The Wrath of Heroes (A Requiem for Heroes Book 2) Read online

  Lannick focused on the bowman, knowing the half-eared sergeant was too far away to do him harm. This man with the arrow nocked was the man who could kill him now.

  The bowstring twanged.

  Lannick lurched forward and arched his back, contorting as an arrow whistled behind him. He rushed ahead and pressed near Clagger’s wayward horse, keeping its mass between him and the archer. He snatched the horse’s reins and tried guiding it along. He cooed in its ear and scratched its shoulder but the horse fought and stamped its hooves.

  There were grunts and the clang of metal. Lannick knew Brugan had engaged the sergeant. With any luck the big barkeep would avoid the blade long enough to whack it from its wielder’s hands.

  The bowstring sang again. Lannick ducked behind the horse as a shaft whizzed overhead. “Move, beast!” he urged, seizing its mane in a fist and pushing forward. At last the horse yielded and began prancing along a roundabout course toward the archer.

  Lannick chanced a look over the saddle. He saw Brugan and the sergeant grappling, both atop their mounts but in peril of being unhorsed. Each held the arm of the other, their weapons swaying overhead but incapable of being put to use. Black blood colored Brugan’s sleeve. Lannick guessed that if not for the wound the barkeep would have overpowered his opponent by now.

  Twang!

  Lannick ducked behind the horse just before hearing the thunk of an arrow sinking into flesh. He hissed as the horse beside him shuddered.

  The beast reared clumsily and then fell. Lannick barely managed to dance away before the falling steed could crush his legs. A shaft protruded from the horse’s neck, the wood still quivering.

  Not more than twenty feet away the squint-eyed archer stood atop the cart. He drew another arrow from his quiver.

  Lannick saw his moment and ran. There was no cover between him and the bow but the distance was short and the archer unready. Lannick drew back his blade, roaring as his did.

  The archer nocked the arrow but wasn’t quick enough. Lannick leapt over the cart’s edge between the wide-eyed conscripts and dove headlong into the man, knocking him from the wagon. They fell in a tangled heap, Lannick barely managing to avoid the arrowhead meeting his neck.

  The archer flailed but couldn’t stop Lannick’s sword from piercing his ribs. He clawed at Lannick with empty hands, then fell still as Lannick twisted the blade and drove it deeper. Lannick rolled away and rubbed sweat and blood from his eyes.

  He sucked in a breath and lay still. He listened, but there were no grunts or shuffles or clashes of steel. He exhaled. It seemed Brugan had managed to smash his hammer into the sergeant’s skull.

  “So,” came a deadpan voice, “seems you’re not much of a soldier after all.”

  Lannick jerked upward. There, just half a dozen yards away, the half-eared sergeant sat on his horse, leering triumphantly over Brugan. The big barkeep struggled to his knees, his sleeve soaked through with blood and another spot welling on the opposite shoulder. He reached for his hammer with shaking hands but it was too far for him to grasp.

  Lannick tugged at his own weapon but it wouldn’t move, the blade stuck between the fallen archer’s ribs. He scrambled about and found the archer’s bow and an arrow nearby. He grabbed both then fumbled to fit the arrow against the string.

  “No need to stand,” the half-eared man said to Brugan. “You’ll die just as well on your knees.”

  Lannick drew the bow, aimed for the man’s head, and loosed the arrow. It flew toward him but Lannick had been too hasty. The shaft sailed just wide of its mark.

  The sergeant looked away from Brugan, startled. His pale eyes narrowed and he bared his teeth ferociously.

  Lannick searched about and spied the archer’s quiver. Another chance. He seized a shaft and nocked it.

  The sergeant had returned his attention to Brugan who was suddenly out of reach of his blade. The big barkeep had collapsed, whether by wit or weakness Lannick couldn’t guess.

  “Bah!” the sergeant cursed. But then he hesitated, seemingly trying to decide whether to dismount and finish Brugan or make a move toward Lannick.

  Lannick used the moment to aim carefully. He was no marksman, but at this short distance and with this time he could shoot true. He breathed, made certain of his shot, and released the string.

