The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (29 page)

Kestian code called for killing him. Any true Kestian warrior would have slit the briene's throat by now to set an example. A demonstration like that could be used to convince an enemy to give up their dreams of victory and to walk away. Goodwyn had been forced to memorize dozens of historical battles that had been won by such a demonstration.

There had been enough bloodshed already, and Goodwyn was determined to stop this pointless war. He reached down and offered the man his hand. Gasps escaped from both the briene and the Waldrene hosts.
 

To his surprise, the briene took it and stood up. Goodwyn and the briene stood in silence for a moment. He wondered what the other man was thinking, if the briene truly knew anything about honorable combat or whether there was an archer ready to put a bolt through Goodwyn's chest any second now.

The briene bowed slightly, pressing a closed fist into an open palm. It looked a lot like one of the many Kestian warrior salutes, signifying a combination of both power—the clenched fist—and control—the open palm.

Goodwyn returned the bow and watched as the briene host simply turned and walked back down the road. It was then that he noticed the sun was almost below the horizon and the clouds were painted orange and purple with the rays of the oncoming sunset.
 

"You battled that briene for more than three hours," came a voice that answered his unspoken question. It was Corliss.

Goodwyn turned to see hundreds of Waldron soldiers, all standing in awe. They were sweaty, bloody, and haggard. Behind them, other soldiers were hauling away the bodies of the dead. There were so many bodies they had to carry them two or three to a litter.

Having fought an honorable battle didn't make that sight any easier to take. Goodwyn felt sick.

"What..what happened?" he asked, barely able to get the words out through a sore, clenched throat. His body ached, his toes, his fingers, and everything in between. He collapsed onto the ground before anyone could answer.

Corliss knelt beside him. "You fought hundreds of them. No one could get near you without dying. It was a sight to behold."

Goodwyn threw up, the vomit spilling onto his shirt and burning his mouth.

All those dead bodies, all those people he had killed. It was the Kestian way, and all of Kest would treat him like a hero, sing songs of his victory and write books about this battle alone. But at what price? Maybe Urus had been right all along. Maybe standing on a hilltop, looking out at a battlefield covered with the bodies of your enemy, wasn't the way things were meant to be. Or maybe that was the
only
way of things, and Urus had it wrong.

But still, he had turned the tide of the battle. He had won the day for Waldron, and because of him maybe even bought Urus and Murin enough time to do…whatever it was they needed to do.

Waldrene soldiers brought him some water and helped him to his feet. He was covered from head to toe in bruises and would likely be all shades of yellow and purple by tomorrow.

"Goodwyn," Corliss said finally, "I've spent my whole life thinking that magic was a fairy tale, the stuff of children's stories. After seeing what the blood mage and that girl could do, I still wasn't convinced any good could come from magic. Watching you fight today, watching you fight a man for hours like that, showed me that maybe some good can come from it. The men, they all saw it. You're a hero; you saved the line and the city."

"I killed hundreds of men, Corliss. The only thing that makes that heroic is the honor of the battle, the
code
. Without that, without honor, it's all just murder. And for what?"
 

"You saved lives, and Urus and Murin are safe. You did what needed to be done, as did we all."

"The briene will be back at dawn; I haven't saved anything yet," Goodwyn said. "I sure hope Waldron has good ale, because I could use a—" He stopped short, staring up into the sky.

Three massive balls of fire shot down from the stars above, trails of flame and debris streaking behind them, as though heaven itself had fired a catapult, launching chunks of hell through the air.

Corliss gasped. "What in the name of the heavens are those?"

"We have seen stars fall from the sky before in Kest, but they were only tiny little streaks of light. Nothing like this."

A loud bang echoed against the cliff face, knocking the Waldrenes to their knees, followed by another, and a third thunderous roar and crackle as the nearest of the three fallen stars struck some distant target.

Each of the balls of flame crashed into the earth, sending up a huge, billowing cloud shaped like a mushroom. Each explosion came with a piercing flash of light that hurt their eyes even from this distance.

A moment later the earth shook, splitting off chunks of the mountain from the cliff face and hurtling them down into the road. Cracks appeared in the ground, in the stone of the sky gate, and in homes and buildings throughout Waldron.

When the ground stopped quaking, many of the soldiers exclaimed that the Gods were angry.

"This has nothing to do with the Gods," Corliss shouted, standing up and squinting into the distance. "I don't know where those impacts were, and it's hard to judge from so far away, but I would bet that one of them came down in Ehmshahr."

"Ehmshahr? That's where Kest is," Goodwyn said.

"And I don't think these were just random falling stars, Goodwyn."

Goodwyn thought about the vertices, and how Murin had said there were five of them: one of them below Kest, one below Waldron, and three more in locations described by some old map.

"Do you think the Order knocked those stars out of the sky and used them to destroy three of the vertices?" Goodwyn asked.

"If so, then fighting off the briene is the least of our problems."

22

"Foreman, the general brings news of the battle," the general blurted, not waiting for a response before taking his ease in a chair across from his old friend's desk.

The foreman sipped at his mug of blute, savoring every drop of the glowing red brew, a tea made from a naturally fluorescent algae that only grew in the puddles ringing his home town of Mog. The sweet-smelling steam drifted to his nose and filled his mind with images of home.

Home felt so far away, memories of the faces of his family already fading.

"So the briene should be through to the inner keep by nightfall?" the foreman asked, cradling his mug with both hands.

