The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (60 page)

Perhaps she was right. He could sit there all day and pretend to be unaffected by Allion’s cutting remarks, or he could seek to assuage the bitterness between them before it became too much to overcome.

“Go,” Annleia urged. “It might be your last opportunity to do so.”

True enough. He had experienced already life’s unexpected ebbs and flows—seen how, without warning, its tides could pull people apart and carry them off in separate directions. Allion was too close a friend to let go without at least seeking to settle matters between them.

He knew also that they had only so much time before the entire company was urged forward again at full pace. Such rest periods promised to be short and infrequent. Were their horses able to gallop the entire distance, he had no doubts that they would be doing so.

He glanced at Crag, whose pinched expression showed only a general distaste. Annleia, however, nodded encouragingly. Perhaps she only wanted some more time alone with her dwarven friend, Torin thought. If that was the case, he wouldn’t refuse her.

After tightening the sword strap slung across his shoulder, he swung a leg over the wagon bed’s wall and dropped to the side. The driver glanced back at the motion, then farther back at a pair of watchriders who urged their mounts forward. Torin paid them no mind, but strode swiftly ahead, outpacing the slow-rolling wagon and the scores of walking steeds that formed their company.

His escorts reined up close. “May we be of service, sir?” one of them asked.

“Just stretching my legs,” he replied, staring ahead.

At that point, Allion turned and saw him coming. The hunter scowled and pulled his own mount to a halt. “Something wrong?” he demanded, as Torin neared.

“Thought I might have a word with you.”

Allion’s horse snorted. The hunter looked as if he wished to do the same.

“Concerning what?”

Torin kept marching, passing his friend by. Allion turned his steed’s head and kicked in alongside.

“Where are you going?”

“The Gaperon, or so I’m told.” It was difficult to keep the annoyance from his voice. “Must these soldiers share our every word?”

Allion, still scowling, signaled to the warders, who backed off, but remained alert, eyeing Torin like vultures. “Is the wagon not comfort enough for you? I’m afraid it’s the best we have to offer—and far easier than riding in armor and saddle.”

Torin passed over the first retort that came to mind. He hadn’t come to be drawn into a fight. “Such hospitality is better than I deserve,” he agreed instead. “I’ll do my best to reward their sacrifice in the coming battle.”

“Will you? Or will you have already run off with this
elf
of yours?”

It took even more effort, this time, for Torin to keep his eyes forward and his tongue in check. His own presence might well warrant Allion’s enmity, but Annleia’s most certainly did not. “Where’s Marisha?” he asked abruptly, thinking to catch his friend off guard. Aside from that, he had put the question off too long already. “Is she safe?”

Allion turned briefly to glare at him, before fixing his gaze northward once more. “She’s serving as healer to those on the front. Having been away, I cannot tell you if she still lives.”

To Torin, the answer was a relief. He’d feared she might have fallen already, and that
that
might be the true cause of Allion’s distress.

Perhaps he wasn’t far off, for the hunter seemed even more bitter and frustrated than before when adding, “What else would you have of me?”

“Blazes, Allion, I’m only trying to apologize for the ill I’ve caused, and to learn what I must do to make amends.”

“
Amends?
” The hunter shook his head with a brittle laugh. “How can you speak of amends while you continue to make the same mistakes?”

“And which mistakes are those?” Torin asked, shifting his eye toward his friend.

Allion met his gaze this time, glaring down at him from the saddle. “If you had only learned to accept life as it comes, rather than constantly chasing after childhood dreams, none of this would have happened.”

Torin frowned, puzzled by the claim. “If I had ignored the dreams,” he said, thinking of those fostered by the Entients, “I never would have found the Sword.”

“And had you not found the Sword,” Allion remarked primly, “you would not have unleashed the Illysp.”

“What of the Demon Queen?”

“We don’t know
how
that might have turned out. I don’t recall the bearer of the Crimson Sword crushing his leg in Killangrathor’s lair.”

