Resurgent Shadows (Successive Harmony Book 1) (21 page)

Caleb stumbled and took a quick double-step to compensate. Something snapped in the night, as if a twig broke, and Caleb felt a sharp pain in the side of his neck. He reached up to see what had bitten him when his knees suddenly wobbled unable to support his weight. He took a staggering step forward and then sank to his knees as his fingers felt the tufty end of whatever was in his neck. His mind clouded over. He tried to concentrate as he heard Sigvid roar in anger, but found that he was slowly losing consciousness. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out as he slipped into darkness.

*              *              *              *

Caleb groaned. His temples throbbed as he was overcome with waves of pain and nausea. He went to touch his head but was unable to move as his hands were bound. He wondered for a moment why he couldn’t see, but then realized that he had been blindfolded as well. His mind was still foggy, but he strained to remember what had happened. Something had bitten him on the neck and then his memory became patchy. He remembered touching something small and tufty, but couldn’t recall what exactly it had been.

“This ‘uns awakenin’!” a guttural voice cackled.

Caleb heard someone approach and had the wind knocked out of him as he was kicked in the stomach.

“Can’t ‘ave ‘im too awake now can we?”

Several others cackled and Caleb heard the golgent—it was obvious from the smell and the voice that it was a golgent—walk away. He gasped for air, breathing in a mouthful of ash and dust that sent him into a wracking coughing fit that contorted his whole body.

“The drugs wearin’ off,” another of the golgent grunted. “Give ‘im another load of the ‘erb, Grungel!”

Caleb moaned softly as he wheezed. The tufty thing that had hit him in the neck had been a drugged dart. Whatever the poison, it had been fast acting and simultaneously inhibited his thinking process and put him to sleep. He wasn’t about to let the golgent stick another of their darts in him, no matter what the cost.

In his clearing mind, he suddenly realized that he was consciously choosing his actions in the presence of golgent. For the first time since Rachel’s death he had not succumbed to the hunter. Concentrating, Caleb could feel the hunter deep within his being, fighting to rise up and take control. But had become the small voice instead of the strong, now easily suppressed by the previously dormant, rational part of him.

“Wha’ about the dverger?” a golgent spat in obvious contempt.

“The Dragonlord wants all the dverger bought to ‘im or you’s could kill ‘em.”

“And the ‘uman? Why waste more drug on ‘im?”

There was an evil cackle and the terrifying sound of steel rasping against leather. Caleb knew what was coming next. He only had a few moments before a knife or sword was going to run him through, spilling his lifeblood onto the ash. He tested his bonds, but found them too tight to budge, the rough cord cutting into his wrists. He took a deep breath as he heard one of the golgent walk towards him. The hunter screamed within him, clawing to take control, to fight, to find some way to escape the sudden and inevitable end. Part of him, though, forbade him from doing anything, in hopes that it would end. It longed for the sweet caress of death’s welcoming hand where he could once again be with his beloved wife and son. A battle raged within Caleb’s mind in the instant between breaths. Then the hunter took over.

He yanked hard against the ropes that tied him, feeling the bindings dig into his skin and cut deeply into his flesh, though the hunter felt no pain. The golgent took another step forward. The hunter yanked on the ropes and felt them slip up his hands. The hunter smiled and he heard the golgent falter at the look on his blindfolded face.

The creature expected to find a cowering whimpering man who would fall victim to his blade without a fuss, not the grinning, calm being he found before him.

The hunter jerked on the ropes and his hands burst free, slick with blood from his torn wrists. Instantly he had the blindfold off and almost simultaneously he lurched forward, bringing his legs up underneath him, coming face to face with a stunned golgent.

Before the small creature could even move, the hunter was upon him. Caleb’s right hand spun upward to grab the golgent’s wrist and forced its own blade down into the creature’s thigh. His left arm flashed over, snatching the dagger from the golgent’s quivering leg and slashing it back across its pinned arm, severing the artery.

As the green-skinned creature fell, the hunter glared down at the five other golgent squatting around a small fire in stunned silence. Part of Caleb, hidden beneath the hunter’s rage, noticed the still, huddled form of Sigvid behind them. The hunter smiled, a figure of pure death and malevolent anger, his hands dripping with both his own red blood and the orange slime of the golgent that lay slain at his feet. There was a long, pregnant pause where the five golgent looked at him in stupefaction and he smiled almost pityingly back at them. Then the golgent reached for their weapons in a chaotic scramble.

