Warlord (35 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Fallon

BOOK: Warlord
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“Oh, yes, I can see how you’d think that was hysterically funny.”
“Don’t you see the irony?” Starros laughed, unable to help himself. “Even if I wanted Wrayan’s job, it wouldn’t make any difference. I’ve sold my soul to a god and I’m still no better off than I was in the palace.”
“I don’t get the joke.”
“Wrayan’s part Harshini, Xanda,” he reminded him. “There’s a good chance he really
will
live forever.”
Xanda smiled. “That is kind of funny, when you think about it.”
Starros wiped his eyes and forced his laughter under control. “I’m sorry. You’re right, it’s not that funny. I don’t know what … you know, I think that’s the first time I’ve laughed since Leila … since she died.”
“I think it’s the first genuine laugh I’ve heard since then, myself,” Xanda replied. “Don’t feel guilty for being alive, Starros.”
“I don’t …
“Yes, you do,” the older man scolded. “You think it’s not fair that you’re still here and she’s gone. And maybe you’re right, given the manner in which you were saved. But you can’t live like that, Starros. I know. After my mother died, I spent months thinking she’d hanged herself because of something I did. Absurd, I know, but I was only six at the time. I used to walk around clutching that damned ceramic horse and knight Mahkas mended for me, reliving those last few moments in my mother’s room before our uncle sent me and Travin out, wondering what I’d done to make her so upset she’d kill herself.”
“I’m not six years old, Xanda.”
“I know. But the guilt is still there, no matter how old you are, or how hard you try to deny it. All suicides are the same, Starros. It’s the ultimate act of selfishness. Suicide offers a release to the one who dies and a lifetime of grief and pain to those who have to go on.”
“Leila wasn’t being selfish,” he objected, a little surprised to hear Xanda say such a harsh thing about his own cousin. “She was the most unselfish person I knew.”
“She killed herself to get back at her father, Starros,” Xanda reminded him. “I know you loved her, but you need to remember that. And someday you’ll get over your grief, too. And you need to accept it’ll happen and not feel guilty about that, either.”
Starros rose to his feet, uncomfortable discussing anything so intensely personal, even with an old friend, particularly with his grief still so raw. “I appreciate the advice, Xanda, but really, I can deal with this on my own.”
“Vengeance won’t make the pain go away.”
“I don’t want the pain to go away,” Starros told him. “Because when it does … then she’ll truly be gone, Xanda, and I’ll finally have to accept that no matter how hard I wish for it, Leila is never coming back.”
 
N
obody was more surprised to see Brakandaran the Halfbreed than Chyler Kantel and the Fardohnyan bandits hiding in the Sunrise Mountains, where Brak had spent much of the last twelve years keeping Dacendaran happy.
He arrived at the bandit camp high in the mountains a bit over a week after Zegarnald had so inconsiderately dumped him back in Fardohnya, figuring there wasn’t much point in reporting to Axelle Regis, as the general was probably already on his way through the Widowmaker Pass (if not already well into Hythria) by the time Brak arrived in Westbrook.
Still cold enough at this altitude to make his breath frost as he trudged upward toward the light, it was quite late when he found the thieves’ camp. He didn’t mean to frighten anyone, but his sudden appearance out of the darkness had the bandits gathered around the small camp fire hastily reaching for their weapons until they realised who the intruder was. Chyler seemed the most shocked of all and after a brief round of greetings to his old compatriots, she bundled Brak away to her tent, to find out what he’d been up to since he left.
Sitting cross-legged in her small tent, his head brushing the steeply sloped hide roof, Brak sipped the hot herbal tea Chyler made for him and told her about his expedition into Hythria, how he’d sent Ollie back to Qorinipor and exactly how he’d arrived back in Fardohnya. Chyler was a good listener and interrupted little as he related his tale, but her expression was grim, and by the time he was finished, more than a little confused.
