Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (60 page)

The merchant’s knives flashed, first high, then low, probing, pressing—so fast, it seemed she must have five or six spinning between her fingers rather than the two Kaden had seen when she walked so calmly into the slaughter. Ut was quicker than his men, however, and wearing heavier armor.

As the two circled each other in the center of the yard, a man’s voice hissed from the shadows. Kaden turned to see Jakin, a crossbow in his right hand, Triste’s arm clasped roughly in his left. He was dressed in his customary tunic and breeches, as though he never went to bed, as though he had expected the sudden outburst of violence.

“Worry about yourselves,” he snapped. “Pyrre Lakatur has lived long in the shadow of Ananshael. She will meet us later, if the god wills.”

Kaden felt Tan stiffen at his side. He looked over at the monk, surprised to see his mouth twisting with some sort of emotion. Tan started to speak, but more soldiers were already flooding into the square, slowed for the moment by the sight of their commander locked in a duel.

“I need to find Akiil,” Kaden insisted. “He’s in the dormitory.”

“The dormitory is crawling with Aedolians,” the man shot back.

“Then kill them!” he replied, gesturing to Jakin’s crossbow.

“This is useless indoors,” he spat. “Your friend’s dead, or he will be dead. I’ve been paid well not to let you join him.”

Kaden hesitated, but Tan took him by the arm with that implacable grip.

“Now!” he said. With a wordless shout of rage, Kaden turned, and the four of them rushed past the stone dormitory, past the screaming and bellowed commands, past the flames licking from the meditation hall, and into the night.

They raced up the trail to the Circuit of Ravens, Tan keeping pace despite his bulk, Triste and Jakin stumbling every so often on the unfamiliar stones. Kaden tried to shut out the sounds echoing at his back: harsh orders barked in the darkness, the clash of steel on steel, screaming. The scene of Pater’s death kept running through his mind, and he realized sickly that the boy would not be the only one murdered that night. Kaden thought back to his words—
I heard them, Kaden, “Make sure they’re all dead.…”
Jakin had insisted that the monks in the dormitory were already dead, but Akiil was no ordinary monk. He was fast and smart. He’d learned to stay alive in the alleys of Annur before he was ever carted off to Ashk’lan. He would have been sleeping in the dormitory with the rest of the monks, but surely he’d heard something. If he could win free of the immediate carnage, he could lose himself in the rocks for days. Had he escaped? Or had Kaden already heard his dying scream? Nausea filled him.

Near the top of the ridgeline, just below the notch that would lead over the saddle and into the shallow defile beyond, Jakin pulled up sharply. Kaden started to ask what was wrong, but the man glared him into silence, then inched his head up over the rise. After only a moment, he pulled back with a low curse.

“What is it?” Kaden whispered, his throat tight.

“Men.”

“With you?”

“There
is
no one with us,” he hissed. “When they sent us to protect you from assassins, they forgot to mention that the assassins were an entire regiment of the Emperor’s own ’Kent-kissed Aedolian Guard.”

“What about that?” Triste asked, gesturing to the crossbow.

Jakin hefted it with disgust. “Only one quarrel left. I didn’t count on having to use so many down below.” As they spoke, Kaden realized with a sickening lurch that the sounds of slaughter behind them had ceased. Sooty red tongues of flame licked against the night sky, casting shifting shadows on the rocks around them. So they were finished with the monks, and presumably their own slaves as well.
It doesn’t take long to kill two hundred people,
Kaden thought hollowly, staring back over his shoulder until Tan broke into his daze.

“They’re coming up the trail behind us. How many ahead?”

“Four,” Jakin replied.

“The crossbow will make it three,” Tan said. “And if you’re anything like your friend with a knife—”

“I’m not,” he spat, glaring at him. “There’s a reason we work as a team. She does the close work; I deal with unexpected problems from the roof.”

Tan cursed, then hefted his
naczal.
“Ahead there are four. Behind, looks like a hundred. You shoot, we go. Kaden, hold the girl. Stay back.”

Jakin looked hard at the monk, then nodded.

Their attack seemed to last only moments. Jakin shot one soldier through the eye, and then he and Tan were on the remaining three. The monk’s spear flickered out to catch the closest man in the neck, while Jakin cut down one of the others, finding with his knife the weak joint where helmet met gorget.

