Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (33 page)

T
hey moved as quickly as the sodden terrain would allow. At first, they did so quietly, but now they made all haste, the booming percussions from the battle to the south punctuating the night and covering their progress. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the vast majority of the Dark Kind were massed outside of Hearth’s walls.

Kole felt the guilt welling up like acid, the one fire to which he was not immune. Misha Ve’Gah, however, was a pragmatic sort, and though he kept pace with her evenly, she often as not took his silence for dawdling.

“Since I’m doing all of the navigating,” she said, “the least you could do is keep up.”

Kole said nothing. He knew the other Ember was merely covering her anxiety. In some ways, she reminded him of the Ve’Ran sisters, albeit a bit more brash. And though she carried her spear with a steady hand, he wondered if she knew how to wield it. He wondered why she had been positioned along the white cliffs, where action was sparse during the Dark Months.

In truth, Kole said nothing because he was tense, and that tension rode them all the way through the marshes in the shape of reed, rock and root. One great beast was unaccounted for. And it had last been seen in this region. Kole knew the Night Lord had not given up. Misha knew it as well. It had both of them peering around every bend in the slow-moving waters and twitching at shadows between the stalks. Though the land would have been difficult for her, Kole regretted leaving Shifa in Hearth.

Misha seemed to sense it before he did, her measured strides morphing into a trot that became half run. She looked back, eyes wild to see if Kole was behind her.

“Go,” he whispered harshly, the back of his neck prickling.

The spear wielder broke into as close to a sprint as she could in the slop, cutting through swaths of reeds in the choked alleyways. Less experienced soldiers might have felt foolish for having been spooked by something unseen and unheard, but these Embers trusted their instincts.

Sooner than Kole would have hoped, the whistling spear separated the furry cattails from the final stalks between them and the river, and they let the current help them along as the way grew less choked. They waded forward, not turning back, and Kole could pick out the rough bank ahead by the way the silver light filtering in from the clouds carved stones from the darkness.

Misha grew taller as she gained purchase on the gravely river bottom, and she must have heard the sound before he felt it. The ripples and waves could have been natural, but he felt the coming of the beast in the undertow, the river pulling at him like an indrawn breath. The loose pebbles underfoot began a rapid slide that threatened to suck his feet out from under him.

Up ahead on the shore, Misha spun, her bright hair indistinguishable from the flaring tassels on her spear. The air around her grew hazy as she set her weapon into a slow spin that soon became a blur. Her features were obscured behind a whirring of green, red and yellow as the atmosphere turned liquid.

Kole flushed heat into his legs as he struggled up the cascading shore. He was chest-deep and slipping. One final lunge brought him up to his naval before he heard a hissing streak along the water’s surface. He spun, the bottom betraying him once more in a lucky stroke that spared his life. As he fell, a spray of water hit him like shards thrown from the prow of a windship. The black mass was indistinguishable from the foam, but the red eyes glowed their ruby glow, and he knew the beast had come as he went under.

The river was cold and black. It enveloped him completely and he tumbled in the wake of the snake’s passing. His fingers scored gashes in the rough sand and he fought to gain a horizon. He did not dare to surface, but rather clung to the bottom and waited.

A weight like a tree trunk slammed into his side and sent him careening end over end. Again, it was luck that saved him. Instead of the beast’s razor teeth, the shallow stones met his brow, leaving their scrapes but sparing him a more ugly fate. Again Kole managed to dig his roots into the sliding silt, scanning the deeper darkness for signs of movement. Just when his lungs were about to quit on him, two red stones appeared in the inky black, and the serpent shot toward him with frightening speed.

Embers rarely ran from fights. They were more than worth their weight in water, unless they were in water. Kole swam toward the surface. The instant his head broke through, his eyes were stung by a brilliant kaleidoscope of amber, yellow and red.

Heat that would have killed any other buoyed his lungs and charged his blood with power. He set his feet in the rolling rocks and ran toward the blazing shore, where Misha Ve’Gah strained in the cyclone of flame. Behind him, the crash of the beast breaking the surface was drowned out by its roar of pain as the flames set to eating.

Kole reached the shallows and spun, drawing his blades as he did and setting the air around him to shimmer as Misha’s flames died out. The serpent surfaced again, its head a smoking ruin, its cry more rage than pain now. It looked like no creature Kole had ever seen, though its body recalled the great burrowing worms of the Untamed Hills, docile creatures that met most challenges with swift retreats.

The fire distorted the Night Lord’s form, the horns atop its head and the frills of its mane a melted and moving mass of coiling black.

“Reyna, down!”

And Kole put the fire in his legs, shooting backward as the serpent lunged for him. A comet in the form of Hearth’s Third Keeper hurtled over him, spinning shaft in hand. The monster was so intent on Kole that it spared Misha no heed, its maw a frothing mess that smelled like death.

Kole lit his blades and angled them sharply, fearing he would be crushed in the collision. There was a whistling as the spear whirled and then a sharp sound like metal on marble.

The river stilled.

As the spray dissipated enough for Kole to see, the beast’s head appeared directly before him and reflex had him stabbing out. He speared one ruby eye, which burst in a shower of hot blood that sizzled along the haft of his blade and coagulated into syrup as it rang along his armored forearm.

There was no cry as the beast died, no animal roar to rival the distant din of Hearth. It had died the instant Misha Ve’Gah’s spear made a hilt of its skull.

Misha pulled her weapon free with a sucking sound and the Embers walked to the shore as the shallows stilled. Kole marveled at the sinews standing out along the backs of her arms, which were bare, her own armor ending at the shoulders.

