Heirs of the Fallen: Book 04 - Wrath of the Fallen (17 page)

Adham studied the map. “What about the path up through the boulders we used to get into the sanctuary? From what I remember, those boulders need only a little shove to get them rolling. We should post someone there. If few sea-wolves try to escape that way, we will crush them under a rockslide.”

“Just so,” Ulmek said. He glanced at Damoc. “The best person is one we would rather not have in the fight, just now.”

“All my people can fight,” Damoc said, puffing out his chest.

“And we do not doubt it,” Ulmek said. “But, perhaps, there is someone you’d rather have wait a while longer, before throwing
herself
into a battle?”

Damoc blinked as Ulmek’s meaning became clear. “Nola. She’ll not like it, but—

“—But if we tell her just how crucial the mission is,” Adham said, knowing a little something about placating warriors, “she’ll be willing. Sumahn should join her, as he knows best how and when to start kicking rocks down onto the heads of our foes.”

“We’ll need his sword on the beach,” Ulmek protested.

“Do you really believe one extra sword is going to change the outcome? We’ll either succeed, or we won’t. But if the Kelrens should bolt for that path and escape into the sanctuary, we’ll have lost the advantage of surprise.”

“I see your point,” Ulmek said, eyes flickering back to the map.

After a moment, Damoc asked, “How exactly do you propose we get all the Kelrens in one place?”

“We attack each group, kill those we can, then flee, leading them where we want them to go.”

“Easy as that, is it?”

“Nothing we do will be easy,” Ulmek said to the elder. “But this
will
work.”

“We should set out as soon as Leitos returns,” Adham said, searching the cavern but not seeing his son.

Damoc looked around as well, and as he did, his eyebrows pinched together. “Where is Belina?”

“Last I saw her,” Ulmek said, “was before I sent Leitos off.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Adham said, but could not deny the sudden worry in his chest.

Chapter 22

The wind had picked up by the time Leitos left Zera’s grave, and the clouds in the west had turned menacing shades of gray and black. As he started down the slope and into a grove of scraggly trees, lightning began tasting the white-capped sea with forked tongues. Thunder pealed, still far off, but getting closer.

Leitos counted the coming storm a blessing, and prayed for a bit more luck in the coming hours against the sea-wolves. As ever, the Silent God of All remained silent, but Leitos was sure Ulmek, Adham, and Damoc had not been quiet in determining the best strategy for defeating their foes.

Lower down, the wind shook trees and brush into a skeletal clatter, and sent leaves skipping over the ground. Leitos followed a trail he had spent many a day running up and down when training to become a Brother of the Crimson Shield. He had intended to angle off to the east and enter the sanctuary from that side of the island, but his feet took him in the opposite direction.

He did not know just where he was headed, until he saw a particular tree growing up through a scatter of large rocks. Leitos moved to the tree and knelt down. He hesitated, then scraped away a tangle of dead grass covering a rocky hole. He had never seen any serpents on the island, but he still held off poking his hand into the hollow. His reluctance, he was forced to admit, had nothing to do with snakes, or any other creature that might have made a den of the hole. Instead, it was the idea that he’d be better served to leave the past buried and forgotten.

He abruptly reached into the dark opening, knuckles scraping against sharp stones and roots. For a moment, he was sure that what he sought was gone, then his fingers fell upon a small cloth bundle. He pulled it out and sat back on his heels. Dust puffed from the coarse parcel resting on his lap, and the hooting wind carried it away. A pull on the tail of a hempen cord released the knot holding it all together, and a golden torque tumbled free into the summer-yellowed grass. He stared at it as if it were, indeed, a serpent.

His final test to become a Brother had been to steal a few treasures from his fellows without them discovering his presence. The torque had belonged to Halan, likely taken from some forgotten bone-town in Geldain. The man’s snores had led Leitos through the darkness that night, and it had been nothing to take the prize and flee. Not for the first time, he wondered how much of that escape had been skill on his part, and how much of it had been Halan
allowing
him to escape.