  The arrow found its target, sinking into the shoulder of the sergeant’s sword-arm. The man grunted and his weapon fell from his hand. “Bah!” he said again.

  Lannick snatched another arrow.

  The sergeant kicked his horse’s flanks. The beast leapt forward, past Brugan and onto the road. The sergeant looked back to Lannick with a glower, then charged down the road at a gallop.

  Lannick loosed the arrow. It smacked into the horse’s haunch. The mount stumbled and clumsily fell, pitching the sergeant from atop it. The horse rolled over the sergeant then struggled upright. The sergeant, though, remained face down on the road a hundred feet away, immobile.

  “Dead gods,” Lannick spat. He knew they needed to get clear of the place, and fast. He dropped the bow and rushed toward his friend. “Brugan!”

  Brugan groaned and rolled onto his back, a pained grimace on his face. “Bastard fought dirty,” he said with a wince. “Kicked my horse and the dumb beast dropped me. Then he stabbed my shoulder when I rushed him. A lucky poke is all. I’ll live.”

  “Lucky,” said Lannick in agreement, though he wondered how much of it had been rust and age.

  Brugan pulled himself up and stared at his arm, the brown sleeve slick with blood and stuck to the skin. “I don’t think it’s too deep but I’ll need to stitch it. You hiding anything to drink? Any strong spirits?”

  Lannick’s hand found his satchel and then the outline of his flask. He paused for an instant. No half-measures, and no turning back. He slapped open the flap and handed the flask to Brugan. “Use all you need, then toss the flask aside. I’ll not be needing it any longer.”

  “Very well, lad.” He pressed himself to his feet, swaying slightly and steadying himself against Lannick.

  “You shouldn’t ride.”

  “No. I reckon not.”

  “Get in the cart. We’ll take it and their horses and head off the road.”

  “And what of us?” came a timid voice.

  Lannick looked to the cart where the bound conscripts still sat. They were skinny fellows, barely older than boys and clad in little more than rags. “Are you lads alright?”

  They nodded in unison, grubby faces easing with apparent relief.

  Lannick moved back to the corpse that trapped his sword and, with some effort, yanked the blade loose. He cleaned the blood and gristle from the weapon then strode to the wagon.

  The boys held gangly arms toward him, thin hands squeezed together by thick rope. Lannick set about sawing through the cords to free their bruised and bloodied wrists.

  “You can walk?” he asked. “You can ride?”

  They stumbled away from the wagon, both rubbing their hands. “Aye,” they answered.

  “Very well,” Lannick said. “Take two of the horses and ride away from here as swiftly as you can. There’ll be trouble coming soon,” he said, thinking again of the death of High King Deragol. “Trouble for us all.”

  Near nightfall they made camp far from the road, beside a tumble of stones that looked to be an ancient cairn marking some forgotten death or battle. Brugan sat by a small fire, wincing as he wrapped new bandages about his wounds. He wore a weary look, his wide face showing no hint of the smile that usually warmed it.

  Lannick paced farther away, allowing the silence to settle upon them. He studied the land about, the setting sun drawing long shadows across the hillsides. He pulled his green cloak—the cloak of the Variden—about his shoulders, worrying over threats drawing near.

  He worried not over conscripting soldiers, though. His head could manage swinging steel and violent men. He worried of threats far graver. These were near-forgotten thoughts, things he’d not considered in a l
ong time. But now they troubled him once again—old worries of ancient evils. Worries of a dark lord thought vanquished a millennium ago and of the vile necromancers who’d persisted in his wake.

  The Necrists. With High King Deragol dead and heirless, could the power of the Godswell open to them?

  He considered General Fane. The fact that the man had struck some black bargain with these creatures, a bargain that initially demanded the general’s daughter and later Lannick, the fallen disciple of the Sentinel Valis.

  Lannick had not thought long on this before—his head had been too sullied by drink and grief and shame. Besides, he’d always known Fane to be a viciously ambitious man, and so even some compact with the Necrists seemed something of which he was capable. A bargain, perhaps? Some deal for ill-gotten influence, the answer to some imponderable question, or maybe the perverse return of a loved one long dead…

  A shiver seized Lannick as he thought on that last possibility, his head filling with images of the stitched faces of his own wife and children worn by the Necrists who’d hunted him.

