Wrath of Lions (9 page)

“He is, and you have done nothing wrong,” replied Ashhur. “My brother’s motivations are beyond understanding, and I have no control or influence over him. All I can hope to do is protect you as best I can, my wonderful creations whom I love more than my own being.”

“Is this a parable?” shouted someone from within the throng.

“A test?” shouted another.

“No,” replied Ashhur.

The girl’s lips twisted into a half frown and she rejoined the gathering of her villagers. Felton did the same, looking as lost and confused as a wayward pup. They stood as a writhing mass of humanity, talking among themselves, words drowning out words drowning out the occasional laugh or tentative plea. Patrick looked up at Ashhur, and the god leaned over.

“That went well,” Patrick said sarcastically.

“As well as it could,” said Ashhur, sounding dejected. “They do not understand. Not a one of them. I created them. Their naïveté is my doing.”

Patrick shrugged. “No harm in that, My Grace. You wanted to create paradise, and you did. It was wonderful while it lasted. How could you know Karak would turn out to be such a bastard?”

Ashhur turned away without answering, his glowing golden stare settling on the eastern expanse. His expression was blank. Patrick didn’t like that look. Not one bit.

The residents of Grassmere split into two groups—those who wished to stay behind and those who would accompany the god on the journey to Mordeina. Two thirds of the populace chose the latter, and they wandered up the slope of the plateau, carrying their meager possessions. Patrick spent the rest of the day lecturing those who remained, mostly young families, on how to protect themselves. They disassembled some of the tents of those who had departed, using flat-edged stones to whittle the tips of the poles to points for spears. As with most every settlement outside of Lerder, there was little to no iron available—even the large granary had been built with interlocking logs tied off with twine—so they would have to defend themselves with what they had. He instructed a group of men to dig into the soil and gather as many large rocks as they could to hurl at the enemy, and he made man and woman alike form a line and showed them how to thrust with the pointy end of a spear, describing the sensitive areas on the human body.

“Just like with animals,” he told them. “Look for the soft spot, and strike for it.” A few from those gathered on the Gods’ Road, including four Wardens, came down to assist him in his duties. Stoke Harrow, a man who had accompanied Ashhur on his trek into the delta, helped him put on his mismatched suit of armor, so he could show his students the weak points.

All the while Ashhur sat in the center of the spiraling tents, chanting silently, using his godly magic to bring pillars of brightly colored stone and trees from the earth to form a jagged wall around the settlement. It was an amazing spectacle to see, and the pillars and trees caused quite a ruckus when they emerged from the crust, which made Patrick’s teaching efforts all the more difficult.

Not that it mattered. The people took to their lesson as though it were a game, acting as if Ashhur’s dire news were nothing to worry about. Frustrating as it was, he couldn’t necessarily blame them.
You’ll learn soon enough,
he thought solemnly.

They were back on the Gods’ Road several hours later when the sun set below the western horizon. Tents sprang up all across the road, stretching outward for miles, lit by dozens of cookfires. Patrick spread his bedroll out on the packed dirt, far away from the noisy mass of humanity. Pigs squealed and horses whinnied. The scent of cooking meats reached his nose, and his stomach cramped. He was famished, having eaten only some salted beef that morning, but his body was too sore from the day’s labor to move. Instead, he took a swig from his waterskin, wishing it were wine, then pulled a pile of blankets atop him to stave off the night’s cold. At least he wasn’t staying behind in Grassmere, as the four Wardens who’d assisted in the citizens’ training had been asked to do. Four less guides to help lead this motley lot.

Ashhur sat nearby, legs crossed, gaze fixed on Celestia’s star, the brightest in the heavens. He had spent much of the evening among his people, blessing them, joining them in laughter and prayer. He now appeared tired and worn to the nub, the light of the half-moon forming deep lines of worry on an otherwise perfect visage. Patrick shifted beneath his blankets, rising up on his elbow.

“You look troubled,” he said.

Ashhur glanced back at him, his eyes glowing faintly.

“I am. It is an unusual sensation for one such as me to experience.”

