Dark King Of The North (Book 3) (3 page)

Adara stood, her eyes shifting to watch their surroundings.

Frog climbed aboard his steed. “Most likely some exiles have gotten themselves some boots. We should get back to Captain Weaver. He’ll want to know about this.”

“I’m afraid we can’t allow that,” a voice said.

All heads turned to their left and spotted a tall, lanky fellow stepping out from behind a thick pine. A thin sword rested in his right hand, the blade aimed at Adara.

“Fortisquo!” the woman shouted.

“And friends,” another voice spoke.

The wardens and Adara looked to their right. A gigantic man with a bald head moved from dark shade into the open, four burly men with swords behind him.

“Formation!” Frog yelled.

The wardens began to move their horses, but they suddenly halted, staring at white flecks trickling down from the sky.

“I’ve brought along an old friend of yours, Adara,” Belgad the Liar said as Karitha slipped from a shadow and into view.

“Magic!” Adara yelled to warn her companions.

It was too late. The wardens were unmoving, a slender layer of ice having already formed over them. Frog sat fixed in his saddle, his sword held high but still.

“You bastards!” Adara dropped her horse’s reins and jumped away from the animal, drawing her sword and dagger.

“Fighting will only make this more sporting,” Fortisquo said as he moved toward the woman, his rapier still pointed at her.

“No.” Belgad moved forward, nearly between the two rapirists. “She is not to be killed.”

“She murdered my brother!” Karitha yelled.

“Your brother killed himself!” Adara shot back.

“Because you left him!” from Karitha.

Adara paused, taking breaths slowly. “And whom do you think I left Jarnac
for
?”

Karitha stared at the woman in silence.

Adara’s sword twisted in her hand to be leveled on Fortisquo.

The wizard turned her rage on the swordsman. “The man was a friend of yours!”

“How was I to know?” Fortisquo said. “Your brother traded women like he was a slave master.”

“But he was in
love
with her!” Karitha pointed at Adara.

Belgad stepped into the middle of the argument. “This can be settled at a future time. We are here for Adara.”

“She’s to blame for my brother’s death,” Karitha said, then pointed at Fortisquo, “as is he!”

Belgad nodded. “And all of that can be dealt with later. We have what we came for.”

“Who says I’m leaving with you?” Adara took a step back, shifting her weapons to point at the hulking Dartague.

The big man smirked. “Be sensible.”

“If you so much as come near me, I’ll run you through,” Adara said.

Belgad looked to his wizard. “Karitha?”

“Sleep.”

Adara’s weapons slipped from her fingers as her eyes suddenly grew heavy. She stood as if in a daze for a moment, her vision glazed, then her eyes shut and she dropped to the ground.

Belgad stood over the woman. “No harm comes to her,” he ordered. “We turn her over to Verkain. There is potential for profit here.”

No one said a word.

“Do I make myself clear?” Belgad eyed Fortisquo and Karitha.

The swordsman and wizard shot each other dark glances, but they nodded.

“What of the wardens, my lord?” one of Belgad’s men asked.

Belgad glanced at the frozen soldiers. “Leave them. They may thaw eventually. Or not.”

Chapter Three

The day was long and cheerless with gray clouds blocking much of the sun. Kron kept his eyes sharp for signs of life in the forbidding land, but all he found were the tracks of a fox and an old wagon trail. For the first time in many years, the well-traveled Kron Darkbow was on unfamiliar ground, and it made him all the more edgy because it was Kobalos, a land known for its harshness in all manners.

“What are the Grave Lands?” the man in black asked as he rode next to his two companions.

“A battle was fought there long ago,” Randall explained, “and the bodies were left on the field. That’s why it’s called the Grave Lands. After a heavy rain you can still see the bones and armor in the mud.”

Markwood’s eyes scanned the dismal ground around them. “Seems hardly worth fighting for.”

“The coastline has some greenery.” Randall glanced about at what little gray grass could be seen. “It’s even pretty in the summer. And the hills north of here are known to be full of diamonds. It’s how my father keeps his economy going.”

