The Lore Of The Evermen (Book 4) (21 page)

26

High in the sky, winds tossed a solitary dirigible to and fro in unpredictable air currents as the pilot struggled to keep the vessel afloat. A boatlike tub hung under the rune-covered cylinder by wires as the vessel’s two occupants clutched onto the rails with white knuckles.

Miro had been told it was dangerous to fly so high, but he’d instructed the pilot to take him up anyway. In his heart he knew it was foolish to risk their sole dirigible, not to mention the lives of its occupants, but below, in the deep sea, the brave Veldrins and Buchalanti fought a battle that made the risk pale in comparison.

He felt a surge of joy as he saw the Veldrins’ first pass, watching the warships shatter the enemy vessels one after the other. As Deniz circled around, Miro saw the Buchalanti charge into the armada from behind, and then a haze of smoke clouded the vista while he struggled to make sense of the battle.

“So many,” the pilot whispered. “There are just so many
of them
.”

Deniz destroyed more than a dozen ships with his second pass, but this time the enemy was ready for him, and he lost four of his own Veldrin warships. The commodore disengaged, and the Veldrin fleet sped away.

The
Infinity
led the point of a wedge deep into the armada. Launching their salvos ahead of them, the Buchalanti smashed ship after ship, and Miro soon realized the black specks in the water were bodies. Every revenant lost to the sea was a revenant he wouldn’t have to face on the beaches.

Miro saw the
Infinity
crash into a big black warship.

Then, on the other side of the armada, Deniz became embroiled in close fighting, smoke clouding the scene as the Veldrins became encircled. Miro’s fists clenched at the dirigible’s rail as he wondered what was happening inside the cloud of gray haze.

The smoke cleared for an instant, and Miro saw the
Seekrieger
dangerously engaged, grappled to an enemy flagship. Miro felt his heart race, and he pinched his palms. Then Miro’s heart leapt out of time as he saw the
Seekrieger
slowly sink into the water.

“High Lord, I must take us down,” the pilot said.

“Soon!” Miro barked.

Fighting at the heart of the armada, the Buchalanti vessels fell to the enemy one after another. Miro saw the
Infinity
crippled with a battering broadside. A dreadnought took fire and returned with a fierce energy weapon, blasting vessels into halves. Then the
dreadnought
broke up under a sustained barrage.

Two Veldrin warships tried to break free of the encirclement, but the enemy shattered them with blasts of cannon. Smoke clouded the air once more, and Miro felt the blood drain from his face as he waited for it to clear.

The armada burst free from the smoke, leaving their
sinking
ships behind. Moving inexorably forward, the enemy left the destruction of the naval battle behind.

It was over.

“Take us down,” Miro whispered.

The pilot struggled against the wind and for a moment almost lost control, but he managed to descend, and the passenger tub steadied.

The pilot turned them back toward Castlemere, and Miro soon saw the harbor come into view.

“Back behind the defenses,” Miro instructed.

The dirigible descended and soon hovered over the ground as Miro threw down the ladder. He scurried down and then stood weaving on the ground as the pilot took his vessel back to safety. Miro was shaken.

“What news?” Beorn rushed up. His expression registered Miro’s white face.

Miro looked around to make sure he couldn’t be heard.

“The naval engagement is lost,” Miro said. “The Veldrins and the Buchalanti . . . they’re gone . . . all of them.” He took a deep breath. “We destroyed a great number of enemy ships, perhaps half their force. But it wasn’t enough. The rest will soon be landing.”

“Miro,” Beorn growled, “pull yourself together. We will mourn them later. Scherlic and Deniz . . . all those who fought . . . we will mourn them. But now is not the time.”

Miro nodded. He took a deep breath and straightened, aware of his men’s eyes on him. He pulled the mask of the high lord back over his face.

“You know what has to happen now,” Beorn said, his face grim.

“I haven’t agreed . . .”

“Miro,” Beorn interrupted. “Listen to me. There’s no other way. We’ve talked about this. It’s a lord marshal’s duty to speak the truth when it needs to be told, and I’m speaking it now. We must evacuate the last people from the free cities. Then we need to burn them.”

“How can I tell the leaders of Castlemere and Schalberg we need to destroy their cities?”

“Let me tell them,” Beorn said. He gripped Miro’s shoulder. “It doesn’t always have to be you, Miro, who must tell the awful truth.”

