“I’m sorry, sergeant. I cannot simply leave.” He gave Barold a curt bow. “The prince must hear what I have to say, and it must come from my mouth alone if it is to be believed.”
Barold sighed, frustration at Arrin’s choice written in the lines of his face. “So you would have us both killed for your determination?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I have been nothing if not generous. Give me your missive and I swear to you it will reach the prince.”
“No.” The word came out harsh. Though he hadn’t meant it, there was a challenge in Arrin’s tone. Years in the wilderness, thought second to the quickness of his blade, his nature had grown hard, aggressive. In his travels, he so seldom found the need for civility. He had lost its knack.
Hoping to avoid the needless bloodshed of innocent men, Arrin continued. “I cannot leave, for to do so means the death of all that I love. It would mean the same for you; all of you.”
“You dare threaten us?”
“I offer no threat, sergeant, only a sad truth. A force like none seen before rides upon my heels and threatens to engulf all of Ahreele. Thick with the certainty of Lathah’s walls, your prince will seal the gates and your doom with his ignorant stubbornness.”
Barold lifted his blade, the sharpened tip just inches from Arrin’s cheek. “You’ve crossed the line of my kindness.”
“Then take me to your prince. Would he not richly reward the man who brought me before him humbled, to be slain by Olenn’s own hand?” Arrin slowly moved his left hand to his belt and undid the clasp. The belt slithered down his legs, his sword dropping to the dirt. “If the prince wishes me dead, he can ask for no better fortune than to do the deed himself. I surrender to you, sergeant.”
Barold growled, his eyes narrowing. He glanced at the soldier who counseled him earlier. The older man nodded. The sergeant looked back to Arrin with grim resignation lining his face. He gestured his men forward. “Search him, and then bind him tight.” He sheathed his blade with a snapping clank as his men closed around Arrin. “I’ll grant your wish, exile. I pray you’re wrong about what you say, even though it will mean your death.”
Arrin nodded and gave himself over to the soldiers, one of which patted him down with quick hands. “I too pray I’m wrong, for if I’m not, it will mean all of our deaths.”
Barold retrieved Arrin’s weapon. He slid the sword loose of its sheath and saw the thick blood that still stained the blade. He raised his face to meet Arrin’s stare. Arrin said nothing as Barold sheathed his sword, the man’s dark cheeks paling. The sergeant spun on his heels and motioned for his men to follow. He headed off with quickness in his step.
Arrin fell in with the soldiers who held his bound arms. He looked toward Lathah as leaden knots formed in his stomach. This was not the homecoming he’d dreamed of.
Chapter Six
Commander Feragh led the charge into the Grol village, jumping from his horse in a graceful bound, his sword free of its scabbard before the pads of his feet hit the ground. He growled low in his throat as a skeleton crew of old and maimed warriors burst into view and barreled as best they could toward him in ragged defense of their home.
“Kill them all. Show these loathsome dogs no mercy,” Feragh called out as a decrepit Grol lunged at him, its short blade overtaken by the burnt umber of rust.
The commander shook his head as he batted away the Grol’s pathetic slash. The tip of its sword already missing, the blade shattered against the fine steel of Feragh’s broadsword and exploded in a cloud of dusty brown shards.
The warrior hissed and stumbled back, but not before the commander sunk his blade deep into its protruding chest. The point slid clean between the ribs, it found its home inside the Grol’s heart. Black blood gushed from the wound and the warrior collapsed without another sound, Feragh’s blade pulling free with ease.
He looked over at his warriors and smiled grim as they followed his lead with vicious precision, mowing down the last of the Grol resistance. It was slaughter, not combat. He counted the kills as the bodies fell to the dirt; there’d been little more than a dozen. It was hardly worth the effort.
Feragh cleaned the blood from his sword with lazy wipes as he surveyed the now quiet Grol village. Tiny huts made from overlapping tree branches and sealed with an abundance of shit and mud littered the cleared circle of land that made up the village. The wooden pens the Grol used to hold their prisoners, the walking meals, stood open and empty. Only the scent of its occupants remained. Fetid and foul, it was the vile smell of fear and excrement.
Feragh listened as he had at each village before, thinking perhaps there was a trap yet to be sprung along his path, but no sound drifted to his ears as he scanned the huts for more of the vermin Grol. His sword ached for the blood of a true battle.
“Do a sweep.” He motioned for his men to search the village, but he knew what they would find; nothing.
This was the third village they’d encountered on their way through the country of Gurhtol. It had been the same at each. Only the old and frail met them as they rode up, throwing away their pitiful lives in a futile attempt to bring down the Tolen. It made Feragh laugh.
There were no real warriors, no women, and no supplies. The Grol had taken everything of any value and left the dregs of their society behind to die. The commander was happy to oblige them, however unsatisfying it might be.
Feragh turned his gaze to the dead Grol at his feet as he returned his blade to its sheath. Missing an eye before Feragh and his legion had arrived the corpse looked pathetic, even in the peace of death. Its puckered socket stood in sharp contrast to the wideness of its other eye, which stared without seeing. It lay with its mouth agape, its blackened and blistered tongue lolling. A number of its teeth were little more than jagged remnants like broken shards of pottery poking from its blackened gums.
Feragh had done it a favor by putting it to his steel, but the arrival of his men was a mercy wasted on the Grol.
The commander shook his head and spit a mouthful of yellow phlegm on the dead Grol’s cheek. It made him sick looking at its withered face. No matter how he rationalized it, he couldn’t imagine how the Grol had once come from the loins of his great people. Distant cousins, so far removed from the glory of the Tolen, the Grol were mutts compared to the pure wolfen bloodlines of the Tolen. Nothing more than shit, tangled in the fur of a Tolen’s ass.
“They’re all gone, commander,” the deep bellow of General Wulvren told him as he came to stand before Feragh. “It’s exactly the same as the last two villages. They’ve cleared out, only leaving their trash and infirm behind, as if there were a difference.”
Feragh nodded as he met Wulvren’s red eyes. “They’re up to something.” He drifted from the general’s side and into the village square, such as it was.
Gnawed bones carpeted the area nearest the central fire pit, picked so clean as to reflect the day’s light. A charred and withered Grol body hung from a makeshift spit over the still flickering flames, its arms missing, gnawed off at the elbow. A bent, bronze spear was skewered through its torso, its point bursting from the Grol’s gaping mouth and propped upon a stand of piled stones. The scent of burnt meat competed with the rancid smell of Grol occupation, neither an appealing accompaniment to the other.
Feragh watched as his men fired the huts. He snarled as the odor of burning feces was added to the list of offensive smells that soured in his nose. He regretted his earlier command to raze the villages, leaving nothing for the Grol to return home to, should he fail to learn of their purpose. It was an order given out of spite that he likened did more to offend him than it would the Grol, should they ever return.
The commander moved away from the billowing clouds in search of fresh air and strode toward the far side of the village. Wulvren followed. Once there, Feragh glanced at the dusty ground and gestured for his general to take a look.
“They’ve put no effort into covering their tracks. They don’t care if anyone follows or knows where they go,” Wulvren commented. He pointed toward the distant woods. “If their path holds true, it would appear they’re headed
