INBORN (The Sagas of Di'Ghon) (31 page)

There was something very familiar about the man. Something about the way he moved…

Thaniel didn’t have time to get a better look at him. He bolted up the street heading for the tannery with every bit of speed he could muster. His feet, used to years of running messages in icy Ontar Hold flew across the wet stone.

He looked over his shoulder. Both soldiers were coming for him fast. They were a lot closer than he thought they should be already. Thaniel flew by the horse, arms pumping. He caught a glimpse of men, the ones left alive anyway, running in the opposite direction.

His heart hammered as he rounded the corner and tore into the tannery.

He saved somebody.

Savages

Lars Telazno worked his way through the milling people, eyes flitting from face to face as they passed. The roar of the water wheel and the rush of the gorge seemed louder here. Now it made a little more sense to him. It was possible this was all some accident. Maybe the boys somehow only fell out of the compartment. He imagined Harkanin not hearing a thing and just rattling forward, especially with how shaken the man seemed by his encounter with the First. He half expected to see the pair of them walking toward him any second.

Yet, the blood on the door bothered him. Why would there be blood? If the soldiers had taken them out of the wagon, wouldn’t they have slit Harkanin’s throat for the trouble? Harkanin wasn’t lying. The man was telling the truth as he saw it. That was the only thing he was absolutely sure of.

Lars kept scanning the crowd. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere. Maybe the soldiers had them spooked, he thought. Yet, it seemed like something else was happening.

“What’s going on?” Lars Telazno asked a bent old man. The fellow had blotchy tan spots spreading over his face. The only area that wasn’t marred
by the things was his bright red bulbous nose.

“Are you stupid?” The old man shook his head and just kept walking.

He asked someone else.

“The water’s been rising for days.” She half curtsied while she clutched a bundled up child to her breast. She was a pretty girl. “They say the dam is gonna fail tomorrow.”
Her eyes regarded him skeptically, as if he should know what she was talking about. Then, in a hurry, she started past him.

“Tomorrow?” Lars called after her, “How do they know that?”

“Good luck, sir.” It was all she had time for. He didn’t watch her go.

“Lucky it’s still today then.” He muttered.

Lars Telazno saw the crowd far ahead shift and surge toward him. There was some sort of commotion near the entrance to the dam’s street. He bolted forward and leaped up on a crate, allowing him to see over the crowd.

Five
men wearing shining armor plating and the crimson garb of Ontar were running his way. Two soldiers led the rest. Whoever wasn’t able to get out of their way fast enough paid for it. People flew left and right as they charged through the masses as if they were playing in high weeds.  The two men in front had their eyes locked on someone that was running ahead of them.

The boy, big brown cloak flapping horizontally behind, ran like he was on fire. Lars only caught a glimpse of his face as he darted in a wild zigzag pattern through the crowd of moving people.

Thaniel.

Lars was already running. Now that he was off the crate he couldn’t see Thaniel but there was no missing the soldiers on his heels. They were all big men. If the crowd was a sea, Lars headed straight for the floating heads.

He’d only seen Thaniel for an instant but he recognized a peculiarity in his face. Any normal boy running from even one soldier would’ve had fear painted all over him. Thaniel, for some reason, didn’t. Acting when others froze was a skill some took years to develop. The boy seemed built for it.

He ran like a rabbit ran from wolves. At first it appeared nothing more than a wild dash. But if you looked closer, it was clear that he moved with purposeful focus. His arms pumped for every ounce of speed he could muster as he dodged, feinted, and spun forward. In the face of death or capture this slave boy’s eyes were all concentration. It was all or nothing.

Still, it was clear that the big men were gaining.

Lars needed to get to Thaniel before they did. As he judged the distances
, he needed just a little more speed than he could muster to make it. His lungs heaved in and out as fast as he could breathe in a desperate push forward. People were everywhere. No matter which side of the street he ran on they just seemed to be in his way. Lars saw a pocket of openness and darted into it. Now that he didn’t have to duck around or knock people over, he was gaining some ground. Then, just when it looked like he might make it, the front two broke left into an alley.

He hadn’t even seen Thaniel head that way.

Lars made it to the throat of the thin passage just before the remaining three soldiers. There was no sign of the two leaders, or Thaniel.

Maybe it was time to even the odds a bit. He turned to face the re
st of the pursuers.

