Crown of Steel (Chaos Awakens) (12 page)

"He did this to me. Please, you have to help me find him. He needs to pay for what he's done." Haley pleaded, using the pain of her actual past to conjure the emotions she needed to lie believably. Xan had told her that she could use scars to her own advantage, and finally she was doing just that. She slid her mask back over her face to hide the wreckage again.

The men looked at each other again, but this time the shorter nodded to the taller of the two. The larger mercenary took a step forward, speaking quietly and quickly. "Your man came through here a little over a week ago, got into an argument with one of the traders, lit some fires, caused a real ruckus. He was looking for a ride south towards Yillan Reach, but no one was traveling that way. They say the area is overrun by monsters. He left after that, but some few of the traders were pretty angry about the whole affair so they sent messengers out to report the harassment to the mages. The Order of Mages and the guild are on friendly terms. The Order sent some men out later that night and after getting the details they went out in pursuit. They were on horseback and he was on foot, so they probably caught him up the next day. That's all there is to know, now I'd recommend you move along before you attract anymore notice."

Haley gave one quick nod. Startled by the information she'd received and a little worried. Whatever other problems they had, now the mages were involved, and that would only complicate matters. What if they'd already gotten Xandrith? That could be a dangerous situation. He was already wanted for several other crimes. "Thank you." Haley said quietly, not wanting to seem ungrateful. With that she turned and started walking away from the camp. Kassa fell in at her side.

"That was good thinking." The older woman whispered.

Haley shrugged. "Xandrith gave me the idea. What are we going to do if the mages have caught him?"

Kassa returned the shrug. "Xan is pretty resourceful. We shouldn't assume anything before we see evidence that the worst has happened. He's been running from the Order for years, and if anyone can keep hidden from them it's probably him. He's the strongest person I've ever known."

"You think so?" Haley asked, not as certain herself. Xan wasn't exactly acting like himself.

"Even if they do have him, that just means we'll have to go set him free. It wouldn't be the first time I've pulled him from the Order's clutches." Kassa said with a grin. It was obvious she was trying to brighten Haley's disposition.

"You're assuming there will be anything left to save. He wasn't exactly on the Order's good side, and who knows what they'll do with him now. If they know he's using magic and his fingers are already clipped they'll probably kill him." Haley refused to return the humor.

Kassa’s mouth set in a grim line. "Xan has proven difficult for anyone to kill so far. Counting him out before his time is a mistake. Now stop dwelling on the worst possible outcome. It's pissing me off." She seemed angry. "I've feared the worst for so long. I need him to be alive, so shut up about it."

Haley was about to snap back at the older woman, but she closed her mouth as she thought better of it. Worrying really wasn't getting her anywhere. Kassa looked threadbare and morose. The pain just behind her eyes was so intense it made Haley feel uncomfortable. There was a depth of emotion present that Haley wasn't sure she could compete with, and all she could do was fret and worry. She was far too young to be so morose. Xandrith would be indignant if he saw her acting this way. Besides, wasn't she the one who'd been hopeful to find Xandrith alive to begin with? Now that they were so close, after they'd come so far, now her doubts were deciding to set in? She chewed on her own frown and then forced her face into a semblance of a smile. She could feel the mask mimicking the expression. She wasn't sure how she looked, but she forced herself to keep smiling. If Xan could smile through the worst of times, so could she.

They were three days outside of the merchant's camp when they found the first clear signs of some type of struggle. One particular section of road was complete chaos. There were deep hoof prints as though horses had been run hard, and massive gouges in the dirt some large enough to fit half a man in. Some of the trees in the vicinity were scorched, and a small section of the woods was blown over as though struck by some monstrous wind. Kassa and Haley quickly split up to better search the area for signs of passage or some clear indicator of who had won the conflict and which way the survivors had gone. Haley trudged off the left side of the road and into the thick of the woods where there was either a deer trail or someone had recently broken through the winter brush.

