The Fall of Highwatch Page 4

  Valia’s father’s spirits had never recovered from the loss of his household. He was the first to sicken in Highwatch itself. And the first to die. The disease spread. There seemed to be no pattern. No distinction. The fever struck servants, soldiers, knights, and even the Warden’s household. As in Kistrad, some recovered and some did not. To some, the prayers of the priests brought an almost instant recovery. To others, no amount of prayers, litanies, sacrifices, or medicines brought relief. The High Warden’s wife was one of the lucky ones. Valia was not.

  She sickened not long after her father. It struck lightly at first, and for a while the fever lessened. She was even able to leave her bed at times and sit with Guric upon their balcony that overlooked the little garden. But when her father died, the grief weakened her. Her mother had not survived their journey out of Damara. Her older brother had died defending them in the Gap. With her father gone …

  “You’re all I have left,” she told Guric. Tears came at her words, and that night the fever returned with a vengeance.

  She died nine days later.

  Soran himself had prayed at her bedside, had offered sacrifices on her behalf, but all to no avail.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. The last words she spoke to Guric. She closed her eyes and fell into some dark dream from which she never woke.

  Guric begged for Soran to perform the rites to raise her, but Soran refused, saying that if his prayers had failed to heal her, it could only be the will of Torm.

  “Damn Torm’s will!” Guric said.

  “That’s your grief talking,” said Soran. “I forgive you. But don’t do it again.”

  And then Guric had understood. He had thought Highwatch his home. He had thought himself a valued member of a proud and noble house. If not a son, then at least a beloved liege. But in that moment he saw it all for the sham it was. How could he have been so wrong? The Knights spoke of honor and truth and loyalty, of fidelity. But when it really mattered, when nothing else mattered more, it was all empty platitudes.

  Guric could not return to Damara. He’d severed those ties. If he went back, he’d return as a beggar. And Guric would beg no more. He would seize what he wanted, and gods help anyone who stepped in his way.

  It was Argalath, his favored counselor in his dealings with the Nar, who had first told him of other means to bring Valia back to him. Ways that the Knights would not smile upon. Older ways. Rites that the Nar had performed when they were a great people. But there would have to be sacrifices.

  Guric had not balked and, in fact, seized on the notion. He began gathering Damarans who were disaffected with the rule of Highwatch, who felt themselves wronged at one time, or those who simply wanted more. Argalath found allies among the Nar.

  Guric had placed his men well. Inside the fortress, they weren’t many. The Damarans he could trust numbered less than a score. The Nar, mostly Creel gathered by Argalath, numbered almost a thousand. But they were camped outside the Shield Wall. Just as Guric had planned.

  It brought the Knights out of the fortress. A third of the knights or more were out on their usual patrols. A scarce few remained at Highwatch. But the others, led by Soran himself, went to confront the Nar, whom they believed to be the usual winter bands who simply lingered too long. That many Nar gathered this late in the season …

  Highwatch, which had once struck Guric with such awe, which he had once believed to be the most formidable fortress within a thousand miles, fell in a single afternoon.

  “What are they doing?”

  Guric heard the guard’s question as he approached the main gate. Before the Damarans had come, this bit of the Shadowed Path had been unworked walls of solid stone. But in the years since, Damaran and dwarf craftsmen had hollowed out tunnels, halls, raised a thick wall at the entrance and exit, and built parapets along the cliff wall, both inside and outside.

  The gate guards were all gathered around the doors, both the large main gates and the smaller postern door. Three of the ten had their faces pressed up against the small peepholes. None of the men turned at Guric’s approach.

  “It’ll be over soon,” said one. He was taller, older, the beginnings of a paunch straining under his mail. “You just watch.”

  “Took you long enough,” said the first at hearing footsteps behind them. “A man could die of thirst waiting on you.” Guric cleared his throat.

  The men whirled. Upon seeing their captain and four armored soldiers before them, all the guards whirled and stood straight, their eyes forward.

  “Your companion,” said Guric, “has others duties now.”

  “Yes, Captain,” said the chief guard.

