The White Towers (45 page)

Above them loomed the threatening shadows of the White Lion Mountains, and it was early afternoon, growing dark with stacked up storm clouds overhead, as they reached the valley floor and carefully picked their way towards the Kripzallandril Pass, simply known as
The Krip
, before which the departed elf rat army had been camped.

More snow began to fall, delicate little flakes that settled on their shoulders and hats and mounts. Dek glanced up, face a scowl, as they moved onwards and stopped in the deserted space the camp had occupied.

Zastarte went off to scout the locality, as Dek and Kiki turned to face the mouth of the pass. Here, it looked completely non-threatening. It was wide enough to take ten cavalry side by side and had only a gentle slope that had been trampled flat by the recent elf rat soldiers. However, both Dek and Kiki knew what lay ahead: the path, winding steeply up into the White Lion Mountains, narrowing to single file as it travelled up, up, up into the lofty peaks, treacherous for both men and horses alike, as howling icy winds blew hard enough to send an explorer careering off the path and into the void below. Dislodged rocks from above could crush a man’s skull or, even worse, there were huge sections that were prone to avalanche. Not only was there a threat of being buried in such a horrific fall of ice and rock, but there was also the threat of reaching a section of previous fall and finding the path either gone, or buried. It was not a trek to make lightly, nor was it one for the faint-hearted.

“I remember training here,” said Dek, gently, his voice oozing like smoke, his mind drifting back over the years. He glanced at Kiki. “You remember?”

“Not something you easily forget,” smiled back Kiki, lips narrow.

“I’m not looking forward to this. We lost lots of good men. Back in the day.”

Kiki nodded, and turned at the sound of Zastarte’s approach. “They’re heading southeast, following the range down towards Timanta. I would tentatively suggest they’re using Zunder Fortress as a staging post; good defensive position, and you have the whole of eastern Vagandrak at your disposal.”

“And what about the west?”

Zastarte shrugged. “They have more than one army.”

“That’s what worries me,” brooded Kiki.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” said Dek. “Maybe the whole of their forces haven’t yet come meandering over the White Lions; maybe, and this is just a very sombre thought, just
maybe
we’ll meet them high up on the peaks.”

Kiki considered this. “We’ll cross that particular cracking ice ravine when we come to it.”

Despite the lateness of the hour, and with night falling fast, they began the trek up the wide snow road ahead of them, aware that time was of the essence, painfully aware that Vagandrak was
running out of
time. They moved with slow, measured steps, each lost in their own thoughts, each looking ahead at the mission to come – the stealing, or destruction, of the Elf Heart from under the very nose of the elf rat king, Daranganoth; unless he’d travelled south with his army – or armies. The whole mission stank like a ten day corpse and Kiki found familiar demons haunting her, found familiar doubts assailing her senses. The old
what ifs.
What if this didn’t work? What if Sameska had been lying? What if they died in an avalanche? What if they were slaughtered the minute they stepped foot in Zalazar? Were Narnok and Trista still alive? Was there still a release from their
Iron Wolf
curse waiting for them back at Desekra Fortress, as General Dalgoran had promised? All swirled in a maelstrom of worry and doubt, with a constant underlying cackle from Suza, her dead bitch sister, waiting for her to drop down to the Chaos Halls beyond the Valleys of the Dead.

Dek found himself falling into a dark mood of desolation and doubt. As they trudged through ankle-deep snow, each footstep sapping just a little bit more strength, and with a biting wind chilling his face and finding tiny ways of intruding beyond his woollen clothing and oiled leather coat to make him curse and forever tug at the edges of his leaking clothing, so he glanced left at Kiki; glanced at that, some would say,
gaunt
face but a face that he found strong and beautiful. She was a proud woman, and he loved her dearly. But here and now, he felt like they were marching to their doom on an impossible task. Sometimes, Dek felt like he could take on the world. Here, in these godsforsaken lands, on this desolate mountain road heading for the poisoned lands of a hated, cast-out race, he felt a great weariness settle over his heart – like a gauntleted fist encompassing his dreams and goals and future. What future could they possibly have? They were going to die on this foolish fucking mission, and yet Kiki would not back down, would give her life to save her country despite her own deep problems, and that was why he loved her. That’s why he’d follow her to the edges of the world and die for her on a distant battlefield, his blood mixing with the ice and frozen ground.
That’s
why he loved her.

