Sons of Evil: Book 1 Book of Dread (22 page)

Faine cleared his throat and
went on. “You are free to go, so long as you leave these lands. I’ll have your
things brought to you, and you may depart when you wish, with my blessing and
hope for a safe journey, but also with my doom. You have been brought to me as
strangers in a time of war, and lied as to your intentions. For that I could
have you killed, although if you truly go to the Far North I fear your end will
be no better. Our scouts will grant you passage, but if you turn aside or prove
false… Suffice to say, if you are brought before me again, there will be no
mercy shown.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Silas
said. “You needn’t worry about us. We’ll not trouble you again.”

“Good,” Faine said as he
turned to go. “I have enough troubles as it is.”

*

They held off further
discussion until morning, giving in to exhaustion and taking rest while they
could. Luke’s sleep, aided by Silas’ remedies, was a very deep one, and they
let him continue on undisturbed as they gathered in Adrianna’s tent to talk.

“I think we should depart as
soon as we can,” Barlow stated. “Captain Faine’s assessment about the
Westpahlian army is correct—the truce is likely to be a short one, and we don’t
want to be caught here when the fighting breaks out anew. The question is, how
soon can Luke be ready to travel?”

Silas sighed. “A few days rest
would be best, but I fear you’re right. The sooner we move on, the better.”

“He’s tough,” Darius said,
with some pride. “If we need to move on, he’ll not want to hold us up.”

“Any chance of convincing him
to turn back?” Adrianna asked. “He won’t be much good with a sword for a while,
and we will be following those giants north. Eventually they’ll stop, either to
attack again or to draw a defensive line. Hopefully we’ll be able to slip
through unseen, but if not…it might be an extremely tough situation.”

“No doubt,” said Darius. “But
I know my brother, and he’d follow us even if we snuck off and tried to leave
him here. Besides, him trying to return home alone would be perilous as well.”

“I agree,” Silas said with a
knowing nod. “No reason to waste time on an argument with only one possible
outcome. Let’s gather our things before Captain Faine has a change of heart,
and once Luke awakes, we’ll see how soon we might be away.”

It was shortly after noon by
the time Luke had roused himself and taken some food and water, and he managed
to sit up and listen to all that had transpired while he had been starting his
recovery. Upon hearing of Captain Faine’s assessment of the situation and
decision to allow them to depart, he cut in for the first time. “We should be
off swiftly, while we can.”

“Our thoughts exactly,” Darius
said. “As soon as you’re ready to travel.”

Luke stood, wincing against
the pain and allowing his brother to steady him. As soon as the world about him
stopped spinning, he said, “No time like the present. Let’s go.”

“Are you sure?” Adrianna
asked. “Another day is unlikely to—”

“My legs are fine. Just don’t
ask me to carry any of you. You’ll all need to pull your own weight from now
on.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Silas
replied, playing along. “But no promises. If the going gets rough, I’ll likely
be hiding behind you.”

Darius rolled his eyes. “Don’t
encourage him.”

They covered just over eight
miles before they halted for the night, finding a pace that, while not as
aggressive as might be desired, allowed them to make progress without pushing
Luke too hard. Captain Faine had been good to his word. They had left the camp
unchallenged, receiving only nods of acknowledgement as they left, and the
mounted patrol that passed them halfway through their day’s march had simply
slowed enough to recognize them, then saluted and rode on.

Dawn
brought thick clouds and the promise of rain, the air heavy with moisture. It
was Luke who awoke first, and he took the opportunity to rise and slowly
stretch his aching muscles. He took as deep a breath as he dared—too deep and
his ribs would cry out in pain—and eyed the sky, grateful for the shelter of
the clouds but hoping the rain would hold off. Wet clothes made a long march
all the more miserable.

Darius saw his brother eying
the morning and joined him. “You know you should be resting until we’re ready
to go.”

Luke gave a fractional shrug
with his shoulders, a delicate, safe gesture. “Probably thought it was more
important to show you all I’m prepared to move on. I don’t want to delay us any
further.”

“Fair enough. I’d clap you on
the back in a show of brotherly love, but that’d probably show me something
else.”

“I’m not saying there’s no
pain, just that I can deal with walking. All bets are off if you slap me on the
back. Who knows, maybe in an insane rage fueled by pain, I’ll draw my sword and
hack away at you. If I was you, I wouldn’t want to take such a huge risk.”

“I’m glad that giant didn’t
dislodge your sense of humor…such as it is.”

“Nice,” Luke replied with a
smirk.

They passed that day
unchallenged and unmolested, even the weather cooperating, only a few brief
showers falling, barely enough to wet their clothes. As they resumed their
journey north the next morning, they found they had camped only a few miles
from a city, one in which the citizens for some reason did not light well at
night. As they approached, they saw why.

