“Dahken Cor, for years you have avoided my rule, even to the extent of slaying my subjects, and yet now you come before me willingly, with a plea for formal parlay. What do you here?” asked the queen, her voice surprisingly strong for her obviously advanced age. Her face remained impassive as she spoke, and yet there was hardness in her gaze. Cor knew he was expected to show all manners of respect and deference to this woman, but Rael and his death had driven those sentiments out of him.
“I’ve come hoping to end any hostility between us. I am not evil and wish no harm to anyone in the West. I don’t want to have to avoid your spies any longer,” Cor answered, though somehow it seemed inadequate.
“I cannot help but question your honesty Dahken Cor. You are responsible for the death of twelve of my soldiers as well as a venerable priest, a priest that you knew, that served Garod faithfully for over sixty years.” The queen’s manner remained impassive, but her voice developed an edge. The accusation brought a sense of guilt that Cor pushed away with his response.
“Your soldiers were obviously under orders to take me regardless of whether or not I was willing. You would have people believe that they in Aquis live in freedom from tyranny under the care of Garod, but apparently that freedom from tyranny only exists for those who accept Garod’s care without thought. Your priests have changed history over the last seven hundred years, and I doubt even Her Majesty knows the true history of the West or especially the Dahken.”
His challenged her with his tone, and though he used the title, his words contained no respect. This brought fire into the queen’s eyes, but she allowed him to speak his piece; extreme silence had come over the crowd.
“You blaspheme,” she said, quieter now than before, “and you dare to throw accusations at the god to whom you and all Westerners owe their freedom. You come before me, showing no respect before Garod. You worship an evil god who did nothing to end the enslavement of the West at the hands of the Loszians, and your people allied themselves with the sorcerers. Were it not for your letter announcing this parlay, I would do as my advisors recommend and have your life ended here and now.”
Though the queen’s face was honest in her dire warning, Cor could not help but smile at the threat. He was keenly aware of Soulmourn and Ebonwing’s presence at his belt and could almost hear them urging him to do battle and shed blood, and for a brief moment, Cor considered whether he could in fact reach Queen Erella to slay her first before her guard were upon him. He felt a mirthless laugh well up within him, but he stifled it and pushed these thoughts away.
“I don’t see the need to discuss history, nor epistemology, with you Queen Erella,” Cor replied with contempt. “Suffice it to say, almost everything you know and teach about the Dahken is untrue at best. I’m here for a specific reason, and I would have it heard.
“I ask free passage through the Shining West at my will, and I will harm no one except in my own defense. I require free access through one of the mountain passes into Losz and safe passage back into Aquis when my business is concluded.” This created quite a stir and some guffaws amongst the small crowd.
“Entrance into Losz is strictly forbidden to all,” the queen replied succinctly.
“Majesty, I don’t need your permission,” he said, beginning to clench his teeth; his defiance was clearly appalling to both the priests and soldiers. “I have traveled the breadth of the West and avoided your spies for months. I will find a way into Losz without you if necessary, but frankly I require the fastest path available.”
“What business could you possibly have in the Loszian Empire that does not involve harm to the West? The Dahken and the Loszians have long stood against us.”
Cor unbuttoned one if his saddlebags and removed the preserved tattoo Rael had cut from the Loszian assassin so long ago. He held it up for Queen Erella who motioned with her right hand, and a plated soldier stepped forward, took it from Cor and brought it to the queen for inspection. She looked at the design on one side for a long moment, before turning it over; her impassiveness turned suddenly to revulsion, and she cast it back towards Cor with revulsion.
“You dare to defile my hands with a trophy cut from human flesh!” she very nearly screamed at him. “Perhaps the honor of peaceful parlay is not for you; you are no more man than the Loszian necromancers who slay at will in their own orgies of evil.”
Her guards and soldiers, including the nine who still flanked Cor, rested hands on weapons, their weight shifted to the balls of their feet. Should she order it, they were ready for combat, and Cor heard the weapons at his belt singing in the back of his mind. They wanted blood. He willed them from his mind, and Cor made certain his voice reflected level calm as his next words could mean his death.
“My apologies, Majesty. The marking is a tattoo cut from the arm of the Loszian who murdered my parents two years ago. The Loszian lords mark their servants so that other lords know whom they serve. The Loszian necromancer who claims this mark came into Aquis by way of a smuggler in the town of Hager and completely destroyed Sanctum. While the three servants he brought with him did not live to return to Losz, he unfortunately escaped me through magic.” Cor paused a moment, holding the queen’s gaze and hoped she would come to the same logical conclusion as he. “I would like very much to meet him again.”
“My queen, may I speak with you?” asked a voice from the periphery of the hall.
Cor looked to the left where an old man, though not as old as the queen herself, stood in a doorway of an adjoining corridor. The man had stark white hair and beard that looked as if it had begun to thin only recently, and his back was bent in a way common to those of advanced age. He approached the queen with a speed that was unexpected for his apparent age and physical condition and leaned over her in a most familiar fashion with his back to the assembly. He whispered at an inaudible level, and Cor could not see the man’s lips for he kept his face pointed directly away. After only a few seconds, the man stood up and planted himself to the side of and slightly behind Queen Erella.
