Heirs of the Fallen: Book 03 - Shadow and Steel (18 page)

Damoc ignored her for now, and stabbed a finger at Robis, the bumbling youth who fancied that he loved Belina, and who had blown the warning horn. “Come here,” he ordered.

Robis stepped forward, eyes downcast. He was a dullard with not the wits to properly wipe his own arse, let alone to see the deception Belina had cast over him. For all his faults, he was good in a battle, being too stupid to know fear or feel pain. Still, he had betrayed the clan.

“I did not know what she had planned,” Robis blurted. “She promised that she would—” He suddenly clamped his teeth shut, perhaps thinking it better not to reveal just what Belina had promised.

“Where was she taking him?” Damoc demanded.

“I-I don’t know,” Robis stammered. “She never said she was taking
him
anywhere. If I’d known, I would not have joined in her sport.”

“What manner of idiot believes rallying our defenses is a simple game?” Damoc seethed. “Did it ever cross your mind that sounding the alarm without cause might lead to leaving the camp undefended?” And that was yet another thing he would have to rectify. Someone should have stayed behind to guard the camp. Instead, all had snatched their weapons and run off like untrained louts. But again, that was for later.

Robis swallowed, his throat clicking in the quiet. “She said it would be fun to stir the camp.”

“Fun,” Damoc said flatly, his wrath extinguished by his disbelief. “We are not about
fun
,” he announced to all. “This rebellion we wage is no game. We fight an enemy that has every advantage, and no mercy for fools.”

A few nodded, but most looked at their feet, or the weapons held in their hands.

“I do not want your shame,” Damoc went on. “I want you to do what we have prepared to do. To accomplish that, we must keep our wits about us. Had the Fauthians crept into our camp, using Robis’s foolishness as a distraction, they could have wiped out the bulk of our clan in one attack.”

“How do we know they did not creep in among us?” Nola asked, her jaw set. “Why else would my sister have—”

“They did not,” Damoc said firmly. “Belina is confused, that is all. If there is a betrayer,” he allowed, “it is this Leitos.”

He refused to believe Belina had betrayed them. At the same time, it disturbed him that Nola so readily accepted the idea. But then, Nola had always been a girl who saw all in stark contrasts. To her there was right and wrong, even if the wrongs were done out of ignorance.

“Then what would you have us do?” Nola said, sounding unconvinced.

How long will I hold sway over her?
he wondered—hardly a rare thought of late. A woman had never led a clan or served on the Great Council, but Damoc thought Nola might, one day. She was capable and ambitious enough. And should things go badly against the Fauthians, her unbending, pitiless ways might well appeal to the clans.

“We must find Belina and break the hold this outlander has over her,” Damoc said. “Then we will carry out his sentence.”

He was not entirely convinced Leitos was an enemy, but he refused to let his doubts outweigh what had to be done. If he ever discovered that his judgment had been made in error, then the burden of that mistake would have to be carried in his heart.

“And after that?” Nola pressed.

“After that,” Damoc said, “we do what we have planned so long to do—we destroy the Throat of Balaam, cutting off the Fauthians’ source of power. Then, while they are vulnerable, we will destroy our enemies, one by one, until none are left in all the Isles of Yato.” He cast about, pleased at the determined faces directed his way. “But first, we retrieve Belina.”

“Is that a mistake?” Nola did not say it as a challenge, but the challenge was there nonetheless.

“When we took up arms against our former rulers, we promised, when at all possible, to never again leave our people in their hands. You know that. We all know that. Even the least of us cannot be left to the Fauthians. That is our law,” he said again, ensuring all understood that his going after his daughter had nothing to do with his position as an elder.

There was no grumbling, no irreverent stares, but he felt the doubt flowing from his clan.

“Strike camp,” he called, giving them something else to think about, “and prepare to march. Leitos has already had too long to turn my daughter’s mind and heart. We must reach her before it is too late.” He paused, then added, “If you see Leitos, kill him straight away. He cannot be allowed to corrupt more of us.”

