Thy Father's Shadow (Book 4.5) (30 page)

“That may not be enough to stop the wizard,” Bowe said through slitted eyes that Terian could barely see from below. “I will ensure he does not escape.”

“What else is inside?” Terian asked.
If we’re going to do this, best to do it right.

“No idea,” Dahveed said, and Terian could sense his discomfort. “We only know there’s a wizard because he hurled a spell at us.”

“He could teleport if things get dicey,” Terian said. “Just disappear out of here.”

“No, he couldn’t,” Dahveed said. “The Colonel in charge of this regiment brought with him an iridescent sphere that prevents teleportation out of Sovar. The wizard—and any others within those walls—are trapped.”

“Trapped means dangerous,” Sareea said. “Like a cornered rat, they’ll strike at anything.”

“And a cornered wizard means their strikes are somewhat more effective than tiny claws and teeth,” Dahveed said.

“Will they be expecting someone to come from the air?” Grinnd asked, breaking his silence.

“Depends on how much of a veteran their wizard is—hell, how many veterans they have in total,” Dahveed said. “Anyone with any experience serving in an army knows that when you bring spell casters into a fight, the rules change dramatically. Assume they know we’ll come at them from all directions, including above.”

“Army moves in and seals off the ground exits,” Terian said, staring at the building across the street. It looked to be in shambles, just another dilapidated shanty home in Sovar that had probably seen its best days centuries earlier. “We crash through the plaster wall there,” Terian pointed to indicate one of the solid walls, “but also come in through the second floor simultaneously with three floaters through that cloth wall,” he gave a nod to Bowe, “and try to get this wizard before he causes any damage. He goes down, we mop the rest up.”

Amenon reemerged from the door of the headquarters, the sharp spikes jutting off his armor cracking against the plaster frame and dislodging grey powder. “I heard the gist of what you are proposing and I approve. Grinnd will lead the way on the ground, I will follow with Dahveed behind me. Sareea, Bowe and Terian will strike against the second floor.”

“How soon will the army start to move into position?” Terian asked as he felt the effects of Falcon’s Essence take hold, pulling his feet above the surface of the water.

Amenon paused, and turned his head toward the house in question. Soldiers were visible in the back alley next to it, moving slowly.

“They’ll hear them,” Terian said. “With the water filling the streets, there’s no way to move silently in that—”

“We go now,” Amenon said, and started across the street. “Make your attack on the second floor in fifteen seconds.” He drew his sword as he went, Grinnd and Dahveed trailing behind him.

“Son of a …” Terian muttered and then shook his head. Drips from above were pelting his armor like a lightest rain. He glanced at Bowe, who stared at the building across the street, and then at Sareea, who seemed to be casting him a
What are you waiting for?
look. “You heard the man. We have an appointment to keep in about ten seconds. Let’s move.”

Chapter 44

Terian’s axe shredded through the thick-spun cloth, some cheap threading manufactured from low quality vek’tag silk castoffs. He could hear Sareea’s blade doing the same next to him, and they burst through into the dwelling and into a world of shouts and screams.

Most of them were coming from downstairs, Terian realized as he plunged his axe into the chest of a man carrying a short blade sword. The look of shock was muted as dark blood ran down the man’s chin, pouring from his lips like the water rushing down the slopes of Sovar.

Sareea was already sweeping forward into the room as Terian pulled his axe out of the man’s chest and let him fall.
Traitors are supposed to bleed to death anyway.

A trio of screams from below hurt Terian’s ears and he cringed. One of the shouts of agony degenerated into cursing, and he recognized the voice as Grinnd’s, the loudest of the three. Another was a little higher, more accented—
Dahveed
.

The third was his father’s.

He broke toward the outline of a stairwell ahead but was halted by a hard gauntlet slapping him in the chest. “Go up,” Sareea shot at him as she pushed him back. Bowe flew past him in her wake, and Terian froze, watching the two of them descend. Another scream penetrated louder than the others, and he knew from the sound of it that Sareea had dealt with someone—and quite harshly.

Terian steered his course woodenly toward the stairs up to the third floor. His feet were still drifting above the old planks that made up the floor.

