The Last March: A Grimdark Epic Military Fantasy Novel (The Silent Champions Book 6)

by Andy Peloquin

  Blank stares greeted his words. Fatigue-numbed women, children, and elders stared at him as if at a madman. He felt half-mad, too—delirious with pain, clinging to a hope fainter than a candle in a hurricane. Yet he couldn’t give up. It wasn’t in his nature to quit, not with so many lives resting on his shoulders.

  Anguish twisted like a knife in Koltun’s gut as he instructed Lingram to keep riding. He wanted to slow, wanted to stop his horse, to dismount and help the women, children, and elders to hurry on to safety. He had sworn to protect them, to do everything in his power to keep them safe. But now he had to ride past. Had to turn a blind eye to their exhaustion, to their bloodied feet and terrified eyes. The only way any of them survived this was if he kept riding.

  For a moment, the horse beneath them slowed. “I don’t see the Arch-Guardian!” Lingram’s voice echoed with a hint of panic. “Or Captain Hadrick.”

  Koltun peered out from behind Lingram’s back, scanning the slow-moving column. A furious curse burst from his lips when he failed to catch sight of the Captain’s horse, the two pack horses carrying the remaining barrel of flarequartz, or the horse-drawn cart that had carried the Arch-Guardian. Of course the bastard Captain would flee to save his own hide. He’d expected better of Dayn, though. Even the Secret Keeper couldn’t be cold-hearted enough to turn his back on such a desperate plight. Or could he? The Arch-Guardian’s words, written on Bradon’s ceramic tablet, flashed through his mind.

  Dayn had asked how many lives he would be willing to trade to shape the future of humanity. Koltun hadn’t been able to give an answer, but the Secret Keeper had made his position clear. His mission to bring the flarequartz back to the Princelands, to his fellow priests in the Temple of Secrets, mattered more to the man than anything else.

  Koltun glanced over at Bradon’s corpse, still strapped to the pack horse that carried the last of the flarequartz the apprentice had taken against his master’s commands. I’m sorry, lad. You were a good man, and you deserved a better master.

  Drawing in a breath, Koltun steeled himself. “It changes nothing,” he said, forcing his voice to sound more confident than he felt. “We make do with what we have.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lingram clapped his heels against his horse’s ribs, and the mount took off at a fast trot once more.

  Koltun glanced over his shoulder at the seven miners who had ridden with him and Lingram. All of them had families in that column, loved ones who greeted them with exhausted smiles and tears of joy. Yet, to their credit, they slowed only a few moments, just long enough to squeeze the hands of husband or wife, to press quick kisses to their children’s foreheads before riding on. All but one. One of the men threw himself from his saddle and scooped up the infant cradled in his wife’s arms. The last Koltun saw of him, the man was trying to push his wife and toddling daughter up into the horse’s saddle.

  A lump rose to Koltun’s throat. He couldn’t fault the man. The miner hadn’t signed up to fight and die as Koltun, the Screaming Howlers, and the Legionnaires had. Of course he would tend to his family, the ones who mattered to him more than anything else in the world.

  He couldn’t shake off the burden of dread that settled on his shoulders, however. With only seven pairs of hands—the six miners and Lingram’s—to prepare to bring down the Cliffpass, would they have enough manpower? Or would the Eirdkilrs reach them too soon? He refused to consider that eventuality. For the sake of those they now left behind, their small company had to be enough.

  All of Koltun’s strength went into clinging to Lingram and remaining in the saddle as they raced down the Cliffpass. Even just shouting had nearly drained him—his eyes drooped shut, and his head swayed in time with the horse’s drumming hoofbeats.

  It seemed he barely blinked and when he opened his eyes, Lingram was shouting at him once more. “Sarge, look!”

  Blinking hard to clear the fatigue from his brain, Koltun peered around the young man’s back. Ahead, at the section of the Cliffpass Lieutenant Enthrak had indicated, four hungry-looking men and women were scrambling along the cliff walls. They clutched small, canvas-bound bundles in their hands and lengths of unraveled hemp rope dangled behind them.

  And beneath them, propped up in the wooden cart, sat Arch-Guardian Dayn. The lid of his flarequartz barrel was open, and he had three more women working to grind the stone into powder to fill the bundles. He had no tongue to form words, but directed the work with frenetic hand gestures and pointing motions.

