Leaves of Flame (48 page)

“Then we should kill them,” Siobhaen said, “instead of wasting time sitting here talking about it.What if they send out scouts?”

Eraeth nodded grudgingly.“I think Siobhaen is right.We can’t risk waiting for them to leave on their own.”

“Good,” Siobhaen muttered, drawing her sword soundlessly, a vicious smile twisting her lips. “I don’t like these Snake People. They’re unnatural.”

Colin recalled how singularly brutal she’d been taking some of them in that first surprise encounter and grimaced. “I would still like to keep our presence a secret.”

“Not possible any longer.”

He stood and met their gazes. “There is a way. I’ll slow time for both of you as well as me. We can slip past them.” At their skeptical looks,he added,“I’ve done it before,with the Tamaea on the battlefields at the Escarpment.”

“You were exhausted afterward,” Eraeth said. “This would be two people—”

“I’m stronger and more practiced now.”

Eraeth glowered.“—and do you really want to be weakened while facing off with the Wraiths?”

“I don’t think we have a choice.”

Eraeth and Siobhaen remained quiet for a long moment, long enough Colin held out his hands for them to take. Neither one of them moved.

“Do you really think the Wraiths don’t know of your presence?” Eraeth asked, his voice level. “You sensed the Wraith army, were concerned they would sense you when you went down to scout it out. What makes you think they don’t already know that you’re coming?”

“I sensed the army because it was so large. It would be nearly impossible to miss. There are only three of us.”

“But they still may have sensed you.”

“I can’t sense the Wraiths right now. I assume they can’t sense me.”

“But you don’t know that for certain.”

Colin glared in irritation, then dropped his hands. “No. I can’t guarantee that.”

“Then the risk is too high. I won’t allow you to exhaust yourself for something this trivial.We’ll take out the patrol. If that forewarns the Wraiths, then so be it.”

He turned away and motioned toward Siobhaen. Colin thought about defying him, grasping both of their arms and slowing time regardless. But he wouldn’t be able to get them to move and couldn’t possibly drag them both beyond the patrol. So when Eraeth turned, he let his anger and frustration tinge his voice as he said, “I’ll take them out.”

“No. You’re already weak from the scouting. Siobhaen and I can handle it.”

He shot a look toward Siobhaen for confirmation and she nodded.

“When we reach the Source, I’ll need you to do what I ask without question,” Colin said.

Eraeth ignored him, speaking to Siobhaen. “There are six of them, three each.”

“Two each,”Colin said,reaching for his staff.“I can fight without the use of the Lifeblood.”

“Then two each. Siobhaen, you take the left, I’ll take the right. The cleft opens up into an oval-shaped gap, but they’re stationed on the far side, near the mouth of the crevice. They’ve set their packs and supplies to one side. Leave your packs here. We’ll come back and get them when we’re done.”

Colin gripped the handle of his staff, massaging the wood. “Don’t risk yourselves if they try to use their darts. I don’t know what the poison will do to me, but I doubt it will kill me.”

“I don’t plan on giving them time to do anything but draw their swords,” Siobhaen said. She turned to Eraeth. “Ready?”

He grinned.

Then they were running, rounding the rock outcropping Eraeth had used to spy on the group and sprinting toward the Haessari. The dry heat of the wastelands burned in Colin’s throat as he tried to control his breathing. None of them made a sound, Siobhaen and Eraeth pulling out slightly ahead of him, even as he pushed and allowed himself to grow younger, faster, more lithe and nimble. He fixed his attention on the six figures ahead, the Snake People sitting around a fire pit made of stone, slabs of rock laid out on all sides for them to sun on. One of them was crouched down, setting wood into the pit, although it hadn’t been lit yet. One other stood off to one side, holding what looked like a brace of rabbits. Their conversation was sibilant, full of elongated vowel sounds, although Colin found it hard to hear much over the rush of blood in his ears and the thud of his own feet juddering through his body.

