Sunset of Lantonne (101 page)

Raeln tried to argue, but each time he opened his mouth, Phillith grunted a sharp rebuke, until he gave up and clamped his jaw shut.

“That’s better. Go tend to your family and those who would be family,” Phillith said with enough finality that Raeln nodded in agreement.

“What will you do?” Raeln asked a moment later, avoiding Phillith’s eyes.

“I won’t become a damned ghoul,” the man snapped, glowering. “That’s my problem, not yours. If I even answer that question, you’re the type to stay behind or try to talk me out of it. Keep your mouth shut and just walk away. I know you’ll do your best with these people, and that’s all I’d ever ask of you.”

Standing helplessly, Raeln waited until Phillith turned his attention elsewhere before he turned to go. He wanted to fight, to beg the man to find some help somewhere, even if he knew there was none to be had. More than anything, he wanted to say good-bye, knowing Phillith was right in the severity of his wounds. Raeln could not do even that, as it would have made Phillith furious. Death always came sooner or later to soldiers, and Phillith had come to grips with that decades earlier.

Raeln wandered away, not really sure where to go. He wanted to go to Greth, but he still worried that Ilarra might need him. He wanted to be useful to the survivors, make sure they knew he would protect them when they had to travel. There were so many places he could go, only a few of which he actually cared about.

He stopped walking, looking between the central building where Greth waited for him and the clearing where Ilarra was recovering. It would be so easy to go back to Greth and sleep for days, but Raeln’s overinflated sense of duty would not allow him to do so. Instead, he forced himself back to the clearing, his bare feet dragging through the damp grass.

Stopping before he was visible from the clearing, Raeln stood there for what felt like hours, though the lack of any real movement of the moon in the thick clouds told him it had likely been less than one hour, trying to decide what to do.

The survivors, Raeln knew, could wait. They were so tired many of them would have gladly lain down in front of the enemy forces to die had Raeln not pushed them to run. Letting them go until morning would normally be out of the question so close to the city, but small groups of patrolling women and men were dimly visible in the rain at the edges of the camp, the moonlight occasionally showing their movement. Even an untrained child could scream long before zombies reached them with nearly a mile of open ground all around them to show the enemy’s location.

Ilarra was safe, or as safe as she would ever be, sleeping beside her dragon. That thought made Raeln smile and nearly burst out laughing, the idea still difficult to grasp. For so many years, he had been referred to as her watchdog, making the idea of her new protector being a dragon all the more humorous for Raeln.

That left Greth.

Raeln wanted to go to him and collapse in his arms. He wanted nothing more than to sleep near someone who understood him and cared about him, bringing with it all the absurd sense of security others in the camp felt by finding another living person who wanted to be with them in the dark. It was anathema to his nature, though. Raeln had always been the one searching for others to protect, usually finding Ilarra. He could not quite bring himself to take comfort in someone else…not yet. Once they had gotten farther from the undead army and…

A faint rumble shook the ground as a column of flame shot from the western side of Lantonne and lit the whole sky. Seconds later, he could hear what sounded like the giant blocks of stone from the city’s walls hitting the ground.

The elementals. He had nearly forgotten about them, which was as absurd as Ilarra cuddling with a dragon. The creatures were nearly as large as a city, and certainly larger than the one he and Ilarra had grown up in. With them on the loose, he had all the more reason to want to be miles from Lantonne and never return.

Greth could wait, he finally told himself, giving the cabin-like building a sad look. There was too much to do, too much to plan, and too much at stake for affection just yet. That could come later, once they were no longer within range of the elementals and had seen no more Turessians for at least a few days.

Walking again, Raeln had no desire to seek out Ilarra or disturb her and Nenophar. They both needed rest from whatever they had been doing during the struggle to hold the undead at bay in the city. Instead, he wanted to find On’esquin and shake the orcish man until he explained all the nonsensical things he had mentioned in passing and everything that hinted at knowing far more about what was happening than Raeln did. That was a goal Raeln could use to keep himself awake.

As he walked, Raeln touched the gashes under his tunic. They stung only when he thought about them, but he found most had broken open and were bleeding slowly. Phillith’s infection was a very real warning of the risks for Raeln as well, but he had to hope he could shrug off anything the filthy claws of the corpses might have put in those wounds. There was little else he could do besides ignore the pain until it went away or got bad enough he could not walk or fight.

His footsteps leaving paw-shaped divots in the mud that filled quickly with water, Raeln made his way into the clearing, where Nenophar still lay near Ilarra. Both of them looked up as he came closer, shaking off a thin layer of icy water that had covered them.

Raeln turned away from them when he spotted On’esquin sitting near the edge of the clearing on a large, flat-topped rock. Unlike the others, the orc allowed the freezing rain to settle on him. It ran in thin streams off of the hood he had pulled up and dripped from the cloth onto his tusks, which stuck up from his lower jaw. The man seemed immune to the cold in much the same was as Ilarra and Nenophar, and to a much lesser degree, Raeln and Greth.

“You come with a purpose. That much I can see from far off,” On’esquin said when Raeln was almost to him, though he kept his eyes on the ground. “I appreciate your visit, even if you do not bring with you the same calm I heard earlier. For now, the dragon lends me the calm I require.”

Raeln squatted in front of the armored man, trying to draw On’esquin’s eyes to his own without success. “Where did you come from, On’esquin? Your accent is not one I know, and you’re marked as a Turessian. I need to know what you’ve seen, so I can get these people to somewhere safe. You promised me answers.”