“Allow me a guess,” Kron said, “slave labor.”

Randall nodded with a sorrowful look.

They were quiet again as the sun began to go down, and soon they were setting up camp for the night. Two of the three went to sleep without talking further, the gray land surrounding them seeming to draw the life from them, while Kron took first watch.

In the morning they had a quick breakfast, Markwood providing strips of bacon and hot biscuits with blueberry jam from some hidden source, and they were back on their way.

Within a few hours they came to a series of squat hills that crossed their view from east to the west.

“Inside lies the Grave Lands,” Randall spoke, the first words shared between the three since the day before.

With Kron motioning for them to continue, they rode into the hills following an ancient trail.

By noon they found themselves staring from on high into a dark valley below, a region even more desolate than that through which they had been riding. A dull mist hung over the vale though there were no obvious signs for a source of the moisture.

“The Grave Lands,” Randall said, pointing down.

Soon they were trotting along a dry ravine that ran from the short hills into the dank valley. Their line of sight quickly became limited by the fog, offering only a shallow view around their immediate vicinity.

Still, they worked through the dead trees and odd, man-sized stones that stuck out of the earth every so often. Kron kept a solid watch on the ground for tracks, and he saw many, but they were old. He also noted a number of broken and cracked bones poking out of the gray soil as well as the occasional rusted plate or blade.

They had been parading through the mist for some time when Maslin tapped Randall on the shoulder. “We are being watched.”

Kron yanked on his horse’s reins, bringing the animal to a halt while he stood in the stirrups and scanned their limited view.

Randall also pulled his animal to a stop, then twisted in his saddle to eye the mage behind him. “What makes you say that?”

“Magic knows magic,” the old wizard replied. “You would have detected it yourself if you had been looking.”

“Do you know from which direction?” Kron asked.

Markwood pointed directly ahead.

“Do you know who or what?” from Kron.

The wizard shook his head, then pushed himself off the back of Randall’s horse. “I suggest we walk from here, to be ready for battle.”

Kron traded a glance with Randall, then both men climbed out of their saddles. Kron made sure to hand his bridle strap to the healer, knowing Randall was no natural fighter and safest out of any confrontation. The youth took the reins and tied them to his own animal.

The dark warrior drew his sword and stared at Markwood as if expecting further direction from the mage.

“I only know it’s ahead of us,” the wizard said.

“It’s hard to tell in this haze, but I believe the keep lies that direction.” Randall  motioned a hand the way they were heading.

Within a few minutes the healer was proven correct. The lone remaining tower of the squat stone building loomed over them suddenly out of the fog. There had been another tower once, but it had crumbled with time and its remains sat like a stone dwarf at the base of the structure’s eastern wall. A lowered iron portcullis partially blocked the keep’s main entrance, but much of it was rusted and a portion was bent back as if by a mighty force long ago.

Kron’s eyes darted around the place. “Could what you sensed be coming from here?” he asked Markwood.

The wizard nodded. “This is most definitely the place.”

Kron extended a flat hand toward the other two, a sign to stay where they were, while he cautiously moved ahead with his sword leading the way. Within seconds the man in black disappeared into the fog around a corner of the ancient keep’s dark outer walls.

“He enjoys this, doesn’t he?” Markwood whispered.

Randall smirked. “Loves it.”

A few minutes later Kron slunk from around the other side of the building. His sword was now sheathed, but his bow had been drawn and an arrow strung.

“I heard something,” Darkbow said as he approached the wizard and healer. “A rumbling beneath my feet.”

“That’s not good,” Markwood said.

Kron’s head spun toward the old mage. He was about to ask a question when he felt a tugging at his left boot.

The man in black looked down.

A skeletal hand reached up from a crack in the hard dirt, clutching at Kron’s leg. The archer jumped away, but the bones continued to flail.

Then all three men heard a faint groaning beneath the dirt and their legs began to shake along with the ground.

“On the horses!” Kron slipped away his weapons while hustling toward his steed.

Randall asked no questions and turned to pull himself into his saddle. The animal whinnied and shied away, nearly dragging the healer along before he let go of the reins. Then Randall spotted what had spooked the beast.

