Beyond the Bulwarks Read online

  Anzo fought back fear, cleared his throat. “Isn’t Grondomagnus enough for the coming season?”

  “Grondomagnus will soon be a memory.”

  Anzo looked up. “You’ve found him?”

  “Young Durrim was right about one thing: the gutless Faces sold out their master. A pack of them rode into Caerigoth last night and brought word. The old He-Witch is hiding out in a border village. We’ll muster as soon as the ground is dry enough and ride out.” The King folded his arms and appraised Anzo. “You’ll be with us?”

  “I...” Response died in his throat. Varya! “My woman ails.”

  “She is in the care of mine.” Theregond’s smile acquired a calculating glimmer.

  Anzo nodded. Zulen eyed him, fingers playing about the hilt of his saber. Trapped. Damn it, I’ve been too clever, too clever by far. “I will be with you, lord.”

  “Good!” Theregond clapped his hands. “With the Vhurrs united behind me—” he jolted Zulen with another backslap “—our Wasteland friends, and the Weasel at our side, there is no way we can fail!”

  Anzo bowed, could barely keep the tremors at bay. “No way, at all.”

  ***

  Heathen was waiting in the corridor outside Varya’s chambers when Anzo returned. He stiffened, hands on his axe when he saw his face. “By Aeydon, you look like you—”

  Anzo made a chopping motion to silence the giant. “Why aren’t you in there?”

  Heathen grimaced. “Aehemir.”

  Anzo nodded. “Wait for me out here.”

  “But what—”

  “Wait for me.”

  Anzo stepped into the room to find Aehemir stooped over Varya. She looked up at Anzo and flinched back from the bed, blinking as though she’d been in a deep concentration, now disturbed. Candles around the room fluttered back to full life, a dimness that had seemed to cloud around Varya’s bed broken.

  “My Lady.” Anzo did not hide the hand clenched at his sword grip.

  Aehemir noticed and smiled faintly. “The war winds blow out of the east.” She bowed her head to him. “You’ll be leaving soon.”

  Anzo’s gaze flicked over the Vaethin icon at her breast before going to Varya. “How does she seem to you?”

  “She will be here when you return.”

  “She’s hardly stirred.” Anzo came to the bedside and put a hand on Varya’s brow. She shifted in her sweat-stained linens. The strange heat was still there. “Is there any sign of...whatever this is breaking?”

  “I can’t say.” The Lady of the Erevulans sat in Varya’s chair and drew a rag from a bowl of water on stool, wrung it out and dabbed it across Varya’s face. “It is almost as if she holds herself in this state.”

  Anzo bit his lip. Varya’s hair lay in an auburn fan about her drawn features. I’m leaving you again. It wasn’t enough. Gods, there should have been more. He knelt and took the Initiate’s hand into his own, squeezed. This time, I’m not sure we’ll find each other.

  “The bond between you is strong,” Aehemir whispered. “It will draw you back to her.”

  Anzo released Varya’s hand and stood sharply. The Concubine’s words felt nearly as cool and threatening as Zulen’s blade at his back. He wouldn’t, couldn’t look at her. “We’ll see,” he growled and fled for the door, hating himself for his cowardice every step of the way.

  Heathen bristled as Anzo latched the door behind him. “This is all wrong, Weasel. I hate leaving her in there with that...that...”

  “Not here. Come on.”

  Anzo led the giant through the hall and out into the damp, misty cool. Without a word, the pair took to the ramparts, found a spot away from guards and clumps of men swaying together in quiet with shared drinks.

  Throwing his arm over the giant’s shoulders, Anzo drew Heathen close. “We’re probably being watched. Someone, somehow may even be listening, but I can’t worry over that.”

  “What are you talking about, Anzo?”

  “Laugh occasionally.”

  “Huh?”

  Anzo hugged him closer, hard. “I’m going to release you. We’re going to lean back against the palisade, like we’ve been drinking, like we’re sharing memories. And laugh, like it’s all a big joke.” He let the youth go and assumed the façade.

  “All right...” Heathen settled next to him. He made an odd face and unleashed a monstrous guffaw, a horrid sputtering sound, made all the worse for being forced. “You’re scaring me, you know?”