Zastarte, also, was moody and nostalgic. He thought about his childhood, joining the army, applying for and being accepted into the brotherhood of the Iron Wolves – Tarek’s elite. He remembered being a hero: the cheering crowds, children thanking him in village squares for killing the sorcerer Morkagoth and bringing peace and security back to the lands of Vagandrak. And the women… oh, how they were thankful, throwing themselves at him, opening their legs willingly for this hero of Vagandrak, a
prince,
no less, with his dashing good looks and, even though he said so himself, a perfection of sartorial elegance. And yet. And
yet
somewhere along the line it had gone wrong.
Somewhere
his brain had become mis-wired; he’d always thought he’d end up married with bawling, boisterous kids ready to carry on the Zastarte name. Instead, he found himself in a torture cellar inflicting pain on innocent victims and watching them suffer, and burn.

He shivered, as a demon passed over his soul.

And now he realised he was in love with Trista. But, even if she’d lived after the events in Zanne, even if she’d survived the constant fighting without him by her side to watch out for her, would she ever return his love? How could she, knowing what he’d done in his dark and evil past? The atrocities he’d carried out in the name of… jealousy? Loathing? A base-level hatred of humanity? Because these things he had done, they were not born from love, or even desire or lust – no. They were products of a hatred that ran bone-deep, at the cellular level. They were genetic. Inherited, perhaps? Had his father carried the same warped desires?

Zastarte ground his teeth and marched on as darkness fell over the mountains and the world, and the biting wind brought him more pain.

“We’re all going to die,” he murmured, although his words were taken by the wind and snapped away to the snow-laden valleys far below their panoramic view, fading fast. He gave a twisted, sardonic smile. “And nobody is going to
give
a fuck.”

 

They walked for half the night, deeper into The Krip, travelling inwards and upwards as if this were some insane military training exercise and a competition to see who had the greatest natural stamina. Dek finally called a halt, spying a cave down a narrow ice-edged cleft, and away from what had become a more severe and narrow path into the heart of the White Lion Mountains.

They just managed to squeeze the horses into the opening and tether them to nearby rocks. The place was a natural wind break and they unloaded wood from the horses, placing blankets across their backs, and Zastarte built a small fire at the mouth of the cave, where Dek brewed some hot tea and they all warmed savagely chilled fingers over the flames, sitting on their bedrolls to remove the seeping cold from the rocky ground.

The wind howled, a mournful series of ghost sounds, and Dek and Kiki huddled together, her head on his shoulder, staring at the dancing fire. Zastarte watched them from across the flames, his eyes hooded and dark, his cup in both hands warming his fingers, his mood brooding.

“You wish she was here, don’t you?” said Kiki.

Zastarte gave a single nod.

“You’ve changed a lot since I found you in that torture cellar.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why?”

Zastarte considered this. Eventually, just as Kiki thought he wouldn’t answer and was going to prompt him again, he said, “I believe that I found myself. I found peace with myself. The inner demon was cast out.”

“Inner demon?”

“Yes. A voice that spoke in my head. Prompted me to do bad things.” Kiki’s mouth went dry, and she thought about Suza.

“And you killed it?”

“I think, more, I exorcised it.”

“Did your demon have a name?” said Kiki softly.

“Yes, but I will not speak it here, lest I conjure the bastard back from the Furnace.” His head tilted to one side. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Kiki in a tiny voice. “I have a sister. Suza. She… died when I was much younger. It is her that haunts me, her that taunts me.”

“No, no,” said Zastarte, shaking his head. “I don’t believe that; I don’t believe your sister is inside your skull. This is something else. Something that came with our curse on that day Dalgoran and the other magickers created The Iron Wolves.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. This Suza – she is a product of the curse. There will be a way you can kill her; or banish her from your mind. You just have to find the right trigger, the right pressure point, and she will be kicked screaming and wailing into the Pit.”

