The Storm's Own Son (Book 1) (15 page)

They were all recessed back on the higher cliff in such a way that they could not be seen from the road below, and at a height that made Talaos
marvel at how they'd been carved at all.

Talaos stood there for a long while, in silent wonder, as the wind blew all around him.

He reflected on what they might be. Heroes of ages past?  Or perhaps Magi? If so, they looked like none Talaos had ever seen or heard of. The figures on the mountain seemed far more primal and grand.

Shapers of the world.

Perhaps they were gods.

As they might have been
, so long ago that only the stones remembered.

Whatever gods had truly been, if ever they had walked the earth, Talaos thought, these mighty figures on the rock would surely be how ordinary men would have seen them.

Without a conscious sense of why, he raised his right hand to them in greeting, and farewell. The straight path in the stone faced them. He walked it, and down the steps below.

H
e returned to main road at the pass and looked east.  Before him the descent looked much longer and more gradual than the ascent had been in the west. There were lower ridges of forested mountains, line on line, gently falling into hill country at the horizon. For a long way at first, however, he would be going downhill.

Talaos
laughed, and walked with swift steps down the road.  After a little while, feeling suddenly exhilarated, he began to trot, then run.

The wind felt cool and fresh in his face. He ran in great loping steps
down the switchbacks, rocks scattering in his wake. He ran on. He reached the tree line, still descending. Pines loomed on the slopes around. Every now and then, some animal would panic at his approach and flee into the woods. He reached a valley with a little stream, where the road crossed at a shallow ford, and without slowing, raced up the next ridge. His body sang with life and his pack felt almost weightless, and still he ran.

At last, he came to a
wider valley where the trees gave way to meadows.  The next lofty forested ridge rose a mile or more to the east. He looked at the sun overhead, and with a start, realized he'd been running, sprinting at almost full speed, for more than an hour.

~

Talaos strode down the deep forest path in the fading light.  He'd at last reached the end of the high ranges, and entered the hill country beyond. Though it was supposed to be inhabited, he'd found only devastation.

There'd been a ruined mining operation,
equipment smashed and anything of value long gone. He'd passed the charred remnants of a village with blackened skeletons of people and domestic beasts, and then a battlefield where dozens of bodies had been left to rot.

He thought of
his own life of violence on the streets, and how petty it now seemed. He thought of the lives being taken in the violence now around him, and wondered how many of them were tough fighters, like the gangsters of Carai, and how many of them were terrified innocents, pleading as they were slaughtered. He thought of men with expressions of serene calm, presiding over the deaths as they preached peace. He stalked down the road in deepening shadows.

Deep in his roiling, brooding thoughts, he paid little attention to what was around him. It was perhaps for that reason that he failed to see them, until they were upon him.

A large band of armed men, perhaps as many as fifty, fanned out from the woods on either side of the road. They carried a motley assortment of weapons, and some wore armor. They advanced all around, slow and sure, with expressions ranging from greedy leers, through tension and caution, to glum resignation.

He thought about the dead innocents, and these living men of war.

Were these the men who'd slaughtered a village, right down to the animals?

Off to the south, past a line of trees, he could see a ruined, looted farm.

He brooded, dark anger growing inside.

But this war was not his war, he thought. He continued on.

They began to move to stop him.

A big, burly fellow, with close-cropped hair
, and a scowl on his scarred face, swaggered forward on the right. He had a battered breastplate, and carried a huge mace over his shoulder.

Talaos ignored him.

"Hoi! Stop, you!" the man barked.

Talaos considered who this man might be. They
could have the blood on innocents on their blades, and that man their leader in the deeds. Not his war, but storms roiled in his mind.

"
I said stop!" bellowed the man. "Hand over everything you've got, or you're dead."

Blood of innocents. But he was no innocent
.

The storms in his mind broke, and Talaos looked over at the man in sudden fury.

Fast as thought, he drew his spear from its harness on his pack. There was a cracking sound like thunder as he hurled it full at the man's chest. The latter flew back five feet into a tree as it struck. He coughed blood as he died, transfixed, with the spear through his breastplate and buried a foot deep in the wood behind. From the hole where the spear impaled him came a whiff of acrid smoke.

