Heirs of the Fallen: Book 02 - Crown of the Setting Sun (3 page)

Gasping and sweating, he pressed the snake’s head against the closest boulder, while his opposite hand retrieved an egg-shaped stone. His first wild swing collided with his wrist, and he bit back a howl. Furious now, his second, third, and fourth blow crushed the adder’s skull to a pulp. The serpent wrapped tighter around his forearm, but it was dead.

Waiting for the creature to accept its demise, he settled back on his heels, shaking as exhilaration waned and his heartbeat slowed. On rare occasions, he and Adham had secretly caught serpents or lizards or rats and, well out of the slavemasters’ sight, had prepared forbidden meals. Adham often stated that meat tasted better when cooked and spiced, but the closest slaves came to fire was its light, when the slavemasters burned camel dung of an evening.

Leitos unwrapped the snake from his arm and set it aside. Even in death, it writhed back and forth. He hunted until he found a prominent lip of stone jutting off one of the boulders. Using the same rock he had used on the adder, he smashed the stony protrusion. Sandstone crunched and flew. He stopped after he had a collection of shards littering the ground at his feet. Kneeling, he picked through the sharpest bits until he found one as long as his hand and somewhat knife-shaped, then sharpened the crude blade against the curve of a boulder.

While he worked, he searched the desert. The only prominent landmark was a long, knobbed ridge of reddish sandstone far to the west. Other outcrops reared up, all stubby and offering little reliable shade. Of
Alon’mahk’lar
, there was no sign.

After dragging the makeshift knife back and forth over the boulder, the roughness began to smooth, providing an edge of sorts. Most importantly, he created a sharp tip. After a few more licks, Leitos strode to the serpent and went to work. He considered his grandfather’s cautionary words, making sure the cut was well down from the head in order to avoid the snake’s venom sacs. His knife was sharp for stone, but not really sharp at all, so he sawed and hacked, until he could rip off the head and toss it away. Next, he dug the tip into the adder’s belly, making a gruesome mess of things, but managing to gut the serpent.

Tucking the stone knife into his loincloth, Leitos ducked into the shade the adder had been using, but found it far too narrow for him. He draped the serpent over the boulder, then set to digging with his hands until he carved out a suitable burrow. Once satisfied, Leitos took up the snake and crawled inside.

Out of the sunlight, his skin tingled with relief, and the sand was delightfully cool under his folded legs. Using his teeth, he dug into the pinkish-white meat, tearing away stringy mouthfuls. The taste of blood was good and wetted his tongue, but the meat was full of thin bones, forcing him to eat slowly. Every bite renewed his strength a little more. He still wanted water, and as every hour passed, it became all the more important to find some. Come nightfall, he planned to move west again, and hopefully locate a hidden spring, or maybe a dry streambed in which he could dig down until finding a seep—something the
Alon’mahk’lar
forced slaves to do. He refused to fully consider that he might never taste water again.

After finishing his meal, Leitos peeked out of his burrow. The same vulture wheeled in great, slow circles far above. He flung the snakeskin out into the sunlight, then scooted deep into his shelter. He reclined on his side, head resting on his arm. He lay there a long time, breathing easy and resting.

Between one moment and the next, the extent of the day’s trials fell on him. The sounds of begging men surrendering to pitiless slavemasters rose up in his mind, and he heard the dreadful wet clangs of edged steel cleaving flesh from bone, the guttural snarls issuing from the slavemasters as they crushed the hopeless uprising. The appalling outcome of Adham’s act fell heavily on Leitos, evoking a strangled sob full of grief and resentment.
Why, grandfather? Why did you stand against our masters? You ruined everything!

Never again would he share the cool of the night with his grandfather, feel Adham’s hand upon his brow, or take comfort from his low, rumbling voice. Adham had doomed himself, the other slaves, and even his own grandson. The result of his insurrection had destroyed the life that the Faceless One had provided his sworn enemies. At the mine, there was always food, water, and shelter—perhaps not as much as one wanted, but enough to live. As long as slaves served without complaint or defiance, the
Alon’mahk’lar
mostly left them alone.

