Secrets of Arkana Fortress (37 page)

              As Rolden unsheathed his sword, Franlet closed the tome and stuffed it inside her cloak underneath her real arm.

              ‘Where is he then?’ Rolden enquired as he looked from doorway to doorway. ‘Who is he? And how would he have gotten inside?’

              San Kiln spat out of aggravation. ‘The stench is vile!’

              From within the distance came the sound of numerous armoured feet trotting around. It grew louder and louder until the doorways opposite them filled with the figures of the elite female soldiers they had encountered in the ruins of the city. The biggest question to Kelken, Breena and San Kiln was where their leader was.

              Rolden looked from one hard lined female face to the next, counting roughly 11 or 12 of them, each outfitted in the same dark metal plate armour as the rest of their comrades.

              ‘Who are you and how did you enter this place?’ bellowed the Templar commander.

              He was met with a steely silence.

              ‘Remove yourselves from this place at once or face the consequences.’

              Breena glanced at the boldness of the man and knew that there was hardly any chance of winning a fight against these highly trained warriors.

              There was a throaty laugh, coarse and gravelly, that travelled through the musty air from the right-most entrance. The flickering light caught the glimpse of dark green armour and the gigantic crossbow that was attached to the back of it. With a looming presence, the armoured feline strode into their view, this time with his helmet removed. There was a shared gasp at the sight of his face – large patches of bare skin, where some sort of mutilation had occurred, sat among his tabby-black fur like leeches, and a deep scar cut across his left eye from his forehead to his mouth.

              ‘You Traseken Templars used to be a lot nobler than this,’ the cat croaked with a sly grin. ‘I remember when you were a lot less hostile.’

              Rolden remained steadfast, regardless of the collective disgust at the feline’s appearance. ‘You didn’t exactly come here for a nostalgic chat, did you Mister…?’

              He was met with another rough laugh. ‘No names, thank you. I’m here for the book your hairy friend so cunningly put in her cloak.’ He raised a gloved finger at Franlet who grunted ferociously at him, shying away protectively like a threatened mother guarding her young offspring.

              ‘I don’t think someone like you would appreciate a text of this nature,’ she spat.

              ‘Oh, but I have to disagree. You see, ever since I caught a whiff of these three in the city I was most intrigued. Bearing in mind I was here in this run down shit heap for another reason, the book immediately took precedence.’

              Kelken backed up a little. ‘How did you know we had the book in the first place? You smell it or summit?’

              The figure boomed with amusement once more. ‘Smell it? Oh please, do you think I could physically smell something like that amongst all this fire and dust and shit?’ He glanced at San Kiln, slipping his fangs over his lips in a threatening smile. ‘I recognised the smell of the magic that surrounds that thing.’

              San Kiln sniffed the air curiously. ‘I smell nothing but you… it’s like… it’s like…’ He adjusted his tunic and then hissed violently. ‘Like the village where I got the tome from.’

              Breena rolled her eyes and huffed. ‘Ever heard of the old adage ‘never give your enemy too much information’ San?’

              San Kiln hummed.

              ‘Oh you mean the home of that arrogant caster. What was his name again?’ He raised a paw. ‘Oh yes – Kasten. Now he was an irritant.’

              ‘How did you…?’ San stood, shock on his furry face.

              ‘Less of this,’ the scarred feline growled as his arm swooped round to his back and unlatched the inhuman-looking crossbow, bringing it to the forefront and looking like a Bullwark ready to charge. ‘Give me the tome, and I mean now.’

              Rolden held out an arm defensively and edged San Kiln and the other backwards. ‘Franlet, take them to the other passage out of here.’

              Kelken felt his chest tighten. ‘Rolden… no…’

              His old friend sidled a look at him imploringly. ‘This is a fight for the Traseken Templars, not an outsider mercenary and his daughter.’

              ‘I’m not fucking leaving here. We can take them, Rolden.’ He grabbed his shoulder and stared him in the face solidly. ‘Please.’

              ‘Franlet? Please take them away.’

              The dark faced Bullwark seized Kelken’s free arm and yanked him away, trailing him behind her as he struggled pathetically in her god-like grasp. ‘This way, Kelk.’

              ‘For fuck’s sake, Fran, let me the fuck go! I’m not leaving Rolden to die here.’

              Breena had already ushered San Kiln to follow suit.

              Rolden saw the uniform group of elites edging forward. ‘Don’t worry… I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.’

              As one of the elite soldiers unleashed a storm of icy bolts from a pair of glowing hands, he reached underneath his cloak and down to his belt, slipping his hand into some sort of articulated gauntlet of dark gold and grey. He arched it up and out of it grew a shield of brightened blue and white that flashed and vibrated as the magic bounced off it, dissipating into the air.

              ‘A lovely little gift the old mage Diedra left me,’ he shouted back at his retreating companions.

              The armoured feline laughed and purred harshly. ‘Now that’s a new one on me… I suppose you can teach an old cat new tricks, eh?’ With that he unleashed a barrage of crossbow bolts at the resolute Templar, all of which fell uselessly to the carpeted floor, bouncing like raindrops on baked soil. He swore and signalled for his elites to converge on his position.

              Franlet pulled a combination of books and waited for a section of the bookcase to lower down into the floor. She tugged at Kelken’s struggling form. ‘Will you stop waving that bloody sword about – you’re going to have someone’s eye out in a second.’

              ‘We can’t just leave,’ he whined aggressively.

              ‘We’ve no choice.’ Franlet looked back at Rolden who was fending off three females in a dazzling display of swordsmanship.