So he
can
use that spear,
Kaden thought to himself absently. He didn’t know much about combat—his father’s guardsmen had taught him and Valyn only the rudiments before they were shipped away—but Tan moved with a confidence and deadly speed that couldn’t be faked.

Rather than pressing the attack, the remaining Aedolian stepped back, unnerved by the death of his companions. He seemed to have no relish for a heroic duel, and turned his head to glance down the trail behind him. That’s when Jakin leapt.

He was fast, almost as fast as Pyrre, fast enough to close the distance and thrust his knife through the gap in the helmet and into the brain, but not, Kaden realized with horror, before the soldier could raise his blade. The two fell to the ground, the Aedolian dead where he lay, the sword he still clutched buried in Jakin’s stomach. Kaden started to run to him, but Tan stopped him with a hand on the arm.

The monk wasted no time catching his breath. “He’ll be dead in minutes,” he said, as though that settled the matter.

Kaden tugged his arm free and turned to the fallen man.

He had pulled the sword from his body and rolled onto his back, blood welling from the deep puncture. Pain creased his face, and when he spoke, his words were weak, his lips flecked with blood and spittle. “The base of the Talon,” he managed weakly. “Pyrre will meet you at the base—” He broke off as coughing racked his body, squeezing his eyes shut with agony. Kaden made to cradle his head, but Triste stopped him.

The girl’s gown was badly ripped, her jaw trembling, her breathing heavy, but she hadn’t panicked. If she didn’t have Tan’s stony resolve, she did, at least, seem in control of herself, and she pushed Kaden out of the way gently but firmly, then took the dying man’s hand in her own and pressed her other palm to his brow. “Thank you for saving our lives,” she said simply. The two remained motionless, like a statue carved from the mountain. Then, for the first time since the two merchants had arrived at the monastery, Kaden saw Jakin smile, the spasms that had racked his body subsiding.

“Go,” he said weakly, then closed his eyes. “I will wait here for the god.” With a final squeeze of his hand, Triste nodded, then stood, unshed tears in her eyes.

“There is nothing more we can do for him,” Tan said. “Come.”

They had just started to run once more when Kaden remembered his candlestick—the only weapon he had. It was just a few paces behind, and heart hammering in his chest, he turned back for it. The unlikely weapon had yet to prove its value, but it would be foolish to leave it behind for the sake of a few more seconds, seconds that couldn’t possibly make a difference. He was bending to pick up the bloodied silver shaft when he heard the panting and scrambling. Someone was coming, climbing the far side of the small rise just a short stone’s throw away. Cursing himself for a fool, Kaden snatched the candlestick and spun about to chase after his companions. The voice stopped him cold.

“Kaden! Help me!”

He stared as Phirum Prumm hauled his bulk up over the rise. The monk was sweating and shaking, his robe ripped away from one shoulder, blood from a gash on his forehead running down over his quivering jowls. His chest heaved with the effort of running up the path. How he, of all people, had escaped the carnage below, Kaden had no idea. All he could think was that Phirum was in danger because of
him,
because of the soldiers he had somehow brought down on them all, and he had to find some way to help.

“Can you keep running?” Kaden asked.

Phirum’s eyes widened still further, as though the question terrified him, but then he looked behind him to where the ruddy flames from the burning monastery flickered against the clouds, the roar of the fire punctuated by curses and screams. He turned back to Kaden and nodded.

“All right,” Kaden said, taking a deep breath. “Keep a hand on the belt to my robe. You’re still going to have to run, but I can help pull you some, especially on the uphills.”

“Thank you, Kaden,” the youth replied.

Kaden just nodded.

“Let’s
go,
” Tan said. The older monk started to double back, but Kaden waved him on.

“We’re coming,” he replied.

Without another word, the four of them turned from the ghosts of the dead and the cries of the living to race into the emptiness of the night.

44

Dawn will come.

