City of Steel (Chaos Awakens Book 3) (2 page)

The sound of Kassa's name sent a wave of despair through the assassin.  He briefly considered just closing his eyes again and going to sleep.  The trolls could take him.  What did he have to live for anymore?  She’d talked with him about starting a family just before he’d taken her into those gray passages. Just before he’d ruined her again. How was he supposed to accept a future without her? He swallowed that gravely shard of self-pity with no little effort before speaking again. "I guess I should get up then.  I don't like trolls, and I'm fairly certain they don't like me either." 

"Yes, it's about time for that.  You'll need to be careful, though.  Your body is weak and your second heart is not fully formed.  If you push yourself too hard it could just stop.  We wouldn't want that, would we?"  The Young Xan seemed completely serious.  

"Maybe not."  Xan answered as he attempted to push himself back to his feet for the second time since waking from death.  He had to keep going.  He’d promised Leahn, and he couldn’t quit after all that this journey had cost Kassa.  Some foolish part of him refused to ever give in while his legs would still carry him forward.  His hand brushed something cold and metallic at his side, and he stopped for a moment as he realized exactly what it was.  The knife blade was coated in a drying layer of his blood, yet another layer to the already intricate pattern of the metal.  It was Haley's knife.  He'd bought this blade for her as a gift, and it had somehow ended up in Kassa's hands.  Xan shook his head, trying to shake away the notion of what that might mean.  Haley wouldn't have parted with that knife willingly.  He picked the knife up, wiped away his own blood, and put it in an empty scabbard at his side.  He'd have to deal with those bleak considerations later.  He needed to get up. 

His body hurt.  The muscles ached and that burning sensation still made his veins feel like molten metal.

"Blood stopped pumping through your system for a time.  The burning is normal blood flow returning.  It will pass soon enough."  Young Xan addressed his concerns, and as soon as he spoke the words older Xan realized the truth to them.  The sensation was similar to having slept on an arm funny, if not accompanied by a bit more pain. 

The pain in his chest was annoyingly acute as he scrambled the last bit to his feet.  He could feel his second heart hammering away in his chest, beating with obvious strain to maintain his blood circulation.  It was on the right side of his chest, somewhere below his lung. The sensation was a strange one.  Xan placed a hand over the place on his chest where he could feel the excited beating originating from.  His hand was different than he remembered it.  His fingers were longer, the bones heavier.  His human fingernails had been replaced by black claws that edged beyond the tips of his fingers when he curled his hand and tensed his knuckles. 

"Hmmph."  He let out a slight puff of exasperated air. 

"There is no point in dwelling on the details just yet. We should get going." The younger him attempted to distract him from the discovery of his new physical traits by repeating the same insistent desire to leave.

"Where are we going?"  Xan asked, taking his first uncertain step in the direction of the talking image of his manifested insanity. 

"Out of here, for now. After that, well, that's something you'll have to decide."

Xan chuckled dryly. "My last plan didn't work out so well."

"Well, that makes us about due for some good luck, no?"

"You're never going to pass for me if you keep being so optimistic."  Xandrith noted with a frown.  His next footfall was accompanied by a flare of pain through his chest.  He winced and bit down on his lip for a few seconds before speaking again.  "How long am I going to be weak like this?" 

"That's difficult to say.  If you were a troll you'd be fine already.  Your humanity isn't doing you any good.  The wound is definitely healing faster than it would for a normal man, but it's far slower than a troll's injury would patch itself.  You're just going to need to be careful until the damage to your primary heart is repaired.  There is no helping it."  That wasn't exactly encouraging. 

"Which way do we go to get out of here?"  Xan asked, pausing a moment before a thought occurred to him.  "No, on second thought, which way did Kassa go?  I need to find her." 

Fake Xan shook his head. "You're not thinking clearly. Kassa left here in a hurry. You're not going to catch up with her in your current state, and you don't want to. If she knew you were alive, she'd kill you again, and this time she'd be certain to make it stick. Do you really want to throw away the only advantage that you have right now? They all think you're dead."

