Child of Fate (9 page)

“Well, that’s better. You can be reasoned
with. I know the boy’s name, but who are you, my lady?” Drefan
asked with a grin. He turned and saw Alto still laying on the
ground and staring at her. “Oh, get up already!”

Alto lurched to his feet, noticing for the
first time the other occupant of the cave that Drefan had
mentioned. He was a boy, from what Alto could see. He reminded him
of his brother Darren, in size and age if nothing else.

“Don’t think you can mock me!” she raved at
him. “You know who I am or you wouldn’t be so bold!”

“Humor me then,” Alto said as he reached out
and put his hand on Drefan’s blade to lower it. “I don’t know who
you are.”

“Trina,” she said, glancing back and forth
between the two of them.

Alto turned to Drefan and received a shrug in
response. “My friend here is Drefan,” Alto said. “I’m Alto. You’re
Trina and you’re Namitus?”

The boy nodded and stepped forward. He
glanced about, a timid look in his eye. Alto spotted the pipes
tucked into the boy’s belt. “You’re the piper!” Alto exclaimed.

“What are you doing here?” Drefan asked,
focusing his attention on Trina.

“Trying to escape from your people!”

Drefan let out an exasperated sigh and looked
at Alto. “Women,” he muttered. “Bound and determined to make my
life miserable no matter where I find them.”

Alto found himself nodding and stilled his
head. “Trina, can we play a game?”

“A game? What sort of fool are you?”

Alto grimaced at her incredulous tone that
came across in spite of her accent. “I want to play a game where
you pretend we’re not out to get you, and we’ll pretend you’re not
looking for an excuse to hit me in the head with a rock again. If
we can do that, then maybe we can all figure some things out.”

She folded her arms across her chest as she
considered his request. “Fine,” she snapped. “What do you want to
know?”

Alto looked at her more closely now that he
had the presence of mind to do so. Details were impossible in the
gloom of the cave but he could easily tell she wore a robe made of
wool and trimmed with animal hides. “Are you one of the
Kelgryn?”

Darkness or not, Alto caught her rolling her
eyes. “Is this to be a game of stupid questions, then?”

Alto was glad the darkness hid his blush.
Drefan offered the next question. “Why are you in a cave?”

“Because we escaped your soldiers and ran in
here,” Trina snarled.

“You ran in here? We had to climb up a
mountainside and then back down through a hole!” Alto blurted
out.

“They already had us in the mines,” Namitus
spoke up to say. Trina turned to glare at him but he shrugged. “We
saw the light in this cave so Trina took the sword she’d taken from
them and pried out a support beam. It caved in behind us and kept
them away.”

“But then you realized you couldn’t climb out
so you started playing the pipes in hopes someone would hear you,”
Drefan finished for him. “Weren’t you afraid more of the soldiers
would find you?”

Namitus nodded while Trina fielded his
question. “We expected they would but we had no other recourse.
Starving in a cave offers no hope. Being recaptured offers the
chance of escape again.”

Alto followed her line of thinking and found
himself nodding at the practical wisdom of it. Her insistence on
being attacked by Kingdom soldiers continued to bother him enough
that he wondered aloud, “You keep saying Kingdom soldiers attacked
you. Why would they do that? Aren’t the Kelgryn and the Kingdom at
peace?”

“How else would they get so close to us?”
Trina spat.

Alto held up his hands to calm her but she
ignored him. “It’s my turn now, farm boy! Why are you here?”

“We’re hunting goblins,” Alto said. “They’re
raiding the road to Highpeak. We didn’t see any, though, so we kept
going and found Highpeak had been attacked.”

“And we found Kelgryn weapons,” Drefan
added.

“Bah!” Trina turned and spat on the floor in
disgust. Alto was shocked by her behavior. It was crude and unlike
anything he’d ever seen a woman do before. “What use would we have
for a place like that? Our interests lie in the sea and the coast.
We only come to the mountains when we must.”

“Why would you be here then?” Alto asked.

“We were attacked and taken hostage, you
fool!”

“Carried from your beds all the way
here?”

Trina snapped her mouth shut and glared at
him. “No,” she admitted. “We were traveling.”

