Blackhand (2 page)

Zurah stroked his beard. “During my lifetime I have seen many cast into the mountains,” he said. “But none have returned for absolution. Those who survive the wilderness usually become mercenaries. Or bandits. Rauk’s plan offers us the only hope.”

The discourse faded and night swallowed them. Quintel did not have confidence in either path.

On the second week of their exile, they came upon a span of shattered earth. Slabs of granite formed an expanse of jagged, hostile angles. Each slab had to be negotiated individually. It took them a day to travel less than a mile.

Quintel carefully slid down one of the steep granite inclines. Shards of rock cut into his legs, but he kept silent, not daring to show weakness.  At the bottom of the slope, the others awaited him.  Rauk and Toren stood frowning while old Zurah leaned against a toppled boulder, trying to catch his breath after his own descent.

Halfway down the incline, Quintel slipped and tumbled to the ground, landing hard on his back.

“We travel too slowly,” said Rauk as he pulled Quintel to his feet. “We should have reached the border days ago.”

And thus the unspoken was spoken.

The warriors continued east with Quintel and Zurah stumbling behind.

Light drained from the sky and they made camp under a jutting boulder. A small fire bloomed from the scraps of wood and brush they had gathered, but its warmth did not last long. The group encircled the flame. Quintel sat slumped forward, his stomach pleading for food.

“Tomorrow will mark the second week of our exile,” Rauk said as the fire reached its modest peak. Shadows danced a mask across his face.  “Huk’s patrols will soon be everywhere. We are too easily tracked.”

Zurah threw the last crumbling branches upon the flame.

“The prince and I have come to a decision,” Zurah said falsely. He and Quintel had never discussed the matter. “We are burdens. You must go on without us.” Zurah was setting the warriors free, meeting the inevitable with honor.  Quintel didn’t like it.

Rauk stood and offered his back to the dwindling fire.

“We can leave you one of the knives,” he said, turning to meet only Zurah's eyes. “Quintel will have a better chance that way.”

“Yes,” the old man answered.

Quintel bolted to his feet. “You can’t leave us! We have no chance without your help!”

“We will all die if we continue like this,” Toren said. “We must split the group.”

With a final glance at Zurah, Rauk and Toren slipped beyond the glow of the fire in silence.

“Sit and rest, boy,” Zurah said to Quintel. “We are far from finished. My years may yet profit both of us.”

Quintel did not tell himself lies to ease his fear. The warriors had all but carried them for the last few days. Without their help, he and Zurah were dead.

He took a place beside the dying fire and tried to find comfort upon the cold stone.

As the first brushes of sleep touched his mind, he remembered Aran’s execution. He remembered the blade slowly disappearing inside his brother’s body. Even through exhaustion, the memory made his chest tighten. 

In time, fatigue overcame him and he surrendered to darkness.

Night melted and light again filled the sky. The warmth of the morning awakened him. Dew dampened his skin, but his tongue was dry and swollen.

Zurah sat on a boulder tapping pebbles from his boot. Beside him rested a long knife.

Quintel looked around the camp. The two warriors were nowhere in sight.

“How long have they been gone?” Quintel stood. In the distance, he saw birds of carrion flying circles above the mountainous horizon.

“Since the middle of the night,” Zurah answered. “Apparently, they thought it best not to say farewell.”

Quintel looked at the knife. “At least they left us a blade. They could have taken everything.”

“Rauk is a man of honor,” Zurah said. “He left us with all the help he could afford.”

Zurah picked up the knife and turned it in his hand, examining it from different angles.

“I supposed you noticed I hadn't killed myself,” he said.

Quintel looked at him and tried to smile. He was glad Zurah had not followed protocol.  Even though the old man was slow and brittle, Quintel didn’t want to be alone in the nothingness. “Surrender is not upon us yet. The rebellion may be over, but we are not.”

Zurah laughed. “Young lord, why do you insist on inserting yourself into the rebellion? I was one of the architects of the uprising, and throughout two years of planning, I never once heard your name. Your brother sought to protect you from such matters.”

It was true. Until the night of the failed coup, Quintel had only wanted the same thing every young Abanshi warrior did: to take his place on the battlefield against Sirian Ru, the Lover of Life, the cannibal god of the East. He had known nothing of his brother’s plans.

“I may not have wielded a weapon, Zurah, but my heart was with the rebels.”

“Are you sure it was not merely misplaced loyalty to Aran that got you into this?”

Quintel was six years old the first time he met Aran.  His brother had shown up at the court nursery unannounced. With a gaggle of handmaids in pursuit, Aran had scooped Quintel from his lesson and taken him riding for the entire day. From that day on, they were inseparable.

“You may be right about my loyalty,” Quintel said. “But I will never believe it was misplaced.”

“So what inspired such loyalty, young prince?” Zurah continued. “Why show fealty to a man already dead?”

Why. Quintel had flailed himself with the word since entering the wilderness. Why had he lied to the tribunal? Why had he declared loyalty to a man already dead? There was only one answer to all of the questions.

“Aran loved me.”

They buried the ashes from the fire and tried to conceal the camp's remains. The weight of their hunger prevented hasty movement and the task took longer than it should have.

They continued due east, directly into Huk's territory, to procure whatever provisions they could find.  If they could make it beyond the border, the patrols would thin and they would be safe. Hunger and thirst made them bold.

When they had finished hiding their camp, Zurah picked up the knife and stuck it in his belt.

“If we are attacked by Huk's soldiers, I will fight them off while you escape,” he said.

Quintel said nothing. If such a scenario occurred neither of them would escape.

They hobbled eastward for several hours, and the landscape began to change. Abrupt mountains gave way to rolling hills, hard stone surrendered to soft earth. Clusters of trees dotted the hills before them and green shimmered in the short grasses.

