INBORN (The Sagas of Di'Ghon) (17 page)

Then more came. Now, hungry eyes ran a constant circuit between flames, oxen, and them.  One of the wolves, the biggest set of eyes, seemed to be getting closer with every try. If he managed to hamstring one of the oxen, they would be stuck out here between keeps. At least until the pitch ran out…

The big wolf, gray and brown fur bristling as it snarled at the bouncing flame, made another pass, coming within just a few feet of the oxen before the flames sent him back with his tail tucked. 

Part of him welcomed the wolves. Every last hungry one of them. In fact he should be tossing them treats out the side of the wagon. Because Elycia had been planted right beside him for the past hour. When the first one lunged
for an ox she was so startled that she leaped in fright, and landed right in his arms.

When she realized what she had done, the look she shot him nearly ripped him in two. He’d rather be eaten by the wolves than feel that again. He
couldn’t blame her for being scared after she saw him call the dra, with that dreaded dais blazing like lightning beneath him.  What was she supposed to think after seeing something like that? He didn’t know what to think himself.

Thaniel shook it off, not wanting to dwell on it anymore. But it was so hard. It was like a nightmare that you still remembered after waking. It wouldn’t go away. The vision of that cerulean scaled beast haunted him. The big round solid blue eyes seemed to still be peering into his soul. Why him?

Thaniel forced it all away and struggled to focus on the present. The important thing was that Elycia was right here, by his side now. That was all that mattered. That, and making it to Navillus.

“Wipe that stupid grin off your face boy and swap out that torch.” Harkanin nodded out in front of the oxen at the ingenious rig as it swayed back and forth trailing lines of guttering black smoke. One of the torches was low on fuel again. 

Thaniel felt his ears go hot. Even with wolves on all sides he couldn’t help but grin with Elycia next to him.

“She’ll be here when you get back.” Jorel cooed. Then he pretended to throw up.

“Don’t start that again.” Elycia snapped.

Thaniel leveled his hardest look at him. It had the usual effect. None.

“I’ll be right back.” Thaniel squeezed Elycia’s shoulder and she glanced up at him, eyes pleading for him not to go. Thaniel wanted to spend the night looking into her eyes, blue as the unusual sky. Shiny golden curls glistened in the firelight. They bounced with every lurch of the wagon. As far as he was concerned this trip could take for the rest of his life if he got to stay right beside her.

“It’s your turn, lover.” Jorel smirked, holding up a fresh torch.

“I know, dolt for brains.”

“Don’t worry. They won’t eat too much of him. He isn’t nearly as tasty as me.”
Jorel’s eyebrows rose up and down as he grinned at Elycia.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” Elycia
groaned.

Jorel laughed.

“Get on with it.” Samial Harkanin growled over his shoulder.

“Be careful.” She smiled, eyes full of concern.

Thaniel felt himself beaming again, if he ever stopped.

“Now, I think I’m really gonna be sick.” Jorel handed over the unlit torch and leaned in a bit so as to let not let Harkanin hear. “Come back in one piece.”

Thaniel tore his arm from her shoulder. Was that concern for him in her eyes? Maybe she was just worried at their predicament. It was so hard to tell with girls. Then her eyes glazed over and slid away. He had no idea if she would let him come back beside her after he was done. His heart dropped through the bottom of the wagon bed. Like he wasn’t there at all. Thaniel went numb.

“That’s it boy. Go on now.”

Walking the yoke while the rig swayed back and forth was dicey at best. Doing it while those teeth snapped at you was entirely another. He struggled to keep his balance. Without her…

“Make it quick, Messenger.” Samial Harkanin growled. “We’re comin up to a rough patch.”

Thaniel’s head spun as Elycia’s scream ripped through the night. There was a blur of gray and brown movement to his right. He spun and realized before he even finished that it had been a mistake. His boots slipped off the rigging. Time seemed to slow as he felt his foot catch on something.