  “You need to be scared.” Anzo grinned falsely, glanced about for some sign of eavesdroppers. “You know by now what it is Varya and I are about, yes?”

  Heathen wobbled close in feigned merriment. “I’ve known since practically the beginning.”

  “Then you know there would come a time when we would have to flee.”

  Heathen’s eyes widened. “Now?”

  “No, not yet. Not me, anyway.” He put his hand on the giant’s arm. “I have to stay with Theregond. His victories have made him dangerous, delusional. He plots an invasion of the Empire.”

  “That’s suicide!”

  “Maybe not.” The words felt strange, spoken through a fake smile. “With the tribes allying to him now, it makes Theregond the greatest warlord east of the Lydirian.”

  “Can we go to Durrim?”

  Anzo shook his head. “The lad is in too deep.”

  “But we have been battle-brothers.” Heathen turned to the palisade, shook with fury, the façade crumbling. “Vhurrs do not turn on blood bonds.”

  “Yes, they do.” Anzo hugged the giant to him again. “You know that. And Vhurrs haven’t been acting a lot like Vhurrs since we’ve been among them.”

  Heathen shivered against Anzo. “Let’s kill them all, then.”

  “No.” Anzo gripped hard. “No, that would be suicide.”

  “Then let’s run, like you were saying.”

  “We can’t do that either. I have to go with Theregond when he rides out against Grondomagnus.”

  “You can’t!” Heathen twisted in Anzo’s arm, grabbed him instead. “Anzo, he’ll draw you in too deep.”

  “I’m already too deep,” Anzo replied. “I’m part of some grand design in his mind, now. That’s why I have to go. If I don’t, it’ll arouse his suspicions and none of us will get out.”

  Heathen stared at Anzo a long time. “What is it you’re saying?”

  Anzo patted the giant’s face and pulled out of his grasp. “When we’ve gone, you’ve got to take Varya and flee for the Lydirian. She’ll know what to do.”

  “She’s comatose!”

  Anzo offered him a lopsided grin, the first honest smile of the conversation. “Then improvise.”

  Heathen snorted and looked away, into the camp smoke-wreathed night. “So, this is really it, then?”

  “It is.” Anzo blew out a long breath, suddenly felt better, the fear, the choking, clenching darkness that had built in him for weeks cracking and breaking up. “I’m sorry we didn’t have more time, friend.”

  “You’re mad.”

  Anzo laughed. “Beyond a doubt.”

  Heathen looked at him, smiled knowingly. “You should have told her.”

  “Varya?” Anzo arched his eyebrows. “Told her what?”

  “You know what.”

  Anzo opened his mouth to retort then snapped it shut. With a shake of his head, he looked off into the misty dark beyond the palisade. “Well...when you’re clear of all this and safe, you can tell her whatever it is you think I should have said.”

  “No.” Heathen held out his hand. “You will tell her.”

  Anzo grinned, took the young giant’s hand, and drew him into a crushing hug.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Face of Darkness

  The village lay in a narrow hollow, enveloped in gloom thickened by smoke rising in a pall from crude huts. Hillsides crowded in from either side, hid the settlement from the surrounding country. Metal hissed somewhere; the grate of a steel edge being sharpened on a blacks
mith’s stone wheel. A babe’s shriek rose higher. A woman chortled with the drowsy pleasure of a man in her bed. It would have been just another dreary Vhurr hamlet, were it not for the warhorses teeming in pens on the west side and the ramshackle, recently-erected shelters spread beyond them.

  Anzo sat in the saddle, his foul-tempered mount arrayed beside Theregond’s at the edge of a tree line overlooking the gorge. The woods around them whispered with nervous horses and their riders, tightening saddle straps, checking gear and weapons. Erevulan nobles and their retainers waited in quivering silence. Zulen and his Arriaks mustered on Theregond’s other side, practically motionless in the early morn mist. The Arriakan chieftain hummed something, a dissonant tune without meter that set Anzo’s teeth to grinding.

  The undergrowth before Theregond shivered and a Face emerged, his horrid mask hiding expression but not the expectant bloodlust of his eyes. The brutish figure gestured downhill. “He is still there.”

  Theregond nodded. “How much force?”

  “His personal guard,” the Face replied. “It will be kin and a few others.”

  “How many?”

  The Face looked away and shrugged. Zulen murmured something that set some of his men to chuckles and Theregond to smiling.