              Breena urged them to hurry, San Kiln trotting in front of her towards the emerging exit. She fired an arrow from her bow, attempting to give Rolden some cover. Her arrow, although on target, bounced feebly off the armour of her target – she was unable to get a decent angle. She shuffled backwards as she saw the female build a big bolt of red magic from her eyes, poised to strike like a preying cat to attack.

              ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she exclaimed, her voice a sudden wave of fright. Her breath held for a second as she tried to speed up her legs, but found that they refused to act.

              Seemingly out of nowhere, an arrow lodged into the elite’s neck resulting in the magical projectile to careen sideways into a stack of books and scrolls, disintegrating them into dust.

              Breena looked up thankfully, expecting a god or divine being to have been the dealer of death. A hooded figure darted sideways up high on a secreted balcony, hurling arrows left, right and centre. She guessed it must have been Leskin as she turned to enter the black hole of a secret exit. The bookcase rumbled upward behind her and the others, leaving them to the darkness.

              In the faint distance, Breena thought she heard the sound of, what only her twisting stomach could deduce as, an enormous crossbow being fired, followed by the crashing of stone and metal.

              She crossed herself, as did her father.

Chapter 26

The city lay behind them, the ruined sight a much more harsh reality than it had been before. Rolden and Leskin, two of the only remaining Traseken Templars, had fought until the end, but their fates remained a mystery to Kelken. In his mind his friend was all but dead – there was no way he could have survived against an evil force like that. Rolden was, without a doubt, the most efficient Templar that had ever lived in Kelken’s mind – his ability to improvise tactically and swiftly was like nothing he had ever seen from one individual before. Maybe there was a chance he had survived the encounter?

              Within a day’s trek they had fled about a dozen or so miles west of the city, which was still no closer to safety where the feline and his mercenary forces were concerned, let alone whatever evil they fought for.

              They had found a small clearing in a patch of wood not far from the jutting mountains of the southern territories. Further west was the dreaded Forest of Mutilation, so called due to the strange deformities that ravaged the trees, shrubs and forest floor. Stretching along the coastal regions southwest of Yingtzo it was a moist, fertile marshland as well as an expansive forest. Within this cursed area many years ago, it was supposed to have been the home of some of the most legendary reptilians of all time.

              The much fabled reptilian pirate turned guardian, Syntolla, was said to have originated from the lost marshes. His life told the story of an infamous pirate who pillaged ships and ransacked small coastal towns. That was until he stumbled across a young female mage – a mage of sight. She saw that Syntolla’s destiny was not in his life of piracy, but as a guardian of good, fighting against oppression and corruption. Her magical ways shook him into the right path and he became a noted guardian in the service of the steward of an old, illustrious town in the south. There had been many fabled battles and stories.

              Something in the night air had instilled the sense of despair, or maybe it was just Kelken’s mood. He sat with his back away from the small fire Breena had constructed out of dried wood and brush. Franlet sat on a large log with San Kiln as she did her utmost to translate the ancient text into something legible.

              Kelken sat hunched over his knees, eyes fixated on a nearby sapling that pushed resiliently through the trodden soil as if reaching toward the heavens, ever hopeful. He never usually allowed things to get to him like this, but it was in the pale light of the fire that his mind gave body to his deepest thoughts. He could picture Rolden’s face from all those years ago – a young, chiselled set of features awash with the hope and anxieties of the future, that stared at him warmly when they both started their service. They had been a deadly efficient pairing, often sent out together on whatever missions they were given. It was through these missions that their partnership formed into a close friendship, and then into something that was akin to one mind. They had a fluid rhythm in their approach that gave them the kind of legendary status among the Templars that a prophet would have with the people.

              All that had been lost; not just in the past day, but years ago when Kelken had left to find his wife. He recalled Rolden’s angered speech when he found out he was leaving – it was all about oaths, honour, and duty… not to mention their friendship.

              Breena walked up beside him and looked at the sapling as well. ‘Have a drink, dad.’

              He said nothing.

              ‘Oi, old man.’ She tapped the back of his head with her fingers.

              ‘What d’ya want?’ he grunted, his mouth muffled with his fists.

              ‘Want a drink?’ she asked again, this time more softly.

              ‘No.’

              Breena paused as she stared at the back of her father’s head. She crouched next to him and peered at the side of his face. ‘What’s on your mind, dad? Rolden?’

              Kelken nodded his head, his face a blank anguish.

              ‘I don’t know what to say to you. He wanted us to live.’

              ‘No, he was being his stubborn self as he always used to be. He should’ve let me stay and help him fight that mangy cat.’

              ‘I’m pretty sure that he knew we had a mission to get on with.’

              He snorted and tilted his head to one side. ‘Mission? What mission? That silly bitch wanted us to bring that fucking book here to be translated and that’s what we done – end of. Don’t give a shit about any fucking money at the moment.’

              ‘Dad…’

              ‘No. No more,’ he snapped. ‘I’m fucking sick of all this. That bastard book has caused too much trouble already and now I’ve had to leave one of the bestest friends I ever knew to his death. How d’ya think I feel right now, eh?’

              Franlet had looked up at this sudden outburst, her long exhale of breath fanning the flames of the fire in front of her.

              ‘Give me a good reason to carry on with this bullshit?’

              Breena gaped awkwardly. She had never seen her father act like this towards her before. She had been used to him being a bit thoughtless, but he had always looked after her over the years. It suddenly dawned on her that she was feeling threatened and very much out of place next to him. ‘Dad… I…’