The hunter took a step forward.

A blinding flash cut through the darkness and the sound of gunfire tore through the silence. A half a dozen rounds screamed by Caleb’s head, tearing into the nearest golgent and knocking its broken body backwards over Sigvid’s still form.

The hunter dove to the ground and rolled to the side, clasping the curved dagger close to his chest to avoid falling on top of it.

Bullets flew over his head and he heard the golgent fall. The hunter waited where he lay, pressed into the dirt and ash, his body still and his breathing shallow. The gunfire cut off sharply, but the hunter waited. Hopefully the shooters would think he was dead and, when they came to investigate, the hunter could spring out on them and take them by surprise. The rational part of him understood that whoever was out there was most likely not an enemy, judging by the fact that they had just killed all the golgent. The hunter was not taking any chances. He would kill first and ask questions later.

The hunter waited—intent on the slightest sound that might tell him that whoever was out there was approaching. The minutes stretched on, not even the slightest noise breaking the stillness of the night or the hunter’s concentration. Blood dripped from his flayed wrists, but the hunter felt no pain, only a minor flush of irritation at the incessant drip that could potentially give him away. A few more minutes passed and then a soft crunch ever so gently broke through the silence like glass under pressure. Someone took another tentative step forward and then progressed more confidently as it drew nearer. The steps broke into a quick jog and then suddenly stopped.

He tensed, steeling his muscles to spring upwards in a moment’s notice. A shot rang out, blasting at the hunter’s eardrums from only a few feet away. It took all his strength to keep from leaping up to either fight or flee, but he maintained his prone position. The shooter took a few more steps and another shot when off. The shooter was obviously making sure that all of the golgent were dead and not, as he was, simply lying in wait for the right moment to strike.

The hunter scoffed. The shooter was either incredibly confident that all the golgent were dead, or else stupid to come so close just to see if they were dead.

The hunter waited as the shooter took three more shots, counting off the remaining three golgent of the five that had been shot. The footsteps moved closer and the hunter poised, ready to strike. The footsteps stopped and the hunter sprang upwards, his legs spinning up and around to hit the shooter in the back of the legs, knocking him from his feet. The hunter leapt up as the shooter scrambled to get to his feet.

A gun bellowed and a bullet whizzed past the hunter’s head with an angry whine. The shooter scrambled to his feet, but found the hunter’s knife already descending towards his exposed throat. The hunter looked down at the man, exultant in his latest victory, when the firelight flickered across the shooter’s face. Caleb started in shock as he recognized the crazed, panic-stricken face staring back up at him, despite the beard and disheveled hair that obscured it.

“Thomas?” Caleb said tremulously, his hands shaking as the knife dropped from his suddenly slackened grip. The eyes that stared back at him showed no sign that they recognized him at all, only a vague faraway look of illusive unconcern and insanity, which Caleb found disconcerting. He sank to his knees, reaching out to grip Thomas’s shoulders with hands that were suddenly wracked with waves of pain. “Thomas, its Caleb. Don’t you remember me? You saved me from the Charlotte city-fortress when it fell. You taught me how to fight, how to survive. You buried my wife, Rachel!” Caleb shook the man somewhat roughly, hoping for even a glimmer of recognition.

Thomas looked up at him and suddenly there was a faint shine of recognition in his eyes. He looked confused for a few moments and then grabbed his gun from where it had fallen in the dust and sand.

“Caleb?” he asked tentatively, dropping his finger onto the trigger. “What are you doing here? I left you over a year ago.” Caleb took a step back hastily as Thomas leveled the barrel of his gun at him.

“I’m on my way into the city to see if any of the dvergers survived.” As he said it, Caleb suddenly remembered Sigvid.

Ignoring the gun, Caleb turned his back on Thomas and hurried to Sigvid’s unconscious form. The dverger was huddled next to their weaponry and armor, breathing steadily despite the nasty head wound on his brow. Caleb hadn’t noticed the absence of his mail coat in the frenzy that had followed his sudden awakening, but he found comfort in seeing Faeranír’s gleam. Sigvid would obviously be okay, but the blow he’d sustained and a mixture of drugs had overcome the tough dverger constitution. Caleb picked up the bow, wincing in pain as his raw and bloody wrists bent. As he did so, he noticed the chain that held his ring in the dirt and snatched it up as well, quickly donning it and tucking it into his shirt.

