The Betrayed (22 page)

Matriarch Alda spread her arms helplessly. “We came from Sarid. We visited dozens of villages. Hundreds joined our ranks. They marched east with the love of the gods in their hearts. We met no fleeing refugees. Or our brothers and sisters.”

Ayrton rubbed his neck. What was happening? The entire Territories seemed to be one huge cauldron of confusion. What were the patriarchs doing? Who led the people?

You,
his soul told him. A headache started to bloom above and behind his ears.

His comrades watched the clergy with suspicion in their eyes. Ayrton prayed for strength. He so needed strength. Animals needed someone to control them.

“Going east is a lost cause,” he blurted. “You will find empty villages and roving hordes of brigands and, further still, tens of thousands of Caytoreans intent on bringing death and ruin. You cannot fight them.”

“We must fight them,” Alda said, but she did not sound convinced. “It has been decreed.”

“We must go west. It’s our only chance,” Ayrton pleaded.

“We need to find the patriarchs and matriarchs from Talmath,” she mumbled, almost in a trance.

Ayrton wanted to grab her by the neck and shake her. But he knew it would be a great offense. The patriarchs had left the people to die while running off, saving their own hides. “Our only hope to stay alive is to move west, far from the killing.”

“I need to speak to my goddess,” the matriarch declared.

Ayrton swallowed. He had lived a life of sin, once. In the great scheme of divine plans, he knew he deserved to die. But he didn’t want his life to end in a failure. There must be more to life than dying an anonymous death in a field somewhere. There must be more to life than being just another victim to human greed and madness.

There had to be.

A wall of colors closed on them. “The matriarch will now retreat to her shack. She will pray and fast and seek illumination. You should go back to your people and wait,” Lenard said.

Ayrton motioned his men to follow. There was nothing else he could do.

“I don’t trust that bitch,” one of the soldiers barked as they left the village.

A sharp tip of a sword under his chin made him halt. “Watch your tongue. That’s blasphemy!” Ayrton hissed. He lowered the sword and shoved the man hard. “Always remember, we are soldiers of the gods. We serve the Cause!”

The man paled, sobered, and then reluctantly nodded.

Later that day, villagers came with their meager share of bread and salt, offering them to Ayrton’s men. They scarcely had enough for fifty, let alone thousands, but it was a gesture of goodwill.

Two days passed without a word from the matriarch. She was still in seclusion.

It would have been so simple to tell his men to pack and leave. They could proceed alone, without blessings from the priests. No one could stop them. But then, what was he going to do? He had no plan.

In the camp, he made his men pray twice a day, at dawn and dusk, and made them sing songs and bring offerings to the shrine in the village. The pile of offerings was almost hip-high, with trinkets of all sorts.

Some of the refugees volunteered to help the local farmers with bringing in the harvest, while others helped the herds with their flock of goats. In return, the local smith offered to sharpen their swords and buff their armor. There was very little violence. The awe of the gods kept everyone in check. But Ayrton feared the moment when this awe rubbed off.

Hundreds of refugees left them, joining little convoys of pilgrims or taking off on foot, striking north and south and west. A pack of savage dogs and people without hope remained.

On the third day, the brothers and sisters slew a chicken, in honor of the gods and goddesses, praying for guidance. But Matriarch Alda still wouldn’t come out.

Ayrton sat on a rock, staring at the world. It was so peaceful, immense vistas of green grass fluttering in the breeze, birds spiraling above the fields, hunting mice and insects.

He had no idea what the patriarchs and matriarchs in Jaruka had decreed, but it seemed like a giant mess. The Territories were not ready for an all-out war with a powerful enemy like Caytor. The combat priests and the few unlucky losers like him were not enough to stem that ugly, bloodthirsty war machine. He did not want the responsibility. He did not desire the failure. He wanted hope.

“Convoy approaching!” one of the lookouts shouted.

Ayrton stood up on his little promontory and shielded his eyes. A band of about a hundred, maybe two hundred, people were approaching the village from the northeast. They might have been more stragglers fled from Talmath.

As they came near, he glimpsed robed figures on donkeys, and riffraff in tatters following them.

“Spike, Enrique, with me,” he ordered. Two of the Outsiders followed him into the village. Spike was a former rapist, and Enrique was a silent type who no one really knew what he had done in his previous life. But he prayed five times a day, and tears ran down his face every time.

Ayrton’s blood heated when he saw the familiar faces among the newcomers. Some of the donkey riders were patriarchs from the Grand Monastery.

Under-Patriarch Lenard and a flock of underlings were already talking to the Talmath escapees. Ayrton shouldered his way through the tightly pressed crowd.

“…has fallen, we were told,” Lenard was saying.

One of the mounted figures wore a grim mask on his face. “Who told you that?”

Lenard turned and pointed at Ayrton. “They told us.”

“Talmath is safe. The faith is strong in the city. Our soldiers are fighting the Caytorean heathens bravely. The city has not been lost.”