A fair argument, perhaps…though, without the Sword, they may never have met the Entients and learned of the dragon at all. Either way, the threads were too closely intertwined to believe that one change in events would not have altered others.

“By the same token,” Torin countered finally, “it was you who helped to slay Killangrathor. And had the dragon not been killed, it never would have become an Illychar.”

Allion’s glare turned poisonous. “Would you have rather let the dragonspawn roam free?”

“Of course not. You did what you had to, what you believed was right at the time. As did I. No one could have foreseen all that would result.”

The hunter scoffed. “Is that how you wish to justify it?”

“I’m not seeking to
justify
anything. I’m only—”

“You’re doing what you always do, challenging fate in pursuit of some ideal future that doesn’t exist. You refuse to accept the ordinary, as if you’re somehow better than the rest of us. And your actions have brought ruin to us all.”

Was that how all of this had happened? He had indeed made certain choices, early on, to reach for a grander future than that afforded by the safer, more certain path. But was it wrong to reach for the extraordinary if the known path offered only a dead end?

“Even now,” Allion pressed, “you think to save the world in one fell swoop, rather than join the slower, more difficult struggle the rest of us must face. Your only commitment is to your own glorified aspirations, leaving others to take up your share of the common burden.”

Perhaps his friend was right. Contentions sprang to mind, but they seemed petty and self-minded, one and all, their only potential purpose in redirecting blame. If that was all Allion was willing to discuss with him, then Torin was clearly wasting his breath.

“You seem to have already decided, then, upon my lack of value in the upcoming battle. Hopefully, the rest of these men are not similarly discouraged.”

“You’re no hero, Torin. I was there, every step, when you recovered the Sword, remember? I know what you did and what you
didn’t
do. You cannot ask me to take heart in a legend I know to be false.”

Torin had heard enough. “The tale isn’t written yet,” he said, then turned on a heel and headed back toward the trailing wagon.

The pounding in his chest soon reached his ears, his blood envenomed with the sting of truth. He didn’t need Allion to tell him that he was hardly what the bards would sing about. He didn’t need his best friend to bring to light all his darkest fears. He’d received a warmer reception in Yawacor, from mercenaries and cutthroats and those he had barely known, than from the one person he might have expected to welcome his return. He wasn’t sure what it might take to satisfy his former friend, but he doubted now if even his death would be enough.

“Did it not go well?” Annleia asked, after he had climbed back up into the wagon bed.

“Perfectly,” he huffed, without looking at her.

She remained silent for a moment, then added, “It does you no good to hoard your misery from the world.”

“It does the world no good for me to share it,” he snarled, glaring now across the way. Catching the stern look Crag gave him, he forced his tone to soften. “I’ve sown misery enough, don’t you think?”

He looked to his own hands then, clenching them together with a molten determination. She knew no more than Allion. But he would show them both soon enough. To the Abyss with her and Ravar and their restoration of the seal. That road was far too perilous to risk on such an uncertain outcome. Instead, he would give Allion the commitment he was seeking. He would show them all just how well versed he had become in the harvesting of death and sorrow. They wanted a battle? He would give it to them, with all the pain and fury that Itz lar Thrakkon had bred within him. It would be a conflict for the ages, the kind in which true legends were forged.

One way or the other, he would make this next confrontation his last.

T
HE SILENCE PEALED LOUDER THAN
thunder.

It wasn’t
complete
silence, but after weeks of deafening clangor within their iron-shelled rover, it seemed as such. The steam-powered engines had gone cold and quiet. Her team no longer labored at the pump handles, for their efforts availed them nothing. For a time, there had been the raucous howling and banging and clawing of those skatchykem seeking to pry their way inside. But most had since moved south to engage easier prey. After that had come the rains, a downpour so violent that it rang like pebbles upon the ceiling. The waters, funneled down to the boiler, had effectively replenished their drinking stores, but had failed them in their attempts to start the rover back up again. When the boiler had gone dry, the fires fanned by the pushers’ labors had failed as well, and no flame of their own would take hold as that one had. Evidently, whatever sorcery the Entients had worked would be required anew if they hoped to bring the rovers back to life.