“Dahken Cor, I see little reason to grant you this request, and I have little doubt that you will turn out to be treacherous like those Dahken before you. However, provided you leave Byrverus without incident, I will allow you access through the mountains. I will send two of my guard captains with you to ensure your safe passage; they will cease to accompany you once you reach Fort Haldon in the mountains.
“Dahken Cor, I do not expect I will ever see you again. Either the Loszians will slay you or pervert you to their wills, assuming they haven’t already. If by some chance you are a man of honor, and by even less chance you survive your endeavor, I expect you to present yourself before me once more.”
Queen Erella stood, turned and walked slowly, but not without strength, exiting through a corridor to the right of the throne and dais. Two armored guards followed behind her, while the old man selected two armored men, one of whom led Cor into the palace, and spoke with them in hushed tones. Cor stepped forward to the bottom of the steps leading up the dais and picked up the tattooed skin, placing it back in a pouch at his belt. He patted the horse, deciding the entire affair went about as well as he could have expected. Now, he only had to hope he was right.
* * *
Palius knew what every Westerner knew and many things beyond common knowledge. He had no idea what the Dahken referred to as the “true history” and neither did he care. The older Dahken who abducted him clearly had corrupted the young man, who now styled himself Dahken Cor. The Dahken proved himself to be blasphemous, disrespectful, arrogant and remorseless; he was everything history had taught Palius the Dahken were.
He had advised the queen to allow Cor his request; evil the man may in fact be, but Palius was not certain he was a liar. Cor’s desire to meet, and perhaps slay, his parents murderer seemed genuine. If the Dahken truly was in league with the Loszians, as Queen Erella seemed to suspect, he would already have a route into the empire. With all likelihood, the Loszians would kill Dahken
Cor on sight, and that would resolve the matter completely.
26.
It took the better part of three hours for the two captains to prepare for their new responsibility. They had to secure horses, gear and supplies, as well as official letters from the old man explaining to any official what their specific mission was and where it ended. Cor waited impatiently with Kelli’s reigns in his hand. He didn’t understand the complications; when he wanted or needed to go somewhere, he simply went.
The ride to Fort Haldon would not take long, perhaps a week, as the captains intended to set a brisk pace. The fort did not show up on Cor’s map, which didn’t completely surprise him. Fort Haldon was a military installation only, little more than a wooden stockade with tall archer’s towers, whose sole purpose was to guard one of the few passes that led completely through the mountains to Losz. Approximately five hundred men stayed there, almost all of them archers, and the force was changed out completely every six months.
The first two days were ridden in near silence, with what little conversation passing only between the two captains. They did not interact with Cor whatsoever, preferring each other’s company; they clearly did not care for the duty and obviously had their own misgivings about the man they traveled with to Fort Haldon. The captains ate their own food, not partaking of anything Cor ate or prepared, and offering him nothing of theirs. Cor knew that one day he would have to address mistrust as well as curiosity, but for now he was content to allow the two soldiers their own misguided thoughts and beliefs.
As the ride continued, the men began to talk more freely of various things ranging from their families and extended families, the weather, battle and what they will do when they choose to be done with the army. One of the captains was a career soldier and had already decided to die in the queen’s service, one way or the other, while the other only did the job to help pay his father’s debts. In another few years, he would leave the queen’s service and return to the farm. Cor began to take part in the conversations and was at first met with distrustful silence. As the soldiers came to realize that he and they were different only in minor ways, they began to speak with him more easily, though they often would end conversations in awkward silence. It would not be fair to say that by the time the three men reached Fort Haldon they were fast friends, but perhaps the two captains had a slightly different view of the Dahken. At the least they understood Cor’s desire to locate his parents’ killer.
Cor recognized the terrain as they rode closer to the ever present mountains on the eastern horizon. The ground changed into foothills the closer they journeyed; it was no different as when Cor went into the mountains with Kamar. The memory brought him a hint of sadness; that man did not deserve his death, and Cor always wondered why the spider hadn’t attacked him first. Perhaps the thing had a memory of the meal that had escaped it once before.
Fort Haldon was nearly one hundred fifty squat wooden structures behind a fifty foot tall wooden stockade. It looked more like a military camp than an actual fort, and only the wooden shacks as opposed to canvas tents gave the fort an air of permanence. The wall was perhaps one hundred feet wide, ending on either end at an impassible rock face. Eight towers, roughly twenty feet taller than the wall itself and currently each manned by four men with longbows, were interspersed at even intervals from one end to the other. A walkway ran between these towers, providing nearly four feet of cover for any defenders standing upon it, and it was eight feet wide, with standing room for two ranks of archers if necessary. Should a massed attack come down the pass, roughly half of the fort’s defenders could man the walls in defense. Additionally, eight catapults with large piles of boulders beside them stood at the center of the fort, surely with the ability to toss large amounts of rock several hundred feet beyond the stockade. While Cor was not skilled in the arts of war, he was sure that Fort Haldon’s five hundred could easily slay thousands of attacking troops before falling.