Ayrton felt blood in his veins curdle. What the bloody Abyss was going on?

“Who are you, soldier?” one of the patriarchs, the only mounted one in the lot, asked him, his voice stern.

Ayrton swallowed. He bowed. “Holy one, I am Ayrton, a soldier of the gods. I serve the Cause. We have come from Talmath, holy one. The city has been overrun by the Caytoreans.”

“Those are words of sedition, soldier!” the priest snapped. “The gods and goddesses protect us.”

The Outsider looked at the faces of the people tailing after the patriarchs. They were mostly peasant boys and girls, with naked zeal on their faces, fool volunteers for a fool’s cause. His shock twisted into cold rage. “The city is burning, holy one.”

“The city is safe!” another patriarch intoned.

“You could not have seen it burn; you fled it,” Ayrton whispered.

Murmurs spread all about him. Ayrton felt his callused fingers touch the hilt of his sword.

“Are you accusing us of something, soldier? Do you doubt the divine guidance that we provide? Do you question the gods and goddesses?” the first patriarch boomed.

“I serve the gods!” Ayrton hissed.

The patriarchs turned away from Ayrton, ignoring him. “We have departed from the city some time ago, but Talmath was in the safe hands of our many brethren. We have left to rouse more people to the Cause. But we will return, with strong faith in people’s hearts. And we will expel the Caytorean invaders from the Territories!”

A ragged cheer spread through the crowd of priests.

“We already have a hundred brave soldiers with us. And I see you have recruited another hundred,” the man continued.

“This man commands several thousands of soldiers,” Lenard offered.

The mounted man would not look at Ayrton. “They will, too, join the holy march to Talmath.”

Ayrton felt his heart hammering in the pit of his stomach. He was not going back to Talmath. He did not want to die for nothing. But how could he refuse? These men had taken him, saved his life, saved his soul. They had given him a new life, a new hope.

And now, they would take it away.

Ayrton stared at the patriarchs. He knew they were lying. They had fled to save themselves, and now they intended to send thousands of people to a useless death. It was wrong.

He stood there, his blood pounding in his temples, a red haze beating before his eyes. An Outsider only got one chance.

Matriarch Alda staggered out of her hut. She stank. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes full of crust. She looked parched and famished. Tottering slowly, she approached the shrine and lifted the carcass of the slaughtered chicken in the air.

“Goddess Selena has spoken to me! Our gods summon us west! We must go west.”

Ayrton closed his eyes.
Thank you, Gods.

CHAPTER 20

A
dam the Butcher.

The nickname spread like wildfire. Within less than a day, everyone in the camp had heard the name. His soldiers would swear by their mothers and sisters that they had never called him Captain Leech in their lives. His lieutenants vowed to die for him if necessary.

And all Adam was…was a dead man with nothing to lose.

He did not seek glory or power. They came, nonetheless, jeering and taunting. But they meant nothing. He was a rock, rolling down the side of a mountain, such a free and reckless ride. He owed nothing to no one. Death was the ultimate freedom.

As a major, he was privileged to join many of the discussions regarding the art of war in the big command tents. Soldiers served him wine and cheese as he listened to his comrades talk. Most of the time, he listened and learned that war was a very simple thing. What complicated the whole business were human emotions. Once you threw in fear, hesitation, confusion, and greed into the cauldron, it became a whorefest, worse than any he had participated in while in Paroth.

His colleagues despised and hated and feared him. He was a symbol of evil, a mascot of all things wrong. Yet, deep down in their souls, they were glad that he existed, because he spared them the need to be like him, to be the monster.

As the captured hilltop became a major encampment, Adam made sure no hands went idle. He defoliated the entire region as he built the biggest hedgehog of a camp ever made, with so many lines of picket that the foremost rank was out of bow range.

His men were an example for the rest of the forces. They trained from dusk to dawn, especially the peasants and the auxiliary units, which were less experienced. Many regulars grunted at his decision to arm the weakest units with crossbows until he demonstrated the sheer effectiveness of the weapon in the hands of a common man against the bodies of several dissidents.

With peasants turned into a deadly force, morale and loyalty grew. Animosity between units lessened as men scorned for their lack of combat skills became equals with their hard-core trained comrades.

Now that he commanded three whole battalions, the results of his efforts became visible almost instantly. He ordered towers built and mounds erected. Every day, a company spent a day hammering rock with pickaxes, hauling stones half a mile back to the camp and piling them on top of the mounds he had built.

After a week, there was a small quarry just outside the camp. The piles of rock had become a breastwork, encircling the entire perimeter of their position. The tiny supply bivouac had become a small army city, three times its original size.

The Caytoreans had temporarily diverted their forces further south, avoiding him. Scouts reported their movement day by day, even as more Eracians poured into the Territories, strengthening their hold of the northeastern reach. Talmath, Poereni, and other cities were all besieged, yet they held. There was still hope that the Eracians might cut off the Caytorean rear.