Steel And Flame (Book 1) (33 page)

“That is also not unknown.  Try and deal with it as
best you can.”

It sounded the best advice anyone had offered yet, and
coincidentally the path Marik had decided he needed to walk.  At least Maddock
had not attempted to convince him it only existed in his head.

“Or perhaps you should walk over to the Tower tonight
an’ ask them to change your lovely visage to that o’ a snake or an equally
cuddly swamp critter.  Get the waiting over with, you know.  End the suspense.”

Marik’s eyes shot venom at Chatham.  The loquacious
fool sat back in his chair with hands raised in mock surrender.  Maddock looked
ill-pleased with his friend.

“At any rate, the warmer months are near.  The units
and squads assigned to farther regions will be setting out before too much
longer, so they may arrive at the start of the conflict rather than in the
midst.”

“Messengers and lesser nobles have been arriving by
the day,” added Dietrik.  “The officers must be wading through a pile of
contracts as we chin.”

“All the more reason to rise above your fears and
finish your training in the time you have left.  Spring approaches, as do our
marching orders.”

Marik glanced at the three men across the table. 
“What are the odds of us being assigned together?”

Harlan answered, “Not very high.  We probably won’t
see each other until next winter once we set out.”

“All the more reason to drink to our health an’ live
for today!” paraphrased Chatham.  “Come on,
lad-o,
let’s have a run an’
see where our luck takes us!”

Marik laughed.  “This isn’t the Randy Unicorn,
Chatham.  You have a long walk ahead of you to get to Hanson’s Alley tonight.”

“Alas, your words are filled with a sad, sad truth. 
But there’s always sport to be had in a civilized setting such as this fine
establishment, if you but know where to find it!”

He knew he would probably regret letting Chatham take
the lead, so he pled exhaustion and stayed at the table awhile longer.  Marik
shrugged off Chatham’s promise to liven him up before the night waned, watching
while the jester left in search of the serving boy for a new round.

To sit with his friends around a table, drinking ale
and talking into the night…Marik found his life good as spring drew nigh and
the last of the winter nights deepened.

*        *        *        *        *

The last of the winter nights deepened as Colbey stood
atop the walls of Kingshome, gazing to the southwest where the far off Rovasii
Forest of his birth lay.

Soon.
  The
thought echoed repeatedly with increasing fervor following each frozen day that
grew slightly warmer. 
Soon it starts.

The waiting had always been his worst times on duty,
the patience required by the Guardians coming much harder to him than to his
training mates.  Sitting in blinds while his quarry gradually believed
themselves safe to step into the killing zone was quite a different waiting
altogether than the festering stagnation he now suffered.  That he had brought
it about by his own accord did nothing to ease this insufferable exile.

Colbey had known the best, indeed the
only
course of action would be to wait for his enemies to make their next move.  The
back trail was nonexistent, leading nowhere, teaching him nothing.  No clues or
spoor were there at all to reveal the nature of which unseen hand had wrought
such destruction among the Euvea.

If Elder Orlan had been right in his assessments, the
preliminary preparations for whatever force gathered should be near their
conclusion.  A great foe would emerge, one with designs to match its resources. 
Whatever their reasons, whatever their target, be it the lands of Galemar as a
whole or an object much smaller in size, if not importance, Colbey did not
care.  Let them make their move.  He was ready.

But he was no fool.  No, despite what the council had
believed, Colbey had never been so blind as to disregard his own shortcomings. 
He well knew that others in the village misunderstood him, misconceptions born
of his pride and bearing to be sure, yet misconceptions all the same.  Colbey
never cared for what others thought of him.  To his mind, their inability to
read him was a strength in his favor.

No single man could ever do what needed to be done,
even be he an army of one, a soldier of the gods, a warrior without peer.  The
odds were long Colbey would ever find the men who had planned the attack,
though he intended to try with all his skill and cunning.  Still, if he should
fail in the larger mission, simply fighting against those who had destroyed his
home, his life, would be enough.  Thomas understood that.

Thoughts of the Guardian who held the responsibility
for ensuring their people’s survival, a responsibility thrust on him without
warning, touched Colbey’s own interior winter momentarily.  Thomas had
understood him deeper in the end than anyone else.  The younger scout would
never forget that.  Especially here in this den of outland vagabonds.

He lived among them without being
of
them. 
Thankfully that truth had been quickly recognized by the other men in the
Second Squad.  They recognized him as an outsider.  In their minds the words
they used were undoubtedly
loner
and
solitary
.

The attempts to open him up and welcome him into a
larger circle of friends within the squad quickly died, to Colbey’s
satisfaction.  He had nothing to say to them nor any inclination to be near
them.  He would never be one of them.