  Anzo edged close to the King. “What?”

  Theregond turned his grin on Anzo. “He says the little man probably can’t count.”

  “He is there!” The Face snapped with clear embarrassment. “A man doesn’t need numbers to know where to cut!”

  “Indeed.” Theregond shot Zulen a warning look before letting his gaze settle on the village. “No defenses...no palisade...not even a proper lookout.” Theregond shook his head. “The arrogant bastard doesn’t have a hint of our coming.”

  “Or it’s a trap,” Anzo suggested.

  “Orlek and the Codir are on the other ridge.” Theregond nodded towards the opposite rise overlooking the hollow. Anzo spotted a flicker of movement in the tangle of trees there. “If this was a trick he would have warned us.”

  “You hurry,” the Face growled. “They will rise soon.”

  Theregond drew his sword. The air rasped with hundreds of weapons. Anzo’s hand shook as he unsheathed the blade of Enu Mbawa. The bleating of the infant rose to the heights. Sickness clenched in the pit of his stomach.

  “You look comfortable.” Theregond looked Anzo over. “In the saddle, I mean...you’ve ridden before?”

  Anzo’s father wouldn’t have agreed. He shook the thought away. “The Vyrm Kynn had horses, when they could steal them.”

  “Well, you’ll get to sharpen some of those old bandit skills shortly. Stay close to me.”

  Zulen muttered something from Theregond’s other side. The King nodded at the words. “Yes. But try to take the He-Witch alive, if you can.” Theregond gave his mount a touch of heel and cantered out from the shielding dark of the woods onto the open crest of the rise. Morning sun flashed across his sword as he raised it. Across the hollow, the trees shimmered with motion as the Codir emerged, Orlek obvious at their fore, a spear raised in response.

  Someone screamed in the village below. Anzo’s darting stare caught a woman rushing for one of the huts, a water jug dropped and bounding across the ground, plumes of spilt water glittering. Codir horns blared, were echoed by the Arriaks and the Erevulans. With howls, the riders poured from the hilltops and down into the hollow.

  Anzo and Theregond lingered to the rear with a handful of his personal guard while the Arriaks streamed around boulders and clumps of spiny brush, the rest of the Erevulans following in their wake. The Codir were a blur from the other side, screeching with glee, clearly racing their eastern allies for the village and the kill. Struggling to keep in the saddle as his quarrelsome mount negotiated the slope, Anzo could appreciate and fear the skill it took the tribes to descend at so reckless a rate.

  Face warriors were scrambling from shelters, more from the huts. A man with his breeches still down was struggling to disentangle his weapon from the knots of his belt when a Codir arrow took him in the throat. Another was sprinting for the gate to the horse pen when a swipe of an Arriak saber cleaved his skull in a burst-melon splash. Then the marauders were in their midst, rampaging through the village with jeers and laughter that didn’t quite drown out the screams.

  The village dissolved in anarchy. An Arriak freed the Face’s mounts, sent the panicking beasts stampeding through the narrow alleys of the settlement. A woman carrying a bundle got caught in their path and went down, tumbling amongst the bloodied hooves as something pink and squirming tumbling free. Flames scrawled skyward. Codir bearing torches hurled them onto the thatched roofs of huts, waited with catcalls for the inhabitants to surge out and perish in flurries of steal and arrows. Arriaks rode down fleeing men, corralling them towards intersections with cruel, high-pitched cackles where their white-haired fellows took turns picking them off with bows or skewering them with lances.

  It wasn’t a battle and calling it a massacre would give it too much dignity.

  A pack of Faces formed something of a party near the center of the village. Anzo, with Theregond, arrived in time to watch the Arriaks pick them apart. The riders circled, one or two breaking off at random moments to lunge in with spears to jab the formation. Bodies piled and the formation shrank with each foray. Finally, the swirl of Arriaks tightened and, with a communal shriek, they veered inward and crushed the survivors, pummeling hooves drowning out the gurgles and pleas.

  The air stank of blood, fired pitch, and seared meat. Anzo’s flesh prickled as embers from blazing huts settled across him. He tried not to see too much. He tried not to hear Theregond’s laughter.

