Steel And Flame (Book 1) (6 page)

Modesty hardly mattered at a time like this.  He tore
off the remnants of her shirt and under-shift.  Colbey rinsed the torn rags in
the water so he could clean the wound.  Once it was as clean as he could make
it, he bound it tightly.

Colbey was far from satisfied with the job.  Her
breasts interfered with his normal binding technique so he could not wrap
tightly as he liked.  He would rush her back.  One of the women tending the
wounded would make a better job of it.

When he reached the council tree’s base he realized he
had overlooked a separate problem.  He would never be able to free climb all
the way to the platform bearing the weight of a person.  Colbey swore to
himself as he left her propped against a gnarled root.

He found one of the other searchers.  The two salvaged
rope lengths from a damaged maintenance building meant to service the
walkways.  They made a length long enough to reach the ground by tying these
together.  Colbey climbed back down and tied the end around the woman, then
lashed her to his back with a shorter length.

With the second man supporting most of her weight by
pulling from above, Colbey carried her up without any close calls.  They
quickly hustled her to the council building.  Colbey resumed the hunt while his
helper took the rope and left to find the remaining Guardians.  The others
might need extra help themselves.

Not long after, Colbey found Council Member Orlan,
clinging to a root and barely clinging to his life.

*        *        *        *        *

“Do you know,” Orlan rasped while Colbey lashed him to
his back in preparation for the climb to the council hall, “I was…thinking of
you this afternoon…or was it yesterday?  I’ve lost track of time.”  His
breathing was shallow and uneven, his voice a whisper Colbey would have been
unable to distinguish had Orlan’s mouth been further than a few inches from his
ear.

“Elder, you need rest.  I’ll get you to the Healers as
soon as possible.” 
Healers?  Only by the barest definition.  Everyone with
Healing talent is dead! 
The magnitude of what had occurred crashed down on
the young scout’s head worse with each realization.

“Colbey—”  A hacking cough interrupted that lasted
several moments.  Colbey felt the elder’s chest heaving against his back.  The
old man labored for air.  “While you were gone…did you learn of any who could
have…could have done this?”

He felt his helper pull on the rope to take up the
slack between them.  This was far from the safest method to bring either
himself or the victims up to the council building, but time worked against them
and he would have to compensate for the odd weight distributions and tugging
jerks with his climbing skill.  Colbey gripped the handholds provided by the
thick bark and said, “I did not learn anything about a force of men gathering,
no.  And Thomas said Adel did not recognize the invaders.  She would have known
anyone coming from the fringe.”

“From…from out past the…fringe then?”  The council
member seemed to be losing strength.  Maybe he would pass out.  That might be
best, perhaps.

“I heard no rumors of such.”

“It’s strange…Colbey.  I look around…there’s no
bodies.”  The old man must be passing into delirium.  Colbey could see far too
many bodies.  He knew the memories would never leave him in peace.  “I saw
several of them fall…where are their bodies?”

“You mean the attackers?”  Come to think of it, Colbey
had only found the dead of his own people, scattered like flotsam on the shores
of the Southern Sea.  Surely the combined force of the Guardians, scouts and
the villagers must have slain some of their foes!  “You are right.  I haven’t
seen any foreign bodies.  Only our people.”

“And the demons…I know a few…fell to the Guardians.  I
saw them fall…taking men with them.”

In moments he would pass out.  Colbey felt glad of
it.  His skin had begun to crawl.

Orlan must be near delirious.  His last words
guaranteed it!  And yet, looking around at the mass destruction, a terrible
evil had been afoot here.  He would make certain he spoke with Thomas later.

After he reached the top, he and the villager carried
the council member back inside the building from which he had served his people
for so many years.

*        *        *        *        *

The Guardians uncovered a cache of torches from
another ruined storeroom and distributed them to the searchers while the light
faded.  All through the night Colbey worked by torchlight, crawling over roots,
toppling wreckage aside, climbing to stranded buildings or searching out hidden
places.  In one such hideaway he remembered from his own childhood adventures,
he discovered a pair of children, six years old and so terrified they had
finally fallen asleep in each other’s arms from sheer exhaustion.

Calming them after he interrupted their slumber turned
into a real test of his skills.  Eventually he soothed them enough to bring
them back to the council hall.  The workers there were near the end of their
endurance.  They each suffered from wounds themselves.  Ceryl, a matronly woman
with graying hair, accepted the young ones.  She immediately put them to work
carrying supplies and changing bowls of fouled water with fresh.

Thomas lay there, passed out from exertion.  His cloak
and tunic were off.  A second man worked to change the bandages Colbey had
noticed before.  The older Guardian had sustained an arcing gash down his side which
curved across the top of his stomach.  Any lower and he would have been
disemboweled.

Whole and young, Colbey returned to his labors.

Dawn broke.  He still sifted the wreckage for any
faltering life.  Colbey had been awake for an entire cycle of day and night,
but he pushed on.  His training provided him with techniques by which a tired
man might find extra strength to continue.

With the words Councilor Orlan had passed to him in
mind, he also searched for any signs of the invaders; broken weapons, torn bits
of cloth, dead or wounded laying where they fell.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing
could be found and Colbey refused to believe it possible.  There must be
clues!  He might believe they carried their wounded and dead away with them in
accordance to whatever religion they followed, except it defied plausibility
for a large group to fight without having at least a few pieces of equipment
break in battle.  As well, not a single arrow protruded from bark or wall. 
Colbey had found numerous arrows yet recognized every one as products from the
village fletchers.