On’esquin grinned in the twisted way orcs tended to, his tusks making his face look angry even with the smile. “If I am marked as a Turessian and I speak like a foreigner, then where would you think I came from, wildling?”

“Say it.”

“I came from the land you call Turessi, though I left there…I left a long time ago,” he explained to Raeln, his black eyes darting up to the sky briefly. “Most recently, I came from Corraith to find someone in these lands. My lord told me of a prophecy—”

“I don’t believe in prophecies.”

Smiling again, On’esquin reached into a row of pouches along his belt slowly, clearly understanding Raeln would not tolerate any chance he was reaching for a weapon. From the dried leather bag, he produced a stack of parchments tightly wrapped in leather and fastened with a silver button that held a symbol similar to those tattooed on his face.

“I met a man in the deserts,” he went on, holding the roll of papers in his hands, seemingly unbothered by the rain falling on it. “I waited a very, very, very long time for his arrival, but he fit the description of the one that would tell me of the war’s start. I had thought perhaps the prophecy was a lie, but when he found me, it changed everything.”

“And what does this prophecy have to say for Lantonne?”

“It says a great many things.” He waved the leather-bound bundle at Raeln. “Only a handful have begun to come true.

“Raeln, you must understand this is not the vague guesswork of a street prophet. These are the dictated words of my lord and master, who was given a gift by the same dragon that now lays with your sister. For a time, my lord could see the pattern of fate, which he used to see what the greatest threat to his lands might be.

“Turess, my master, believed the greatest threat might be traitors to his rule or division of the lands after his death. What he saw was something entirely different. Instead of civil war, he saw an army of the undead marching across every nation he had once ruled, claiming city after city until no living being remained.

“I was tasked with preventing the worst of what could happen by filling a very specific role in the prophecy. My unique state allowed me to watch over those he thought would be the ones who would start this war. Unfortunately, those who first began the war against Turessi all those years ago were not the ones who would start all of this. I waited for hundreds of years for either the sign I had failed or one of those monsters to try to escape. None ever did, and their own creator left them to rot while he began the war in this region.”

“Dorralt,” Raeln answered, thinking back to Altis. “He arranged all of this?”

On’esquin nodded and tapped the rolled parchment.

“So all of this was seen hundreds of years ago by the monster that created your empire? You could have said something…told someone…”

“You do not grasp what I am saying, Raeln. I spent hundreds of years telling everyone, but I was cast out as a traitor to what I was trying to save. Turess saw to it his prophecies were sent to the council, but they buried the information after the first hundred years, believing it to be a forgery and a lie. They were supposed to protect the nations while I waited with the enemy’s generals that I had defeated. In the end, I did my duty, and they did not.”

Raeln reached for the parchment, but On’esquin snatched it away before his fingers could brush it. “What now?” he demanded, growling as he watched the parchment go back into the pouch. “What do we do now?”

“Now?” repeated the orc, nodding at Nenophar. “He and the girl are discussing strategy. I only know what I must find, not what to do to bring it about or what to do when I find it. You will know what must be done when I do.”

Again, Raeln reached for the parchment sticking out of the man’s pouch, but On’esquin caught his wrist with a strength Raeln had not believed possible, despite the man’s bulky frame.

“I swore an oath to guard this parchment,” whispered On’esquin, tightening his hold until Raeln whimpered and fell to his knees. He used his free hand to push at On’esquin, but he could not so much as budge the man. “You are not someone I trust enough to show it to, not yet. Help me live through the next day, and I will consider it. Until then, you will keep your hands off of me, or I will break them off.”

On’esquin held his position a little longer, then abruptly let go and lowered his eyes to the ground again. “Go and learn what they believe must be done,” he said. “I will do what I must without question when it has been decided. Lacking any direction in the prophecies, I follow others.”

Raeln eased back onto his haunches, rubbing his wrist and trying to ignore the icy water his tail lay in. He watched On’esquin for a minute or more, trying to guess at the man’s true motivations, but the orc gave him nothing and stared at the ground.

“There is the calm I was missing before,” On’esquin said soon thereafter, smiling faintly. “Thank you, Raeln.”

Snarling, Raeln got to his feet and went to Ilarra and Nenophar, who had been whispering to one another until he got within range of hearing. In a gesture of kindness, Nenophar raised one wing over both Ilarra and Raeln as he got closer, shielding both from the rain before putting his own head next to them.

“Why are you out here?” asked Ilarra, smiling weakly. She raised her restored arm and showed Raeln, wiggling her fingers happily. “You must be freezing. I saw Greth go back to the building over there—”

“I need to know what we’re going to do,” he said, cutting her off sharply as he sat down in the mud. “I can’t rest until I know how we’re getting all of these people out of here.” His statement drew a worried glance from Ilarra toward the dragon and a similar look from him to her. They were hiding something, that much Raeln could see, but he did not have the patience to argue with another person who kept him in the dark. “Just tell me what I need to do,” Raeln insisted, putting a hand to his head in frustration. “What is my role in saving these people?”

Things have gotten more complicated since we left the wall, I am afraid
, Nenophar said, his mouth unmoving though his eyes darted to watch Raeln as he spoke. The way the dragon’s slitted pupils narrowed to stare at him made him somewhat uneasy, wondering if he looked like a meal to the giant lizard.