The other men, all of them, drew back with wide eyes as Talaos silently passed.

~

The hills ahead were wreathed in low-lying fog. Dark woods of oak, elm, and linden crowned their peaks
under a gray sky. In the distance, Talaos could see a walled town with glinting lights and smoke rising from chimneys. As he walked towards it, the first living civilization he'd seen in days, he considered the task before him.

For all that he knew
that he had a foe, he still knew almost nothing about that foe. The doctrines of the Prophet were key to everything that was happening. The followers of the Prophet that he'd encountered had seemed absolutely sincere, certain in their beliefs. The young priest had been keen to spread them. Perhaps the belief itself had power. He would have to learn more if he were to hope to overcome them.

And against that power, the temporal power to rule a continent, and the manifest magical power arrayed against him, he had only himself.

He had power of his own, but no more understanding of it than he did that of the Prophet. For all that had happened, he'd done little introspection about what he was discovering within himself, the power that was growing. He'd rarely questioned it because it felt natural, utterly right and an outcome of who he was.

No
, he thought... Not who he was, but what.

Magi used knowledge and carefully crafted items to wield their magic
. Whatever power the emissaries of the Prophet drew on, it wasn't his. If the gods had truly existed, they'd lived thousands of years in the past. There were said to be spirits of many kinds, and those who could call on them. There were always the stories of people with strange, specific, gifts, and he'd now seen such first hand in Miriana.

All of them had power, but
he was none of them.

What was he?

The town was not far now. Though it was mid afternoon, the gates were shut. Instead of the paved plaza that would have been before the gates of a town of this size in the Republic, there was a wasteland of well-beaten mud, dotted with refuse. On the other hand, he thought with a bit of sarcasm, the wall was exceptionally strong-looking and well maintained.

Al
ert guards in varied chain and leather shirts watched him from the battlement.

When he got close enough to hail, one
, probably an officer by the plumes on his helmet, called to him, "Who are you, and what business brings you to Ipesca?"

"My name is Borras, from the Republic, and I'm a merchant."

The officer surveyed him, his weapons, and his light pack skeptically. "A merchant? Selling what?"

"My skill at fighting."

The man laughed, "Ha! Well, there's always room for mercenaries. Wait there!"

After a short while, the gate opened
.  On the other side, he found the officer, a sturdy, harsh-faced man, leading half a dozen guards. All were grim, armed, and ready.

"No trouble now," said the officer.

"On my honor as a blackguard," answered Talaos with a dark grin.

The other made a cynical smile in reply. "If you're looking for work, go see Commander Rocani at the Keep. I'm Captain Iadro."

"Thanks."

Iadro eyed the long scar on his face. "Not your first war, I see. I'd doubt you got that sitting at home in the Republic."

"No. Fighting wild beasts in the mountains."

"Ha! That's good! See you later, Borras."

Talaos
continued on, down the muddy streets. The buildings were somewhat like those in the Republic, but with less use of plaster and whitewash, and high-peaked wooden roofs rather than tile. Faded decorative paint scrolled around some doorways and windows. Shuttered, empty shops, and other signs of ruin were scattered here and there. There seemed to be more people about than a town this size should have. Refugees, perhaps. At some of the vacant shops, the doors had been broken in, and what looked like squatters had set up lodging. In other places, miserable folk in bedraggled homespun garb had set up lean-tos of cloth or scrap wood.

He stopped by several inns, and all were full, or wanted steep prices for spots on the common room floor. Ahead, he could see the keep and an eastern gate. As he walked towards them, he considered what to do.  Then, not far from the keep, on his left, he saw a building
that looked entirely out of place with everything else he'd seen.

It was not large, but i
t looked newly constructed with clean white brick and a round, barrel-vaulted wooden roof.  There were large windows with varnished shutters of light-colored wood, now closed in the damp weather, and big doors of the same material, open and welcoming.

