Blackhand (17 page)

Quintel slowed his pace as he entered the mountains. Running headlong into Abanshi territory would aggravate the guards who might misinterpret his haste. Already, he felt the eyes of sentries upon him from the high trails. They measured his progress and passed warning down the line. It would take days for him to arrive at the gate, but already, they knew he was coming.

As he covered the distance, Quintel observed the crisscross network of tunnels that ran beneath the mountains. He could see the lights of many humans traveling through them. As a boy, he had known of the tunnels, but their locations were well-protected secrets, even though some were wide enough to accommodate wagons. Now he saw them clearly as if the earth were water. He observed busy supply routes and frantic runners. He saw columns of men headed to reinforce different sections of the mountain range and knew that such frenzied activity signified war.

Their lifelight told him everything. The Abanshi already knew Huk’s armies were coming. Their spies had already reported the troop movement. They probably knew about the Thogs as well. Why hadn't he seen that during the excursions out of his body?

He had underestimated his people. They were many weeks ahead of him.

The burning in his heart grew worse. The gnawing regret over killing Huk overtook him and his certainty staggered. He pushed against the black emotions. Now was not the time for self-pity. No matter how deeply his god-half mourned, more killing awaited him. He did not need divine powers to know that.

Dragging the weeping god behind him like a stubborn child, he moved forward.

As he drew closer to the gate, the sentries thickened. Hidden within bunkers disguised within the mountainside, they surrounded him, bows trained and drawn. A simple nod from a superior and the arrows would fly. He sensed the archers cared little for the life of a stranger wandering in from the east.

Above him, giant avalanche machines perched on the top of canyon walls. They were massive timber and steel shelves, stacked high with boulders and supported by chains as thick as a man. At the right moment, any lowly footman could pull a pin and bury an enemy force under thousands of tons of granite.

He moved ahead. Such weapons were meant to crush entire armies, not solitary fools.

At last he came upon the Iron Gate. He remembered it from the day of his exile: A wall of welded iron, stretching between the shoulders of two mountains. A hundred feet tall, dozens of feet thick, it was impregnable to any known weapon. Slots checkered its surface from bottom to top, each only large enough to accommodate a bowman’s aim. About thirty feet off the ground, a large iron door seemed oddly placed. No stairs led to it.

Many bows followed him, the archers invisible to the human eye. Their fingers grew tired from restraining their drawn strings. Now was the time to address his stalkers.

“Hold your arrows!” he said. “I am an Abanshi!”

That got their attention, but they did not lower their bows.

“I am Quintel. Exiled son of King Tilon,” he said, untying Huk’s head from his belt. “I have come carrying my redemption! The head of Warlord Huk!”

He felt some of the archers relax. A few were old enough to remember him, or had at least heard of him.

“Here is payment for my treason.” He tossed the head. It arced through the air with Huk’s black hair trailing in the wind. Hitting the ground, the trophy rolled, coming to rest against the foot of the gate. At last, it was away from him.

After a few moments, the elevated door moaned and opened. A folding ladder fell from its blackness like a tongue. The shape of a man filled the door. As the figure stepped into the light, Quintel saw the man was clad in chain mail and bore the colors of a captain. Studded leather boots covered the lower half of his legs from knee to toe, and a steel helmet rested on his head. An Abanshi sword hung at his side.

Quintel looked into the man’s heart. His light was prickly red, tinged yellow. He was primed for war. With a signal, he was ready to launch a salvo of arrows at the strange visitor claiming to be the exiled prince. But something else winked in his emotions. Curiosity. He remembered Quintel’s banishment and had been present when the prince proclaimed loyalty to his dead brother. He descended the ladder with surprising agility considering the bulk of his armor. On the ground, he walked over to Huk’s head and picked it up. Examining the object, he snorted.

“Quintel was banished years ago,” he said. “If you are him, then you’ve come home to your death.”

“No,” Quintel said. The archers held their aim, ready for the signal. “Abanshi law allows retribution, even for crimes of treason. If I prove myself worthy by deed, I can return. You hold the head of Warlord Huk, separated by my sword. That is my absolution.”

The gate captain turned Huk’s head around in his hands, seeking some indication of ownership. The he looked up at Quintel.

“You quote the law accurately,” he began. “But it is little more than a myth. No one has ever returned from exile.”

“Yet here I stand,” Quintel said. The captain looked at Quintel with a steady stare. A flash of recognition flickered across his face. He was starting to believe.

“If you really are Quintel, how do I know this is Huk’s head?”

“Take it to the capital. There are soldiers there who have met Huk in battle. They will recognize him.”

The captain was silent for a long while, but Quintel could tell he had already made up his mind.

“You have no sword?” he stated more than asked. Then he looked down at Quintel’s bare feet. “Or boots?”

Quintel did not know how to answer. He had left his boots at Huk’s fortress and had not missed their absence. “They were lost.”

Tucking Huk’s head under his arm, the captain nodded for him to approach and Quintel felt the archers relax.

“We will go to Jura, stranger,” the captain began, “but if this is not Huk’s head, you will be killed immediately. Even if it is, I cannot guarantee your continued health. The queen decides what’s law.”

“The queen?”

The captain cocked his head.

“Yes,” he said. “Queen Aul. Your sister.”
 

The captain motioned for him to climb the ladder. Quintel could have leaped the distance to the door, but he did want to alarm the soldiers with such a display. Looking them over, he saw boredom in their hearts. They wanted to fight or go home.

At the top of the ladder two soldiers grabbed him by either arm and escorted him through a solid iron corridor. The captain followed, stuffing Huk’s head in a bag.

They passed through the center of the gate and exited through a door on the other side where a wide staircase angled to the ground. At the top of the stairs, Quintel took a moment and surveyed the land below.

