Across the fray, p.18
Across the Fray, page 18
part #5 of Jon Oklar Series
“You’re Syrah Fielder,” Hadley said.
“You’re the witch from Rohaer?”
“Is there more than one?” Hadley asked as we continued to loosen the straps of the harness so we could get out of it.
“No, but I’m from there also,” Syrah said as she came over and began to help Hadley with the harness.
“Oh,” Hadley replied with interest. “When did you leave?”
“Many years ago. The king there is not a good man. I heard you’ve had dealings with him as well.”
“I have,” Hadley replied. “Was he always as bad as he is now?”
“Yes. I found out years ago that he was interested in using dteria to empower his kingdom,” Syrah said, “It is why I became dedicated to stopping him. Everything is about to culminate. We must not allow any errors.”
“We understand,” Hadley said. “We will follow your orders.”
“There are no orders among my people. We come to agreements. I only wished to introduce myself so that you may better trust my suggestions.”
It was a shame I hadn’t gotten to know Syrah earlier.
I had used this harness enough to become very familiar with it, so I was out first. I took a moment to appreciate the dozens of wagons headed toward Salbeth, protected by at least a hundred people. Most were men, with bows visible, but there were more than a few women scattered among them.
“Do you have any trackers with you?” I asked Syrah.
“One, but I wouldn’t call her talent a gift like I would yours, Jon, or yours, Hadley.”
Hadley asked, “My skill with curses is known among your people?”
“We found out it was one of your mana break stones that ended the bout in the forest, and it was Jon’s healing that got most of my people back on their feet. Would you mind walking through now, healer, and offering your gift? A few need some of your magic, and all should be checked for the pox.”
“Yes, I was planning to.”
“Jon, do you think you should fetch Aliana first?” Hadley asked. “She might be able to tell us which way an attack could be coming from.” Hadley looked at Syrah. “Unless you think your scout will suffice?”
“Any traveling group would be foolish to turn down another tracker.”
Hadley put her hand on my arm. “Let’s go.”
“You’re not going to stay?” Syrah asked Hadley.
“Jon might need help locating Nykal’s troops,” she replied.
“But can he bring you and the tracker back here?”
“No, I thought…” Hadley paused.
“We could use a strong witch just as much as another tracker.”
Hadley glanced up at me. “Do you think you can find them if they aren’t in Salbeth? I would just follow the southern road out. It might split eventually, but stay to the east and you should be fine.”
“Yes, I’ll find them. It’s locating all of you again where I might have trouble. Maybe it’s best if I stay.”
Syrah said, “We will be fine if we are attacked whether you are here or not. It is after the battle we need you most.”
“Do you not know that Jon is the strongest fighter in our entire army?” Hadley asked.
I wasn’t sure I would say the strongest, but this wasn’t the time to argue. My help would be valuable during an attack, that was for sure.
Syrah looked me up and down.
As the caravan of people and wagons continued to pass by, one woman broke off to speak with us.
“Are you talking ‘bout me?” she asked Syrah somewhat defensively.
“Yes, Pull. Do you think it’s worth sending the healer off to fetch another tracker?” Syrah asked.
I assumed “Pull” was her nickname. She seemed to be in her thirties, wearing a sleeveless jerkin that showed off arms thick with muscle. Unfortunately, however, there were food stains on Pull’s armor, and I thought I could smell rum.
I wasn’t sure if I should judge her on her appearance, but if I was going to, I would say that she couldn’t use that bow on her back as well as Aliana could. She probably couldn’t track as well, either. That was a safe assumption to make for pretty much everyone.
“It ain’t necessary. Better get us that witch I hear ‘bout.”
“That’s me,” Hadley said with a slight raise of her hand.
“Good, then, umm, this the healer?” Pull swung her nose at me.
“It is,” Syrah said. “I think Pull’s right,” she told us. “If you’re going to fetch someone from your army, your best fighter might be more useful than another tracker—or your second-best fighter, if the best is already here.”
“Ain’t no one nearby,” Pull said confidently. “Best go now, before we get close to Salbeth. That’s when an attack might be comin’.”
Hadley shrugged as if leaving it up to me. I gathered the harness.
“I’ll go now. I shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours.” I took off the tracker ring from my middle finger and handed it to Hadley. We hadn’t needed it for a while. “Hold on to this and I’ll find you.”
“Best of luck,” she said with a squeeze of my hand.
Although I had passed off the tracker ring I usually wore on my finger, I had kept the callring. It hadn’t been used in so long that, when a while later my finger began to twitch, I thought it was an overused muscle. As the twitching became stronger, however, I quickly let myself down through the canopy and landed in the forest to investigate.
Sure enough, my finger was moving involuntarily…my finger with the callring on it. “Shit,” I mumbled.
If I still had my tracker ring, I could cast the ordia spell “Identify” on my tracker ring, and I would get a sense of the direction of the other tracker ring, which the king should still be wearing. I had planned to borrow the king’s tracker ring later in order to find Hadley again, after I ensured his majesty was safe.