Xandrith opened his mouth to reply indignantly, but the words faltered on his tongue.  The other him was right.  What would he do even if he did manage to catch up to Kassa?  Did he really believe that she would see reason if he could just talk to her?  What did he hope to learn by speaking to her?  The aching in Xan's chest was only partially due to his perforated heart.  No, Kassa was beyond him.  He couldn't do anything to help her this time. Not now anyway, maybe not ever.

"You know what we need to do."  Young Xan spoke, breaking his silent misery. 

"I don't."  Xan replied quietly. 

"You do.  We need to go north.  That's where the trolls are taking him.  That's where he has to go to fully awaken."  The words struck like the tolling of a funeral bell, heavy, somber, and unavoidable. 

"What does that mean?" Xan was confused by the words, yet fully aware that they were correct.

The imaginary assassin laughed and grinned, an expression that never reached his cold gray eyes. "I don't know, but I know it's true! There is something in the mountains that he needs before he can claim his power, Xan. We need to get there before he does."

The injured Xan frowned. "I thought you needed me to decide what our next move would be?"

Young Xan just shrugged and continued grinning like a mad man. "I am you, so you did just decide what our next move would be."

Xan nodded slowly trying not to look as confused as he felt. "I suppose that's true."

Walking was more difficult than Xan would have liked.  The hole in his chest, the one that passed right through to his heart, had torn through some muscle that pulled painfully with every step he took on his left foot.  He'd been forced to stop only an hour after his slow trek had begun to apply a makeshift compress.  The wound wouldn’t stop bleeding.  For a man trained in murder, the blood leaking from his chest in the place where his heart should have been beating was a source of constant anxiety.  Xan couldn't look at the damage without remembering that he should be dead.  Humans don't just walk away from a punctured heart. 

When he was able to drag his attention away from the fatal wounding he'd taken, he was forced to face the reality of the decisions he'd made that had brought him to his current point in life. The Reach was dead. The Drayid had decimated the population that lived there, and he'd destroyed what remained of the Drayid. The emptiness of the place was a sobering reminder of all that had happened in that once great city. The younger version of him had said the trolls were coming to take the place, and they could have it for all that Xandrith cared.  Yillan Reach was a cursed place, and it was only fitting that a cursed people would choose to live there.  It might have been wrong for him to think that way, but he didn't really care. 

It took him well over a day to reach the city gates. When he finally did, it was like reaching the end of a terrible nightmare. Passing beneath the massive steel gates and out onto the road beyond lifted a terrible weight from Xan's shoulders. He would never forget what had happened in the Reach, never forget what he'd done to the Drayid, and what had come to pass with Kassa, but leaving the city was like leaving behind a corpse. At least he didn't have to look at the mangled mess anymore.

"Do you really think the trolls will want that place?"  Xan asked, and as if summoned by his voice the younger version of himself walked up beside him.  That seemed to be how he worked.  Often times he was just gone, but if Xandrith addressed him he was always there. 

"Of course they will.  The Reach is an amazing stronghold.  It can keep people in and out depending upon what they want to use it for.  Also, it's a symbol of humanity's fall.  For all the negative things you see in it, the trolls will see a positive.  They've won, and Yillan is just one of the spoils of victory."  Young Xan sounded regretful. 

"They haven't really won.  Not yet.  We're still fighting them."  Xan said, trying to remain positive. 

Young Xan looked surprised. "Do you really think so? After all we've seen? We're so far north, but we've encountered the plague and hordes of trolls. Trolls hate the cold, and yet they're all over up here. If it is this bad in the north, can you imagine what it's like in the south?"

Xan shook his head. "The humans and orcs won't give in so easily. We're stronger than that. With a threat like the trolls they'll band together and fight. The fae will help as well, I think. It's probably not as bad in the south as you think."

"When did you become so positive?"  Young Xan's expression was skeptical. 

"We've got a lot to do, yet. If everyone is already dead, why would I even bother trying? I need to have something to fight for."

"Revenge." The illusion answered coldly. "We're fighting for revenge, Xan. No one takes things from us and gets away with it. We're going to find that shit swilling false god, and we're going to shove our dagger into his chest again and again until he is as cold and dead as the dirt he'll be crashing into."