“To the Northern Divide,” Namitus added. “To
see the wise-woman!”

“Be silent!” Trina hissed at him.

“Wise-woman? No such thing,” Drefan
muttered.

Trina sneered at him. “What would you even
know of women?”

Drefan laughed. “Far more than I want to.
She’s all yours, Alto.”

Alto clamped his mouth shut at Drefan’s
dismissal of her. He turned back to Trina and thought he saw her
cheeks were a darker shade than the rest of her face. Drefan was
right; Trina was just a girl. His age or younger, perhaps. He
looked at the two of them together; were they brother and sister?
Her head turned enough to stare at Alto, her eyes wide.

“So you were waylaid and brought here. Did
you see Highpeak at all?” Alto asked her.

“We don’t know where here is!” Trina
sputtered. “They kept us bound, gagged, and with hoods over our
heads until we were thrust into this mine.”

“Mine?” Alto echoed. Drefan turned from the
rope and looked at him. “Something is amiss. Perhaps Kar was
right.”

“Who’s Kar?”

“Our wizard.”

Trina gasped and Namitus took a half step
forward. “You consort with such evil?”

“Consort is not the word for Kar,” Drefan
chuckled.

Alto ignored Drefan’s inappropriate humor.
“Kar’s not evil. Far from it, I’d say.”

“All wizards are evil!”

“What of your wise-woman—isn’t she just a
wizard by another name?” Drefan probed.

“Be silent, Kingdom dog! You’ll not be
speaking of things you don’t understand!”

Alto was tired of the bickering. Now that
he’d cooled down, the cave was beginning to bother him. The
darkness and the cool moisture were making his bruises and muscles
ache all the worse. “We can argue over this later,” he said. “Let’s
get out of here first.”

“Up the rope?” Drefan asked.

“Only way; they said the tunnel had
collapsed,” Alto said. Namitus added weight to Alto’s words with a
nod of his head.

“All right, but going up is harder than going
down.” Drefan grabbed the rope and leapt up, reaching to grab
higher with his other hand. He pulled himself up slowly until he
began to work his way back into the chimney.

Alto sighed and moved to the rope behind him.
He grabbed onto it and glanced around. There was no wall for him to
use his legs this time. He would have to rely on his arms to pull
himself up. He bit down on his frustration and grabbed the rope.
Already he could feel the soreness in his palms. He reached up as
Drefan had done and grabbed with the other hand, and then attempted
to pull himself up hand after hand.

Alto had climbed a single span of his hands
when he suddenly felt weightless. Less than a heartbeat later, his
heels hit the ground and shot out from under him. He rolled,
landing hard on the rock and feeling the wind knocked from him at
the same time he heard something crack. He’d barely had time to
register his new position when a louder crash sounded beside him,
followed by moaning and swearing. The rope fell on top of them
both, coiling haphazardly until the end of it arrived with a
chilling finality.

“Some rescue,” Trina muttered.

* * * *

“They been up there a while,” Gerald
muttered.

Tristam grunted. Alto and Drefan had
disappeared over the ledge nearly half an hour ago. The infrequent
musical notes had stopped, but none of them knew if that was a good
or a bad omen. He turned to glance up and down the road as he had
countless times before. This time, he found something to draw his
attention.

“Stand ready!” he warned his company.

A cry of alarm went up from the mouth of the
mine at the same time. Several goblins poured out of it, the first
pausing to look both ways before spotting the Blades of Leander and
rushing toward them. More goblins emerged, followed at the end by a
man with a whip in one hand.

William fired the bolt loaded in his crossbow
without hesitation. The long range and the quick reactions of the
man holding the whip saved him. He dodged out of the way and
shouted in a harsh and guttural language.

“He speaks their tongue!” Kar warned.

“Bet that’s not all he does with their
tongues,” Gerald grumbled as he drew his sword and stood ready.

Tristam stepped beside him on the trail,
moving far enough away that they wouldn’t interfere with one
another. William reloaded his crossbow as the goblins ran up the
hill, brandishing spears and crude swords.

Tristam and Gerald met them, smashing through
their meager defenses. The goblins pushed against them, slipping
between them and trying to overwhelm the two warriors. Gerald cut
into two of them before a spear worked past the armor on his leg.
He spun and went down, slashing and taking the ear off a third on
his way.