“What was your trigger, Prince Zastarte?”

He leaned forward, and for a moment his eyes were visible by the light of the fire. They glistened with tears and he gave a woeful smile.

“I fell in love,” he said.

 

They set off with the coming of dawn, and the track grew ever narrower, ever steeper. Many sections had had great steps hewn into the rock, staircases on which the horses struggled, their iron-shod hooves slipping and sliding. The snow had stopped, and the sky was the colour of the ocean, a dark thunderous grey, with rolling clouds like waves and a distant low-level narrow strip lit by the winter sun. It was bleak, and yet beautiful, and the more they climbed so the pastel panorama before them widened to reveal the land of Vagandrak in all its beauty; all its decadence. Distant castles dotted the horizon, and great swathes of forest were highlighted in stark patches of evergreen. Through drifts of cloud they could see Zunder the volcano, and noted trails of distant black oozing from its summit. The volcano had not erupted for nearly three hundred years, and most scholars believed the mammoth beast dormant. Here, though, now that the elf rats had invaded, and there were no scholars to witness, it appeared the mighty dragon would ignite once more.

They sat and ate a cold meal of dried pork strips and chunks of hard cheese, eating in silence, each lost in their thoughts. Their horses stamped and snorted steam, and Kiki moved to her mount, patting the gelding’s neck and digging out a handful of oats. “Here you go, boy,” she said, words gentle, and the horse ate, then turned, nuzzling her with quiet affectionate sounds. “We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we? And here I am leading you on a crazy mission to quite possibly a certain death. After all, we can’t fight all the elf rats in Zalazar, can we? We can’t possibly battle our way to the Mountains of the Moon through ten thousand enemies. We just haven’t got the… the
strength,
any more. I’m tired, boy. Tired of this world.”

They climbed for another hour, breaching the current peak only to see more, and higher, peaks unfolding ahead of them, like an undulating mass of mountain flanks, each one hiding a further, higher summit. “False summits”, they’d called them during their training days. Designed by the gods to sap a soldier’s morale; especially when humping a large, heavy pack up eternal, leg-breaking slopes.

Distantly, thunder rumbled.

They followed a trail well marked by the recent, passing elf rat army; and then onto another section of steep ascent. Dek was leading, and when he suddenly stopped up ahead, Kiki looked up from her morbid contemplation and halted her own mount.

“What is it?”

“There’s been a rock fall. An avalanche of sorts. The fucking trail has gone.”

Kiki and Zastarte hurried forward and stopped, dismay flooding them. The path had indeed gone; what now existed was a steep sideways slope of churned rock and gleaming ice and snow, cutting across right before them. It carried on, for as far as the eye could see, curving around the side of the mountain and out of sight.

“Horse shit,” said Kiki, voice a monotone.

“There no other way around?” asked Zastarte.

“No. No other path. We’ll have to risk it.”

“We’ll not get the horses across that,” said Zastarte, frowning. “They’ll slide to their deaths.”

“You have to guide them,” said Kiki, “but keep the reins loose in your hand. If you feel the creature begin to slip, let go, or it’ll damn well drag you off the mountain.”

Zastarte stared at her. “That seems a little harsh,” he said, but forced a smile to hide his fear.

Kiki shrugged. “It’s reality, my friend.” She slapped him on the back. “Come on, it’ll be all right. I’ll look after you! After all, we’re the Iron Wolves and we’re on a mission of mercy to save Vagandrak! Chin up, be brave, you foppish dandy bastard.”

Zastarte grinned, and gave an extravagant bow, extending his arm in a sweep. “After you then, good lady. Show me how it’s done.”

Dek went first, approaching the slope warily, his eyes scanning the lower flanks of the avalanche sweep, then looking up to see if it was likely more would come tumbling down on top of him. He looked back at Kiki. “You ever seen one of these bastards go?”

“A couple of times,” she said, breathing deep. “But we have no other choice.”