The Protector of Esparia (The Annals of Esparia Book 1) (30 page)

Cordon was relieved to see his father walk without assistance.  His only thought now was how they were going to transport eighteen crippled men back up the mountain and through the Narrow Passes before the jail break was detected. 
I hope Anton doesn’t find too many guys in this bad of shape.  If he does, we’re in real trouble.

* * *

To Anton’s surprise, the tower he entered had no jailer at the base.  It seemed completely deserted.  No lights, no sounds, no sign of human occupation.  One of the men found some torches lying against a wall and lit them.  With a flame in hand, Anton led his soldiers up the winding stairs.  Making their way from cell to cell, they found no signs of life.  Each jail door stood open, with the compartments themselves full of cobwebs and dust.  Not even a rat greeted them. 

Anton’s frustration mounted, but knowing he needed to check each cell to the very top, he and his men pushed on.  When they reached the final door at the pinnacle of the tower, to their surprise, it was locked from the outside by a single bolt.  Anton slid it back, moving it easily, releasing it with a dull thud.  The heavy wooden door groaned when he pulled on it.  Torch in hand, he entered the darkened room.  It was the largest of the tower chambers.  A small table and a single chair were to one side, an armoire stood at the back, and a thin rug partially covered the bare stone floor.  The only other furniture in the cell was a bed in the far corner.  Starlight poured in from two high windows located near the vaulted ceiling.  Anton walked toward the bed, his footsteps echoing in the silence.

“Who’s there?” a breathy female voice called out.  He did not dare answer.  Anton knew he was incapable of whispering.  Placing a finger to his lips, he tried a, “Shhhh.”

Though he could not see her face in the shadows, he realized she must be someone of great importance to be isolated at the very top of the great, dark tower. 

After handing the torch to a Guardian behind him, Anton crossed to the bed and picked a thin, fragile woman up in his arms.  She was light as a feather and an odd feeling of familiarity swept over him. 

A small squeak came from her when she tried to speak again, but after one more 'shhh' from Anton, she made no further sounds.  She seemed to understand she was being rescued because she reached her arms around his neck and held on.  Flanked in front and behind by five men, Anton raced down the tower stairs with the woman gently cradled against his chest.

When they exited the prison, Anton motioned to Ru with his head, jerking it toward the waiting ropes at the mountain’s side.  Ru signaled his men to begin retreating toward the rendezvous spot.  Cordon’s men were already there, in the process of hauling their rescued prisoners up to the pass.  Only the strongest Guardians were capable of making the initial climb, carrying the feeble captives strapped onto their backs. 

“We found eighteen,” Cordon whispered.  “I see you found…What!  A woman?”

Anton nodded.

“No more?”

Anton shook his head. 

One Guardian offered to take the woman from Anton’s arms, but he shook his head, indicating he would take her up himself.

Another odd, squeaky sound escaped the woman's lips, but Anton, his senses straining to detect signs of the enemy, did not take the time to listen to her words.

When he turned to check on how the ascension was progressing, he noticed Gammet in the group of freed men awaiting their turn up the mountain.  Stunned, he stared at the famous general.  The last time Anton had seen the man, which was only a few months earlier, his hair had been a deep brown color, only beginning to gray at the temples.  Now that hair was snow white in color and stood out in sharp contrast against the dark mountain beside them. 

With the last of the burdened Guardians beginning the assent, Cordon motioned for Ru and his squad to go up.  When the fourth bar and his men ran to the ropes, a cry of alarm came from the far tower where the woman had been imprisoned.

Within seconds, Demarian soldiers came streaming from the barracks. 

“Go!”  Cordon ordered Anton.  He pulled his sword.  Ru and his men formed a semi-circle around the dangling ropes with Anton and his charge at the center.

Before Anton could reach for the rigging, the woman twisted out of his hold.  Her burst of strength surprised him. 

“Help them, Anton,” she ordered in a weak, barely audible voice.  “You’ve come for me at last and I will wait for you here.”  She stepped back against the steep wall and pushed him forward.