At the edge of a modest wood, they found a small pool of water in the roots of an oak and drank deeply. The water was bitter, but their survival became less a dream.

“Where there is water, there is food,” Zurah said. “As long as we avoid Huk's men, we are safe.”

“How can we find food?”

Zurah laughed. “It is easy! We simply...”

Something zipped through the air and Quintel caught a blurred movement from the corner of his vision. An arrow protruded from Zurah's throat. Blood poured from the wound as if from a wine spigot. Zurah made a gurgling sound and grabbed the arrow with both hands. Then he died.

“You idiot!” a voice called from the trees. “I told you not to kill them yet!”

Quintel bolted into the forest. Fear pounded through his veins, making his limbs even weaker. Exhausted, his body could not support his will to survive and he fell.

Rising in a stumble, he stole a glance toward his attackers. A dozen men melted from the trees behind him. They were dressed in shaggy tunics adorned with leaves and bark to blend into the surroundings.

The clank of steel weapons exposed more men in front of him. Quintel's legs buckled and again he fell. He struggled to stand, but they were on him. His final moment had arrived.

One of men kicked him in the ribs. A spear hilt caught his jaw and his head rang with pain. They bound his hands and feet. Blood ran from his mouth.

“So those other two weren't lying,” said one of the men in a strange dialect. “They really were exiled with an Abanshi prince.”

Through a fog of pain, Quintel looked into the barking faces of his captors. They were bearded, coarse-featured men, caked with filth from days of patrolling the forest. Some had twigs tied in their tangled hair. All were armed. In the distance, he saw them remove Zurah’s head with a sword.

One of the men walked over and put his boot on Quintel’s chest.

“Huk will pay us well for this one,” the man said and brought his spear hilt down hard against Quintel’s temple. Blackness.

When he awoke, he felt pain shooting through his arms. He opened his eyes and realized he was hanging by his hands and feet. They had slung him beneath a severed tree limb like a slain pig. His own weight had cut the blood flow at his wrists.

He lost consciousness again. Awareness returned only in fragments during the trip to Huk's fortress, and it was filled with pain.

Chapter 3

Warlord Huk's fortress was a massive walled tower that brooded over the surrounding forest. It had been cut from granite and fitted by craftsmen commissioned by Sirian Ru.

They carried Quintel through the main gate into an empty stone room where they cut him from the spit and let him drop to the ground.

Quintel felt the cold floor against his face. His hands and feet were numb, and it took him several minutes to realize he had been cut free. Someone poured a bucket of water over his head.

“Feed him and clean him up,” a faceless voice reverberated against the walls. “He must be rested for questioning.”

Two strong pairs of hands hoisted him from under his arms. He tried to stand but his legs dragged behind him. They carried him up a flight of stairs and into a room with a single, narrow window. Outside, he saw blue sky and white clouds framed by the gray stone.

He lay there motionless, feeling the sting of blood return to his hands and feet. He thought of Zurah with the arrow sticking out of his throat. He thought of Aran.

Quintel knew he was going to die. He knew Huk would torture him, and in the end, kill him. None of that seemed important as he rested on the hard floor. His muscle, bone and spirit had nothing left to give. Not even despair.

A sound disturbed his exhaustion. The door opened. Several pairs of hands grabbed him, but this time, they were not rough ones. His eyes fell open, and around him he saw a half dozen women ranging from teenagers to grandmothers. They pulled him into a seated position. Two of them held shears and cut his ragged clothes from his body. Another administered a thin broth to his lips. When the mixture touched his stomach, he almost vomited. It was delicious.

They produced a large wooden tub and placed him inside. He was aware of what was happening, but unable to either assist or resist. The women brought buckets of hot water and emptied them over his dust-caked body. When the tub was nearly full they scrubbed him with rough pieces of cloth until his hide tingled. Throughout the process the women never spoke.

After they were finished, Quintel took in more droplets of broth and fell into a deep sleep.

He awoke hours later, his body stiff with pain. Beneath him was a firm straw mattress. The room was dark and the air cool. He turned to see out the narrow window. Blackness now filled the frame. It was the middle of the night.

He thought of Zurah, gone from the world. He thought of home. A thick sense of loneliness made his stomach turn. He would be dead soon and no one was left in the world to care.

He turned his thoughts to Aran and their journey to Vaer for the Winterlift.

Vaer rested on the edge of the world west of the Abanshi kingdom. Although a small nation, its accomplishments in engineering and science were magnificent. Quintel’s first view of Vaerian capital was from a mountaintop looking down upon its entirety. He and Aran had crested the last Abanshi peak and Vaer exploded into existence in the valley before them.

Spread across the edge of the world, the city-state was flanked on the east by severe pink mountains, and on the west by a vast, moving ocean of white clouds roiling from the abyss beyond. Its intricate streets connected arenas, bazaars, factories, farms, inns and dwellings with a mathematical precision that illuminated the grand craftsmanship of the people who lived there.

Its gold and violet spires pierced the clouds and clung to the rim of the world like the teeth of an ornamental comb. The inhabitants of Vaer were a dark-skinned folk who had resurrected many forgotten technologies from the Pastworld. Allied with the Abanshi, they were a bane to Sirian Ru.

In the western lands, the Vaerian celebration of winter's departure was nearly as well-known as their scientific achievements. The Winterlift was an annual festival that marked the passing of the frigid time from the west.

Winter revolved around the convex surface of the earth like the hands of a great clock. Ru had created it to emulate the seasons of the Pastworld. When winter arrived in the mountain lands, the freezing temperatures and choking snowfall smothered travel and trade. Inhabitants had no choice but to wait for the thaw. When that time arrived, the celebration lasted a month.