“Who is this?” an angry voice demanded. “We take no prisoners, Thomas.”

Caleb looked up, his hands instinctively reaching for an arrow from the quiver at his feet. A half a dozen men in frayed military uniforms stepped out of the gloom. They formed a half-circle around him and their guns leveled were at his heart. Caleb froze and the hunter screamed for power within his mind, but Caleb pushed the anger down. Even if the hunter had the skills to kill all of them, he knew he would not come out of it alive. Nor did he have any desire to kill these men unless he had to. He turned his head slightly to look at Thomas, who was staring at the dead golgent with a faraway look on his face, nudging them with his boots as if he expected them to rise.

“Thomas,” Caleb said, prodding the man to intervene. Thomas glanced over at him and seemed to notice Caleb and the men behind him for the first time. He seemed surprised, though he waved a hand at the men as if to placate them.

“What are you doing here, Caleb?” Thomas asked.

“I told you before, Thomas,” Caleb said in confusion.

Thomas closed his eyes in concentration as if struggling to remember something from the distant past. Caleb felt a slight note of panic creep into his heart. Thomas was not the same man that had saved him from the fallen city-fortress. The man before him was broken and lost, trapped in a world of his own that only sometimes ran parallel with reality.

At length, Thomas opened his eyes and smiled. “So you did, Caleb,” he said. “Men, we have found a new companion. Help him with the dverger.”

The men lowered their guns almost immediately, though a few still cast Caleb some dubious looks as they helped Caleb lift Sigvid and support him on their shoulders. Caleb breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, Thomas’s eyes had shifted once again to their faraway look and Caleb had been sure that the marine was going to give the order to kill them both.

Caleb smiled as Sigvid devoured another helping of the thick beans that the ragtag group of soldiers had thrown together upon their return to what they called a camp. From what Caleb could gather, the group was made up of a few survivors of the fallen city-fortress and a couple ex-soldiers, like Thomas, who had wandered into the group. They formed what they considered to be a minor resistance movement, attacking small parties of golgent and any remnants of the Red Dragonhosts that they could readily defeat.

Thomas had been the ranking officer amongst the ex-soldiers and so he was the unofficial commander of the group. His men both respected and feared him, but the military men had spent so long under the strict code of honor and obedience in the armed forces that they followed him without question.

The resistance held their main base in the burnt out husk of an old warehouse that had an entrance to the old sewers in its basement. From it, they had mapped out several ways into the city and used the tunnels on various missions to disrupt the enemy or to scrounge for food and medical supplies.

Thomas himself had been silent and sat secluded once they had arrived at the place he and his men called home.

Sigvid had woken up only a few hours after they had arrived in the camp. After an initial anger at finding himself at the mercy of even more humans, he had listened to Caleb and quieted. He had been appreciative of the medical aide they had given Caleb and even more impressed with the story that the men told of Caleb’s terrifying escape.

Sigvid’s anger had melted away entirely when he had been given his first plate of beans and rice and he had tasted the unfamiliar food. He had eaten several platefuls of the plain fare already and was halfway through another, amiably speaking through a mouthful of the food.

“If we dvergers had food such as this, we’d all be as fat and soft as you humans,” he said with a chuckle as he shoveled more food into his mouth.

The men around him laughed, arrayed as they were around the small cooking fire. Some sat in the dust, ash, and soft sand that seemed to coat everything these days, while others sat cross-legged atop rusty metal barrels that had been sliced in half to be used as benches.

The men seemed to like Sigvid in a novel sort of way. They had seen a string of dvergers being taken into the city earlier, Caleb had discovered, but Sigvid was the first one they had seen up close. Several of them had openly admired Sigvid’s axes and Faeranir, though the majority had merely accepted Sigvid as they did the golgent and trulgo with which they fought each day. They had reached the point where they lived from day to day, accepting what came. They had acknowledged the eventual inevitability of their demise and compared to that knowledge, something as trivial as seeing a dverger for the first time was nothing noteworthy. They had lost hope. Caleb could see it in their eyes and in their actions.

Only some of them still acted as if they had anything in this world to care about. The ones who had been soldiers before, the ones who had faced death and destruction and come away with their sanity intact, they knew how to take time to appreciate the small joys when they came.

“I don’t know about that,” one of the men said with a wink at the man next to him. “You seemed heavy enough to me earlier. I bet you can pack it away with the best of them.”