A subdued cheer went up, and Damoc found himself hoping he was right about the strange young man who Belina claimed to have seen in her visions, this so-called man of shadow and steel, the hope of the world…. If he was wrong, then even the mercy of the Silent God of All would fail to redeem him.

Chapter 25

The darkness of the cell was familiar to Adham, but little else. His long years in the mines had been a time of constant pain, be it from the lash, shackles, the sun, or the backbreaking labor of first crushing rock with pick or maul, then loading the rubble into buckets with hands covered in weeping blisters. Callouses he grew in abundance, but they were never strong enough to resist the cutting edges of freshly broken rock. The same could be said for the pitted iron bracelets he had worn, the marks of their long presence on his wrists a living testament to his captivity. Too, he remembered the harsh desert sunlight, the way it sucked moisture from the tongue and every pore, how it had roasted skin, left a man feeling hot and cracked. And there had been the hunger, a bitter companion with a will only to gnaw your insides. So while only the present darkness was the same, it brought sharply to mind all those past agonies and struggles.

Adham dropped his fingers from the heavy wooden door, and walked to the back wall, his shoulders brushing cool stone. His trek was short, less than his height. He had made it a hundred times since Adu’lin had him tossed into the cell. He turned, thought of the return journey, and decided to sit. In such a cramped space, pacing in circles left him dizzy.

Arms wrapped around his knees, the darkness pressed in. That, too, was a familiar sensation. He put it out of his mind. A barely heard ringing tickled his ears, and above this the slow thump of his heart.

After a time, the few noises he could hear faded to the voices in his mind. Those voices spoke their concern for Leitos and the Brothers, and some fretted over his own quandary.

Slowly, anger rose up, and he turned his attention to it. Worry rarely did a man any good, and while anger served its own dark master, at times it had a way of providing strength, even as it exacted a price. Right now, Adham was willing to pay whatever fee his wrath demanded.

By the time the rattle of a bar being removed from the door sounded within his tiny cell, he was grinding his teeth to the point of pain. As the door swung open, allowing a wedge of pale light to slice through the widening gap, his muscles clenched into tight knots. When he saw the narrow Fauthian face, Adham sprang.

The guard’s impassive expression flashed away to stark surprise. Dropping the torch, he reached for his dagger. At the same time, his lips parted to sound the alarm.

By then Adham was on him, fingers buried in the flesh of the man’s skinny neck. Eyes popping and shot through with hot blood, his teeth bared like a wolf, Adham wrung that throat, twisting, ripping.

The Fauthian forgot his dagger and clamped his hands onto Adham’s wrists, tried to pull them off. Adham drove forward and slammed the guard against a wall. The gagging Fauthian lashed out, his fists fluttering like a pair of startled birds.

“Where is my son, you filthy yellow worm?”

The guard, eyes bulging, answered with strained gurgles. Even if he freed the man, his crushed windpipe would not allow him to answer.

But Adham did not want an answer, he wanted weapons. Still, his fury drove him to shout. “Answer me!”

Other guards began to spill from a doorway from farther down the corridor. They rushed to aid their fellow, shouting and drawing swords.

Adham rammed the top of his head against the Fauthian’s face, once and again, each blow bringing the crunch of shattering bone. His fingers sank deeper, and the Fauthian’s mouth gaped, his tongue wagged. Adham darted his head forward again, driving that bit of pink flesh against the man’s teeth. The Fauthian’s eyes rolled.

Before the others could reach him, Adham snatched the Fauthian’s dagger, slashed his throat, then threw him before his companions. The lead guard danced to avoid his fallen companion, but fell in a sprawl. One after another, the guards tripped, adding to the growing tangle of arms and legs.

Adham sprinted down the corridor. Curses chased him, but nothing else. He paused at a crossing corridor.
Right or left?
Gloom marked one way, and torches brightened a distant junction in the other direction.

Adham ran full out into the light, and soon reached the intersection. Here he had only one choice, a wide stairwell leading up. He took the stairs two at a time, thinking up had to be better than down, when escaping a prison.

