Heirs of the Fallen: Book 03 - Shadow and Steel (2 page)

Leitos snatched the dagger, and escaped through a break in the foliage. Once clear, he ran in a crouch up and over a small rise, slowing only when he reached a dense copse of trees, whose limbs all grew in one direction, trained so by the steady westerly winds that blew off the sea.

Busy congratulating himself, he almost ran headlong into the second Brother—Daris.

Leitos went stock-still, and studied his next opponent. Of an age with Sumahn, Daris counted it a point of pride when the other Brothers named him the trickster of the two. None questioned the pair’s courage and strength, but both Ulmek and Ba’Sel considered them reckless.

Clouds passed over the moon, and shadows frolicked over Witch’s Mole. Daris snorted, scratched his jaw with loose fingers, then slumped farther over.

Sleeping.
Leitos could not believe his plan to wait out the Brothers had worked so well. Moving only his eyes, Leitos searched until he saw a small box tied with a ribbon resting next to the Brother’s outstretched legs.

After tucking Sumahn’s dagger into his breechclout, Leitos dropped to all fours and snuck forward. His chest demanded more air than he dared give it, and a faint sheen of sweat sprang from his brow. As he reached for the box, Daris mumbled in his sleep.

Leitos’s hand hovered. His heart told him to take the treasure and run. His mind spoke of caution. His mind won.

Ever so gently, Leitos settled his fingers around the wooden box, its length and width no larger than his palm, and covered with engravings. Daris stirred again, causing Leitos to flinch, a bare rippling of tensed muscles. He bit back a shout when he found Daris staring straight at him—
No … he’s sleeping with his eyes open.

Leitos slowly brought the box to his chest, and Daris’s tricksome nature made itself plain when something rattled inside. Daris’s hand flew to the hilt of his sword, clutched it briefly, then fell away. Murmuring, the Brother rolled to his side, unconsciously swatting a midge from his ear.

After a few moments, Leitos untied the cloth ribbon and carefully dumped out a trio of mismatched glass beads. He left Daris to his slumber, and crept downslope.

Zera, Leitos thought, with a touch of melancholy, would have been proud. In a very real sense, she had begun his training a year before, which had put him into Ba’Sel’s hands. Of course, her intention had not been to train him, but to trick him into leading her to the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. His love for her had blinded him to her true purpose. While none of the Brothers held that mistake against him—except for Ulmek—it troubled Leitos that he had failed to see through Zera’s ploy. If he had heeded his father’s advice to trust no one save the Brothers, the warriors would likely still reside in their last sanctuary on the mainland of Geldain.

Leitos shoved that to the back of his mind and pressed on through the night, scouring Witch’s Mole and finding two more Brothers sleeping near their treasures. He took a silver pendant hung on broken tree branch by Ke’uld, a Brother who shared ancestry with Ba’Sel—a black-skinned people once of southern Geldain. Soon after that, he found Halan curled up like a baby in a nest of grass. Securing his golden torque proved easiest of all. The snores of the bluff-featured man not only led Leitos to him, but masked his flight.

Two left,
Leitos thought, taking a moment to hide his winnings in a rocky hole at the base of a tree—a place he had chosen days before. After coming across three sleeping Brothers, Leitos forced himself not to grow complacent. It would not surprise him to learn that Daris, Ke’uld, and Halan had all been told to feign sleep, just to put him off his guard.

After arranging a handful of grass over the hole’s opening, Leitos looked to the thin gray line brightening the horizon. In less than two hours, the sun would burst over the turquoise waters of the Sea of Sha’uul, ending the test.
I must hurry
, he thought, at the same time knowing he must use more caution than ever.

Chapter 3

Leitos trotted down a narrow path of hard-packed dirt. Scraggly trees and thick brush provided concealment. He took a short rest when he came to a scatter of boulders rising on either side of the trail. He was within a mile of the southern shore of Witch’s Mole. It seemed odd that the last two Brothers would be in the same area, but the only other suitable place they could hide was at the very extent of the testing grounds, back to the north, atop the highest point of Witch’s Mole, where he had buried Zera. No one would—

Leitos stiffened. So far, he had not crossed the paths of Ba’Sel and Ulmek. Only one of those two men would violate Zera’s grave.

