Word of Traitors: Legacy of Dhakaan - Book 2 Page 32

  Along the seething border between dar and elves, Dagii fought Seach Torainar. The tall tribex horns mounted to the shoulders of Dagii’s armor marked the lhevk’rhu as surely as the flashing crystal in the high warleader’s helm did him. Bounding tiger leaped around wheeling horse. Hobgoblin sword and shield met deadly Valenar double-scimitar—two curved blades joined end to end through a single long hilt. Keraal fought close by, his whirling chain warding off any of the Valaes Tairn who tried to take Dagii from behind.

  “Paatcha!” said Uukam in awe. “This is a battle worth dying in!”

  “It’s a battle one of us must survive,” Biiri said. “Ekhaas duur’kala, if we don’t leave we’ll be caught.” He grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away.

  She shook him off. “We’re already caught. There are elves at the back of the hill.”

  Uukam cursed and raced across the hilltop to the back edge, then cursed again. “A squad of our cavalry fight them, but more come. Our riders won’t hold for long.”

  “We could fight our way through,” said Biiri, baring his teeth.

  “And be struck down by Valenar arrows while we ran.” Trembling eagerness ran through Ekhaas. “Dagii makes a stand. The battle isn’t over.” She spun and thrust her finger at Biiri. “Bring the drum! Play!”

  “I can’t!”

  Uukam snatched the bloody brass rods from the hands of the dead drummer. “I can.”

  “Then do it. Beat a pace like a loping tiger. Biiri, watch our backs.”

  Ekhaas stepped up onto the earthworks so that she stood beside the Riis Shaarii’mal. She took three deep, slow breaths, then one that was very deep. She reached down inside herself, drew up the power of the song that twined around her soul, and sang as she never had before.

  There had been words to the song she had sung for Biiri and Uukam. The tune had been familiar to them. What she sang now had no words, and the tune was ancient. Another duur’kala or one of the dedicated lorekeepers of the vaults of the Kech Volaar might know it. Ekhaas was certain that no one on the battlefield below had ever heard it, yet she was equally certain that it would fire the spirit of every dar, every true child of ancient Dhakaan, who did. The greatest glories of the past could never truly be forgotten.

  Song rolled out of her belly and her chest as it had rolled out of duur’kala of old, but freshly infused with her magic—and from the first note, it seemed that what she sang was even older than Dhakaan, that it grew out of a primal need to fight for life and to triumph over death. The sensation was dizzying, but Ekhaas poured everything she felt into the song. Long hours of training in Volaar Draal had taught her how to project her voice, but even a duur’kala’s voice couldn’t carry unaided over the battlefield. A slim thread of magic stolen from the magnificent whole amplified and tied it to the rhythm Uukam beat out on the great drum. Both song and drumbeat rose into the sky and echoed across the plain, pure as sunlight and as powerful as a storm.

  The battle paused, all eyes looking up at her in amazement, elven bright and dar dark. In the elves she could see a sudden tension, an instinctive mistrust of this martial music. In the dar, though, she saw exactly what she had expected. Wonder. Longing. Awe. Rage.

  She sought out Dagii. The brass half-mask of his helm was raised to her—then he thrust his sword in the air. “Attack!” he roared. “Attack!”

  The battle crashed back into motion. Dagii urged his tiger at Seach Torainar, but a ripple in the currents of fighting forced the two leaders apart. Quick-thinking elves launched a volley of arrows up at Ekhaas but the angle of the hill and a fold of the earthworks offered her protection. Or perhaps the song itself deflected the arrows. Ekhaas’s voice soared.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw the glories of Dhakaan portrayed in the stories and artifacts that had come down through the ages to the Kech Volaar.

  Carved cities and mighty fortresses.

  Vast armies sweeping enemies before them—gnolls, elves, the dread daelkyr and their foul minions. Works of staggering majesty.

  The magical songs of duur’kala and the wondrous creations of daashor.

  The deeds of emperors and generals and warriors—heroes of the dar.

  She channeled what she saw into what she sang, and her song was the song of the Empire of Dhakaan.

