The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

The others came up to him as he stood and furiously kicked at the nearest house of bones, sending it rattling and clattering down. He would have smashed them all, if he could have.

“Is that wise?” asked Yeshu. “There might be a spell on those bones.”

“Gone,” he said. “Out of my reach. There’s no one down here, and Alain is gone.”

The walls ate the sound of his voice, but the rock could not absorb his anger and the blinding grief that, for the space of ten breaths, took hold of him. He choked out a breath and sucked one in, then turned to the miner.

“Pray you can swim,” he said. “We’ll tie a rope to your ankle and you’ll go in. If you reach the other side, you may flee, if you dare, or you may tug on the rope and we’ll haul you back. If you succeed, if there is a way out, then I’ll reward you with silver and riches, as much as you can carry.”

The man wept and gibbered, but Stronghand himself tied the rope to his ankle and drove him forward into the water. The rope paid out, and paid out, and paid out, and Yeshu said:

“No man can hold his breath that long.”

It ceased moving, then slackened slightly. They waited far past the point where a man might live so long underwater.

“Draw him in,” said Stronghand at last, and Far-runner took the line in hand over hand, hauling with all his strength, but a weight fetched up somewhere within the tunnel, and although all three of them yanked, they could not dislodge it.

“He’s fled, or drowned,” said Stronghand.

“That’s an awful way to go,” said Yeshu. A spark of fear brightened his expression as he looked at the creature he served.

Stronghand nodded. “I am not like you, Yeshu, but I deal fairly and I use the tools I have. Come. There’s nothing for us here.”

His loyal soldiers hauled them up; outside, in the blessedly fresh air, the log house was still smoldering, ringed by a garden of corpses. His men had methodically looted what they could, and as dawn shaded the trees from black to gray, scouts raced out of the forest.

“A war band approaches, flying the banner of the hawk.”

They had nothing to wait for, nothing to fight for. They had taken the chance and lost the gamble. Alain was still alive—he knew that—but the hounds had lost his trail and he did not have a strong enough force to fight off determined and organized resistance.

They ran west, and when three days later they reached the ferry, four ships waited by the far shore, just out of sight of the garrison. The merfolk had come when called and brought him a swift means of escape.

“What do we do now?” asked Last Son as they set sail, letting the current sweep them downstream toward the distant ocean. Oars beat the water to keep them in the main current. Stronghand stood at the rudder, watching the shoreline pass. The hounds lay at his feet, heads on their forelegs; they seemed as despondent as any creature he had ever seen, but they trusted him enough to return with him to the ships. At the stem, Yeshu and Far-runner had gathered an audience while they told their tale of wandering among the dead bones of the Earth. Men and Eika huddled together, shoulder to shoulder, comrades rather than enemies as they listened appreciatively. Because he looked closely, he saw two new faces among the assembly.

“Aren’t those two of the slaves we freed at the mines?”

“So they are. They followed us and were strong enough to keep up. They desire to join the army.”

“Is that so?”

“Will you take them?”

As he watched, he saw the stockier one, the more talkative of the two, raise his voice to add to the story being woven by Yeshu and Far-runner. The others did not shout him down. “It seems I already have. A man bold enough to run in our pack is bold enough to fight with us.”

Last Son nodded. “They call themselves ‘Walker’ and ‘Will.’ I’ve kept my eye on them.”

As he had not. He had thought of nothing except Alain, except how water and rock had defeated him, who was mortal and short-lived, unlike the Earth. Stronghand considered while oak forest slid past on the banks. In battle it was usually necessary to act precipitously, but in council a measured decision gave the best results. It was necessary to always keep your eyes open, to examine your position from every side before you chose your course of action.

He had not kept his eyes open.

But Last Son had.

“Why did you not take a name?” Stronghand asked.

Last Son grinned, displaying his teeth. “Last Son is a good name, too,” he said. “It’s the name I want. What do we do now?”

“My brother Alain wanders out there. To find him, I must plan carefully and not overreach. The Salians will fight us. The Wendish are strong. We will use Medemelacha as our foothold and we will push step by step inland, consolidating as we go, just as we are doing in Alba. That way we will find Alain but also gain more land for our empire. Piece by piece.”

“Yes,” said Last Son, nodding. “That is a good plan. That is why we follow you, Stronghand. Because you are not like the chieftains that came before you.”