Until then, they were stranded, hunkered within a cocoon of their own making, with nothing now but to wait and pray for some manner of deliverance.

“Do you think they’ve forgotten about us?” Tonra asked.

Vashen shook her head, not so much in answer as in frustration.
Most
of the skatchykem had pushed south, but not all. Every now and then, a pack would come crawling back to probe the seams of their shell. The fighting that raged without sounded muffled and distant, yet was near enough that a single shout of warning would be sufficient to bring a fair portion of that enemy host swooping down upon them.

“How does the cave cat hunt the shield lizard?” she mused in reply.

“By waiting for the lizard to stick its neck out,” Dugg answered. “Which it must do eventually,” he added gruffly, “else suffocate in its own shell.”

Vashen winced. Perhaps she should have taken care to choose a more hopeful image—even if none could more accurately describe their own predicament.

“We’ve rations enough for a few more days,” her driver observed. “May as well wait it out, see if they give us a mite more breathing room.”

“It’s as quiet now as it’s likely to get,” argued Brokk. His tone was venomous, his stare accusing, as it had been since they had left his brother Tegg behind. “We should break now.”

Vashen wasn’t sure which made more sense. Whenever she thought too hard on one course or the other, her head began to float. She glanced down
at her hands and wrists, bound against the raking slashes used to drain her blood in a vain attempt to keep her rover moving. Perhaps Dugg was right, and she had lost too much. She felt stronger than she had a couple of days ago; the rains had done that much for her. If only they’d come a few hours earlier. Achthium’s trials seemed right cruel, at times. But then, steel wasn’t forged amid blossoms and snowflakes.

“His Glory will learn what happened here,” Vashen declared bravely. “He will not abandon us.”

“As we did not abandon the others?” Brokk asked, mocking. Others amid the crew stiffened uncomfortably at the challenge, but the hurler captain pressed on. “You know we’re on our own. Why else would you have positioned us as you did?”

He was right, she supposed, on both counts. Hreidmar would first have to learn of their situation. Even if he did, there was no assurance of a rescue attempt. Doing so would demand that many be put at risk for a relative few. Faced with the same choice, she had left two more rovers behind as she had the first, pressing on with the remainder because she felt she must. When it had become clear that even those rovers were failing—her own included—she’d had them close ranks and drive east to the very wall of the mountains. Should they be forced to flee their vessels, better to scatter up the slopes than through the enemy-choked floor of the pass.

“What few rations we have, we’re likely to need,” Brokk continued. “And my muscles are going to rot with all this sitting around. If I must fight for my life, let me do so while I can still heft pole and hammer.”

Vashen eyed him squarely. Did he think she felt any differently? Blind passion was fine and good, but survival was a game of wits as well as will.

“Do the rest of you feel the same?” she asked her crew. None responded directly, but as the silence lengthened, she shifted her gaze to gauge their expressions. Her answer soon became clear. “Tonra,” she said, hope and fear blooming in the nest of her stomach, “relay word to the others. We make plans to emerge at sundown.”

T
HE MIDDAY SUN SHONE FAINTLY
behind a grim cover of cloud. The air was chill and moist from the previous night’s showers. Its feel reminded Torin of Yawacor, where the next rain had never been far behind the last. The smell of ash blanketed the earth. Fine weather for a battle, he thought. Crisp and invigorating.

A good day for killing. A good day to die.

He’d spent the past two days in a roiling silence, making no further effort to approach Allion or anyone else. He’d answered questions from Crag or Annleia when pressed, but had done so with frigid grunts and minimal eye contact. His fury may have cooled, but not his resolve to eradicate these Illychar one by one—or perish in the attempt. Even now, with the thunder of their battle cries ringing in his ears, he felt no fear, only a simmering desire to unleash his hand against them.

