Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two (26 page)

Two voices joined in the howl, and a renewed surge of fear rose in Cart’s mind.

I am steel and stone, he thought. My fear just fuels my fury.

Roaring his answer to the beasts’ howl, he advanced on the worg and slashed his axe low across its chest. The howl died in its throat.

The two remaining worgs had Tesh caught between them, but he was holding his own. Just as Cart rushed forward, Tesh felled one of the two, and Cart intercepted the last one just before it pounced on Tesh’s back. Caylen’s spell had weakened them, clearly, and it was just a matter of finishing them off. Cart wiped the gore from his axe on the rough coat of the last worg.

Cart turned slowly to face Caylen. He saw the tome first, one page flipping over in a soft breeze. Then his gaze fell on the wizard’s body, and he walked slowly to stand beside it.

“I’ll take care of it, Captain,” Tesh said.

Cart waved him off. Caylen had been in his care, and he would extend that care to the dead man’s body. He kneeled on the blood-soaked ground, closed Caylen’s eyes, and lifted him over his shoulder.

“Get his tome.” Cart pointed at the book.

“You—” Tesh hesitated. “You’re not going to leave him here?”

Cart stared at the soldier. He sometimes wished he could achieve one of those glares that Haldren used to make soldiers quail, but that required muscles in the forehead and around the eyes that Cart simply lacked. Even so, the simplicity of his unwavering gaze, set in his expressionless face and accompanied by a pointed silence, often had the same effect.

Tesh lifted the book—a little gingerly, Cart thought—and led Cart back to the camp.

Haldren berated Cart, as Tesh had done, for burdening himself with Caylen’s body when there was still a risk of attack, then went on to reproach him for sending Verren off alone—although the scout had returned safely—and for returning with only a sketchy estimate of the number of worgs they faced and any defenses that might lie between the camp and the mouth of the canyon.

Cart found that his impassive stare was also effective when Haldren blustered. Cart stood at attention, unflinching before the Lord General’s tirade, impassive to his criticism, and eventually Haldren ran out of steam. Part of Haldren’s enjoyment, Cart knew, was in seeing the fear and shame in the faces and bodies of the soldiers he chastised, and he didn’t like to give so much energy without getting anything in return.

Despite its imprecision, Cart’s report at least suggested that the worgs’ defenses were too strong for such a small party to breach. Haldren would wait for the soldiers who were marching from Fairhaven, even if it meant a three-week delay in their mission. Better a delay than their reinforcements arriving to find Haldren’s force destroyed, the mission a failure.

Two soldiers had died in the first worg attack, and Caylen’s death meant that three of their original fourteen were dead. Like Tesh, the other soldiers showed no grief over the wizard—none of them knew him at all. To a soldier of the Last War, the death of an acquaintance of a few days was not cause for mourning.

Cart stood over the young wizard’s gore-splattered body, lost in thought. He barely noticed Ashara coming to stand by his side, but her presence was a comfort.

“I can’t understand it,” he said after a moment. “Why should it bother me so much?”

“Why shouldn’t it?” Ashara said gently.

“It took me days to remember his name. Haldren thought he was incompetent and I thought he was a coward. Why should his death mean anything to me?”

“He was part of your team.”

His team? Haldren’s command kept echoing in Cart’s mind—
Keep those two soldiers alive
. Haldren didn’t care a bit about Caylen, but Cart had extended the Lord General’s command to include the wizard, and then failed in that self-imposed responsibility.

“And that’s the other thing,” he said, grasping for words to express the doubt nagging at his mind. “Haldren didn’t see him as part of the team—he didn’t care if Caylen died. Does he care whether I keep myself intact or not?”

“Of course he does.”

“I’m sure he does, as long as I remain competent. But how many times do I need to fail to make him as … as callous about my life as he was about Caylen’s?”

Ashara didn’t have a ready answer to that question, and her silence only strengthened the dread that was growing in his mind. She couldn’t argue with the fact that Haldren was a heartless bastard.

“I’ve always believed that my purpose is to obey, to be a good soldier and carry out my orders to the best of my ability. I’ve only disobeyed Haldren once.” The memory of Starcrag Plain was almost physically painful—while Haldren watched his plans crumble in impotent fury, Cart left him to go fight alongside Gaven instead, to make himself useful in whatever way he could.

“You’re more than a good soldier, Cart.”

He turned to look at her for the first time. She stood close by his shoulder, craning her neck to meet his gaze.

“That’s what you made me to be—your House, Lady Cannith. I’m a weapon of war.”

“A sword is a weapon of war, or one of the construct titans. You’re a man—a living, thinking, feeling man. My House intended you to think for yourself, to make judgments in the chaos
of the battlefield. Not just tactical judgments, Cart, but moral judgments.”

Cart looked back at Caylen’s mangled body. Since Starcrag Plain, he had struggled with a growing sense that Haldren didn’t deserve his complete loyalty and obedience. He had begun to wonder whether Haldren’s years in Dreadhold had blunted his mind or hardened his already stony heart. He had never really considered whether following Haldren was right in a moral sense, but Ashara’s words seemed to strike to the heart of the discomfort he was feeling.