  He shook it aside as best he could and focused.

  Fane had bargained with the Necrists. In light of the warnings of his former Variden brethren that the Spider King had allied with the Necrists—coupled with the news of the death of High King Deragol—Lannick wondered just how treacherous Fane’s dealings really were. The general had lost battle upon battle to the Spider King’s armies, casting his men to the enemy like stones to the sea.

  Could he have bargained with the Spider King as well?

  He wondered if the Variden had underestimated the general’s role in things and the danger he posed. He wondered if Fane’s ambitions stretched so far as to compel the ultimate treachery.

  Could he be losing this war by design?

  Suddenly, Lannick knew his quest for vengeance had become all the more desperate, all the more vital. The stakes had grown immensely greater, and Lannick knew what would happen if he failed.

  His hand found his purse and the outline of his Coda. He reckoned he’d need the thing far sooner than he’d like.

  He remembered when the Coda had chosen him. He was a much younger man, only a year past twenty, back when his motives and ideals were still untainted by the corruptions and compromises of age. He’d been traveling from Ironmoor to his father’s farm when he stumbled upon an old man, perhaps sixty years of age and wearing a cloak of green. The man’s wagon had lost a wheel and the fellow fumbled about trying to refit it to the axle. Lannick offered to help but upon seeing him the man succumbed to some sort of swoon and collapsed beside the wagon.

  “It is yours to bear!” the man had gasped when he awoke. With shaking hands he’d seized Lannick’s wrist, then threw upon it a heavy bracelet of black iron.

  The Coda had snapped shut on his arm like the maw of some terrible beast. Lannick was horrified, and his head flooded then with an agonizing torrent of visions. He’d seen then—through the Sentinel Valis’s eyes—the form of Yrghul the Lord of Nightmares, a monstrosity of bone and swirling shadows, standing triumphant upon the ruins of Ironmoor. Lannick’s eyes had burned as Illienne illuminated the darkness, and he’d watched in awe as she diminished while divesting her divine power. He’d felt the surge of that power as a part of Illienne’s divinity filled Valis, forcing his mind to burn and his limbs to tremble. He’d felt Valis’s confusion when Illienne told the Sentinels she needed to descend to oblivion with her dark twin in order to defeat him. And he’d felt a cold fury in his heart as Valis and the other Sentinels rushed to Illienne’s side in her final struggle, falling upon Yrghul with vicious blades and sending both gods to oblivion.

  He’d felt Valis’s disgust upon being banished from Rune, and his steely resolve to hold true to his oath while he and the other Sentinels were led in chains over the Southwalls. And, lastly, he’d felt the sharp point of the knife—wielded by Valis’s own hand—against Valis’s throat as he’d made ready to pour his power into the Codas he’d forged, thereby carrying out his oath through his followers, the Variden.

  Then the cascade of the Variden’s voices had struck Lannick. They’d assailed him with a barrage of welcomes and warnings, followed by whispers of history’s secrets. Ominous accounts of a war in the shadows of the world, a desperate battle against those foul necromancers who’d remained true to Yrghul. Tales of an eternal vigil, a watch against the Necrists and other enemies in Rune and foreign lands.

  His world had changed that day. It had expanded to a vast realm of uncertainty and peril, a place stalked by foes who’d not rest until their vile master had risen from death and laid waste to the living.

  He’d agreed to take the oath of the Variden, and keep at bay those forces lurking in the dark.

  Lannick felt again the weight of that oath. He’d sworn to remain ever watchful against Rune’s most ancient and powerful enemies, those forces common folk were either merrily ignorant of or thought of as villains in fairy tales. For most, the truth of the enemy’s existence had faded from memory and into myth as the world moved on from the dead gods.

  But the Variden are sworn to remember. And in the nine years after my family’s murder I permitted myself to forget.

  He paced farther from the camp, holding his Coda in his hands. He drew it close, studying in the fading light the lines etched across its dull surface—words of power in the very language of gods.

  The weapon with which to fight the shadows.

