Read Bloodletting Part 1: The Affinities Cycle Book 1 Online
Authors: Mark Ryan
Bloodletting Part 1: The Affinities Cycle Book 1 (4 page)
Chapter 7
Tetra Bicks
Each step taught another lesson in agony. Gritting his teeth, Tetra forged on, forcing his feet to carry him. Tetra followed the trail until it abruptly ended in the middle of a field. He cast about, trying to figure out how he had lost it. The orocs must’ve used their earth magic to cover their tracks.
Carefully balancing on his wobbling legs, he leaned against a tree, catching his breath as the sun cast rays through the light fall mist. Dew collected on the flora and fauna of the fields between village and forest, illuminating the petals of the flowers his sister had loved so much.
Before disappearing, the trail had carved a straight path through the hewn fields of wheat. The trail avoided the roads, moving from hedgerow to hedgerow, straight south toward the Rocmire. During harvest-time stories, villagers would’ve whispered of the forest’s forbidding darkness and Ravagers, beasts changed by the presence of Heart gem shards in their bodies. He had listened to the stories and, like the rest, hadn’t really believed them.
Tattered sheets trailed behind him and he used the sword to chop them free against the base of the tree. Each strike pulsed pain through his body, but the sheets slowed him down now, catching on every twig and bramble. Blood had long since soaked through the once-white sheets. After stripping the sheets away, leaving only the bindings wrapped around his wound. He took a moment more to catch his breath again and then pushed away from the tree.
The orocs wouldn’t have diverged from their route toward the forest. They’d likely begun masking their trail due to the proximity of Castle Drayston, the stronghold of the Drayston family, charged with keeping the region safe from bandits, Ravagers, and anything else threatening the settlements within their domain. Apparently marauding orocs needed to be added to the list, even though there’d been no serious conflicts between orocs and humans for many generations. He had never even imagined that the peaceful orocs would commit such atrocities, nor use fire to do so.
Tears rolled down Tetra’s grime-covered cheeks. Why hadn’t the Drayston soldiers stopped the orocs? Why had they allowed his family—his entire village—to be slaughtered? ’
He came to the other side of the hedgerow and found a stream gurgling at the bottom of a shallow gully in between wide water-worn stones. He’d drunk his fill at the river near Jaegen, but found himself parched at the sight of water. He crouched carefully and cupped water to his face with his hand. It slaked his throat—even his wounded ribs started to feel better—but the relief proved short-lived as he noticed the muddied waters farther downstream. The earth on either side appeared undisturbed—far too smooth. The orocs had hidden their footprints, but couldn’t conceal the sediment they’d churned up. He remained on the right trail.
Save her.
Tetra stood slowly. How long would the waters stay muddy after the orocs’ crossing? He scanned the lip of the ravine on the other side of the stream. His breathing slowed and, for an instant, the wind died down. A faint cry echoed in the distance. The pain in his side throbbed in time with his thumping heartbeat.
He waded into the stream, indifferent to the cold water shocking the exposed skin of his feet. Reaching the other side, he slipped and fell face-first into the mud. Mud mixed with blood, sticking to his face, and he lost his footing again as he tried to get up. He rolled over onto his back, leveraging himself up, but just fell again. He growled in frustration and thrust the sword into the bank, using its pommel to drag himself through the mud. At the top of the ravine, he slipped a last time and fell into a pile of leaves caught against the tall grass. He spat out the leaves and fought his way through the assailing foliage.
Save her.…
The breeze returned and he halted, shivering, though not from the chilled mud clinging to him. Several orocs made their way into the trees lining the other side of the wheat field. They trudged along, waving their hands in great sweeping half-circles over the ground as they went. Tetra waited until they’d disappeared into the woods and then crept across the field.
Save her
.
…
***
Chapter 8
Malthius Reynolds
The scene was straight out of a nightmare. Fires blazed across the village and hundreds of bodies lay hacked, mangled, and impaled on spikes of earth. Others lay lifeless, dead eyes staring at unknown horrors, but without a mark on their bodies to indicate what killed them. Heat and smoke from the fires carried the stench in waves, turning the stomachs of the Drayston soldiers.
Sergeant Malthius Reynolds had heard stories, but never thought he’d witness such brutality. Such viciousness. Reaching a gloved hand to his face he scrubbed from his moustache down to the tip of his goatee. He prayed his instincts were wrong, though they rarely were.