She watched the ground closely and could make out the signs of footprints, but none them matched Xan's boots. Why would anyone have gone off into the woods if they weren't after Xan? Plus, the prints went out and then came back to the road. Haley kept her mouth shut and followed the boot patterns further out. There were at least three sets and they were staggered strangely as though they'd been carrying something heavy between them. After a few minutes, Haley reached a break in the woods that opened into a small open space that wasn't quite a clearing. Haley stopped in her tracks. There were six freshly stacked stone graves lying amidst the trees. The ground had been too frozen to dig deeply. The mages had carried their dead into the woods, dug shallow holes, and covered them over with dirt and rock to protect them from animals.

"Kassa, I found something!" She called back over her shoulder, hoping the older woman would be within range of her voice. Her heart was beating very quickly in her chest. What did these graves portend? There had been a fight, and after the fight some of the mages had been left alive. Those mages had then taken the time to bury six of their dead. What had become of Xan during all of this? Was he one of the six bodies buried beneath the rocks? Would they have even buried him after he had killed so many of them? If he was still alive, how did the mages find the time to stop and bury their dead? Too many questions.

The sound of footsteps roused her from her thoughts. She turned to see Kassa approaching, her eyes also settling on the stone graves. "Was there anything to see on the other side of the road?" Haley asked, deciding to take a moment to address that before they tackled what they had in front of them.

"Dead horses. Four of them. From the looks of the corpses the battle was pretty brutal. I'm surprised the mages had much left to bury after Xan was finished." Kassa said with a nod at the graves. "Six graves, and we can assume Xan isn't in one of them. I don't believe they would have buried him, at least not with their companions. These graves were put in with care. These men obviously were mourning when they constructed these burial mounds." She was circling the graves now, looking more closely at them. "Ah, look." She pointed at a flat stone mounted at the head of one of the graves.

"What's that?" Haley asked. The stone marker had an unusual symbol marking its surface.

"It's a warning. It's telling people that a mage is laid to rest here, and anyone who messes with the grave does so at the risk of stirring up trouble with the Order." Kassa was still moving between the graves. "They all have them. That's a good thing. If for some reason they had decided to bury Xan, they wouldn't have bothered to mark his grave like this."

"Then where is he?" Haley wasn't nearly as competent at tracking as Kassa was. Xandrith had taught her some tricks, but this entire situation was far beyond her understanding. It was like trying to read a book that was written in a language she wasn't familiar with. In Haley's case that was most languages. She'd only recently learned to read at all, and she wasn't that adept at the skill.

"There are a couple of different possibilities." Kassa said with a sigh. "He may have beaten back the mages so badly that they fell back and went to take care of their dead, deciding that it would be better for them not to continue pursuit. I don't think that's the case though, because the remaining horses from their group all leave down the same road they've been traveling this entire time and at a much slower pace. They are obviously not in pursuit anymore, and they're also not headed back the way they came, so it doesn't look like a retreat."

Kassa took a moment as though gathering her thoughts. "I think it's more likely that they subdued him and they're taking him some place. That means they probably know who he is, and they still want something from him. If they'd simply suffered a terrible defeat they would probably not have continued after him. If they'd killed him I believe they would have left him here to rot. There is no reason to drag his body along. Either way, until we know for certain the best thing we can do is to keep following their tracks. They know where Xandrith is, whether he's been captured or not. Our answers are still ahead of us."

The assassin's apprentice sighed heavily. That hadn't exactly been the reassurance she was looking for. "What could they possibly still want from him after all this time? They can't still be worried about their precious secrets, can they?"

"Don't underestimate the mages and their tenacity when it comes to keeping secrets." There was no insincerity in Kassa's voice. She was very serious. "They will go to great lengths to protect themselves, and Xan has come into a great deal of information that would be valuable to them, and some that they would rather he never be allowed to speak of. They're probably intending to torture him to find out what he knows."

