The muridach leader had managed to get to its knees. The creature started to raise its short sword, its beady eyes bulging, and Ridmark hit it three times on the side of the head. On the third blow, it toppled over into the dust, blood leaking from its nose and ears.
Ridmark raised the staff and looked around, but all four muridachs were dead, and he saw no sign of any other foes.
He let out a long breath and lowered the staff.
It seemed that he had walked into the middle of someone else’s war, with the bronze-armored humans fighting the blue-tattooed orcs, and the muridachs picking the bones of the slain. Well, that was not his concern. Ridmark’s priority was to find Calliande and his sons. If the bronze-armored soldiers and the orcs left him alone, he would return the favor.
If they tried to harm Calliande and his sons, they would regret it.
For a moment, sick fear clutched at his heart. He and Calliande had already lost one child. Would they yet lose another? Would Ridmark lose her? God and the saints, that would be cruel. She had suffered so much over the last year.
Was she about to suffer some more?
His hand tightened against the ridged staff. There was only one cure for fear, and that was to face it. That meant retrieving Oathshield and then finding Calliande and his sons. And if Ridmark encountered a living orc or a human, perhaps he could learn something useful from them, or recruit them as allies.
Meanwhile, he could not allow fear to rule his reason. He could be of most use to his family by keeping a clear head, not by rushing off in a panic. Ridmark took a moment to search the nearest carts. He found a soldier’s leather pack, loaded with hard bread and dried meat, and he took it. Ridmark also found a pair of waterskins, and he sniffed one and took a long drink from it. In this arid land, he suspected, water might be as valuable as gold.
Once he had secured the pack, he checked his link to Oathshield. The sword was still two or three miles to the north, and it hadn’t moved during his fight with the muridachs.
Ridmark said a silent prayer to the Dominus Christus, asking him to watch over Calliande and Gareth and Joachim until Ridmark could find them again.
Then he set off to the north, staff in hand, eyes scanning the road and the hills for any sign of foes.
Chapter 4: Fail Again
Calliande drifted through nothingness.
In a way, it was a relief. Nothingness meant she did not have to think about anything, did not have to feel anything because when she remembered things, she felt pain and sorrow and guilt.
Despite her wishes, the nothingness started to lift, and she began to remember.
Some of her memories were ancient, from centuries ago during the first war with the Frostborn. She remembered Ruth the Keeper and Kalomarus the Dragon Knight, the fury of the war against the Frostborn. Then the long sleep through the centuries beneath the Tower of Vigilance, and the second war against the Frostborn, the treachery of the Enlightened and the brutality of the civil war, the final desperate battle below the walls of Tarlion…
Ridmark.
She remembered Ridmark running through the fire to rescue her on the day she had met him, the day she had awakened powerless and lost below the Tower of Vigilance. The eight years of their marriage flashed before her mind. Before Ridmark, she had been alone. There had been friends, but she had been the Keeper of Andomhaim, alone in her duties, alone in her responsibilities, alone in her heart and in her bed. Then had come Ridmark, first the Dragon Knight and then the Shield Knight, and she was happy, so happy that he was her husband. Gareth had come, and then Joachim, and then…
Joanna.
Her thoughts were like a spinning wheel with a notch in the rim. No matter how hard she tried, her whirling mind always came back to Joanna, to the moment her daughter had died in her arms, the moment when her healing magic had failed. Calliande had sobbed in Ridmark’s arms, even as she sobbed now…
Wait. She wasn’t crying right now.
Instead, Calliande was lying on the rocky ground, the air hot against her face. Someone else was crying. Joachim, that was it, Joachim was crying. And there was a smell, a vile reek, a mixture of rotting flesh and something that smelled like musky fur…
“Get back!” shouted Gareth. He was trying to sound threatening, but it only came across as terrified. “I told you to get back!”
Something was frightening her children.
That thought turned her grief and numbness into wrath, and Calliande exploded back to consciousness, sitting up and calling magic to her will.