His few practice sessions that he allowed them to
observe further served to separate him from them.  The skill and ability he
displayed far surpassed theirs, they who constituted the specialist squads.  It
made him even less approachable in their eyes.

So let his superior skill be a wall to keep them at
their distance.  All these deluded amateurs were capable of was annoying him,
anyway.

Colbey cast his gaze across the town while his
thoughts wandered.  The mercenary fighters
were
a slight cut above the
rest outside these walls.  He supposed these facilities were impressive by
their outland standards, except they could never compare to the real testing
grounds of the deep forest, nor to the training required by the scouts, let
alone the Guardians.  In the harshest environs, he had been trained to handle
anything from man to beast, from winter to summer, from fact to myth.  Within
the sealed areas those pairings were often interchangeable, bringing one
face-to-face with denizens far stranger than an outlander’s wildest nightmares
and maddest imaginings.

His mentors trained him to be the best, for only the
best would survive.  These men could scarcely dream what he had been taught to
handle.  They would never believe if told.  To them, they were the cream of
their crop, and had no hint how little talent they truly commanded.

Most, at any rate.  Colbey had spent a great deal of
the winter watching the others in the top squads, looking for potential.  Of
the three hundred or so men, only eleven might be worth anything.  These men
could blossom under Guardian training.  Here were men Thomas would love to take
under his wing and entrust the village’s safety to.  If their strength could be
brought out.  If they could be trusted.

Likely these were the men Colbey would need to use. 
How he would use them and in what fashion depended on what move the other side
opened with.  With himself at the lead, a dozen skilled men could do true
damage to an enemy force.  If he could find the right places to hit.  If he
could find the fracture lines in the enemy’s structure.

Talking with these uncultured heathens was a chore and
a strain on his patience, but he needed to hook those other men, draw them in,
give them a reason to break and follow when he called.  Colbey turned his back
on the night, deciding that waiting would only increase the difficulty.  It had
already taken far too long to distinguish their potential from the trash midden
they were mixed among.  He traipsed down the plank steps in the darkness with
supernatural ease to plunge back into the abyss, searching for his school of
fish.

Book 02

Mercenary

Footsteps echoed hollowly from the irregular stone. 
Torchlight flickered in a phantom halo surrounding Secunda.  Deep in the
catacombs, the narrow voids within the earth widened into passages and
caverns.  Blackness beyond the light created an illusion of endless space
belied by the wet heat pressing down with claustrophobic weight.  All around,
damp stone columns loomed from the darkness, their dancing forms calling to
mind starving creatures, ready to slaughter everything they came upon in
desperate hunger.  Their fluted surfaces reminded her uncomfortably of
glistening fangs.

Falling drops echoed between her footsteps, plinking
into shallow pools.  Or perhaps not so shallow after all.  This subterranean
world could be wickedly deceptive.  Stone gleamed in the fire light.  The
pillars clinging to the cave ceiling looked to be sweating from the heat of the
land’s secret heart.

Each step required care through the outer passages. 
The cave floor was uneven with cracked rock and sharp points that strove toward
a stalagmite future.  Dark pools could appear as solid stone in the faint
torchlight, light the darkness only scoffed at.  Acolytes had vanished at times
when they were due back.  She had no intention of joining them in their
undiscovered fates.

Secunda reached the door she sought at the cavern’s
far end.  Dark and heavy, its deep inlays had been carved with ancient
designs.  Three shadowy figures, their genders hidden beneath the same
acid-green robes she wore, stood near the door.  One nodded after she made the
proper signs and allowed her access to the portal.

Set in the stone wall several feet above the uneven
floor, the door concealed the next passageway.  She carefully climbed a curving
ledge barely wide enough for her feet.  Cautious to keep from pitching
backward, she performed the precise series of knocks required.  One knock on the
carving of people gathered under a tree large enough to conceal the sky.  Two
knocks on the scene of a deep cavern pool surrounded by dark figures.  Three
knocks on the carving between.

This carving held a black figure, so black that at
first she had taken it for a silhouette, but the truth was far less simple. 
Features existed within that deep blackness, if one had the courage to search
closely for them.  She had, once.  After the sensation of being pulled into an
endless void of cold nothingness, of losing herself, Secunda never wished to do
so again.

A pulsing throb arced through her knuckles with each
rap.  She felt warm heat ripple through her hand in time with her knocks as an
unseen heart added its rhythmic beat to her own flesh and blood.  The dark life
within the carving reached for her.  Secunda shivered as the last knock
sounded.

