Storms (Sharani Series Book 2) (15 page)

If Samsin didn’t know better, he would have objected to the implication in Nikanor’s words, that if some contingent of the Sisters came to investigate and found nothing, they’d take their wrath out on the wrongful accuser, but that much was undeniable. The complex political game of the cities kept the elite safe from the Sisters’ machinations. Nikanor though, was nothing in the grand scheme of the game, easily replaced.

Samsin swore. “And you had to go and drag me into this. You realize that if they
are
really still there and the Sisters find out we didn’t tell them, we’re both just as dead, right?”

Nikanor actually smiled. “Well, then I’m glad you went behind my back and sent those missives anyway. My steward will send them when we’re not back in two days.” Samsin blinked. “You think I didn’t know? I told my steward to tell you I’d left even though I hadn’t. I wanted to see what you’d do.”

“You little sneak,” Samsin hissed. In truth, Samsin was mildly impressed. Such deception was a duplicity he expected from some of the Orinai in the city, not a country farmer, and especially not from an Earth Ward.

“He’ll send the missives. It will take them almost a month to get to the Sisters, which will give us plenty of time to get there and back.”

Samsin grunted. Nikanor really
had
thought this out. And played him like a harp. Perhaps Samsin had underestimated him.

Nikanor added more fuel to the fire, allowing the silence to stretch between them. The flames licked at the wood, consuming it with a hunger Samsin found reminiscent of a storm.

“Sleep on it, then,” Nikanor said, pulling a blanket from his pack and lying down next to the fire. “Let me know what you decide in the morning.”

Long after Nikanor had fallen asleep, Samsin sat up in the night, his thoughts wandering with the smoke from the dying fire. When he finally did lie down onto the ground, wrapped in a blanket near the red coals of the fire, he didn’t even feel the discomfort, nor dwell on the indignity of it. Instead, he slipped off to sleep and allowed his thoughts to become dreams, walking him along the paths of prior incarnations, seeking advice and answers.

Samsin came awake, cursing the ache in his shoulders—and Nikanor too, just for good measure—to the seven hells and back again. He sat up with a groan. Wind tousled his hair and wafted the deep, earthen, disgusting scents of the outdoors into his nose. The storm he’d sensed earlier was burgeoning on the horizon and he was tempted to send it away no matter the long-term effects it would have, but he eventually dismissed the idea. He was still far enough away from the Sharani Arena and the deep magics there, but he didn’t want to chance upsetting the delicate balance of the weather system here, not so soon after the last storm. Besides, Nikanor deserved to be wet and as miserable as he.

“Sleep well?” Nikanor asked.

The Earth Ward was already awake—of course he was—but the man stood a few paces away, eyes closed, bare feet planted shoulder width apart, arms clasped behind his back. And the storms-cursed idiot was smiling.
Smiling.

“No, I did not sleep well, you light-blinded fool,” Samsin snapped, getting to his feet and brushing detritus from his clothes.

Nikanor chuckled, but didn’t open his eyes. The laugh was the sound of boulders rolling down a hill. Samsin picked a twig from his cloak and threw it the man. Nikanor had the indecency to chuckle some more.

“Shall we go then?”

The question cut through Samsin’s irritation, replacing it with annoyance. That was it? He was just going to cut through the preamble, ignore breakfast entirely, and ask the question itself? Samsin considered not answering just to spite the man.

Nikanor opened one eye and peered over at him. The effect was almost comical on the stocky, well-muscled man, but Samsin didn’t smile. If anything, the motion made Samsin even more annoyed.

“Can’t we at least have breakfast before discussing this?” Samsin asked.

Nikanor shrugged and opened his other eye. He reached down to the packs and fished around for a while before coming back up with a small pouch and a metal pot. Samsin sniffed and pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. How did Nikanor manage not to freeze in just his loose pants and vest?

Nikanor started a flame using the embers of the prior night’s fire and Samsin rummaged through his pack, sorting through the contents and trying to make up his mind. Actually, if he was honest with himself, he was trying to dissuade himself from the course he’d already chosen. He didn’t know when he’d decided to go with Nikanor on his suicidal quest, or why he even cared, but he did care and he was going.

It was like the rudder of ship, so small in comparison to the rest of the craft, but its motion moved the entire vessel with ease. Somewhere along the way, Samsin’s rudder had been shifted and, despite the protests of both the smarter and wiser parts of him, the vessel would shift as well.

By the time the sun broached the horizon, Samsin sat on a stone near the fire, nursing a warmed cup of mulled wine and staring down into his empty bowl of gruel. The pot was empty too. It had been a tasteless mess, even with the soggy dried fruit Nikanor had slipped into it, but even with that, Samsin felt a little better now that he had a full stomach. Granted, he was dirty, smelly, tired, and in great need of an hour-long soak in the bath, but he felt better. The wine didn’t hurt anything either.

“Shall we go then?” Nikanor repeated, breaking the silence that had stretched between them during the entire meal.

“You’re an idiot. You know that, right?”

Nikanor simply looked at him. Samsin downed the remaining contents of his metal cup—about half the cup—in one gulp.

“Well, let’s go then.”

Nikanor’s face split into the widest grin Samsin had ever seen on the man. It was like looking at a boulder splitting. Samsin scowled at him and the grin vanished, but the damage was done. He’d said it and he kept his word when given, at least most of the time. Technically he’d only implied acquiescence through his statement, but that was overly pedantic. Samsin didn’t like taking victory through technicalities, even though it was something his chosen Progression found favorable.