He’s not dead. He’s not. He’s fine
. The screams below were fading as he stepped into the open stairwell and looked up to the floor above. He could see nothing looking back down at him save for the beams of the ceiling above. With a quick motion, he squatted and jumped as hard as he could.

He felt his feet catch firmly as the spell prevented him from falling once his upward momentum was arrested. He leapt again and came over the railing of the third floor of the building with his sword at the ready. There was only one man waiting for him there, a scrawny runt of a dark elf, thin fingers extended in front of him. “Wait!”

Terian buried the axe in his shoulder and it cut down through the collarbone until it lodged. The man cried out, and blood dripped down his ragged tunic, dyed green. He fell to his knees, the axe still buried in him.

“When I pull this weapon out, you’ll have about a minute to live,” Terian said, keeping a snug grip on the handle. His eyes took in the rest of the room. There were ratty little bedrolls on the hard floor, a handful of possessions scattered about the room. The whole place stunk, the chamber pots full to the brimming.

“Please,” the man said, and blood was dripping from his thin lips. “Please.”

“You have women and children in here?” Terian asked. He looked up, trying to see if there was a stairwell to the roof. The planks looked rotted and there were countless gaps.
Not sturdy enough for people to live up there, or they would, sure as shit.

“No,” the man said, and his body shuddered. “We’re not …” His voice sounded far away, like it was fading. He looked up at Terian, looked him straight in the eyes with dark pupils that appeared to be getting larger by the moment. “… monsters.”

Movement behind him caused Terian to rip his axe free and bring it up in a defensive posture as he spun toward the stairwell. Sareea stood there, watching him, looking grim until she broke into a faint smile.

“What happened?” Terian asked, glancing to the fallen rebel he’d pulled the axe from. The man made a faint choking noise, his thin frame rattling as it tried to cling to a life that was already fleeing.

“Wizard caught our team with an ice spell as they entered,” Sareea said. “Froze the standing water and their legs within it.”

“Huh,” Terian said, still watching the skinny rebel. The man reached out toward him with those long, thin fingers. They touched his boot, smearing dark blood on the toe where the spikes jutted. “Are they all right?”

“They’ll be fine,” Sareea said. “Is this the last one?”

“Seems that way,” Terian said, glancing around the room. “They had most of the resistance stacked up on the first floor, then?”

“Where we were most likely to hit, yes,” Sareea said. “And nobody up here?”

“Their leader,” Terian said with a shake of the head. “We should … attend to the rest of our team.”

“Right,” Sareea said, already descending. She paused, just for a moment. “What are you doing?”

“The sentence for a rebel is death,” Terian said, and stared down at the man. “Death by bleeding, if it happens in the course of resistance. I’m just watching the sentence carried out.” He shot a look around the room. “The man’s near dead, I’ll bring him with us.” He reached down and grabbed the skinny body with one hand, laying it over his shoulder, spikes on his pauldrons burying themselves into the man’s guts.

“Why not leave him for the army?” Sareea asked, still paused on the stairs.

Terian hesitated. “Because I want to watch him die. Did you kill the wizard already?”

“Couldn’t be avoided,” Sareea said, and she broke into a faint smile. “We could resurrect him, though, if you’d like to make him suffer—”

“We’ll leave that to my father,” Terian said, heading toward the stairs. Every step gave way to a creaking noise, the weight of his armor making the floor seem as though it would give at any moment. “Let’s collect the bodies from the second floor and toss them out into the street for disposal.”

“Aye,” Sareea said, descending below where he could see her. “I wonder if they’ll tar and hang them as examples?”

“No,” Terian said, pausing just before he reached the edge of the staircase. He checked to make certain that Sareea could not see him. The body on his shoulder was drawing its last breath, one last, dying gasp, a rattle, and then it went quiet.

He glanced around the room, the empty room—where water dripped in from the ceiling above, splashing in the corner in a strange pattern that looked like hair. Hair bereft of substance, hair that was colored in the exact manner of the wall behind it, like a lizard Terian had once seen that could blend in with whatever it was pressed against.

The colorless hair hung there, the barest outline of a head visible with it, only a couple feet off the ground.

A child.