Through the dull haze that filled the Grave Lands, a line of skeletons in rusted armor and carrying black weapons marched upon them.

Randall almost screamed. Then he remembered his old friend next to him and turned in Markwood’s direction.

The ground erupted at the mage’s feet, skeletons clad in dry and decaying flesh tearing up from below to reach for the wizard. Markwood stood with his eyes closed and his hands clasped in front of him as if in prayer. His lips moved silently, chanting.

Kron erupted as well, swinging his sword from side to side and chopping into hollow skulls with all his might. A good number of the slow-moving bone figures fell apart or were hacked aside, but more and more continued to pour in from the surrounding fog.

Claw-like fingers reached for the three as the mass of skeletons closed in on them. Kron continued to swing his sword, taking out one or two of their dead foes at a time, while Randall could do no more than lean back against his horse with an ever-growing look of terror on his face; the healer would have helped, would have come to Kron’s aid, but he believed his little short sword would be of no service and most of his magical abilities could in no way harm the walking dead as far as he knew.

A bright light sprang forth from the center of the three men, driving back the fog and bringing the dead soldiers to a halt wherever they stood or crawled.

Kron and Randall turned to see the illumination flowing from one of Markwood’s outstretched hands, a tiny yellow flame in the wizard’s palm sending forth the great luminescence.

“Get on your horses,” Markwood said barely above a whisper.

Kron climbed aboard his animal, then saw Randall had not moved.

“You’re coming with us,” the healer said to his old friend.

“Get on your horse, lad,” Markwood said. “This light will not last forever.”

Randall lifted the leather straps of his animal but showed no sign of climbing onto the beast. “We can’t leave you here.”

“If I move, the flame will go out,” Markwood said. “Ride on and I will deal with these devils.”

Randall couldn’t do it. He had only recently lost one friend, Adara Corvus, and he had just become reacquainted with Markwood. He wasn’t about to allow another friendship to slip away. Maslin meant too much to him to allow the wizard to go down fighting things that weren’t even alive, that served no purpose other than to kill.

“Do it!” Markwood yelled.

Randall let his horse’s reins fall from his hands.

Kron dropped out of his saddle, and with sword still in hand he took a stand next to the young healer. “We go down fighting.”

Markwood did not appear happy.

“Close your eyes,” the wizard ordered as the ranks of the dead swayed on boney legs.

Kron and Randall did as they were told.

Markwood jabbed a hand at the gray sky, flinging the tiny flame to soar overhead.

The spark shot upward, then exploded high over their heads, spreading forth golden arms that slowly began to curve back to the ground.

The dead things around them continued to stand unmoving with several skulls hissing screeches in the remains of their throats. Seconds later, as the embers from the flame lazily drifted nearer the ground, the foggy mist began to dissipate as if burnt away.

Still, the skeletons did not move, and Kron and Randall were beginning to believe their situation might be taking a turn for the better.

Those thoughts vanished as a familiar booming noise filled the air atop the keep’s remaining tower. The monstrous black form of a war demon perched on the tower’s crenellation, a gigantic sword gripped in the creature’s metallic claws.

The monster tossed back its helmeted head and roared, shaking the ground further.

Kron slipped his sword into its sheath on his back and again took forth his bow and an arrow.

Randall whispered several words of magical protection, casting shielding spells over himself and his companions.

Markwood opened his eyes. He glared at the metal-plated form of the demon and pointed a crooked finger at it. “You should know better than to face me!” the old mage shouted. “I have already dealt with one of your kind!”

The demon roared again and shook itself, its black armor rattling.

At that the glow from Markwood’s flame spell started to die and the skeletal warriors began their advance anew.

Kron launched an arrow into the nearest skeleton’s head, shattering the skull and dropping the dead thing.

Randall lashed out with his sword and managed to slice away an arm of dried flesh, but his foe did not feel pain and its remaining arm raised a long, rusting ax over its head. The healer took the blow on a shoulder, but his protection spell held true and the ax glanced away without bringing harm.