Pickets met the group a quarter mile from the fort and held them until the commander and several of his men arrived. He was a tall Westerner, several inches taller than Cor, and was of a lean and wiry build. He wore leather armor, designed for ease of movement and carried a shortsword at his side and a full quiver on his back. The commander inspected the captains’ orders, written by Palius with the queen’s seal, and then dismissed the soldiers to return to Byrverus with fresh horses to speed them on their way. Cor clasped the men’s arms, and they bid each other farewell. The commander welcomed Cor into Fort Haldon and offered him all manners of hospitality, which Cor declined saying he wished to get on with his journey. The commander expressed his concern over Cor’s intent to enter Losz, but the queen’s order was clear in the matter; if Cor intended to cross the mountains into the Loszian Empire, the commander would send him on his way.
Cor merely accepted some additional provisions, such as extra water for water is nearly impossible to find in the Spine, before announcing he was ready to leave. A dozen men were called to the wall’s center where they took up positions grasping thick hemp ropes. The men heaved and a pair of near seamless doors, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the wall, opened inward. Cor looked out the open gate into a desolate but wide mountain pass. He thanked Fort Haldon’s commander one last time before riding through at a trot, and he could hear the men heaving behind him as the doors closed with a booming thud. Cor turned Kelli around the see that the doors when completely closed were almost invisible from the outside.
Cor knew the mountains were as wide as seventy miles in places, and he couldn’t be sure how long it would take him to pass through them. First of all, he wasn’t exactly certain where he was located, as Fort Haldon was not marked on his map; he could only make an educated guess based on the direction they had traveled from Byrverus. Also, the ground was simply treacherous, inclining alternately upward then downward with a fair amount of loose rock and rubble. He kept Kelli to a walk and even walked alongside her at times; he had no interest in the mare throwing a shoe or worse.
It was little more than a month ago that Cor promised himself that he never again enter the World’s Spine, and yet here he was, not only passing through the mountains but well on his way into the Loszian Empire with the intention of playing a very dangerous game with a necromancer. Cor couldn’t help wondering why his blood had been tainted with the power of Dahk. He could have been very happy as a farmer; while the work was not easy, he believed most farmers likely underestimated the happiness in such a simple life. Cor was sure his life had never been simple since the winter night when he was a boy that an old man had requested shelter from a horrible snowstorm.
Cor endeavored to put such thoughts out of his mind; in truth, the why, or what could have been, did not matter at all. The only thing that mattered was the reality that here he was crossing the border between the moral but revisionist West and an immoral decadent nation of necromancers and assassins. Cor needed to take utmost care in remaining perceptive of his surroundings. The Loszians would have scouts in or above the rocky pass, but he could not know how close to Fort Haldon they would be. Cor reasonably assumed that the fort’s commander would have his own scouts in the area, which made Cor wonder if the opposing scouts would confront each other or simply keep their distance from one another.
The days had begun to grow noticeably shorter, and in the mountain pass Cor could not push too far with the light fading so quickly. With the rough, rocky terrain, he could only guess that he traversed perhaps ten miles in the few hours since leaving Fort Haldon. He set out fresh water and some oats in a feedbag and tied the horse to a large rock outcropping. Kelli was somewhat free spirited, and Cor was not yet comfortable with leaving her unattended. He did not sleep well, neither for the discomfort of the ground or sleeping in armor for he had grown accustom to those, but due to the disquieting sensation of being watched.
Cor spent the entire next day looking over his shoulder or up on the ridges around him. He still could not ignore the feeling that he was wat
ched, though he was fairly certain that the spy was not above him. Throughout this day, Cor saw many mountain animals on the various ridges, goats being the most common. He had also seen two bears, huge shaggy brown animals that watched him with curiosity, no doubt wondering what he tasted like. The pair were also above him and obviously not curious enough to make their way down into the pass. Cor assumed that whomever watched him would also draw the attention of animals if they were in fact above him on the ridges, and this led him to the conclusion that the spy stayed a safe distance in front or behind him. Or perhaps it was simply his imagination.
Weather made the third day absolutely miserable. The day never warmed to a comfortable level, and a storm had moved in the night before, bringing cold driving rain from morning through the afternoon. At points Cor had to stop as the rain became so hard that he could not see and Kelli had trouble keeping her footing. Their breath billowed like hot steam in front of them, and though the rain stopped in the afternoon, the sun did not appear from behind the dark gray clouds. Cor had not choice but to sleep almost naked; the garments he wore under his armor became so soaked with the near freezing rain that he could only warm himself by removing them. The night was no colder than the day, and the next day warmed under the sun quickly. Cor, his clothes still wet from the previous day, decided to wait a few hours before moving on, allowing them to dry against the sun warmed rocks.
Blood and Steel Page 20