From Across the Clouded Range (96 page)

He did not have the energy to fight
any longer. He wiped the blood from his split lip and wondered why
he was still alive. His eyes finally focused on his attacker, but
rather of the warrior or creatures he expected, he saw Teth. She
stood over him with fists clenched. Fear, pain, and what could only
be revulsion marred her features. It looked like she was going to
strike him again. He did not move to protect himself.

“
You bastard!” she
screamed. “By the Order, what did you do? Being dead would be
better than watching that. If you ever do anything like that again,
I will kill you! I swear it!” Her screams collapsed to sobs. She
stood over him shaking.

“
I’m sorry.” A whisper was
as much as he could manage. He could not stand to see Teth’s
disappointment, so he turned his eyes to the sand. “I didn’t mean
to do it. I didn’t know what I was doing.” He looked back, found
her eyes, and pleaded. “I just wanted you to be safe. I couldn’t
lose you like that. You have to believe me. I didn’t want
that.”

Teth stopped crying, but her eyes were
marked by huge, salty tears. The sight of those tears hurt him more
than the blow. She wiped the tears away, and a small smile appeared
on her chapped, blood-stained lips. She held out a hand. Dasen
accepted it, and with her help, he rose.

Teth threw her arms around him nearly
knocking him back down as his shaking legs strained to support even
his own weight. She pulled him close and squeezed the very air from
his lungs. “I don’t care, damn you.” She spoke into his chest. “I
don’t care. Just don’t become one of them; don’t allow your hatred
to make you into what you hate. Not for me, not for anyone.” She
squeezed him again and let him go.

Teth's eyes turned to the battlefield
around them. “All that just to buy us five minutes? You couldn’t
have come up with anything that actually got us away from here?”
The cutting tone showed that she had forgiven him.

Dasen followed Teth’s eyes across the
field. All around the bloodied pasture, men stood as if stunned.
Many of them had dropped their weapons, and no one appeared to be
fighting any longer. Most of the men had blank expressions as if
they were wondering what they were doing on the field in the first
place. They all looked as dazed as Dasen felt. He turned to Teth,
but she just mirrored his expression of disbelief.

The strange lull was mercilessly
short. As they watched, the men remembered their purpose. Those who
had dropped their weapons hurried to retrieve them before throwing
themselves back at their opponents. In seconds, the scene was much
as it had been a minute before. Desperate defenders charged into
the invaders and were cut down in droves, even without the
creatures or governor to drive them on – Oban’s horse wandered
aimlessly near the unmoving body of its master. Where the creatures
had been, horses stood without purpose as riders like those who had
captured them recovered from the silent explosion that had thrown
them from their saddles. Moving between those horses was a new
group of men who were primarily distinguished by the crossbows they
carried. Though both crossbowmen and cavalry were still far off, it
would not be long before the bolts began to fall and the riders
resumed their charge.

Dasen looked for Teth. She was already
sprinting up the beach to where she had dropped her bow. She picked
up the weapon and a quiver, but they both knew it was pointless.
The rows of invaders continued as far as the eye could see, but it
would only take two bolts to finish them. The situation was every
bit as desperate as it had been before his horrible spell. Teth was
right. He had sold his soul for five minutes.

Still, Dasen searched for
the answer, sure that it was there.
If
weapons cannot save us
, he thought,
and my strange powers are gone. . . .

Then the Order is our only
refuge.
The revelation almost made him
laugh. He had just created a sacrilege against the Order, now he
would call upon its laws to save them. The irony was
perfect.
Surely
,
he told himself,
the Order does not mean
for this to be the end. We have come too far, have survived too
much. The Order has left an escape. I know it.
All he had to do was embrace that order, trust its laws, and
use them to find the way.

He scanned the water and saw a large
vessel making its way down the river, but it was far off and no
more reachable than the distant bank to which it clung. He thought
about the boat. . . .

“
Cover me!” he yelled,
though he knew that Teth had no actual chance of covering him from
the crossbows. He stumbled more than sprinted toward the invaders
as fast as his exhausted legs would carry him and, in a few
seconds, reached the piles of bodies that defined where the battle
had taken place before his spell.

He scanned the bodies as he ran,
trying not to retch at the excruciating sight. It struck him just
how much the power had shielded him from the realities of war. The
smell of death was overpowering. Mutilated bodies were everywhere.
Blood covered everything. Sightless eyes stared at the heavens,
stared at him. Only the urgency of his errand kept him going,
allowed him to continue searching the carnage. After what felt like
hours, he saw what he was looking for. He hurdled the bodies of two
boys well younger than himself, tried to avoid seeing their faces
as he lifted a thick wooden shield from the body of a shirtless
invader.

He pulled up the shield
and turned toward Teth as the first quarrel flew past his face. It
was followed by others whizzing like bees around him. He pulled the
shield over his shoulder in time to catch two bolts that were
destined for his back. The bolts hit the shield with enough force
to knock him from his feet but failed to penetrate the thick wood.
He rose slowly, stumbling as his legs fought his commands, and ran
on. Soon bolts were falling around him like rain. He heard them
beat on the shield like hail. He ran for all he was worth, praying
that the shield would be enough to keep the deadly rain at
bay
.
His legs
wobbled under the strain of his sprint. Each bolt that hit the
shield threatened to send him to his knees, but his feet somehow
found the ground and pushed him on.

Bolts were whizzing around Teth when
he reached her. She had given ground until she was standing in
water to her thighs. She watched the sky trying to dodge the
projectiles, her bow long forgotten. Dasen yelled at her to run,
but she did not look away from the sky.