They both looked at the dead creature in silence. As had been the case with the ape Kole had wounded at Last Lake, the ink sizzled and spat, draining into the river and coating the surface in a slick that shone like ice. The worms of the Untamed Hills had no bones, just cartilage beneath their shifting skin. This one’s was gray and very near to rotten, its stench overwhelming enough to compel them onward with nary a backward glance.

“Not a true Night Lord, after all,” Misha remarked.

“None of them have been.”

“Then what are they?”

“Same as the souls before Hearth’s gates: victims.”

They followed the river’s snaking progress north, and as they did, Kole thought of the serpent’s eyes. It had the same glint as the ape, the same murderous, intelligent glow as the Sentinels in the woods. He thought he’d like a closer look at whoever had been staring back.

Though expected, the sight of the abandoned homesteads along the Fork hit Kole like a physical blow. As they crested the rise that looked down on the stout stone structures, he held out hope that they might find some resistance. There was none.

Kole tried to tell himself that many of the Corrupted before Hearth’s gates were from lands beyond the Valley, but the desolation before them was impossible to ignore. Still, he could not help but feel some modicum of relief that Last Lake still stood, and that ever-present kernel of guilt glowed brighter in his gut as they walked among the empty husks and homes of their Valley kin.

“They fought,” he said, as much to fill the wind-swept silence as to distract him from the few dead they passed. He could tell which had turned—their eyes were misshapen, limbs elongated—and which had died before the change could take hold. Death was a mercy in this war. How defeating, to wish for the Dark Months in place of this madness.

“They lost,” Misha said after a time, but her voice had lost much of its solidity.

“There.”

They were passing an alley when Misha noted a particularly dense collection of former persons strewn about a northern square. Carts had been overturned to form some semblance of a defense, and they could see the spires of a guard tower that stood in the shadows of the mountains.

Coming closer, they saw deep grooves in the earth that stretched like snails’ tracks before coming to rest at the bases of great boulders—telltale signs of the final stand of the Rockbled. Kole did not know how many of the stone-throwers remained among the Rivermen, but he knew there were more of them than there were Embers in the Valley.

He wondered how many had fallen here. He wondered why they had chosen this gate as their final ground.

And then he saw the tracks leading north, and his heart swelled despite his mind’s warning.

T
almir did not see Kole Reyna off in person because he knew he would regret letting him go.

Now, the guilt that had burned at his center had morphed, questions about whether or not he should have allowed the Ember to leave replaced by those demanding to know why he had not done it sooner.

Looking out over the roiling black waters of the Dark Kind, Talmir knew he had chosen right. He knew that, no matter how brightly Reyna may have burned, all fires would drown in the face of this darkness. Had he not sent him north, the questions would have haunted him unto his dying breath. The more he thought, however, the more he knew that questions over what the Embers would find might do the same.

In any case, he was resolved not to die. At least not while his city bled.

Talmir stood on the parapets and looked out over that black sea. The Dark Kind still attacked in mass, but the alleys and trenches were soaked with pitch and oil, the fields burning in defense of the city. Any of the sorry creatures lithe enough to crest the wall were dispatched in short order. But the defenders were only men. And men tired.

Whenever the Captain needed a morale boost, he would cast his gaze to the north, where First Keeper Garos Balsheer stood vigilant before the stonework, his broad arms soaking in the glow of his brazier.

Of the Corrupted, Talmir had taken close account of them. While they still approached in a fervor, their bodies had lost much of their substance, their shoulders sagging, chests sunken. Their maws hung ever open as they slogged forward and their black skin cracked and peeled. They seemed to be unending, pouring out of the trees in an endless stream that would make the River F’Rust blush.

Hearth’s defenders were stronger of body and mind, but the sickbeds had been overflowing for days. Talmir did not know how many soldiers he had lost, but it was too many. He thought of sending for aid from the south, but he knew it was folly, knew that if he were in the position of Tu’Ren and Doh’Rah Kadeh, he would be loathe to send his own to certain death. The Dark Kind would find them soon enough, if they hadn’t already.

How many arrows did they have left? How many casks of oil?

“You going to count the rain drops as well?”

Garos regarded him through half-open lids beneath a half-tilted helm.

“I really have a counting face?”

“A man has a face for everything,” Garos said, looking out over the swarm. “Long as you know the man. Women have two faces for everything, and a man can never know both.”

The hulking warrior bent and stretched, his groans swallowed in a small cacophony of creaks and cracks. Talmir morbidly wondered how much of the miniature concert emanated from the Ember’s armor and how much betrayed the war between tired bone and sinew. The thought that even Garos was beginning to wear down under the steady onslaught was disconcerting, especially with his brazier so near.

The First Keeper likely guessed the direction of Talmir’s thoughts, as he replaced his strained look with one of the usual bravado.

“To tell you the truth,” Talmir said, turning toward the field, “I hadn’t noticed the rain until now.”

“It’s too big a thing for you to notice, I suppose.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re a man of detail, Captain,” he said. “Sometimes the big picture becomes lost.”

Talmir regarded him.

“And the big picture is rain?” Talmir asked. “I could be excused for thinking the siege to be more …” he swept his hand out.

“Pressing?” Garos supplied. He was adjusting the straps on his plate armor, an early model from the same metal smiths Talmir had contracted for Kole and Misha. The First Keeper’s was less flexible than theirs, but unyielding as the walls upon which they stood, much like the man himself.

“Pressing. Yes.”

A skirmish along the South Bend had been quelled, the soldiers there now falling back into the steady rhythm of poking down at their attackers with rod and spear.