The general, a stout man wrapped in tight leathers, shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was strapped from boot to gauntlet with little daggers and pouches filled with tricks that might come in handy in a battle. Aside from the blade, the general was probably the fiercest warrior among all the briene, and the foreman's best friend. After a pause, he answered, "Well, not exactly."

"What does that mean?" asked the foreman, finally looking up from his drink. He regretted it instantly, for now he could see the stacks of paperwork piling up on his desk, and the stacks of other matters piling up in front of the desk, and pretty much everywhere else in the command post.

"The Waldrenes have provided more resistance than the blood witches said they would. They are fierce warriors, not intimidated at all by our technology. They fight with—" the general stopped.

"They fight with what?"

"Honor," he said.

The foreman slammed his mug down and bolted up. "Honor? Those dogs flood the caves with their dams, they steal the children in the dark of the night to put them into their labor camps, and they make ready to lay waste to briene homeland. How could they possibly fight with honor?"

The general shrugged. "Had the general not been there to see it with his own eyes, he would not have believed it. There was a blood witch among them. He killed three medics before one of the Waldrenes killed him."

"A blood witch attacked the briene? And a Waldrene killed him?" the foreman asked.

The general nodded.

"It's got to be a ruse of some kind. They are playing the general for a fool, hoping the general will fall into their trap. The general will see."

"Perhaps," the general mused. He rubbed his thumbs against his fingertips, a nervous habit he only did when something was bothering him. "Has the foreman any more blute?"

The foreman smiled a little and stepped to the kettle over the fire behind his desk to pour his friend a drink.

"So," the foreman began, handing his friend a mug, "how goes the battle then, with these so-called honorable fighters?"

"The sky gate has yet to be breached. The battle waged long until the sun hung low in the sky. The blade accepted a
fein dur
from one of Waldrene heroes, the dark-skinned giant who slew the blood witch."

"A fein dur?" asked the foreman. He had never heard of an outsider issuing a hero's challenge before, let alone someone who wasn't a briene. These Waldrene seemed nothing like what the blood witches said.

"It lasted for hours. The Waldrene was victorious and spared the blade's life. The Waldrenes allowed a retreat to renew the fight at dawn."

"None of that makes any sense, General."

"No, it doesn't. And there's more."

"More surprising than Waldrenes fighting with honor while blood witches attack us?"

The general swallowed, hard. He looked troubled, his yellow eyes watery, as though holding back tears.

"Much."

"Out with it then," prodded the foreman.

"The foreman needs to see this for himself."

The foreman straightened.
What could possibly be so bad?

"Show the foreman."
 

The general and the foreman grabbed their mugs of blute, and the foreman followed his friend out of the office. They weaved their way through the caves, slowly winding around the underground foundry until they reached the surface.

"This way." The general pointed to the west, off into the forest.

"What is it the general intends to show the foreman?" asked the foreman.
 

"It really would be best if the foreman saw it personally."

Grudgingly, the foreman bit his tongue and followed in silence as he was led into the forest along a narrow game trail barely visible in the dusk light. After a few furlongs, they crested a small rise to stand before a watering hole, probably used by the same animals that made the trail.

The watering hole had been drained, only to be replaced with thick, dark purple blood. Hanging from hooks knotted into ropes crisscrossing over the pond were hundreds of briene. They hung upside down, each with a cut across their abdomen and inner thigh, drained of every ounce of their life's blood.

The foreman dropped to his knees, salty tears rushing down his cheeks, over his thick mustache, and into his mouth. He wrung his hands, pleading with the gods to provide him with an answer for the horror before him. No answer came. No solace came from the prayer, no explanation, just death and violence.
 

Death and violence visited by the blood witches.

Without getting up, through sniffs and sobs, he barely managed a question to the general. "When did this happen?"

The general turned and coughed, unable to look at the scene, "Briene only discovered the bodies moments before the general visited the foreman's office. The blood is—" He swallowed, choking back bile, "—still fresh."

"The blood witches did this. All this time, the briene have been supplying volunteers to be taught their technology, their knowledge of steam and metallurgy. Instead the blood witches have been slaughtering innocent brothers and sisters to cast their blood-spells."

"The briene are betrayed, foreman."

The foreman stood and stomped away from the pool. "And they will be avenged, General. Cut the bodies down so they can be given a proper burial of stone and fire."

He stormed down the game trail and out into the clearing, a wide swath torn through the forest to fuel their war machines, war machines attacking an enemy whose only crimes were angering the blood witches.

How could the foreman have been such a fool?
he asked himself, still weeping.

He gazed up to the heavens. "Why, God? What have the briene done to deserve this?"

In response, the heavens opened up and spat forth three giant balls of flame. At first it looked as though they were falling as softly as a feather, but he knew enough to know that was his mind playing tricks on him.

The stars are falling
, he thought.
Surely this is a sign.

"Foreman!" came a shout that shook him from his prayer, though he couldn't tear his gaze from the falling stars. "Foreman!"
 

"What is it?" asked the foreman without looking down.

"Riders approach from the southeast, perhaps twenty," the soldier replied, arriving to stand by the foreman, also craning his neck to stare at the spectacle in the sky.

"Riders from the southeast? The Waldrenes would never be foolish enough to attack our rear with only twenty men."

"They aren't Waldrenes. The riders look like the
fein duras
who fights for Waldron."

The foreman tore himself away from the falling stars to confront the soldier. "What?"

"The riders. They are dark-skinned giants."

* * *