Cursing, Leitos wheeled and ran back, growing angrier with every step. All thoughts of becoming a Brother of the Crimson Shield and of taking his vengeance on the Faceless One flew out of his mind.

He soon crested a grassy knoll and stopped dead when he saw a familiar silhouette perched atop the cairn marking Zera’s grave.

“Come,” Ulmek called, “and take your treasure.”

When Leitos did not move, Ulmek slid off the cairn, and began walking in his direction, thumping the butt of a staff against the ground.

Leitos waited, grinding his teeth.

Ulmek halted just out of arm’s reach, the hollows of his eyes like black pits. “I trust you’ve already taken my Brothers’ prizes?”

“All but yours and Ba’Sel’s.” What he had accomplished did not matter. What did … well, at this moment, he was not sure, other than that Ulmek must pay for defiling Zera’s grave.

“Do you wish to have mine?” Ulmek held out a leather cord hung with a teardrop-shaped amulet—a stone of protection. The making of that protective device involved collecting the blood of those like Leitos and his father, whose ancestors had been washed in the Powers of Creation. The Faceless One then imbued certain ores with that blood, creating a ward against possession by the demonic spirits of Mahk’lar.

“The test is over,” Leitos said, his mind concentrating on how to beat Ulmek, a man who had spent more years in the thick of battle than Leitos had been alive.

“Is it … or has it just begun?”

“You saw me. I failed.”

Ulmek gave him a wry smirk. “Secretly finding and taking any of the treasures, while commendable, is only a part of it. More importantly, striving until the coming of the dawn, even in the face of certain defeat, is the only action required to succeed. In that, you have won your sword and dagger, and a place amongst my Brothers.”

Leitos felt off balance. He had been sure Ulmek meant to provoke him by waiting for him on Zera’s grave, but instead the man was blathering about the test. More, he had just told him he had passed, and was now a Brother of the Crimson Shield.

Ulmek fixed him with a hard gaze. “You see, it is vital that our brethren fight until the end, even when death is certain. How would you chose, little brother, if faced with the choice between life and death?”

Leitos spoke the only truth he knew. “I have given myself to defeating the Faceless One—even if that means my death.”

“Indeed?” Ulmek said. “I am most curious to learn the truth of your conviction … with a final test.”

Before Leitos could respond, Ulmek’s staff cracked against his ribs and knocked him to the ground. Fighting for breath, Leitos rolled to his feet. Staff flashing, Ulmek battered his shoulder, and then his opposite knee. Leitos hobbled clear, searching for a weapon—a rock, a stick, anything—but the only weapon available was in Ulmek’s hands.

“You had better fight,” Ulmek advised. “Our order can ill-afford sniveling weaklings to fill its ranks.”

Leitos tried to work the feeling back into his bruised limbs.
Does he mean to kill me?
The thought seemed absurd, but another look at Ulmek’s face told him otherwise. The man’s animosity was evident in his scowl and the hard, merciless set of his mouth.

With no great effort, Leitos mirrored that expression.
Grow strong and cruel
. Those words echoed in his mind, words spoken by his father, advice given as a means to survive a vicious world.

Ulmek attacked again, holding nothing back, and Leitos ducked under the whistling staff. “Come on, boy, prove your worth, or be cast down.”

Leitos dredged his soul and found a lifetime of buried fury. Once touched, that wrath scorched away any fright or doubt. His menacing smile gave Ulmek pause. “If you want to fight to the death,” he said, “so be it.”

“ ‘Death?’ ” Ulmek repeated. As he considered that, his eyes narrowed, and then he lunged, aiming his strike at Leitos’s neck.

Leitos twitched out of reach, then swiftly crowded the larger warrior. Backpedaling, Ulmek reversed his strike. Leitos caught the shaft against his palms, spun in a tight half-circle, and slammed an elbow against Ulmek’s temple.