He stared at her, surprised that she knew his name.  He had not really looked at her face, and now he tried to see her more clearly, but the dark night prevented it.  “Who…?”

Before he could finish the question she waved him off.  “Help them.”

Anton joined Cordon, Gammet, and the remaining thirty Guardians just as the enemy reached them.  Nearly one hundred swords came slashing in, but these Guardians were the best of the best that Lyrista had to send, and they stood firm against the onslaught of soldiers gone soft. 

Anton heaved his huge sword left and right, downing an adversary with every stroke.  Gammet took up a fallen Demarian’s weapon and wielded it mercilessly.  With each blow he cried out in anger, cursing the jailers and their evil master.  Within twenty minutes of the first steel clashing, the few remaining enemy soldiers retreated at a run.

Several Guardians were wounded in the fight, three badly enough they would need to be carried up.  The defenders had not moved from their original semi-circle.  When they retreated backward to scale the mountain wall, the bodies of the dead Demarian guards marked the perfect half-moon defensive line. 

The woman went to Anton.  She reached up and caressed his cheek with the back of her hand.  “I knew you’d come one day.”

He jerked back, as if she had slapped him, and stared at her wide-eyed.  By the meager light of the stars, he finally recognized the thin, but still beautiful face of Naydeen, Daenon’s mother and Lepsis’ older sister.  His heart lurched in his chest and he barely stopped himself from crying out.  She was the only woman he had ever loved, and for forty-five years he had thought she was dead. 

Questions flashed through his mind, but they would have to wait.  While she clung to his neck, he carried her up the mountain.  He held her once again in his arms while Cordon took lead during the journey back through the Narrow Passes.  Not until he was astride his horse, with Naydeen safely tucked against him, did he venture any of his queries. 

The first rays of morning light touched the mountains as the band of fifty guardians and eighteen grateful, rescued men followed Cordon eastward through the Snow Peak Range.  Anton brought up the rear.

“What happened, Naydeen?  I thought ya was gone forever.”

“I might as well have been.  After Segal died, and you escaped, I was taken to Daenon.  He was told I tried to leave with you and that you killed Segal.  Daenon knew his father didn’t love me; that he never had.  I told him the Maronian courts had granted my divorce.  I wanted to take him and Lepsis and leave.  I tried to explain that Segal attacked you and fell on his own knife when you pushed him away.  I begged for my freedom, for Lepsis’ freedom, just as I begged Segal earlier, but he only laughed.  My boy laughed.”

She paused.  A weak sob escaped her lips.  “You’d think after all these years I’d stop mourning, but he died for me that day.  ‘If my father refused you freedom, what makes you believe I will grant it?’ he said.  I asked him if he was going to kill me, but he said he would never be guilty of matricide and sentenced me to life imprisonment in the tower at Snow Peak.  For the last forty-five years,” she paused, “I never gave up hope you would someday come.”

Her tears flowed freely, wetting his shirt while she rested her head against his chest.  “When I saw you last night, your large frame in the torchlight…I knew.  Only my Anton could ‘shhhh’ so loudly.”

He could hardly believe she was real.  Her hair was matted and dirty, but still soft brown in color.  She had lost a significant amount of weight during her years of captivity, but her muscles were toned and she was not as weak as some of the men prisoners.  “I forced myself on a strict exercise program and ate the food, no matter how bad.  My fight for survival was strong because I wanted to see you again.”

With half of the horses carrying double loads, the journey back to Verdure was slower going than the ride to Snow Peak.  They traveled as swiftly as they could, eating their rations while they rode and stopping only to allow their horses to drink and to redistribute the extra men from one animal to another.  Though several offered, including Cordon, Anton never allowed Naydeen to ride with any other soldier.

After three days of nearly non-stop travel, the group met up with Lepsis and a legion of two hundred soldiers.  After conversing with Cordon and shaking hands with Gammet, who rode behind his son, Lepsis galloped toward Anton.

