It took the better part of three hours for the two captains to prepare for their new responsibility. They had to secure horses, gear and supplies, as well as official letters from the old man explaining to any official what their specific mission was and where it ended. Cor waited impatiently with Kelli’s reigns in his hand. He didn’t understand the complications; when he wanted or needed to go somewhere, he simply went.
The ride to Fort Haldon would not take long, perhaps a week, as the captains intended to set a brisk pace. The fort did not show up on Cor’s map, which didn’t completely surprise him. Fort Haldon was a military installation only, little more than a wooden stockade with tall archer’s towers, whose sole purpose was to guard one of the few passes that led completely through the mountains to Losz. Approximately five hundred men stayed there, almost all of them archers, and the force was changed out completely every six months.
The first two days were ridden in near silence, with what little conversation passing only between the two captains. They did not interact with Cor whatsoever, preferring each other’s company; they clearly did not care for the duty and obviously had their own misgivings about the man they traveled with to Fort Haldon. The captains ate their own food, not partaking of anything Cor ate or prepared, and offering him nothing of theirs. Cor knew that one day he would have to address mistrust as well as curiosity, but for now he was content to allow the two soldiers their own misguided thoughts and beliefs.
As the ride continued, the men began to talk more freely of various things ranging from their families and extended families, the weather, battle and what they will do when they choose to be done with the army. One of the captains was a career soldier and had already decided to die in the queen’s service, one way or the other, while the other only did the job to help pay his father’s debts. In another few years, he would leave the queen’s service and return to the farm. Cor began to take part in the conversations and was at first met with distrustful silence. As the soldiers came to realize that he and they were different only in minor ways, they began to speak with him more easily, though they often would end conversations in awkward silence. It would not be fair to say that by the time the three men reached Fort Haldon they were fast friends, but perhaps the two captains had a slightly different view of the Dahken. At the least they understood Cor’s desire to locate his parents’ killer.
Cor recognized the terrain as they rode closer to the ever present mountains on the eastern horizon. The ground changed into foothills the closer they journeyed; it was no different as when Cor went into the mountains with Kamar. The memory brought him a hint of sadness; that man did not deserve his death, and Cor always wondered why the spider hadn’t attacked him first. Perhaps the thing had a memory of the meal that had escaped it once before.
Fort Haldon was nearly one hundred fifty squat wooden structures behind a fifty foot tall wooden stockade. It looked more like a military camp than an actual fort, and only the wooden shacks as opposed to canvas tents gave the fort an air of permanence. The wall was perhaps one hundred feet wide, ending on either end at an impassible rock face. Eight towers, roughly twenty feet taller than the wall itself and currently each manned by four men with longbows, were interspersed at even intervals from one end to the other. A walkway ran between these towers, providing nearly four feet of cover for any defenders standing upon it, and it was eight feet wide, with standing room for two ranks of archers if necessary. Should a massed attack come down the pass, roughly half of the fort’s defenders could man the walls in defense. Additionally, eight catapults with large piles of boulders beside them stood at the center of the fort, surely with the ability to toss large amounts of rock several hundred feet beyond the stockade. While Cor was not skilled in the arts of war, he was sure that Fort Haldon’s five hundred could easily slay thousands of attacking troops before falling.
Pickets met the group a quarter mile from the fort and held them until the commander and several of his men arrived. He was a tall Westerner, several inches taller than Cor, and was of a lean and wiry build. He wore leather armor, designed for ease of movement and carried a shortsword at his side and a full quiver on his back. The commander inspected the captains’ orders, written by Palius with the queen’s seal, and then dismissed the soldiers to return to Byrverus with fresh horses to speed them on their way. Cor clasped the men’s arms, and they bid each other farewell. The commander welcomed Cor into Fort Haldon and offered him all manners of hospitality, which Cor declined saying he wished to get on with his journey. The commander expressed his concern over Cor’s intent to enter Losz, but the queen’s order was clear in the matter; if Cor intended to cross the mountains into the Loszian Empire, the commander would send him on his way.
Cor merely accepted some additional provisions such as extra water, for water is nearly impossible to find in the Spine, before announcing he was ready to leave. A dozen men were called to the wall’s center where they took up positions grasping thick hemp ropes. The men heaved and a pair of near seamless doors, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the wall, opened inward. Cor looked out the open gate into a desolate but wide mountain pass. He thanked Fort Haldon’s commander one last time before riding through at a trot, and he could hear the men heaving behind him as the doors closed with a booming thud. Cor turned Kelli around the see that the doors when completely closed were almost invisible from the outside.