He couldn’t actually see them yet. His company was still skirting the southern face of the Tenstrock Mountains, whose rugged folds formed a wall against the slaughter raging within the Gaperon itself. The land about was broken and stepped, rising and falling in an unpredictable array of gnarled mounds, knifing gullies, and steep, sheer-faced plateaus. All he could truly discern, based upon the tempest of howls and clangor of arms, was that the battle had reached the southern mouth of the pass, as if ready to spill south upon the shattered plains.

An ill sign. Though no one bothered to confer with him, he could read the dismay in their faces. The coalition forces, as he’d understood it, had dug their forwardmost trenches miles to the north, closer to the Gaperon’s gullet. To have been forced back this far after just a few days of actual fighting did not bode well.

Their wagon was halted at the next checkpoint, and Torin, Annleia, and Crag unloaded from its bed. A much smaller contingent accompanied him now, led by Allion and a bearded envoy sent to them by coalition command. They’d already cleared two other checkpoints before this one. By now, word of his arrival was running well ahead of him. He saw it in the eyes of those he passed: sentries and soldiers and cooks and nurses and handlers and runners—an endless variety of fighters and camp laborers who took pause to mark his coming with sidelong looks and anxious whispers. Torin avoided their gazes, caring nothing for their wonder and suspicion. He didn’t need them to trust or welcome him, only to make way.

The farther they went, the thicker the press became. Many were injured, all were exhausted, debilitated by the relentless conflict. Little by little, Torin sensed something new building around him: hope. A spark only, but fanning gradually, causing the palm that rested upon the Sword’s hilt to tingle. Queen Loisse had been right. Her troops needed this. They needed to reclaim, if only briefly, a glimmer of mirth and triumph. To see that it was happening, and that he was the cause, served as an infectious reminder of what this struggle was about.

Under a mounting wave of expectation, he set his eyes forward and continued ahead.

“Ho!” a voice hailed.

Torin glanced around until he spied a filthy, half-armored figure striding toward them.

Zain.

General Rogun’s commander-in-waiting wore his reptilian smile, beady eyes glittering like those of a weasel in a bird’s nest. “So it’s true,” he said.

“Sorl’s son has returned from the Abyss.”

Up ahead, Allion frowned, but spared the commander a nod. Their party continued its march. Zain fell into step alongside, leaving a troop of mud-spattered Alsonians behind.

“Is the general here, then?” Torin asked.

“Conferring with high command,” Zain replied, “lending our regiment a
much-needed rest.” His gaze found Annleia. “There’s a pretty one. Angel or devil?”

“She ain’t one of your camp followers,” Crag growled, “if that’s your meaning.”

“No? Pity.” Zain’s smile broadened, both chivalrous and predatory. His attention shifted back to Torin. “So, is the Great Fiend as ugly as they say?”

“Handsomer than some,” Torin muttered.

Zain chuckled. “As I suspected. Welcome back, boy.” He stopped, surprising Torin with a quick salute, then grinned at Annleia and turned back toward his men.

Torin’s gaze stretched after him momentarily, after which he simply shook his head.

A tent rose before them. One of the sentries stepped inside the shadowed entrance flap, announcing their arrival, Torin supposed. He emerged a moment later and beckoned them forward.

The detachment of guardsmen halted. The envoy bowed and held the tent flap open for Allion, Torin, Annleia, and Crag to enter.

The interior was lit with lanterns, candles, and the diffuse light of the sun. The smell of blood and dirt and medicinal herbs created a sickly sweet potpourri. Near the center of the tent, stood over a crude wooden table, two men awaited them.

“General, Commander,” Allion greeted dourly. His breath caught as his eyes adjusted and he took a full look at Troy. “Blazes. Good to see you took care of yourself in my absence.”

The high commander’s face was bruised and knotted. His left arm was splinted, his torso and one leg wrapped in gauze. His armor lay in a pile beside a nearby cot, where a pair of attendants were working to scrub it clean and beat out the dents with hammer and chisel. “Better battered than dead,” he replied hoarsely, turning gaze to Torin. One eye was swollen shut. The other was painted red with swollen vessels. “Though, for a time there, I might have argued otherwise.”