T
he room inside was brightly lit with candles, and packed with people of all sorts sitting on the floor. On a small raised platform, at the center of the wall opposite the doors, a woman of middle years sat cross-legged on a mat. She had auburn hair tied back in a severe-looking tight coil, and a large plain white shawl over simple wool clothes. To the right of her was a low shelf with some books, and to the left, on the floor below, sat a strong looking man with a beard.

The woman was speaking.
Talaos had a distinct sense of what he was likely to hear, but he still stopped, and listened.

"...and so the Prophet set forth, humble and barefoot, to seek audience with the warring kings. He begged each in turn to make peace with each other. Some hearkened, and some did not.
He begged them a second time, but they hardened their hearts. The Prophet, with sadness in his own heart, resolved to aid those who had hearkened to the call of peace, and..."

Listening to the speech, Talaos noticed the woman's accent. It took him a moment to recognize it, as he'd only heard it a few times in his life.

Dirion. The aristocracy of old Dirion.

The man with the beard seemed to have noticed Talaos, and wit
h a friendly, gentle expression, gestured for him to come inside. Talaos turned and continued down the street. He was in fact very interested in finding more about why the followers of the Prophet did what they did, but finding out on their own terms could only be disastrous.

So, he considered, what then?

There were two sides in this war, two main alliances, and Talaos decided to see if the Prophet had chosen one of them.  If so, the presence of that building might mean something, might point toward what he needed to do next. He headed towards the keep.

9
. The Winds of War

Commander Rocani sized him up with hard, grim eyes.  The man was on the shorter side, but massively strong in build. His square craggy face was weathered, with an old scar diagonal across it, and  his brown hair was heavily frosted with gray. He wore plain but well maintained armor of segmented plates, a rich, weather-worn brocaded cloak, and had a sword across the big, battered table that served as his desk.

"Looking
to sign on?" he said, without introduction.

"I might be," replied Talaos, "but I'd like to know more about the situation. News is thin on the other side of the mountains."

Rocani seemed to turn the request over in his mind, eyed Talaos again, then answered. "You were an officer, before, yes?  What's your name?"

"
Borras. There were those who followed me."

"I don't need any more officers at present, but it is always good to have someone with the experience.
Stick around here, or in Avrosa, and you can earn your place in time."

"Thank
you."

The commander took another look at
the scars on Talaos's right arm. "That looks more like it came from an animal. A big one."

"Ferox."

"You got pounced by a Ferox, and lived to tell the story? I hope you can bring a little of that luck our way," said Rocani with a grim smile. "Must've been a while ago, by the look of your scar."

"It feels like
a lifetime."

"
I know that feeling, these days."

Talaos nodded in understanding.

"Anyway, to answer your question," continued Rocani, "the situation is bad. A warlord named Basivras picked his side, and made a deal with the hill chiefs, along with some towns away north. He laid waste to the countryside all round here, as I'm sure you saw on the way in. The refugees flooded in, and we were holed up ready for a siege.

"Then,
our senior patrician found a little gold had come his way, and was going to open the gates. But, we put a stop to him. Permanently. Basivras didn't like that, but he didn't get a chance to do anything about it, because then an army arrived from Avrosa, and put him out of business. A few of his men are still out there, living like bandits and preying on what's left of the villages, but there's not much I can do about it right now."

"
The army from Avrosa was forced to return?"

Rocani eyed him
. "Exactly. There is a big enemy allied army coming from further north, and the people in Avrosa will be holing up themselves any day now."

"What about here?"

"I sent a few men, but beyond that, we're going to wait it out, hope for the best, and hope the plague doesn't strike. Avrosa's been a good ally, but I've got to be realistic. If we bend with the wind, hopefully it won't knock us down. You're free to go there and help, if you want. The pay will be better, and if they win, there'll be loot."

"I'll think about it. By the way, I had one more question."

Rocani arched a scarred eyebrow.

Talaos continued,
"I passed a building along the way..."

The commander seemed to guess his meaning, and chuckled.

"The House of the Prophet, they call it."

"
This side is allied with the Living Prophet?"

