The Last Heroes Before Judgement (9 page)

Moser falls filled the air with freezing water droplets. Only the center of the river had thawed and the base of the falls was the same. Occasionally, a large block of ice would come spilling over the edge and land with a crash. The suddenness of the noise woke Kru. He stayed nestled in my arms and buried his nose from the cold.

“I agree, the air is too wet to be this cold. I think it is helping though, with the madness and all. And there he goes. Of course, we missed our chance.”

Sloan was already being ferried across the river. I watched him as we approached the mountain side. His hilt felt mine, and he looked down smiling. He told the ferryman a joke about me and they filled the gully with a crude laughter that ended with them both hacking and coughing. I prepared to scream up at them, but Kru huffed impatiently.

“You’re right, I’m turning out to be just like them.”

Kru looked at me and yawned, bored with my depressing mood. The Swillian Incursion had brought so much evil to the coastal kingdoms that, even though it failed, the savages succeeded in tainting everyone and everything that was not razed to the ground. The priest and the ferryman disappeared from view and I could finally see the ladder of stone. The shadows were all wrong and I spun around in confusion. The sun was already so low that more light was bouncing off the water, making it glow and shoot rainbows through the densest clouds of mist.

“Kru, it’s almost sunset. We might only have one shot at this.”

I was so busy talking to myself that he was first to hear the convoy approaching. He hurried me onward and upward, but I wanted to prepare. I paused at the bottom of the ladder and tried the first rung. Each level had a rock pole over an arch carved out of the rock face. They were each a yard apart. The bottom rungs had cracks from overuse and crumbled at the lightest touch. Looking up, I could not see the top against the quickly darkening sky. The steeds were getting louder as we climbed higher and they bolstered my confidence. Kru was not happy about being stuffed into my stinky vest, reminding me to wash it as soon as I found soap. He barked at the approach of his mother and tried to whine to her about his fear of heights. There were no more missing rungs to the ladder, however, the last few yards to the top were blocked by ice. The convoy rumbled to a stop close enough to shake loose a few hanging sickles. I screamed from almost losing my grip. The ferryman laughed as he approached the eastern shore and let them know I was on the ladder.

“Is that right? You down there boy-o?”

“Major Bloodaxe! We’re down here, under the ice.”

“What’s that you say? Knock off all this ice?”

“No sir. Please don’t!”

The behemoth began jumping up and down on the ice block, laughing all the while. The smallest of the ice sickles fell off and shattered against my protective shells. The madman did not stop until the whole block was loosed from the edge. As it rolled past us, the larger sickles wedged tightly around my back shell and peeled us off the wall. I managed to hold onto the stone with enough strength to rip it out of the mountain, barely throwing it away before it could crush Kru.

“Not again!”

We fell down fast and landed so hard that the giant block of snow and ice exploded. My face was scratched raw with frozen chunks as they bounced off the rock wall. Somehow, we survived. Tina, Kru’s mother, was over the edge barking like mad. I held up Kru for her to see and her barking died down to unveil the argument Major Bloodaxe was having with the ferryman. I thought he was angry about knocking us off the wall. No, they were simply haggling over the increased price of a night time passage across the river. Then, all at once, as it always seems to happen during the winter months, the sun went down. Immediately, the world was blanketed in darkness.

“A rope! Please throw us a rope! Please!”

Major Bloodaxe gave in to the ferryman’s demands and reluctantly paid the price. With his mood so soured, I was surprised to see that he actually threw down a rope. However, he did not bother to tie it off to anything.

“Do you see this Kru? I am holding both ends. This is just ridiculous.”

I could hear the first cart being slowly loaded onto the ferry, but, even the moon was hidden from view beyond the cliff. While I thought about what to do next, I kicked over the remaining sickles to prevent from being impaled in the event of another fall. I rolled the rope into a loop, threw it over my shoulder, and set back to climbing. I reached the previous height just as Major Talon was loading her cart onto the ferry. Not only was that rung now missing, all of the ones above that had been ripped off with the ice. There was just enough depth to the concave areas to use them as handholds. Even that would not allow me to reach the top. I climbed down, very slowly, all the while chanting a lie.