Sigvid chuckled and the men laughed. Caleb smiled, but noticed that the dverger’s humor didn’t reach his eyes. Despite his outwardly jocularity, Caleb knew that Sigvid didn’t trust the men around him and probably never would. There had been too much fear and betrayal for him to blithely accept the men as friends. The men didn’t trust him and Caleb either. They had not earned it, and trust was not given away for free.

“Ah, we dvergers can eat with the best of them. The great dverger warrior Gundlach, immortalized in the stars, could eat the meals of ten men without blinking.

A sibilant voice hissed from the shadows. “Ah, Gundlach the Warrior—great adulterer of the dverger nation and profaner of the aylfin purity.”

Sigvid spluttered in rage as Caleb turned to see who had spoken. A man sat at the edge of the firelight, his back resting against the side of a rusty metal drum. He was dressed in a thick mottled cloak of dark grays and greens that made him look as if he were robed in shadows. The hood of his cloak was pulled low over his head, obscuring his face. He held a thin staff in his long fingered hands, one end disappearing into the shadows above his head.

“Who are you?” Caleb asked. He felt unnaturally drawn to the strangely dressed man.

The figure wheezed, and Caleb realized that he was laughing. Caleb shuddered. The sound was worse than the screech of nails against a chalkboard.

“I am called Nepja Herfiligr, Highwizard of the Order of the Nine Towers, Bearer of the Staff of the Orinai and Master of the Tower of Souls. Who are you?”

Caleb felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end and even Sigvid stopped his indignant rumblings. Here sat a real magic user, a wizard of some standing by the sound of his title. The men around the fire had all stopped talking, almost involuntarily inching away from the wizard as if he carried the plague.

“My name is Caleb,” Caleb said softly, feeling almost compelled to answer.

“And from where do you hail?” The cloaked hood turned towards him and, in a flash of light from the fire, Caleb caught a glimpse of deep, hard green eyes that burned with intelligence.

“I am from here.”

“From Earth?” Nepja demanded sharply. “From this United States of America?”

“Yes, where else would I be from?”

“You humans, you know so little about what goes on around you. Your ignorance sickens me. At least the dverger has eons of inbred mulishness to blame for his own incompetence.”

Caleb felt slapped by the blunt coldness of the remark, though the men around him shrugged and went back to eating. Thomas sat with his back to the man, mind and eyes distant as he absently stroked the barrel of his gun. Sigvid growled in anger and lunged towards the man with his fist clenched, but only made it a few steps before the shadowy figure flicked a hand and Sigvid was thrown backwards with a flash of light.

“The predictability of dvergers is their undoing,” Nepja said, his gaze still on Caleb. “Their arrogance, like the aylfins, is their greatest flaw.”

“And yours is not?” Caleb said bluntly.

“Perhaps. My thirst for knowledge may lead to my demise much more easily than will my hubris, but the universe has yet to wield her hand against me in that regard.”

Sigvid got to his feet with an angry bellow, but Caleb stepped in front of him before the dverger could make another attempt at attacking the wizard. Sigvid tried to shove him out of the way, but Caleb didn’t move and Sigvid quieted, though he shot vehement looks at where Nepja sat.

The wizard hissed in suppressed laughter. “Come speak with me, Caleb,” he said with a slight cough. “There is much I wish to discuss with you.”

Caleb hesitated, not entirely sure that he wanted anything to do with the chilling man.

The wizard noticed his hesitation. “You shall not meet the same fate as the dverger,” he said in an almost contemptuous voice.

“He’s a trickster, boy,” Sigvid growled, grabbing Caleb’s sleeve roughly. “Don’t trust a word he says!”

In his head, Caleb agreed whole-heartedly with the dverger, but found himself inexplicably tugging his sleeve from Sigvid’s fingers and walking forward, passing the point where Sigvid was thrown backwards in a few quick steps. Sigvid protested angrily, but Caleb ignored him, taking a seat near the wizard’s feet and placing his bow on the ground beside him, careful not to brush anything up against the bandages on his wrists.

Up close, Nepja’s face was still hidden in the cowls of his cloak, but Caleb could make out a thin tangle of black or dark brown hair poking out on either side of the hood. There was also a strange black and green pendant that glistened in the flickering light.

“Who are you?” Caleb asked again.

“I am Nepja Herfiligr, of the Order of the Nine Towers, Bearer of the Staff of the Orinai and Master of the Tower of Souls.” Up close the man’s voice was strong and unwavering, though it still carried the sibilant hiss that sent shivers down Caleb’s spine.

