Oathkeeper (17 page)

Good.

Any special instructions?

I don't think they're likely to
, Rae'en answered,
but if they break their word, attack last.

It was a quote Kholster had used in the early days, and the reference brought a smile revealing all eight canines to Vander's lips. “Let the enemy strike as hard as they can. Let them show us what they're made of, and once they've given what they have in the first attack . . . we attack last.”

Let them start it, but you finish it.

“Torgrimm's name, I miss him,” Vander breathed.

There was no need to acknowledge Rae'en's command. Instead, Vander drew his warpick, Scorn, the weapon's serrated head glinting savagely in the sun, and stood at the bow of the ship, both hands on the head of his weapon, its burnished bone-steel haft resting flat against the deck. His men followed suit, lining up along the sides of their ships, showing themselves to the enemy. Attack us, they seemed to say. Attack us, please, that you may be arvashed.

Vander felt the presence of Scorn's spirit at his shoulder, its insubstantial claws clicking next to his ear. When he had forged the weapon and sent a piece of his soul into it, he had seen the thing skitter down his sweat-soaked chest as a bright-red mountain scorpion, poison dripping from its triple tail. It wanted to kill the Leash Holders as much as he did. It longed for revenge.

Sun beating down upon his bald head, hat lost to the waves, neither Vander nor his men moved a muscle until the harbor was clear three hours later. Without a word, the Armored moved, going about their jobs with precision and care. Unlike human sailors, once the ships had docked, the Aern lined the docks in perfect rows, weapons ready, automatons of doom.

Vander walked proudly past his warriors, along the central dock, stepping over a precious upturned crate of out-of-season strawberries abandoned by the merchants in their hasty departure. Before him, Port Ammond rose above the docks, the central high-stepped stair leading up to the covered walkway that served as a secure route to and from a royal estate no longer the pristine white he remembered from before the Sundering. Without the Vael to tend them, the once beautiful marble was now off-white at best. High on either side of the stair wooden posts rose from the marble, red-brown rust stains marking where iron had once stood. Each post supported a brass lantern in the shape of a mighty irkanth, but where once the mouths of those irkanths would have been filled with mystic blue flames, they now held lamp oil and lit wicks.

Two sloping cobblestone roads curved wide around the bluff upon which the royal tower stood, the wall that wrapped itself around the city broken by two wide reinforced doors. Both of the doors were shut tight and barred. The tower itself seemed to stare imperiously down at Vander. He fancied the enormous edifice little more than a tremendous finger thrusting up from the ground wishing nothing more than to shake itself at the Aern disapprovingly. Or was he just in a mood because Brigadier Bash and her squads had left when their mission was accomplished without saying good-bye?

I'm in position
, he thought to Rae'en.

*

Want to trade?
Rae'en sent back to her uncle from her place in King Grivek's death procession.
I could have beaten you there if not for these Oathbreakers. It's only five jun! How can they not run five jun in their sleep in under an hour?

Ahead of her the long line of grieving Oathbreakers clad in white cloaks trod at a solemn pace. They sang songs of gratitude to Torgrimm, the lyrics hastily altered to allow them to apply to the new death god, but not by name. Kholster was merely referred to as “The Harvester” by the Eldrennai clergy. Wylant walked at the head of the procession, hand on her sword hilt, while four of the seven Sidearms who had survived the fight in Xasti'Kaur carried the king with their magic.

Kam's elemental held the late king's body aloft on a miniature thundercloud, its tiny lightning strikes leaving scorch marks on the path. Globes of earth, water, and fire orbited the corpse (which was itself draped in white) in a precise pattern that Rae'en assumed had some meaning.

Vander, do you know what that is?

Only because I've seen the same sort of thing at other Oathbreaker funerals.

He wasn't providing much of a map in her head because of the distance between them, just an estimated time of arrival at Port Ammond and a direction arrow, but he drew the same pattern the Sidearms were making with their magic across the upper right quadrant of her vision. Seen from the top-down perspective Vander had used and letting the lines stay in place even after the fire, earth, and water symbols he had chosen moved on to the next point in the pattern, it was simple to see the three castles' outlines formed by the ever-moving globes.