The door swung inward on soundless hinges.  Beyond,
the caves changed, for here the catacombs had known the hand of man.  Doors set
in the stone corridor led to rooms sculpted for human use.  Natural
architecture had been enhanced by artisans, transforming the depths into a
splendorous palace far below the surface.

Mats of woven reeds carpeted the hallways to provide
sure footing on the damp stone.  The plain doors were new, the originals having
been lost long ago to the ravages of time and water.  Intricate carvings still
covered the natural rock columns and walls, but were worn down, their edges
softened, the definition lost.  They too would be restored in time when trusted,
loyal artisans could be brought to the true faith.  Originally the carvings had
been astoundingly lifelike and biological, combining with the earthy heat to
create a sensation that the beholder stood within the throbbing body of a
mammoth god.  Now, with the damaging erosion, the healthy supernatural essence
seemed diseased.  Walking the reclaimed passageways felt like traveling through
decomposing intestines, rotting even as they still served their host.

It was an astoundingly apt portrayal of the truth.

She hurried through the inclining passages, noticing
the increase in activity since her departure.  Green robes swarmed in greater
numbers than before, but unlike before many were trimmed in red.  Tension
pervaded the ancient cavern network.  She had no time to investigate since her
orders demanded she report immediately upon her return.

Those orders were superceded when she entered the
central cavern containing the temple on the far end.  Without warning, a
piercing shriek split the air, ear shattering in its volume.  The pure crystal
tone vibrated her bones…or at least she thought it did.

It was the alarm.  An intruder had breached the
defenses.  Instructions were clear on what to do in such an event.  Everyone
immediately raced to confront the threat.  The tone pinpointed the breach in
the eastern tunnels.

Battle sounds echoed through the passages.  They grew
louder the closer Secunda raced.  The woven mats disappeared underfoot when her
running brought her into tunnels used less regularly, left undeveloped by the
faithful.  Though the tunnel floor remained relatively smooth, the walls and
ceiling resumed their irregular stone shapes.

Shouts and the crackling of spells mixed with furious
commands.  She came to the entrance of a large cavern with robed figures
filling the central floor.  Around them, the walls supported numerous natural
stone shields with fifteen-foot draperies hanging in pleated stone curtains. 
Flowstone dwarfing the men poured down the walls in frozen waterfalls of white
and rusty-red.  Delicate haystraws hung suspended overhead in a forest of
several thousand stone needles.

This cavern also had many side-caves.  Most opened far
up on the walls, unsuitable for daily use.  The intruder must have found a way
in through one.

Mages in their red-trimmed robes yelled and cast
spells, each holding a torch they’d had the foresight to grab while they ran
into this unlit portion of the catacombs.  She stayed inside the passageway and
evaluated the situation.  Archbishop Burch of the Red Robes directed another
attack by calling for fire spells.  Under his command, twenty mages unleashed
their spells as one.  Secunda located the target by the massive fire spell’s
light a split moment before the attack found its mark.

High on the wall, in a smaller passage that emptied
into thin air, stood a man.  To judge from the bodies lying motionless on the
cavern floor, distance did not hamper his offensive capability.  As the fiery
mass born of the combined spells streaked toward him, he stood firm in the opening,
raising an arm clad in a red far deeper than the bloody trim on the mages’
robes.  Indeed, he seemed clad in no other color.  From his hair to his boots,
he walked as a crimson shade.

The fire exploded in massive, billowing clouds. 
Glowing red mushrooms of flame laced with black lightning burst across the
cavern’s upper reaches.  An earth-shattering roar louder than the alarm shook
the ground.  Secunda was blown off her feet to the tunnel floor.  A hurricane
of burning wind howled through the passageway, nearly blistering her skin.  She
scrambled back to her feet.  Had the Red Robes destroyed themselves in the
blast?

Smoke clouded the cavern.  Fragments of burning stone
arced from the wall, trailing darker smoke streams behind them.  Many fell on
the Red Robes who’d been flattened by the concussion wave.  They screamed when
glowing rock burned their flesh.  Others bent to help the wounded.

Through the ringing in her ears she heard Archbishop
Burch still shouting and, as the smoke thinned by ventilating through the
higher caves, she saw why.  Incredibly, the intruder remained in his tunnel,
unhurt, with nary a thread of his red garb torn.  The massive blast had barely
mussed his hair, though the dangling cave formations around his tunnel’s exit
had shattered.  He held his arm still outstretched, his palm forward.  Smoke
drifted from his fingers.  Not so much as a scorch mark marred his glove.

