Neversfall

Chapter Twenty-three

The formian who had carried the wounded soldier moved out of the darkness toward the sitting Chondathan man. The mercenary gaped at the creature, his eyes wide.

"What in all the hells?" the man said, pushing himself away.

A storm destroys a home not because it chooses to, but because it simply exists. The large formian gave much the same impression as he lifted the Chondathan man into the air with strange, double-clawed hands and began to apply pressure.

The formian squeezed the Chondathans shoulders with force great enough to elicit a scream from the man. Guk's antennae flicked, but he did not speak. Taennen had learned that the smaller formians did nothing without Guk's permission, if not instruction, so he knew Guk was somehow commanding his underling.

The formian dropped the Chondathan, who crumpled on the ground. Blood trickled out from under the man's arms as he lay on the grass with tears welling in his eyes. The Chondathan grew pale and weak. Sitting there in the dirt, he looked like a little boy roughed up by street urchins looking for coin, trying to stifle the tears and not be thought a coward.

The mercenary tried to stand in defiance only to be knocked down when the formian skittered forward and swept his feet out from under him. Guk's slim appendages jerked wildly again, and his cohort bent to grab the Chondathan once more.

"Stop," Taennen said.

"You will ask questions now," Guk said.

"Yes," Taennen replied.

Guk's underling grasped the Chondathan and began to lift him.

"Stop, I said!" Taennen shouted and moved to wrest the man from the creature's grip.

The formian dropped the Chondathan and stepped back, once again concealing itself in the shadows.

"He will answer to stop the pain," Guk said.

"Yes, he will. But that does not make it right," Taennen replied.

"He stands against order," Guk said, as though the words were explanation and justification enough.

"It doesn't matter. Besides, if you torture him enough, he'll tell you he's a troll and can grant your greatest wish,"

Taennen said, kneeling next to the Chondathan.

"He defies order. If he does not serve the purpose of answering your questions, we will end his life. We have suffered him to live this long only because we thought he might help you. He does not respect order and should die," Guk said. The unsettling timbre in Guk's voice settled into a rhythm that Taennen found even more alien than usual.

"No," Taennen said, standing and turning to face the larger creature. He stepped closer to Guk, moving out of Lucha's light filtering down through the tree tops. Though dark, they could see one another, and their gazes locked, neither of them flinching nor blinking. Taennen held his ground, hand on his weapon.

"I can't let you murder him," Taennen whispered. "Maybe we can trick him somehow."

"Lie," Guk said. Formian voices did not lilt when inquisitive and so Taennen did not respond for the span of several heartbeats, finally identifying the words as a question.

"Yes. Fool him into telling us how many more of them there are, whether there are any secret tunnels we can use, and anything else we need to know," Taennen said.

"We will not lie," Guk said as he moved toward the Chondathan, who gasped when he saw the largest formian. Guk stared hard at the man, his head twitching slightly. "Ask him your questions."

Taennen eyed the big formian but stood over the Chondathan, lowering his voice and scowling as best he could. "How many more of you are underground?"

"To the hells with you, Maquar," Rhalov said.

"Approximately forty," Guk said. Rhalov's eyes went wide staring at the formian.

Uncertain what was happening, Taennen continued. "Why are you here?"

Rhalov said nothing, but Guk spoke. "For coin." The Chondathan stared at Guk, his lips pursed, his brow furrowed.

"Why are the Chondathans here?" Taennen asked. Again, Guk spoke when the human would not, saying, "For coin."

Taennen growled at the answer, upset with himself for being so vague, and angry at the stubborn prisoner.

"Is there a way to use the tunnels to enter Neversfall?" Taennen asked, turning to face Guk in anticipation of the response.

"Yes," Guk said, eliciting a moan from Rhalov. "Where? How?" Taennen said.

Before Guk could respond, Rhalov did. "I'll speak! Just get it out of my head!"

"Speak," Guk said, though Taennen was uncertain whether he had stopped his magical reading.

"Enter the tunnel where you just exited. Take the second tunnel left, the first right and the second left again. You'll see a ladder built into the rock," Rhalov said.

"Is it guarded?" Taennen asked.

Rhalov nodded. Taennen paced, running his fingers through his dark hair.

"Who is in charge? Bascou?" Taennen asked.

The Chondathan grinned and shook his head. "You know who."

Taennen lashed out and slapped the man's face. He already knew the answer but could not bear to hear the name aloud. His suspicions confirmed, he turned from the prisoner and stared at the ground.

"You are finished with him," Guk said.

"Yes. We'll tie him up and come back later…" Taennen started to say but was cut short as a glow caught his attention.

