Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (59 page)

“We shall see,” was all Jinzan could counter with.

Even he had to admit that he had not made it sound as
ominous as he had hoped.

*
* * * * * * *

[Bring me the assassin,] Ni’Hash’Tk demanded. She
loped along, forcing the rest of her army to keep up with her and brooking no
rest.

[Your Magnificence, the assassin has already departed
some hours ago,] said the priest beside her.

He rode a ground-hawk, a large short-feathered,
flightless bird that was strong enough to bear the weight of armed and armored
goblin cavalry. They were fierce creatures that were difficult to train, but
they were the fastest land creatures that would bear a goblin in combat.

Ni’Hash’Tk’s army had shrunk some since she had given
the order to quicken their pace. While the troop had been intended for quick
travel, there were still not enough mounts to go around. Many of the goblins
had managed to crowd atop the chk’p’dn lizards that drew the human
rock-launchers, and all the available ground-hawks were being ridden, whereas
many had been led on leashes previously, to keep them fresh for battle.

All the goblins who could not find faster
transportation than their own feet had fallen behind hours ago. Ni’Hash’Tk
assumed that Gkt’Lr was among these.

[Send someone back for him. Bring him a ground-hawk
and order him to rejoin us.]

The dragon’s angry growl spooked the priest’s bird,
causing him a moment’s panic as he fought to regain control of the skittish
animal.

[He did not fall behind, Mighty One,] the priest said,
careful not to “correct” her. [He went on ahead of us. If he cares to maintain
stealth, we could not catch him even if we sent up skyriders to search for
him.]

[Curse that impudent little mouse. He had best make
good use of his early arrival. If I find he has not taken enough hearts when we
arrive, I will crush him in my jaw and spit him upon the ground,] Ni’Hash’Tk
swore.

The eating of a goblin as punishment was at least seen
as a noble death—a service to the goddess. Being spat out, though, was a
horrible insult, the ultimate rejection by the dragon, beasts known to eat
anything they wished, even things most would consider to be inedible.

[As you wish, Your Magnificence,] the priest
responded.

Ni’Hash’Tk looked ahead to the east. Through breaks in
the trees, she could make out the mountain range the Kadrins called Cloud Wall.
The translation of its draconic name was “Godsforge.” The volcanoes had been
dormant for millennia, but at one time, they belched forth fire and ash and
were the home of the fiercest of dragons, before the stone warlords came and
took them back for the metals they hid.

Unlike the goblins, who could just see the mountains
when the terrain allowed them an unobstructed view, Ni’Hash’Tk’s superior
eyesight allowed her to make out the city, nestled against the mountainside:
the future home of her son, Ruuk’Pt’Kaan.

Chapter 29 - Tour of Duty

Try the road and see the woods,

And feel the wind at sea,

Just pack up all your worldly goods,

And come along with me.

We’ll see their sights and eat their food,

And tarry with their lasses,

If their lads break up our mood,

We’ll kick their scrawny asses.

Whene’er we stop, which shan’t be soon,

With no place left to roam,

We’ll pack up ’fore the next day’s noon,

And set off back for home!

They sang as they rode, the mood lighter than it had
been upon their departure. When traded stories began to wear thin, the mood of
the travelers had grown solemn. Brannis had a lot churning in his thoughts, and
he had grown prone to long periods of introspection, lost in thought as the
others carried on quiet discussions around him, careful not to disturb him. The
effects of the tattoo Kyrus had inscribed on his shoulder made Brannis nervous.
It had seemed like such a clever idea when he had conceived of it—taking a
cultural difference between the worlds and combining two arts into a formidable
defense. Kyrus seemed no worse for the ward he bore two days later, but how
long would that be the case?

He had made casual inquiries about the use of wards
for protecting their persons and the troops, on the pretense of finding
innovative ways to combat the goblins’ expected attack. None of the four
sorcerers had thought it a prudent idea. Iridan worked with wards regularly and
thought that it would be unhealthy, though it might work temporarily. Ruuglor
thought that simply writing on the skin would not hold up to the rigors of
sweat and rubbing cloth, and the rune would be ruined before it provided any
real benefit. Brannis could not convey the idea of a tattoo without having to
get into more detail than he thought appropriate. He let the matter drop, not
satisfied at all with what he had heard.

Brannis knew that it was dangerous to go into battle
with troops whose morale was poor, but these were not “troops” in the
conventional sense. When conscripts and knights often jested and sang on their
way to battle, it felt different. The conscripts, especially if they were
completely green, as many were, were easily deluded into the gloried notions of
battle that the troubadours peddled. Knights … well, knights were hard to
deter. They knew the sins of blood and flesh they were about to face, and faced
it anyway; the brotherhood of the knighthood was what they leaned on to get
them through.

