Shadow Of The Mountain (4 page)

This stopped the rider and his head leaned back, silently cursing the sky. Aldren knew he was right. They had to go back. Dragons that murdered men were not of this realm, and Amoria would need time to assemble.

The rider spun his mount around, his face an angry scowl. Tossing the spear to the sand, he charged past Aldren without a word, heading north, back towards Dershaw.

Shakily Aldren sheathed his sword and raced through the beating wind in pursuit, begging the strange men at their back not to follow.

Glancing once over his shoulder, all he saw was swirling sand.

Perhaps he’d be back at Stonewall earlier than anticipated.

War had a way of changing things.

Chapter 1

Tenlon marched to victory with the other apprentices, listening to their hushed laughter and excitement, telling stories passed down from fathers or brothers or cousins who’d made the march before. To different locations, of course, but the end result was always the same. No matter the battle, the land, the heroes or the enemy, the core of such tales were always supported by the same foundation, the same pillars of truth and pride: Amorian soldiers, Amorian dragons, Amorian victory.

Where Tenlon came from, past victories were a religion and the soldiers who fought for them divine. Young boys lived and breathed war, dreaming of it beneath warm blankets and praying for the days to pass with speed so that they might soon join the ranks of heroes. They longed to follow in the deep and bloody footprints left by Amorian warriors who had come before them, to reach the heights of strength and courage of legend. Theirs was a nation of power, of green-cloaked soldiers with swords and spears, of brilliant scholars and mages, and a bronze dragon that watched over them all.

Tenlon did not share in the excitement that surrounded him and walked on silently, his thoughts uneasy and nervous of the days to come. Battles were an unpredictable affair, and to think any different was idiocy. Men gave their lives for a cause, and flesh would be torn from them by both sword and spell, or worse.

Whatever blood flowed through Tenlon’s veins, it was not that of a hero. Looking far ahead, he could see violence on the horizon. It sickened him.

Tenlon’s father had been a weak man, his mother had always said, although he was too young to witness any of it. A drinker and a gambler, the man was indebted to an unsavory group of fellows from Galla for a great deal of coin. Tenlon had been two or three when his father had finally vanished for good. The city guards who came to their house said that many of the gangsters had great ovens that could destroy a body in minutes. Upon discovering how much he owed, they didn’t search too hard for him. After that Tenlon spent a few weeks secretly sleeping on the hardwood floor next to his bed. He suffered from nightmares that his mattress was burning him alive, much like what he imagined happened to his father. His mother never remarried after that, and it had been just the two of them.

As a boy he’d been small and frail, which hardly changed in adolescence. He was always the smallest, the thinnest. But he was quick-witted and smart, and after learning to read text at a very early age, found strength in the written word. In fact he’d learned his letters so fast that it frightened some of the other villagers. They joked that he was possessed of the mind of a Lagrean. These had been ancient scholars, powerful, and now vanished from the lands of men.

Tenlon half-wished that that were true. It would have explained why he was so different.

In the days of his youth he had consumed every scrap of written parchment to be found in his small village, and soon there was little of interest left for the tiny scholar. After that his mother had taken him to a neighboring town three miles to the west for more books, texts, or scrolls; anything that was worth reading was read.

He asked questions of the townsfolk—old seamen or retired soldiers, merchants and travelers—listening to them, absorbing their words, learning of a world beyond his patches of forest and looming mountain borders. Everyone was always polite to the curious boy, especially the elderly. They would discuss countless topics: history and the stars, distant lands of desert and heavy jungle, oceans that never ended and peoples long forgotten. And Tenlon sat in rapture, content to listen, remembering it all. When the stories ran dry, there was always something to read in one town or the next and anything bound in leather that he found fascinating, he devoured.