  Koltun nearly wept at the sight. Relief swept over him, a soothing wave that washed over him like a cleansing bath after weeks on a hot, dusty road. He closed his eyes, his muscles relaxing, and would have fallen from the saddle had he not been bound to Lingram.

  By the Swordsman, we have a chance!

  He opened his eyes as Lingram reined to a halt. The young man unbound the length of rope securing Koltun to his waist, and Koltun swayed, reeling like a drunken sailor. Only sheer determination kept him upright in the saddle as Lingram leapt down. He couldn’t move—even the act of drawing breath threatened to topple him from his precarious perch—but simply stared at the Arch-Guardian’s pale, pinched face.

  Strong hands locked around his waist and he allowed the miners to haul him down from the saddle. He leaned on Lingram, legs wobbling, and let the young man help him over to the cart where Arch-Guardian Dayn sat. He made no protest as two miners lifted him into the cart, setting him at the Secret Keeper’s side. Then they were gone, off to work to prepare to bring down the Cliffpass as they’d intended. Lingram went with them. Young and strong and light, he was best-suited to join the miners climbing the cliffs to plant the flarequartz bundles.

  Koltun sat alone with Arch-Guardian Dayn, staring at the man. He struggled to find words—blood loss, fatigue, and pain numbed his mind.

  “How…?” he finally croaked out. “What…changed?” He could say no more. His throat was parched, his mouth bone dry, and his voice ragged as withered burial cloth.

  Arch-Guardian Dayn understood. With a grimace of pain, the Secret Keeper drew out his writing tablet and wrote, slowly, laboriously. Sweat stood out on his forehead, his eyes bright and feverish. Yet he didn’t stop until he finished, then turned the tablet toward Koltun.

  “The time came to make my choice. The more I considered, the more I grew certain of the Mistress’ will. I could not live with anything else.”

  Emotions thickened Koltun’s throat, swirled in his chest, too many for his mind to comprehend. He stared at those written words, lifted his eyes to the Arch-Guardian’s face.

  “That’s it?” The words came hard. “Your goddess suddenly changed Her mind and told you so?”

  Arch-Guardian Dayn shook his head. Again, he wrote and held up the tablet. “The goddess does not speak to us with words. Instead, She fills the world with information and gives us the freedom to make our own choices.”

  As if to emphasize his words, he swept a hand toward something that lay a few paces farther down the Cliffpass. Koltun squinted to see what it was. At first, he didn’t recognize the twisted lump of shining steel and red fabric, all stained with mud. But as he blinked, the details swam into focus. A body, clad in armor and a long red cloak, lying silent on the trail.

  He sucked in a breath. Captain Hadrick!

  Rigidity hadn’t yet set into the Captain’s limbs, and the pallor of his skin made his flabby neck appear like sagging, rotting dough, speckled with blood. Koltun’s head snapped back toward Arch-Guardian Dayn, a question in his eyes.

  Arch-Guardian Dayn held up his tablet. “He chose to flee rather than remain with his people. I watched him ride away, and all I could think about was that I would be the same kind of coward if I followed him. I could not be that man. When I reached this spot, I found him like this. His horse threw him from its back right here. Confirmation from my Mistress that I could not ignore.”

  Koltun felt a harsh laugh bubbling up from his chest. Captain Hadrick hadn’t been entirely useless, in the end. The arrog
ant coward had been the gods’ tool to convince the Arch-Guardian of the right thing to do.

  Arch-Guardian Dayn was writing again. “My body is too weak to help,” his tablet read, “but I can give of my mind and my knowledge. It is no less than the Mistress demands.”

  Then, as if realizing something, he sat up straighter and looked around. Koltun recognized the searching look in the Secret Keeper’s eyes, and the knowledge of what the priest sought brought the sorrow roiling back to his gut.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, gesturing to the pack horse that carried the quarter-barrel of mined stone. Bradon’s body was still slung over the saddle. “He died protecting his friends, and fighting to defend the flarequartz.”

  Grief twisted the Secret Keeper’s face, and tears welled in his eyes. Closing his eyes, he bowed his head for long seconds.

  Koltun let him mourn. Truth be told, he wanted to mourn, too. He’d lost so many friends, comrades, and brothers-at-arms—sisters, too, with Caela staying behind to fight. But he couldn’t. Not until the Cliffpass was brought down and the women and children reached safety. Grieving had to wait.