“Is there no other way?”

“You know there isn’t.”

“Lord of the Sky.” Miro muttered. “What a thing to have to tell someone.”

“They knew it might come to this,” Beorn said.

Miro sighed and nodded to Beorn. The two men walked back to the wall, and Miro found a courier.

“Summon Councilor Marcel of Castlemere and Councilor Lauren of Schalberg,” Miro said.

He gazed out at the city of Castlemere as he waited. The killing ground extended ahead of him as far as the feeble city walls.

“Yes, High Lord?” a tall man spoke in a guttural accent. Beside him an attractive woman waited anxiously.

“Councilors,” Miro said. “The naval engagement is lost. The brave men of Veldria and House Buchalantas took many of the enemy with them, but it is now time to put into action the next part of the plan. You know this is what we agreed to do. Only you can give the order. There is no other option.”

Beorn opened his mouth, but Miro spoke first. “We must burn Castlemere and Schalberg. We can’t give the enemy an easy harbor or a place to fortify. We need them to land on the beaches. We can’t defend your cities, and we can’t leave them standing.”

Beorn glanced at Miro and sighed.

Both Councilors paled. The leaders of the free cities had little experience of war.

“No,” Councilor Lauren said, shaking her head, “I won’t agree to it.”

“Listen to me,” Miro said. “Even if we destroyed your docks but left the rest standing, the enemy would still make landing in your harbors and use your buildings as cover. Your cities are perfect targets—we know our enemy is always eager to find more of the living to add to their numbers, and they will have no desire to be exposed on the beaches. Landing is a time of weakness for them and we need to force them out into the open. Burning the cities will create wreckage, ash, and heat—an environment they won’t want to disembark thousands of revenants into. If we can make them land on the beaches, we can hit them while they’re exposed.”

“We must do this?” Councilor Lauren’s eyes brimmed
with tear
s.

“We must,” Miro said. “I swear to you, by everything I hold dear, if there were another option I would take it.”

“I believe you,” said Councilor Marcel. He slowly released a breath, and then nodded. “Give the order. Burn them.”

The tears now fell from the corners of Councilor Lauren’s eyes. “If we must,” she whispered.

“I promise you, when this is all over, we will rebuild your cities. I swear to you, that you will always be free.”

Councilor Marcel led a weeping Councilor Lauren away.

“You could have let me do that,” Beorn said.

“The responsibility is mine,” Miro said, “though I appreciate it, I really do. Give the order.”

Miro wiped a hand over his face as soldiers ran for
Castlemere
while another group headed further west in the direction of
Schalberg
.

“Keep an eye on the coast,” Miro said, “and tell that pilot to keep his dirigible in the sky. We need to know where they plan
to land
.”

27

Bartolo, Dorian, and the five recruits were all exhausted, but they’d cut the journey to the lands of Altura’s south down to days.

They’d just passed the last signaling tower before Wondhip Pass, seeing the prism shining bright and lustrous. Now the farmland and forests gave way to barren rock, the land gaining a gradual slope as Bartolo stared up at the Elmas, his eye following the winding mountain path that led to the pass. He placed his hands on his knees as he walked uphill, forcing fatigued limbs to continue the harrowing pace.

Bartolo rested briefly, glancing behind him and scanning the faces of his men. With no time to find others, these youths were all he had. He’d thought he might have to leave some of the recruits behind, but they’d stayed with him, even through the last few
grueling
, climbing miles. They were fit and well trained, but even so, Bartolo wondered if he’d been wise to bring them. If it came to fighting, the recruits had no armor.

Bartolo’s gaze returned ahead, and he spotted a nearby rise where some boulders clustered to form a hill. He leapt from rock to rock until he was at the summit, before shading his eyes and gazing once more up at the mountain. Hearing movement
behind him,
he turned and saw Dorian climbing up the rocks to meet him. The young yellow-haired bladesinger moved with grace, and wore his armorsilk like it fitted him, Bartolo noted with approval.

“What do you think?” Dorian said.

“Nothing,” said Bartolo. “No light.”

“Why would Tingarans stop the light at Wondhip Pass? I can understand their motivation in blocking our call to the east, cruel as it is, but to prevent our signal going south? Do they really hate us so much?”

“I don’t understand it either,” Bartolo said. “After what
happened
at the bridge, I had to check. And here we are, and there’s no light at the pass.”