The city
was a ruin. Many of the buildings and houses were still standing, but none were
undamaged. As they continued to draw near, they could see it had yet to be
abandoned, many people wandering through the mess, some moving with a purpose,
trying to start putting their lives back together, others aimlessly, lost and
unsure what to do. A small group was at the eastern edge of the city, working
with shovels to dig graves. A pile of bodies was near them, and several more
dead were being added, brought on carts while mourners followed behind.

“Giants must have hit here,
either coming or going,” Darius said.

“I think you’re right,” Barlow
said. “I believe this is Bloomfield, or what’s left of it.” He pointed further
west where the remains of the huge wall that connected the twin cities of
Bloomfield and Brimfield formed a barrier to any invasion from the Far North. Obviously,
it had not stopped the giants. The near section of the wall, like the town of
Bloomfield, was a ruin.

“Fate is a strange thing,”
Silas said. “I’ve been wondering how we might pass into the north. The wall is
well-guarded, and we could not have hoped to pass through easily. Looks like
the giants did us this one favor.”

“I still suggest we move
further west, out of sight of the people of Bloomfield,” Adrianna suggested. “I’d
rather move unseen if given the choice.”

“Agreed,” Silas replied.

It turned out there were many
choices for passing the wall. The giants had not merely breached it in one or
two spots, but rather had made a point of bringing much of it down, likely so
that the damage could not be swiftly repaired. It spoke of better planning than
any would have given the beasts credit for, and the promise of further raids in
the future. Here and there a group of two or three soldiers was spotted, but
any attempt to reconstruct the wall would require far more resources than
Dalusia currently had available, as would any attempt to guard the length of
the line the wall had covered. Just as the companions could choose a spot to
move north unchallenged, any raiding party coming south could do the same.

After full darkness fell, the
few troops still watching over the wall were made known by the small fires they
lit. Apparently they were unwilling to brave a further attack from the north
with no more than the light of the moon. The travelers chose a spot to cross
that was well away from any human occupation and where the wall had been
smashed thoroughly to the ground.

In its former glory the wall
rose over forty feet high, and was actually two walls of thick, carved stone
with a stone “roadway” some fifteen feet wide near the battlements atop the
structure, which gave the defenders a way to move easily along its length. Now
the remains sat in large, uneven chunks, distinguishable from the great
boulders that had brought it down only by the white-gray color and the
occasional smooth sides that indicated the earlier work of human hands. The
companions picked their way through the rubble, still no easy task especially
in the half-light of the moon, the ruins filled with deep, haphazard shadows. Twenty
minutes after they started across they finally cleared what was left of the
once mighty barrier.

Darius paused and looked back,
the wall, and therefore human lands, now behind them. “The Far North,” he
announced, realizing they had crossed a less visible but no less real line of
another sort.

“The far south of the Far
North, one might say,” Luke put in.

They started off, but came to
a halt after only a few moments. A low wooden structure was before them, and
they moved around it slowly, before Silas put his finger on what it was.

“A catapult,” he concluded.

And so it was, like in design
to those used by the armies in the south, but built and used by the northern
giants, this machine was far larger than any they had seen, so large they at
first had been unable to tell what it was, being thrown off by its scale.

“This explains much,” Barlow
said. “As strong as the giants are, I did not understand how they did so much
damage to the wall, and apparently in a short period of time, otherwise Captain
Faine and the Dalusians would have been warned of their coming much sooner.”

“I expect if we traveled along
this side of the wall we’d find many more such devices,” Darius said.

“Based on how badly the wall
has been crushed, I would agree with you,” Barlow said.

“These giants are much
different than stories tell,” said Adrianna. “Organized. Building catapults. It
can bode no good for our kind.” The dour expressions on her companions’ faces
told her that all agreed with her assessment.

“Well, what are we waiting
for,” Luke said with a laugh. “Let’s go find them.”

Despite the obvious irony in
his tone, he led and they followed. It was what they had to do.

*

For a week they had traveled
north, through Elysium’s Neck and then into the Far North proper. The land had
become hillier and trees more frequent, the plain now far behind them and the
Long Shadow Mountains rising ominously before them, towering black shapes
visible through what was left of the late summer haze. The giants cut a wide
swath, and evidence of their passage was easy to spot, bent tree branches even
indicating the direction of their travel. The companions covered ground at a
decent pace, more so as Luke continued the long, slow process of healing from
his injuries, but none of them could tell whether they were gaining or falling
further behind the giants, whose behaviors on a march—how fast they moved, how
long they rested—was unknown to them. The real question was where would the
behemoths turn and make a stand. The companions’ best guess was the mountains,
where the giants lived. Unanswered was how they were going to pass the Long
Shadow range and its oversized inhabitants.

