Child of Fate (8 page)

“Or maybe someone,” Kar said. He stepped past
Alto and plucked out a tuft of fur wedged in the crack of a
rock.

“People don’t have fur,” Alto said.

“Oh really?” Kar turned to stare at the
rolled up wolf pelt stored on Sebas. Alto got the message and
clamped his mouth shut.

“Kelgryn then,” Tristam grunted.

“Again with the Kelgryn?” the wizard
muttered. He shook his head in disapproval. “What about mountain
men? Or normal men—hides are cheaper than clothing sewn from wool,
cotton, or silk.”

“Aye, but there’s a lot of things that keep
pointing to the Kelgryn.”

“A lot of convenient things,” Kar
corrected.

“Be silent!” Drefan hissed from the front of
the companions.

The others fell silent and stared at him. One
at a time, they looked around and then cocked their heads,
listening to the wind that brushed the mountains and the animals
and insects that lived there. The animals, Alto quickly realized,
had gone silent.

“What’s that?” Gerald asked.

Tristam and the others moved forward,
straining to try to pick up whatever it was Drefan and Gerald
heard. One by one, they caught occasional bits and pieces of it.
High-pitched, it sounded like faint chirps and calls from a bird,
but it sounded like no bird they knew of.

“Let’s go,” Tristam said. “But be silent and
slow. At the top of the rise ahead, we might see this strange
songbird.”

Alto waited for the others to ready
themselves. He saw William readying his crossbow and realized he
should do the same with his longbow. He pulled the bow free from
Sebas and bent it to fit the string in place. Gripping it tightly,
he mounted the stallion and knocked an arrow. He rode after them,
taking care to keep Sebas on the quietest route he could find up
the path.

The path descended into another valley.
Smaller trails climbed up the side of the hill on their right but
to the left the ridge ended. Iron bars were driven into the edge of
the path and a rope had been strung between them along the
makeshift road. They could see, a few hundred feet down the path,
the entrance to a mine shaft on the righthand side.

Fresh pebbles bounced down the steep hill to
their right. Alto stared up, searching to find the source of the
dislodged rocks. He saw movement just as he heard the tones again.
This time, rather than a short chirp, it sounded like a partial
melody. “Did you hear that?” he called out to the others.

“Hush, lad!” Drefan hissed.

Alto glanced and saw everyone was looking up.
William had his crossbow raised, prompting Alto to raise his own
bow, though he had no cause to draw back the string on it. He
scanned the hillside, looking for a target, but found nothing.

“Drefan, check it out,” Tristam snapped.

“Sure, send the little guy,” Drefan muttered
as he climbed off his horse. He pulled a rope out of his pack and
looped it over his shoulder and then moved to the steep hill. He
selected one of the goat paths and started hiking up it, using both
hands and feet to allow him to make it up the steep grade.

Drefan made the climb look easy as he moved
from one rocky outcropping to another. Pebbles and small stones
rained down as he dislodged them. He stopped at one point below the
base of a vertical expanse of rock; Drefan looked down at them and
pointed up. Tristam waved him on.

Alto watched in disbelief as Drefan worked
his way up the sheer rock face. His arms and legs stretched out,
finding nooks and crannies that were invisible to those below. By
the time he reached the top of it and pulled himself onto a ledge,
the sun was beginning to peek over the ridgeline above them.

A few moments after Drefan disappeared, he
tossed one end of the rope over the edge and it landed less than a
dozen feet up the hillside. Alto saw his companions looking at him
and felt a dread grow inside him. Tristam flashed him a grin. Alto
heaved a sigh and dismounted from Sebas. He slipped the bow over
his shoulder, grabbed the quiver that was secured to Sebas’s saddle
and slipped that over the opposite shoulder.

Alto slid back down the hill twice before he
managed to reach the rope. He grabbed on, clinging as his feet
slipped again. With his fall arrested, he heard Gerald chuckling
and then being silenced by Tristam. Alto drew his feet up and got
them under him. Rope in hand, he wrapped it around his other wrist
and began to pull himself up one footstep at a time.