"That would be something. Not sure it would be good. No, neutral as far as I can tell. Just spreading the good word in their way. They do a lot of charity, bringing in gold
and goods from donations somewhere. Gold they spend to keep people alive is gold we don't have to."

"Do they have houses
among the other side in the war?"

"
A few. And up in what used to be Dirion, from what I hear. Feel free to go talk to them yourself, if you want to know more," He paused, looking at the stack of papers before him, "In any case... come back when you're ready to sign up, but now I've got work to do."

Talaos bid his thanks, and left.

Outside, in the outer courtyard of the keep, Talaos knew exactly what he needed to do.  He headed straight for the west gate, the road that led to the coast, and Avrosa. The gray daylight was fading to dusk.  He walked up to the officer who seemed to be in charge.

"
Is there still time to open the gate? I'm on my way to Avrosa."

The officer looked him over, nodded with a kind of black humor, and replied, "Eager to fly into the teeth of the storm, eh?"

"It never leaves me."

~

He pressed on in the darkness down the rutted, muddy road. The air was still, the forest pressed tall and close all round. Gloomy hills rose beyond, and mist clung to the hollows. Hardly a bird or beast moved. Talaos walked with sword drawn, cloaked, alert blue eyes glinting in the shadows under his hood.

Here and there were further signs of war. A burned mill by a little splashing stream, a smashed and plundered merchant wagon
in a ditch, some corpses hanging in a copse of trees. Sometime after midnight, he passed another burned and ruined village.

Later still, he came upon a campsite in a little pasture next to the road.  Three wagons were grouped in a kind of protective half-hexagon with a campfire in the middle.
People slept under blankets, clustered close to that fire, and two armed men stood watch, scanning the night around them. As he approached, the men on watch turned to him with sudden fear in their eyes, as if seeing an apparition. They took half-steps back and raised their weapons, one an axe, the other a spear. Talaos paid them no heed and passed silently by.

In the murky
dark after midnight, he began to grow tired. The fog was thickening again. He found a low spur of a hill that ran close to the road. It ended in a rocky crag  that looked, to him, like an inviting place to rest.  He climbed the gentler slop at the side, but once on the top, he saw something else. Further up the spur, on a rise that formed a kind of foothill to the higher ridge behind, was a circle of trees and what looked like toppled standing stones.

With curiosity, he ascended the spur
up the weather-worn remains of what might once, long ago, have been steps. Reaching the place, he found eighteen tall, narrow gray stones, cracked and worn with the ages, carved with runes and shaped much like those at Amari. Some of the stones looked to have toppled long ago.  Others, though, had been pulled up recently, and scattered  in random directions. Holes and fresh dirt, no more than a few weeks old, marked the spots where the stones had once stood.

On a sudden impulse, Talaos walked over to a stone, as long as he was tall, and picked it up. Only
then did he consider that he shouldn't have been able to do it. Not by himself. No matter, he thought, he already had. He carried it back to what seemed to be the right spot, then did the same with the next, and then the rest of the uprooted stones. Once that was done, he turned the long-fallen stones on their ends, and propped them up with earth behind.

He walked to the center of the ring to survey his work, and thought it good.

Then, faintly all around him, he thought he saw shapes, or perhaps the outlines and whispers of shapes. They stood there, outside the ring and well away from him, flickering in the black night, as the moon peered through the thick clouds overhead, and then they were gone.

Feeling exhaustion at last
, he descended to the rocky crag over the road, and threw himself to sleep on the welcoming stone.

~

Talaos awoke to the sound of creaking wheels, grunting animals, and muttering people.  The fog was breaking up in the early morning sun. He looked over the edge of his crag, and saw a long line of people, wagons, carts, and domestic beasts, all heading west toward Ipesca. From the sun, he guessed he'd been asleep about three hours, but he felt fresh and ready to begin. At least, he thought, he would after he'd had a bite to eat.

He swung himself around, feat hanging over the edge of the crag, overlooking the road some twenty feet
below. He ate a small breakfast from among his travel rations. Some of the trudging people looked up at him, faces tired and fraught with cares.