Inwardly, Bartolo seethed. Altura was under attack. His
homeland
needed him.

Miro needed the signal to get through.

“So you think there’ll be four of them, like last time?” Dorian asked.

“Tapel said that last bunch was waiting for four more men to join them—the ones Jehral met. So, at a guess, I’d say between four and eight.”

“You think the recruits are up to it?”

“Eight bandits against us two and five lads who’ve trained at the Pens most of their lives? I can’t see them putting up much of a fight. The last station was guarded by rogues, not warriors,” Bartolo said. “This one shouldn’t be any different.”

Bartolo stretched, hearing his back crack as the recruits caught up. He felt confident, but a thought kept nagging him.

Why would these men in the pass, Tingarans, care whether or not Hazarans and Petryans helped Altura?

Loki had only the barest idea where he was.

After the shipwreck, he’d taken his surviving draugar and finally found a way up from the beach to the high cliffs above. That was only the beginning of his ordeal, for Loki was confronted by a
terrible
expanse of desert.

He knew this must be the Hazara Desert he’d been told about. The storm had turned the ship around before casting it against the shore, but this land could be no other place. He also knew his draugar wouldn’t last long: the Lord of the Night had cooled the air aboard the ships with lore, but the sun here was fierce, and rot would soon take them.

Loki headed north and struck success when he found a Petryan town called Hatlatu. He used his wretched draugar from across the sea to destroy the town and kill the townsfolk, first questioning some screaming women, checking his location, and finding out about the route to his fellow necromancers in Altura via the
mountain
pass.

Loki used his essence to make new draugar from the dead of Hatlatu to replace those he’d lost, but making a draug took time, and he only made a dozen.

Now these dozen were all he had left.

Loki’s goal was to find cooler lands and meet up with his fellow necromancers, and so he kept heading north. Finally Loki found the mountain pass.

The pass was guarded by a strange tower.

Loki tried to decipher the lore, but it was foreign to him. He didn’t let any of his draugar pass beneath the three-legged tower, and particularly he stayed clear of the triangular prism.

But there was only the one way through.

Finally Loki decided to take a risk, and sent a draug to pull at one of the tower’s three legs. The whole thing finally came crashing down, and Loki made his draugar send the tower tumbling down the mountainside, back the way he’d come. The strange glossy
pyramid
was buried in a rockslide, and Loki was pleased when the way through the pass was made clear.

He made camp in the gully. It was a good, defensible position, with a sweeping view of the land on all sides. Looking through the pass to the north, he now saw lush forests and knew this must be the land of Altura.

Loki frowned when he saw movement on the mountain. He quickly set an ambush and waited to see who was coming.

“This is one of the worst approaches I’ve ever seen,” Bartolo
muttered
. He finally made a decision. “I’m going to scout ahead.
Bladesinger
Dorian, you’re in charge. Bring them forward, but shadow the rocks, and don’t enter the pass.”

Bartolo scampered ahead, keeping his body close to the ground. He left the path and climbed up the steep mountainside, gripping loose boulders and pulling himself forward and up. He felt sweat dripping down his brow and shook droplets from the dark locks of his hair.

Up ahead, he could see a cleft in the mountain: Wondhip Pass. He veered off, climbing vertically now, taking his weight on his legs and pushing hard, only using his arms to steady himself. He kicked a rock loose and sent it tumbling down the mountain. Soon he was twenty paces high, and he felt his arms and legs burn as he kept going, refusing to look down. He now skirted the rock face, heading toward the pass but maintaining height so he could look down.

Bartolo cursed inwardly when he saw the cleft was too steep for him to look into, the walls too high.

He would have to climb down.

Bartolo’s feet scrabbled at empty air as he descended for a time without being able to see what lay below him. His heart beat loudly in his ears as blood coursed through his limbs. Finally his left foot found a ridge in the rock, and he wedged it in tight. Moving slowly and fighting the fatigue in his limbs, he shifted down inch by inch, and then Bartolo could look down, though he was still a hundred feet away.

His heart hammered as he saw a gray-robed necromancer and a dozen revenants waiting in ambush.

Bartolo closed his eyes. He would be sending recruits—well trained but hardly battle hardened—against revenants. They were outnumbered two to one. The lads didn’t even have armor.