As the
three soldiers burst through the crowd and into the alley, Lars Telazno’s face lost some of its color as he realized what had upset Harkanin. Every one of them stood head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. They were half again as wide as Gabril. The man would have looked like a little brother to the smallest of them. Their skin was too thick. Their muscles, every stretched piece of sinew, flexed and contracted in perpetual movement. They looked part man, part beast. Whatever had happened to these men, if they could still be called men, these were not mere soldiers.

Lars Telazno opened himself, stretching out with his senses and grasping the
Jen’Ghon. He took hold of the
air
around him and flattened sheets over on it itself in an interlacing pattern that was stronger than steel. He felt the
air
solidify and harden in his grasp. At his urging it became a simple bar. With a viciousness that surprised even him, he swung at the first man’s legs. He went down hard, rolling over the wooden plank. Following right on his heels, the next man tripped over him and they both went down in a tangled mass of arms and legs.

The third man leaped over the other two. He was coming straight for him with a speed and mass Lars could only equate with a charging bull. Only this bull
’s horns were spinning twin axes.

Lars smiled at the man’s snarl. It was obvious he thought the first two had merely tripped. As the soldier swung an axe straight for his head, Lars brought up the bar. All the while swinging it with practiced ease, he managed to both flatten and stretch it out so that it formed a perfect square shield.

Lars slammed the invisible shield into the axe and sent the weapon spinning out of the man’s hand. It buried in the face of one the other soldiers with an appalling crunch. The man’s dead body flipped over from the force of the impact and struck the man behind him in the gut.

The man’s head turned watching his friend fall as Lars swung the shield back the other way, catching him in the side of the face.
He felt cheekbone snap against the shield.

Lars stood, legs wide, holding the shield of
air
in one hand as he formed a second weapon, this one a long blade, in his other hand.

One of the fallen men looked up, stared at the axe buried in the soldier’s face and then back at Lars. Without a word or warning he sprang for Lars like a dagger toothed cat, two great axes raised high.

Lars took the blade and sliced him from his groin to his neck. Blood, intestines, bile, and whatever he had in his stomach spilled out of the man while he was still arcing through the
air
. Lars swept the offal away with a wave of his hand, sending it spraying across the last man’s face.

The
soldier’s eyes went wide. He could see Lars’ weapons now. They were formed of air, but the hardened surfaces were slick with blood and the gore of his fellows. His eyes narrowed. Enraged, the man screamed a fierce battle cry. Lars answered it with an attempt to slice the man’s head off. The warrior, his senses now realigned with reality, blocked it with a thunderous slap from the flat of one his axes. Nearly simultaneously, in a move that Gabril would admire, he threw the second axe right for Lars’ chest.

The grim smile the man wore told Lars
that he had used this move before. It had obviously never failed because the man was still here to use it again.

Lars Telazno forgot he was old. For an instant he was a young man in service to the Order again, fighting for the things he believed in with his whole heart. Once again
, he moved with the flowing grace of a man accustomed to the threat of death.

Lars timed the throw perfectly. With the precision of a surgeon he slapped the side of the blade, sending its force and momentum in an entirely different direction. He knew every strand of
air
the tumbling blade would eddy through before it stuck in a barrel.

Lars Telazno never took his eyes of
f the huge soldier. The warrior had thrown one of his axes. He still had another. However, the huge battleaxe was still rebounding upward from blocking Lars’ first attempt at relieving him of his head. So, Lars struck low. He took the man’s legs off with one swipe of the blade.

The man
toppled forward. Blood spurted out from both of his stumps in lethal amounts. In seconds, Lars knew the man would be dead.

“What do you want with Thaniel?” Lars asked, pressing the tip of his blade up against the man’s thick neck.

“To the hells with you.”

“You are going to tell me what I want to know.”

“Ask the Ontar.” The man smiled up at Lars right before he pushed his own neck onto the blade. He shoved himself into it so hard that he severed both of his arteries and his windpipe. A fountain of blood erupted from the man’s neck.

“
Anwarian savages.” Lars straightened his robes with a stiff jerk.

Oblivion

A song for the children known affectionately as,

‘The Death Song’ from the halls of Oryk,

Where
the Circles start their fourteen years and a day training.

Let them come.

My blades are the nine hells.

Let them come.

S
ee how death tastes like steel.

Let them come

Let them come

Let them die.