Reserved mainly for elemental lords, ladies, or royalty, I think
, Vander thought at her.

And the cloud represents the backdrop?

I think so
, Vander thought back.
But it isn't like they gave us a class on it. The Leash Holders only wanted us to stand there and look impressive.

I bet they wish we were a little less impressive now.
Rae'en grinned.

I'd wager naming rights on it.

Which is why
, Rae'en sent,
one of us has a son named VanZhander and the other one . . .

Has made her point
, Vander replied, clearing the design from her field of vision.

Walking slowly enough to keep from bumping into the Oathbreaker in front of her—one of the surviving three Kingsguard—made her feel like she was doing muscle control exercises back home in South Number Nine with Quana or Malmung. And while the temperature didn't bother her, the scent of the Oathbreakers around her sweating through their underclothes did.

She tried to occupy herself by admiring the colors of changing leaves, the crisp crunch underfoot as she walked over them, but that could only keep an Aern occupied so long. Maybe Irka would have been able to spend hours enjoying Gromma's “gifts of nature” all around, but really all Rae'en wanted to do was bury Grudge or Testament in another Oathbreaker's skull.

She could always check in with Bloodmane, but the fact of the matter was, she didn't want to talk to him at all, much less look through his eyes. She caught glimpses when she closed her own, but until she had to do otherwise, she'd decided to let Vander do the seeing for her.

Any news?
she almost asked him. Almost because she'd just had an update. It was too soon to ask for another.

Zhan
, she thought to the First Ossuarian.
Any update on my ring?
Her father's final gift to her had been a ring of silvered bone-steel made from his own bone metal. Inside, he'd inscribed the words: “Daughter, of you I am proud.” On the outer ring, he'd wrought a stylized representation of his scars. She lost it in the blasted Zaur tunnels when she'd gone into the Arvash'ae far too early and was still kicking herself over it. Two Bone Finders had been sent to find her back when she'd been captured and feared dead, but she'd already escaped with the help of Wylant and Captain Tyree. They had meant to go back for the ring immediately, but when Kholster had gone missing, it had interrupted everyone's plans.

Teru and Whaar are working on it, New Bones.
Zhan's thoughts, tinged with gentle teasing, touched her mind.
I'll admit, it does seem to be taking them overlong. Would you like me to have Alysaundra speed them up?

Would you mind?

Would it matter if I did?
Zhan asked.

Of course it would
, Rae'en thought back.

Good. Then I don't mind.
Zhan paused, composing his thoughts, which felt strange to Rae'en, as if he were broadcasting silence.
It is merely that I seem to recall quite recently when the Firsts of One Hundred, both previous and current, were screaming at me to find bones. In one case they were the bones of a living being and therefore outside my Oathbound purview, and in the second case they were unattainable for less mundane reasons.

My father had just died, Zhan.

I know.
His thoughts were warm but firm.
I understand you were both under great duress. But you must understand that I am sworn to seek the bones of the dead or items made from bone metal. I am not to knowingly seek, as Ossuarian, the bones of the living. I must protect myself from being Foresworn as well, New Bones. As much as I may wish Uled had not encumbered me with such an oath, he did, and by it I am still bound.

Rae'en had not understood that, not at all.

And Grivek's release didn't—?

I did not swear the oath to Grivek, Zillek, or the crown. Uled took it upon himself to work it into me, in much the same way keeping oaths is worked into all Aern.

Why?
Rae'en asked.

I have my suspicions
, Zhan thought back,
but dwelling on them does nothing but stir up old feelings I would prefer not to awaken.

Didn't Uled's death free you from it?

No, nor did Kholster's.
He sounded impatient with the line of questioning there, but Rae'en kept asking.

Why not?

I have asked the same thing of myself many times
, Zhan told her.
I did not have the answer then either.

“Fine,” Rae'en whispered into cupped hands. Letting out a long breath, she went back to watching the Sidearms. “I wish I could see better, though.”

After a moment, she felt the touch of Bloodmane's mind connecting her wordlessly to another of the warsuits.