It seemed as if he wasn’t safe after all. I wondered if it was Valinox causing a threat. No, his army couldn’t have possibly caught up to ours, unless there was another trap? No, the king would’ve called me earlier.
Maybe he has been calling but I’ve been too far away for the ring to pick up the signal. I’d better hurry.
I thought about going back for my tracker ring to ensure I found Nykal and the rest of our people, but I had already been soaring south for the better part of an hour. I should be close to Salbeth. It seemed smart to look for the king there first rather than waste time going back.
I hurled myself extremely high up, where I could feel thinner air. Up here, I could see an opening in the forest canopy a couple miles south. If he was indeed at Salbeth, I would be there in no time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Earlier that day
It had been about a day since Eden had a real meal. The last one was shortly after the battle on the road. Since then, only scraps of food remained. There had been barely enough to sustain everyone as they’d made their way off the road and into the woods.
Failina had scouted from the air to assure them that Valinox was far behind, while Aliana stayed with the king’s guard at the front to sense whether anyone waited with a trap. Eventually Failina assured the king that Valinox had slowed for good. He was too far away to catch up before they reached Salbeth.
Valinox probably intended to keep his army as healthy and strong as he could. Failina had spotted a number of sick among the enemy. They were being transported with everyone else. Eden took that to mean that most of the sick were recovering. Hopefully they wouldn’t be able to fight to their fullest, but time would tell.
If it wasn’t for these miserable conditions, Eden probably would’ve felt like herself again. As much of a strain as the war had been on her, it was dteria that had been the most difficult thing to manage. Jennava had helped her through the worst of it, and time had seemed to take care of the rest. She no longer had needs—she had urges, still, to cast when there was no reason to do so. She had urges to attack when there was no target in sight. She was probably the only person in their army who looked forward to battle so she could use dteria and rid herself of these urges, at least temporarily. Of course they always came back stronger afterward, which was why she mostly kept to herself during these long walks.
Remi had forgiven her long ago, but it didn’t seem as if the two of them would ever have the same friendship they once did. Remi hadn’t told Eden one thing about Charlie, and it was clear that the two had something between them.
Most of Remi’s time was spent training the princess how to use fire. The two of them now walked together toward the head of their army. The queen had tried to talk Callie out of pursuing a talent with sorcery, clearly fearful of her daughter fighting, but it seemed as if she had recently given up.
Michael came up on Eden’s side. “Can I buy you an ale when we get to Salbeth?” he asked. They would be there soon.
Oh Michael, always glancing at her with this look as if she might invite him into her bed again if the right words came out of his mouth. Or was it because of dteria’s effect on her mind that she often found herself attributing ulterior motives to the actions of her friends?
I did that long before dteria, she reminded herself.
“I need a hot meal and a bath before I can start thinking about ale,” she replied.
He gave a nod and fell silent as he walked beside her.
“What do you think Jon and Hadley are doing right now?” he asked.
“Fucking.”
He snorted. “Well, when they’re done, I bet they’re coming back with some of those pastries we like from Koluk.”
Eden didn’t believe they would, because bringing a few pastries wasn’t important, and Jon and Hadley always took care of the most important things and tended to forget about the rest of life. She didn’t want to ruin Michael’s mood, though.
“That would be nice,” she commented.
“By the way,” he said, “I don’t know if you’ve seen my heroic attempt at flying.”
Yes, just about everyone in their large group had turned toward Michael when he let out a shrill scream as he narrowly missed a tree. He’d crashed like a sack of potatoes and tumbled across the ground. There was still quite a bit of dirt on his clothing because of it.
“Oh, that was your heroic attempt?” she played along.
“Very,” he replied sarcastically. “Even heroes can scream like girls.”
“Oh really?” she said as she held in a laugh. “And which heroes are those?”
He looked at her in disbelief. “You’ve never heard of William the Wailer?”
She laughed. “Can’t say that I have.”
“Really? What about Samwell the Shrieker?”
She smiled and shook her head.
“Surely you’ve heard of the great Squire Squawker?”
“Who was he the squire of?”
“The Noisy Knight, of course. The two of them had some very rowdy adventures. I hope you see now that one day I’ll have my place in the book of legends, Eden,” Michael continued. “Michael the Moaner.”
Eden’s guffaw turned many heads, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Is Moaner really the name you want?” she asked.
“It’s not about want, it’s about destiny. And it’s the only alliteration I could think of.”
Eden’s laugh was cut short as Kataleya came from ahead. “Where’s Reuben?” she asked with a worried expression.
“In the back with Charlie,” Michael answered.
“What’s wrong?” Eden asked. She was much shorter than most everyone else in the army and couldn’t see very far ahead.
“Maybe nothing,” Kataleya said. “But I must get Reuben quickly, just in case.”
“For what?” Eden asked.
“He might need to amplify the king’s callring if Jon is too far away.”
Kataleya continued on toward the back. Eden walked to the side in hopes of seeing something, but the trees were thick. It appeared that their army was stopped somewhere ahead, but Eden couldn’t see why.
“Let’s find out what it is,” Michael said as he offered his hand.
