallel gashes in her shoulder that looked suspiciously like the dirty work of a spiked club. Jared ran to her aid and lent her an arm to lean upon. Latifah hastily followed, pulling out a neatly rolled strip of cloth from a belt pouch and began bandaging the Master Swordswoman’s shoulder with it.

  “Mala!” he exclaimed. “What happened? What of Lucas and Zoe?”

  “Gone. I couldn’t… save them…,” she gasped, still trying to catch her breath. She shook her head. “No time... wake the camp quickly and quietly.” She waved to Latifah, signaling her to finish her bandaging. The younger woman complied, wrapping with more haste but still tying it off tightly. Jared ran back towards camp in the direction Mala had come. He stopped suddenly. The woodsman hadn’t been looking closely but he had been walking behind Mala’s boot prints back into camp. Her boot prints turned into paw prints, the mark of a large cat more specifically. Jared turned back to Mala, the question already forming on his lips. The thought was lost upon seeing the sheer size of the horde on the horizon approaching camp behind the two women. He resumed his task and sprinted back into camp, rousing soldiers as fast as he could and gesturing for them to be quiet with a finger upon his lips.