“What’s the reason for the worry? Same as usual, or something new?”

The deity shook his head and glanced down at the settlement at the base of the plateau, with its new multicolored wall.

“I fear this may all be for naught. Those I leave behind do not understand what is coming for them. They will perish, and they will perish horribly. I should bring the whole throng of them with me.”

“We go through this every time,” Patrick insisted. “Yes, it’s awful. But as you said, you can’t coddle your children any longer. It’s time for us to grow up and make our own decisions, and from what I saw in Haven, growing up is almost always painful. Take solace in the
fact that those who come with us will be protected once we reach Mordeina. That is all we can ask for, is it not? And besides, those who stay behind will fulfill their purpose…”

“That is my hope,” the deity said with a nod. He looked odd in that moment, more guilty than a deity should ever appear to be.

“Sometimes hope is all we have,” Patrick said. “For example, I hope my mother’s making progress on that wall you wanted, and I hope the king they crowned is up to the task of leading these people once we arrive, since I assume your attentions will be focused…elsewhere.”

That seemed to snap Ashhur back to his old self. “Yes, it is my hope as well. Your mother is strong. Perhaps not strong in the same way Bessus was, but she has her talents. She is the only survivor of my first creations, and she’s more than capable. I believe she will teach Ben Maryll well, just as she taught you.”

Patrick scoffed inwardly at the notion. He had come to realize that his mother and father had very little to do with the man he’d become. He didn’t correct his god, however, for Ashhur knew far more than he did. If Isabel DuTaureau’s harsh and distant parenting could make this new King Benjamin anywhere near as strong as Patrick was now, there was a chance Paradise might be saved.

Patrick lifted his waterskin to his lips in a toast.

“To Paradise, to your ever loving grace, and to pounding Karak’s ass when he finally arrives,” he said.

“As good a toast as any,” Ashhur replied, a somber smile lifting his lips.

C
HAPTER

4

“H
eave! You, stop that dawdling. There will be time for water when we set this stone. Stop worrying about slicing your hand open. I’ll heal it if you do. You—the man with the torn breeches—don’t stand there! If that rope snaps, you will be crushed. Is that what you desire? No, no,
no
! Stop jumping on those boulders. Do you think this a game, you fool?”

Ahaesarus took a step backward, throwing his hands up in frustration. Those who should have been working were laughing and cajoling instead. At the rate the stones were being put in place, they would never have the wall built before Ashhur’s arrival.

After taking a deep breath to calm his nerves and tugging on his scarred ear, he allowed himself a moment to put things into perspective. It was early morning, the sun barely up long enough to take the haze from the sky, and there were already two hundred people working. The citizens of Mordeina stood among acres of mud, lifting granite blocks—each as wide as a small hut—from the nearby mountains with pulleys made from ropes and felled tree, attempting to swing them into place atop the uncompleted wall. Others stood atop the completed portions, pouring mortar into the
gaps before the blocks were nestled into place. The progress they’d made over many months of labor was extensive, yet laughable considering how much still remained to be done. The main entrance was finished, a stone arch that had taken a full week to perfect. The wall in general was fifty feet high and went on in a semicircle for a span of six miles. It would take more than fifteen miles of wall to completely encircle the settlement.

We will never finish in time.

They had received Ashhur’s letter describing the events in Haven in painstaking detail just as autumn took hold of the land. Along with that message came a warning of Karak’s planned assault on Paradise. The final instructions were to begin construction of the protective wall around Mordeina, the planning of which had fallen to the Wardens. None of the humans knew anything of woodwork or masonry, never mind architecture. Each of the great structures that had been erected in Paradise—Manse DuTaureau, the Wooden Bridge, and the seven buildings in Lerder—had been conceived of and built by Ahaesarus’s brethren. Even considering that fact, the designer of these edifices had been a single Warden, Boral, who still resided and worked his craft in Lerder, on the banks of the Rigon, hundreds of miles away. Most of the Wardens had been minor tradesmen in their past lives on their obliterated, faraway world. Ahaesarus, in fact, had been a farmer and a priest. He had risen in stature after his people were brought to Dezrel to become nursemaids, and he’d learned to appreciate his second chance. He had become a strict adherent of Ashhur’s laws of love and forgiveness, a teacher whose loud voice served him well in gaining the attention of the juvenile beings under his care. His size and integrity had made him the most prominent of all the Wardens, climbing so high in the eyes of Ashhur that he had been named Master Warden and given the responsibility of tutoring one of the three youngsters who had been tabbed as potential kings of Paradise. He took pride in his duties and excelled at them.

