Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (8 page)

“Soldiers have collapsed the entrance,” she
guessed.

Dana stopped and looked behind her. She saw
Khalous standing motionless in the tunnel, his black and silver
hair nearly scraping the roof, shoulders sagging, head bowed, chest
heaving as he sobbed silently.

The moment Dana had been dreading finally
came.

Reaching for her brother, she pulled
Broderick in tight and wept into his shoulder. To her surprise, he
didn’t push her away like he usually did.

“We’re never going back. Are we?” Broderick
said.

Dana sniffled, wiping her eyes. “I don’t
know.”

She looked at the captain. For as long as
she’d known Khalous he had been committed to serving her family,
honor bound to the kingdom of Aberdour and the family of Kingsley
and Lilyanna Falls. In the cramped tunnel, under the weight of the
siege above, she felt the split running through his soul.

“Khalous?” she asked.

The old captain opened his eyes and walked
toward her. “Best keep moving.” His deep voice echoed with an eerie
calm through the dark passage. “There’s no going back now.”

The tunnel emptied out into a copse of
maples, its ingress discretely covered by a natural formation of
mossy boulders, cool and damp under the forest canopy. With his
sister Lia in tow Brayden wove his way from the cave’s mouth down a
widening slope to join a large group of refugees that had also
escaped the attack on Aberdour. He counted about eighty people,
peasants in patched leggings and tunics of brown and gray, faded
reds and oranges. They clung to one another in scattered piles,
children to their mothers, wives to their husbands, sobbing
together and nursing teary eyes and minor wounds. He saw a couple
of his family’s servants, a baker he knew who lived a short walk
from the castle, and other nameless faces he knew he’d seen
before.

A handful of priests and nuns had fled
Aberdour’s chapel and were now moving from group to group
inspecting wounds and offering comfort, though what comfort could
possibly be found in this moment Brayden couldn’t imagine.

Lia tugged on his shirt and whimpered
something about mother and father, but Brayden’s mind was too
scattered to comprehend her words at first.

“Are they really…” she started asked.

He looked at her, confused. “What?”

“Mama and papa. Are they really gone?”

All words had deserted him. Even if he knew
what to say, the hot coals in his throat wouldn’t let him speak.
After a perhaps too revealing hesitation, he saw fresh tears float
to the lids under Lia’s eyes.

Taking his ten-year-old sister by the hand,
Brayden walked through the crowd, looking for his other
siblings.

One of the nuns recognized him as he passed
and exclaimed, “My Lord Brayden! Thank the Allgod you’re
alive!”

“Have you seen Brynlee or Scarlett?” he
asked.

The nun’s eyes became sympathetic. “I am
sorry, my lord. I’ve not.”

Another tear slid unbidden down the prince’s
cheek. He wiped it away with his fingers, trying not to imagine the
horrible things that might have befallen his sisters.

“What about Dana?” Lia asked.

He paused, weakening against the fear
hammering on the doors of his heart. The last he had seen of his
older sister she was being attacked by a black viper.

“We got separated,” he said.

Lia pressed herself into him, sobbing into
his tan jacket. He held her for a moment, his eyes scanning the
crowd for his siblings, but all he saw was disquiet and sorrow in a
crowd of faces he didn’t know.

The final words of Lord Kingsley echoed
through Brayden’s mind: “You’re a man now, son.”

The phrase made Brayden angry. How was he a
man? How did this horrible situation make him any more of a man
than he was when he woke up this morning? He hated the idea of
becoming a man, the responsibility, the weight of purpose. In his
final moment Kingsley had charged Brayden with becoming something
he didn’t want to be, something he didn’t even know how to be.

A few moments later, Khalous Marloch emerged
from the tunnel with Dana and Broderick in tow. Lia sprang toward
her sister and dove into her, arms enveloping her. Dana squeezed
her in reply and dropped a kiss atop her head. “It’s all right,
Little Bit.”

“Hate it when you call me that,” Lia
said.

Brayden felt himself growing nervous when
Khalous locked eyes with him. The veteran soldier of Aberdour
strode toward him, his face speckled with dirt. The captain knelt
and looked up into Brayden’s eyes.

“The time has come to be brave, my lord,”
Khalous said. His words were loud enough for only Brayden to hear.
“The time for being afraid is gone. I need you to be strong and do
as I say and help me lead your siblings away from this place.”