That last thought rang hollow, but Leitos denied the truth that the slavemasters made sport of the chained at every opportunity. Instead, he nurtured his resentment, clinging to the idea that his life, difficult and uncertain as it had been at times, had become an ongoing nightmare of thirst and suffering in the face of Adham’s revolt. His only consolation was that if he found no water, his misery would end within two or three days.

Trying not to think what the morrow would bring, he scrubbed the back of his hand across his damp eyes, sighed deeply, and curled into a protective ball. With all his heart, he hoped that when he awoke he would find himself back in his cell, and that all he had experienced since Adham challenged their masters was but a horrible dream. Regrettably his thirst, the taste of drying blood on his lips, and the ache in his cracked feet, proclaimed the truth. His foolish hopes died quickly and quietly.

W
hen Leitos’s eyes opened, the day’s overpowering brightness had dwindled to a ruddy afterglow. Outside his burrow, a mangy jackal growled and snapped at a trio of vultures. Befuddled by sleep and intense thirst, it took a moment for Leitos to realize the carrion eaters fought over the snakeskin he had discarded. He watched until he succumbed once more to sleep….

Seemingly moments later, his eyes flared wide to find that night had stretched its cloak of darkness over the land. Despite the apparent tranquility, his heart fluttered, and he was panting for want of breath. He waited, still as stone, not daring to blink.
Something
had dragged him out of a sound sleep, and whatever it was had filled him with alarm. Chewing his bottom lip, he waited.

After a time, his heartbeat slowed, and he relaxed. He told himself that an already forgotten nightmare must have brought him awake. With what had happened at the mines, he must expect bad dreams.

He licked his lips, but his tongue was too dry to offer relief. Now more than ever, his body cried out for water. Stiff and achy as he was, and desperate for a few more hours of sleep, Leitos decided it was past time to set out again. He had not yet shifted his position when the sound of feet crunching over desert gravel froze him.

The walker came nearer, a stealthy advance. Despite the gloom, Leitos easily made out a pair of huge sandaled feet come to a halt in the sand piled at the mouth of his burrow. Fearing the seeker would question the suspicious mound of loose soil and the subtle tracks covering it, Leitos’s heart lurched into a frantic rhythm. Starlight glinted dully off the rivets of the
Alon’mahk’lar’s
sandals. He imagined the creature looking about, its broad, flat nose raised to the breeze.

When the head of an iron-banded cudgel thumped down next to those feet, it was all Leitos could do not to bolt from his makeshift cave. His only hope rested in knowing that
Alon’mahk’lar
saw poorly in the dark, and could catch a scent no better than a man. If he remained still, his pursuer might move on, allowing him to flee under the cover of night.

But why should I hide from them anymore?
a small, compelling voice wondered. With but one word, he could give away his position and accept the enslavement he deserved. He would be chained on the morrow but, too, he would be fed, watered, and sheltered. And he might even find Adham still alive, waiting for his safe return in their cell. Giving up was the right course, that voice assured him.

Leitos did not understand why he resisted surrendering, until the night’s gentle breath filled his nostrils with a scent as familiar to him as that of his own sweat. The smell of blood wafted from the dark smears glazing the cudgel’s head, and beneath this lurked the bestial reek of the
Alon’mahk’lar
. While the mingling of odors was recognizable, Leitos had never consciously noticed them because of their close and constant proximity, the whole of his life. If oppression, sorrow, and death had a scent, this was it; a stench that embodied all that Adham had stood against.

I never noticed,
Leitos thought in dismay, taken aback by his lack of discernment, horribly ashamed that he had so recently condemned his grandfather’s actions. Over long moments, understanding began to fall upon him and, like a pick striking unyielding stone, all that he had been forced to believe by the slavemasters began to crack and fall asunder.

Leitos shrank away from the
Alon’mahk’lar
, both physically and within his mind. Once backed as deep into his burrow as he could go, he found himself shivering and struggling not to vomit. His distress had nothing to do with any odor or fear, but rather the realization that he had nearly given himself over not to a benign master, but rather to a lifelong oppressor, a creature that cared no more for him than it cared for stomping a beetle underfoot. In surrendering, he would defile his grandfather’s sacrifice, the deaths of all the other slaves, and his own life.

