Even Gods Must Fall (10 page)

Aurec addressed Vajna’s concerns. “General, I fully trust in your ability to defeat the enemy. If anything, our task is made more difficult with this line of fortresses.”

“All the more reason to keep the vanguard together. We’ve already taken out one of these monstrosities. How much harder can the others be? The lads know what to expect now. Give us a week and the entire eastern sector will be broken wide open.”

“Making Piper the correct one for this task. However, that doesn’t mean I can afford to squander another general, especially not one of your experience and caliber, Vajna,” Rolnir said. “You’re more valuable to me, and the army, here.”

Sense of importance suddenly inflated, Vajna felt humble. “This doesn’t sit well with me, but I am honored in your opinion, General.”

Problem solved, Aurec was able to continue, “Vajna, the army has occupied the foothills and immediate plains along the Murdes Mountains. As we speak, columns are forming for the push into the heart of Delranan. I’ll lead one, Rolnir another, and you the last. Our objective the retaking of Chadra Keep. Do not stop. Do not wait. Attack with all possible aggression. Crush any who stand in your way.”

“What of the other two columns? Surely we can’t accurately coordinate our movements spread out across a third of the kingdom,” Vajna protested.

“A calculated risk we must take,” Rolnir said.

Vajna studied king and general while he contemplated what was about to happen. In theory it should all work. Harnin had a skeleton force at best, no more than seven thousand with a large portion dedicated to the defensive line. The rest would be spread out in vain efforts to engage the rebellion. He saw opportunity to win the war and be home before the spring.

“When do we attack?”

Aurec smiled. “All three columns are presently lining in order of march. They will push out under cover of darkness where we will each ride out to assume control.”

“Our departure point will be here, at the ruins of Arlevon Gale. The army will splinter in two days’ time. Once each column reaches Chadra they will encircle the city, thus pinning loyalist forces within,” Rolnir explained. “Good luck, General.”

“And to the both of you,” Vajna replied. His heart was lighter than it had been for a long time. Confidence swelling, the old soldier felt invigorated enough to finish his portion of the crusade and finally head home for much-needed rest.

“How does it feel to be home?” Aurec asked Rolnir once the formality of tactics was finished.

“Not as good as it will be once I discover whether my house is still standing or not,” the redhead general of the Wolfsreik replied. In truth he dreaded his homecoming, knowing he and the other officers in his command had been branded traitors. How many families had already been rounded up and put in slave labor gangs or, worse, murdered in their beds while the army was busy in another kingdom?

“I can’t make any promises, though I sincerely hope your kingdom isn’t in as much disarray as my own,” Aurec answered. Barely twenty-one, the boy king was beginning to sound more like a seasoned professional. War and the hard cruelty of winter helped forge him into the king Rogscroft needed. Hard when necessary and compassionate when the situation called for it, Aurec was well on the path to becoming as great a king as his father had been.

Rolnir nodded. “Fair enough.”

Nothing else needed to be said. All three looked inward as their thoughts gradually shifted back to what they hoped was the last stage of the campaign.

Horses snorted as they strode through calf-deep snows. Aurec’s pathfinders, Mahn and Raste, had taken a platoon forward to scout out the nearest major roads in order to facilitate the army moving faster. They’d been in Delranan for less than a full day and were already thirty leagues into the kingdom’s interior. Most of the roads were cleared, a dual-edged blade if Aurec had ever seen one. Clear roads meant enough columns of infantry or cavalry had already gone by, heading east, or the local villagers had gone stir-crazy from being trapped within their homes over the course of the unusually long winter. Either way it was a risk he needed to take. The drive west couldn’t afford to be slowed down, not with the end goal almost in sight.

Aurec’s real fear was that the discipline of the army would break down the longer the campaign lasted. Men would want to return to their homes as those repressed worries came to light. Each would be thinking of their own families at this point. Aurec sympathized with them, for he lamented Maleela’s loss every night. A small part of his mind whispered that she was already dead, forgotten on some desolate stretch of Malweir he’d never heard of.

He’d ridden at the head of the five-thousand-strong column deep into the night and was borderline exhausted. Youthful exuberance was all but lost on the new king. He should still be sowing his wild tendencies, not burdened with the worries of the crown and a kingdom. Aurec missed his father, for that was the logical destination for all of his worries. The pain of seeing Stelskor’s beheaded corpse continued to war within Aurec’s heart and mind. Yet the longer the war dragged on the more he felt less than the day prior. His nerves were numbed. His mind was hardened by brutal statistics and casualties reports.