“You mean the God of War just picked you up and carried you back here magically?” she asked, her eyes wide with the notion Brak had been transported anywhere by the God of War.
“It was a little more immediate than that, but it’s basically what happened.”
“But … even after everything you’ve just told me, I still don’t understand why.”
“I irritate him.” Brak shrugged. “I tend to do that a lot.”
“But why is the God of War mad at you? You told me you had no interest in this war. Didn’t you tell him the same thing?”
“I really
don’t
have an interest in this particular conflict,” he agreed. “It means nothing to me that Hythria and Fardohnya are fighting again. They’ve been doing it on and off for the past thousand years. Life just wouldn’t be the same if it didn’t include at least one Hythrun-Fardohnyan skirmish every century or so.”
“But …” she prompted.
“He’s interfering a little too directly,” Brak told her. “Not enough to annoy the other gods yet, but more than enough to get up my nose.”
Chyler smiled, amused, it seemed, by his annoyance with the immortals. “And just exactly how does a god manage to get up your nose, Lord Brakandaran?”
“By making sure the Hythrun put up a decent fight.”
“Wouldn’t they do that anyway?” she asked with a puzzled look. “I mean, the Hythrun teach small children how to hold a weapon. I can’t see the world’s most dedicated followers of the War God suffering an invasion from anybody without objecting to it.”
“But they’ve been decimated by the plague,” he reminded her. “If things were left to progress naturally, Axelle Regis would be lucky if he encountered even a token resistance between here and Greenharbour. The end result would change the political climate of the whole continent, but the cost in lives would be negligible.”
“And now?”
“The God of War is stacking the odds. He tells me he’s taken a personal interest in the Hythrun leadership and is crowing about it as if it were a grand idea. I suppose to him it is. If the Hythrun manage to rally themselves and put up an effective defence, there’ll be a bloodbath and the more blood the better as far as Zegarnald’s concerned.”
Chyler still didn’t see the problem. “Will it make that much difference, though? Hablet’s amassed a force of over eighty thousand men. Even a brilliant and experienced general would have trouble making much of a dent in our forces with fewer than fifteen thousand to throw against us.”
Brak shook his head. “Actually, a brilliant strategist and fifteen thousand men could cause untold damage, given the right circumstances. And that’s exactly what Zegarnald is banking on. To put up any sort of effective resistance, the Hythrun are going to have to decimate the Fardohnyans every chance they get, preferably with minimal casualities on their side. The only thing holding up this massacre he’s arranged to keep himself amused is the insanity of Lernen Wolfblade, who’s decided to lead the Hythrun forces himself.”
“How does that help?”
Brak smiled grimly. “Ollie could probably mount a successful campaign against the High Prince of Hythria.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?”
“Zegarnald won’t allow such a situation to last,” he assured her, shaking his head. “Lernen’s just bought us some time. Sooner or later, Zegarnald will get impatient and he’ll intervene, either directly or indirectly, and then we’ll have our massacre. Count on it.”
Chyler frowned. “I think I’m beginning to understand. You’re not worried about the Hythrun so much as all the Fardohnyans who are going to die in this conflict, are you?”
“I’m half Harshini, Chyler. I have this unfortunate tendency to despise the futile waste of human life.”
“But I’ve seen you kill without hesitating.”
“I said
futile
waste. I don’t have a problem with the necessary stuff.”
She leaned forward to top up his tea from the pot sitting over the tiny stove she used to warm her tent. “I know this is going to be hard for you, Brak, but I really think you need to accept that you can’t fight the will of the gods.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Who says I can’t fight the will of the gods? I do it all the time.”
Chyler was unimpressed by his boast. “So what are you going to do? General Regis has shifted a good thirty thousand men through the pass in the last month alone. Winternest is in Fardohnyan hands for the first time since it was built. The behemoth is on the move. Even someone with your talents is going to have trouble stopping it.”