Xan chuckled, a dark, dry sound.  "I do like that idea.  That sounds like something to strive for."  He looked to his side to see that the false-Xan had vanished.  It didn't matter, though.  He'd gotten what he needed out of that conversation. 

A splash of smoke on the horizon drew the assassin's eyes up from the road.  He hadn't seen any signs of habitation since he'd left Yillan Reach, but smoke trails almost always meant that someone was around.  He gauged the distance to be about a day's trek out from him, at least at the pace he was making with his injuries.  He needed supplies, and he could use a night of rest with others to provide lookout. Fire didn't always imply that whoever had lit the fire was friendly though.  Lately it seemed there had been a drought of sociable people, and that was before taking into account that Xan wasn't precisely looking his best. 

It had been well over a day since Xan had eaten, and his supply of fresh water was down to its last drops.  He could probably replenish the water easily enough.  Most roads were near enough to some form of flowing water, but he wasn't quite up to hunting for his own food yet.  His chest was getting better, and though it was still bleeding it had slowed to a mere seep.  Still, agitating the wound by running around through the woods chasing game was probably a terrible idea.  Xan let out a sigh.  He already knew he was going to investigate the smoke.  He was attempting to talk himself into it, and that was a sure sign he'd really already thrown caution to the wind. 

"I'll be careful about it.  It's not like this is the first time I've had to take a risk to resupply."  He said to no one in particular.  He half expected the other half of his mind to talk back to him, but he remained silent.  Xan took that lack of feedback as agreement.  If he disagreed with Xan's chosen course of action, he probably would have said something.  "That's stupid.  He's me, why would he disagree with me?"  Xan mulled that over for a moment before frowning.  He was putting way too much time into this circular thinking. He supposed he was looking for something else besides recent events to think about. His mind jumped unbidden to Kassa’s warm eyes gone cold and black. Xan pushed the image away and decided circular thinking was preferable.

Eventually Xan was forced to break off from the main road in order keep the smoke ahead of him. He followed a small trail for the better part of an hour before that led back onto a larger road that was rutted with the signs of recent passage. He stopped and examined the tracks. The prints left in the partially frozen earth were strange, even to his trained eye. There were what looked like at least five sets of deep wagon tracks, but Xan could only make out the sign of two separate horses. That many wagons should have had at least three or four horses each to pull the kind of weight the depth of their tracks was implying. There were no other signs of beasts of burden and few of the people traveling, so what was pulling them?

The assassin looked down the roadway leading directly towards the smoke in the distance. Judging by the age of the tracks, Xan guessed that he was approaching some sort of camp. Soon enough he would know what had pulled the wagons down the road. It briefly crossed his mind that it might be some sort of troll progression, but Xan had never heard of trolls riding horses, and he had seen a few human footprints in places as well. Humans probably wouldn't be traveling alongside their troll cousins. The family relations were somewhat tenuous. Xan’s curiosity was working against his natural caution of the unknown.

He could still just circle around the whole mess and resume his trek northward, though he wasn't entirely certain where he would locate his final destination. The mountains was entirely too vague a goal.  Xan struggled over the particulars of each choice for a while, but in the end his stomach won out.  If there was a chance that he might resupply, he'd have to take it.  He couldn't very well march into the mountains with what he had on him.  His pack was mostly empty, his boots were too tight on his feet, and his clothes had been stolen from dead men and still had some less than appealing stains. 

His decision made, he set a strong pace for the smoke ahead of him.  He wasn't moving as fast as he would have liked, but he was slowly getting better. That wasn't something that many men who'd been pierced through the heart could say.  "I'm resilient."  He said to the open road.  It didn't bother to reply, but Xan was alright with that. 

It took him the better part of the day. Just before the day was settling down to rest and the night was waking to fill the sky, the familiar sounds of a busy camp drifted on the wind past the assassin.  The smell of meat being cooked over open fires, and the sounds of people, families, talking, laughing, and playing were like music in the air.  Xan's tension slipped away as he realized that his gamble had paid off.  Whatever these people were, they weren't part of a war camp.  Xan pulled his hood over his head as he drew nearer.  Under normal circumstances he would have approached without his hood since hooded men rarely appeared trustworthy, but Xandrith was guessing that a man with horns was probably even less trustworthy than one wearing a hood.