  The beat of Uukam’s drum became the beat played by all the drums that had survived on the battlefield. The rhythm anchored Ekhaas to the fighting soldiers of Darguun. It carried her vision into living hearts, bringing a renewed energy to the goblin who rode his leopard against a Valenar horse, to the bugbear who laid about him with a steel mace that reaped lives as a scythe reaped grain, to the hobgoblin warcaster who beat his broken staff against the bleeding head of a staggering elf wizard. Ekhaas watched the reserve regiment at the base of the hill gather itself and throw back the Valaes Tairn. She watched the fragments of Darguul companies flow together, form themselves into wedges and force their way through their enemies to reach each other. She watched the Iron Fox Company, under Dagii’s command, take a position at the heart of the swirling battle.

  And Valaes Tairn died—but so did Darguuls. Slowly, in spite of the valor of the dar, the battle turned back to the favor of the elves. A newly reformed company collapsed. A rush of elven cavalry drove the reserve company back to the base of the hill and shattered their lines. Beneath the swallow-tailed banner of stars, Seach Torainar whirled his double scimitar around his head and gathered elves for a rush on the Iron Fox. Dagii shouted and roared, urging his warriors into stronger lines to meet the attack.

  “Maabet!” Biiri cried from behind her. “They’re through. They’re coming—the elves are climbing!”

  The beat of Uukam’s drum faltered, then faded, and Ekhaas knew he had gone to aid in whatever defense Biiri could muster.

  She sang alone. Her throat was raw. Her jaw and chest ached. She knew that the veins and muscles of her neck must be standing out, straining like the rigging on a ship in a storm. She looked down on the defeat of Dagii’s army and almost—almost—the sorrow of a dirge, of the fall of Dhakaan and the beginning of the hard Desperate Times, crept into her song.

  No. She wouldn’t let Darguuls die with the sounds of mourning in their ears. She wouldn’t sing defeat before the Valaes Tairn.

  Ekhaas reached deep into herself, flung her arms wide, and sang defiance. Her song soared again as she built on the old music, weaving a new vision into it. A vision of a homeland for an ancient people, restored to pride after long millennia. A vision of a red tower above a sprawling, bustling city; of clan chiefs and warlords gathered in unity to take back the land that belonged to the dar; of a new age for hobgoblins, goblins, and bugbears. Haruuc’s vision.

  She threw back her head and howled Darguun’s pride to the sky.

  Another howl answered her.

  And another.

  And another.

  And the elves of the Sulliel warclan were shouting in alarm and fear. Ekhaas’s gaze snapped back to the battlefield.

  From the hills and woods on the northern side of the plain poured a river of black and gray and white. Small, lithe forms hunched over powerful shoulders that bunched and surged beneath thick fur. Goblins and wolves, the larger shapes of worgs among them as well. Taarka’khesh. The Silent Wolves, silent no longer.

  Hope gripped her and her song rose, wild and triumphant. She howled and wolves howled back. Ekhaas heard startled shouts from Biiri and Uukam and elven screams from the backside of the hill, and she knew that the Valenar who had sought to capture them had new problems. Across the battlefield, the taarka’khesh crashed into the elves, throwing them into disarray. Teeth snapped at the legs of horses. Short blades and crossbows bit into elf flesh.

  Another rider joined Keraal at Dagii’s side. Dressed in black, he was all but invisible against the black fur of the great worg he rode, but Ekhaas knew him. Chetiin—and Marrow—had returned.

  The double scimitar of Seach Torainar dipped and spun, gutting a goblin with one blade and pier
cing his wolf mount with the other. Then the weapon rose high and whirled. The high warleader raised a slim horn to his lips and blew a long, wailing note—and he wheeled his mount and raced from the battlefield. Everywhere, elves broke off their fighting to follow his retreat. Ekhaas might have been standing at the ocean’s edge, watching the tide turn. Victory had turned into a rout.

  Those Valenar who were still mounted offered a hand to comrades on foot, or else turned to cover their escape. The taarka’khesh didn’t pause. Elves who stood to fight and horses too slow in their flight were overwhelmed by snapping, tearing jaws and stabbing blades. The retreat was a flurry of red robes and white flanks galloping away along the plain; the pursuit was a rushing shadow, night chasing day into the east instead of the west.

  The desolation of the battlefield was revealed. Corpses of elf and dar, horse and great cat and wolf. Of the proud Darguul army, only the Iron Fox Company remained in any numbers.

