Skies (41 page)
Caleb’s eyes widened in grudging admiration. What the half-breed Athore had just done, Caleb would have normally said was impossible. Even with a gun, Caleb would have been hard pressed to kill both trolls. The trolls had skin like stone that even armor-piercing rounds had trouble getting through. It would have taken some incredible shots to the eyes or soft spots—the groin, mouth, nose, ears, or throat—for Caleb to kill one.
Loran laughed, a genuine smile of pleasure coming over his thin, bloodless lips.
“Well done, well done indeed, Athore,” Loran said approvingly. “I see that Granil chooses his envoys well.”
Athore inclined his head slightly and bared his yellowed, pointed teeth in a snarl. “If you be done with your little test, Loran, I do be needing to return to me Dragonlord soon and the journey is long. Let’s be getting this done here and now.”
“I agree. The siege at Raleigh is already under way. The assistance of your Dragonlord is no longer required.”
Athore leapt to his feet, his axe seeming to leap into his hands. “This be not the agreement made between Granil and Mortan! The hosts of Granil and the Browns will be joining the battle at Raleigh, with you or against you. You be choosing which.”
Loran made a strange gesture with his right hand and pushed it out toward Athore with an indecipherable shout. Athore was thrown backwards as if struck by the force of a small car, flying at least twenty feet through the air in a jumble of arms and legs before he crashed into one of the abandoned vehicles strewn about the valley. The car buckled and bent under the force of the crash. Broken glass exploded outward from the shattered windows.
Athore toppled, face-forward, onto the ground. Shards of glass stuck up from his back, stained orange with his blood.
“The agreement is annulled,” Loran snapped, pulling the hood of his red cloak back up over his head. “Tell Granil that his services are no longer required and, should he desire to test his might against the power of Mortan-zai, he is more than welcome to meet his death at our hands.”
Without a backward glance, Loran turned on his heels and headed back the way he had come, soon vanishing behind the hills.
Caleb sat motionless behind the blackened tree stump, eyes off the scope, not understanding what he had just seen.
Down in the valley, Athore moved shakily, his arms twitching and jerking uncontrollably as he struggled to rise. He pulled himself halfway up the car, but his legs wouldn’t move. He yanked feebly at the roof, struggling vainly to pull himself up, but his grip slowly gave way and he slid down the side of the car.
Caleb looked down at his rifle and then glanced down to the valley where Loran had disappeared. The gun would create too much noise if he wanted to follow Loran. Shouldering it, he drew a short, wide-bladed knife from his boot and got to his feet.
He picked his way down the hill, careful not to send too much ash and dust into the air. Athore had managed to get himself up into a sitting position. Orange blood pooled around him, making a sickening slurry of ash and debris. Caleb walked up to him, knife held at the ready. Athore glanced up at him and grinned.
“I thought I be smelling more human flesh earlier.” A fit of coughing overcame him and he spat up blood. “This be how I die then? Betrayed by the wizard and killed by a human—a pitiful
human
.”
Caleb ignored him. Athore’s axe lay within easy reach of his fully functional right hand, even if everything else from the waist down was lifeless.
“Listen to me, human,” Athore said suddenly. The intensity of his words made Caleb pause. “Chaos will reign. You will all die. Mortan will start with us—with the Browns—but eventually you will all die. This is just the beginning.”
Caleb shrugged and flipped his knife over in his hand. “I’m already dead.”
His arm pumped and the knife took Athore just below the throat. It was an easy throw, one that didn’t give Caleb even the slightest surge of pride.
Athore gurgled weakly and then slumped forward in death.
Ten minutes later, Caleb was tracking once more, his knife back in its sheath and devoid of the half-troll’s yellow-orange blood. A few hundred yards from where he had witnessed the encounter between Loran and Athore, more tracks merged with the pair that he followed. From the breadth, depth, and number, Caleb judged that at least six more trolls had joined up with the man. If Caleb was lucky, he’d be able to sneak up on a few of the trolls while they were alone and then pick them off one by one. That was way too many for Caleb to take on at once, even without the addition of Loran’s apparent power.
He still didn’t fully understand that, though he’d been mulling it over in his mind ever since the fight. Athore had called Loran a wizard, but he couldn’t accept that answer. Despite all the evidence to the contrary around him, Caleb still needed something rational to which he could cling. Otherwise the hunter within him would take over.
Caleb found the remains of a large fire where they must have camped the night before and what was left of an evening meal, but the smell dissuaded him from investigating any further. An unwanted memory reared up in his mind and threatened to overcome him at the sight, but he pushed it away. He followed the tracks north along the edge of an old highway, the asphalt all but hidden beneath a film of ash and debris. He kept at least half a mile behind them at all times, just close enough to see the small black cloud they kicked into the air. He shadowed their movements for most of the day. They stopped only once, late in the afternoon, but they were up and moving again within only a few short moments.
Caleb dripped with sweat and his throat was parched from the cool, dry air, but he didn’t slow, nor did his grip slacken on his rifle.
Night fell.
As darkness closed in, his other senses heightened to compensate for his decreased vision. The faint sound of gunfire made a staccato note of discord in the night, augmented by the concussive rumble of a distant mortar exploding. The Raleigh city-fortress was really under siege.
Though the darkness hid most of the normal landmarks of the area, he knew he was close. The hilly ground and deserted, decaying buildings of the old city would have hid the battle and the city-fortress walls from view even without the dark, but he knew from experience that the flashes from gunfire and mortar shells carried in the black and he’d soon be able to see them against the cloudy sky. He kept his eyes peeled upwards and was rewarded with a faint, flickering glow in the sky as he crested the top of one of the larger hills.
Memories swirled around in his mind at the sights and sounds, mimicking the shadows that danced around him. For a moment, he wasn’t there walking along the abandoned road any longer. For a moment, he was back within the Charlotte city-fortress, hearing gunfire and feeling the desperate wash of pain and fear slip over him. Then he was back in the moment again.
As he crested another hill, two figures, who had obviously been shadowing him, rushed him from either side. The one on the left raised a cudgel and Caleb spun to face it. His rifle bucked in his hands as he fired off a quick shot. The flash threw the short figure into sudden detail, revealing a shock of auburn hair bursting out around the edges of a conical steel cap and a startled expression on the squat man’s bearded face. The light reflected off more metal on the man’s chest. The shot went wide.
Caleb heard a muffled noise behind him and realized he’d forgotten the other figure. He twisted at the hip, dropping his rifle and reaching for his handgun, but he only made it halfway before something hard connected with the back of his skull and his vision exploded in a flash of white. He toppled forward into the ash in a sprawling heap, a trickle of blood tracing down the side of his face.
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