The Soul Sphere: Book 02 - The Final Shard (23 page)

“Stupid,” the Kabrinda chief muttered.

“Rest now,” Zald told him.

Lucien leaned close and spoke to him in his own speech. “Don’t give up.”

“I will fight, as I am able,” he replied. “But one must accept the inevitable. Grosh never learned that.”

“He never will,” said Lucien. “Ast slew him.”

“And Ast is now dead, too?”

Lucien nodded.

“He did understand, but too late. And I was a fool to turn my back to Grosh. I should have known he was too stubborn to give in. He did so only so he could act out of spite.”

“He was a coward. He struck from behind.”

“He cared only for what served him. In the end, even what was best for his pack mattered not to him.”

Zald handed Lucien a skin of water, which he used to wash the wound and then to wet Durst’s throat. “Thank you,” Durst said. “Now let me rest for a time, if I can.”

Lucien started to turn away, then stopped. “I am sorry I failed you.”

“You did not. You aren’t here as a body guard, but as a trusted advisor.”

“Still, I should have—”

“Enough. What’s done is done. Turn your eyes to the present and the future. Watch the battle and let me know what is happening.”

Durst lost consciousness for several hours. When he awoke, he was surprised at how distant and small the pain was. He tried to lift his head but could not. He lay back, realizing the end was near. Turning his head, he noticed Lucien sitting beside him, gazing to the south. Night had fallen, and from that direction came a glow from a massive fire. “Is it over?” he rasped.

“Yes,” Lucien said. He held his chief’s head up so he could drink.

Durst took a small sip, but it only made him cough. He pushed the water skin away. “Who was the victor?”

“No one. Roughly half have been killed. The others spent themselves and came to a truce of sorts. Each pack chose a new chief, and the two
made a blood pact to stop fighting for now. The bodies of the dead burn in a great pyre.”

“Who are the new leaders?”

“Yola for the Omwee, Ench for the Salesh.”

“I have heard of neither.”

“Nor had I,” Lucien replied. “But you know how goblins are. Most of the strongest were first into battle, and they fell.”

“Will these two pass the challenges?”

Lucien shrugged. “I cannot say. The packs seem to be accepting their leadership for now. They both want to speak to you.”

“Me?”

“A meeting of chiefs.”

Durst started to laugh, then coughed again instead. “I forget I am still chief while I live. Bring them.”

The two new leaders approached and knelt beside the fallen Durst, a sign of respect.

“What do you wish of me?” Durst asked.

The two glanced at one another. At a nod from Yola, Ench spoke. “Peace,” he said, his voice with an unmistakable quiver. He cleared his throat while he looked away, embarrassed.

“Grosh had that, until he broke faith. What of your packs? What would you command them to do?”

“To march with the others to Veldoon. We live or die together.”

Durst smiled and nodded, then eyed Yola. “And you?”

“The same.”

“In that case you shall have peace, as far as it is mine to give.” He turned to Lucien. “Tell Xoshan what has been agreed to here. It is a binding agreement I expect him to keep.”

“Xoshan is not chief of the Kabrinda,” Lucien protested.

“He will be by the time you reach him. I will not be leaving this field.” Durst saw Lucien open his mouth to speak and cut him off quickly. “Obey me in this, Lucien, and don’t make me waste what little strength I have left arguing with you.”

Lucien bowed his head in obedience.

Zald was called over, and they discussed how they could return to the main goblin column. No one wanted to slow the lead packs, and Yola and Ench accepted their fates without complaint—their packs would have to move all the faster to catch up. As they left to start their preparations, Durst asked Zald to post his riders to their rear and flanks, to be certain they did as promised.

“You expect more trouble from them?” Zald asked.

“No. But more safe to watch them.”

After Zald had given his men their orders, he pulled Lucien aside to talk to him privately. “What should we do about the wounded? They won’t be able to keep pace, and we have no one to spare to watch over them.”

“No wounded,” Lucien said.

Zald started to laugh, thinking Lucien was joking, but it caught in his throat when he saw the grim look on Lucien’s face. “Surely there are wounded in a battle this size.”

“Was. No more. All either move with pack or die.” Lucien turned to the roaring blaze that consumed the bodies of the fallen goblins.

Zald followed the goblin’s look and understood. “But Durst,” he said. “He is your chief.”

“He is goblin first,” Lucien replied. He drew his warblade and went back to bid his leader a good journey into the next world.

*          *          *

Alexis was nearly asleep in the saddle, but she pressed on. Her escort—five Lorgrasian warriors—eyed her warily. One had asked her to stop and take food and rest, but her reply had been sharp enough that none had dared do so again.

“There!” Karla shouted, pointing ahead. In the gloom of early evening, campfires glowed dully. They had reached the rear of the Lorgrasian army.

Alexis was fully awake now. She spoke to her horse, urging him through one last push before he, and she, could rest. She thought back to the last few weeks and allowed herself a small smile. The duke had been a disappointment, but the goblins were moving, and she had driven herself through one last detour to seek more allies. It had cost her a week, but it appeared the time was well spent, with another promise of aid being collected.