With Iridan, Ruuglor, Faolen, and Juliana, he was
traveling with educated, cultured, and, except for Iridan, untested neophytes.
Wars were pages in history books, celebrated with parades. They knew they would
see things they had never wished to see, and would fear for their lives, and
Brannis could not just sing a trail song to get them to forget that.

It was Juliana, of all people, who had broken the mood
by breaking into song. She had an impressive repertoire of trail and tavern
songs, many of them bawdy enough to make him blush—though only because the
tawdriness of the lyrics was accentuated when a young lady sang them. She did
not,
however, have the voice for them. She could keep time well enough, but the
notes held little melody after she was done wringing the tune out of them.

“I apologize for the ones with overly strained meter
and poor rhymes,” Juliana said. “I learned them from the traders that frequent
the city, and translated many of them into Kadrin myself. Much of Kadris is
boring, and the songs our bards write are the same. Things are much more
entertaining down by the wharfs, where you find all manner of exotic
foreigners.”

Brannis suspected that young sorceresses of the Sixth
Circle needed to be kept busier if she had so much time to spend hanging around
dockside barrooms, where she said she learned most of the songs she knew. The
songs sounded vaguely familiar, at least as best as Juliana could render them,
but Brannis knew the words to only a few.

“I used to wonder what you did with your free time,”
Brannis joked. “I guess now I know.”

“Brannis, that is no way to talk about a lady!” Iridan
jumped in, indignantly defending a perceived slight to his betrothed’s honor.

“Well … I had meant the translations,” Brannis
clarified, and Iridan might have begun to blush, if the cold air rushing by
them had not already reddened his face.

Onward they flew—for in truth their horses had not
touched the ground in hours—and the mountains engulfed them. They made their
own passage as best they could, but their luck only held so long before they
were forced to ascend. The sights all around them were magnificent as they
worked their way up the steep grade of the mountainside. The horses, trained as
they were to obey without question, carried along as if they were on level
ground and not mounting the vast craggy rocks of the Cloud Wall.

Their ascent brought them up above the snow line, the
point where it was winter every season and where the ice no longer melted
before it took on snow again. As they crested the peak—a flat-topped caldera of
an inactive volcano that was a tower’s height deep in snow—they could see much
of their day’s ride ahead of them. There would be at least three more mountain
crossings before they could reach the other side of the range, perhaps four if
there was one obscured from view by larger mountains.

Brannis resisted the urge to call a halt, unsure of
what sort of footing was presently beneath them. So long as the horses kept in
motion, they would continue to remain airborne just above whatever paltry
ground lay below them.

“Keep moving. Resist the temptation to stop and gawk!”
Brannis urged as he took his own advice and allowed his mount to continue on
down the far side of the mountain.

The effect was both thrilling and terrifying. As they
had ascended, it was easy to look forward and see the height of the peak shrink
as they approached it. Now that he was heading down, Brannis could see the
entire descent in its vast panoramic glory, spread out before and below him,
with nothing to save him from a fatal plunge but the magic of the horseshoes
his mount wore.

With gravity to aid them and no footing to worry
about, the horses sped ever faster as they went down. Brannis kept a light hold
on the reins, hoping that the horse could react faster to obstacles in their
path than he could, since the scenery was hurtling past as an awesome rate.
Within moments, his horse had cleared the snow line and, not long afterward,
reached the valley between mountains in less than a tenth the time they had
taken to ascend.

For three more mountains, they repeated the exercise,
speeding down one mountain and carrying that momentum halfway up the next. The
whole endeavor was upsetting to both the nerves and the stomach, and all but
Juliana managed to lose some portion of their morning meal along the way. The
sorceress seemed, however, to enjoy the ride.

*
* * * * * * *

 “Well, at least the goblins will be hampered by the
weather,” Brannis said, feeling cheerful. “And we seem to have reached the city
before them.”

Indeed, there was no goblin host camped out in sight
of the city, nor any sign of their imminent approach. Brannis’s course had
brought them out just north of the city. Winter had come early to the western
face of the Cloud Wall, and they stood in ankle-deep snow beside their mounts,
thankful to be near the end of their journey.

Between them and the city lay Neverthaw Lake, through
which the blue-green glacial waters of the Neverthaw River ran. The lake had
once been a quarry during the early days of Raynesdark’s construction. With
wards to keep them intact, the stone structures of the city had little need for
additional stone, and the quarry eventually fell to disuse and was allowed to
fill with water.

