David Wells - Cursed Bones

Having completely searched the fortress, they left through the secret escape tunnel from Severine’s chamber, walking into the cool breeze toward the surface. It opened behind a boulder inside a cave with a natural underground river surfacing in a rushing torrent and cascading out of the cave mouth and down the hillside.

Isabel knelt down, Trajan right beside her, examining footprints in the soft riverbank soil.

“Many people came this way,” Trajan said.

“They’ll be easy enough to follow,” Isabel said. “The hard part will be spotting when the witches break away from the refugees.”

“Not with all of us looking,” Trajan said, motioning for one of his men to take point. They followed the trail from the cave and into the jungle for several hours before they came to a clearing littered with bodies, some were fallen soldiers from both the Regency and Karth, others were just people fleeing the Regency; some died by the blade, others were killed with magic.

The many paths leading from the clearing were all filled with carnage as if the refugees fleeing the fortress had scattered into the jungle the moment the Regency soldiers ambushed them. Trajan and his men began the painstaking process of following each path for a small distance and discovered that they all circled around to the same place, behind and to the left of the spot where they got ambushed. From there, the survivors of the ambush circled around and continued on into the jungle.

Their path took them over a small mountain pass and down to a major road that intersected two other major roads within a few leagues in each direction. Those who had escaped the fortress had camped by the road for the night and then gone in different directions, melting away into the jungle. Isabel looked at the trampled roadside where several dozen people had camped along it all at the same time and shook her head.

“Any idea how we can track the Sin’Rath from here?” she asked. “They could be anywhere by now.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Trajan said, then smiling suddenly and pointing before taking off at a dead run down the road. Some distance away, another man scrambled out of the jungle, running away from Trajan down the middle of the road. Trajan stopped and returned, smiling and schooling his breath.

“Now we have something to track,” he said.

“Who was that?”

“One of my father’s men, a watcher assigned to wait here and see if anyone showed up. He will run back to my father and report our arrival.”

“So the witches will know we’re still tracking them,” Isabel said. “We might not want to just follow that guy blindly back to them.”

Trajan hefted his club. “The witches have no power.”

“Maybe not,” Isabel said, “but they can always give bows to the hundred men they have working for them. A hundred arrows may not be magic, but they will kill you just the same, club or not.”

“I’ll send two men ahead to scout,” Trajan said.

“Fair enough,” Isabel said. “Let’s go … but carefully.” It was becoming painfully clear that Trajan was going to do what he was going to do, regardless of Isabel’s suggestions. She turned her thoughts to figuring out how she was going to get close to Phane, and exactly what she was going to do once she did.

The man’s tracks doubled back and looped around the other direction, meeting up with a set of almost forty older tracks marching two by two along a narrow jungle path away from the road. The scouts continued to range out ahead of them, searching out the path taken by the watcher, marking the trail and pressing forward.

After several hours of steady movement, the scouts were waiting alongside the path for them. They were in a rough part of the jungle. Cliffs, sudden steep hills and rocky outcroppings were the norm, with all manner of vegetation clinging to every surface possible. Travel was treacherous and slow.

“They left the trail up ahead,” Trajan whispered, as his scouts followed the trail farther. Everyone was quiet, waiting for word from the two men, but time passed and they didn’t return.

While they waited, Isabel started to worry that the Sin’Rath had captured them and were sending soldiers. Her idle worry seemed to take on a life of its own within her mind, expanding into fear and full-blown panic within the space of a few moments. She crouched with the rest of Trajan’s men, shivering in fear of some imagined threat. Ayela noticed something was wrong and touched her arm with an inquiring look.

Isabel nearly leapt out of her skin at the sudden contact, her panic breaking and fading away like water. She shook her head to Ayela and went back to her own thoughts. Never before had she experienced such sudden and irrational fear. It couldn’t be Azugorath, or the darkness, or anything else magical.

That left two possibilities: either she was becoming a coward … or it was the bone.

After it had become painfully clear that something had happened to the scouts, Trajan led everyone along the path they’d taken and were relieved to meet them returning to make their report. They’d found a cave with a door at the back of it about ten minutes away. Had the Sin’Rath and House of Karth not left so many footprints, the cave would have remained completely hidden.

“So that’s one way in,” Trajan said.

“You think there might be another?” Isabel asked.

“I’m certain of it. There will be at least one escape passage and probably another entrance as well.”

“If we could find the escape tunnel, I bet it would lead straight to the king’s chambers. We could get behind them,” Isabel said, “and avoid fighting your men altogether.”

“That may be more difficult than you imagine,” Trajan said. “Escape tunnels are often deliberately unfinished, with three or four feet left to dig so the exit point can’t be easily found.”

The rear guard raced up, low and quiet, and whispered something to Trajan, then returned to his post.

“Regency soldiers are coming this way,” Trajan said. “They’re about ten minutes out.”

“We could always hide and let them fight it out,” Isabel said.

“If my father weren’t inside, I would agree with you. As it stands, we have little choice.” He signaled to his point man and they started toward the cave.

The entrance was covered over with hanging vines. Once inside, they found a small cave, measuring ten feet deep, four feet wide, and almost five feet high. The back wall was occupied by a large, stout door. Trajan tried to open it, nodding to himself when it didn’t budge.

“If you give me the space I need to use my magic, I can open that door,” Hector said.

His tone was monotonous, void of passion or feeling, simply conveying information. Isabel made a mental note of his mood. She’d been worried about him since Horace died, but things had really changed with him after he woke the ghidora. His mood was dark, devoid of passion or humor or desire, as if some essential part of him had gone missing.

Trajan and Isabel withdrew about forty feet from the cave and waited for one of his men to signal. They returned to find the door open and two freshly killed men on the floor-both of them Karth house guard. Hector was cleaning one of his swords.

“What have you done?” Trajan said. “These men were of my house. Why did you kill them?”

“So they wouldn’t raise the alarm,” Hector said slowly without looking up from cleaning his sword.

Trajan started to take a step toward him, but Ayela stopped him with a hand on his arm.

Isabel went to Hector and stood in front of him, waiting until he looked up at her. She saw so much desolation in his eyes … it worried her.

“Don’t kill any more of the Karth guards if you can help it,” she said quietly but intently.