David Farland - Sons of the Oak

“Yes,” Fallion said, “but they’re spread out all over the land. It would take a year to gather them all. So we can’t rely on them to save us,” Fallion said. “We have no food, and we can’t forage. We won’t last a year.”

“There’s something else,” Jaz said. “Bright Ones fired arrows at me on my way to the hideout. One of their arrows took my graak in the wing. They’re hiding in the trees along the river, watching for graak riders. Every time one of us tries to fly out of here to forage for food, it gives them one more chance to spot us.”

As if to emphasize his point, there was a flapping of wings at the mouth of the tunnel, and a graak croaked as it announced its presence. A new rider had just arrived.

Fallion made a mental note to check the wing on Jaz’s graak. The membrane could be easily torn and become infected. They’d have to sew the wound closed and let the beast rest for a few days.

“What do we do?” the oldest of the Gwardeen girls asked. “Everyone knows to come ’ere. We could ’ave riders stragglin’ in all night.”

And if everyone knows to come here, Fallion thought, then this is no hiding place at all.

He wondered if he should run, just tell the children to fly away. They could go to the Fortress of the Infernal Wastes, and from there head inland.

But there were problems with even that simple plan. Even by flying out of the fortress, they might reveal its location, and Fallion needed to keep it as secret as he could. It had tremendous strategic value.

Besides, he thought, even if we fly away, what kind of life would that be? Would I really be solving anything?

Waggit had always told him not to run from problems, but toward solutions.

“Tonight, I want a sentry at the door,” Fallion said. “And I want another about two miles down the canyon. If any of Shadoath’s scouts try to make their way up here, I want ample notice. Depending on their number, we can either choose to fight or to run.”

“And what then?” someone asked. “Do we stay up here forever without any food.”

“Maybe we could fight them,” one boy said. “We could drop shot on them from high up, from our graaks.”

Fallion doubted that such an attack would do much harm, but it was Denorra who objected first. “We might kill a couple o’ golaths that way, but for what? It’s not likely that we’d ’it Shadoath ’erself. And they’d be on our tails sure then, and we’d be next to die.”

“There are other ways to fight,” Jaz suggested. He nodded toward the leather bag on the floor, the forcibles in plain sight. To the children the forcibles were more an emblem of Fallion’s kingship than his signet ring, for what was a king without endowments? “Perhaps it’s time,” Jaz said, peering into Fallion’s face.

Valya offered, “Milord, I will give you an endowment.”

“As will I,” Jaz said.

Fallion looked at his friends, and his heart felt so full that he thought it would break.

“I’ll not take endowments from the people that I love best,” Fallion said. “Besides, we don’t have a facilitator. We must find another way.”

Valya mused, “This may be our chance to strike Shadoath’s Dedicates. She has just sacked a city. She’ll be taking endowments tonight and sending the new Dedicates to her keep. We know that she sailed east from Syndyllian with her Dedicates in the past. It’s likely that she’s got them hidden here on Landesfallen, or somewhere nearby. We only have to follow her ship. We could go out in force, hunt for it in the night.”

Fallion wondered if it would work.

The other children looked at Fallion hopefully, and Denorra said, “It’s better than sitting on our asses, just waitin’ to starve-or for one of ’em to come kill us.”

Could it really be so easy: just fly old Windkris out to where Shadoath hid her Dedicates and dispatch them along with their guards?

But Fallion had no army to attack with, or at least no army that he was willing to risk. He wasn’t about to send the children into battle.

He had only his own strong arms, and he doubted that they were enough.

But I’ve been training for this fight from childhood, he thought. His small size belied his prowess in battle.

What’s more, there was a hidden fire within him, yearning to blaze.

He had no endowments, and he knew that if he were to proceed, he would be placing himself in tremendous peril.

I could find her Dedicates, he told himself. I could strike them down.

Afterward, killing Shadoath herself would not be hard. Fallion knew a dozen good warriors who might manage it.

Fallion needed only to seize the opportunity.

He’d never taken a human life with his own hands, and he was not eager to do so now.

But he thought of Captain Stalker’s advice: when it comes time to gut a man, you don’t cry out or make threats or apologize. Just be the kind of man who quietly goes and takes care of business.

“That’s the kind of man I want you to be,” Stalker had said.

Fallion wasn’t sure that he trusted the advice, but with nothing but uglier choices before him, it was the only decision that he could make.

As evening fell, Fallion built a fire up, a bonfire that belched smoke and filled the cavern with light.

As he did, he felt a familiar tug. A voice whispered in his mind: Sacrifice to me.

The time for battle was at hand, and after many years, Fallion gave in.

Yea, Master, he said in his mind. My work shall bring you glory.

The children took ashes from the fire and mixed them with water, then daubed them upon Windkris, Fallion’s great white graak, painting it black.

In the darkness, he’d be almost impossible to spot. Then Fallion painted his own face and hands black, and wiped the sweet-smelling ashes upon his clothes.

Last of all, he honed his blade to razor sharpness.

Fallion peered through the gloom, taking one last long look at his friends, and then bade them all good-bye.

He felt as if he were looking upon his own children, and it broke his heart to be forced to leave them now, alone and helpless.

He went out to the ledge, untied Windkris’s leg, and leapt onto the back of his mount. The graak lumbered forward to the edge of the cliff and leapt, then soared out over the valley.

A wind was rising from the land, and it bore the graak aloft, sent the great painted reptile soaring through the night beneath stars as bright as diamonds.

He circled east and then south, hiding the direction of his approach from any unfriendly eyes, and soared through hidden flyways among the stonewood trees until he reached the hills above Garion’s Port.

There, east of the city, his graak perched in a tree, and he watched a small black schooner.

Is it the Mercy? he wondered.

He watched for hours as away boats rowed up to it, loading their cargo. Fallion saw humans being carted up by the score, most of them unconscious or incapacitated to the point that they had to be carried.

Sometime well before dawn, still hidden by the darkness and a rising mist, the ship stole out to sea.

He studied the ship’s bearings, and knew where it was headed. Valya had said that it sailed due east from Syndyllian. Now it was taking a course southwest. By triangulating the courses in his mind, he was able to fix an approximate location, one that he recalled from Captain Stalker’s old charts-the island of Wolfram, or one of the other atolls close by.

Fallion waited until the ship was far out to sea before he gave chase.