At the top of the stairs, he crashed into a massive set of double doors. He expected resistance, but they banged open, revealing a circular hall alight with scores of torches burning between grotesque sculptures. At the center of all that radiance stood a ring of smoothly tapered pillars, rising up to meet an open portal in the domed ceiling—the heart of the palace. Within that columned ring knelt the blindfolded Brothers of the Crimson Shield, most bloody and battered, all with their hands tied behind their backs.

Shouts rang out behind Adham, pushing him into the hall. He sensed a trap, but surely it was not for him. Or so he thought, until the architect of that snare spoke.

“It seems the resourcefulness of you Izutarians is not overstated,” Adu’lin said to one side.

Dagger at the ready, Adham searched for the Fauthian leader, but he remained out of sight.

“I now see why the Faceless One prizes your people,” Adu’lin went on. “I dare say that if you ice-born savages abandoned your futile resistance and embraced the High Lord of this world, his rewards would be beyond measure.”

“My people will fight until the last drop of our blood soaks the ground at our feet. To the Thousand Hells with you and your false god.”

“A pity,” Adu’lin said, not sounding put out in the slightest. He emerged from behind the statue of a nightmarish creature of horns, tattered wings, and bony limbs. Once he revealed himself, more armed Fauthians crept from the shadows.

Adham glanced over his shoulder. The guards he had thwarted stood behind him, looking eager to begin whatever it was Adu’lin had in store.

“Until the last drop of my blood,” he growled, and feinted toward them. They leaped back as one, but he had already spun around and was running for Adu’lin.

At Adham’s brazen attack, the Fauthian leader’s smug smile fell off his face. Adham loosed a battle cry and raised his dagger. If a man was to die this night, he meant it to be Adu’lin.

So great was his wrath, Adham barely noticed the Alon’mahk’lar step from behind a statue. Coarse reddish hide slashed with black, the demon-born moved between Adham and Adu’lin, a great sword held in its six-fingered hand. That weapon, fully as long as Adham was tall, swept upward.

“Do not kill him!” Adu’lin warned sharply.

The creature hesitated, and that was all Adham needed. He buried his dagger in the demon-born’s belly, and the Alon’mahk’lar bellowed. Before Adham could wrench the dagger loose, the Alon’mahk’lar smashed a fist against his shoulder. A loud popping noise filled Adham’s head, and fiery agony rushed through every inch of his body. The blow flung him through the air, and he bounced off a pillar. He collapsed to the stone floor, and fought to regain his feet.

The Alon’mahk’lar stalked close, protuberant black eyes slit by golden pupils. A double set of horns grew from its skull. One set spiraled upward, and the second set curved down around its thick neck. Its belly still bore Adham’s dagger. The beast raised its sword, preparing to cleave Adham in two.

“Hold,” Adu’lin shouted, arresting the demon-born’s attack. “The Faceless One offers handsome rewards for the living blood of the Valera line. Besides,” he added, “I promised our guest a harsh lesson, which I still mean to deliver.”

Adham gulped a breath while the Alon’mahk’lar was distracted. Envisioning the course he would take, Adham moved abruptly, teeth gritted against fresh agony.

He caught the hilt of the dagger, gave it a twist, and tore it from the demon-born’s guts. The Alon’mahk’lar floundered back with an eye-watering cry. In spite of Adu’lin’s command, the creature swung its sword. Adham flung himself aside, cringing at the sword’s fleeting brush over the back of his head.

He was up again in an instant, clumsy but moving toward the bound Brothers, whose blindfolded heads were turning this way and that.

The Alon’mahk’lar roared behind him. With the barest measure of caution, he slashed the bindings holding one man’s wrists, then another’s.

Wild shouts went up all around him, from the Fauthians and the freed Brothers. After the shouts came the sounds of fists pummeling flesh, steel hewing muscle and bone. Screams erupted from the wounded and dying.

Adham did not waste a moment to see who suffered the worst of the spreading melee. Once he had freed three Brothers, he knew he would never free them all.