Allion gestured to his charges. “Torin, Crag, Annleia. You received your king’s message?”

Troy nodded, studying Torin with that damaged eye of his. “Come to rid us of this scourge, we’re told.”

“And just in time,” Rogun jeered. The general was in full, bladed armor, looking and smelling as if he’d been rolling in a mound of offal. “En route to Thrak-Symbos, we hear. Pray tell, how do you mean to drive the rats back into their hole?”

Annleia responded before Torin could. “’Tis the task we’ve been given,” she said, as if that were explanation enough. “We bear artifacts that make it possible.”

Rogun snorted. “Magic.”

“The Illysp are not natural to this plane,” she said. “It is not by physical means that they will be vanquished.”

“Seem real enough to me,” Rogun argued, picking a scrap of flesh from his shoulder and flicking it to the earth. “Though the men they’ve trampled will doubtless be relieved to hear it.”

“We’re here to serve,” Torin offered, “in whatever manner is necessary.” Annleia scowled. “The Gaperon is sealed, is it not?” he pressed, weathering the heat of her stare.

“There are other passes,” Crag reminded him, “east through the Aspandels.”

“That is our road,” Annleia insisted.

“And a dead end, until you find me one who can navigate the ruins,” Torin responded curtly. “General, Commander, my blade is yours.”

He felt Allion peering at him, seeming suddenly uncertain. When he looked over, however, and their eyes met, the hunter’s mouth snapped shut and his expression became petulant.

“A pet dragon might prove more useful,” Rogun said. “Lost yours, did you?”

“And angered its sire. Trust me, General, you have no wish to meet Him.”

Rogun raised an eyebrow, more amused than curious. Torin expected Annleia to say something, but the elf-woman had gone cold with silence. Instead, it was Troy who replied, “Trust, in these times, is a precious commodity.”

It was the same as with Allion, he realized. They were not certain they
wanted
his help. They were not sure they could rely on it. And why should they? Up until now, he had failed everyone’s expectations, including his own. Well, the time had come to put to rest the doubts that had haunted him throughout his life. If his existence was to signify anything, he would have to define it now.

“That I might do more harm than good, is this what you fear?” he asked.

“With respect, Commander, seems your forces are already on the verge of defeat. Trade me weapons, if you must. Arm me with seed cones. But do not ask me to watch from afar when I might do much to help stem this tide.”

Allion scoffed, clearly unimpressed. Both Rogun and Troy regarded him bluntly. Annleia was the first to speak.

“You swore an oath. You cannot forsake our task.”

“Then find us a guide, Annleia, as Ravar said we would. Until then, I’ll not sit idle, waiting for the stars to align.”

Her lips tightened, and the intensity in her eyes nearly caused him to retract the words. But he set his jaw and gripped the Sword’s hilt, refusing to do so. When it appeared she might say something more, she turned instead and strode from the tent. Crag followed, leaving him with a long, pinch-eyed glare.

He must think I’m right
, Torin thought,
else he would have spoken.

Allion, strangely, looked as if he might go after them, but stood his ground.

“Are you so eager to return to the grave?” Rogun asked when the pair had gone.

“If that’s what it takes.”

The general’s moustache twitched, the corner of his mouth turning up with just the barest hint of a smile. “In that case, you’ll ride with me.”

Torin wasn’t sure how to respond. Slight as it seemed, it might be the most respect Rogun had ever shown him. As with Zain, he had to wonder if this acceptance was some sort of game being played at his expense. The general did so enjoy keeping others off their guard.

“Where’s Corathel?” Allion asked, when it seemed Troy was not going to argue. “Seems
he
should have a say.”

“The chief general is in the field,” Troy answered. “Those siege rovers our Hrothgari spoke of finally arrived, only to stall in the pass. Corathel has led a host north to hazard a rescue of those stranded within.”