“I’m not afraid of heights. Kru, say it. We’re not afraid of heights.”

By the time we reached the bottom, we both had to pee out a whole jug’s worth of fear.

“Kru, I have a plan. You aren’t going to like it. Don’t worry, it will work- I hope.”

I tied the rope to the straps of my back shell, putting it on wrong so that it would hang from one shoulder. The uneven weight only slightly choked my neck. Kru was in the loose vest so he dug his claws into me for grip. We climbed slow enough that Major Swiftblade was loading his cart when we ran out of rungs. Each move after that was even slower and much more dangerous. I had both hands in the small holds and one leg stretched out to keep our weight unbalanced, pulling us opposite the shell. The convoy was completely across when we reached the top of the broken ladder. And, the cliff’s edge was still blocked by a smooth outcropping with no one left to help.

“Sorry boy, this is the part you won’t like. You’re going to make it, I promise. Say it with me, we’re not afraid of heights.”

Kru was- thankfully- too scared to struggle and froze stiff in my hand. I pulled him out of my vest and took a deep breath. I had no choice but to throw him over the barrier and close my eyes to listen. He hit the road and shrieked in relief. I slid the shell off next and swayed dangerously to give the heavy weight some momentum. With the other end of the rope in my mouth, I threw the shell up and over. Kru was startled, crying out as though he had been crushed. I pulled the rope down until the shell got stuck on something and sighed.

“Fine, I admit it, I am afraid of heights.”

The shell could not hold my weight but it could at least aid in the jump. I aimed to get my foot in the very top hand hold and then laid flat against the slick rock. I was frozen in fear and Kru knew it. He dragged the shell as far as he could. I jumped and pulled and scrambled over the edge just in time for the shell to react- by whipping up into my nose. I screamed from fear more than pain. Kru was happy to see me, but all I could do was lay on the road, laughing and shaking and crying from the nerves. A small victory, as I still had to cross the river.

The hilt had stopped giving me strength when the sun went down and the rush from the climb drained all that I had to spare. Stretching did not help and the only water I had to drink came from the same freezing river I still had yet to cross. The ferry line was made of the thickest rope I had ever seen, and, even it had turned mostly to ice. The moon was nearly full but much dimmer and darker than it had been the night before. The line was so weighed down that where it went slack the current pulled it into the water, making the way across disappear altogether.

“Alright boy, we’re going in blind so prepare to get wet. Oh, and possibly go rushing over the falls. Are you ready?”

Kru mimicked my tired face and began stretching. I grabbed both ends of our rope and threw the center loop over the ferry line. The ice was tall enough to walk down until my shell hit the water. The freshly melted liquid was still ice cold. Floating chunks of ice and snow slammed into the shell, bursting in my face. That was no worse than being completely drenched. Kru kept dry at first, until we- and the ferry line- dipped under the water. I was nearly standing on it to pull the rope forward. The center of the river ran the fastest, making the second half of the trip easier.

I worried about the noise we made touching down on the ferry. My shell knocked on the wood several times and Kru barked for his freedom while I untied our rope. Even frozen to the bones, I hid us before the ferryman could hobble out and look. He spread the curtain of his window for light and checked for footprints in the snow. He crouched low, wheezing from the strain of bending over, and checked under the line of young pines that marked the boundary of his yard. Then he hopped through them, muttering to himself angrily. He opened the back door forcefully and a woman inside cried out from the surprise. Slamming the door behind him did not stop me from hearing every word.

“Aint nothin’ out there woman. Now where’s my damn tea?”

He hurried her to the front door and shut it behind her. She came out carrying two heavy black pots and wearing thin sleeping robes. She also muttered to herself, but came down to the river side where I was actually hiding. Between the ferryman’s thick Slorrick drawl, and her soft facial features, I was sure that they once called Finn their son. I slid down and away but the pile of snow we were hiding behind ended into the water. I had Kru’s mouth, and had to cover mine as well, because of the uncontrollable chattering of my teeth.

“Yea, it’s no worries. Probably just heard that poor boy fallin’ to his doom is all.”

She dumped the contents of the pots and dipped them both into river before giving them a quick scrubbing.

“Dangerous times… as if cheating the Bloodaxe weren’t bad enough.”

