She wasn’t one for chatting and neither was I. The silence between us was a palpable thing; it had a weight and a life of its own. I wasn’t afraid to turn my back on her even though my whole life had been exposed to the idea that the Border people were vicious, degenerate sub-human creatures that murdered and even ate their victims. Yet, she had not left me out in the cold to die, when she clearly had had several opportunities to do so.
Diomed bucked through a belly high drift and we were suddenly on a trail that was used regularly as it descended into a mist shrouded valley between two mountain ridges. I saw the glint of a fast moving river through the heavy pines.
“Where are we?” It was the first time I’d actually spoken in hours and she turned her head to look at me, her breath pluming around her face so that she seemed cloaked in mist. All I could see were her eyes glittering like two silver amethyst orbs in the darkness of her hood. Eerie. It gave me the creeps.
“Border town, what you once called the Cape of Fear. We called it Elassan, the City of the Mists.” She pointed. “Beyond the mist lies the Waters of the Gates and there lies what is left of Elassan burned to her foundations.”
“Why here? Why did we come here?” I asked feeling uneasy.
“Ask yourself. Your horse brought you here, not I.” She nudged Beau forward and disappeared into the mist. Peony hesitated and then followed her, leaving Diomed to come up in the rear. I reached for my Dad’s pistol and made sure I could access it quickly. We walked on through the mist, barely able to see each other let alone our surroundings. It was eerily quiet, all I could hear was the sound of a thin wind soughing through what felt like ruins and the slow ponderous echo of waves against the jetty.
Here, the sun refused to shine and I pulled the glasses down to sit on my chest straining to see something. All I saw was Peony’s back end and the pack saddle.
“Arianell?” I said unnerved. She answered me.
“I am still here, Tobias.”
“Wherever ‘here’ is,” I muttered and I felt the shudder run through Di under my legs. I stroked his neck. “It’s okay, boy. Easy.”
Half crushed and burned walls of stone and brick loomed up out of the mist, its empty windows blind eyes that begged for life but life had long since fled this place. The air reeked of ash and death, sour chemical smell left behind when a village or city dies.
Not even a bird disturbed the quietness, and the only other sound I heard were the thuds of the horses’ feet.
“Why would they bring my horses here?” I mumbled. “There’s nothing here and no one would buy them way out here.”
“I told you that the theft was only the means to an end and that was to get you away from your home, your family and safety,” she said impatiently. “Here, you are more vulnerable.”
“Why? How am I so important to anyone? I mean, I know my grandfather is the Earl of Gleneden and the Warlord but my dad was only the second son, not the heir and my uncle is in fine health, married and has his own son. I am not in the running for his seat nor a favorite of the Emperor as is Justinan.”
“Justinan?”
“My cousin, my uncle Norleby’s son. Viscount Gleneden Spencer.”
“You are important, Tobias because of who your mother was.”
“My mother was just a crofter’s daughter from a villager near Aberden,” I shook my head. She had shown me the map of the Oldlands across the sea and the tiny village on the coast near the Fallow Islands where her family owned the land.
“Your mother’s family came over the Border and settled outside Elassan on a farm producing the finest berries and textiles your people had ever seen. An ancient family imbued with powerful magic and sorcery. You are a rare cross between those that can wield magic and the Oldlanders who can’t. That is why your family was destroyed and why you have been lured here.”
“Okay, then why did we come?”
“You came to retrieve your horses,” she said.
“Yeah, I get that. Why are you here?”
“I am what you call a Ranger. It is my duty to protect one of the Chosen and see that no harm comes to you.”
I snorted. Chosen? I wasn’t chosen anything. I had a Dragoon revolver, a musket and a stud horse that wasn’t afraid to fight. I didn’t need any…girl to protect me. I told her so and she ignored me, drawing her blade free from its scabbard. The flat of it glowed as if a beacon, piercing the mist so that we could see that we were in the remains of a once graceful and beautiful courtyard. A fountain in shattered tears of marble lay scattered on fire blackened rounded cobblestones. Dead, broken and withered rose bushes leaned drunkenly in beds where even weeds refused to grow. What little grass remained was brown and trampled. Masonry made piles here and there, some appeared almost as if statues of inhuman monsters. One reminded me of dragons that my mother had spoken of in fairy tales, another of a heroic knight raising aloft a sword.
My eye was caught by a fresh pile of horse droppings just as Diomed dropped his head to sniff the ground. On the cobblestones, there were no foot or hoof prints but the horse’s senses were more acute than mine.
“This way,” I spoke and turned Diomed down a narrow alley where the ruins of two story houses leaned in forming a sort of tunnel. We rode warily, neither I nor the stud liked the encroaching feeling as we traveled the lowering ceiling of the alley.
I whistled softly and heard an answering whinny but regretted doing so as I had just stupidly announced our arrival. Thankfully, she did not say anything but simply slipped off Beau and pushed her cloak back so that she had free movement to swing her sword.