Sunlight stabbed into her eyes, and a strange scene greeted her.
She wasn’t in the Citadel. For that matter, she wasn’t in Tarlion. She sat in a shallow valley between low, rocky hills, a small creek trickling its way towards a sea in the distance. The sun blazed overhead in the cloudless sky. Joachim squatted next to her, crying and clutching her hand. Gareth stood before her, his small hands balled into fists, his face working as he tried to scowl.
A creature stood before them.
It looked like a man-sized black rat. It stood about Calliande’s height, with vicious-looking yellow teeth, beady black eyes, and vibrating whiskers. A thick pink tail coiled and uncoiled behind it. The ratman wore leather armor, and in its right hand, it held a short sword of bronze.
Calliande had never seen a creature like that before, but a memory stirred. Ridmark had told her about his journeys before he had met her, his mad quests into the Qazaluuskan Forest to speak with the Elder Shamans of the bone orcs. During that journey, he had met and fought rat-like creatures that called themselves the…what had it been?
Muridachs, that was it. The thing standing before her was a muridach.
The ratman’s black eyes shifted towards her.
“I told you to get back!” said Gareth.
“Gareth, Gareth,” said Calliande, scrambling to her feet and grabbing her staff as she stood. “I’m here. Get behind me.”
He was trying so hard to be brave, but he quickly stepped behind her.
The ratman stared at her.
“Who are you?” said Calliande. “Do you speak Latin?”
It was hard to make out expressions on the muridach’s furred face, but it turned its head and spat in the dust. “Human words. Bah! Stupid language.”
“Orcish, then?” said Calliande, changing to that language.
The muridach blinked. “The tongue of the green ones?” Its orcish was accented, but otherwise comprehensible. “Pity you soft pink ones cannot speak a proper language. But that is just as well.”
“Who are you?” said Calliande again.
The muridach sniffed in her direction. “You smell…hmm, not sick, but weak. But you look young enough to bear a whelp or two yet. We shall fetch a decent price for you in Urd Maelwyn.”
“Will you, now?” said Calliande. “How very flattering.”
“You will come with me without a struggle, human female,” said the muridach. “Else I shall inflict pain on your whelps until you comply.”
Her angered hardened into something deadly.
“I’ll give you one warning,” said Calliande, pointing her staff at the creature. “Let us go in peace. Or else I will defend myself.”
The muridach let out a high-pitched, chittering laugh, at odds to its deep voice. “With your stick? Human females are too weak to fight muridachs! Perhaps once I bite off a finger or two from your youngest whelp, you will learn to obey.”
The muridach took a step towards Joachim.
A second later the muridach fell dead to the ground, smoke rising from the crater that Calliande’s spell of elemental fire had blasted into its chest. Joachim and Gareth gaped at the corpse, and then looked up at her.
For a moment, no one spoke.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” said Calliande at last. “It was threatening to capture us and sell us as slaves.”
“I…I understood some of what it said,” said Gareth, staring at the dead muridach. “I see why Father wante
d me to learn orcish.”
“I didn’t know there were such things as rat people,” said Joachim. He was too stunned to cry.
“They’re called muridachs,” said Calliande, trying to bring some order to her thoughts. “I have never seen one, but your father fought them a long time ago.”
“Then Father must have beaten them,” said Joachim.
“Did it come back for revenge?” said Gareth.
“I…” started Calliande.
She opened her mouth, closed it again, and looked around.
Just where had Rhodruthain taken them?
She had traveled nearly everywhere in Andomhaim, and it didn’t look like any terrain anywhere in the High King’s realm. Calliande’s first thought was that the hills looked like the foothills of the Lion Mountains, or maybe the hills of western Durandis, but it wasn’t this dry in either Durandis or Caertigris. Rhodruthain had transported them somewhere through magic, that was obvious.
But where?
“Where’s Father?” said Joachim.