She finished by huffing and filling one of the pots with fresh water. She stood to leave but first adjusted her robes. She stared up at Mother Moon, and my teeth stopped chattering from a case of slack jaw. Her legs were revealed to have several thick matching lines of scar tissue. In the name of the allFather, she had been dipped to boil many times over the years. To me, the sacrifice of pain was the underKing’s bidding. But then, the Swillians were no better- using the pox as a weapon to expand their empire. When she went back inside, I crawled onto shore, still shaking my head, and hid several paces away under the largest pine I could find. I pulled off my wet clothes and hung them on the lowest branches to dry. However, Kru could do no such thing with his fur.

“You’re alright boy, they didn’t see us. No one will ever hurt you like that- I promise.”

We both laid there in a pile of pine needles, shivering and moaning, until our heat filled the shell. I worried about Kru being cold and wet but neither of us had the energy to build a fire or find food. Every waking moment was misery and the frozen metallic hilt amplified that as well. My head was freezing into a block of ice, and it froze the most miserable images in front of my eyes. Even the ferryman’s wife, two days from the nearest Sheriff, somehow suffered the heartless traditions of the Slorrick. All their gods ever seemed to want was a sacrifice of pain, and yet, all it ever seemed to accomplish was to make weak men feel strong. And they always seemed to be the same type of men that somehow knew exactly what the gods wanted from us.

“That’s why she did it Kru. There was nothing good waiting for her, nothing but pain. You know what? I’m glad Ulfbar burned to the ground. They deserved it.”

Leiza chose to die with her innocence, and I could not stay angry about that. I wondered how Lazarus was dealing with the loss his twin sister. In my own undying quest for honor, there was no innocence left to be had. All the evil the Swillians piled into the great scales, the gods would be far less forgiving of my transgressions. In that way, the Tonney’s were right to keep me in a cage, as I could only pray that the uncontrollable red shadow would wait for the field of battle.

My bladder woke me before the sun could. Kru dug into the pillow of needles to hide from the open air. I thought hanging my clothes out would help them dry. They were frozen stiff. I knocked the snow off the top of the shell and laid out the pants and vest on its dark surface. We went back to sleep to wait until first light. The ferryman walked past on his way to the outhouse and did not see us sleeping under the tree. We quickly made ready to move after the close call. I was dressed and crouching with Kru when the ferryman sped back to his house.

“Gotta grab those pearls ‘for them damned sanitation boys get ‘em.”

The fool was either planning on extorting the price of a crossing, or worse, somehow convincing his son to loot my squished corpse. He already had Major Bloodaxe’s gigantic beaver’s tail cloak strung up on a drying line. Just as with the lords of Ulfbar, I decided to exact my revenge without violence. He burst out through the front door and I dove under the tree line into the back yard. The lady called after him, but he whistled loudly to block out her voice. Their noise covered my advance into the yard. The cloak made for a very large roll and I even grabbed some fish they had left out to dry. They kept arguing louder as I made the high road and the dirty ferryman would have seen me clearly if he were not turned away, purposely ignoring his wife.

“The poor lady eh? Oh well, breakfast?”

Kru snatched a frozen filet out of my hand with such a force that it broke into pieces. I picked up what was dropped, fit it back on the line with the rest, and threw the icy treats over my shoulder to thaw. We were trotting in the wheel marks while the sun rose into full view. The power excited me to run faster. Not long after that, the tracks ended short. I came upon everyone still yawning and stretching. Kru barked and ran for his mother and he even received a few cheers from the big dogs. The snow must have convinced Lazarus of a delayed spring, because he had wrapped his body so completely that only his eyes and fingertips were left exposed. I thought he ran at me shaking from the cold, however, he was preparing to angrily shake the life out of my body.

“Matthius, you idiot. Can you not think? Is your head filled with stones?”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“You give him exactly what he wants from you every time. When are you going to grow up and think about the mess you always make- always?”

“I see you brought my pup back safe boy-o. And you had time to steal some pearls.”

“Well, Sinner no longer needed them, and I couldn’t just let those dirty sanitation boys get ahold of them. Also, sir, I believe you dropped this.”