Nikanor made quick work of dousing the fire, actually smothering it by shifting the earth over it and making it appear as if the stones had swallowed the flame entirely. The dirty dishes were washed—by Nikanor—and returned to their places in the packs, and then they shouldered their packs. Samsin almost groaned at the protest his shoulders and back gave him as he raised his pack. Almost. He wasn’t about to give Nikanor that satisfaction.

He grabbed his short spear and readied it to use as a walking staff. He glanced over at Nikanor and noticed that the man had pulled a massive war hammer from somewhere.

“Where’d you get that?” Samsin asked, studying the weapon.

It was made entirely of metal, including the haft, though it looked darker than the hammer’s head. Only as thick as two of Samsin’s fingers together, the haft looked far too thin to be able to support the massive, wide, block-like head at the hammer’s top, but Samsin had learned long ago that where Earth Wards were concerned, anything metal could be deceiving. There was intricate scrollwork or writing on the hammer’s head, etched into the surface, but he wasn’t close enough to make it out. He honestly couldn’t remember seeing it anywhere on the plantation.

“I fashioned it while you were sleeping last night,” Nikanor said. He glanced to the northwest, to the mountain peaks poking above the trees against the distant horizon. Samsin shivered, grateful it was still full summer and there was no white covering those peaks.

“Only you would spend the time you should have been sleeping doing actual work,” Samsin said.

Nikanor glanced at him and frowned slightly. Samsin narrowed his eyes, wondering what had sparked the response from the normally unshakeable man.

“One of us had to keep the watch,” Nikanor said, then picked up the hammer and placed it on his shoulder.

He started walking, not bothering to see if Samsin followed or not. Samsin did follow, once again questioning his decision to come along, though now for entirely different reasons. His grip on the spear was a white-knuckled one.

What followed was the most grueling, exhausting, all-consuming day of hellish torment Samsin had ever endured. Nikanor set a hard pace, and they did not stop for lunch or any other breaks outside of a few brief respites barely worthy of the name. The storm, actually more a mild spattering of rain, broke just after the sun reached its zenith in the sky, but Nikanor did not slow. Like an intractable boulder rolling down a hill, Nikanor ploughed on late into the evening, ignoring Samsin’s protests. When Samsin went to sleep that night—after taking a short stint at watch—sleep came to him quickly, like an eager lover, and he almost didn’t mind the discomfort of the rocks beneath him.

The next fortnight was worse.

At the base of the mountains, Samsin finally broke. He shrugged out of his pack and threw it to the ground and flapped down next to it. Nikanor, already far ahead of him, kept walking for a good distance, even to the point of clambering up a sizeable portion of the mountain slope, before he noticed Samsin wasn’t following anymore.

“You go on ahead,” Samsin shouted. “I’m not taking one more step toward that insufferable hell hole.”

Samsin didn’t wait to see how Nikanor replied. Instead he closed his eyes and leaned back against a rock, honestly not caring that it was hard, cold, and uncomfortable. Exhaustion, irritation, and resignation had killed many of his previous objections. He pulled the cowl of his cloak up over his face to block out the sun, ignoring the dank pungent smell of his own body sweat and the lingering wetness from the rain a few days before.

The sound of rocks and dirt being crunched underfoot reached Samsin’s ears, but he ignored it. Nikanor could go swallow the sea for all Samsin cared. He needed a few minutes rest at the very least.

A deep, putrid smell assaulted Samsin’s nose. Samsin’s eyes snapped open. “Nikanor, are you a child . . .?” The rest of his words died on his lips.

Glistening teeth reflected the light before him, sitting within the gaping maw of a massive, white-and-black-striped feline. Well over fifteen feet long and as big around as a mead barrel, its thick, furred length rippled with muscles. If Samsin had been standing, the creature’s head would have come up to his chest. Long front and hind legs clenched and unclenched as claws were extended and retracted. Purple eyes regarded Samsin beneath heavy, thickly muscled brows.

In that split second of realization, Samsin registered those details. In the next, halfway between one breath and the next, he reacted by instinct and rolled to the side, his spear clattering against the rocks that dug into his skin and pummeled his flesh. The massive cat roared, the sound thunderous so close to Samsin’s ears. The world was a twisting, spinning mess, but Samsin managed to right himself and leap to his feet. The only thought in his mind was to run, to get away from the monster at his back.

Something slammed into his back and he fell forward, arms outstretched. White hot pain lanced through his shoulders and he felt blood seep down his back a moment before he crashed to the ground. The weight of the creature—by now Samsin had realized it was the massive cat which had tackled him to the ground—blasted the air from his lungs and he thought he felt one of his ribs crack, though he couldn’t be sure. His vision swam and he instinctively threw his hands up over the back of his head. He reached out for his powers, to the magic within him, but there was little to grab on to. There was no latent energy built up in the ground, nor was there much in the air. Samsin strained to gather what he could from the air, but before he could do so, his concentration was shattered by the weight lifting off his back. The sudden release was like the afterimage of a lightning strike in a storm, the momentary pause before the thunder.

The thunder never came.

Samsin blinked rapidly and sucked in deep, cold lungfuls of air. He groaned and struggled to his hands and knees. Hearing returned to him and he heard someone shouting near him. Was that Nikanor?

“Get up, Samsin, stones break you!” Nikanor’s voice bellowed, though the sound seemed to echo in Samsin’s ears. “Get your fat, lazy butt off the ground.”

A defiant roar cut off anything else Nikanor said. Samsin took Nikanor’s shouted advice, however, and forced himself to his feet. He ran a few steps before chancing a look back over his shoulder. Nikanor stood between him and the massive cat, feet planted wide and arms outstretched. His hammer glinted in the sun a few feet away, though he didn’t glance toward it. Samsin stopped and turned around to witness the spectacle.