Calliande looked around and realized that she could see no sign of Ridmark anywhere. For an instant sheer dread paralyzed her. Had Rhodruthain killed him? God and the saints, if Ridmark was dead, what would she do? How could she carry on without him?
Then she felt foolish. Her dagger was still at her belt. Ridmark had given that dagger to her a long time ago, and Calliande had used it to save her life from an enemy. That had given a dagger a link to him, which meant she could use it to locate him.
“Wait a moment,” said Calliande, grasping the dagger’s hilt. “I’ll find him.”
She closed her eyes, concentrated, and cast the spell.
At once she felt his presence. The spell let her get a general sense of him, and relief flooded through her. He was alive and unharmed, and he was…
She blinked a few times.
Not all that far from here, actually.
“He’s about…ten or eleven miles that way, I think,” said Calliande, pointing towards the far side of the valley. “That would be,” she glanced at the sun, “south.”
“But he’s not hurt?” said Gareth.
“No,” said Calliande. “He’s not. We should join him at once. We…”
She looked at her sons, the realization of a problem working its way into her mind. A walk of ten miles over rough terrain did not daunt her at all, even after the strain on her health of the last year. Given how often she had to travel for her duties as Keeper, she had grown used to it. But the children?
Gareth might be able to manage it. Certainly, he would take it as a point of pride not to complain. But Joachim was only three. She doubted he could manage a ten-mile walk. She would have to carry him for at least part of the way, and they would have to rest often…
“Mother?” said Gareth.
“Yes?” said Calliande, shaken out of her thoughts.
“What happened to us?”
Now that was a good question.
“I don’t know,” said Calliande. An idea came to her, a way to head towards Ridmark and keep the children distracted from their fears at the same time. “But this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to find your father, and while we do, we’ll figure out where we are and what happened to us. Are you ready to help me with that?” Both boys nodded. “Then follow me. Stay close, don’t go running off, and tell me if you see anything strange.”
She started across the valley, Gareth and Joachim following her. Calliande’s heart screamed for her to go faster, but she kept her strides slow to match pace with the boys’ shorter legs. Despite the grim situation, a flicker of amusement went through her. Maybe this was how Ridmark had felt while waiting for the others to catch up to him during their journeys to Urd Morlemoch and Dragonfall.
Urd Maelwyn, though. The dead muridach had mentioned that name. Calliande had never heard of it, but it was almost certainly the name of a dark elven city. Had the muridach been in service to a dark elven prince?
“I’m thirsty,” said Joachim.
“When we stop to rest, I’ll summon some ice and melt it for us to drink,” said Calliande.
“Can I drink some of that water over there?” said Joachim, waving a hand at the sea.
“That’s seawater,” said Gareth. “It will make you sick.”
“Oh.” Joachim thought about that. “How did you know it was seawater?”
“Can’t you smell the salt?”
Joachim wrinkled his nose. “I couldn’t smell anything except the rat-monster that Mother killed. I think it really needed a bath.”
“I will not argue,” said Calliande. The problem of food and water weighed on her mind. Had Rhodruthain dumped them into a desert? The muridach had been here, though, and the creature didn’t look starved. With the magic of elemental water, Calliande could solve the problem of drinking water, and Ridmark had considerable skill as a hunter, so they could at least survive. “But right now, I want us to figure out how we got here and why.”
She needed to think, and listening to the boys’ questions would help her to do that. She wanted to shield her sons from the harsh truths of life as long as she could, but they were all in danger together, and the boys had to understand that. Besides, children had a knack for asking obvious questions that cut to the heart of the matter.
“That wizard,” said Joachim. “The wizard with the dragon staff. His magic brought us here.”
“Rhodruthain,” said Gareth. He managed to pronounce the name right. “Was he a high elf, Mother?”
“No,” said Calliande. “At least, I don’t think so. He wasn’t like any high elf I had ever seen.”
“Then he was a dark elf,” said Gareth. “Like the ones you and Father fought.”