In the darkness, Leitos cursed that quailing voice within himself. He had known only suffering at the hands of the slavemasters. There would be neither food, nor shelter, nor forgiveness. Nor would he find Adham waiting. Slaves that resisted, few though they were, died staked under the sun for all to see, their skin cut off in strips, their screams choked with handfuls of sand. Such despicable cruelty was a warning to the chained. Moreover, that action was a testament to the black whims of the
Alon’mahk’lar
and the one they served.

“I am sorry,” Leitos murmured under his breath, tears beginning to flow as he saw in his mind’s eye a smiling Adham, his protector, his kindred. Adham had cast aside his own life to ensure Leitos’s escape. Of course there was a price for such freedom, and for whatever reason Adham had believed Leitos could meet it.
Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers
.

A wave of shame fell over Leitos for ever thinking along the same lines as Altha.
Are we all so weak?
Leitos thought, recalling how few slaves had stood with Adham, how most, including himself, had looked at the man as if he were insane for standing against the slavemasters. “I am sorry,” he murmured again.

Leitos did not notice that the
Alon’mahk’lar
had moved away, until it called out to its brethren in its natural tongue, a deep and garbled muttering. Upon hearing that demonic voice, dismay came alive in Leitos, stealing his breath. Slaves rarely heard that language, and it induced a nearly incapacitating fear. Oily sweat popped out on his brow. He forced his shuddering limbs to remain still. The effort left him weak, but also gave him a sense of victory.

By the time he was in control of himself, the
Alon’mahk’lar
had moved out of earshot. With the utmost caution, he peeked from his shelter and sought his enemy. Off to the south, moving with slow deliberation, the group of hunting
Alon’mahk’lar
were but shadows within shadows drifting over a low dune of pale sand. Even with the distance, their eyes winked and glimmered like dull silver coins.

He could not understand how they had missed him … until he remembered the jackal struggling to claim a meal from the vultures. Though he had been half-asleep, he recalled the jackal darting in, over and over, to snatch the snakeskin, only to have the squawking carrion birds flap and hop forward, driving their adversary back. Their battle must have obscured his tracks. Never in his life had he given thanks to animals that feasted upon death, but he did so now.

Leitos crept out of the burrow and raised up into a crouch, keeping a wary eye on the slavemasters. They continued to move away, unaware of how close they had come to capturing him. Not only were they moving away, they did so at a hard angle from the direction he intended to travel. Relief washed over him, but he quickly tamped it down. He could ill-afford to grow confident that he was safe. Not yet, maybe never. Adham’s demand that he avenge their forefathers meant that he might never know peace or safety.

How can I do your will, grandfather?
he thought, setting out. All too well Leitos recognized that he was but a half-starved youth, alone in a perilous land about which he knew nothing. In truth, he was only vaguely aware of his location in a world larger than he could imagine.
Geldain
, he thought in answer to the unspoken question, recalling the name Adham had mentioned when pointing to the crude map he had sketched in the dust on the floor of their cell.
Somewhere far south of a land once known as Tureece
. Based on that, Leitos supposed he was half a world or more away from the place he had been born. Just the thought that so much land and water existed made him nervous, as it always had when Adham spoke of such things.

As he crept from bush to boulder, eyes darting from one shadow to another, he sifted through old conversations until recalling Adham’s story of a voyage across the Sea of Drakarra, a journey during which he and the other slaves had, by turns, been either chained to the decks of a great ship, or lashed to one of a hundred oars. Leitos had been but a babe then, Adham told him, newly weaned and tossed with other infants into a large basket.
Alon’mahk’lar
feared deep water, Adham had said, which meant the shipmasters were treacherous humans. That self-serving men would betray their own always troubled his grandfather, perhaps more so than the presence of the Faceless One and the
Alon’mahk’lar
. After landing on the shores of Geldain, the slaves had been given over to new masters, chained together, and marched into the heart of a nameless desert. Most slaves perished long before reaching the first of many mines, but the
Alon’mahk’lar
always brought more.