  A notion struck him, and he exhaled with a whistle through his chipped tooth. Codas left their bearers when those men and women died or grew infirm or useless. Just as his Coda had chosen Lannick, it could have chosen another after he’d hammered it from his wrist those many years ago. It would have sensed his thoughts, his failure and despair, and would have compelled him to give it to another more suited to carry on the fight.

  Yet it didn’t, even when I abandoned the others.

  As they had many times of late, his thoughts turned to Fane. This time, though, those thoughts carried a new urgency. If Fane was in league with the enemy, then the man needed to be slain. His leadership had brought nothing but ruin, and had allowed the Spider King to march nearly undeterred through Rune’s southern reaches with only an illusion of resistance. Rune’s armies needed to be freed from his deception or they’d have no chance at all of beating back the Arranese.

  Lannick knew, then, this was why his Coda remained his and his alone. His purpose—vengeance—was now intertwined with that of the Variden.

  He sniffed. He’d not be lashing the Coda to his wrist anytime soon—he didn’t fancy the idea of old comrades poking about in his head.

  No. My grief and regrets are mine alone to possess.

  He looked outward, across the darkening landscape fading beneath the blanket of night. He was very likely headed to his death, as were a good many folk finer than he. The task would be as great a one as the kingdom had ever faced. There’d be horrors unimaginable ahead.

  There seemed an inevitability to that. An impending doom that inspired even as it frightened, for it left no room for half-measures or turning back.

  This was his path.

  This was his purpose.

  This was how he’d avenge those he’d loved.

  He would kill Fane. And after Fane’s death, he’d wage war with Fane’s army against the Spider King and his Necrist allies. And in doing so, perhaps he’d save the kingdom.

  A crooked smile crept to his face.

  Captain Lannick deVeers, he thought. Protector of Ironmoor, indeed.

  2

  DOUBT

  Zandrachus Bale shuddered and pulled his robes close. The fire would not warm him, nor would the light of the sun setting over the barren steppe beyond. It wasn’t a cold evening—rare indeed was such a thing in Arranan—but then, this was no chill of the body.

  It is one borne by doubt alone.

  He wondered if he’d have the strength to see his task to its end, and shuddered once more. He was so very far
from his home, so far from the sheltered nooks of the Abbey, and there would come no assurances. He was on a quest to summon another Sentinel, and the last he’d encountered had been none too pleasant. The thought of Lyan the Just looming over him in the cavern beneath Cirak still unnerved him, her eerie gold skin shimmering in the cavern’s light and her ominous sword at the ready.

  There were so many uncertainties, so many awful ends he could meet in this place. If there were anywhere in all the world that would seem most perilous for an acolyte of the Ancient Sanctum it was Arranan, the nation of marauders presently warring with Rune. Bale pulled strands of graying hair from before his eyes to behind his ears and scanned the far horizon. It seemed at least they were alone here, though Bale wondered whether such was a good thing in this stark land.

  Lorra grunted, drawing Bale’s gaze. The woman sat across the fire, poking a bent stick into a foul-smelling pot of misshapen roots. Firelight danced about her sharp nose, thin lips, and green eyes. She was not a beautiful woman in the classical sense fancied by painters and poets. Yet there was a prettiness about her. It was one set with many rough edges, but it was a prettiness nonetheless.

  I would never have made it this far without her.

  He studied her for a moment longer then sighed, pulling his eyes from her face and back to the wasteland before him. Stunted trees clung near broken boulders, drawing crooked shadows across the yellow dirt. Ragged-winged vultures circled on hot breezes in the distance, and Bale guessed some strange beast was dying somewhere beneath their spiral. There were no signs of proper civilization in this hard land, and the sudden, dry wind carried naught but the reek of desolation.

  Arranan.

  Bale had studied much during his time in the Abbey. Indeed, rare was the day he’d spent away from a musty book in the sputtering candlelight of its library. He’d read of this place, known as a hard land with hard people. Brave merchants were said to travel to its ancient capital of Zyn, though otherwise the realm had remained largely isolated for centuries. It was often described as a nation of violent tribes ever at war with one another, with no ambition beyond avenging ancestral grudges.