Cor knew the mountains were as wide as seventy miles in places, and he couldn’t be sure how long it would take him to pass through them. First of all, he wasn’t exactly certain where he was located, as Fort Haldon was not marked on his map; he could only make an educated guess based on the direction they had traveled from Byrverus. Also, the ground was simply treacherous, inclining alternately upward then downward with a fair amount of loose rock and rubble. He kept Kelli to a walk and even walked alongside her at times; he had no interest in the mare throwing a shoe or worse.
It was little more than a month ago that Cor promised himself that he never again enter the World’s Spine, and yet here he was, not only passing through the mountains but well on his way into the Loszian Empire with the intention of playing a very dangerous game with a necromancer. Cor couldn’t help wondering why his blood had been tainted with the power of Dahk. He could have been very happy as a farmer; while the work was not easy, he believed most farmers likely underestimated the happiness of such a simple life. Cor was sure his life had never been simple since the winter night when he was a boy that an old man had requested shelter from a horrible snowstorm.
Cor endeavored to put such thoughts out of his mind; in truth, the why or what could have been did not matter at all. The only thing that mattered was the reality that here he was crossing the border between the moral but revisionist West and an immoral decadent nation of necromancers and assassins. Cor needed to take utmost care in remaining perceptive of his surroundings. The Loszians would have scouts in or above the rocky pass, but he could not know how close to Fort Haldon they would be. Cor reasonably assumed that the fort’s commander would have his own scouts in the area, which made Cor wonder if the opposing scouts would confront each other or simply keep their distance from one another.
The days had begun to grow noticeably shorter, and in the mountain pass Cor could not push too far with the light fading so quickly. With the rough, rocky terrain, he could only guess that he traversed perhaps ten miles in the few hours since leaving Fort Haldon. He set out fresh water and some oats in a feedbag and tied the horse to a large rock outcropping. Kelli was somewhat free spirited, and Cor was not yet comfortable with leaving her unattended. He did not sleep well, neither for the discomfort of the ground or sleeping in armor for he had grown accustom to those, but due to the disquieting sensation of being watched.
Cor spent the entire next day looking over his shoulder or up on the ridges around him. He still could not ignore the feeling that he was watched, though he was fairly certain that the spy was
not above him. Throughout this day, Cor saw many mountain animals on the various ridges, goats being the most common. He had also seen two bears, huge shaggy brown animals that watched him with curiosity, no doubt wondering what he tasted like. The pair were also above him and obviously not curious enough to make their way down into the pass. Cor assumed that whomever watched him would also draw the attention of animals if they were in fact above him on the ridges, and this led him to the conclusion that the spy stayed a safe distance in front or behind him. Or perhaps it was simply his imagination.
Weather made the third day absolutely miserable. The day never warmed to a comfortable level, and a storm had moved in the night before, bringing cold driving rain from morning through the afternoon. At points Cor had to stop as the rain became so hard that he could not see and Kelli had trouble keeping her footing. Their breath billowed like hot steam in front of them, and though the rain stopped in the afternoon, the sun did not appear from behind the dark gray clouds. Cor had no choice but to sleep almost naked; the garments he wore under his armor became so soaked with the near freezing rain that he could only warm himself by removing them. The night was no colder than the day, and the next day warmed under the sun quickly. Cor, his clothes still wet from the previous day, decided to wait a few hours before moving on, allowing them to dry against the sun warmed rocks.
It was that afternoon that Cor caught sight of a small group of men coming from the other direction. In the sloping, twisting gorge it was hard to tell how far away they were or how fast they moved, but they came on foot toward him up the pass. Once he was perhaps forty feet away, Cor quickly dismounted and double checked the buckles on his hauberk and legguards. He hoped these men came at him with purpose and were not just sentries come to intercept an intruder, but he was taking no chances. He tethered Kelli and then stood a few yards in front of her, waiting for the men to approach.
There were five of them, all wearing black leather jerkins and breeches with heavy wool cloaks. Four of the men were relatively nondescript as compared to typical Westerners, but the fifth, their leader, reminded Cor of the man who killed his parents. He did not look like the Loszian necromancer, but his limbs, joints and fingers looked slightly distended, slightly out of proportion with the rest of his body. He signaled for two of the men to stay back, both of whom carried loaded crossbows, a significant fact that was not lost on Cor. The other two and the leader approached closer. All were armed with a sword of some type or another, but they kept their weapons sheathed and close at hand.