The one making the fire saw them first, when they were twenty paces away. A sharp warning hiss escaped him.

The others reacted instantly.Their movements were fast and fluid, but Colin had been expecting it after that first startling confrontation. He closed the distance before the one who’d hissed had completely drawn his sword, his staff cracking into the Snake’s head with enough force to jar Colin’s arm and set it tingling. Blood fl ew, but the Haessari crumpled to the ground and Colin leaped over him, putting himself in the middle of the group. He heard the clash of weapons, punctuated by short hisses and grunts, but he didn’t spare a moment to look at either Eraeth or Siobhaen. With a sharp thrust, he punched his staff into the stomach of the nearest Snake, turned as the creature folded, and tried to swing toward the one on his right. But the first had grabbed hold of the wooden shaft. He ducked as the second swung his sword, bringing his staff up to block it, twisting even as he sent a surge of power down the staff into the first’s hands. The Snake gasped and let go, even as the second growled and drew back for another strike. Colin snapped the staff upward and hit the first under the snout, the Snake reeling backward, then spun and caught the second’s next cut in the staff’s center.

The Haessari glared at him, his strange eyes narrowing. His forked tongue flicked out to taste the air, his reptilian skin shiny beneath the sunlight, the black-and-tan patterns strangely enthralling.

With a suddenness that startled Colin, the folds of skin along both sides of the Haessari’s neck flared open, the undersides a pale yellow in color. The Snake’s jaws snapped wide as his head snaked forward to strike, two flesh-colored fangs protruding, glistening with poison.

Colin reacted instinctively, jamming his staff up into the gaping mouth even as the strength of the strike shoved him backward. He tripped on one of the stones laid out before the fire pit and fell, the Snake landing heavily on top of him. His breath rushed from his lungs and he struggled to draw another as the Snake tried to rear back, the staff caught behind his retractable fangs. Scaly hands grabbed the shaft of the staff and Colin realized the Haessari must have lost his sword when they fell.As the Snake tried to roll them,his weight lifting off Colin’s chest, Colin tucked his leg up into the space between them and shoved hard, letting his staff go.

The Snake fell away, still grappling with the staff, and Colin reached for the knife sheathed at his side. He rolled into a crouch at the Haessari’s side and shoved the dagger up under the snout, inside the fl ared hood. The Snake’s struggling ceased.

Spinning, Colin caught sight of the last Haessari as the Snake fell beneath Siobhaen’s blade from behind, the Snake too focused on defending himself from Eraeth. None of the other Haessari had fl ared their hoods, their bodies lying scattered around the fire pit. Breath heaving, Colin stood as both Eraeth and Siobhaen wheeled to face the next threat, only relaxing as they took stock of the situation. Neither one was breathing as hard as he was.

“Check and make certain they’re dead,” Colin said.

“I’ll do it.”

Siobhaen began moving from body to body. Eraeth cleaned his sword on one of the bodies before sheathing it. Colin turned to retrieve his staff. A few new nicks marred the surface of the wood. He wiped the Haessari’s saliva off of it with a piece of cloth ripped from the body, then began searching the dead.

Twenty minutes later, he rose, a vial of what appeared to be the Snake’s poison in one hand, but nothing else of interest. Siobhaen stood over the brace of rabbits and made a disgusted noise.

“What is it?” Eraeth asked.

“They’re not rabbits. They’re rats. The Snake People eat rats. Big rats. I hate them even more now.”

Eraeth shook his head and turned to Colin.“Anything of interest?”

“No.”

“They appear to be just another patrol, although a more permanent one. The fire pit isn’t new, and there’s plenty of wood stored in a niche in the cliff face over there.”

Colin grimaced. “Then we better get moving. There may be another patrol due here shortly.”

They left the bodies, retrieved their satchels, and entered the mouth of the eastern crevice, slipping into the cooler shadows between the cliffs. Siobhaen scouted ahead, motioning them forward at intervals, but there were no branching chasms, and few alcoves or niches where someone could hide.