He turned to see what looked like the bars on a prison cell, horizontal lines crossing verticals, beams of blue light floating before Rhalov. The strange, lighted lattice floated forward, pressing slowly into the Chondathan, who loosed a high-pitched scream as his torso was seared by the strange force. A sound like meat sizzling on a skillet and the rough scraping of a shovel filled his ears. Rhalov's scream was cut off as the bars faded from existence on the far side of his body and he slumped to the ground.

"For all the One," Taennen said, turning from the sight of the man's chest splayed open and the smell of burnt flesh.

"You did that?" Taennen said, facing Guk.

"He defied order. Be careful that you do not," Guk said with no hint of threat in his voice.

Taennen wanted to scream, to denounce what the formian had done, but he knew it would do little good. While he objected to the deed, he was not in a position to argue. His mind turned to his next task, and there was a pressing matter still to attend. He wondered what part of himself he had lost that might have objected more strongly. Could he get it back?

"You helped me get the information I needed. Now what? We were even, and now I am in your debt again," Taennen said.

"You will need help at the fortress," Guk said.

Taennen squinted but agreed.

"His answers, and our help in taking the keep. That we offer," the formian replied. "And what price do I pay?"

"We lost many of our kind and all of our workers. We need workers. We cannot return with fewer than we had when we left," Guk said.

"I can't give you back your prisoners. They're not slaves. They'll be freed," Taennen said, taking a step backward. "Not them," Guk said.

Taennen cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. After a few moments he understood what the formian was suggesting. The idea made him sick at first. But the idea of not seeing justice done broke his heart. He wanted an end to all the wrongdoing at Neversfall.

"Fine. Any of the invaders we capture…" he said, unable to finish the sentence. Part of Taennen was disgusted with himself, another part proud for making a hard decision that he knew was the right one. The decision had not been as hard as he imagined. That bothered him.

"There are others near," Guk said.

"Chondathans? Where, in the woods?" Taennen asked.

"Not the invaders," Guk replied.

"Who?" Taennen asked.

"Many like you and the others," Guk said.

"Maquar and Durpari?" Taennen said.

Guk affirmed, and the formian ranks began to move forward again. Taennen restrained himself from dashing ahead to see the others, to find out what had happened. Lucha's light had become brighter, and though the formians moved quietly, even they could not avoid rustling through the underbrush. He wondered how they had ever surprised the Chondathans who had been chasing him. So it came as no surprise when he heard human voices shout in warning from the west, closer to the edge of the forest.

"Peace," Taennen said.

The formians stopped their shuffling, and the woods soaked up every bit of sound. Silence reigned for several moments before a single voice called out.

"Taennen?"

It was Adeenya. Taennen smiled and pushed past the formians to step into a less crowded patch of the forest: Gasps from the darkness greeted him a mere moment before several Maquar ran to him, cheering in low voices. Joy was in the air, but the seasoned warriors knew quiet was a necessary tool. Taennen greeted his friends with hugs and claps on shoulders.

After exchanging greetings, the formians stepped out of the trees just enough to be seen by the humans. The Maquar and Durpari gasped and cursed, lifting their weapons.

"No!" Taennen said, his arms high. "They want to help."

"Help what?" a Durpari woman asked. "Help us retake Neversfall," Taennen said in a low voice.

Before the gathered humans could respond, Adeenya stepped out of the crowd. Taennen smiled to see her again. Her smile was no smaller than his, though it fled her face as she turned to face her makeshift army.

"He is right. We will retake Neversfall. We must. Go, rest," she said, pointing to a nearby clearing.

As the soldiers grumbled and walked away, Taennen nodded to Guk, whose people followed him in the opposite direction several paces away. The two officers stood in silence a few moments before Adeenya recounted her escape, never mentioning who had captured her. Taennen shared his own, and Adeenya fumed at the news of the weapons smuggling.

"Taennen," she said, "I didn't murder Marlke. I tried to stop him. I stabbed him after he attacked me, but he could have been healed-would have been healed. Jhoqo let him die. He's mad, Taennen. He-"

"I know. I should have seen it," Taennen said.

Adeenya nodded but said nothing further on the matter. "So how are we going to take Neversfall?" "I know the way in," he replied.

"That will help," she said, "but our men are disillusioned, wounded, and hungry."

"It's amazing what a lack of choice can do, and we don't have one," he said.

She nodded and glanced toward the formians. "Are they really helping?"

He followed her gaze to the creatures and said, "Yes."

She said nothing for a few heartbeats, but then asked, "Why would they help, and why would we trust them?"

"We trust them for the same reason we take the fortress," he said. "We have no choice."