  He let them stew a moment. Then he motioned to the gates. “Anything to report?”

  “Lord Soran is circling them now,” said the older guard. “The Nar are scattering. Lord Soran will land soon, I expect.”

  Guric paced in front of the guards, inspecting each one. All stared straight ahead, none daring to meet his gaze. Good. He needed them pliable.

  He stopped before the chief guard and said, “I want both main gates opened and an honor guard lined up outside. Now.”

  The chief guard’s eyes went wide. “M-my lord? I … I don’t understand.”

  “The Knights are about to get most of that rabble on the move,” said Guric, “but their chiefs are going to come inside to meet with the High Warden. For a good tongue lashing, I expect.”

  “My lord,” said the chief guard, ‘we were not told of any—”

  “I am telling you now,” said Guric. He took a step forward, putting his nose only inches from the guard’s forehead. “Are you questioning my orders?”

  The guard swallowed. “Of course not, captain.”

  Guric turned and stepped away. “Then do it.”

  “You heard him,” said the chief. “Double quick! Get those gates open. I want Hailac near the winch. Everyone else, a line on each side, just inside the gate.”

  “Make that just outside,” said Guric, loud enough for all to hear.

  The chief guard frowned. “Outside the gate, captain?”

  “The Knights are just outside,” said Guric. “Are you really concerned about a half-dozen old men riding past?”

  The eight men selected to line up outside the gates all looked decidedly paler, but they gripped their spears in steady hands as the large double doors swung open with a creak of frosty hinges and rattling chains.

  Light poured inside the path, and Guric got his first good look of the scene playing out before him.

  It had still not warmed enough for the winter snows to melt, but most of it had been trampled by the thousand or more Nar camped before the main gates. Tents, rope palisades, fires—all laid out with no semblance of order. Each tribe staked its claim and camped. When the next came along, they found a place and did the same.

  A few hundred feet above the plain nine scythe wings circled and swooped like a monstrous murder of crows. One of them let out a roar, and even from the great height it hit the ears with an almost physical force. Guric could hear horses in the Nar camp neighing in panic, and over them the shouts of their masters as they tried to get their mounts back under control. Three scythe wings descended in a wide spiral. Guric saw that Soran led them.

  “Good,” said Guric. “Here it comes, you bastard.”

  “Captain?” said the chief guard. He was looking at Guric with wide eyes.

  Guric smiled. “The Nar. Soran will give it to them. Won’t he?”

  The chief gave a nervous laugh. “As you say, my lord.”

  The guards had lined up facing each other, forming a path leading into the gate. Guric and the chief walked between them. The four soldiers Guric had brought remained just inside the gate.

  The nearest edge of the Nar encampment was a few hundred yards away. Even as Guric and the chief guard stepped past the last of the guards and stopped, a large company of horsemen galloped out of camp and headed right for them.

  “That doesn’t look like a half-do
zen old men,” said one of the guards behind them.

  Guric said nothing. The man was right. He counted a score and one horsemen, all hardened warriors, all holding bows.

  “Captain …?” said the chief guard.

  “Rest easy,” said Guric. “This will all be over soon.”

  The Nar rode at an easy canter, not hurrying. Beyond them, Soran had landed his scythe wing, and his rear guardsmen were about to do the same. The ground shook with the approach of the horses.

  “Those don’t look like chiefs either,” said the chief guard.

  “No?” said Guric. He smiled and stepped forward, raising a hand to halt the warriors’ advance.

  The horsemen reined in their mounts and spread into a wide arc. Guric had to give the guardsmen credit. They kept their posts. The chief guard looked on the Nar surrounding them with dismay, but he stood his ground and kept his mouth shut.

  It wasn’t until the Nar reached over their shoulders for their arrows that the Damaran guards broke and ran.

  “Captain!” the chief guard screamed, then the first arrow struck his throat.