Reynolds whistled, raising his hand in the air and pointing left then right. “I want Volcons on the east side of the village, turn the fires on themselves. Vortens, follow them, move the air out of the way and cool the ruins. Tiduses on the west side of the village, pull condensation from the air and ground. Tectons, assist. Create channels from the wells to the outskirts. Archons, channel the Siren’s efforts, pressurize the water and direct it.”
Scanning the village, Malthius Reynolds made up his mind, dispatching the rest of the unit. “Prios’ and Geists, split up, go with each unit to try to find survivors. Everyone else, sweep the wreckage behind the crews after the fires are out.”
Out of the thousand men garrisoned at Drayston Castle, his unit was twenty-five strong, a standard patrol and emergency response dispatch. Every unit was designed to have two of each magic affinity in their ranks. The soldiers split out, sweeping the village. The discipline in their actions pleased Reynolds. He had spent more than twenty years supervising such teams, and tolerated no incompetence.
To his left two Volcons were walking through the fires, gathering the flames from the burning buildings into floating balls that trailed them, floating through the air. The Vortens were following them, channeling air away from the fireballs, redirecting it into gentle breezes, pushing the heat and fumes upwards, not only robbing the flames of their fuel, but also clearing the village of the stench.
On the right the second team was moving a little slower. Both Tectons had their hands on the ground, working together. The earth split before them, a gaping trench moving towards the village’s wells. Hands touching, the sirens were pulling water from everything around them, depositing it into the trench. The two Archons were channeling the raw force of motion, pulling the water back up from the trench as it filled, blasting the fires out.
As the fires abated and then extinguished, the rest of his unit moved through the village. Psions, able to amplify their perceptions, and Geists, able to feel life around them, moved through the wreckage as the other ten soldiers manually shifted burned beams and rubble. As they worked through the massacre, they tenderly deposited bodies in the streets. It took about thirty minutes for them to finish the first sweep of the village.
All the while, Reynolds was analyzing the destruction, studying for clues of who could have committed this atrocity. It was simply too much for one group of men to have accomplished by themselves. Was this the act of bandits, or of some renegade group, someone set against the Lord Drayston?
A young soldier in the green and gold colors of Drayston trotted up. Malthius steadied his horse as it shied, gently patting its neck, comforting it. It didn’t care for the smells of blood and fire. Neither did he.
“We’ve found no survivors,” the soldier reported. He removed the triple-ridged helm from his head and held it under his arm as he wiped his forehead. Perspiration matted his dark, shoulder-length hair. He blinked bright blue eyes as a drop of sweat slipped past his glove.
“Not even any children, Corporal Mikkels?” Reynolds watched the men working in the wreckage of Jaegen. The question was baited, playing to his suspicions.
Mikkels shook his head. “That’s just it, Sergeant, there are no children. None.”
Reynolds exchanged a glance with Draden Greenwald, the retired, burly Drayston guard who’d seen the fires from his home and joined them as they rode to investigate. The man barely fit into his old studded-leather armor, his belly hung underneath the armor as it bunched up against his armpits. Likely he hadn’t worn it in years.
“No survivors,” Mikkels repeated. “No children, and no enemy dead. The villagers had to have killed at least one of them. I don’t understand, sir.”
“Orocs.” The sergeant hated his instincts, even when useful. There had been a hundred years of peace between the orocs and humans of the region, but as unlikely as his suspicions were, the facts of the attack didn’t fit anything else. Orocs were the only race that carried their dead away, the only race that would take children. Saplings, they called them. Reverence for the young ran deep in their culture.
The earthen spikes were the clincher. Oroc earth mages used spikings in their attacks. Harvesters, the oroc name for a hunter, left massive earthen spikes along the edges of the Rocmire forest, a boundary for the lands they hunted. This killing field Jaegen had become was the end result of the same style of magic; and combat.
An attack of this scale was unheard of. This wasn’t a simple clash or border dispute. This village had been left as a message. Drayston was supposed to know that someone wasn’t happy. But which clan? Or were the Rocmire orocs untied? Most of all, Reynolds wondered what the message was. Why were the orocs ready to declare war on humans?
Draden spat on the ground. “Permission to check the outlying areas, sir?”
Reynolds nodded, still intently studying the village, ignoring Corporal Mikkels for the moment.