She ceded the point but asked again, "But why are they going to help?"

"For payment. The same reason anyone does anything," he said.

She glanced back at the formians again and said, "They wanted coin?"

"Payment doesn't always mean gold or silver," Taennen replied.

Before Adeenya could respond, Taennen walked toward the soldiers in the clearing. Jhoqo had always said that a good soldier knows when a command is a poor one, be it unjust or simply mad. Taennen was about to give an insane command, and he could only hope that his soldiers were good and that things weren't as simple as he had always believed them to be. The world had come to look quite different in the last couple of days. Maybe he was seeing things that Jhoqo could not.

"Please, everyone, listen to me," Taennen said, waving for the displaced people to gather around him. Blood spattered his flesh and his armor, his face was worn and haggard.

"Maquar, we have been betrayed," Taennen started. "No, not just us. Everyone who hails from the South. Sadly, that betrayal came from within our ranks."

The Maquar and Durpari stood silent, though the former prisoners began to shout at Taennen, having picked him out as the person in charge they hoped would help them.

"Listen, please, all of you," Taennen said. "I know you want to go home. I know you are beside yourselves wondering why your former slavers are standing only paces away," he said, indicating the formians still gathered nearby.

"My fellow soldiers, I know your minds are spinning right now. Mine is too. Though I was not with you in your battle against the Chondathans, the full weight of Jhoqo's betrayal sits on my heart as well," he said.

The Maquar lowered their heads in unison, a sign of respect to the relationship between Jhoqo and Taennen.

Taennen spoke again, an orator emerging from him out there in the wilderness. "Beneath Neversfall are forces that would break the laws we hold dear, and that some of us have sworn to defend. Weapons are being smuggled to feed the war machine that is Mulhorand. This citadel will make more coin in a month than most chakas make in a year. Illegal coin! Blood coin! Coin pried from the hands of the dead citizens of the next country that the vicious Mulho-randi target. This must be stopped."

The former captives seemed unmoved, standing huddled together away from the soldiers, separating themselves as though some caste system were in place. Who could blame them for not wanting to get involved? This was not their affair. They had sworn no oaths, they were not being paid. Their faces showed only the desire to remain free, to return to their homes and the lives they had known before being taken by the formians.

Taennen noticed the disinterest from the citizens as well and turned to address them. "I am sorry you have suffered. Some of you have been away from your homes for a long, long time. Little would please me more than to take each of you to your homes right now and know that you would never have to return to this place," he said, pausing before continuing.

"But I can't do that. The truth is that the people in that fortress must be stopped. Many, many more people will die if they are not. The Adama tells us that we are all connected, that our goal should be the good of all things because all things are part of us and we are part of them.

"Good trade benefits everyone, but what the warmongers behind this are doing here does not. The victims of the Mulhorandi will not benefit, the citizens of the South who devote themselves to the laws we live by will not benefit."

The former captives murmured among themselves but seemed largely unmoved. Taennen moved closer to them. "And you and those you love will not benefit. You may be harmed by this action," Taennen said.

"How? The Mulhorandi don't attack my homeland," said a short man in shabby clothes.

"Not yet," Taennen said. "But these weapons will allow them to expand their borders farther, to extend their reach into lands that may not have interested them previously. Perhaps they will come after your home next. When they conquer those around them, what will stop their appetite for more war and more land?"

The former captives muttered amongst themselves. After a few moments, one of them stepped forward and spoke.

"We're not fighters, sir. What are we supposed to do? We just want to go home to our families. For some of us, it's been a very long time."

Taennen nodded. "I know, my friends. If I saw a choice, I would latch onto it, but I do not," he said. "Friends, please trust me. You do not want to be alone here in the wilds of Aerilpar," Taennen said. "There are far worse things in these woods than you have encountered before." chapter Tujeotu-Nioe

Jhoqo stared at the corpse of Bascou laid before him in his command building. He dismissed the Chondathan soldiers who had brought the body to him, and then crumpled into a chair. Bascou's thick cheeks hung from his face like sacks of emptied wheat. His wounds still dribbled, sprinkling the floor with red. Jhoqo had barely known the man and would not miss him.

He was a cursed darkblade. Damn all the Chondathans to the Hells, he thought. He would trade the whole lot of them for ten Maquar or even Durpari. He sighed and let his muscles relax, slumping in the chair.

The Chondathans were unimportant, but the people they represented were not. The men and women who had hired the mercenaries knew what needed to be done, and they gave Jhoqo the means to do it. So why couldn't his own soldiers understand? Couldn't they see the degradation of Southern ways all around them?