  Guric stood unmoving as arrows flew past him, some close enough that he felt the wind of their passage. He closed his eyes and listened to the dying shrieks of his men. Arrows found their marks, and the four soldiers he’d left inside the gates did their duty with swords and daggers. Some small part of Guric cringed at the sounds. But then he thought of Valia. He remembered feeling the life slip out of her as he held her hand. He could still feel the cold emptiness of her dead flesh as he held her until dawn. The screams of dying Damarans didn’t mean as much anymore.

  Something wasn’t right. Soran’s hackles were already up as he landed his mount, and when he saw the Creel, he understood why. Even in the cold, the Creel was naked from the waist up, and every bit of exposed skin had been painted with arcane symbols. On shoulders, chest, and forehead, the symbols had been cut directly into his flesh, and blood ran down his face. A shaman at the least. But by the wild look in the man’s eyes, Soran feared he might be one of the demon binders.

  Soran called upon the Loyal Fury.

  The Creel, chanting a litany in some language that was not any tongue of the Nar, raised one hand, and a tiny ember of light shot out. But as it flew it seemed to feed on the air, tumbling and growing into a ball of flame.

  Soran raised his own hand, and the sigils etched into his gauntlet flared. Holy light engulfed him and his guardsmen, and as a river swallows a stream, so the power of Torm swallowed the dark magic of the Creel.

  Then the arrows began to fall.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HWEILAN TOOK TO THE TREES AND DID NOT LOOK BACK, weaving through the trunks and stumbling over roots hidden under the snow.

  When the ground began to slope under her feet, she realized she’d made a poor choice. These woods ran along the arm of the mountain for a ways, then ended on a rocky escarpment. No paths and far too steep to climb.

  Hweilan stopped, realizing she had to make it back to the path.

  Then she heard sounds of someone coming through the woods, right on her trail. She couldn’t see who it was. Among the pine and spruce that stood like silent sentinels on the hillside, she could discern little more than snow under her feet and dark shapes all around.

  Hweilan turned, following the grade of the hill in hopes of the graveyard and finding the path again.

  Sounds of pursuit grew closer, and she forsook stealth for speed.

  “Stop!” said a voice behind her. A man’s voice. She risked a glance behind her. It was the Nar. Oruk. Still a ways behind her, lurching over the uneven ground and favoring one leg, but the look of fury on his face …

  Hweilan turned and ran, leaping roots and rocks and ducking under branches. She veered uphill, hoping to find the path again.

  She saw it, no more than a few dozen paces ahead of her. Risking a glance back, she saw that Oruk had fallen behind but was still coming on.

  Hweilan bolted out of the trees and onto the path. A sort of ululating hiss in the air was all the warning she had.

  Something struck the back of her leg, right behind the knee, then pulled round both legs. Hweilan went down, throwing both hands in front of her to break the fall. Her father’s bow flew out of grasp. She hit the ground hard, her breath forced out of her, and her face skidded over the thin snow on the path.

  “Thank you,” Jatara’s voice came from behind her. “Had you stayed in the trees that never would have worked.”

  Hweilan rolled over and forced air into her lungs. A thin braided cord, weighted on both ends by round stones, was tangled around her legs. Jatara was walking down the path toward her.

  “Stay away from me!”

  Jatara reached back and pulled a coil of rope from her belt.

  Hweilan let out a long, wordless scream, hoping that someone—anyone—would hear.

  Jatara laughed. Only a few paces away, she stopped and her eyes hardened. “Take that knife and toss it aside. Then be still and I won’t make this too tight.”

  Hweilan tried to scream but it came out more of a sob.

  Think, she told herself. Jatara had the sword at her hip, and if even half the things Hweilan had heard were true, the woman knew how to use it. Hweilan’s knife would be no match, not unless she could get in close. And then it came to her.

  Hweilan sat up and reached for the cord round her knees.

  “Ah-ah!” said Jatara, her hand going to her sword. “Knife first.”

  Scowling and doing her best to keep back the tears, Hweilan pulled her knife from the sheath at her belt and tossed it to the side of the path.

  “Good,” said Jatara. “Now on your knees and turn around.”