Eden thought about it for a moment, then put her small hand in his strong grasp. They weaved through their ranks of many archers, most of whom seemed content to stay back and let whatever this was resolve without their involvement. It was their sluggish movements along with their loose expressions that said they were as exhausted as Eden was.
Everyone was filthy as well. If they had the time, perhaps Kataleya could’ve created enough freshwater for everyone to bathe, but instead they had pushed on toward Salbeth knowing they could reach the forest city before dark. There they would finally relax. Or so Eden thought. Now what the fucking hell was stopping them from getting there?
Uphill they trudged, Michael never letting go. He had become very capable since Eden had first thought of him as a silly wind mage. She was so tired she could easily imagine going limp. Michael would probably scoop her up and carry her the rest of the way, but she managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Is that a wall of ice? What the hell?
The forest opened ahead, the trees giving way to a magnificent city. Salbeth was a large dwelling of tall homes with steep roofs. The city was built between the bases of the thickest trees and along the slopes of grass-covered rocks. A picturesque river ran beneath a bridge and filled a crevice that appeared to surround the city. The water flowed into a stream, which Eden had seen twist and turn alongside the road north, the road that she had walked on for many miles and was glad to leave behind.
She might’ve been able to appreciate such a city if her entrance wasn’t barred by hundreds of clearly disgruntled citizens wielding hammers, hoes, and pointed sticks. They stood behind a humped wall of ice that came up to their shoulders.
The structure was wide, extending fifty feet in each direction and meeting many trees along the way. Eden was certain everyone could get over it eventually, but they were likely to take many injuries if they had to deal with these commoners prodding at them with their gardening tools.
Ice mages were few and far between, but how many had to be here in Salbeth to create something like this?
“This is your king,” Byron seemed to be explaining to one older man who appeared to be the leader of this mob.
“He doesn’t look like a king to me.” The older man spoke with nods and grunts of approval from those behind him. He stood on the center of the wall, at the one place that looked flat on top. He wore a blue scarf around his neck, a woolen cap on his head, and thick trousers on his legs to keep out the cold. Strands of thin gray hair fell out from his cap as he looked around vigilantly for anyone trying to cross over the wall.
“Brave bunch of idiots,” Michael muttered to Eden as he dropped her hand and pushed through to the front. She stayed behind a few ranks. She didn’t trust herself to behave appropriately given her terrible mood and unnatural urges from dteria.
They certainly were idiots. There might’ve been more of them, but did they really think they could stand up to…Eden stopped her train of thought. She looked back at their meager army.
Fuck, we look ragged.
The clothes many people wore hung like tattered rags from their bodies. There weren’t enough wagons to carry everyone’s belongings, so pretty much everyone wore their dirty armor and carried their few possessions on their back. Even the king was filthy, his crown looking like a burden as it sat atop his matted hair, speckled with blood and dirt.
Eden had seen the king fight. She had even thrown a dagger using dteria at one dark mage advancing on him. One thing Valinox had taught her besides how to ruin her life was how to aim. She had gotten damn good at both.
Her dagger had disappeared down to its handle in the dark mage’s neck. He’d tried to scream but choked on his own blood as he fell to his knees at Nykal’s feet. The king had finished him with a stab through his back, allowing Eden to pull out her dagger and wrap dteria around it as she got ready for the next target.
The princess had spent the beginning of the battle defending her father, but it was Nykal who first realized something.
“I’m not the target,” he’d uttered and looked around for who it was.
There had been very few of Valinox’s sorcerers after him. Most seemed intent on getting past their cluster of troops to reach the center. Nykal was tall enough to spot Jon there.
“They’re after Jon,” he’d said.
The princess had darted off.
“Callie!” Nykal had screamed. “Stay here!”
Later, Eden had heard that Callie had jumped on Valinox’s back and burned his face, helping Jon out of a situation that could’ve gone much worse for him. Eden had stayed with the king until the battle was over. He was good with a sword, but he lacked sorcery, and it was clear that Harold’s people weren’t interested in protecting Nykal.
Eden didn’t see many archers of Salbeth now, behind the wall of ice, but all it took was one with a good shot. The king had on steel armor, but his head was uncovered. Eden stepped up from behind the king.
“I think you should stay back,” she advised.
“I agree with her,” Failina said as she gestured for the king to move.
“Nonsense. These people need to see their king.”
Michael was asking questions to the people of Salbeth, “Don’t you know who we are?”
“We do, and that’s why we’re not letting you in,” said the man atop the wall as he flung his loose scarf around his neck. “Turn back now.”
Eden noticed Kataleya coming through with Reuben. “And who do you think you are to keep out the king’s army?” Reuben was yelling.
“I’m Garrity the Icemaker, and you are not the king’s army.”
Shit, I’ve heard of him.
“Fuck you and your scarf!” Remi yelled and made a ball of fire. “We are the king’s army, and we have come here peacefully, but I’ll melt down your wall of ice and burn everyone who stands near it if you don’t let us in.”
Remi is in an even worse mood than I am. That made her dangerous.