Leitos unwrapped the bundle a little more and found Sumahn’s dagger. In the diminished light of day, he saw that it was no treasure at all, but a rusted bit of steel. Most of the leather wrapping the hilt had rotted off. Still, it might have some sentimental value to Sumahn, and he deserved to get it back. Last out of the bundle was Daris’s small wooden box, its sides and top deeply engraved with fanciful designs. Doubtless, he’d want it.

Leitos bundled the dagger and the box back into the swatch of cloth and retied the cord. He carefully returned Halan’s golden torque into the hollow and covered it again with grass. As a final touch, he placed a few stones over the hole. Like Zera’s simple grave, it was the best he could do to honor the fallen Brother.

The wind fluttered something at the edge of his sight. Leitos checked his surroundings again, saw nothing but trees and bushes, then stood and moved closer. There was a clump of hair caught in the grass. A slimy chill coated his gut. The hair, dark and long, was held together by a small patch of skin still wet with blood.

Tucking the bundle into his robe, Leitos moved in an expanding circle, looking for signs. Twenty strides from where he had buried Halan’s torque, he found drops of blood splashed over an area of trampled grass. At the edge of that spot, he found a pair of drag marks, perhaps made by someone’s heels. They lead out of sight around a tall dense thicket.

A noise turned him. Head cocked, senses alert, he faced the thicket. For a time, nothing unusual came to his ears. Then he caught a muffled shriek, followed by a round of gruff laughter. The nasty slime coating his insides froze solid.

Leitos flung himself to his belly. Before he set off through the thicket, he reluctantly abandoned the bundle tucked into his robe. Crawling with it would be impossible. He began inching over dried leaves and prickly branches. The wind masked his movements, allowing him to move quickly.

He came to the far side, saw no one, and exited the brambles to take cover in the notch of a split boulder. From farther down the hillside, he heard another muffled scream and more laughter.

Moving through a cluster of low-growing trees, he went toward the sounds, sword and dagger out and ready. The scent of salt and foam spiced the wind pushing against his face. Kneeling, he peered through a leafy break in the branches.

Across a grassy clearing, three sea-wolves were passing an earthenware jug amongst themselves, shouting encouragement to a fourth who was wrestling with someone on the ground. A flush of outrage crossed Leitos’s skin when he saw Belina’s terrified eyes above the thick gag stuffed into her mouth. Her feet were bound, and the brute on top of her was trying to tie her wrists.

The need to help her surged through him, birthed a strange tingling in his fingers and toes. Then that feeling engulfed him. He tried to move, but it seemed as though a sheet of ice had frozen him to the ground.

Belina suddenly twisted and heaved, driving her knee into the Kelren’s groin. He fell aside with a groaning wheeze, and Leitos saw that they had stripped her bare. A roar of drunken laughter went up, as Belina struggled to her knees, then to her feet, and tried to hop away. She did not get far before falling.

Still laughing, the rest of the Kelrens rushed in and applied their boots to her ribs, ending her wriggling flight. The first man she had knocked off came back, delivered a backhand blow to her cheek, and promptly tied her hands. As she lay groaning, he roughly thrust a hand between her legs.

A searing flash of rage melted the icy bonds holding Leitos still. Black hatred crashed over him, as he tore out of the trees in a half crouch. At the same instant, lightning exploded overhead. Before the brilliance faded, he saw a shadow sweeping toward him. As he turned, a heavy fist to the chin rocked his head, and it seemed as if the sun had burst in front of his eyes. Leitos fell sideways, barely retaining the presence of mind to roll away. The sea-wolf came after him. A kick caught Leitos on the fleshy part of his thigh, and the one after found his ribs. While Leitos struggled to separate up from down, the Kelren stomped his head.

Groaning, Leitos abruptly reversed his roll and crashed into the Kelren’s shins, making the brute stumble. Leitos rolled once more, and shoved himself to his feet. Still blinded by starbursts, he slashed his sword wildly and retreated, trying to shake off the dizziness.

The Kelren tossed his head to clear the tangles of filthy hair from his mud-brown eyes. As he raised his axe, his lips parted in a gap-toothed smile. “Look here, lads!” he cried. “Girl’s lover has come to save her from you louts.”