“Are you Dahken Cor?” the leader asked, bringing his men to a halt.
“I am.”
“Why would you seek entrance into Losz? To do so means death for a Westerner.”
“I am no Westerner, and I answer to no monarch or god of that realm.” Cor reached into his belt pouch and tossed the tattooed skin at the leader, who caught it one handed. “I seek the Loszian noble who owns this mark. He and I have met before, and we have much to talk about.”
“I am Wrelk,” said the man, folding the flap of skin and placing it in his own pouch, “and I serve the lord you seek. I have been sent to bring you safely to him. You are lucky he knew you were coming; had you reached our gate, the men there would have slaughtered you without asking questions. No Westerner enters the Loszian Empire without a dozen crossbow bolts in his chest, and it was expensive to secure your access through the gate.
“Hand over your sword,” Wrelk commanded him.
“You are the second person to demand my sword in the last few weeks. Will you be as wise as the last in letting me keep it?” Cor asked him.
“It would not do to have you assassinate my lord once I bring you to him, Dahken Cor.”
“If I wanted to assassinate him, I’d have paid a Loszian to do the job. At the least I would have myself smuggled in aboard a ship from Tigol, not have walked in plain sight through the Spine. I go with you, but I keep my sword,” Cor said, his tone making it clear that it was his final word on the matter.
Wrelk rolled his eyes and stepped back; he motioned at Cor with his right hand, and the other two men stepped forward, hands on their swords. The first made a clumsy reach for Cor’s sword hilt, and Cor in a much practiced manner drew Soulmourn and took the man’s left hand off at the wrist before he even realized what had happened. Grasping Ebonwing in his left hand, Cor plunged Soulmourn through the man’s breastbone while he, still clearly in shock, slowly attempted to draw his own sword with his right hand.
Cor heard the smooth sound of steel pulled from a sheath behind him, and he kicked the dying man off of his sword. He turned just in time to catch a two handed blow on his right armguard; had he not turned, the stroke’s angle would have likely led the sword to sever his sword arm just below the shoulder. As it was, the heavy blow knocked him sideways and bent the armor painfully into his upper arm. As Cor recovered his balance, the man brought his bastard sword back around in a stroke meant to hack deeply into Cor’s shoulder, scale mail hauberk or not. Cor weaved his upper body back away from the blade and, using the flat edge of Soulmourn, pushed the passing blade faster in its arc down and to Cor’s left. The swordsman was suddenly off balance with the massive weapon and realized too late he was overextended. In a backhanded stroke, Cor whipped Soulmourn up and to his right, hacking diagonally through the man’s head, and it shattered as if it were a melon, chunks of bone, brain and gore blasting out in an arc away from where the body slumped to the ground.
Wrelk stood about ten feet away from Cor, a longsword in one hand and his other hand held in a fist at head height. Though urged to lunge at the man, Cor could see the crossbows trained on him from twenty feet away, and he couldn’t be sure as to how much protection his armor would afford him against a weapon with such power at this range.
“Enough Dahken Cor,” Wrelk said. “My master would be very upset with me should I bring you back as a corpse. Though he has powers to make you his slave after death, I believe he has other intentions.”
“Don’t think you’ll live long enough to experience his displeasure,” Cor growled back menacingly, taking a measured step in Wrelk’s direction. The man laughed and sheathed his own sword, lowering his raised fist.
“Very well, Dahken, keep your sword then. My lord did not actually order me to take it, so he is clearly not concerned about you. Let us go. We have some miles to go before you meet him.”
Cor wiped the blood off of Soulmourn onto the wool cloak of one of the dead men and then sheathed it, and he could feel an odd melancholy settle over him at the prospect of no more bloodshed. He walked back to Kelli, who had watched the entire exchange wide eyed, and unbuckled his right armguard. Inspecting it, he hoped he could repair it easily enough, and he placed the piece of armor into a saddlebag. His arm, which was in immense throbbing pain moments ago, no longer hurt, and Cor knew not even a bruise would show itself. Bruises were nothing but bleeding under the skin, and like all of his wounds, they healed as he slew his foes. Cor untied Kelli and walked with her, following Wrelk out of the mountain pass.
27.