After a brief pause that Brayden realized
revealed just how frightened he was, he forced a rapid nod.

“Where are we going?” asked Broderick.

Khalous stood, and walked forward to address
the crowd. When he spoke, he sounded like a bear, authoritative and
mad: “We need to move out of here, quickly! Black vipers will soon
be scouring these woods.”

“To the White Wood!” someone shouted, a
voice in the crowd that Brayden could not see. “Hide behind the
northern falls.”

“We were flanked from the falls!” said
another. “The enemy came in through the secret path. Wildmen from
the deep north. They slaughtered–massacred my sons.”

“Where do you expect us to run to?” asked a
worried father from deep within the crowd. “We can’t run south.
That’s Jackdaw territory.”

Jackdaws. The word made Brayden’s heart grow
even colder. The cannibalistic barbarians hadn’t ventured within
sight of the city in many years, but they still occupied pockets of
the southern woods.

“We have two ships in the harbor to take us
to Efferous,” Khalous said. “We need to get there as soon as
possible.”

“Black vipers took my wife,” said another
man. “We have to go back!” A few other men, two holding common
short swords and a third with a pickaxe, met his words with
guttural shouts.

“We can’t go back,” Khalous said.

“To all the hells with that!” spat the man
with the pickaxe. “Those bastards murdered my son and are surely
doing the unthinkable…” his voice cracked, “…to my daughter.” He
pushed through the crowd as he spoke, making his way back up the
hill toward the city. “I’m going back. If anyone wishes to join me,
so be it.”

Brayden watched a handful of angry husbands
and fathers go with him.

“Any man who goes back is as good as dead,”
Khalous said, pushing his voice above the rising commotion of the
people. “We need to move east. Now!”

More protests followed, but Khalous ignored
them. He gathered with Brayden and his siblings along with two
other members of the King’s Shield, Pick, and a muscled brawler
named Connell Stone. Most people called him Stoneman, but Brayden
knew it had less to do with his last name and more with his
immoveable stature.

“You two,” Khalous said, gesturing toward
his soldiers. “Get them out. And if the vipers come, get
bloody.”

“Bloody, sir?” Pick said with a smirk.

“Bloody bloody,” Khalous growled.

Stoneman faced the mob and in a guttural
voice that boomed through the trees, he said, “Anybody who’s not
headed back into Aberdour to die, follow me! If we hurry we can
reach the shore by nightfall.” He started moving east through the
trees with Pick and a confused, frightened, injured, and angry
crowd of refugees.

Khalous’ eyes went to Brayden, and then
moved from Dana, to Lia, and then Broderick. “Where are Brynlee and
Scarlett?”

Tears rolled down Dana’s cheeks. “I–I lost
them,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry.”

“Damn the stones!” Khalous said. He whipped
around to face the direction of Aberdour. For a moment it looked
like he was about to abandon his own advice and charge back into
the city, sword drawn and hungry for blood.

When Brayden saw the weight of Dana’s guilt
settle upon her, he said, “It wasn’t her fault. Black vipers
attacked us. We all got separated.”

Khalous faced them again. “No one is blaming
anyone.” He paused, his demeanor calming. “Listen to me, all of
you. You all are more important to the realm than you realize. I
need all of you to run. Stay with me, but if I fall behind, or if
anything happens to me, you need to take your siblings and run. You
four are all that remains of Edhen’s rightful heirs. You need to
run. You need to survive. Understand?”

Though he quivered when he did so, Brayden
nodded.

Khalous started down the slope on the trail
of the refugees of Aberdour.

“What about Brynlee and Scarlett?” Lia
blurted. “We’re not just going to leave them.”

But Khalous kept walking.

“No. Stop!” Lia said, but the captain
ignored her. “I said stop!”

Khalous whipped around, eyes fixed with
anger. “To what end, your highness? To be thrown in their cages
along with them? To be tortured and bled until you beg for
death?”

“We have to go back!” Lia shouted, nearly
cutting him off.

“You do and I’ll kill you myself to spare
you from the consequences of your own idiocy,” he roared.

“Khalous!” snapped Dana.

The captain stopped, took a breath, and the
red of his face began to diminish. The moment defused, and he
walked away.