Haley flinched. "They wouldn't."

Kassa's expression told her the truth of it even before she spoke. "The first time I rescued Xan from the mages they'd already had at him for a while. Xan managed to piss them off so much that they accidentally knocked him out before they could get anything from him."

Despite herself Haley gave a single, cold laugh. "That sounds about right. Did he go back and kill the person who tortured him?"

Kassa shook her head. "We were rather pressed for time. Escaping was our top priority."

"Well, he might get his second chance at it then. I don't think he'll let them go again." Discussing any other person, that comment might have seemed absurd. Xan was the one being tortured, after all, but as far as Haley could tell it would be those inflicting the suffering who had the most to worry about. When the assassin was angry, it was a terrible idea to be in his path. The mages had been lucky the first time, but if Xan escaped a second time, Haley doubted he would be so lenient twice.

"We should get back on the trail. The longer we delay here, the further ahead the mages get. We don't want to risk losing the trail. If it snows or if we get a heavy rain we could lose them entirely." Kassa said, already heading back through the woods towards the road. Haley fell in at her side quickly.

She ran her hand over the handle of her axe. "If they hurt him, I'm going to tear them apart." She said with determination.

Kassa looked over at her for a second before giving the younger woman a grim smile. "I believe it."

They moved quickly from there, neither able to relax now that Xan seemed so close at hand. Following the trail left by the mages turned out to be easier than either of them could have hoped. Having apparently caught their prey, they were no longer making any attempt to disguise their direction of travel. On the third day along their track they found a clear sign that Xan was, indeed, traveling with the mages.

One of the assassin's blades was left beside a fire-pit still greasy and messy from being used as an eating utensil. Both Kassa and Haley quickly recognized the familiar weapon, but finding it so carelessly wedged into the ground next to the burnt out fire pit put Haley in a particularly foul mood. She was still working on restoring it to its former glory as they moved on down the road. The mages obviously had no appreciation for the quality of the weapon they were misusing. Xan's weapons weren't the sort you used to pick meat from a rabbit alongside the road. They were the weapons of a fighting man, meant to only be drawn and used once violence was the only solution. Haley finished cleaning the blade and set to honing the edge. Luckily the steel was well crafted and there would probably be no lasting damage to the fine steel. "Fucking horse pricks." She cursed quietly under her breath as she slowly worked a knick from the edge.

Kassa laughed lightly as they walked with Haley fussing over the steel.

"What?" Haley snapped, not at all amused.

"Sometimes you remind me of Xan. He used to do the same thing, mutter to himself when he was angry."

Haley blushed as she slid the blade into an empty scabbard along her back. "Well there is just no reason to misuse a fine weapon like that. Good steel is hard to come by, and expensive."

Kassa just nodded. "Oh, I know."

Eager to change the subject Haley pressed on. "Are we making up any ground on Xan?" She asked.

"No, I'm afraid not. They must be carrying him on horseback. They're not setting a hard pace, but the horses move faster than we do no matter how fast we walk. Even pressing as hard as we have we've only just managed to keep pace with them." Kassa sighed. She did a good job at hiding her exhaustion, though it was still evident in her posture. Haley was feeling it herself. They'd only been sleeping a few hours every night, and during the day they'd been pushing at a pace just under a run. It was disheartening to imagine that they were only just keeping up, especially when the mages already had over a week's lead on them. The odds of ever catching up seemed slim.

"They have to stop eventually." Kassa added, as though that might help. "I can't believe they'd be taking Xan too much further. I don't know how they're restraining him, but if they mess up he'll probably destroy the rest of them. They have to know traveling this way is dangerous."

Haley was about to agree when she caught sight of a large shape off to the side of the road ahead of them. "What's that?" She asked, pointing ahead.

Kassa's eyes followed Haley's gesture and she squinted. "I don't know." She said. "Maybe a horse, or a cart?"

A small smile touched Haley's lips. "We could use a horse."