David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Gallen’s greatest hope was that the dronon’s sensors wouldn’t penetrate here, so far beneath the tangle.

Yet he still felt afraid. The dronon had a tool he couldn’t defeat so easily. The Seekers. The dronon could still track by scent. But he hadn’t left any scent within two thousand kilometers, and here in the tangle, air currents moved sluggishly. Their scent might not reach the surface for days maybe weeks.

But if by chance the dronon found that scent, they would be able to follow it easily.

While the others rested, Gallen packed enough food for five days, wondered if it was too much. He hoped to find Teeawah sooner, but in all honesty, it could take months. He had no idea how to reach his destination except through an interlaced network of caves that might be impassable. Quite possibly, he might find that he was in a section of the tangle that didn’t connect to the caves.

And if he didn’t find the city soon, he’d die. He was a lone Lord Protector, leading his friends into an enemy fortress. Part of him wanted to deny that anything bad would happen, but he’d seen some of the prowess of the sfuz. They were so fast. He wouldn’t be able to protect his friends in a pitched battle. Gallen wouldn’t even be able to protect himself against so many enemies.

In all probability he was leading them all to their deaths.

Gallen clenched his fists and cursed his fate. If only he hadn’t beaten the Lords of the Sixth Swarm. Only an odd combination of determination, skill, and luck had put him here. Yet if he’d walked away, if he’d simply refused to fight that first battle so many months ago … the dronon would still rule the worlds of man in tyranny.

No, Gallen could not truthfully regret his fate. The dronon war had cost millions of lives each day. Gallen had won a temporary peace for mankind. A few months of reprieve, a few months of joy on ten thousand worlds. Some fifty quadrillion people lived on the Unified Worlds. Gallen had won something for them, and even if he and his friends died in these lightless depths, their lives would not have been wasted.

But in spite of the facade he tried to erect for his friends, Gallen didn’t believe that he would survive this trip. The tangle seemed too thick, too dangerous. His destination too uncertain. The dronon too likely to attack.

Even if he did find the Waters of Strength, who knew if they would have any effect on him?

Gallen had too many foes to combat, too little to hope for.

He felt overwhelmed. I am but one man, Gallen thought. Too much depended on him. Not just Maggie and Orick and the few friends around him-it was Arachne and Athena and the gray people that Felph held in such low esteem. And beyond that was the wider universe. Everynne fretting somewhere back on her Omni-mind, his Mother living in her quaint home on Tihrgias, Ceravanne trying desperately to find her own peace under the tutelage of the peaceful treelike Bock.

Gallen wanted to collapse, to turn aside and run. He’d never faced a task so daunting. The prospect of failure terrified him. If I die , he thought, Lord Felph could resurrect me . But Maggie, Orick, and Tallea would be dead. He couldn’t face that. To live on without them would be damnable. He’d never forgive himself.

So he had to beat the dronon. He had to go on fighting, drag himself forward no matter what the consequence.

Regardless of the outcome, he had to go on, keep fighting, because … because he loved them all, loved them so profoundly that for a moment he stood in awe of the simple power of his emotions, just considering, remembering the faces of friends that were beginning to be lost in the haze of time.

He closed his eyes, tried to recall the woods outside his home on Tihrglas, the call of the kiss-me-quicks hopping in the bushes, the towering green pines, the way the maples on the hillside north of town reflected the reds of the sunset in the autumn till they shone like coals.

Gallen’s mantle recognized his desire, sent him recorded images of home-sights, sounds, smells-so that suddenly Gallen found himself standing inside the common room at Mahoney’s Inn, the first night he’d met Everynne.

There were John Mahoney and Father Heany smoking by the fireplace, just after teasing Gallen about how he fancied young Maggie Flynn. And over in the comer sat Sean Mullen, a terribly thin man who’d once given Gallen’s mother a cow. Gallen hadn’t thought about him in months. Beside him sat Ian O’Bannon, an old fisherman who’d taught Maggie to dance-another friend Gallen had forgotten. The fellow had once told Maggie that she should stay away from Gallen, saying, “You’ll have naught but misery from that one-always out playing the hero, trying to impress folks.” Gallen could smell the beer in the air, the sweet tobacco smoke, the scent of wool and sweat. He could feel the heat of the fire warming his hands.

Yet this memory belonged to Veriasse, not to Gallen, so that he saw himself and Maggie as they had been that night, two shy teenagers sitting off in a dark corner, trying to hide their affection for one another from everyone in the room.

Gallen laughed at the image. Both he and Maggie had looked so skinny, so young, so innocent-just six months before.

Is that how I was? Gallen wondered to himself. A child. A barbarian. A wild animal. Despite all the dark times since, despite his loss of innocence, Gallen looked at the young man he’d been a few short months before, and decided he would not trade places.

Not even if he died today because of it. He thought about the warning Ian O’Bannon had given Maggie. He’d believed Gallen wanted to impress folks. He’d never understood, never understood what Gallen dared tell no one that he did what he did because he loved people, loved them so deeply that something inside him just had to give and give until he had nothing left to give.

Even his dear friend Orick didn’t understand it. Orick thought that Gallen fought because of some innate need to struggle. But Gallen realized at this moment that he fought, even when he’d run out of strength and out of hope, because that was all he could do. Someone had to fight, and he would fight on, yet wish desperately for the fighting to come to an end.

Gallen sighed, withdrew from his reverie, went back to work. Felph had loaded an odd assortment of weapons for the earlier expedition. Felph’s arsenal held weapons one normally only found in military hands-class II small arms. Most of it was offensive weaponry; Felph had little defensive armor. That wasn’t odd. Getting military body armor was nearly impossible.

Gallen replenished his supply of photon grenades. An explosive foam would work as land mines. An intelligent pistol with smart missiles would help him quietly neutralize individual sfuz. He did find one automated defense system-a class IV defensive weapon, that might save their lives with its powerful shields, but Gallen felt compelled to leave it behind. The power unit on it was low, and the thing weighed so much that even having Orick haul it around could prove impossible.

Once he’d sorted the weapons, he stared at the pile-slight grenades, concussion grenades, heat grenades; small arms; assault pistols; explosive foams; Black Fog. Enough weaponry to kill five thousand men. It wasn’t enough.

Not against creatures like the sfuz, who Athena believed would rise from the dead. Who knew what powers the sfuz might have? The thought made him feel jittery.

More disconcerting, Gallen had an odd feeling of discomfort, the feeling he was being watched. It seemed unreasonable to imagine he was being watched in his own ship. Yet the feeling had grown as he brought the ship into the tangle-an enigmatic sensation, an itching at the base of the brain.

If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn the sfuz were watching him not from without, but from within. He imagined another consciousness wandering through his mind, turning over his thoughts and fears and ambitions, trying to discover what lay beneath. Sometimes he’d find his eyes wandering about the ship, and it seemed almost as if another entity commanded them, was searching through Gallen’s eyes.