Draden kicked his horse into a gallop, riding out of the ruined village to the west. He had family out that way, if Reynolds remembered correctly.
“Branon,” Reynolds shouted. “Get over here!”
A nearby soldier stiffened his back and hurried up. “Yes, sir.”
“Ride back and inform Lord Drayston that we suspect Jaegen was attacked by orocs. There are no known survivors as of yet. We’re tracking the attackers, have the castle send two more units to bury the dead.”
“Orocs, sir?” Branon asked. Reynolds could see the confusion written across the private’s face.
“Yes. Orocs.” Reynolds narrowed his eyes. “Now why aren’t you mounting your horse, Guardsman?”
Branon might’ve been freshly assigned to Drayston, but hesitation had been the death of many a soldier. If a war with the orocs had begun—and Reynolds was pretty sure it had—best to break him of bad habits quickly, for his own sake as well as others’. The inexperienced guardsmen clued in on Reynolds’s mood, clambered onto his horse, and headed east.
“Orders, sir?” Mikkels asked.
“Round them up, Corporal.”
Mikkels loosed a shrill whistle. Drayston soldiers emerged from wreckage and the few standing structures in the village, marching back to their horses. The two dozen men of the squad would be no match for an oroc war party, especially not if they had sent an entire clan.
“A village has been attacked, everyone killed. This cannot stand. We have to try and rescue any survivors … which I believe there are.” Reynolds rode out in front of the line. “They have several hours on us, but even orocs can’t outrun horses.”
“Sir,” Mikkels said, “are we enough to defeat an oroc raiding party, even if we can find them?”
“No,” said Reynolds. “We aren’t. But that doesn’t matter right now.”
“Sir?”
He looked Mikkels in the eyes. “They slaughtered an entire village, Corporal, and took the children. They still have those children, and their only chance of survival lies with us right now. We will follow them to the edge of Rocmire, where we have a chance. We cannot let them lose us.”
Mikkels opened his mouth, but then shut it and tilted his head in compliance.
“Move out,” Reynolds said, turning his mount south.
***
Chapter 9
Tetra Bicks
Tetra followed the orocs until the sun hung low over the horizon. What would he do once he caught them? He’d glimpsed the larger party ahead of the rear guard, but the slow pace of the orocs covering their passage made them fall farther behind with every step.
Save her.…
Twice, he’d been sure they’d spotted him, though they hadn’t split off to come accost him. Orocs were notorious for being impossible to catch unawares. Of course, they were also known for being peaceful, if reclusive healers.
The ground sloped gently downhill as they drew close to the Mirewall. Tetra had learned about the Mirewall, but never seen it, despite the fact that it was a day’s walk from Jaegen. Mirewall was a series of terraced cliffs that formed a natural barrier at the edge of the Rocmire forest floor, a hundred feet below. The lichen speckled terraces stretched a third of a mile, ranging in height from ten feet to almost forty at the top.
The orocs stopped at the edge of another tree-lined field and one looked back in his direction. Tetra sprawled, breath hissing through his teeth as he fought to keep from crying out in pain. Quick motions, making his stomach muscles clench, were giving him waves of nausea. Ignoring it as best he could, Tetra watched. One at a time, the orocs crouched and then vanished over an unseen edge.
As the last one disappeared, panic surged through Tetra.
Save her.…
He couldn’t lose them. Rising, he hobbled across the field to the trees and dropped to his knees again, panting, side throbbing. Thirty five feet below, the orocs gathered at the base of an overhang, collecting the equipment they’d thrown down ahead of themselves. The orocs were placing giant hands on the ground after loading their equipment. Earth and rock bubbled beneath their palms, smoothing out and obscuring their tracks.
One of them shouted a guttural alarm. Tetra’s heart clenched, but the oroc pointed away to the east. The others grabbed the rest of their items and started running. For the first time, Tetra noticed a field of distant treetops after the drops ahead. The Rocmire forest. If they reached it, he’d lose them for good; and whatever had spooked them increased their chances of spotting him trailing along.
His skin burned as a fever consumed him. Half of what he saw was delusion. Children being yanked behind the orocs, flames coming from the forest, it was as though he was trapped in last night. Tetra’s eyes were wide and drool was dripping from the corner of his mouth.
One of the orocs lagged behind, searching for something. Tetra tightened his grip on the sword.
Save her.…
the words echoed through his soul and drove him forward.
***