Brayden watched as one by one his siblings
tore themselves from their home, away from their sisters, and
followed after the mob of refugees. When Brayden followed suit he
felt like he was abandoning Brynlee and Scarlett. Every footstep he
took brought the weight of the guilt down upon him more and
more.

When he glanced back he saw Lia still rooted
to her place under the trees, alone on the patch of earth outside
the tunnel’s entrance. He went back and put his hands on her
shoulders.

“Listen,” he said, mustering the strength
within him to speak, “we’ll come back. I promise. Some day we’ll
come back and get them. But right now if we stay here, we die.”

She frowned. After another look back at the
walls of Aberdour, Lia stomped down the trail after her siblings.
Brayden noticed her tiny hands had balled into fists.

Minus the ten or so men who returned to
Aberdour to fight, there were about seventy people in all making
their way through the woods behind the men of the King’s Shield.
There were forlorn men in patched leggings and haggard women in
tattered peasant gowns, humble servants of the castle and a handful
of priests, nuns, and orphans.

Later in the day, the group crossed a rocky
hilltop from which they could see between the thinning trees a
monumental swathe of dark blue ocean. The green light of the woods
was growing somber as scudding dark clouds from out over the sea
filled the sky above.

Behind him, to the west, Brayden saw the
gray and brown city of Aberdour seated like a woodland king on the
hills of Edhen. At its back rose a narrow four hundred foot
waterfall while a broad expanse of green field stretched before it
to the south—the vast acres of his father’s majestic kingdom.
Brayden knew much of it: from the vertical cliffs that hugged the
Falls of Edhen to the hills of Berstane beyond; the forest of
Kintore to the west, where Lia was so fond of absconding, and the
Aviemore Wood to the south where he had hunted quail with his
father earlier in the morning. Brayden thought the sight was
magnificent, and felt a small part of himself die at the thought of
never seeing it again.

Around mid-afternoon, Brayden heard voices
at the front of the crowd. He jogged ahead through the trees until
he saw Khalous conversing with a battle-worn soldier bearing the
maroon crest of a mighty horse on his dirty breastplate.

“What is it?” Dana asked.

“Soldiers from Montrose,” Brayden said.

“I thought Montrose fell moons ago.”

Indeed it had. Aberdour’s western kin in the
kingdom of Montrose had experienced the onslaught of black vipers
just before the start of winter. Many of its refugees had fled to
the forests of Aberdour.

“We were going to make our way south to buy
passage to Efferous,” the soldier said, “but Lady Earline has
fallen ill.”

“The queen?” Khalous said, shocked. “She’s
alive? Why didn’t you send word?”

“Rumors were that Aberdour had joined the
Black King.”

“Nonsense!”

With a newfound quickness in his steps
Khalous forged ahead over a sudden rise in the forest floor.
Brayden hurried after him, eager to see what lay ahead.

The rise overlooked a secluded crevice in
the hillside below. Crowded within it and huddled against the wall
of earth was a conglomerate of cream-colored tents, a couple
wagons, and a central fire pit. A handful of dingy soldiers, and a
dozen weary men, women, and children had taken refuge in the
nook.

“We rest here!” Khalous shouted to the
refugees.

Everyone formed up in tight groups to rest
and tend to the wounded.

Brayden watched the captain make his way
down the edge of the alcove to the queen who was reclining on a bed
of sticks and leaves under a pile of blankets.

“Uh-oh,” Broderick muttered. “It’s
Clint.”

Brayden follow his brother’s gaze to a lone
figure hurrying up the hill in their direction. Clint Brackenrig,
prince of Montrose.

“Sanctimonious swine,” Lia muttered.

“You don’t even know what that means,”
Broderick said.

“Well that’s what Old Betha calls him.”

“Quiet,” Dana said.

When Clint neared, Brayden greeted him with
a guarded, “Cousin.”

The boy, merely a year older than Brayden,
was tall for his age, and big, but not necessarily fat. He carried
himself like a prince among ants with close-set dark eyes and a
penchant for fine clothing. Today he wore a gray tunic decorated
with lion silhouettes, black slacks, and high boots with shiny
silver buckles. Brayden noted that although Clint looked sharply
dressed, he appeared tired and distraught.