Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

Garec’s hands began to tremble. ‘Let’s ride, Mark. We can’t stop them. There are – what? Fifteen or twenty of them? We can’t… let’s run for it. Come on.’ He was scared.

Mark shot him a withering look. ‘How long until they’re in range, Garec?’ He was ready to die; this was his moment. Brynne was watching; his final stand would make her proud.

Garec gripped his pommel with both hands until they stopped shaking. He focused on the advancing line and shook his head. ‘Not yet. Not yet.’

Mark held the bow ready as Brand’s voice came to them across the field, shouting ‘Pick them off! As many as you can!’

‘Now?’ Mark’s voice was urgent. ‘Garec?’

‘What?’ He shivered. Please don’t make me do this.

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now, now!’ He felt the air go out of his lungs. He couldn’t fire. He hung his head.

Brand’s voice came again. ‘Garec! Garec, kill them, Garec!’

Mark loosed his first shot and shouted victoriously when one of the Malakasians fell. He nocked another arrow, aimed over Brand’s head and fired into the Malakasian line. This one took a horse in the chest, and the animal tumbled headlong across the frozen plain. As he fired over and over again, nocking, drawing and loosing like an automaton, he paused only once to look at Garec with a mixture of pity and disgust. There was no time to talk, so he carried on trying to wound or kill as many of the soldiers as possible before they closed for the hand-to-hand fight.

Garec wouldn’t fight; it was up to him, Brand and five exhausted soldiers, to defeat an entire squad of Malakasian cavalry.

Three dead. Four dead. Five injured. Six dead. Mark kept a mental tally. Seven injured, maybe dead. Eight injured. Nine dead.

And then Brand was with him.

‘What the holy hell is the matter with you, bastard?’ Mark screamed in English, too fired up with adrenalin to remember to speak Common.

‘What?’ Brand shouted despite the fact that they were side by side. Two of his soldiers had drawn their bows and had joined Mark, firing into the charging line.

‘You led them here,’ Mark screamed, ‘what were you thinking?’ He fired again. Ten injured. Eleven dead.

‘I lost men leading them away from here,’ Brand said, drawing his short sword and charging into what was left of the Malakasians.

Mark tossed his bow aside, shrugged out of his quiver and drew his battle-axe. Throwing his head back, he screamed, then dug his heels into his horse’s sides and galloped into the fray.

Garec never moved, and those few moments were the longest, hardest of his life. He didn’t have the strength to watch, but focused on his horse’s trailing mane, gripping the pommel of his saddle tightly. His stomach clenched at the screaming, and he winced when his face was splashed with someone’s blood. The noise of battle was gruesome, terrifying, unbearable: the sounds of suffering, pain and death.

Someone threw a sword and it slashed across his horse’s rump, opening a deep gash. With a furious whinny the animal reared and Garec fell to the ground, where he lay, immobile, waiting to be trampled to death.

Then it was over.

Only Mark, Brand, and a woman named Kellin remained in the saddle; everyone else lay dead or wounded. Brand dismounted to see to his injured soldiers, trying to keep his face immobile as he realised none would survive to see the midday aven; Garec rolled onto his side, his back to the carnage, and rested his head on the icy field.

Later, when the pyres were lit and the dead had been given their rites, the four remaining partisans mounted and rode slowly towards Wellham Ridge. Garec, without a horse, rode in silence behind Kellin. He was too ashamed to look at anyone; he couldn’t stand the thought of what he might see in Mark’s face: disappointment, regret, anger, hatred. Instead he watched Kellin’s light brown hair moving against the heavy weave of her cloak.

It was dark when they arrived in the village, but Steven and Gilmour were not difficult to find; they were sitting together in the front room of a tavern called the Twinmoon. The ever-shrinking group was reunited, but Garec, dejected and embarrassed, excused himself. He would go in search of a new horse in the morning; he told the others to leave without him and neither Mark nor Brand argued.

Steven looked closely at Garec, and agreed.

‘Please,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll catch up with you tomorrow or the following night at the latest.’ As long as they rode south and followed the river into Meyers’ Vale, he wouldn’t have any trouble finding their trail. He needed the space to think; if being alone meant he was captured, interrogated and killed by Malakasians, well, that would be fine too.

As the door closed behind him, Alen let out a long sigh. ‘Too close, old man,’ he murmured to himself.

He had spent the past several days ignoring his new body’s responsibilities while he searched Welstar Palace for the slave magicians. A thousand Twinmoons ago these men and women would have been trained as Larion Senators, but since the collapse of the Larion brotherhood, Nerak had brought Eldarn’s most promising young sorcerers here to serve his own mystical needs.

Alen guessed that six or seven enslaved magical hunters were permanently searching for him; over the Twinmoons there had never been a break in the energy sweeping the land for some sign of him. His home in Middle Fork had been his only refuge – every time he had ventured out, even just into the village for bread, he had been at risk of discovery. Over the past fifteen Twinmoons he had stopped bothering; his house remained camouflaged, but he used little more than a rudimentary cloaking spell when he left the protection of his home for the nearest tavern, where he invariably drank himself into a stupor.

Alen was determined to find and kill these magicians, and Bellan, Prince Malagon’s only daughter. He had intended to find and challenge Nerak himself to a battle that would – hopefully – end both their lives, but Nerak had fouled his plans by travelling east. Alen flushed with anger at the thought that he and his friends had made the trip to Malakasia for nothing – even the Larion far portal, the only way to send Hannah back to Colorado, was in the east, under Fantus’ protection. There had been no need for Hannah, Hoyt and Churn to accompany him into the palace, but he hadn’t had the heart to tell them they had come this far for nothing.

When they were taken prisoner, Alen had decided he had to live long enough to see his friends safely back to Treven, or onto a barge headed north to Pellia; only then would he return to the palace to await Nerak’s return.

Now, while they recovered from the rigours of their imprisonment, he spent every spare moment searching for the slave magicians, and for Bellan. He also made sure the Malakasians didn’t discover three empty cells, which wasn’t always easy: this morning he’d got a little lost in the endless corridors and nearly blown it, running into an officer as he hustled down to intercept the morning mush delivery. It was rare for an officer to actually make an appearance in the dank prison levels, and this time it nearly cost the old Larion sorcerer his cover.

‘Late this morning, Sergeant?’ the lieutenant asked pointedly.

‘Sorry, sir,’ Alen said, saluting smartly. ‘I had word that new prisoners were coming in, and I wanted to be sure we had cells available on that wing, sir.’

‘I know nothing of new prisoners, Sergeant.’

‘No sir. Confused information, sir.’ Alen took the trenchers from the soldier, who had probably been standing rigidly at attention from the moment the officer had entered the hall. ‘Thank you, Tandrek.’