  A whirlwind of sparks and smoke erupted from the collapsed hovel to Anzo’s left. A Face, half-ablaze lunged across his front, set his horse to rearing in panic. Theregond’s guffaws cut off as the attacker’s spear shot for his side. The King pivoted in the saddle, slashed wildly to deflect the thrust. The spear point gouged his horse’s flank. The beast tossed, nearly flung Theregond.

  There— Anzo paused with his sword held limply to one side —all I have to do give him a moment more and Theregond will—

  A frenzied kick from the King hurled the Face backward into Anzo’s shrieking mount. Damn it! The smoldering Face whipped about and shoved the shattered point of his weapon up at Anzo. Air burst from his chest. Splintered wood punched at ribs but could not penetrate his mail corselet. With a shriek of pain and fury, Anzo rose up in the stirrups as his cavalryman father had once instructed and brought his blade down with every bit of force he could muster. Steel missed the skull but passed through neck and collarbone with a sickeningly wet impact. Blood jetted into his face.

  Cursing and panicked with blindness, Anzo fumbled to smear tacky warmth from his eyes. Vision returned to him in the form of Zulen, twenty yards away, his bow knocked and aimed. The Arriak met Anzo’s stare and smiled.

  Son of a—

  The passage of Zulen’s arrow pricked Anzo’s earlobe. Someone shrieked behind him. Wrenching about, Anzo turned in time to see a Face tumble from a smoking rooftop with the arrow in his eye socket. Zulen’s mocking laughter followed Anzo as he recovered, drove his mount on.

  “Where is he?” Theregond was bellowing. “Grondomagnus, you vile, demon-humping wretch, where are you?”

  The wild excitement of the sack was already petering out. Misery and pain interspersed with cries of triumph and the harder grunts of men aroused beyond self-control. Flames roared. Smoke twisted and bunched, almost hid piles that had been human beings, ignored by the victors or kicked into stillness if they still twitched. Shadowy figures dragged others behind those structures that still stood and darker noises coupled with whimpers.

  Anzo wiped tears from burning eyes, was still man enough to admit to himself that it wasn’t all from the sting of fiery haze.

  “Here!” A Codir rider emerged from the chaos. “My Lord, this way!”

  Theregond’s teeth showed fiercely white fr
om a face darkened with settling ash. He spurred after the warrior with Anzo laboring to keep up.

  A single stone structure, a crumbling dome dedicated to some forgotten god, occupied the heart of the razed hamlet. A half naked man sprawled face down at its threshold, Orlek grinding his face into the dirt with a boot on the back of his neck. A pair of armored Faces lay a few feet away in pools of blood. The darkness inside the dome moved with whimpers, grunts, and the slap of flesh.

  Theregond chuckled and dismounted. Arriaks, Codir, and Erevulans bunched around, a sinister murmur spreading through them. Chilled and disgusted, Anzo remained in the saddle.

  “Now-now, is that you, old He-Witch?” Theregond stooped over the prone man. He glanced at Orlek. “Let him up.”

  The pressure released, Grondomagnus shook himself and got to hands and knees. A matted mop of dirty blonde hid his face. Anzo noted an iron-handled lance still leaned beside the door to the dome, the shriveled mass of the warlord’s mask where it had been left, dangling on the point of the weapon.

  “Look at me,” Theregond demanded.

  Grondomagnus groaned once then shot to his feet, flinging back his mane. Orlek sprang away, sword flashing into his hand. But Theregond didn’t move, grinned at his rival. “Still some energy, old friend?”

  The chieftain of the Faces was easily Theregond’s height, but lean and muscled in the way of an athlete where the Erevulan King was broad and tending to fat. Scars squirmed across his massive chest, some still fresh and purple-black. Anzo noticed patterns, sigils he’d seen on berserkers that became monsters, and tensed.

  “I am betrayed.”

  Theregond shrugged. “The Vhurrs—even Faces—don’t tolerate losers.”

  “Kill me.” The chieftain’s voice made it an order. “We are brothers, of a sort. You owe me that.”

  “You and I are nothing.” Theregond held up his sword and prodded his rival’s chest. “I owe you nothing.”

  “Devils take you, then, Theregond,” Grondomagnus snapped. He glowered at the foes crowding all around him. Despite their bravado, none would meet his stare when it settled on them. “Devils take you now.”