Then, abruptly, they could see sunlight ahead and the end of the chasm. Siobhaen approached cautiously, crouching down as she neared the edge. After a long moment, she stood and motioned them forward.

When he saw what lay beyond, Colin found he couldn’t breathe.

Eraeth grew still and muttered, “Aielan’s Light.”

It was the remains of a city, only unlike any city Colin had ever seen and on a scale larger than any city within Alvritshai, human, or dwarren lands today, even the ancient ruins he’d seen in the northern wastes. The crumbled buildings stretched from the base of the small ledge the three stood upon as far as they could see in all directions, the red cliff face they stood against curving away to the north and south. The closest buildings had decayed the most and were mere piles of broken rock with only the barest impressions of edges were walls had once stood. But as Colin’s gaze traveled farther east, taking in the intricate and methodical system of roads, he noticed that more and more of the buildings had survived intact. The buildings increased in size as well, the ruins rising in height even as the land began to undulate with low hills. Farther distant, muted and washed out by a thin haze, he could see other buildings more or less intact, or with upper stories collapsed inward.

“Look,” Siobhaen said, pointing with one hand. “There used to be rivers here.”

Colin followed her arm to where the land sloped gradually down to a dried-out river basin cutting between the buildings.A second river joined it,just barely visible on the horizon. The buildings near the junction were the tallest, although it was obvious they had been taller once before. Towers—like those in Terra’nor and the Ostraell, built by the Faelehgre ages past—had once soared into the heavens. Most had been snapped off, their true heights lost in whatever cataclysm had destroyed the city ages past. The heat haze made them surreal, almost illusory.

“The Source is here,” Colin said. He didn’t need to sink into the earth to know. Whoever had built the city had created the Source. Or at least found the reservoir of Lifeblood and used it somehow. “They would have built it near their center of power, near the center of the city.”

Both of the Alvritshai turned toward the shattered towers.

“It looks to be a day distant, at least,” Eraeth said.

“And we’ll likely have to deal with the Snake People between here and there,” Siobhaen added. Her hand clenched on her cattan.

Colin glanced up toward the sky.The sun was behind the cliffs to their backs, keeping them in shadow. But there wasn’t much daylight left.

Without a word, he turned to where the ledge continued to their right, a path leading down the side of the cliff to the buildings below.

Horns blew, the clamor rising over the jarring clash of weapons and the screams of men dying. Gregson’s hand was clenched on the pommel of his sword, his gut shrieking for him to draw the weapon and charge out toward the battle lines less than a hundred feet distant. The backs of the Legion defenses surged, men trying to shove forward toward the main line lost among the mass of bodies.Wounded were being dragged from the press, covered in blood, others missing arms or legs, some obviously on the verge of death, most bellowing in agony or sobbing, hands clutched to a side or head or an arm. A few were completely limp, feet gouging trails in the already trampled and muddy ground.

Not all of the men were wearing the armor of the Legion. Some were civilians like those Gregson had guarded on the flight south.

He glanced back at the bedraggled group that followed him, perhaps only thirty left, with another twenty-fiveor so Legion. The group had scattered at the end of the Northward Ridge, over half retreating back the way they’d come. He didn’t know how they had fared. For those that had headed toward the Legion’s lines, the sprint to the cover of the hills had been costly, the Alvritshai decimating the group. It would have been worse if the Legion archers hadn’t been there to attack the Horde’s supply wagons and draw them away from those who hadn’t reached the tree line.

He turned back to the group that led them behind the army’s line—the commander of the unit that had hit the supply wagons and two of his lieutenant commanders—the rest of their unit behind the refugees, herding them along. Greg-son and Terson had gathered those closest and headed south, only to have one of the unit’s archers catch up to them within an hour and order them southwest, toward the main battle. They’d followed the guide until joining up with his unit. The few remaining refugees had been relieved to be under the protection of the two hundred men, even though they were being escorted to where the fighting raged.