He climbed back up and shifted again along the mountain; it was easier when he could see where he was climbing. His urgency spurred him on, but he was forced to take a different route on his return journey, climbing higher still, ascending the steep face until he was precariously perched hundreds of feet above solid ground.

Bartolo clutched at a rock but felt it fall away from his hands. He winced at the clatter as more stone fell, and then he heard a rumble above his head.

A huge boulder bounced along, gathering speed as it fell.
Bartolo look
ed frantically for somewhere to lunge to, but he couldn’t find any handholds, and in a heartbeat the boulder would smash into his head, crushing his skull and throwing him from the cliff face to plummet to his death.

As Bartolo cringed, awaiting the inevitable, he heard a how
ling win
d.

Without warning a great gust shoved him hard up against the mountain, and he couldn’t have moved even if he’d wanted to.

The sound of the crashing boulder as it rolled along the stone suddenly stopped. Bartolo looked around him in amazement,
wondering
where it was; he hadn’t seen or heard the huge stone fall.

Glancing up, he saw one of the strangest sights of his life.

The boulder hovered in the air, directly above his head. Wind howled in his ears, an eerie gust unlike any force of nature. The boulder . . . moved. It traveled horizontally along the cliff, though Bartolo knew the movement was impossible, and when it was a safe distance from Bartolo, the stone once more dropped and resumed its crashing charge.

The wind fell away, and Bartolo was once more able to move his limbs.

Knowing the sound of the boulder would disturb the
revenants
, Bartolo lunged for another outcrop and grabbed hold to pull his body to a safer position. He began to make his way down a cleft, heading back toward the waiting recruits, and he’d soon descended the mountain face, to once more reach the
winding
trail.

Dorian waited with the recruits, their backs to a large boulder as they drank water and rested in the shade. Bartolo decided against mentioning his experience with the boulder; he could hardly believe it himself.

Dorian rose as Bartolo approached, and as the two men put their heads together, Bartolo thanked the wisdom that had led them to elevate the young man.

“Bad news,” Bartolo said. He shook his head; the term didn’t do their plight justice.

“What is it? Ambush? How many?”

“Revenants,” Bartolo said.

Dorian’s eyes widened and he blanched. “How?”

“I don’t know how, but they’re here. Come on. I need to talk to all the lads.”

Bartolo crouched down on his haunches as he scanned each face in turn. Timo regarded him with intelligent eyes. Martin looked strong and sturdy, ready to face anything.

“Listen,” Bartolo said. “The tower in the pass is gone. Unless we can raise it again, our signal to the lands in the south won’t get through. A force waits in ambush. I must fight, and Dorian will help me, but it’s time for the rest of you to go home.”

“Go home?” Martin said. “No, we’re here to help you.”

“No.” Bartolo shook his head. “You can’t. There are a dozen revenants waiting in ambush. The seven of us . . . well . . . we’re
outnumbered
. Our force isn’t enough.”

“Then how do you plan to restore the tower?” Timo said.

“I’m going to fight,” Bartolo said.

“But I thought you said there are too many of them?” Timo pressed.

“There are,” Dorian said, looking at Bartolo. “But we’re going to try anyway.”

“Then I’m trying too,” Martin said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“Me too.”

“So am I.”

“I’m not going home now.”

“We won’t leave you.”

Bartolo drew in a slow breath and let it out in one strong stream of air. “I appreciate your bravery, and your loyalty. I really do. But lads, to go up there is to die. We’ve got armorsilk and zenblades. They’ll kill you.”

“Bladesinger Bartolo,” Martin said, lifting his chin, “I’m not going home. You say there are too many for two
bladesingers
. Five more of us could turn the tide. No, listen.” Martin shook his
flaxen-haire
d head when Bartolo opened his mouth. “I haven’t trained at the Pens since I was six years old just to go home when the going gets tough. What have we trained for, all these years, if it isn’t for a day like today? I’ve got a sword, and I have my friends by my side. We need to do this.”

Dorian met Bartolo’s gaze and raised one eyebrow.

Bartolo sighed. “Who among you agrees with Martin?”

Every recruit raised his hand. Dorian chuckled.

“Then I thank you, lads. I . . .”

“Enough, Bartolo, just tell us how to kill them,” Dorian said.

“All right,” Bartolo said, his voice firming. “Here’s how we’re going to do it.”