All night Kaden had repeated the mantra to himself as they fled through the darkness beneath a moon pale as the belly of a fish. Tan led the small party up treacherous streambeds, through narrow defiles, and along ledges a pace wide where the cliff face threatened to shoulder them into the abyss. Pyrre appeared a few miles from the monastery, as promised, at the base of the towering granite spire known as the Talon. The entire side of her once-fashionable coat had burned away, and splattered gore, black and glistening in the moonlight, coated her left arm to the elbow.

“You monks really know how to move,” she gasped, falling in beside them.

Kaden wondered how the woman could still walk, let alone run, until he realized that much of the blood belonged to soldiers dead on the slopes below. When three Aedolians burst from the shadow, threatening to block their path, Pyrre killed two without breaking stride while Tan knocked the third screaming from the ledge with his
naczal.
The old monk seemed strong as a bull, and the merchant—
she’s not really a merchant,
Kaden reminded himself—moved smoothly and silently as a shadow cast by the moon.

Dawn will come,
Kaden told himself as he labored up the steep grade, Phirum tugging at his belt and wheezing with exhaustion and terror the entire time. The monk was slowing him down, there was no question about it, but leaving him behind was unthinkable. Too many people had already died. Ruthlessly, Kaden thrust the visions of Pater from his mind, forced down the thoughts of the Shin lying slaughtered in their cells, of Akiil hiding somewhere or bleeding slowly to death, shoved away everything until there was only the steady heave of his chest, the burn in his legs, and the gray blur of the rock beneath his feet.

Dawn will come.

And yet, when the sun
did
finally rise, wan fingers of rose and russet coloring the sky, the nightmare persisted.

Tan led them east, always east and upward, stabbing deep into the heart of the peaks. The decision made sense—without the burden of weapons and armor, Kaden’s group would move more quickly than the Aedolians. The problem was, Phirum was having trouble keeping up, just hauling his own bulk along the broken path. Tan and Kaden had taken turns towing him through the night. (Triste was too small to help, and Pyrre just laughed at the suggestion.) The fat acolyte had stumbled countless times already, twice dragging Kaden down with him. The whole situation was untenable, but there was no other choice, and so Kaden gritted his teeth and ran on.

The sun climbed and the air warmed. He started to sweat beneath his robes. All at once, the defile opened out in a small bowl, where Pyrre pulled up short. Kaden thought briefly that the Aedolians had somehow managed to get ahead of them, to cut them off, and he craned his neck, steeling himself for the sight of helmed men with drawn swords. Only there were no soldiers—just a sparkling mountain lake, small enough that he could throw a stone across it, and a few patches of crag grass. The trail, if it could be called a trail, circled the lake, then knifed up a horribly steep ravine.

“Up again?” Kaden asked wearily.

“Just a second,” Pyrre replied. “They left most of the soldiers to mop up at the monastery, but I want to know just how many are following. I think from here I can see part of our backtrail.”

“You can’t,” Tan said curtly, but Kaden and Phirum were already turning to look.

As Kaden tried to see past a stand of priest pines in the middle distance, the fat monk at his side let out a quiet sigh and dropped to his knees. Kaden surpressed a moan. If Phirum couldn’t even stand, it was going to be almost impossible to drag him up the steep climbs that awaited.

“Come on,” he said, reaching down to grasp him by the robe. “It’ll only be harder to start again if you sit down now.”

The monk didn’t respond.

Kaden turned to him, sharp words on his lips, but as he tugged at the robe, Phirum’s head lolled to one side, and Kaden realized with shock that blood was trickling from his lips, pouring down his fleshy chin in a crimson stream.

“Tan!” he shouted. “Something’s—”

The words died on his lips as he found Pyrre wiping her blade calmly on the leg of her trousers, then slipping it back into its sheath.

For a moment, no one did anything. Kaden stared at Pyrre, Triste stared at Phirum, and the fat monk stared at nothing as his eyes glazed over. Then Tan was sliding between Kaden and the merchant, hefting the
naczal
in both hands.

“Get back,” the older monk said, his voice flat, hard.

Pyrre spread her hands inquisitively. “Aren’t you Shin supposed to be great observers? I’ve saved Kaden’s life four times in the last half a day—I would think my goodwill would be clear by now.”

“Goodwill?” Triste demanded, her voice quivering with anger and disbelief. “You murdered Kaden’s friend and you want to talk about
goodwill
?”