But building a gigantic, fifteen-mile-long wall? He felt out of his league. He and his fellow Warden, Karitas, had painstakingly mapped out the giant oval that would surround the settlement, reconciling which areas of the surrounding forest would need to be cleared, how many massive stones they would require, and from where the stones would be harvested. He was often still anxious when he fell into bed at night, and sleep had become a rarity. The proposition was simply so
huge
. If not for the fact that they had Mordeina’s thirty thousand residents at their disposal, they would have been lucky to raise even one section of wall.

Eveningstar would have been better suited for this work,
he thought, and then shook his head in disgust. Jacob Eveningstar was a traitor who had turned on them all. It appalled him that he had not seen that betrayal coming. Ahaesarus had always considered himself a stickler for detail, yet he’d ignored all the signs. The fact that Benjamin Maryll, the boy who now was king, had been a chronic underachiever under Jacob’s tutelage, only to flourish under the Warden Judarius’s watchful eye, should have been sign enough that something was amiss.

He shrugged aside his guilt and threw back his shoulders.

“Get moving, you idle ingrates!” he shouted. “This wall is not going to build itself!”

He received countless groans and complaints in reply.

“What seems to be the problem, Master Warden?”

Ahaesarus looked to his right. Isabel, the matriarch of House DuTaureau and Ashhur’s second creation, stood beside him. She had appeared from out of nowhere, and her intense green eyes were observing all the commotion before her. She was a tiny creature, but the confidence with which she carried herself made her seem larger. Her clothes were a study of contrasts: her tight-fitting, emerald-green gown, colored to match her eyes, made her look like a goddess of the sea, whereas the bundle of furs draped over her shoulders were more reminiscent of a barbarian. Some commonfolk
whispered that her cold stare could turn men to stone, and others said that the bright red of her hair was a sign that the fires of the underworld burned in her veins. She was aloof and unflinching, a woman who guided the simple people of Mordeina with a heavy hand. Though she had never been nice to him, Ahaesarus admired her greatly.

“I apologize, Isabel. I did not hear you approach,” he said.

“You should pay better attention,” she said coldly.

“Perhaps you are correct.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Master Warden. What is the problem here?”

Ahaesarus cleared his throat. “I am simply trying to motivate the workers. They are easily distracted.”

“They are. As well you would be too if you had only known a life of comfort.”

“I have been in this world as long as you, Isabel.”

As the woman gazed up at him, her steely gaze narrowed.

“Yet you also lived through war and hardship none here could imagine,” she said to him. Her tone wasn’t necessarily cruel, but there was an accusation there that made him feel like a child, even though he had outlived her by nearly a hundred years. “You cannot treat these people like they are your fellow Wardens. They are naïve, simple folk. They cannot wrap their heads around the concept of losing the safety they’ve always known. They don’t understand it, and I fear they won’t until Karak’s Army stands before them.”

“You have lived just as they have. How can
you
understand it?” he asked

Isabel offered him the chilliest smile he had ever seen.

“I may not have lived through the genocide of my people as you Wardens have done, but I have experienced my own hardships. I have never claimed to understand yours, so do not belittle mine.”

He bowed his head. “Many apologies, Isabel. I meant no disrespect.”

“Yet disrespect you did.”

Ahaesarus had no retort for that.

The tiny woman cleared her throat. “Be that as it may, you are forgiven. Your presence in our settlement has been a blessing during trying times, and for that I am thankful.”

He grabbed her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it.

“It is my honor, Isabel,” he said.