Lazarus ripped the cloak out from under my arm and shook it out. He was huffing and looking away on purpose so I shrugged it off as the typical morning grumps, amplified by the loss of his sister. I was cautious about touching him in such a state, so I only tapped on his shoulder.

“Those pearls are yours now brother.”

“That one is mine. I do pick them well. Now, prepare my cart for departure boy. The convoy sets in at the training center this day!”

With Major Swiftblade making noise so early, I was confident the mood would hold all day. I quickly got his tent in order, and also turned over the fire pit out of habit. I found Senjay making a mess of Major Talon’s equipment. He was so frustrated he tried to shoo me away.

“Hey, it’s real swell to see you too brother.”

“I knew you would make it fine. I’m just sick is all. You gotta back away.”

“Come now Senjay, you know Swillians are immune.”

When I jumped into the cart he turned away, but, he was holding his stomach - not covering his mouth. I raised a brow, certain that his sickness stemmed from consuming tainted foods.

“Your face is as green as your eyes. You didn’t get the fire burning hot enough, did you?”

He wanted to tell me off so I made retching noises, and he vomited over the short wall of the cart. I got the equipment tidied up and tucked away neat for him. The fish had a small chance of being tainted by whatever made Senjay sick, and it was enough to keep me from taking that risk. I kept the thin fishing line for myself and tossed the filets into the trees for the birds. Major Talon again approached me while still getting dressed so I nervously asked the first question I had.

“Ma’am, why are you the only Slorrick woman I’ve ever seen without the burn scars?”

“I knew you were lying. Exactly how many girls have you seen boy?”

I looked even further away and felt my face turn bright red.

“Why not ask the brother of your friend, the Sheriff.”

“Ma’am, I don’t understand. Sheriff Wellings has no brother ma’am.”

I shrugged my shoulders at her and she mimicked me with her own look of surprise and holding her hands up. When I blinked she grabbed the two fore-fingers of both of my hands and bent them backwards with a twist. I slowly knelt before her and she leaned in very close.

“Not anymore!”

She squeezed harder as her face twisted into the smile of evil pleasures. Thankfully, Major Bloodaxe laughed, so did everyone else, and so did she. She let go before my wrists could break, but she was not finished making her point.

“Why you look on me pervert? Make a turtle soup. And you. You laugh but you have no shell. Turtle has no shell! Turtle has no shell!”

The dogs recognized the order and Senjay was pounced on over and over until he retrieved his shell from the cart. While we waited for him, Kru ran over to me and jumped on top of my shell. He managed to balance up there and howled as if he had conquered a great enemy. We howled back at him, doing more pushups while Major Bloodaxe joined us, and continuing until he was fully warmed up for the morning run.

“You’re all lucky it snowed in the night. Mount up. We’ll be headed off road and I don’t want any of you’s breaking an ankle in some hidden snake hole.”

“Sir yes sir!”

Major Bloodaxe led us down the road several miles and proved to have accurately memorized the hidden path. We made a left turn as the paved road turned right. The steeds were only slightly slowed on the gravel trail, as the deep snow helped provide traction under their hooves. When the trail ended, the Bloodaxe flourished his fire cannon and delighted in blazing a new path through a patch of frozen saplings. The ball of lightning rolled atop the snow and left a path of hot mist in its wake, before bursting into flames some fifty feet away. The steeds passed through easily and lined up the carts in a row on a hidden plateau. The Bloodaxe hurried us out of the carts and chased us up a serpentine stair case that had been dug out and filled with gravel long ago. We slipped and tripped many times, sprinting as fast as was possible given the ice and the incline. Eventually, we spilled out onto another plateau at the top of a very high peak. We were more than one hundred yards above and beside the high road, and could see it rolling clearly across the valley for many miles. It ended at a waterfall many times larger than the Moser, and circled back with the mountain that separated our flood plain from the next valley.

“Sir, where are we?”

“Well boy-o, this is Red Heart Run. West across the gorge there, that’s Embraun.”

“What? Can’t hardly see it through the trees.”

“That’s the whole point. That whole mountainside is the city and they even got a whole port on the Lokah side of the ice. It’s all hidden from view.”