By now the other sea-wolves had turned to see what was happening. One called, “If there’s two of ‘em, like as not there’s more. Cut his throat, so’s we can find the rest. Mayhap they’ve a boat that can take us off this bastard rock.”

Mud-eye sneered. “Think I’ll save ‘im, lads. Pokin’ a boy’s skinny arse is jus’ as fine as pokin’ a girl’s.”

Leitos circled warily, letting the sea-wolf make his threats. As long as he kept yammering, it kept the others off Belina. It also gave Leitos’s head time to clear.

Mud-eye throttled the haft of his axe with thick fingers, and gave his hips a vulgar thrust. “Ever had a man’s love, boy? Mayhap I’ll start with your mouth, then work my way round to your puckered little arsehole. How’d that be?”

Leitos stayed quiet. Stepping cautiously, he flicked his gaze toward Belina. The other Kelrens had turned their backs on her. She was now sitting up, slashing the bindings around her ankles with a sharp rock. The blow to her cheek had split the skin. A fan of blood covered one side of her face, and dripped onto her bare knees. But she was alive and ready to fight.

“Mayhap we ought to make ’im watch us take his little bitch, first, eh?” one of the sea-wolves called. The others agreed with rude laughter.

Tendrils of fury spread through Leitos’s limbs, wrapped him about like wings of ebon frost. His mind grew colder still, and a frigid, unfeeling clarity speared through him. His thoughts raced, while at the same moment, the world slowed around him.

As everything went oddly still, he sensed something unseen reaching for him. Instinctively, he sought to hold it. A flickering stream of images blurred behind his eyes. The sea-wolves and Belina vanished, all went dark, and his vision came to rest on the golden spindle drifting through a field of black. As before, he saw the tangled threads spreading outward from the hook at one end, saw how the spinning whorl twisted those threads into a single beautiful cord, and then wrapped them tightly around the shaft.

He reached for those loose threads, brushed them with his fingertips, and for a moment he seemed to be in a thousand places at once, his being stretched and tugged in all directions. He drew back with a surprised gasp. Delicate, those threads were, but somehow powerful beyond reckoning. They seemed to contain every thought ever conceived, every deed ever done.
The spindle,
he thought
, is the true master here.
Upon that delicate axle hung not the world, but all worlds, and even the darkness between the stars. It controlled
everything
, and made order out of all that sweet chaos. The entirety of what his eyes and emotions showed him was the root of absolute power, and for the briefest instant that power was his to control. And he wanted only to wreak vengeance upon those who sought to defile Belina.

As the golden spindle vanished and the world came back, unimaginable strength flooded him. He became weightless as thistledown. Queer sensations raced across his skin, joined him to the beating heart of the living world. He felt the pounding of distant waves through the stony soul of Witch’s Mole, smelled the sea on the wind—not just the Sea of Sha’uul, but
all
seas. Some cold and thick with ice, others warm and green. He tasted the dust of many deserts, smelled the slow-decaying loam of forgotten forests. The colors of the motionless world before his eyes bled away, leaving all painted in silver and black hues.

As he searched the frozen scene, those stark hues grew brighter, sharper, casting all in unnatural but beautiful contrasts. Leitos focused on the rigid Kelren before him, and saw wisps of light rising off his skin. Leitos’s hatred rushed through his veins, as did his vitality.

He allowed the natural flow of life and the world to grind forward. “I think I’ll kill you now,” Leitos said to Mud-eye, calm voice soft as silk, sharp as a fresh-stropped blade. An eager smile turned his lips, not at what he was about to do, but at the sheer enormity of life and power coursing through him.

A wave of uncertainty rippled the Kelren’s face, making it uglier than ever. “What’s wrong ...with ...
yourrr
...
eyessssss?
”

Obeying Leitos’s desire, the world slowed again, and the sea-wolf’s words reached him as a dragging hiss. The motion of everything except him ceased. The wind perished, a leaf hung in the air, waiting expectantly to resume its twirling expedition. Bent trees and their thrashing limbs stood firm as stone. The moment stretched long, but Leitos was unhindered.