“No,” said Calliande. “I don’t think he was a dark elf, either.”
“Maybe he was a new kind of elf?” said Joachim.
Calliande opened her mouth to say there were no other kinds of elves…and then she closed it.
Maybe there were other kindreds of elves. How would Calliande know? She had traveled through all Andomhaim, much of the Wilderland, and the Range of the manetaurs, but she knew there were lands and nations beyond those. Ardrhythain had spoken of continents and civilizations beyond the sea that would be devastated if the Frostborn had prevailed.
Was this one of those continents?
That was an uneasy thought. As far as Calliande knew, no one had ever crossed the sea and survived. The navigational skill of the men of Andomhaim was not up to the task, and none of the other kindreds seemed interested in traveling by sea either. Some ships had left at various times during the history of Andomhaim, seeking new lands, but none had ever returned…
“Wait,” said Calliande. “Connmar.”
“What’s a Connmar?” said Joachim.
“It’s a name from history,” said Calliande. “Connmar Pendragon, the younger brother of the High King during the war with the urdmordar. Before the Two Orders were founded, Connmar despaired of victory and believed mankind was doomed. He built a fleet, gathered his followers, and set sail. He was never seen again, nor were any of his ships, and then Ardrhythain founded the Swordbearers and the Magistri.”
Gareth looked fascinated by the history. Joachim only seemed confused. Right now, Calliande supposed, it didn’t matter. Though if Rhodruthain had met Connmar Pendragon at some point, that would explain how Rhodruthain knew Latin.
“But why did Rhodruthain bring us here?” said Gareth.
“A quest!” said Joachim. “He asked for the Keeper and the Shield Knight. That’s Mama and Papa. He must want you to go on a quest for him.” He brightened. “Like that bard sang at the High King’s hall before you got sick.”
Calliande suppressed a grimace at the memory. A few weeks before Joanna’s premature birth, she had felt well enough to attend a banquet at the High King’s Citadel, and there had been bards. One of the bards, no doubt hoping to flatter the Keeper and the Shield Knight, had sung of Calliande’s first journey to Ca
thair Solas with Kalomarus and the Swordbearers. Not only had the bard managed to get every single detail wrong, but it also reminded Calliande of the men who had died on the journey and how the sword of the Dragon Knight had almost killed Ridmark. It had put Calliande into a foul mood, but Joachim had been enchanted.
But Joachim had a point. Rhodruthain had been looking for the Keeper and the Shield Knight.
“If he wanted Mother and Father to go on a quest,” said Gareth, “maybe he should have asked politely.”
“That would have been preferable,” said Calliande. If Rhodruthain wanted help, this was exactly the wrong way to go about it. Why dump them here in this strange land?
And why bring the children along with them?
A shiver of fury went through Calliande. Whether well-intentioned or not, Rhodruthain had put her sons in danger, and she would not forget that. Or maybe he had intended to snatch away Calliande and Ridmark from the Citadel, leaving Gareth and Joachim behind. That might have been worse. Calliande would not know if her children were safe, and they would not know what had happened to their mother and father.
She knew firsthand what it felt like to lose her parents, and the thought that Rhodruthain might have inflicted that deliberately on her sons…
Her hand tightened against the staff of the Keeper.
Rhodruthain had caught her off guard once before. She had been weighed down with the numbness of her grief, and Calliande cursed herself as a fool for it. She had failed her daughter. She would not fail her sons. And the next time Rhodruthain showed himself, she would be ready for him.
They reached the far end of the valley and started up the slope. Joachim asked if he could rest for a bit, and Calliande nodded and let him sit. Gareth did not ask if he could rest, but he sat down nonetheless. She stood watch over them and touched the dagger again, casting the spell to find Ridmark. He was closer than he had been, maybe eight miles to the south, and he seemed to be moving in their direction. Calliande glanced at the boys, decided to give them a few more minutes, and then reached for the Sight, sweeping it around her.
Sevenfold Sword: Champion Page 5