Sweat was streaming down his face by the time
he reached the rock face. He paused, catching his breath, and then
studied the wall of rock ahead of him. He shook his head to keep
the sweat from running into his eyes and then saw the small cracks
and holes caused by weather and erosion over the years that Drefan
used. He scowled, knowing he could have never done the same, and
then tightened his grip on the rope. He put his boot against the
rock and started up, ignoring the burn in his arms and
shoulders.

An eternity later, Alto glanced up and was
blinded by the sun. He blinked the spots from his vision and felt
his leading foot slip. He crashed into the side of the rock,
grunting and fighting to keep his grip tight on the rope no matter
what else happened. A few gentle thumps and scrapes later, he came
to a rest.

He glanced down and weighed his options. He’d
climbed nearly twenty feet up the vertical face. Starting over and
trying to climb it again was more than he could bear. The agony in
his arms, shoulders, and back notwithstanding, Alto knew if he
couldn’t find a way to finish the climb now, he’d never manage it.
He looked up, squinting against the overhead sun, and began the
arduous task of hauling himself up hand over hand on the rope.

“Took you long enough,” Drefan hissed when
Alto’s hand scrambled over the edge of the cliff.

Alto threw a leg over the ledge and pulled
himself up, and then lay on the shelf, gasping for breath. He
glanced over, unable to speak for lack of breath, and saw Drefan
was slowly climbing to his own feet from where he’d laid with his
feet against a rock. The rope had been wrapped around the boulder
but Drefan had held onto the rope on the opposite side of the rock
from Alto to keep it from slipping.

“Get up,” Drefan muttered, flexing his hands
and then rubbing his wrists. “There’s a trail that leads to the
whistler.”

Alto groaned as he rolled to his hands and
knees and then slowly stood. He shook his arms and rubbed his
hands, much the same as Drefan had. They burned from the rope and
the lack of blood, not to mention the agony his muscles had
endured. “Whistler?” he wheezed.

“The minstrel playing the flute,” Drefan
said. He gathered his rope and coiled it back up, and then slipped
it over his head and shoulder again.

Alto grunted, and then waved his companion
ahead. Drefan drew his sword and tossed it back and forth between
his hands a few times. He swung it around, restoring circulation,
and then started down the faint trail that led off the ledge and
back along the ridge wall. After only a few minutes, they rounded a
rocky outcropping and were plunged back into shadows. Their trail
ended at another ledge, but below them a few feet, another ledge
led to a fissure in the rock wall.

“Cave!” Drefan hissed, pointing at it.

“Long fall,” Alto said, pointing at the half
a dozen feet separating their ledge from the lower one.

The sounds of a flute being played drifted
out of the hole in the rocks below them. “Rocks don’t make sounds
like that,” Drefan pointed out.

Alto nodded. “How you plan on getting down
there?”

“We jump!”

“You’re daft,” Alto muttered. He peered over
the edge and backed away quickly. It wasn’t a straight drop but the
angle was steep enough to promise more broken bones than spared
ones.

“Aye, no sane man thinks he can live a good
life as a thief.”

“I thought you gave that up?”

“I did, mostly, but once you’ve got the
thrill of it in your blood there’s no going back.”

Alto sighed. “How do we get back up here once
we go down?”

Drefan removed the rope and looked around. He
moved to some larger rocks and motioned Alto over. Together, they
moved the rocks, with Alto providing much of the brute strength,
and wedged the end of the rope between them.

Drefan moved to the ledge and dropped the
coil over the edge. He sat down on the edge and grabbed the rope,
and then pushed himself off and twisted as gravity claimed him.
Alto rushed over to the edge. Drefan was standing on the lip of the
cave and staring into it. He looked back up and waved for him to
come down.

Alto made the mistake of looking past Drefan
and saw the steep side of the cliff that descended into a very
narrow point between {the} rocks. It was nearly two dozen feet.
Alto staggered back, his balance shifting as the ledge beneath his
feet slanted.

Away from the ledge, he took several breaths
to calm himself. The ledge hadn’t changed, only his relation to it.
He reached down and grabbed the rope, and then turned around and
laid face down on the dirt and stone of the shelf. He slid himself
across it backwards until his feet hung over open space. Alto
ground his teeth together and kept pushing, even closing his eyes
as his hips cleared the edge and his legs dropped straight down. He
inched himself back slowly using more and more of his own strength
to hold onto the rope as gravity claimed him.