He seldom saw faces, recalled names. Each soldier in uniform was a number. A statistic. The impersonal nature of his position left him hollow. He needed more than the war was willing to give back. Already he felt old, used up. Thoughts of a warm bed and belly full of properly cooked food, not the meager rations the army cooks prided themselves on producing once a night, mocked him through the chaos of battlefields. The war continued to change him on fundamental levels. Some were positive while most reduced his opinion of what a ruler should be. No one being should have the ability to decide who lived or died. No one. Yet he was co-commander of nearly twenty thousand soldiers, many of whom weren’t going to go home alive.

It had taken many long nights before Aurec came to accept that casualties were an awful part of war. He despised losing troops in combat, but recognized they were almost necessary. War was the most brutal, twisted event any race could endure and it was entirely too common. His faith in the gods decreased daily, for what omnipotent beings responsible for the creation of the world would so casually allow their creations to wholesale slaughter one another?

Aurec turned inward. His thoughts centered on bringing as many of his soldiers home as possible. The war dominated his dreams. Thinking about anything else merely served to distract him from what needed his attention. Men were willing to die under his banner, proudly wearing his colors on their armor as they waded through the slaughter of others who might once have been friends. It was a grizzly task.

Mahn rode in a short time later, out of breath and red faced. His eyes harbored a nervous twitch that led Aurec to believe their easy march was about to end.

“Sire, we’ve come across tracks. A lot of tracks. We’re not alone out here.”

Aurec’s frown was concealed, thankfully, by the night. He couldn’t stop from looking left or right, though. “Are you sure they’re not ours?”

The question was almost foolish, a desperate grab towards answers he hoped weren’t what Mahn said next.

“They’re Goblin prints,” Mahn confirmed.

“Goblins? How? We all but destroyed them in Rogscroft,” Aurec protested. “There’s no way they could have gotten here before us.”

“I don’t know, sire, but after these last few months I’d recognize their prints blindfolded. All I can report is what I’ve seen.”

“Pick riders to send word to each of the other columns. I can’t have two-thirds of my army marching blindly into a trap,” Aurec ordered.

Mahn nodded and rode on, leaving the king of Rogscroft and commander in chief of the combined army at yet another loss. The more he thought he was getting ahead, the more setbacks reared up to slap him back into place.
Goblins already in Delranan. What have we gotten ourselves into?

The Olagath Stone

The quest was uncharacteristically somber since Boen’s departure. While they might have chided the big Gaimosian for his singular mindset, he was the anchor that kept them moving. Bahr had grown increasingly silent as the days progressed. The loss of Maleela and his expected confrontation with his brother plagued him more than he was willing to admit. A man unused to answering for his deeds, the Sea Wolf harbored all of the hurt and pain since being arrested in Chadra and kept it for his own. Not even Anienam correctly guessed the reasoning. Quiet, Bahr drove them ever eastward, towards the ruins of Arlevon Gale.

Everywhere they went were scenes of violence. Burned homes. Slaughtered animal carcasses. The occasional body partially buried in the snow. Whatever games the rebellion and loyalist soldiers were playing seemed confined to the far western stretches of Delranan. They feared that Skaning and his cutthroat band of mercenaries had already gotten ahead and were terrorizing their way across the kingdom in efforts to prevent the quest from finding safe harbor.

Sitting atop the horse they’d acquired in exchange for their broken down wagon, Anienam made a show of yawning and accidentally reaching over and slapping Skuld on the shoulder. Blind, he grinned at still being able to outsmart the former street thief. Their relationship was rocky at best, though nowhere near as turbulent as his and Bahr’s. Anienam often found mixing with normal people mundane and difficult. He attributed that to growing up in the shadows of the last Mage. Magic was forbidden in many parts of the world and frowned upon in the rest. Only the Elves continued their practice in the arcane arts, though what really happened in their hidden forest cities remained the subject of much speculation.

“I swear you’re not as blind as you claim,” Skuld chided. His tone was playful.

Anienam laughed, a tormented cackling sound. “You doubt the handicapped? Not very polite of you, young one. Why, in my day I was taught to respect my elders. My father would turn in his grave if he heard you just now!”

“What happened to your father, Anienam?” Skuld asked. “We all know he was the last of the Mages but you never said what happened.”

The wizard fell uncharacteristically silent. He’d never spoken about Dakeb, his father, to anyone before. Doing so was always so complicated in his mind. He seldom viewed the past with fondness. There was too much pain in Dakeb’s life for Anienam to enjoy the memory of what his father had been. Who he was, however, was an entirely different matter. Anienam decided that he didn’t need to shoulder the burden on his own any longer, not if he expected Skuld to step into his shoes when the time was right.