That day, a little before
noon, any hope that all the giants had fled back to the mountains were dashed. Four
of the monsters manned an outpost of sorts, an area they had cleared halfway up
a rise to give them room to operate. Three hill giants were playing some sort
of game, rolling bones and guffawing at one another’s luck or skill. The
fourth, a stone giant, was asleep, his back propped against a pile of boulders
he had stacked for ready use. This was no ambush—the giants made no attempt to
keep out of sight—but clearly no counter-attacking human army was going to
approach the giants’ mountain home unseen.

The companions huddled in a
small copse of trees, watching the giants for a time. “Think there’s more in
the area?” Darius asked.

“Hard to say,” Barlow replied.
“Either way, we should work our way around if we can.”

“We could use a distraction,”
Silas stated. “A lot of open up space up ahead. All it takes is one spotting
us.”

“So who’s going to volunteer
to be the distraction?” Luke asked.

“That wasn’t what I had in
mind,” Silas said, turning to Adrianna.

She, in turn, looked at
Barlow. “With your permission.”

“You needn’t ask for that.”

“I’d still like to have it.”

Barlow grimaced, but nodded at
her to go ahead.

With words spoken so gently
none of the others could hear, Adrianna cast a spell. One of the boulders the
sleeping giant rested against suddenly lurched out of place, and half the stack
came crashing down, several rolling away down the hill. As the stones tumbled,
a small flock of birds rose screaming into the sky. The hill giants reacted to
the commotion by leaping to their feet and grabbing their clubs. A moment later
the alarm left their faces and they were laughing at their companion.

The stone giant’s arm throbbed
painfully, as he had been caught between two of the rolling boulders, but now
his pride was stung worse. “I no make mistake stacking rocks.” The statement
was an accusation.

“We no move dumb rocks,” one
of the hill giants answered, the laughter gone from his voice and his face. “Rocks
bad weapons. Club better.”

The stone giant responded to
this by hurling one of the rocks at the hill giants, who scrambled out of the
way just in time. Once the immediate danger of the flying boulder was past,
they looked at one another, then gave a shout and charged with clubs raised. The
stone giant, rather than fleeing, grabbed another rock.

“That’s our signal to go,”
said Adrianna.

The travelers were well out of
sight before the giants had settled their differences.

*

Captain Faine couldn’t shake
the feeling. His chest felt tight and his throat constricted, the bile that
threatened to lurch out at any moment choked off. If it was just him, if his
fellow officers felt different, he might be able to think his way around it,
but the more he tried, the more his whirl of thoughts settled on the same
desperate conclusions. He and his men were doomed, doomed unless they acted,
and even then…

News from the east wasn’t
good, Four Creek having fallen, and the Longvalian army possibly moving toward
them. The giants hadn’t reappeared, but the wall was ruined, and there was
little to hold them back if they moved south again. The truce with the
Westphalians felt less certain than ever, the dead buried and the wounded
recovering, the armies simply waiting for one or the other to make a move. Faine
knew the Westphalians had superior numbers, even here in his own land, and
since the fall of Four Creek he had nowhere to turn for reinforcements. Even if
the foreign armies withdrew, and the giants remained in their mountain
dwellings, the land was so sick he doubted he could feed his men through the
winter. Everywhere he turned he found only hopelessness.

Despair settled upon him, deep
and dark, a chill that went into the marrow of his bones. Those who knew the
Captain wouldn’t have believed such a thing could happen. They’d seen him rally
his men against terrible odds, find a way when others had given up all hope. But
the men who had served with Captain Faine the longest felt the same utter
despair, and only saw the confirmation of their own doom in their Captain’s
pale, drawn face.

Faine glanced at the maps
spread on the table, useless really. He knew there was little that could be
used to advantage here on the plain. He felt a surge of bitter rage, and
gripped the edge of the table, ready to flip it, to cry out to the heavens and
ask why he had been left to such a fate, but he caught himself, some sense of
pride and self-discipline piercing his personal gloom, if only for a moment. He
steadied himself, keeping some of his composure, but the darkness in his
thoughts wouldn’t be so easily cast aside. The table remained upright, but the
decision he had reached would not change. They would attack in the morning,
truce or not. Surprise was the only chance they had, and a slim one at that.

The leader of the Westphalians
was having shockingly similar thoughts. Far from home, his supply line already
thin and constantly threatened, he could wait no longer. Retreat was not an
option. They would attack in the morning.

As the sun edged above the
horizon the next day, the two armies flew at one another, simultaneously
breaking their truce. It would be a bloody, cruel fight, with little quarter
given, and regardless of who won, misery, pain, and death would be the order of
the day. Praad lingered for a moment, watching as the first blows fell, wishing
he could stay through the day, to drink in all the glorious suffering, but he
had tarried long enough. He had tracked those with the book to the Dalusian
camp, and knew they had gone north from here, but the opportunity presented by
these two armies sitting so close and so uneasy was too much for him to pass
up. It had cost him less than a day, and as the sounds, sights, and smells of
battle filled his senses, he knew it had been worth it.