Teeth. Long sharp teeth
, intended for only one purpose, to tear off chunks of flesh, snapped at him. Only the chain of the torch kept them from ripping his throat out.

He knew he was only a few feet off the ground but it felt like he was falling forever as fangs drew closer with inevitable finality.

Somehow the torch he held sprang to life. The wolf was so close now that Thaniel saw the dancing yellow flames reflecting in the beast’s eyes.

He wondered if he would be dead before he hit the ground.

He had always thought that when the end came his life would flash before his eyes, kind of like a final tally of all the wrong he had been guilty of. He would take the time to make amends with the Creator who would smile down at him and give him the almighty and well earned thumbs up sign. None of that happened. Although everything seemed to be moving slow, like the world had been drenched in molasses, there wasn’t enough time for repentance. In fact, as he thought about it later, repentance never even occurred to him.

Instead, as the teeth lunged for his throat a haunting plea gnawed at his heart. It exploded from deep inside him. It was the childhood the slavers had taken from him. The family he lost forever and would never avenge. It was
a hunger for a world he hadn’t seen. It was his promise to see Elycia to Navillus. Or even to the next keep. It was so much more and yet boiled down to one word.

Unfinished.

That word exploded in his mind. It ignited his senses. Like a hot poker it spurred him to move. Yet Thaniel knew instinctively that it would be too late. At any moment he expected to feel teeth rip into his throat.

“No!” Thaniel screamed in a bright flash of pure rage. There was a loud thwack followed by a tearing snapping sound as hot blood
speckled across his cheek.

The wolf lurched away suddenly, probably with his throat as a prize.

Thaniel expected to feel pain but there wasn’t any. Maybe the dead didn’t feel pain. Somehow the thought angered him. That such a boon would only fall to the dead. Thaniel reached for his throat expecting to find it a bloody hole. Yet it wasn’t. Confusion clouded his vision as the world tried to expand.

Details trickled back in, filling gaps. He wasn’t hurt.
In fact, he was staring into the dead face of the wolf that a moment earlier wanted to eat his guts. Its head didn’t seem to be on right. Its yellow eyes dimmed as he watched.

Just then the swaying torch sputtered out in a hiss as it landed in a puddle of half frozen slush. Instantly the blackness swept in, carrying with it multiple sets of yellow eyes.

Jorel yelling at him seemed to pull him fully back into the world of the living. He was reaching down for him. Thaniel realized he was looking at the world upside down.  Somehow his foot had gotten caught in the rigging and now he hung helpless alongside the wagon as it lurched to a sliding stop. Curiously, Thaniel found himself wondering just how hard Harkanin had to pull on the reins to get it to stop. The oxen were obviously spooked beyond all reason.

Jorel must have replaced the torch because it now guttered brightly above him. The warmth of it as it bounced about was paradise to his soul. It was short lived though as gray and brown wolves moved in, unable to resist the big stupid dangling piece of meat he was, regardless of the dancing balls of flame.

“Come on booby!”

The wolves were coming fast.

“Don’t let them get her.” The words just tumbled out in a frantic rush. His eyes searched for Elycia. All he wanted was to make sure she was alright. She had her face buried in her hands in terror, but her fingers were parted just enough so that she could see him hanging there like bait.

“She’s fine. Now, shut up and reach for my hand.”

“Nine hells…” He heard Harkanin swear as mud and ice cold slush splashed across his face.

A black horse pounded in beside him. Flashing hooves sent wolves flying in all directions. What the horse missed, the warrior that leaped off her back and into the pack didn’t. Wolves sprang at him from all sides. Yet the man seemed the
picture of grace and calm. A vicious mix of yelps and snarls filled the night. Two silver blurs of steel cut a path of bloody mist in front of him as he glided through the snarling beasts. The blackness seemed to be raining furry body parts.