“
Where am I supposed to
run? Have you already forgotten that I can’t swim?” Dodging a bolt
by a fraction of an inch, she spared a glance at him and saw the
shield he carried. “That’s great, but that shield is only going to
protect us for so long.” She flinched as a bolt nicked her arm,
leaving a long gash that welled with blood.

Dasen did not try to explain. He
grabbed her hand as he ran by and pulled her into the river. The
water exploded around them as it rose up their legs, but they did
not stop. The rain of arrows gave way to the sound of hooves
churning the water. The water rose, and their momentum slowed. The
horse sounded like they were on top of them. It was now or never.
Dasen threw the shield out in front of them, clenched Teth’s wrist,
and dove into the water.

Plunging beneath the current, he held
onto Teth and kicked until his lungs were burning and Teth was
struggling to pull her hand from his grip. His head rose from the
water but was blocked by something hard, so he altered his course
to come up just to the side of the shield. He grabbed the great
plank of wood and searched for Teth. She was already there,
clinging to the shafts of two bolts, panting for breath. A
desperate scan of their surroundings showed that they were alone.
The invaders were concentrating on the few defenders that remained,
had lost all interest in them.

Dasen laid back in the water and felt
relief rush over him. They had done it. They had done the
impossible and done it without the help of his hell sent
powers.

He brought his feet under him to push
them farther into the river, but they continued to fall with no
sign of the bottom. Panic hit him at the loss of that security. He
grabbed the shield for support and felt it plunge beneath the
surface. Teth gasped as the shield fell, but its decent soon
stopped, and her gasp became a sigh of relief.

Dasen pulled his feet back up, taking
his weight from the shield, and started to kick. He had not
expected them to be out so far, but it appeared that the current
was pulling them away from the bank as it carried them toward the
city. The last remnants of the battle still raged on that bank,
however, and it was still far too close for Dasen’s comfort. He
wanted to be as far as possible from the fighting and the burning
shell of the city that would soon be upon them.

A quick scan revealed the
flat-bottomed barge hugging the far bank. “I think we should try
for that barge.” Dasen's words were soft, little more than a
whisper, but Teth retracted from them in shock. Her knuckles were
white for the grip that she maintained on the short bolts that
jutted from the top of the shield. “They may take us all the way to
Wildern if we can make it to them, and we need to get farther into
the river in any case.” He put a hand on Teth's back. “Do you think
you can help me kick?”

Teth let out a long, shaking sigh and
nodded. Dasen brought his hand from her back and pushed two strands
of wet hair over her ear. Her lips trembled, but he did not think
it was from the cold. He searched for something more to say but
could only manage to stare into her stormy eyes.

“
I don’t have much left.”
When Teth’s words finally came, they trembled and slurred as if she
could barely form them. “I’ll try.”

“
Just hang on,” he
assured. “I'll turn us around. Do what you can.”

Teth nodded her approval – or was she
nodding off to sleep. Dasen slowly turned the shield so that she
was facing the opposite bank. He gladly left the battle behind and
positioned himself next to Teth so that their hips were touching.
He kept as much of his weight off of the shield as possible, and it
actually rose as they kicked. Soon, they had reached the middle of
the river and could barely hear the sounds of battle over the rush
of water around them, but they did not catch the barge. It used a
small sail and oars to pull itself past the city until it was lost
from sight

With the barge gone, Dasen told Teth
to stopped kicking. They focused on keeping themselves low as the
city slid by. Thoren was still clouded by flying creatures, and
destructive magic still rained down on the buildings that the
unchecked fires had not consumed. At the city docks, creatures used
claws, teeth, tails, and fire to destroy the wooden structures
along with the hopes of those seeking an escape. The unholy beasts
waited until a group had almost reached a ship before they dove out
of the air and smashed it. They trapped another band on a shattered
dock and left them to burn. They capsized a fully loaded ship just
as it pushed off. Their only goal was despair, Dasen realized. The
creatures only destroyed the docks to make the people on them
suffer. It was too unimaginable to watch.

He turned to Teth. Her face was an
agonizing mix of revulsion and exhaustion. He slipped his arm
around her waist and pulled her close to him in the water, felt her
warmth through their damp clothes. “Don’t watch,” he whispered.
“We’ve seen enough.”

For once in her life, she listened.
Teth turned her eyes from the city, and they both watched the far
side of the river where they were ironically passing the Ronigan
estate. That side of the river was a vision of tranquility. The
river seemed to be a boundary to the creatures. They did not
venture past the docks. Anything in the river was safe, and the few
small boats that got away were ignored.

Dasen thought about trying for the far
bank, but the current seemed to want them in the middle of the
river, and this time, he was willing to trust that the Order knew
what was best for them. Occasionally, they kicked to avoid the
larger pieces of debris that might draw attention to them, but for
the most part, they just floated, hanging on to the shield and each
other for all the support they needed. Teth slept. Dasen wished he
could, but his memories would not allow it, so he held her, kept
her safe, and tried to forget.

Chapter 41

“
Get out!” Ipid whispered
around the misery that kept his head pressed to the dirt at the
bottom of his tent. “Get out! I don’t want to see you or hear your
lies again. You and your Belab can go to chaos. I don’t need or
want your help.” His head came up, eyes red, cheeks wet, face
twisted. “I said, get out!” he screamed at Eia.

It had been several minutes since Ipid
had witnessed Arin’s betrayal. In that time he had gone from
blaming Arin to himself to Belab to every one of the above. He had
cried, raged, plotted, and finally given up. He was powerless to
help, was nothing more than a leaf being blown by a tornado, was no
more powerful than that leaf to stop what was happening. But that
didn’t mean he had to be happy about it, had to sit with his
betrayer and pretend it was alright.