“Shall I dismount, too?” I whispered. She shook her head and told me to wait. I argued, saying I could handle myself in a fight as well as she.
“I doubt that,” she muttered, stalking her way forward. I nudged Diomed and the horses followed. We entered a small building like a warehouse on a side street. All that was left of it were two walls and a part of a third. Others had fallen down around the walls making it an enclosure and within it, three thin horses milled aimlessly about. They were my missing mares and a gelding we used for farm work. None of them looked as if they had eaten in a while, their ribs were slats of bone and their hips pointed like a cow.
I jumped off Diomed, climbed over the broken bricks and stones to enter the corral. All three rushed me, nuzzling, looking for the treats I always had in my pockets. I pulled out the apples and carrots doling them out to each as I crooned nonsense to them. Running my hands over their flesh, I checked them for hurts and found none.
“My poor babies,” I soothed rubbing Fancy’s forehead and slapping Jett’s neck. “Who has treated you so poorly?” I looked around and found a thin trickle of water seeping out from under the remains of the warehouse. That was their only source of drinking water. There wasn’t a blade of grass and they had chewed every piece of wood they could find down to splinters.
“Cruel bastards!” I snarled. “Who would do that to an animal, starve it to death?” I started to dig away at the rubble, trying to clear a path where they could exit but after five minutes of moving concrete blocks and bricks, I was sweating and back sore. Not that she offered to help. She stayed out of my reach, her blade extended as if she expected the Hordes of Hell to descend on us.
I reached in a hole and jerked at a particularly large boulder and couldn’t budge it. Tugged harder, felt something shift, heard a rattle as dust dribbled from shoulder height along the wall. Felt a sharp burning pain in my shoulder near my neck and let go to grasp it as I sat down abruptly.
Stared at the wall over my head and cursed. Saw nothing, not even a shadow but the burning sensation in my shoulder and neck was followed by an intense pain. I cried out yet my voice was a whisper. All three horses crowded me and I saw Fancy rear up over my head, her hooves striking down as if to crush my skull yet she did not touch me. Instead, she trampled something under her feet and stood there shivering and blowing with the last of her strength.
“Tobias?” she called and climbed over the wall to stare at me, the horses and what was under Fancy’s hooves. Her eyes widened. She uttered a word and the walls literally flew away from us in every direction but that of the other horses waiting nearby. She knelt at my side and pulled my hand away from the burning bite in my flesh. Unclenched my hand and under my tunic and shirt were two tiny pin pricks, the marks left by the infamous dust adder. She checked again the mangled remains of the snake that lay under Fancy.
“Dust adder?” I asked managing not to whimper and she nodded gravely. I knew that very few people survived the bite of the rare and elusive snake. I was equally amazed that there would even be one alive in so cold a clime.
She helped me up to my feet all the while keeping her attention on everything but me. “Arianell,” I said and she ignored me. “Arianell!” I shouted and she stopped. “No one ever survives a dust adder bite, not even in town with a doctor’s care. Take my horses back to Cayden’s Valley and let them roam free. Or take them yourself and keep them. I’m going to die here. You know that.” I felt the first twinges as the poison hit my stomach, leaned over and vomited bloody sputum.
“No, you’re not, Tobias,” she gritted her teeth, sheathed her sword and whistled. I saw the three horses gallop towards us and she spoke a word to Diomed. He dropped to his knees and she helped me walk over. Mounted behind me and held me on as he lurched to his feet.
“Up, Diomed, Spiorad capall!” She cried and the stallion leaped from his kneeling into a full-fledged gallop. She guided him with her knees and seat and only as we raced through the streets out of the ruined city did the others appear. I heard the sound of my horses following, even the poor starved trio keeping up and the pounding hooves of a score of other riders.
I saw Rangers mounted on fleet, agile runners, the Lemieux Brothers on stolen coach horses and most horrifying of all, Hussars and Dragoons in the uniform of the Emperor. All running us down. No one used their rifles or swords that I saw at their sides but it wasn’t long before they ran into the slower starved animals who did their best to delay them. I was terrified that the soldiers would kill the horses to get them out of the way.
“Come on, Fancy, Jett, Smokey!” I pleaded desperate not to leave them behind. “Arianell, the horses!”
“Hush, my brave Prionsa,” she murmured. “They will keep up. We will not leave them behind.”
I put my head down and struggled to cope with the sensations coursing through my body. I was nauseous, weak and shivering yet my skin felt as if it were on fire. It hurt to breathe and my neck and shoulder burned with a throbbing that traveled from the bite area to my ribs. I was suddenly unable to maintain my balance and felt my body start to fall off the left side and only her sudden grab for my shirt stopped me from falling. Her voice receded and everything started to shut down. I shook my head and that made it infinitely worse. I couldn’t even feel her body pressed against mine.