It may be wise to speak a little more quietly
, Silencer (Caz's warsuit) intoned.
However, having heard your request . . .

A second view of the procession, this time from the front, appeared in the leftmost corner of her field of vision.

Can he get me a better view of the Sidearms?

One moment.

Rae'en had met them all briefly at Oot. Mazik, the only one of them with hair short enough that her father would have approved, was the one with the bandana tied around his neck pulled up to his nose to conceal the way his elemental foci had taken over his throat and lower jaw, converting them to brass. He was the one who'd stayed behind to try and help Wylant fight the Zaurruk in the tunnel.

As far as Rae'en could tell, he was Wylant's second-in-command, even though he walked at the back of the group of Sidearms. Number one in the front and number two in the back? Yes, that had to be it. With Rae'en at the very back of the procession, they didn't need to cover it, so they'd bracketed the king's corpse between them.

Frip and Frindo walked on either side of the corpse, Frindo on the left with his right hand slightly upraised to control the whirling globe of flame, inset crystals in his palm and (in place of) his left eye, the metal around them a polished brass.

His twin brother Frip took the right side, his left hand with its steel plate and blue crystal angled in extremely similar fashion to his brother's. Just as Frip was his brother's opposite in so many things, he controlled an orb of ice, letting it dance in an orbit counter to Frindo's flames, the steel plate over his right eye with its inset crystal sparking with the cold blue in defiant opposition to his brother's red crystal.

She skipped curly-headed Roc with his metal feet (the lone Geomancer and therefore obviously the elemancer responsible for the twirling hunk of granite that completed the globe pattern) and watched Ponnod. She couldn't see it through his breastplate, but he was supposed to have lost his entire upper torso to his elemental foci, becoming, at least externally, a being of brass and steel. Rae'en could hear his breathing even from back where she walked. It sounded more like a bellows than any set of lungs she'd heard before.

When Mazik, Roc, Kam, and Hira had gone back to try to retrieve the bodies of their fallen comrades, they'd found Ponnod dragging Frip and Frindo behind him on an improvised Zaurruk-hide sledge. The three of them had been terribly injured but were not quite dead.

Wylant charged down a dark Zaur tunnel, ran right into one of those giant serpents, and only lost four men
, Silencer commented.
Impressive
.

Griv, Tomas, Dodan, and Bakt had all died. Rae'en would have remembered their names even if she'd only heard them once, not only because she, like her father, was incapable of forgetting anything, but because they'd been drilled home by the series of toasts Wylant and her Sidearms had made back in the camp near Oot on the night they'd retrieved their lost companions.

Silencer was right. They impressed her then as she pieced together the battle that had led to Wylant's capture, eavesdropping, albeit unintentionally, while she sat at the base of her father's statue and Grivek and Yavi slept.

They impressed her now, too. She knew that, like her, they could have made the trip to Port Ammond much more quickly. Flying in tandem, they could have made the trip faster than she could, but they kept a pace their fellows could match. Wylant's Sidearms were the only Oathbreakers Rae'en had met that she actually liked. Of course, she was open to at least the idea of liking any Oathbreaker her father's First Wife found acceptable to serve under her. Rae'en was tempted to make them all Aiannai, but she wasn't completely sure whether she could or not. Was it that simple? Wylant had been a Leash Holder, but Kholster had made her Aiannai because she had kept her oath in grand fashion at the breaking of the Life Forge and because he loved her.

Did liking and respecting them make them fit to be Aiannai, too?

Hours later, with Port Ammond looming in the distance, cast in shades of red by the sunset, Rae'en still didn't have her answer.

CHAPTER 14

BONE FINDERS

Teru and Whaar, one of fifty-two pair of Ossuarians who had been reunited with their warsuits, moved through the tunnels of the Zaur, giving more thought to the construction of passages through which they traveled and the quarry they sought than to the combats raging in the surrounding areas. The warsuits Bloodmane kholstered seemed in little danger, and now that Rae'en was safe and appointed the new First of One Hundred, the item they sought had little to do with the living.