“Dakeb was…a different sort of man. He was the last of the old breed. A guardian of the collective hopes and dreams of the entire world. Not any easy task for anyone to take on, young Skuld. Malweir knew him as a true Mage, but he was so much more. Did you know he was the one responsible for taking the four shards of the crystal of Tol Shere and hiding them once the war ended? Few did. Of course Sidian eventually discovered them and attempted to release the dark gods from their prison years later. The Silver Mage failed and the crystal was ultimately lost to the other dimension.”

Eyebrows scrunched together as Skuld tried to piece important, or what he thought were important, elements of the grand tale together, and the young thief shook his head. “I don’t understand it.”

“Understand what?”

“The need for crystals and stones. You said something about an Olagath Stone to Bahr earlier. Now this talk of a crystal. Why would beings as powerful as gods fear something so simple as a stone?”

Anienam’s sense of pride increased as Skuld tried to flesh out the center of the entire tale. “Gods aren’t as powerful as you might assume. What is the quickest way to kill a god?”

“I don’t know,” he replied after a few minutes of thought.

“Stop believing some might say, but it is more complicated than that,” Anienam answered. “Gods need us to believe in them. Our faith gives them power and the ability to manifest in greater, different forms. Take away that belief and they are considerably weakened, but not dead. Long ago, or so the histories tell us, the gods were born from stone and rock, water and fire. They stored immeasurable power in Malweir, drawing on it as the ages sped by. Never underestimate the strength buried within the stone at your feet.”

“Wouldn’t doing that keep the gods from becoming more? From reaching their full potential?”

“Indeed. It was as damning as it was meant to be liberating. The greatest scholars theorize that’s the source of the schism between light and dark. The dark gods wanted to pull their power from the ground while the gods of light sought to keep it buried, for all life on Malweir benefited from it. What started as debate quickly devolved into brutal warfare that continues on to this day,” Anienam explained.

“What is the Olagath Stone?” Skuld asked.

“A token of extreme power. There are several scattered across the world. Groge’s Blud Hamr is one. Phaelor, the star silver sword, is another. The very wisest of our races learned the ancient secrets. Some say it was the gods of light who allowed it. I do not know either way, but the lore masters studied and developed their strengths around the power of the gods. Once the war became evident, a council was founded, in Averon. There the leaders of the free world met to decide what to do should the gods bring their war down from the heavens.

“It was decided that a series of stones would be created. Each stone would be capable of power undreamed of. They could confine the gods or release them. You see, the lore masters might have been highly skilled but they were not gods. Their knowledge of the power was rudimentary at best. The stones were flawed. Only one survived the creation process.”

“The Olagath Stone,” Skuld finished.

“Yes. It alone has the ability to free the dark gods from their prison or keep them confined for eternity,” Anienam said with a smile.

“Through the Blud Hamr.”

“Very perceptive. I grow more impressed with your development daily, my young friend,” Anienam complimented. “While each stone was intended on being all powerful, it was also realized that there was the potential for corruption. Even then there were subversive races at work in Malweir’s shadows. Weapons were forged to counter the power of each stone. They too have all been destroyed over time. The Mages were partly responsible for hunting down and removing the weapons from the world.”

“I don’t understand why though. Wouldn’t each weapon be a powerful item to withhold? It seems to me that there is more evil than good in the world. We need all of the tools we can get if we’re going to win this war, Anienam.”

“Yes and no. The weapons were specifically tailored to their stones. Without the stone to draw power from, the weapons were all but useless. The orders of Mages couldn’t take the risk of some dark sorcerer discovering long-forgotten secrets of the weapons and actually finding a way to turn them evil. The weapons needed to be destroyed. So it is that only the Olagath Stone and the Blud Hamr remain. Should we lose Groge or the Hamr, we are lost.”

Silence fell over the wagon. Skuld tried, and failed, to digest what he’d heard. There was nothing natural about the direction his life had taken. Wizard. Magic. Gods. He was just a common thief until a few months ago when he overheard Dorl and Nothol talking about treasure in the Murdes Mountains. Skuld allowed his dreams of overcoming abject poverty to get the better of him and he stowed away on Bahr’s ship. Nothing would ever be the same from that moment. Ever. Skuld was faced with many decisions to make regarding where he wanted to take his life. Few of them were good. All he knew was there was no going back to Delranan. That life was finished.

“Anienam, can we succeed?” he asked.

“I want to believe in my heart that victory belongs to us,” Anienam replied. His voice turned soft. “It will not be easy, or pleasant. Some of us will not live to see the results of our efforts. A sad fact, but an inevitable one. The powers arrayed against us will be greater than even I am capable of dreaming of. The Dae’shan will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. Even down to three they will not be easy to defeat. This is the final, great battle of age.”