“This was the last place I saw before they sent me into the wilderness,” he said. Again a human memory pierced his godly veil and filled his mind with recollections of his childhood. Memories of Aran jumped to his thoughts. He was home.

“It will also be the last thing you see if your story doesn’t match the truth,” said the captain with forced coldness in his voice.

They ushered Quintel down the stairs. Dozens of soldiers milled about the encampment at the foot of the gate. Some were doing laundry, some sharpened their weapons, a group to the side played a game of chance. Each human burned a different fire in Quintel’s eyes. No two were the same. This one had a blue tint to his light. This one flashed more green. Some had halos spiked with experience, others carried blooms of knowledge and study. They were multi-colored prisms of experience, beings of flame. If he stared at one too long, the man's entire life took form in Quintel's mind. As he walked past, many stopped what they were doing and offered him threatening glares.

They took him to the stables at the far end of the compound. In moments, four horses were saddled and ready to ride. Pairing him with a rather shabby steed, they bound Quintel’s hands and handed him the reins. Crossbows were distributed to his guards.

“No tricks,” the captain said. Quintel nodded.

With the captain in front and the soldiers on either flank, they headed down the rutted road to Jura, the capital city of the Abanshi kingdom.

As the rhythm of the journey took hold, Quintel allowed his mind to explore the countryside around them. With his eyes closed, his guards thought he slept, which was fine with them. In reality, his mind traveled far away, studying the frenzied activity of the world. The entire kingdom pulsed with war. Days to the west, a column of Vaerian battlewagons, three miles long, crawled toward them. Even they had already received warning of the Thogs.

Further down the road, they passed an approaching column of Abanshi in full armor making their way to the Iron Gate. The captain broke off to the side with their ranking officer. There was a flurry of conversation and the captain showed him Huk’s head. The officer shrugged.

The captain glanced back at Quintel.

Returning to the group the captain took his place at the lead and said nothing, but Quintel saw a change in his lifelight. He was almost certain Quintel was telling the truth.

The ride took the remainder of the day and most of the evening. Had Quintel been allowed to travel at his own pace, he would have made it to the capital within hours. He had to be patient with his countrymen. Their cooperation would be needed very soon.

Jura ringed the top of a broad mountain like the crown upon the head of a king. The city was surrounded by several concentric stone walls and stair-stepped down the mountainside. Hundreds of shops, dwellings and stone structures were tied together by a web of twisted avenues, alleyways and terraces. The place had not changed much since he left.

The royal castle was carved from the mountain’s peak. It was his boyhood home.

They entered Jura through the main gate without being stopped or questioned. Once inside the first wall they kept to the main fairway and moved deeper into the heart of the city, past the second wall, past the third, all the way to the foot of the castle.  Sentries met them. The captain dismounted and repeated Quintel’s tale, finishing the story by producing Huk’s head. Again, the trophy was greeted with shrugs of uncertainty.

A few of the sentries recognized Quintel. They knew who he was and a noticeable degree of irritation spread among them. A banished prince showing up right before the greatest war in history could not be a good sign. And wasn’t it known that Quintel had been enslaved by Huk? Hadn’t he served as the warlord’s nurse or something? He felt a ripple of suspicion move through the group.

Their collected assumption was plain. His presence was a bad omen.

Quintel saw these thoughts travel from man to man. Except for the captain. The chief sentry agreed to take the news into the castle. He barked orders to his subordinates and they rushed over to Quintel. Taking the reins, they led him to a place he knew too well. The city square. The place where he watched them execute Aran.

They led him to the cell at the center of the square. A large barred door was the single entrance into the cube. One of the sentries jammed a key into the lock and the door swung open. They pulled him from his horse, cut his bonds and shoved him inside.

Again, Quintel was a prisoner.

The captain came to the door. He still had Huk’s head stuck under his arm.

“They’re sending for someone to confirm or deny your tale,” he said. “I wouldn’t be hopeful, lost prince. Even if this is Huk’s head, the odds are good you’ll die anyway.”

Quintel was not afraid.

Chapter 21

An hour passed. His token cadre of guards traded jokes and gossip a few feet from the door. None of them expected anything to come of his arrival except an execution. Those who remembered him considered him a traitor. Those who didn’t remember him had better ways to spend their day.

His cell was three paces wide and twice as deep. It held no furniture or adornments, and its floor was hard-packed dirt. Quintel stood and did not move. Only his body was captive. His mind roamed over the city, gathering the feelings and thoughts of the Abanshi people, relishing the vast garden of life that surrounded him. His consciousness flitted about, touching various minds, brushing against entire lifetimes. The variety was magnificent.

At the edge of his comprehension, Quintel began to understand deeper truths of his situation. He was starting to grasp his role in the conflict. Yuul had chosen an Abanshi host so that the hatred against Ru would be as strong as possible. The god knew it would be weakened by conscience once it entered the world. It had to find a being who already hated the god. A being whose mind would not waver when faced by the task of killing. In this matter, the god had erred.

Quintel sensed the approach of a rider at the edge of the square. It was the man who would -- or would not -- identify Huk’s head. He gathered his mind and stepped toward the door to see his judge.

The guards, including the gate captain bearing the head, broke from their distractions and converged to meet the horseman, who trotted across the open field at a leisurely pace.

The man was clad in loose fitting robes and a cowl. It was obvious that he was not a warrior. In fact, the cut of his clothes was not even Abanshi. As he grew near, Quintel made out his facial features. His sharp nose perched above a mouth that bore a frown so deep it seemed to pull the entire face downward. His white-blue eyes were sheltered in deep sockets, and heavy creases etched his face from chin to brow. Quintel recognized him, although he had only met the man once before.