The stories he loved the deepest were of the dragons, most especially the mighty bronze Draxakis, ruler of sky and cloud. Victorious tales of the Amorian fleet were painted with such stunning clarity in his mind that they became part of him, carved into his spirit, his very soul. Since then his life had been drawn to the wondrous beasts, and the need to study and work with the dragons arose within him as naturally as a thirsty man might reach for a pitcher of cool water. But to do this meant acceptance into the scholarly academies and it took more than dragon lore to gain entrance to their hallowed halls.

As young as the age of seven, he was able to read entire passages of text and recite them verbatim, purely from memory, and his appetite for knowledge only grew. Soon his mind became a vast library that never filled, with new wings and corridors always under construction, shiny clean floors of white marble and shelves of texts that rose up to cloudy heights. He remembered all of it: each word, every page, each story.

Such skills were never held in high esteem amongst the other youths of his village, who would constantly be thrashing each other with fists or wooden swords, coming home bruised and bleeding. There were few friends during those early days, but he hardly noticed. Every minute was spent working, learning, preparing for a future that was still just a dream.

Tenlon was not the least bit saddened when the village boys reached the age of eight and most were sent to various academies to begin their training, the first of many steps to the Amorian cloaks.

Their departure did not bother Tenlon at all. He did not wish for the life of the soldier, but to work with the Amorian fleet. Creatures of unfathomable magic and beauty, dragons were capable of devastating violence and destruction. Though now there were few left in Endura, their numbers nothing next to what they once were.

Still, compared to the power of such wondrous beasts, man was just a guest on this planet, thriving to civilized society beneath their indifference to our presence. Even if their numbers were dwindling, it was still a dragon’s land and by battling only each other and not man, they allowed us to share it.

Tenlon’s passion had grown to an obsession and he found his life within them. Through creatures he’d never even seen before but for his imagination, he found direction.

Persuaded by his mother’s countless letters to the capital, two old mages came to his village to meet with him at the age of eight. They were from an Amorian academy in the city of Iralic, and they would either be the saviors of his life or the executioners of his dreams.

The two asked him various questions for an entire afternoon, the topics of which he‘d only rarely discussed with other people, much less individuals of such wisdom. He recalled that history and philosophy were discussed, as well as geography, astrology, advanced mathematics, and the genesis of Draxakis and the fleet.

His mother said the conversation gave her such a headache that she had to sit on the porch with a mug of mulled wine to relax her brain. The men spoke quietly with her before leaving.

A covered wagon came three weeks later to take him to the Iralic Mage Academy, over six hundred miles to the northeast. A silent, green-cloaked guard waited on their porch while an academy administrator told his mother the tuition would be waived. She cried as she kissed Tenlon goodbye, telling him his life would be different now, better.

She was right, for the most part. He’d found his place in the world.

They wrote for two years before her letters stopped coming. He later discovered she had passed away on a particularly cold winter’s evening, two months after his eleventh birthday. When his second spring at Iralic finally rolled around, the students of his class were allowed their first opportunity to return home to families for a short break after midterms. Tenlon had nowhere to go.

He knew horses and during such times of freedom worked in the city stables, helping out where he could. Besides the meager pay, he was allowed exhilarating rides through the countryside atop fine mounts owned by nobles and Amorian cavalrymen passing through the eastern territories. His skills in the saddle progressed so much that he even began competing in various races, earning a bit of silver by winning far more then he lost.

Those were fine days
, he thought. His mother was gone, but he found friends in Iralic, brothers. He’d found a life.

Tenlon felt a nudge.

“You look lost,” Graille told him. “Where are you at this time? Sailing the Venda or with the dragons?”

“Neither,” Tenlon shook his head with a grin, pushing thoughts of the past from his mind. “I’m still on the march. Unfortunately.”

The afternoon sun beat down upon their academy robes of gray and Tenlon could feel beads of sweat dampening his chest. Except for the chill of night, one would never guess it late autumn. There was no shade on the open grasslands, just a rolling ocean of green that stretched out in all directions.

“It could be worse,” Graille mumbled. “Things can always get worse.”