“Did the Lokah allow them to cut into their glaciers?”

“You know how they got permission? That twin peak rising up out of the plains is New Lantya. The Lantos have no power left anywhere else in the world but this one city. That’s how Embraun became the capitol of all the Unified Nations.”

“You meant, because it is the richest city in the union.”

“That’s right son, and they protect it thusly. That observatory aint always pointed up. So, you’s best act like it’s watching, even when it’s not. Is that understood?”

“Sir yes sir!”

The high road led to a bridge across a dammed section of the mountain that had split long ago. A small village of houses were dug into the rock and lifted up by stilts on both sides. Above the damn, the Lokah had built a series of high-arched bridges across the water from which guards in bright white uniforms were inspecting ships headed into and out of the Lantos territory. Through that one window cut into the mountain, we could see the Lokah plains for many miles. To my surprise, the lands that led up to the first blank faced step of the giant’s stairway were not the barren tundra and frozen lakes I had imagined. It seemed the high altitude landscape was only bordered by the ice, and they had preserved a lush forest of the same gigantic scarlet pines that grew on the western slopes. It was much more impressive than the farms and ranches below us.

The valley floor was almost entirely cleared out to be a grassy plain, except for small patches of trees that were too uniformly spaced to have any purpose other than dividing boundaries. The steeds from our convoy had made their way down another hidden serpentine on the southern face of our little mountain and galloped freely out in the endless fields. They conquered every hilltop, digging for green grass and eating to their fill.

“They’ve got the right idea now haven’t they? Tell you boys what, you wanna go run around in the snow as well?”

“Yes sir.”

“Of course, sire.”

“Good, go fetch Rosalien. I need her to take me into town.”

“But sir, the steeds will be miles away before we can reach them.”

“Well then, you had better get your arses down there already!”

We ran back down the serpentine, slipping just as much, and moving twice as fast. When we reached the plateau, I saw the Majors had unlocked two sliding doors- twice the height of the carts- and I was entranced while they pushed them apart.

“C’mon Matthius.”

There was an entire compound carved into the back of the lonely little mountain, but, staring into the dark chasm offered me nothing. Senjay and Lazarus were racing down the next serpentine, and I was already too far behind catch them. I wanted to slide down through the middle. Even with that, the steeds were already racing north to play in the warm streams. The northern slope seemed designed for travel by way of back shell, given the way I slid down so quickly. When we had finally rounded his steed, Major Bloodaxe even used his cloak as a sled and shot through the trail I left with the widest grin.

“I’ve gotta turn in this loot for whoever was robbed, because that’s what an honorable man does. You lot prepare yourselves to begin a regimen of basic training. We start tomorrow and go ‘til someone dies, or the spring melt- whichever happens first. I won’t be babying none of you either, that’s the corporal’s job.”

“Sir yes sir.”

He left us there, out of breathe and at the bottom of the mountain. Our eyes shifted between the three of us as we wondered who would be chosen as corporal. I did not know if the rank held after our training but I needed the chance to prove my worth. Before too long, Major Bloodaxe let out a series of ear piercing whistles that sent the steeds on a trot back up the hill.

“Oi matey, tell you what. That was a neat trick sliding down and all, but I’m betting I make the summit before you’s two’s.”

“Is that so, Master Pirate?”

“Make turtle soup!”

Lazarus barked at the back of Senjay’s head so convincingly that he dropped down without hesitation. Before we understood the ruse, Lazarus circled round and jumped off Senjay’s back. He landed on a passing steed and grabbed two fistfuls of mane, laughing crazily from the nerves.

“All that for a rush? You could have been impaled! Did you not think about that mess?”

He turned back, pulling down his face cover to stick out his tongue. I thought Senjay would have agreed that it was not fair. He simply rushed past me up the slope. Major Bloodaxe was so massive that his passing had plowed the snow clear to the grass line. We all raced up the hill laughing and calling out taunts to one another as if training had already begun. Majors Talon and Swiftblade were watching from above, wringing their hands and discussing how best to fill the training curriculum with as much misery as possible. By then, it was already too late to break us down. Compared to losing our home, the lives we had built, and Leiza herself, training for a war sounded like a blessing.