  So he turned his attention to the miners scrambling up the cliff wall, planting the bundles of flarequartz and stringing the hemp strands that would serve as the fuse. Though it took nearly all the strength that remained in his tired, battered, and pain-wracked body, he forced himself to sit up straight, to lift his voice and shout orders to the men and women.

  Time was running out. The enemy was coming, and if they didn’t finish their task before the Eirdkilrs caught up, no one would escape this desperate last march alive.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Koltun could feel time passing. At a blurring pace, his heart hammering a frantic beat, his anxious mind flooded with images of the oncoming Eirdkilrs, until he imagined he could hear the thunder of their heavy boots on hard stone. Too slowly, too, dragging as he chivvied the miners to work faster, to plant their flarequartz bundles with greater haste.

  Each minute was precious. Every second could mean the difference between survival and failure.

  The seven miners he’d brought from the front line set to work without hesitation, falling to the task of grinding the flarequartz to powder to fill the bundles, unspooling rope to serve as a burn cord, and setting the wrapped explosives in the Cliffpass. The four who had already been at work when they arrived showed them the cracks, crevices, and fissures in the stone that Arch-Guardian Dayn had designated as the best places to place each wrapped bundle. With so many additional hands, the work went twice as fast.

  Yet still too slowly. Koltun glanced back up the Cliffpass, toward the nearest bend in the trail just a quarter-mile away. Desperation burned bright within him as the path remained empty—the women, children, and elders should be appearing around the turn in the pass at any moment.

  Nothing. Bare rock walls, ground thick with mud, and grey haze-filled sky met his searching eyes.

  Come on! Tension coiled tight in his gut. They were running out of time. The Eirdkilrs couldn’t be far now. With more than two thousand Eirdkilrs facing too few Princelanders—not even a hundred and fifty had remained standing when Koltun rode away, leaving his friends and comrades behind—the battle would be over in a matter of minutes. Had been over, fought and ended while Koltun and Lingram rode away.

  At their speed, almost as fast as the horse that had carried him down the Cliffpass, the Eirdkilrs would cover the last fifteen miles to his position in less than three hours. Even if they paused to lick their wounds, they ought to be here soon.

  And still the fleeing women, children, and elders hadn’t arrived.

  A loud thump echoed from behind Koltun. Whirling, he sought the source of the sound—unmistakably the noise of a body hitting the muddy ground. He sucked in a breath as he caught sight of the shabby, blood-soaked figure lying on the Cliffpass.

  Lingram!

  He was moving before he realized it, scrabbling across the flat wooden bed of the cart and leaping down. The drop from cart to muddy ground was longer than he realized, his legs weaker, too. He fell, hard, face slamming into the mire and hard, stony earth beneath. Pain raced through his entire body, blinding hot in the stump of his arm. Yet somehow he managed to rise and stumble the five yards to where Lingram lay.

  Relief flooded him as he saw the youth’s chest rise and fall. But one look at the pallor of Lingram’s face told him the boy was in a bad state. The youth’s skin felt hot and clammy at once, his heart racing as Koltun felt for his pulse, and shivers wracked his thin frame.

  Keeper’s teeth! The exhaustion, cold, wet conditions, terror, and recent battle had overwhelmed the young man, and now fever ravaged his body.

  Struggling to his feet, Koltun spun toward the cart. “Tell me you’ve got something for his fever, Arch-Guardian!"

  The Secret Keeper shook his head and gestured to himself. Koltun understood—had the priest had a remedy handy, he would have already used it to cure his own ailment.

  Koltun’s heart thundered a frantic beat as he looked around for anything—anything!—he could use to help Lingram. But he found only bare rock and muddy ground. The Menders had stayed behind to help hold the shield wall against the Eirdkilrs. The cart was bare of supplies. If the women or elders of Highcliff Motte had anything, it was too far back to be of any use.

  Lingram’s eyelids fluttered, opened for a moment. “S-Sarge,” he said, teeth chattering. “S-So…tired. C-Cold.”

  “I know, lad.” Koltun gripped the youth’s hand in his own. “But hold on. You’ll be away from all this soon enough.”

  It felt like a lie. Keeper knew none of them were getting out of this alive. And yet, saying the words aloud was the best he could do to comfort the exhausted, sick young man. Here and now, with the enemy coming for them, that faint shred of hope had to be enough.