“The world should stop,” Ashara whispered.

“What?”

“It happens so often that we barely notice it, but the world should mark the passing of any mortal soul.”

An image flashed into his mind of a soul—Caylen’s soul—as a white bird suddenly caught and crushed in the black, oiled cogs of Haldren’s schemes and Kelas’s conspiracies. Ashara was right—sometimes on the battlefield he had felt a moment’s pause, the tiniest slice of silence in the din when someone nearby choked out his last breath. The rumbling wheels of war and rebellion should cease for an instant at least, to give some acknowledgment of the sacrifice made in their name.

Haldren barked at two soldiers to drag Caylen’s corpse outside the camp and bury it, before the stench of it drew the worgs down upon them again. The noise of the camp intruded back into Cart’s ears, and the instant of silence came to an end.

Fortunately, when Haldren put a competent sergeant in command of the overland expedition, he made a wise choice. The sergeant, whose name was Mirra, was resourceful and had connections in House Orien. Rather than march ten soldiers along well-traveled roads for three weeks, which would be certain to attract attention, she secured seats on the lightning rail for them all. The group split up to board and reunited in Passage, completing more than half their journey in a mere twelve hours. From there, it was only a week’s march to Arcanix and another four days
to join Haldren’s camp near the canyon. An advance scout from the overland party met the sentries from the camp fully two weeks before Haldren expected reinforcements to arrive.

Haldren was not accustomed to praising the soldiers under his command, even when they displayed initiative and creative thinking. So he left that task to Cart, who thanked Mirra warmly and briefed her and the other sergeant on the situation in the canyon. In the week since Caylen’s death, the worgs had attacked the camp only once, and it had been a small group of scouts rather than a serious assault. Evidently, Haldren had withdrawn far enough from the canyon that the worgs no longer felt threatened by their presence.

Cart wasn’t convinced that twenty soldiers were any more likely to take the canyon than ten, but the doubling of their numbers did hearten the soldiers. Compared to his original assessment of the situation, things had improved somewhat. Cart’s team had scouted the canyon, identified their objective and its location, and determined at least a vague sense of the enemy’s numbers—roughly two dozen, perhaps a little less since Cart and Tesh had killed five. The worgs still outnumbered them.

Haldren had spent hours with Tesh, drawing a map of the canyon and filling in as many details of the terrain as possible. Cart and Verren had sketched in their estimates of enemy positions, though of course those could change constantly. Haldren thought he had a reasonably clear sense of what they faced, and had crafted a plan he thought would allow them to overcome the worgs’ defenses.

Cart’s role in that plan was to keep Haldren alive—the Lord General still trusted Cart’s ability to do that, despite Caylen’s death. Haldren’s magic, and even Caylen’s, had proven the most effective weapon against the worgs in their two previous skirmishes, so the main force of their attack would consist of Haldren’s spells. Cart and a single squad of soldiers would protect the Lord General, and Ashara would heal him—and Cart and the soldiers—as much as she could. The other three squads would harry the worgs’ flanks, strike quickly, and flee from strong resistance.

Cart reviewed the plan one last time as the soldiers broke
camp, slowly shaking his head. It seemed workable, if a little blunt-edged. But given the way the mission had gone up to that point, he had little confidence in plans.

A single howl, long and high, greeted their first approach. As it faded into an echo in the canyon, another one began, immediately joined by two more, then a ghastly pandemonium of yips and wails. Cart saw the soldiers glance at each other, multiplying their fear as they saw it in their comrades’ faces. He’d chosen what he considered the best of the four squads—Tesh’s squad—to provide Haldren’s escort, but fear could poison the strongest soldier’s heart.

“Steady,” he said. “They will learn to fear us, soon enough.”

He glanced at Haldren and saw a couple of soldiers do the same. Cart and the Lord General marched together a few paces behind Tesh, with the sergeant a few paces out to Cart’s right, another soldier opposite on Haldren’s left, and the others trailing behind. Haldren strode ahead, arcane power brewing in the air around him, streaming behind him in wisps of red smoke and motes of purplish light. He wore the mantle of leadership proudly, accepting the burden that came with it—the burden of being this little squad’s sole hope for survival.

The sight of him bolstered the soldiers’ courage, and Cart nodded in approval. Haldren could persuade, could lead, could inspire fierce loyalty and tremendous courage when the need arose. At times his charisma did seem magical, as though spells were woven into his words to soften his hearers’ fears or steel their resolve, but Cart didn’t know how to draw the line between the Lord General’s natural leadership and his sorcery. It didn’t matter—his soldiers would follow Haldren gladly to their deaths.

Another chorus of howls erupted in the distance just as the canyon mouth came into view. The sound didn’t seem to be coming from the gap in the wall of boulders, but farther into the canyon. With a sudden jolt, Cart remembered how the worgs had caught him off guard before, with Tesh and Caylen—the constant sound of distant howls that didn’t seem to draw any nearer.