After a short while, a pair of men, moving in pace with the others, came into view. One
, of middle years and pot-bellied on an otherwise strong frame, rode a tired-looking horse. He was better dressed than most, but his rich clothes were muddied, and he wore a sword at his side.  With him on foot was a solemn soldier in a chain shirt, a long spear over his shoulder.

Talaos called down to them
. "So, the enemy has reached Avrosa."

The well-dressed man stopped, looked up at him
with curiosity in his weary brown eyes, and answered. "Yes. All those from the countryside who could not reach the walls in time are now flying where they may. How fare things in Ipesca?"

"Rocani has the walls well maintained and men in good order. There is not much room."

"Did he let that place be built, that Prophet's house or whatever they call it?"

Talaos was surprised by the question, but answered without hesitation
, "Yes."

"That is
unfortunate. Strange things were happening in Avrosa."

"How so?"

"People being taken in for questioning by the Vigiles or the Council for no reason that seemed apparent to me. Emissaries of the Prophet sitting in on the meetings. It made no sense, and made me nervous..."

Then, with a look of sudden suspicion, the man stopped, put his hand on his sword,
and added, "And who are you?"

"No friend of the Prophet."

With that, Talaos dropped from his crag, twenty feet to the grassy roadside below, and landed lightly as a cat. To the startled, almost astonished expressions of the two men and the others around, he continued casually down the road toward Avrosa.

~

From the low rise that marked the final end of the hills, Talaos could see the coastal plain before him. Beyond it were the strong walls and pale stone towers of the city of Avrosa on the shores of the eastern sea. The clouds had finally cleared, save for a few stragglers that floated lazily in a peaceful blue sky.

The scene below that sky was anything but peaceful. 

A vast swarm of men, twelve thousand or more, encircled the city. Some stood in place in ordered companies with spears and large round shields, or massed short bows. Many more went about working. Closest in to the city, they were digging trenches in two concentric rings. Behind that, men were setting up the frames for siege engines. Further back, tents of many colors were being raised, with banners on tall poles between.

Beyond the tents, other men were digging an outer line of trenches, and building small watch towers of wooden posts and planks.  At the very outermost edge of the army, squad
rons of light cavalry patrolled ceaselessly, their armor gleaming in the sunshine.

It was the first time Talaos had seen an army at war, and for all
his opposition to being dragged into one unwillingly, he liked what he saw.

However, he was here to fight a war of his own, and the sides were neither this army nor the city it besieged, nor any of their friends. The sides were him, and the Living Prophet. Wh
erever led towards his victory in that war was his path. Whoever intentionally hindered him were his foes, and whoever could help him along the way were his allies. He drew his blades, threw back his cloak, and walked down the road toward the army below with a swift, easy stride.

As he reached the plain, he saw that the farmsteads here about were all abandoned, and it looked like everything of value had been seized by one side or the other, but there were no burnings and no gratuitous destruction.
The road, dirt even this close to the city, was deeply rutted with recent wagon tracks. No doubt, thought Talaos, from the refugees that must even now be crowded inside the walls.

A patrol of horsemen, a dozen strong, rode up to intercept him.  They
wore chain shirts, close-fitting helmets with cheek guards, and they carried light oval shields and long spears. One, clearly their officer, had gilt on his armor and a plume on his helm.

The
y fanned out in a half circle across the road, and the officer raised his hand. This close, Talaos could see he was man not much older than himself. The other surveyed him, his weather-worn black gear and cloak, his scars, and his bright gleaming blades. Doubt grew in the man's eyes.  At last, however, the officer mastered himself and spoke.

"
This city is under siege."

"I can see that," replied Talaos.

"Why are you here?"

"
To enlist."

"
And what is your name?" said the officer, with a cautious expression.

"Talaos."

The officer seemed to collect himself by means of professional bearing, and spoke again, with careful precise words. "Follow us until we get in hailing distance of the outer pickets. I'll send you to an officer there. They'll tell you where to go next. Be ready to answer questions."