Into the lake crashed Draxel Falls, named after the
sorcerer who had diverted the Neverthaw’s headwaters to fill the old quarry. It
was a majestic sight, especially in winter when the falls partially froze.
Though not yet winter, it was late enough into the autumn that Brannis and his
companions were able to see the falls in the early phases of its icing over.

The city of Raynesdark sat partway up the
mountainside, tucked snugly in against the rock. Naught but stone could be seen
of it. The outer walls, the defensive towers, and the tall buildings and castle
keep beyond: all were built of the same dark stone once quarried just outside
the city. Presumably, in bygone ages, there were wooden structures, but Raynesdark
was among the oldest cities in the Empire, and after long enough, folk tired of
replacing buildings. Warded stone lasted like nothing else and, with the
attentions of a wardkeeper, could be maintained indefinitely.

Brannis knew that while the city was largely hidden by
the massive wall as they looked up at it, there was only so much above ground
to be seen. Harsh weather had driven many of the inhabitants underground, where
whole subterranean districts of the city lay. He had studied maps of the overcity,
the undercity, and all of the mines, and the overcity was the smallest part of
the whole complex. What was above was mostly commerce and trade, barracks for
Duke Pellaton’s garrison, and summer abodes for the wealthier of Raynesdark’s
citizenry. Duke Pellaton’s castle was a massive fortified structure that was
built into the mountain itself, spanning the overcity and undercity, and
offering entrance to the ancient and disused upper mines. The lower mines, the
lifeblood of the city, were accessible elsewhere from the undercity.

The road approaching the city paralleled the river,
just far enough away that it did not wash out in the spring floods. Upon
reaching the base of the mountain, the wide trade-way meandered its way up to
the city gates by way of a half dozen switchbacks, keeping the grade low enough
for wagon teams to ascend safely. The setup also afforded the city’s defenders
an excellent vantage overlooking any approaching invaders, who would either
have to take the long road or scale numerous smaller cliff faces to climb up
directly.

“Though we have made it in time for dinner, I find
that I no longer hunger for it,” Faolen remarked. He had taken the worst of it
throughout the five days’ journey, from saddle sores and leg cramps to aching
back and nausea over the mountains.

“There now, no need for gloom,” Iridan said. “We have
arrived, and our journey is finished. We can prevail upon Duke Pellaton for
proper accommodations tonight and recover from this ordeal.”

“Oh yes,” Juliana said. “I feel much better now that
we have put ourselves in the path of a goblin army. I cannot be soon enough rid
of these
scaaaary
horses and slip into a nice relaxing battle for my
life.”

“Mind you, only Iridan and I are expected to join the
battle,” Brannis said. “The three of you are noncombatants once the fighting
begins. You will stay with the peasant folk, helping with any evacuation as
needed. Beforehand is when I will really need you. There will be much that
needs doing, and we do not know how long we have. Hopefully Duke Pellaton will
have scouts with a better idea of where the goblin army is. At the most,
Illard’s Glen is a two-day march from here. It is mostly a matter of when they
decide to strike.”

“If you do not mind me asking—and mind you, this has
played about my mind for days now—but how can you be certain they will strike
here and not Korgen?” Ruuglor asked.

“You certainly waited long enough to ask that,”
Brannis said. “The simple answer: goblins are not stupid. They have a force far
too large to have been brought to conquer just Illard’s Glen, and Korgen is no
more of a threat, nor much more of a prize. The goblins attacked Illard’s Glen
to field-test their new siege engine before bringing it to bear here at
Raynesdark. They would not need a new wall-wrecking weapon if they were to
attack Naran Port, which is the only other city in the region that would be a
large enough target to justify bringing an army that size.”

Brannis tried to sound sure of his answer, but he knew
there were several jumps of logic that could easily mislead them if any single
one were wrong. Guessing the goblins’ motive was the biggest risk in his plan.

“I would hate to hear the complex version,” Faolen
muttered just loud enough to be sure Brannis heard.

Brannis glared sidelong at the sorcerer but said
nothing.

“Well, we are not yet in place to get ourselves
attacked,” Juliana said cheerfully. “We ought to get moving.”

With that, she urged her horse to a gallop and shot
off toward Raynesdark like a loosed arrow.

Brannis took a quick glance at the other three
sorcerers, shrugged, and took off after her. Iridan, Faolen, and Ruuglor
followed in his wake.

*
* * * * * * *

There had been no trouble at the city gates.
Accompanied by the four sorcerers—one of whom was wearing warlocks’ garb—and
bearing orders with the imperial seal, Brannis followed the gate guards
directly to the castle to meet with Duke Pellaton. The city had been on edge
since the arrival of refugees from Illard’s Glen, several days earlier,
bringing word of the goblin invasion. The walls teemed with soldiers in numbers
that could not have been sustainable in peacetime.