“What does that mean?” Caleb asked.

“It has no meaning here,” the man said, the bitterness and anger in his voice almost palpable, “though it meant much in the land from which I came.”

“And where is that?”

“It was called Rafirrma, though that is unimportant. My knowledge is not imparted without a price and you have not the fare. What are you doing here, in the company of a dverger? You are out of place.”

There was a hunger in the man’s voice that Caleb did not understand.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Caleb said to buy time.

“Do not try and fence words with me,” the wizard hissed. “What are you doing here? You bear one of the legendary weapons of the dverger Ferreiros, and yet you are as human as any other from this world.”

Caleb shifted uncomfortably, moving so that Faeranir was partially covered by his body. He had no idea how the wizard had recognized that the bow was imbued, but he had no intention of having it removed from his possession so soon.

“Sigvid made it for me after he took me in, before the enclave fell and the rest of the dvergers were either killed or captured,” Caleb replied.

“And why would a dverger take in one such as yourself? Dvergers are distrustful of humans at best, hostile at worst.”

“I don’t know.”

“Fool. There is always a reason. No one does something for nothing.”

“I saved his life once while killing some golgent,” Caleb said, refusing to delve into the emotional quagmire that held the real answers. “That might play a part in it.”

“A human save a dverger from the golgent? If your exploits earlier are any indication, this might be true, though I doubt that your actions were entirely selfless.”

Caleb remained silent. The wizard was starting to unnerve him with the intensity of his interrogation. He felt as if he were suddenly under some enormous microscope and, looking up, all he could see was the hooded, shadowy face of this stranger.

“Why did you kill the golgent and not the dvergers?” The question was sudden and unexpected, though spoken with the same intensity as every other question.

“Because they are golgent!” Caleb said indignantly. “They’re evil. The dvergers are not.”

“You humans and your misguided attempts at morality. Are the golgent evil or are they simply living out the measure of their existence? How are you in any sort of position to issue judgment on them? I’ve read your histories! I’ve seen your machines and your machinations of war. Could you not just as easily be called evil by them? Do you call the spider evil for eating the fly, or a cat evil for killing the mouse?”

Caleb was speechless with shock and anger. The wizard’s hooded face remained motionless, gazing at Caleb as he struggled to articulate the roiling emotions within him.

“They kill children,” Caleb forced out at length. “They killed my wife and my baby son! They’re evil and they deserve death.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps you would kill
their
children, if given the chance.”

Caleb felt his blood boil and struggled to keep the hunter at bay. He got to his feet angrily, snatching Faeranir from the ground with a shaking hand. Without a word Caleb turned his back on the wizard and stomped off towards Sigvid and the fire.

Nepja’s hissing voice hit him in the back as he stalked away. “You’ll be back, Caleb.”

Caleb’s rage rose and fell in waves as he stalked past the men huddled on the ground around the fire. They avoided his gaze as pushed by them through the cloth-covered door into the night beyond. He walked a few paces away from the building and collapsed onto the ground, placing Faeranir across his lap and tilting his head back to the sky.

A chance breeze pushed the fog and haze aside so he was able to make out the stars above him before it was obscured. His mind was racing, full of a mixture of emotions and conflicting thoughts that left him with a dull headache and an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. He took a few deep breaths to calm his troubled mind and let his thoughts drift along their course, playing themselves out until his mind was pleasantly blank except for the dull ache that throbbed at his temples.

Light shone behind him for a moment as someone threw the cloth doorway aside and stepped out into the darkness. From the heavy footfalls that followed, Caleb knew it was Sigvid. Caleb expected the dverger to start shouting angrily, demanding to know what the wizard had said, but surprisingly Sigvid came up quietly next to him and took a seat in the dirt.

“How are you, Caleb?” the dverger asked, gazing up at the sky and not over at his taller companion.

Caleb sighed and looked down at his bandaged hands. “I don’t know. I thought that I had finally found myself again, but when those golgent had us and the one came over to kill me something else inside of me took over. Some dark, hungry, angry part of myself took over and slaughtered that golgent as if it were as weak and clumsy as a baby. Look at these hands! I don’t have the strength or the will to tear my own flesh apart like this. But some primal hunter within me wanted that golgent dead and did what was necessary to see that it died. Am I doomed to lose control like that every time my life is in danger?”