She was right, of course, which didn’t make Brak feel any better. But he was convinced of one thing. Even if he couldn’t stop the war—which seemed unlikely now—he was determined to do something to limit the damage. Every life saved was one less Zegarnald could feed on.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I suppose the only way to slow this down now is to find a way to even the odds a little. If the Hythrun aren’t confronted with overwhelming numbers, they’re more likely to fight a traditional war, rather than go looking for new and creative ways to annihilate large numbers of their enemy in one fell swoop.”
“You can’t do that unless you can convince Hablet to stop sending his troops through the Widowmaker.”
“Should I ride down to the Winter Palace, do you think?” Brak suggested. “And inform his majesty that I’m the fabled Brakandaran the Halfbreed and I’d very much like him to stop invading Hythria, please, because I’m having a disagreement with the God of War?”
Chyler laughed. “Oh, definitely! That’s bound to work.”
Brak smiled. “And to think I thought stopping this wretched war was going to be a problem.”
“Well, if anybody can find a solution, Brak, I’m sure it will be you.”
He studied her in the flickering light of the small lamp. “I thought you’d be violently opposed to me doing anything to aid the Hythrun.”
“You’re not really aiding them, though, are you? You’re trying to find a way to limit the number of Fardohnyan casualties. Besides,” she added with a scowl, “this damned interruption to trade between Hythria and Fardohnya is costing me a lot of business. With all these troops on the move, we haven’t been able to rob a decent caravan travelling through the Widowmaker in months.”
“How awful for Dacendaran.”
“I’m not worried about the God of Thieves, Brak. My people are starving. If you’re planning to do something to put an end to this insanity, I’m right there with you.”
He swirled the tea around in his cup while he thought about it. Chyler waited impatiently for a time, but clearly, she expected him to have the answer at his fingertips.
“So,” she asked, when the silence dragged on too long for her liking. She was glaring at him as if he already knew the answer to the problem and was just waiting for the most dramatic time to announce it. “How are we going to stop another fifty thousand-odd young, innocent Fardohnyans from marching through the Widowmaker to almost certain doom in Hythria?”
“We have to block the pass,” Brak replied thoughtfully, wondering if it could even be done. Since the Widowmaker had been paved it was much wider than it once was. A simple rock fall wouldn’t be enough and it was too late in the year, and not enough snow left, to trigger a decent avalanche.
“How?” Chyler asked, obviously thinking the same thing.
“We’re going to have to blow it up, I suppose.”
The bandit stared at him. “
What
?”
“You know. An explosion. Big boom. Lots of smoke and noise. I hear they’re quite common in Fardohnya, particularly since Hablet’s had them trying to perfect his cannon. Impressive they are. If we pick the right spot there’ll be rocks flying everywhere—but significantly downward—conveniently coming to rest somewhere it’ll take ’em six months to clear …”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I know what an explosion is, Brak. What I don’t know is how you’re going to make it happen. Unless you’re planning to attack a column of heavily guarded artillery and steal their ammunition when they finally come through the pass, you have nothing to work with. The recipe for making the explosive powders they used when they constructed the pass—and presumably the same recipe is used in the cannon—is the best kept secret in Fardohnya. Hablet would line his daughters up and shoot an arrow through each one of them himself, before he allowed that information to fall into the wrong hands. And you have to admit, given what you’re planning, you do qualify as the wrong hands.”
“I don’t need Hablet’s damned explosives.”
“Then how are you going to blow up the Widowmaker?” When he didn’t answer her immediately, her eyes widened in shock. “You’re going to use
magic
?”
“Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me you
want
to see some real magic at work?”
“Well, yes … but … can you do something like that?”
“You’d be amazed by some of the things I can do, Chyler.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously as she studied him in the golden lamplight. “Why now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve known you for twelve years, Brak. You’ve never once done anything even remotely magical. Why now?”
Brak shrugged and drank down the last of his tea.
“Now I have a reason,” he said.

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