Eyelids fluttering, Ulmek staggered away, dragging the staff behind him. Leitos brought his foot down, splitting the seasoned shaft, and hastily caught up the staff’s broken end. He whirled it in a defensive blur.

“Ba’Sel and Sumahn claimed you showed promise,” Ulmek grated. “All the Brothers have said the same.”

When Ulmek came again, Leitos defended himself. Wood cracked against wood. The jarring blows stung Leitos’s hands, sank an ache deep into his shoulders, drove him back a step at a time. Where Leitos faltered, Ulmek advanced, sure of foot, confident, deadly.

Leitos feinted a strike at the warrior’s head, then dropped below Ulmek’s guard, and struck him across one knee with all his strength. As Ulmek danced back, Leitos somersaulted over the ground, coming up slightly behind his foe. He rammed the point of his elbow into the back of the man’s unhurt knee, then pivoted, one leg extended, and swept Ulmek off his feet.

Leitos scrambled up and away, gathering himself to finish the contest, but Ulmek was already on his feet again.

“You’ll have to do better than that, boy,” the warrior taunted. “Or, perhaps, you would rather me leave you to weep over your dead mistress? Who can say concerning changelings, but it could be that her breasts are yet plump with a weanling’s milk? Your love for her is sickening, not worthy of our order. You are weak, boy,
pathetic
….”

As Ulmek continued to berate him, Leitos’s anger became uncontrollable, scorching away carefully constructed barriers against memories he would rather leave buried. He saw again Zera’s radiant emerald eyes before him, burning with the fiery light that he had stolen when he plunged his dagger into her heart, an accident born of a fear for everything the Faceless One touched. Even as she died in his arms, Zera had pleaded for Leitos to speak his love for her.

Her blood spreading over his hands burned as hotly in memory as it had on that terrible night. Ulmek had made him remember those things, and he hated the man for it.

“There we are,” Ulmek said softly. “Come for me, boy!”

Silent and grim, Leitos charged. When Ulmek stumbled on a jutting stone he should have seen, Leitos stabbed the splintered end of his staff at Ulmek’s neck. The warrior blocked the blow without effort, one moment fighting to regain his footing, the next poised and sure.
A trap!

Before Leitos could catch his balance, Ulmek thrust his heel behind Leitos’s and struck him on the point of the chin, his fist falling like a slab of granite. Leitos slammed against the ground, numb all over.

Ulmek knelt at Leitos’s side. “I know Ba’Sel warned you about letting anger take your heart—he taught me the same, many years gone. I’ve never believed it, and still do not. The trick, boy, is to master that fire, use it to your advantage. Your failure to do so has cost you a victory. When you feel you are ready to try—”

Ulmek looked up sharply. “Do you hear that?”

Leitos, only now catching his breath, sat up and cocked his head. Beneath the hooting song of the island and the breeze whispering through leaves, he heard a rhythmic thrumming.

“Drums,” he said, doubting his ears. “It sounds like drums.”

Just then, a closer sound of breaking limbs came to them. Both leaped up, brandishing their broken staffs.

Ba’Sel burst out of the trees a hundred paces away, his faded robes flapping.

“We must return to the sanctuary,” he panted. Sweat sheened his dark skin, and his eyes were wild with a fear that no leader of warriors should reveal.

Leitos had never seen him like this, and it left him unsettled.

Ulmek caught Ba’Sel’s shoulder before he could bolt back the way he had come. “What is wrong?”’

“Sea-wolves,” Ba’Sel blurted, jabbing a finger to the west.

Ulmek and Leitos spun. Far out to sea, seemingly ushered up from the south by massing storm clouds, a pair of sleek ships propelled by dozens of sweeping oars and square sails plowed the sea toward Witch’s Mole. The drumming had grown louder. Less than half a turn of the glass remained before they would make landfall.

“Why has no one sounded the alarm?” Ulmek demanded.

Ba’Sel looked more flustered than ever. “We were preparing to raise our newest Brother. There was a feast that needed making, the honing and oiling of his sword and dagger—”

“I know about the ceremony,” Ulmek said. “None of that matters now, save that Leitos will need his robes and weapons. I trust you have given orders to destroy these scum?”