  Ekhaas’s song swirled to a final ringing note that filled the sky in triumph. The power of it faded from her body and left her trembling. Her right hand found a shoulder of the earthwork for support. Her left found the Riis Shaarii’mal. She plucked the banner from the ground and thrust it high.

  A cheer rose from the survivors of the battle, muted and small amid the carnage, yet deafening in its own way. A rider turned his tiger, racing it across torn corpses and churned grass, and urging it up the steep slope of the hill’s front in mighty bounds. When the beast reached the earthworks, Dagii slid from the saddle, pulled his helmet from sweat-drenched hair, and dropped to his knees in front of Ekhaas. His ears stood tall. His shadow-gray eyes were wide with pride and adoration.

  “Taarka’nu,” he rasped. Wolf woman.

  Ekhaas’s strained throat could barely work but she forced her voice through it. “Ruuska’te,” she whispered. Tiger man.

  He rose, put his hand over hers on the shaft of the Riis Shaarii’mal, and they turned to face the battlefield together. The survivors roared again, even louder than before.

  The long shadows of late afternoon reached along the plain. The survivors of Dagii’s army gathered dar corpses. A pit would be dug and a cairn built over it. Later a proper monument might be erected to the heroes who had expected only to slow an attacking army and had instead defeated it.

  The bodies of elves and their horses were left where they lay. Carrion eaters were already circling in the sky and gathering in the woods.

  Most of the taarkakhesh and a number of the surviving great cat cavalry still pursued the fleeing Valenar. The howls of wolves and worgs echoed out of the east, relayed over great distances. “The elves make no stand,” Chetiin said, listening to the howls along with Marrow. “They may run all the way to the Mournland. Horses can outpace cats and wolves over long distance but the taarka’khesh will patrol the border for a time to make sure they don’t try to come back.”

  “They’ll find their way back to Valenar,” said Dagii. He sat on a log, one bandaged leg thrust out before him. A scimitar had pierced a weak point in his armor. One of the taarka’khesh had offered him magic to heal it, but Dagii had directed him to chant his spells over Ekhaas’s wounded back instead. “Through the Mournland or down to Kraken Bay for passage on a sympathetic Lyrandar ship.”

  Keraal, standing with his arms crossed, grunted agreement and added, “Lhesh Tariic owes a debt to you. He should greet you in Rhukaan Draal as a hero.”

  Caught in the middle of a sip of numbingly hot herbal tea intended to soothe her throat, Ekhaas grimaced. She looked around. The four of them were, for the moment, alone. She wasn’t sure she wanted to speak in front of Keraal, but she didn’t think she had much choice.

  “That may not happen,” she croaked. Her voice sounded as strained as Chetiin’s. “A song message from Senen Dhakaan came to me during the battle. Tariic has arrested Ashi, and a changeling has taken Geth’s place. She said Makka is hunting, too. I don’t know what that means, but—”

  “Something is wrong,” Dagii said.

  “I’m going back,” Ekhaas told him. “Ahead of the returning troops. I may be able to slip into the city.”

  Dagii nodded. “I’m going with you.”

  “No,” said Chetiin. The shaarat’khesh elder’s ears cupped. “Your place is with your soldiers. I’ll go with her.”

  Keraal’s eyes had narrowed in suspicion. Dagii bared his teeth and flattened his ears. “There’s more happening than you know, Keraal. This may be a test of your oath to serve me.”

  “Ban,” the other warrior snarled. “I see as well as a hawk by day.” He looked at Chetiin. “Your name’s not Maanin. You’re Chetiin.”

  Marrow growled. The goblin’s ears flicked, but he nodded.

  Keraal looked back to Dagii. “Did you hire him to assassinate Lhesh Haruuc? I hated him, but I wouldn’t have done something like that. If you did, you don’t have the muut or the atcha I believed you did.”

  Breath hissed between Dagii’s teeth and his ears pressed back even further. “I didn’t—and Chetiin wasn’t the assassin. Suggest something like that again and I’ll pit my sword against your chains.”

  Tension pulled at the air between the two warriors. Ekhaas’s hands tightened around her mug, but before she could say anything, Keraal bent his head. “I am without honor in this, lhevk’rhu,” he said in apology. “I doubted you.”