Several acolytes bearing weapons ran into the cavern
from different tunnels.  Archbishop Burch shrieked to be heard over the noise. 
“The cave below him!  Get in there!  Find a way up! 
Find a way up
!” 
They rushed forward.  Secunda dashed into the cavern to aid the Red Robes who
had not yet regained their feet.  The nearest had been blasted down atop
several sharp stone points, the stone breaking when he collapsed among them,
injuring him further.

When the last acolyte entered the lower cave, new
sounds of fighting erupted.  Two fled, pursued by something hurtling from
within.  It was the head, left arm and tattered remains of an acid-green robe,
severed diagonally from shoulder to the waist.

Secunda gaped at the meat thumping wetly to the stone
floor.  Something
occupied the lower tunnel.  It must posses
otherworldly strength to have shredded a trained acolyte in the blink of an
eye.

Burch frantically attempted to reorganize his mages
when Cardinal Xenos arrived, accompanied by the rest of the Red Robes.  They
crowded the cavern as cardinal and intruder locked eyes.

The cardinal did not wait for the Red Robes to gather
their strength, even though a combined attack would surely put an end to the
intruder as well as the cavern’s entire eastern end.  Instead he raised one
hand to display his god-granted power before his followers.

An archbishop in the Red Robes herself, Secunda felt
his power building.  She grabbed the wounded man off the floor, tugging him
over broken stone toward her passage with all the speed she could manage.  When
Cardinal Xenos released his spell, the entire cavern bucked and filled with
blinding light.

Stone again tumbled from the roof.  Several acolytes
screamed in terror.  When the ground stopped shaking, she looked at the wall
where the intruder had perched.  The hanging tunnels were there no longer; the
wall had become a molten mass of slow, sliding molasses.  Stone columns melted
like candles.  All who could move save the cardinal fled the choking smoke and
gas.

Xenos noticed Secunda lying on the floor with the
wounded Red Robe.  He walked to her side.  His calm expression masked the
seething anger boiling in his eyes.  “When did you return?”

She shook her head.  It did nothing to clear the
ringing.  “A moment before all this.  I heard the alarm.”

He nodded once and shortly demanded, “Follow me. 
Leave him for the others to look after.”

Cardinal Xenos walked placidly into the passage. 
After grabbing a passing Red Robe and transferring responsibility for the
wounded man to her, Secunda quickly followed him through a series of passages
to the personal quarters he occupied whenever in the catacombs.

She had been in them before, yet their strangeness
struck her anew.  They seemed to have been brought whole from the central
palace.  Carpets, wood paneling, bookshelves, desks, cabinets, even a
fireplace.  One would never know he stood in an underground cave when inside
these chambers.

He sat in a large, overstuffed chair facing the
hearth, offering her no invitation to sit as well.  She stood slightly behind
him, to one side.

“You failed.”

“Yes, your eminence.”  Sweat formed on her brow, as it
had not during the recent situation.

“Tell me the details.”

“Sixteen fell.  Only two were human.”

“Such losses for a village of savages with no concept
of the true use of their power?”  The dim light shrouded his angular face, the
fire reflecting in his narrow eyes making him look feral.

“Many of the defenders excelled in combat skills.”

“To damage your forces?  They must have been skilled
indeed.”

“Within hours of striking, the conquest was
completed.”

The eyes narrowed further.  “A successful conquest you
claim?”  A pause to allow consideration of her words, before, “Then tell me why
the object of your mission still lies fallow in the forest of a foreign land.”

She reported in a monotone.  “The wards around the
reservoir were many generations old.  The descendents have been maintaining
them and adding their own, but the recent shields did not compare with the
original casting.  The two sorcerers, the wizard and the Red Robes you assigned
to me combined their skill with my own.  We were unable to breach after peeling
away the surface layers.  A thorough examination after we were rebuffed
revealed it to be of sufficient strength to withstand us all.”

“What was the give?”

“At the peek of our working, I’d estimate the
resistance to still be over half.  If it had been more, we might have collapsed
the shield under continuous workings.”

“What of the shielding expert I sent with you?”

“He was one of the two who fell.  Yet even with him, I
doubt we could have triumphed.  I suggest that only a full team of adepts would
have a chance against such advanced shield energies.”

He sat in silence for long moments, causing her to
wonder if she had overstepped.  The sweat ran into her eyes.  She dared not
move.  “Continue.”

“It was obvious we lacked the skill to break the wards
on the reservoir.  The holdings of the forest settlement were smashed and I
deemed it safe from any outsiders that might discover it by chance.”

He continued gazing into the flames.  Secunda could
feel his displeasure growing.  She rushed to demonstrate her planning, hoping
to prove that any incompetence that had clouded the mission had not been hers.