“Need help boy?” An old man’s face, white hair, wrinkles to spare, and the bushiest eyebrows he ever saw was hanging upside down in front of him. He wasn’t anything special. Except that his eyes were alight with an e
erie blue glow. Thaniel stared, open mouthed. The energy radiating out from those eyes seemed to reach out to Thaniel, as if the man would have seen him if he was painted black in a vat of oil.

The old man smiled on one side of his face knowingly and without waiting for an answer the old man produced a knife from his sleeve in a flourish. Thaniel tumbled to the
wet snowy ground.

When Thaniel looked back up the man held out a hand, which thankfully wasn’t glowing.

“Are you going to just lay there in the slush?” The man asked.

Feeling like an idiot and still not able to shake the man’s piercing azure gaze, Thaniel reached up and took the man’s hand. The moment he did the glow
in his eyes dimmed, leaving a pretty regular looking old man standing in the flickering torchlight.

“My name is Lars Telazno.”

Grizzly
Decoration

Lisella Ontar studied the pile of maps spread out in her drawing room.

“This weather can’t hold forever.” She tapped the map with the tip of her dagger. “If we take Rarien before winter returns, the grain from their silos will make it easier to feed our men for the push to Flameshelm.”

“It will take Flameshelm a month to raise enough men to stop us.”
Irkhir pointed to the ports where ships full of mercenaries were most likely to come ashore. “Even if they set sail today, they will be too late by a week. Rarien might be out of the way by a few days, but it will buy us two weeks in return for our efforts. All the time we need.” He glared at the map as if daring it to say otherwise.

She had known Irkhir since birth. He was her father’s advisor, then her mother’s, her brother’s, and now hers. Although she would be the only one to put the man to any real test. She had always known him as a tutor, kind of like a gruff old uncle. Now the man had turned out to be quite a strategist as well. Every bit of their plan was well thought out and based
on simple common sense.

“With that we can make it to Flameshelm in three weeks, four at the worst.” Irkhir grunted satisfactorily, running a meaty finger along the top of one of his axes. The heavy axe hanging at his hip had been the feared weapon of the Ontars for ages.
It could chop through any shield and open the heaviest armor in a single cut.  It took years of work for the men of her ranks to build enough muscle to wield the weapon with any skill. Now that Irkhir had been transformed by the blood of the dra, a process she still had to remind herself was real, the mighty axe looked too small for his hands, like he caressed a child’s toy. The insufficient weapon was a perfect reminder of why they needed to push for Flameshelm.

Flameshelm was the largest city in all of Anwar. Due to its protected harbor and close proximity to the upper passes, it was the center of trade and therefore garnered the bulk of Anwar’s wealth. Pilinor, the fat pig that ruled Flameshelm, would try and fight. But he wasn’t a warrior. His army was more for show than fighting. The last time she saw him, he came with a huge retinue of men, not a one of which had bothered to sharpen his blade. Once it fell she would put that wealth to good use. War was expensive. But
more importantly, Flameshelm derived its name from the hundreds of low smoke stacks that stuck up from the city. They protruded up through the rooftops of smithies, armorers, and smelting yards, making the vast city look like a giant smoking pin cushion. Lisella needed weapons. Bigger weapons. Weapons made for the likes of the Bloodborn.  She would put every one of those smokestacks to work.

Irkhir heard the man coming long before she did. By the time he knocked on the lintel they were already turned around, waiting.

Blackthorn, one of the First, had been big before the ritual. Now the warrior was too tall and his shoulders were too wide to allow him to walk through her door straightway. Getting through it required a stoop and an awkward looking side step at the same time. Behind him five more men filed in, all members of the First, wearing the traditional crimson and heavily decorated shining armor plate.

“Mistress. I bring word from Gremsfell.” Long blonde hair hung down either side of his head
, almost touching the floor as he bent low.

“Blackthorn, get up. Where have you been? The First of the
Bloodborn should not keep me waiting. ” Lisella let her chill tone wash over the man. Word from Gremsfell was overdue by a day.