  Dagii said nothing for a moment, then his ears rose slightly. “I have a story to tell you, Keraal, but it will wait for the journey back to Rhukaan Draal.” He looked at Ekhaas and Chetiin. “If Geth and Ashi are in trouble, we should hurry. It would take three days if we travel at the pace of the slowest survivor. A small company could make it in two. Tariic would think nothing of that—a victorious warlord isn’t slow to share his news.”

  “Your arrival can serve as a distraction, then,” said Ekhaas. “Chetiin and I will go ahead. I know magic that can speed our travel.”

  “Save your voice.” Chetiin scratched Marrow’s head. “You’re not the only one who knows something of swift travel. The Silent Clans will aid us. I guarantee that no one will know we’ve returned to Rhukaan Draal.” He glanced at her. “If you’re not too tired to leave tonight.”

  Ekhaas’s ears stood tall. “I’m ready.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  3 Aryth

  Geth could smell burned flesh. It was his.

  He could smell scorched hair and stale sweat, old blood and hot metal, charcoal and, curiously, the hint of sweet spices.

  “Te laloo kaanii.” Daavn’s voice. The warlord of the Marhaan spoke Goblin. Without Wrath, Geth only caught the roughest meaning of his words. Something about healing quickly.

  “Chiit so shiftaa,” said Tariic. Geth felt something poke at the skin of his side. With his arms stretched and bound over his head, his body was exposed and vulnerable. “Toma piisho,” Tariic added. “So kaas te vusrii.”

  Vusrii. To burn.

  The touch of red-hot metal seared his other side and Geth jerked and screamed. His eyes snapped open to the same small, brazier-lit chamber lit chamber he had seen for … who knew how long. He managed to evade the burning metal for a brief instant, but the it was back, pressed firmly against his skin. He howled and thrashed but the iron stayed on him. The gnarled hands of the waxy-fleshed goblin who held it were steady. Dark eyes flashed with greedy pleasure.

  Finally the metal pulled away. Geth collapsed back against the inclined table on which he was stretched. Tariic moved close and clamped a hand over his forehead, holding him still. Eyes so brown they were almost red stared into his.

  “Where is the Rod of Kings?” he asked.

  Geth fought the haze of pain and forced out the same answer he had given again and again. “I don’t have it!”

  “Te kuur doovol.” He tells the truth.

  This time it was Pradoor’s shrill voice. Geth twisted his head under Tariic’s palm. He could just see the old goblin woman crouched beside a heavy rack of knives, w
hite eyes shining like the sharpened blades. Symbols had been scrawled in a rough arc on the filth-crusted floor in front of her. At the center of the arc, smoke shifted from a metal bowl filled with coals.

  Tariic cursed. “You’re certain?”

  Pradoor’s fingers twined through a bunch of cords knotted together and strung with small, flashing tokens. “The Six lend me the wisdom to hear lies,” she said in the human tongue, accented but clear. “He tells the truth.” Her wrinkled face split in a smile. “But he doesn’t answer the question, does he? Ask another.”

  Tariic’s ears went back and he looked at Geth again. “Who has the Rod of Kings, then?”

  “I told you!” Geth groaned. The evasions came easily. “Chetiin stole it!”

  “He tells the truth.”

  With a growl, Tariic gestured and pointed at Geth’s belly. The goblin torturer nodded and turned to the brazier. Metal grated on metal as he exchanged the cooling iron for a fresh one. He didn’t speak. Tariic had shown Geth that he couldn’t—his tongue had been cut out—and that he couldn’t hear pleas, questions, or answers either. Deaf and mute, he was the perfect tool for extracting secret information.

  The chamber was well-used. Had the torturer plied his trade for Haruuc?

  Hot metal swiped across Geth’s stomach like a knife. He screamed again and strained against his bonds. Ropes creaked. Tariic slammed him back.

  “What did Chetiin do with it?”

  “He ran! He climbed down the wall of Khaar Mbar’ost and disappeared into Rhukaan Draal. I haven’t seen him since!” His voice cracked in an involuntary sob. Deep inside him, an inner voice was stronger. Hold out! He must not find it.