  Hweilan could hear Oruk getting closer. She’d have to make this quick. She turned around, putting her back to Jatara, got up on her knees, and clasped her hands in front of her, as if in prayer.

  “Arms at your sides,” said Jatara, as she leaned in close, the rope held out before her.

  Hweilan reached inside her coat with her right hand and moved her left arm down to her side.

  “Both arms,” said Jatara. Almost close enough.

  Almost—

  “I said—”

  —close enough.

  Hweilan’s fist closed around the kishkoman, the sharp spike protruding from between her middle fingers, and brought it out of her coat. She turned and punched.

  Jatara saw it too late. Her eyes widened in the instant before the sharpened antler went into the right one. She shrieked and fell back, dropping the rope and both hands going to her face.

  Hweilan scrambled away, her legs kicking, trying to loosen the cord around her legs. It only made it tighter.

  The sounds of Oruk breaking through the brush were very close now. Hweilan lunged to the side of the path, grabbed her knife, and raked its sharp edge down the cord. The tight braided leather parted like spidersilk before her blade.

  Oruk crashed through a pine branch, sending needles loose in a shower, and stared at the scene before him—Hweilan on the path, knife in hand, Jatara writhing on the path, blood leaking from between the fingers she held to her face.

  “Whuh—?” said the Nar, and then Hweilan was on the move. She snatched her father’s bow in one hand, keeping the knife in the other.

  “Never mind me!” Jatara shouted. “Get! Her! Now!”

  Hweilan ran.

  She kept to the path. Many times she slipped or skidded in the frost or through the carpet of pine needles, but she kept her feet, knowing that a bad fall or twist of her ankle would be the end of her. She’d walked this path more times than she could remember. She knew every twist and curve, every tree and stone. Hweilan ran, swift as a hart. Never able to ride a horse, Hweilan had walked or run her entire life, and there were few in Highwatch or Kistrad who could outrun her. Once Scith had even said that in a long distance race between her and any horse in Highwatch, he would have laid his coin on her.

  Although the sounds of pursuit
grew farther behind, they did not cease. Oruk was still following. If she fell, if she stopped to rest, he’d be on her in moments.

  She knew that once she reached the fortress, found the first guards, a knight, or even a servant, she’d be safe. One word in the right ear and Hweilan could have every soldier in the fortress out after Jatara and Oruk. Argalath himself would be hauled before her grandfather. A deep and vindictive part of Hweilan’s heart warmed to the thought of what her Uncle Soran would do when he heard of this.

  Then she saw the smoke.

  A smear in the sky. Not the usual haze of evening cook-fires or wood burning against the early spring cold. A thick, gray smoke.

  Hweilan rounded a bend in the path. The trees fell away and she had a clear view of Nar-sek Qu’istrade, the distant cliff walls, the fortress of Highwatch, and Kistrad huddling at its feet. At the bottom of tall columns of smoke she saw the angry glimmer of flames. Kistrad was burning. Thousands of Nar filled the valley. Some moving toward the fortress, but a great many not moving at all.

  Shocked, Hweilan stopped, her breath coming in great heaves, her heart hammering against her ribs. But even over the sound of her own breathing and her frightened heartbeat, her sharp eyes caught other sounds—faint, but still clear, even over the distance.

  Steel ringing against steel. The bellow of a scythe wing. The screams of the dying.

  Highwatch was under attack.

  Much to Guric’s fury, Soran had survived the ambush. The powers of his god had protected him from the Creel spellcasters—though his guardsman had not been so fortunate—and the poisoned arrows, if they had even managed to pierce the scythe wing’s thick coat and skin, had no effect.

  The fiercest fighting took place in the valley between the village and the Shield Wall. Once the Knights saw Nar pouring through the Shadowed Path toward the fortress, they regrouped and attacked. Just as Guric knew they would.

  He knew the tactics of the Knights, and he placed his men well. In the first wave, the scythe wings came in low, roaring and sending the Nar horses into a panic. They landed, and as the Knight set to work with bow and arrow, the scythe wing waded into the Nar. Each sweep of its wing wreaked carnage among warriors and horses alike.