Terian held up his finger and placed it on his lips, then spoke low as he tossed the body over the edge of the railing, hoping its landing would keep Sareea from hearing his words. “Stay quiet, stay hidden until the army is gone. Do not make a sound until they’ve left.”

He looked around the room, wondering how many of them there were, hiding, invisible from the spell the wizard had surely cast upon them. He would have guessed at least five, maybe ten. Maybe more.

“What are you doing?” Sareea called up from below.

“Hurt my shoulder throwing that corpse over the edge.” He stepped into view and looked down the stairs to see her standing there, the body at her feet. “Too much desk work. I think I’m atrophying away.”

She cocked her head at him and smiled faintly. “You need more exertion in your life.”

He smiled back, but there was no warmth in it.
Say what you have to.
“I trust you’ll help me with that.” Without another look back, he descended the stairs toward her. The thin, bony face of the rebel he’d killed stared back at him with hollow eyes.

Chapter 45

“Utter foolishness,” Amenon pronounced as the carriage made its way back up the tunnel toward Saekaj. “An insurrection not even in name, nor half measure.” The bumping of the carriage along the tunnel road jarred Terian’s tense body. Sareea sat next to him, aloof as ever. Dahveed was in the seat next to his father, who had his helm off.

“You would wish for a more dramatic and troublesome rebellion, then?” Dahveed asked with some amusement. His head rocked slightly as they hit a rut in the road. “I suppose we could send down a few more wizards, perhaps some enchanters with the instruction to make a true mess of it.”

“I think that the mess we had was quite enough,” Amenon said with a slight smile. “That wizard acted with far more craftiness than I would have expected from Sovar trash. Any idea who he was?”

“I don’t know the wizards as well as the head of the Commonwealth of Arcanists might,” Dahveed said with a shrug. “I could have him come down to the Depths to try and identify the body on the rot pile, if you’d like.”

Amenon hesitated for just a moment, lips pursed. “Do so. I do not wish to let this matter go to rest without investigating all possibilities.”

“The Third Army will be tied up in Sovar for quite some time, yes?” Terian asked, trying to control his voice.

“At least a week to allow tensions to dissolve, I would think,” Amenon said, his face pinched in contemplation. “It may not have been an actual rebellion or riot, but I see no reason to let it spark another before we have a chance to dampen Sovar’s enthusiasm for one.”

“I’d be surprised if their enthusiasm wasn’t already dampened,” Terian said, looking out the window to see the thin sheen of water making its way down the slope. It was only a trickle now, compared to what they’d faced on the way down. “Among other things.”

“A week will see the Back Deep dried out,” Amenon said with a nod. “When I was a child I saw many a harsher flood than this. The ground will accept the water, and it will make its way down to the Great Sea after a time. Such is the way of things there. This is normal.”

Normal to see your home turned into a flooded bog with water in the streets.
Terian kept himself from grimacing.
I suppose hanging out nearer the Front Gate in the Unnamed, I had no idea how bad it got down in the Back Deep.

“What I’m curious about is what prompted this particular uprising,” Sareea said.

“Do rabble need cause to rise?” Amenon said, staring out the window.

“No, but seldom will you find a man willing to toss himself into death without good cause,” Dahveed said, his eyes canny.

“The one I fought looked underfed,” Terian said, thinking about it. “I haven’t seen any fishing production reports in the last couple weeks.”

Amenon looked over at him, eyes focused in the distance, as if staring through him. “You’re quite right. I hadn’t noticed.” He tapped a finger on his chin. “Now that I think on it, I haven’t seen production reports for wildroot or mushrooms in at least a few weeks, either.”

“Starvation has been the cause of more than a few desperate maneuvers,” Terian said.

“It’s not quite reached starvation levels,” Dahveed said, “but there are some who are most certainly getting close.”

“You knew this was a problem?” Amenon snapped.

“Whispers and secondhand rumors,” Dahveed said, holding his hands up. “Until this visit, I had not been to Sovar in a few weeks. Too busy attending to other matters.”

“If they are edging close to starving,” Amenon said, “Shrawn is holding back information from me.”

“And you didn’t notice?” Terian asked.