Alexis swelled with pride at the sight of her people. When she had found the patrol she now traveled with, they had told her over 6,000 marched to war. She thought it to be a hopeful exaggeration, but now as she looked over the campfires strung along the gap between the Trawnor Mountains and the Great Northern Forest, she thought the estimate a fair one.

The pickets halted the riders, then grew joyful upon realizing the queen had returned. Alexis was happy to see a man among the rear guard, armed and ready to battle side-by-side with the female warriors. Whether they liked it or not, her lieutenants had followed her orders.

She rode to the front, the word of her return spreading faster than her horse moved. They knew better than to cheer and thereby warn a spy that this was a person of some importance, but they came out of their tents and watched her pass with a hopeful gleam in their eyes. She reached the front well after full dark, and a dozen warriors or more buzzed around her, wanting to report and to receive news and orders. She quieted them by raising both hands overhead in surrender. “Are we secure here?” she asked.

“We are,” said Delona.

“Then we will speak more in the morning. You have all done well, and we have moved with great order and speed. But I would rest now, and ask that we delay our departure past dawn, for my sake. Is there a place I might lay my head?”

“Take my tent, my queen,” Delona said, gesturing toward it.

“I thank you,” said Alexis, who went inside without another word.

“That’s not like the queen,” someone noted,” accepting another’s tent so readily.”

“She’s exhausted,” Karla told them. “She has barely rested for the last ten days, and before that, who can say?”

Delona nodded. “Anyone who disturbs her will answer to me.” The look in her eyes was as lethal as any weapon.

*          *          *

The sight of the end of the Stone Mountain range had been drawing Demetrius on like a siren, the rock wall he had grown accustomed to diminishing in the distance and finally vanishing, as if the Little River swallowed it up. He tried to avoid thinking overly-optimistic thoughts, that the army of Corindor or Delving would suddenly appear there, weapons glinting in the sunlight, proud warriors ready to unseat Solek and set Arkania right again. But the mountains had begun to feel like a prison, a way to isolate this small force from their brothers-in-arms, and Solek had already slapped at them once. Demetrius had no doubt he could do so again if he so chose. He knew they were no safer beyond the end of the range, but at least there was hope that allies would be found there, so to him the final peak was a key point, a line that once crossed would mean they were another large step closer to their goal.

Gellan trotted up beside him. Corson had offered the dwarf a turn on the horse once, but the look on Gellan’s face when he rejected the offer kept a second offer from being made. “Looks like some weather brewing up ahead,” the dwarf said, pointing to the foothills some miles away.

“Awful low,” Corson commented. “Fog from the river?”

“Not sure,” said Demetrius. He felt an icy ball starting to develop in his gut. “We’d better ride ahead and take a look. Best order your dwarves to hold here.”

They rode forward slowly, studying what was before them. “Looks like the clouds fell from the sky and landed there,” Corson said.

Demetrius nodded but said nothing for a time. The wall of “cloud” loomed as they neared, twenty feet high and too dense to see into. “Remember the rain Solek sent to chase us from Mill Harbor?”

“Rain that melted steel and flesh? Kind of hard to forget.”

“Remember how irregular the cloud looked, because it was so straight. This reminds me of that. It is too linear, like it was placed here. And any fog yields some distance to the eye when one draws near. This is a solid wall of white.”

Gellan had sent orders to stop the dwarves’ march, then chased after the riders. He had overheard the end of the conversation as he reached them. “Solek’s work, do you think?”

“I do,” Demetrius replied. “The question is what to do about it.”

“Well, the mountains won’t let us go around to the south,” said Corson. “I can’t see the end of this fog to the north, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that way blocked too.”

“I agree with you, but north is an option, and not altogether out of our way.”

“But it cuts us off from our allies.”

“For the time being.” He saw the concerned look on his friend’s face and added, “I don’t like it either.”

“It doesn’t look solid,” said Gellan. “I bet we could walk right through it.”

“Undoubtedly. But it might be hazardous in some way—poisonous, corrosive—and even if it wasn’t, it would be a great way to get lost. If it is from Solek, and he controls it, we could march in circles for weeks.”

“Then what do you propose we do?” Gellan asked with folded arms.

“For now, we wait.”

Gellan growled but uttered no audible word of protest. He stalked away to speak to the dwarves.

Once Gellan was out of earshot, Corson spoke. “Waiting might be what Solek wants us to do.”

Demetrius sighed and blew out a long, slow breath. “I know,” he replied.

*          *          *

Tala sat astride her horse, watching Rowan give orders. His comfort and confidence in his new role had grown just as surely as the white “cloud” that pushed them across the peninsula toward the confluence of the Crystal and Little Rivers. She only hoped he would have the chance to use his newly discovered leadership skills against Solek’s forces in Veldoon.