Fair and open trade was being stifled by petty laws and politics. The very idea of declaring trade with another country to be illegal was absurd, even offensive, to anyone who loved the South and the ways of the Adama. The citizens he was working with understood that, and he knew that he would have to walk away from his entire career. For the South, he would do that.

Jhoqo stood and took a deep breath. So be it, he thought and walked out the door, leaving the lifeless Bascou behind him. He called out to the Chondathan guard who was his shadow, "Go and fetch me your second in command."

The guard, with his downy beard, was one of the youngest the Chondathans had brought. He did not move, though his eyes went straight to the ground.

"Go!" Jhoqo barked.

"He's dead, sir," the boy said, twitching.

"Then the third, and if he's dead, then the fourth. Just get me somebody, boy!" Jhoqo yelled, and he started toward the central tower, namesake to the citadel.

Before he reached the door, an older man, a bit thick through the belly, came to a stop in front of him and saluted.

"You have a wizard in the mines, yes?" Jhoqo said. The man nodded.

"Go and get him right away. Tell him I have a challenge for him," Jhoqo said, craning his neck to look up at the top of the tower.

Of all the feelings that swirled through him, Taennen dwelled the longest on foolishness. He was afraid, intimidated, uncertain… but mostly, he felt foolish. The torchlight held by the man behind him guided his steps through the tunnels. Taennen glanced back once to see the ragged squad behind him, stumbling through the stone corridors. Foolishness.

Here he was, hoping to lead a score of soldiers and ten utterly untrained farmers and craftsman against a fortified citadel held by veteran soldiers who weren't as worn and weary, and who outnumbered them besides. The only advantage they had, by his reckoning, was that the Chondathans and their dwarf cohorts would be unlikely to expect an attack by the very forces they had just routed.

"How many can we expect?" asked one of the former captives-a farmer by trade-and not for the first time.

"We should be ready for at least twice our numbers," Taennen replied.

The soldiers nodded and traded words of encouragement and reassuring claps on backs. The few citizens all seemed to pale at the same moment. They would be the first to die, Taennen knew. Unable to skillfully wield the weapons they had been given and facing trained foes, they would fall quickly. They would serve the cause best if they could live long enough to distract an enemy, allowing a Maquar or Durpari soldier to end the attacker's life swiftly. It was a matter of stretching their numbers. Taennen stopped, the people behind him stumbling into him.

"Sir?" someone said.

But Taennen barely heard the question. He turned to look at the former captives, their eyes wide and knuckles white on weapons that would likely not help them. A soldier knew that his life might be forfeit at any time, but these men and women-farmers, brewers, herders-they had sworn no such oaths. Taennen needed their numbers and their swords, but guilt tugged at him. Surely many of them would die.

Looking at the former prisoners, their thin faces reflecting a lack of proper nutrition, he spoke. "Go back. Turn around and await us at the edge of the woods. If we don't return, head straight south. You'll come across an expedition sooner or later, likely some halflings who will take you in."

The soldiers stayed quiet though a few exchanged glances. The former captives, frail and tiny compared to those around them, stood stunned.

"You said you needed us," one of them said

Taennen nodded. "I do, but people are going to die. The soldiers among us have all sworn oaths to fight for our lands and have training. You owe no one anything and have lived your lives away from conflict. If you go with us, you will die and quickly."

"We know that," the same man responded to the reluctant nods of several of the others.

"Then why come?" asked one of the Maquar before Taennen could respond.

Another man, shorter and rounder in the belly, shrugged and said, "Like you said before. They have to be stopped before they come to my front door. Besides, lots of innocent folk will die by these weapons they're selling. I won't have that on my soul while I sleep in my comfortable bed."

Taennen shook his head. "Innocents die all the time. We can't save them all. We can't stop it all. You aren't responsible."

The man nodded and said, "True enough. But I'm here. Maybe I can save some. I have to try."

"Very well. Thank you. Thank you all," Taennen said.

A few of the civilians looked less eager.

"The offer is still open to anyone. Anyone who wants to leave, should. We will find you when this is over. Feel no shame in leaving," Taennen said.

A bearded man in tattered brown robes and a woman in a filthy silk dress both pushed their way back through the line toward the forest exit. A few breaths later, two more men joined them. Some of the other civilians tried to stop them, to talk them out of leaving, but Taennen insisted that they be allowed to go.

No one else chose to leave, so Taennen led his troops toward the large cavern where he had encountered Bascou. He hoped the man was truly dead and hadn't been saved by the other brigands. How many would there be? Would they be waiting in ambush? Could they retake Neversfall?

Taennen did not know, but he was there and he had to try.