  A shadow loomed over him, and Koltun looked up to find Arch-Guardian Dayn had descended from his cart. The Secret Keeper swayed unsteadily, his face drawn and pinched with the pain of his wound. Even from this distance, Koltun could smell the stink of fester. The Secret Keeper’s injury hadn’t healed. Wouldn’t heal now.

  Arch-Guardian Dayn lifted his writing tablet, and Koltun read the words. “Follow me. Bring him.”

  Koltun stared at the priest, but Arch-Guardian Dayn turned away without further explanation and struggled up the Cliffpass. The incline was shallow, the muddy ground dotted with rocks that made for easy climbing, but pain and fever left the priest weak. He tottered and swayed with every step, and his progress was glacial.

  Koltun called over two of the nearby miners to help, and together they lifted Lingram’s shivering body onto Koltun’s back. Koltun’s knees wobbled and sagged, joints aching, but he forced himself to take a single step. Just one, barely more than a shuffle, but it was enough. Holding the young man in place with his one good arm, Koltun staggered up the incline in pursuit of the stumbling Secret Keeper.

  Arch-Guardian Dayn climbed only a short distance, but it felt like an eternity passed before he turned his shaky steps toward the western wall of the Cliffpass. Koltun’s eyes widened in surprise as the priest seemed to disappear into the cliff face.

  What the fiery hell? He blinked—had his pain and exhaustion-numbed mind imagined it?

  But no, as he reached the spot where he’d last seen the Arch-Guardian, he understood. A narrow passage had been carved into the cliffs at just the right angle to make it all but invisible to anyone not directly in front of it. The Secret Keeper shambled up the adjoining trail, heading toward what looked like a blank wall of stone. Again, the appearance proved deceiving. At the touch of Dayn’s hands, the rock wall itself slid aside to reveal a dark entrance into the mouth of a tunnel.

  Arch-Guardian Dayn slumped against the wall and slid down to a seat, sweating and panting. With effort, Koltun lowered Lingram’s body to the ground as carefully as his exhausted muscles could manage.

  He stared in surprise at the opening into the mountain
itself. “What…is this…place?” He, too, labored for breath. Blood loss, pain, and fatigue left him drained, and it felt as if he’d just run a thousand leagues.

  Arch-Guardian Dayn tapped a finger against his chest, then motioned to the tunnel.

  “A Secret Keeper path?” Koltun asked.

  The priest nodded, then reached for the pouch at his side. Opening it, he revealed four small chunks of the dark brown stone he and Bradon had crossed Fehl to collect.

  Koltun’s eyebrows rose. “The Secret Keepers mined for flarequartz here?”

  Again, Arch-Guardian Dayn nodded, then drew out a pendant from beneath his robes. The jewelry was shaped in the beautiful, lithe figure of a woman. The Mistress, goddess of the Secret Keepers.

  But it was the metal that the priest indicated, not the figure.

  “Silver?” Koltun asked, mind racing. “Silver and flarequartz?”

  This time, the priest shook his head. With effort, he reached into his sweat-soaked, mud-splattered, reeking robes and drew out the writing tablet. He scratched a few words onto the ceramic surface with a shaky hand, then held it up to Koltun.

  “Mistress cares not for silver,” the words read.

  Koltun’s brow furrowed and he struggled to decipher the meaning of the priest’s words. “So what, the Secret Keepers have been hunting flarequartz throughout the Sawtooth Mountains, and finding silver is just a coincidence?”

  Arch-Guardian Dayn nodded. Again, he wrote—Koltun didn’t hurry him, glad for a few moments to catch his breath. “Searched for three hundred years. Stone spoke of in Serenii texts. Now, we found it.”

  Koltun sucked in a breath. Three hundred years? The Secret Keepers had spent nearly as long hunting this strange stone as the Princelanders had lived on Fehl. No wonder it’s so important to him! This would be the discovery of not just Dayn’s lifetime, but the lifetime of every Secret Keeper that had lived on the continent.

  The Secret Keepers sought to shepherd mankind into the future. Flarequartz and its marvelous properties could shape that future in countless ways. Arch-Guardian Dayn had not only his own mission to fulfill, but that of every Secret Keeper that had lived and died searching for this stone.