They walked upon a smooth road of hard-packed dirt, a scar that scored the land a hundred feet across and almost as many miles long. The road, he knew, was a newborn, just five days old. The grass had been trampled so tremendously by the thousands of Amorian boots and horse hooves that it would take a lifetime to grow back, if ever at all.

Tenlon had no idea how many their numbers were: infantry, spearmen, light and heavy cavalry, archers, supply wagons, surgery units, cooks, stable hands, scholars, Magi, engineers, blacksmiths, royal guards, advisors, and emissaries. He only knew that King Healianos had amassed the entire army to counter the threat, this Volrathi force.

However many, once the Amorian lines began moving from Corda to the battle it took five days of waiting before Tenlon and the rest of his class joined the march, so great were their numbers.

He had watched the wide line pull away into the distance, stretching from sight, disappearing south as if it went on forever.

It was the first battle Tenlon would see in his sixteen years and was to be the greatest battle in all of history. Amoria had assembled a massive war machine of dark green and a dragon fleet that hadn’t tasted defeat in over three hundred years.

Tenlon had a nauseous feeling about all of it, but his boots kept pace with the rest, marching toward what all around him believed certain victory. He fought to share their optimism, and why not? Their army was great, their soldiers disciplined, their dragons legend, and their mages strong.

His mind couldn’t see the brightness in any of it, though, only a shadowed future.

Their Gallan allies to the east were supposed to lend the support of their soldiers in the battle, and word had spread that they never arrived. Amoria was on the path to war alone.

“Something is happening,” Graille suddenly said.

Tenlon looked ahead at the mage apprentices marching before them. The excited voices of the boys quickly turned to hushed whispers and he felt a ripple of tension spread as the lines subtly shifted to the right of the road. They were approaching something, and whatever it was, the youths seemed to be avoiding it.

“What do you think is wrong?” Tenlon asked, straining for a look.

Graille pointed to their left but the gesture was unnecessary. Everyone could see it as they passed.

In the grass, just off the flattened road, lay a motionless creature of black fur. A cloud of flies stormed over the carcass, their flight filling the scene with a constant, unsettling drone. Tenlon looked on and felt his throat tighten.

The beast’s stomach was torn open to display spilled entrails and its coat was crusted over with dried blood. Stretched out far longer than Tenlon was tall, it looked like a cross between a bear and the great jungle cats found in the Western Isles. Long, lean and muscled, its wide jaw hung open in death, showcasing a vicious set of sharp fangs to all who passed.

“Is that what I think it is?” Graille asked quietly.

Tenlon tried to look away but it was impossible. The beast was so large that it hardly seemed real.

“A Blackwolf.” His friend was in awe.

“It’s enormous. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“No,” Tenlon told him as they passed. “But I’m glad it’s dead.”

***

After another two hours of marching, they approached the final ridge of grass before it dipped down into the Goridai Flatlands. Tenlon and the rest marched up the easy rise and the distant horizon slowly revealed itself with each step, awash in the sun’s bright warmth and opening before them like a wide, new world.

They had assembled outside the capital eleven days ago in preparation for the battle, with six of those days on the march. He was relieved at the prospect of a rest and to reach more level ground after walking countless miles over rolling hills that never seemed to end.

The relief dried up and died within his heart once his eyes took in the sight before him. The entire flatlands were overflowing with the forces of the Volrathi, and the image was something from a nightmare. It was as if a great flood had swallowed up the land, filling it with blackness. East and west, the enemy covered the Flats like the shadow of a world-consuming storm, spreading beyond vision, numbers beyond counting. They took the horizon and made it their own, and the mere sight of it all was vast and terrifying.

Tenlon glanced down at the slender lines of Amoria pouring into the flatlands. They no longer appeared to go on forever. How could anyone stand against such a force? It was like a fire set against an ocean. He felt a wave of despair overcome him, knowing the truth of it as soon as he saw what they approached.