“Thought you might need some help, you’re behind schedule,” Lepsis called out, drawing ever closer to Anton and the lady.  “Border’s tightened up since you left.  Cordon says you found a female pris…” his voice trailed off and his eyes grew wide.  He gazed at the fragile woman cradled in Anton’s arms.  “Naydeen,” he mouthed, for no sound came out. 

At first she looked at him perplexed, but soon her face lit up.  “Lepsis!” she called excitedly.  “Oh Lepsis!”

All Lepsis could do was stare in complete astonishment at his sister. 

Anton reigned to a stop.  Carefully, he handed Naydeen over to her little brother, smiling broadly at the tender reunion.  Lepsis silently wept.  Naydeen kissed him and wiped his tears with her hands.  She finished the trip to Headquarters safely astride her brother’s horse, with Anton guarding their backs.

* * *

Gammet had been given a horse by one of Lepsis’ men and finished the ride to the Esparian command center beside Cordon.  “When you came through that door at the fortress I thought I was looking into the face of a ghost.  How did you survive the Dorsett attack?” 

Cordon nearly fell off his horse when his father spoke.  He had tried several times during their three day journey to talk with the old man, but Gammet refused to say a word.  Now he spoke two complete sentences.

Cordon recounted the details to his father, of how he was covered by the bodies of the dead and wounded and how the Elitet missed him.  “Three other men survived in the same manner.  Reese was one of them.  We alone live to tell the horrors of that battle.  What happened to you, Dad?”

Gammet’s voice took on a bitter tone.  “They surrounded my command, picked off my men one by one.  Before I realized they weren’t going to kill me, I was captured.  I would never have allowed them to take me alive.  My weapons were seized and I was taken to a command center.  There I saw Ballian, proud of his treachery.  From the command post they took me directly to the prison tower at Snow Peak.”

“We found out about Ballian a few weeks ago.  So much has happened since the battle at Saylon Dorsett that it’s difficult for me to know where to begin.”  Cordon explained about Gayleena, John, and Jessica.  He recounted every detail of the last month.  They were nearly to Headquarters when he finished bringing his father up to date. 

“The Lady Gayleena is here.”  Gammet’s voice was flat.  “I would like to meet this son-in-law of hers.  He sounds like quite a man.”

Cordon was confused at his father’s lack of surprise or enthusiasm.  Thinking quickly, he hoped his next comment would unleash a spark.  “John is.  Anyway,
Lyrista
thinks so.  I’ll send you to him.  He’s still pretty green and could use all of your help.” 

When Gammet did not react to the hint of Lyrista’s romantic interest, Cordon’s confusion turned to worry.  During their conversation, he had noticed several changes in Gammet’s attitude, but with the absence of curiosity toward Lyrista, the light of their father’s life, his son recognized the dark signs of depression.  Gammet had spiraled downward, deep within the deadly tentacles of this monstrous disease. 

The next day the two men were seated in the command center, awaiting Lepsis.  “Are you certain you don’t want medical attention, Dad?” Cordon asked. 

Gammet shook his head.  “My body will mend on its own.  I don’t want healers poking and prodding at me.”

Yeah,
Cordon thought sadly,
your body will heal, but what about your mind, your spirit?

“Sorry I’m late.”  Lepsis walked into the tent.  “I was looking for Anton, but he wasn’t at his campsite.”

“He’s at the hospital.  Hasn’t left there since we arrived yesterday.”  Cordon motioned to the large tent at the center of the base.

“Then I’ll see him soon enough.  Ready?”

The three men strode to the medical center.  Cordon wanted to meet the eighteen freed men.  Gammet agreed to accompany him, and Lepsis was along to make the introductions.   

Most of the men were scientists Daenon did not want killed.  Their stories were similar.  Afraid they would defect to Esparia, taking their secrets with them, Daenon imprisoned them.  Those who out lived their usefulness were tortured, rather than killed outright.  Two of the freed men were the Provincial Regulators of Snow Peak and Palium, retained in case Daenon needed some bargaining tools, and one man was once Segal’s leading strategist.  Daenon imprisoned him as retribution for his father’s death, blaming the man for the Blue Mountain defeat.