Promise of Blood

Chapter 32

Taniel approached the bastion gate wondering how the St. Adom’s Day Festival was progressing in Adro. They’d received a shipment of food that morning: barrels of ale, salted pork, and beef of the highest quality. Much better fare than normally seen on the Mountainwatch.

Mozes was already at the gate, and armed to the teeth with knives, pistols, and a rifle. Rina, the Watch kennelmaster and one of Bo’s women, stood opposite of Mozes, crouched among her dogs. The beasts gave a quiet whine when Taniel approached. He squatted a few feet away and examined them in the torchlight.

There were three big, long-haired mastiffs. They wore black spiked collars, and were attached to Rina by nothing more than leather harnesses. Bigger than wolves, they could pull her off the mountain easily if they wished.

“What are the hounds for?” Taniel asked.

Rina didn’t look up from her hounds. “The tunnel,” she said. Her voice was low, gentle. “I trained these three in the mines. They’ll cross forty yards and bring down a Privileged in a second. Musket fire doesn’t bother them.” She scratched one behind the ears. He turned toward her, massive head cocked, tongue rolling.

“What are their names?”

She pointed to the biggest one. “Kresim.” The next, “Lourad.” She patted the one who she’d been scratching. “And this is Gael.”

Taniel held a hand out to Kresim. The dog sniffed once and turned away.

“They’re not trained to be friends,” she said.

“They like you enough.”

She nodded. “I’m the master.”

“I see.” Taniel stood up. Bo arrived with Katerine, who gave them all a look of disapproval. Bo squatted beside Rina and slid a hand up around her waist. Lourad growled low in the back of his throat.

“Tst,” Rina hissed at the dog. Lourad lay down on the ground.

Bo backed off a step. “Damned big hounds,” he said to Taniel. “Things make me nervous.”

“You’re bedding their master,” Taniel said. “That’d make me nervous. I’m surprised you can stand after all the drink you’ve had.”

Bo craned his head toward Katerine. “She has ways of sobering a man up.”

“None pleasant, I’d imagine.”

Bo cringed.

Ka-poel emerged from the darkness of the town a few moments later dressed in her buckskins. Taniel had not seen them on her since Fatrasta. She normally preferred her long dark duster and wide-brimmed hat. The buckskins clung to her body, reminding Taniel she was a woman and not just a girl. Something he’d not noticed before. He noticed his hands were shaking from lack of powder, and took a sniff from his box. That steadied somewhat. He inhaled deeply and tried to resist taking more until it was needed.

Ka-poel was followed by Fesnik, leading a pair of donkeys laden with powder barrels, and a few steps behind him was Gavril. They all gathered around the Watchmaster.

“We’ve got enough powder to collapse their tunnel,” Gavril said. “We can trust you to set it off when we’re at a safe distance?”

“That much powder,” Taniel said. “We’d have to be too far away.” Vlora could do it from that distance. She’d always been able to detonate powder from farther away than any mage Taniel knew – her unique talent.

“We’ll use blasting cord, then,” Gavril said. “This will be quick. No one makes any noise until we’ve checked the tunnel – Rina, that includes your dogs. Who knows what kinds of traps they have waiting for us, or how many workers and soldiers they’ve got in there. Once that’s done we’ll set the powder, and then we hightail it out of there. We leave the donkeys if we have to.”

“What’d they do to deserve that?” Fesnik said.

Gavril rolled his eyes. “Everyone ready?”

Nods went around, and they left silently by the front gate.

The mountainside below was completely black all the way to Mopenhague, where the Kez army still camped. They proceeded into the darkness, going slow enough to let their eyes adjust. A sniff of black powder made Taniel’s brain buzz and brought his senses into sharp focus. The darkness held few secrets for him. For that he was glad – he still remembered the howling from the other night, and the sense he’d gotten of evil creatures prowling the mountainside.

Taniel went on ahead, Ka-poel following twenty paces back. They moved silently down the mountainside, their eyes sharp for Kez guards. Taniel reached the ruins of the first redoubt. It had been taken and retaken, then left for nothing and finally smashed by artillery and sorcery. He expected guards, but when he climbed among the stone rubble it was empty.

He checked each redoubt carefully. Were he the Kez, he would have left a small guard at each of them to raise an alarm of a counterattack – however unlikely. In the fourth redoubt he found a body, head removed by a cannonball and the corpse stinking in the tatters of a Kez uniform: a soldier missed by those who’d scoured the mountain for bodies the last week.

There were still no guards.

The digging started not far past the last redoubt. Taniel scouted the area for some indication of the enemy. There were no lights, no signs of people, nor when he put his ear to the ground could he hear the sharp clicks of shovels and picks beneath him. Taniel frowned. Something was off about this. He sent Ka-poel back to let the others know they could come forward. