by Rutger Krenn
FORTRESS OF THE FORGOTTEN
BOOK ONE OF THE SWORDMASTER SERIES
Rutger Krenn
Copyright 2014 Rutger Krenn
Cover Design by www.ebooklaunch.com
When ancient evil rises so too do the powers that ever contend with it. Men must battle the servants of destruction, wizardry oppose dark sorcery and courage vie against despair. Thus it has been through the long ages, and so it will continue. Unless darkness triumphs forever . . .
Chapter 1
The Chung still hunted him.
Talon rode upwards along the shadowed path of a ridge. The sorrel, which had carried him a long way safely, pricked its ears as it followed the narrow track between tall, overhanging trees. They were in high country now; beautiful, but dangerous for the unwary.
Talon’s senses were keenly alert. After some time he neared a clearing surrounded by dark conifers. The nearby mountainsides channeled a breeze scented with pinesap. Dismounting, he ran his hands affectionately over his mount’s reddish brown coat. He couldn’t afford any delays, but the tired horse held a special place in his heart. Looping the reigns quickly and skilfully over a branch, he went to see where his pursuers were.
Cautiously, he inched on his stomach to the edge of the ridge and studied his back trail. Now that he was out of the shadows, the noon sun beat down and he took a sip from his water bag. He was careful that no sudden movement betrayed his presence. In the valley below he saw rising dust and an occasional flash of color. His enemies were there, but he couldn’t see clearly enough to count them. Were they all together, or had some slipped ahead?
Even in the heat of the day they were riding their horses hard, and though they were several miles distant they were closer than they were this morning.
Talon watched the Chung warriors for a little while longer, wanting more to drink but rejecting the temptation before making his way back to the sorrel. He gave the horse the last of the water and rode on, hugging to the cover of trees wherever they grew on the ridgeline. Soon the trail took him over to the other side and away from view.
He paused, considering what to do. Ideas came and went as his eyes meticulously took in every detail of the countryside. Several valleys opened nearby and he believed he was near Thromdar castle, but he wouldn’t reach it today, nor was he likely to make it much sooner than tomorrow night.
There were still many long hours of pursuit ahead. Tiredly, he brushed beads of perspiration off his forehead and acknowledged that he was assuming he would reach safety at all. He must be honest with himself; his enemies had a good chance of finding him before then.
His first task was to try and hide his trail and deceive them. He’d been doing this for weeks now, and skilled as he was, he still hadn’t thrown them off for very long. Each time gave the sorrel a chance to rest though, and it gave him a brief respite from the worry that constantly nagged him. There was also a grim satisfaction in outwitting, even momentarily, those who hunted him. He could evade them for only so long however. They would never give up the pursuit, and sooner or later a deadly confrontation would occur.
Making up his mind he continued down the path. It wasn’t really a proper track, just a rough trail between the trees that a few riders had occasionally used over the years.
This was a lonely part of the mountains. From here, all the way to the east coast, was the kingdom of Aren Daleth. Further along it became a prosperous and well-populated realm.
Far to the south, Eruthram was a danger to everyone. Even in this most northerly of realms, many hundreds of leagues away, they felt the peril. His influence stretched beyond all borders and no race, people or place was safe from his threat. A sudden chill ran up Talon’s spine as though merely thinking about him had drawn the gaze of unseen and malicious eyes.
The feeling swiftly passed, and he found one of the things he was looking for. The grass near the trail had become stunted and brown. It was short and the earth beneath was hard. He turned aside and headed off at an angle. The sorrel left virtually no sign of his passing.
He knew it wouldn’t deceive his enemies for long. The trail couldn’t be hidden altogether, and there was no such thing as leaving no sign at all, as long as those who followed had sufficient skill. Dourly, he acknowledged his hunters had proven their ability. Still, it might delay them a little while.
He cast his mind back over the years to how it had begun. Mountain country was good for thinking. There was time and space enough to work things out, to feel the scented breeze on his face and to fill his lungs with fresh air. There was nothing like it, and here, in his childhood home of Aren Daleth, the mountains were magnificent. He caught the far off glint of snowy peaks and felt, after these many years, that he finally had a chance to build a life of his own choosing.
He had been only six years old when Goblins attacked his group. The party was made up of a dozen men, all of them warriors except the merchant they worked for, who was travelling with goods to the western land of the Chung. Talon was in his service. He had been placed there by his father as he was the second son and his older brother, and father as well it seemed, didn’t like to have him around. It didn’t worry Talon as he was glad to escape the beatings they gave him. He didn’t know why they treated him that way; he always tried to do the right thing, but he had heard them talking one day when they thought he couldn’t hear. It had something to do with his mother, but whatever it was he wouldn’t find out easily. She had died soon after he was born.
“Only what she deserved,” he had heard his father say coldly.
As a child he didn’t understand those words. As an adult, he could now perhaps guess some of their background. He also knew that things were rarely as they seemed. There was a mystery about his mother that was always hinted at but never spoken, and he intended to search out the answers.
The Goblins ambushed the group from a well concealed position. He still remembered their ugly faces, fierce with hatred and filled with a killing frenzy. And they had killed.
The whole party was down in a matter of minutes and soon only Talon was left. He was just a boy, but violence and fear didn’t shock him as badly as it would have many others his age. He’d almost grown accustomed to it. He picked up a discarded sword, too heavy for him to lift properly, but he intended to use it.
He remembered how they tried to circle him and how he had backed up against the side of a cliff so they could only form a half ring around him. They looked like very ugly men, though shorter, and their limbs were too long for their bodies making them appear ungainly. Nevertheless, there was tremendous strength in them. They carried wicked looking scimitars in their calloused hands, the skin of which, like the rest of them, was swarthy.
It was their eyes that scared Talon the most though. They looked at him and saw not a boy, but an enemy. A helpless enemy perhaps, but one to be captured and dealt with. The warriors were all dead, and now they could take their time.
There were only a half a dozen of them left, but one alone was more than Talon could handle. A fierce feeling rose within him, part anger and part something else. He had never felt its like before, but it coursed through his blood and ran through all his limbs. He would defy them!
“Well,” he said, trying to keep his voice from betraying fear and saying what he thought his father would have in the same place. “Are the race of Goblins scared of one man? It must be true that you’re all cowards.”
The Goblins hissed and snarled. They were more like animals than people, and yet he knew they were far more cunning than they looked.
“You ain’t a man, little th
ing. And you ain’t going to become one,” rasped the foremost Goblin. His voice was thick and heavy, almost a snarl.
They grew silent and moved closer, though not yet near enough for a slash of his sword. The one who had spoken drew a knife from his belt. He ran a grubby finger along its edge, testing the sharpness. He pulled another and drew the blades slowly across each other. The sound of their honing seemed very loud.
Without warning the Goblin threw. The knife flew fast and hard at Talon; not at his body but at the hands holding the sword. Quickly he pulled back his arms and the knife clattered against his sword and fell harmlessly to the ground.
“Agchack is going to enjoy!” barked the leader, and the others laughed. The sound was like a pack of wolves snarling and yapping in the desolate wilderness during the lonely hours of a winter night.
The others drew their knives also, and one after the other they threw at his hands.
Even now, all these years later, the scars were still there. Talon, his hand firmly holding the sorrel’s reigns, looked down at his right arm, which had been lower on the hilt and borne the brunt. They weren’t obvious, the wounds having healed and the skin growing back healthily, but they would never fade entirely.
He guided the horse into a heavy stand of timber. The leaves of untold years lay thick and undisturbed on the ground and he went several hundred feet beneath the cover of trees before dismounting.
He tethered the sorrel. “Stay here, boy,” he said quietly, not as an instruction to the horse but to reassure it with his voice. He traced his way back to where he’d entered the wood.
Picking up a fallen pine branch with long dead needles he carefully swept the leaves to remove all trace of his passing. He didn’t forget to cover up the slight indentation where the branch had lain on the ground as well. Shifting something like that left a mark for those who noticed such things. It may have been there for months and he knew that otherwise he would have left a sign of his passing just as obvious as any tracks.
He returned to the sorrel, placed the branch on a spot where it could have fallen naturally, and began to ride once more. He was leaving a trail again, but he couldn’t hide it all the time. This would be found but it might take his enemies a while to do so.
The sorrel came out of the stand of trees some miles to the north and Talon started riding along its edge. They were climbing again, and the lonesome valley had grown even more silent and begun to darken. It wasn’t yet as dim as beneath the pines, but daylight was swiftly fading and in less than an hour night would claim the mountains.
It would have been pleasant, he thought, to just now be returning to a house after a hard day’s work. To a place where lantern light and the flicker of the hearth fire could be seen through windows and doors. It would be nice to come home to warmth and laughter and for someone to welcome him. It would be a good way to live, and all the more so if he could find someone to share his days with.
He decided to stop. The sorrel had come a long way, but there was still further to go. He would rest now, despite the risk, in the concealment of the eaves of the wood. When it was fully dark he would ride again.
He tethered the horse and studied the nearby grass. It wasn’t as good as the sorrel deserved, and Talon wished he could feed him the oats he’d earned, but it was something at least. He laid himself down in the shadows and watched, listening to the steady rhythm of grazing and kept his ears open for other sounds.
He heard very little. There was only the distant call of wood pigeons settling down for the night and the slight rustle of leaves in the tops of the trees. There was a murmur along forest aisles, some ghostly touch of air that was not quite reassuring.
He strained to hear any sign of pursuit but knew this was probably futile. Had the Chung tracked him down they would attack swiftly and without warning. He was unlikely to hear them coming before the very last moment.
He was sick and tired of running. He was within reach of safety, but if they found him first it could only mean death. Certainly for him, but he vowed with determination, just as surely for some of them. There were ten Chung, and he couldn’t hope to beat them all, but some at least would feel the keen edge of his sword.
Night stole down the sides of the mountain and pooled into the valley. The air turned cool and the forest stilled. There was nothing to be seen or heard.
Talon began walking the sorrel to warm him up. He needed to conserve his strength in case the pursuers closed in. Then he would need all the speed and endurance the horse could offer.
After a while he mounted and set the horse to an easy canter. He climbed again, ensuring that he wasn’t going to get caught in view of his pursuers at the bottom of the valley come daylight. They would probably guess this course of action, reckoning he’d head for a ridge and try and lose them by slipping into a different valley, but they couldn’t know which way he would go and they couldn’t track him in the dark.
He chose to go to the north. It would get him where he was going quickly and whatever trail he left wouldn’t be found until morning.
Soon he reached another ridge and followed an ancient path for a mile or so. He made sure to keep trees between himself and the valley he’d left to stop any chance of being silhouetted against the starlit sky.
Some while later he came to the trail’s end. It forked into two new ones, both entering different valleys. To the right the track descended gradually and to the left it was somewhat steeper. Stony ground made up both paths and they seemed equally good for hiding his sign.
There was something about the smaller valley on the left that made him uneasy. He smelled smoke. It was faint at this height, but down in the dark hollow of the mountains there were fires. Perhaps many of them. He could see its flicker in places amid the trees, but it was so obscured that he couldn’t tell how many there were. Yet to his knowledge no one lived there at all.
This was the Battlemark of Aren Daleth, so called because it was the border between the kingdom of the Northmen and the Goblins who inhabited the mountains to the west. They were bitter enemies and many battles had been fought along its length. That was the main reason for Thromdar castle. It straddled the primary pass that allowed entry to the rest of Aren Daleth.
There were other passes and other castles but these routes were narrow and easily defended. The pass that Thromdar protected wasn’t, and the castle was therefore built to maintain a small army.
Talon didn’t know whose fires they were, and that worried him. They could be soldiers of Aren Daleth or Goblins. It was more likely to be the former though. Unless it was a large army of Goblins they wouldn’t risk coming this close to the castle.
He made his decision. This could be a chance to lose his pursuers: if there were soldiers from Aren Daleth nearby he could return to Thromdar with them and his enemies would have lost their opportunity to kill him.
He slipped down the trail as quietly as he could and made sure the sorrel went slowly so as to leave as little trace as possible. His heart was light and it felt like a great burden was lifted from his shoulders. Nevertheless, he went with great care. After all, he couldn’t be sure who was sitting next to those fires. Men had died in these mountains by making such mistakes, and he was a very careful man. There were times to be bold, indeed times to take the greatest risks, but never unnecessarily.
He slipped into the valley as though the sorrel was a shadow cast by the faint glitter of starlight. There was no noise and nothing to be seen. Horse and rider were like a formless spirit from another world.
It was some time close to midnight when Talon reached the bottom of the valley. He’d passed through a large stand of timber, and the smoke was now strong in the air. All the time it had grown, and it now filled his nose with a sharp and pungent odor.
There were more fires than he had at first thought. There were hundreds. This was the encampment of a large army, and he was now very close.
There would be picket lines and sentries nearby. But sentries for whom? Why wo
uld an army of Northmen be encamped here instead of in Thromdar’ barracks? He didn’t know, but he had to find out, and he had to do it soon.
If these were men from Aren Daleth it was strange, but all was well. If not, there was great danger. Danger for him, because come daylight he might be seen leaving the valley, and danger for his homeland. His loyalty was undiminished even though he hadn’t been here for many years. It was his home and he had a strong desire to protect it.
Bitterly tired and unsure of whether to curse his luck or praise it, he dismounted and tied the sorrel to a branch. Slowly, using all the skill he’d been taught in such things, he crept through the trees toward the fires.
He found every ditch, every pool of shadow and all the stands of bushes and grass that could hide his approach. He spotted the sentries and noted they were positioned in pairs, but it was dark and they were too far away to be seen clearly. He couldn’t approach them to see who they were as there wasn’t sufficient cover to get that close. Nor did they speak.
Talon was uneasy and muttered silently under his breath. He kept going toward the main encampment.
Soon it became clear to him. Terribly clear. This was an army of Goblins. He looked out at them, sprawled in their ungainly fashion among the flickering lights of their fires. They were several thousand strong and showed no signs of nervousness. They were close to Thromdar castle and the death that had claimed many of their kind, yet it didn’t seem to worry them at all. And the fact that it didn’t worry them worried Talon very much.
He had to get out of here and go to Thromdar with great speed. Even as his mind was forming these thoughts his body was moving.
Aren Daleth must be warned. He didn’t know why their scouts hadn’t picked up this Goblin army, but if they had, something was wrong. Why hadn’t it been routed?
He passed the sentries again on his way back and froze as he caught a murmur of conversation. Had they heard something that alarmed them?