Tristam saw Gerald fall. He laid into the
goblins pressing against him, holding them back with defense
instead of trying to fell one with every swing of his sword. The
short creatures were crude and unskilled but that made their
weapons no less dangerous, especially when they attacked in
numbers. “Help Gerald!” he cried out, unable to get over to the
struggling man.

William put a bolt in the back of a goblin
that was about to jump on Gerald. Karthor rushed in, brandishing
his mace and smashing the distracted goblins aside. William dropped
his crossbow and drew his blade before wading in and hacking at the
goblins that were turning on the priest.

William and Tristam kept the creatures at bay
long enough for Karthor to drag Gerald back and check on the man.
Blood ran from the scratches on his face and soaked his leg and
opposite side. Gerald cursed and struggled against the priest,
trying to gain his feet.

“Lay still, you oaf!” Karthor snapped.
“You’ve been stabbed and laid open.”

“Kar! Do something!” Tristam cried out. Blood
ran from the side of his thigh and his arm, but the four goblins
that faced him were showing signs of using tactics. Rather than
rushing blindly or running in fear, they circled him and kept him
preoccupied. William, to his right, only had three of the
waist-high creatures to deal with but they turned him until his
back was against the wall and he had no room to maneuver.

“They’re only goblins,” Kar said, effecting a
poor imitation of Tristam’s voice. He chanted a few words while
tracing an arcane symbol in the air. His hand snaked out and his
fingers finished the final arcane gesture. Dirt and layers of rock
burst upwards in a line straight out from Kar to the three goblins
pressing against William.

The goblins shrieked and yelled. One flailed
his sword wildly, striking William on the side of the greave and
pushing it aside so the point of its blade bit into his knee.
William smashed the goblin’s sword aside and scored a deep cut
along its shoulder. It fled right into Kar, earning the wizard’s
boot in its side that sent it tumbling over the edge of the
cliff.

The other two fled, one running into the
closest goblin harassing Tristam. Tristam took advantage of their
confusion, killing both and stepping into the unthreatened space to
keep the other goblins at bay. William hobbled over and between the
two of them, they dispatched the other three goblins.

“Where’d their handler go?” William asked as
he limped back to the eastern side of the road and leaned against
the wall. He looked toward the mine entrance.

“Ready your crossbow and watch the entrance,”
Tristam snapped. He turned to the others. “How’s Gerald?”

Karthor wiped the sweat off his brow and
glanced up. The light faded from his holy symbol slowly. “He won’t
be dancing anytime soon,” the priest said. “A rusty sword under his
shirt cut deep in his side. Leander’s blessing has saved his life,
but the wound and the healing wore him out.”

“He’s lazy, but this is the first time he’s
slept while a fight raged about him,” Kar offered.

Tristam’s only response to Kar was a twitch
of his lip. He turned and stared up the side of the hill. “No word
from Drefan or Alto?”

The silence of his companions gave him the
answer he already knew.

“Tend to William,” Tristam ordered.

“What about you?” the priest asked.

“Scratches,” he muttered.

“Those weapons aren’t clean; you’re likely to
take infection or worse,” Kar snapped at him. “William’s milking it
for attention. He’s not old enough to know to save it for the
attentions of a comely lass.”

Tristam shook his head. “Karthor, tend to
William. We need to secure that mine and create a defensible
position.”

Karthor nodded and moved to help the
crossbowman. Kar glanced around and sniffed the air. Staring at the
edge of the road where the goblin had slipped under the rope and
fallen to his death, Kar casually asked, “So, who noticed the man
behind the gobs wore a Kingdom tunic?”

Tristam jerked his head up and stared at the
abandoned mine entrance. He narrowed his eyes and muttered a curse
before he scooped Gerald up. He grunted as he hoisted the heavy man
over his shoulder. The leader of the Blades managed to push the man
across his saddle and then lashed him there. Tristam smirked as he
considered smacking the haunch of Gerald’s horse to send the steed
galloping back down the road. Only the thought of whether the man
might meet friendly or enemy forces first stayed his hand.