Skuld laughed suddenly, a gentle sound that was more awkward than mirthful. “And no one will ever know who stood there at the final battle. We are nameless heroes, Anienam.”

“Sometimes those are the best kind.”

Ironfoot tossed a small log on the fire. “Another two days. That’s what Anienam says. Two days and this will be decided one way or the other.”

“Doesn’t seem so long now, does it?” Nothol asked as he stared deeply into the licking tongues of red and orange. “We could almost make a vacation out of it.”

“Don’t you dare look at me, Nothol Coll. One more rib and I’ll blacken your eye,” Dorl snapped from his spot beside Rekka.

Nothol grinned sheepishly and held up his hands. “Fair enough. I was just trying to lighten the mood. Besides, you’re getting cranky in your old age.”

Dorl made to stand but Rekka’s lightning-quick reflexes clamped a hand on his shoulder and forced him back down. Despite her actions, the twinkle in her eye suggested she was beginning to appreciate the subtle barbs between the longtime friends.

Dorl wagged a finger at Nothol. “Just wait. You just wait.”

“Your girlfriend seems to agree,” Nothol laughed.

Ironfoot laughed so hard he spit a mouthful of water out. Even Groge enjoyed a laugh. Dorl could only fume harmlessly as the much-needed humor spread around the tiny camp. They’d been missing their greatest military asset, Boen, and struggling with a way to compensate for his loss. Many turned to Groge in the hopes the Giant youth would find his inner warrior and lead them into battle. Dorl was as frustrated as the others but had an outlet, even if it was the naturally taciturn Rekka Jel.

Bahr had grown increasingly reclusive the deeper into Delranan they drove, giving the sell swords cause for concern. He’d been their rock since departing to rescue the princess back in the fall. Whatever personal demons he combated when he thought no one was looking were starting to bleed over into the rest of the quest. Melancholy was as dangerous as enemy steel.

“That felt good. I haven’t laughed like that since the feast after we crushed the dark Dwarves at Bode Hill,” Ironfoot announced. “Dwarves often find humor in battle. It keeps us moving past the grief of loss.”

Nothol said, “Makes sense to me. Let’s hope we’re all still around after this is finished so we can share a good laugh.”

“Wizard, what do we do when we reach the ruins? I can’t imagine our enemies will leave it unguarded,” Ironfoot turned to ask. The Dwarf captain had had his laugh and wanted to get back to business. War wasn’t a topic of general discussion.

Anienam paused as he noticed each of his companions slowly turning to look at him. The looks on their faces were heavier, more troubled, than any other he recalled seeing. Hope clung desperately against the harsh realities closing in around them. Deep inside, Anienam began to question whether he was the right person for this task. The fate of the entire world rested on the shoulders of the handful of collected souls staring back at him. Were they enough? What would Dakeb have done? His father had a knack for collecting assorted characters, forging them into a cohesive unit, and tackling intense evil. Anienam wasn’t his father.

There was no way he’d ever be able to live up to Dakeb’s reputation. The last descendant of the Mages felt his confidence slip, gradually chipping away with each new challenge or setback. He didn’t know how much more he had left to give. Anienam lacked the resources necessary to feel inspired. His companions weren’t hostile but remained cold to his advances. He recognized that he wasn’t an easy person to get along with. Wizards seldom were. Magic continued to leave a sour taste in the world long after the Mage Wars.

Not that he could blame them. He often imagined he’d feel the same way if he hadn’t been adopted by Dakeb when he was but a babe. Instead he’d grown up learning the nuances of magic and how to control his newly discovered abilities. Long decades spent in solitude all boiled down to this last task. One final quest to help right the wrongs committed by magic users since the dawn of time. Anienam Keiss wished it had fallen on anyone else but him. For all of his bluster and bravado, he felt weak inside.

“No, the Dae’shan will have assembled as many dark agents as they deem necessary to protect the ruins.”

“And keep us out,” Nothol added.

Anienam nodded. “And keep us out. Exactly what they’ve collected won’t be learned until we arrive, however.”

“Isn’t there some sort of spell you can cast to give us forewarning?” Ironfoot asked. He folded his burly arms across his chest as he glared at the wizard. Already his mind was racing through potential scenarios.

“That was never my area of focus. I can cast protection spells, the occasional attack spells, but long-distance scrying remains unknown to me,” he replied. “Captain Bahr, what would you suggest? We are but two days’ ride from our final destination.”

Bahr, a distant look in his eyes, casually glanced up from the fire. He hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation. Thoughts of Maleela and Badron and the possible confrontations upcoming twisted his thoughts in unimaginable ways. That he was subconsciously abandoning his friends and allies to deal with their own futures was almost lost. Almost.