“You’re down,” Drefan hissed, tapping him on
the back. Alto opened his eyes and kicked his feet until they found
the lip of the cave entrance. He dropped to his knees and clung to
the rock, breathing hard.

“Now head inside,” Drefan whispered.

“Just like that?” Alto hissed. “We don’t know
what’s in there!”

“Aye, but we’ve got a rope!”

Alto stared at the man’s grin and shook his
head. “You first.”

“You’re the new guy—you go.”

Alto glared at him and then nodded. He
grabbed the rope again and closed his eyes. He stepped into the
darkness and lowered himself as slowly as his burning arms would
allow.

Alto could make out the walls of the cave as
long he kept himself from looking up at the cave opening. He saw
the wall of the cave slant underneath him, angling the chimney-like
cave deeper into the side of the hill. Alto’s feet touched the
angled rock until he was lying along the damp surface as he lowered
himself.

Teeth clenched with the effort of holding his
grip in the darkness, Alto almost slipped when he felt his legs
swinging freely. He kicked them about, frightened that he’d found a
bottomless pit, and grunted when his shin bounced off the bottom
edge of the chimney.

He craned his neck to stare past his feet and
caught glimpses of a rock beneath him, but it was still an
uncomfortable distance away. He had plenty of rope beneath him so
he continued his descent. It wasn’t until he’d dropped his entire
body beneath the nearly vertical chimney that he realized he hadn’t
heard the musical notes for some time.

As soon as Alto’s feet touched solid ground,
he let go of the rope and dropped to his knees. He sucked in breath
and pressed both hands to the wet floor of the cave, stretching the
burning muscles and trying to cool the fire in his palms. He looked
up from the floor and away from the small pool of light beneath the
chimney. He had to blink repeatedly to force his eyes to pierce the
darkness. They adjusted in time for him to see a shape moving
toward him.

Alto rose up and staggered when something
slammed into his chest. He stumbled back and reached for his sword,
only to be knocked onto his back as the figure crashed into him
again.

“Darkness take you, Kingdom scum!” the figure
spat in an aggressive female voice tinged with a strange
dialect.

Alto threw his hands up to block the
pummeling the woman was delivering. In moments, his arms were numb
from the assault and several times blows had glanced off his
shoulders, face, and head. She continued to vent her rage at him
and Alto was hard pressed to do more than keep her from bashing his
face in.

“That’s enough,” Drefan said from behind
her.

The blows stopped but Alto felt the woman’s
legs tighten against his sides and hips. He risked a look and saw
her struggling and using her legs to keep Drefan from pulling her
off him.

Alto raised himself up on one elbow and saw
the woman fighting against Drefan’s grip. Her head was pulled into
the light from the chimney and Alto forgot his aches and bruises.
Her pale colored hair was pulled back in a braid, though he
couldn’t be sure of the color in the poor light. Her face was
twisted into ferocious snarls, but there was something about her
that stopped his heart for a moment.

“Enough!” Alto roared, shocking both of them
into a moment of stillness. When they looked at him, he continued.
“I don’t think I’m Kingdom scum. I was a farmer until a week ago.
We heard a piper and came looking.”

“Who—” The woman grabbed onto Drefan’s arm
about her neck and yanked it free. She glared at him a moment and
then turned back to Alto. She leaned forward until her face dipped
out of the light and was only inches from his. “Who are you?”

“I’m Alto,” he answered. “We’re—”

“We’re looking for whoever destroyed
Highpeak,” Drefan said. He drew his blade and rested it on her
shoulder beside her neck. “You wouldn’t know anything about that,
would you?”

“Kingdom scum,” she growled. “You won’t kill
me; you’re not man enough! Your soldiers wouldn’t do it; why would
you be any better?”

“Our soldiers?” Alto repeated.

“Get off my companion,” Drefan said. “And
make sure your friend minds his manners.”

She dug her hands into the leather of Alto’s
chest and pushed herself off him. “Namitus, if they do anything
stupid, kill them.”