The sun rose higher.  Noon arrived.  He continued to
work.  Finally, while the sun disappeared behind the tree line a second time,
Thomas called a halt.  Every corner in the village and surrounding forest had
been searched multiple times.  Anyone surviving the attack by the unknown
assailants had been found.

Of the entire village, hidden for generations upon
generations within the forest’s depths, only forty-seven remained.

*        *        *        *        *

Piecing together what had happened turned out to be no
easy task.  No one still alive had either been present at the catastrophe’s
start or been in the village’s southern end where the attack seemed to have
initiated.

Colbey had nothing to contribute yet so he listened to
the twenty-two men and women capable of speech struggling to fit the puzzle
together.  The noncombatants among them each told the same story.  They had
been about their normal day’s routine when the sudden shouting, destruction and
unearthly roars shattered the peace.  Most were buried under collapsing
buildings before they had a chance to fight or flee.

Thomas gave the account for the remaining Guardians, a
dishearteningly small number.  He sat in the head council chair, his wounds
having been aggravated to the point where merely standing brought pain.  Also,
he was the senior village member at the moment with the exception of Orlan, who
still lay unconscious on the room’s far side with the severely wounded.

“The others and myself were on patrol duty.  A pall
came over the forest and we knew trouble was happening.  Most of the animals
were fleeing from the direction of the village, so we turned and headed back. 
We met up along the paths and formed a group.  Every scout and Guardian who was
working the southern patrols has turned up dead, so I assume they fell to the
invaders before they reached the village.

“When we arrived, most of the damage had already been
done.  A resistance had formed in the hanging gardens east of the Ivy
Platform.  Council Member Farr was leading and organizing them, and we joined
his forces.  Our foes were two.  Men and women dressed in green robes with red
trims, and others wearing white robes with hoods, but the hoods were unused and
falling down their backs.  Some in the green robes were chanting what had to be
spells since the surrounding structures collapsed or exploded as they did so.”

This bad news elicited denials from most of the
survivors.  Nobody wanted to hear it.  Invaders were bad enough but the
presence of magic users here, so close to the pool they had protected for
generations, was the worst news possible.  It meant the Guardians had failed to
fulfill their primary function; to protect that which they had been created to
protect.

“I saw this with my own eyes!” Thomas shouted over the
protests from those who had been knocked unconscious before they could witness
the facts personally.  The effort cost him.  He dissolved into a heavy
breathing interspersed with coughs.  Finally he recovered enough to continue. 
“They were only a few and their power was greater than ours!  But however few
they were, they were able to control those demons they had before them.  You
all saw.”

As they all had, with the exception of Colbey.  Each,
to a man, had described the horrors which shredded the populace.  At first he
attributed it to shock, but the repeated stories and identical descriptions
finally convinced him.

The magic users had not been half as destructive as
the monsters they brought with them.  Nearly twice the height of a man, they
were covered with course brown or black hair that could have been mistaken for
fur in any society other than this one, as familiar with the weirdling beasts
of the deep forest as they were.  They bore the heads of beasts with furious,
predator’s eyes.  Many had horns on their heads which curved like a pair of
sickles.  A few carried weapons large as a man, mostly oversized axes or clubs.

The raw strength possessed by these demon creatures
reached beyond comprehension, Colbey had been told repeatedly.  A single swing
shattered walls or toppled walkways.  He remembered the mangled bodies missing
limbs and found he could imagine it all too clearly.

“They fought their way through us.  All of us combined
defeated only a handful of these creatures.  Whatever they were, they bled and
died.  But most of us were struck down.  I fell myself and was left for dead. 
From where I lay, I could see them continue to the heart of the village.”

He stopped then.  The people listening murmured to
each other.  Colbey allowed them to for several moments, then he spoke out on
the matters the others had avoided.  “I came back in the same manner as the
other Guardians, but through a forest devoid of animals.  I have spent two days
searching for survivors and have three questions.  One, what happened to the
enemy dead?  You say you cut down a number of these monsters, yet I have found
no traces of them.”

“I lost consciousness soon after I fell.  I didn’t see
what happened to them.”  The others also professed a lack of knowledge.  With
everything else happening, no one had noticed what became of their fallen
enemies.

“Very well.  That brings up my second question.  I
arrived late in the afternoon.  You say this began shortly before dusk the
previous day.  Where did they go?  After conquering us, they turned and left?”

One of the young children Colbey had discovered
suddenly started squirming.  She reluctantly spoke when everyone’s attention
turned on her.  “We saw them.  From our hiding hole.  All the monsters left the
south end with the white robes.”

“You didn’t see anything else?”

“I was too scared,” the child murmured.  She shook
slightly and looked near to tears. 

“It’s all right,” comforted Ceryl.  “When did you see
them go?”

“Maybe after sunrise.”  Her small voice hitched as she
buried her face in Ceryl’s chest.

“So half a day before I arrived then,” Colbey said. 
“Whatever they were after, they either found it, couldn’t find it or couldn’t
get it.  If they couldn’t find it, they would have spent more time looking
after the effort they had gone through.  I’m inclined to believe they either
got it or couldn’t get it.  The presence of these mages only leaves
me
one conclusion.  Thomas, is there anyone left who knows how to work with
seals?  We need to check the defenses on the pool.”

“I’m afraid that you’re right,” Thomas softly
admitted, silencing the few moans from the others.  “Unfortunately, the only
one left is Orlan.  If he ever wakes up, it will be a long time before he’s up
to the job.”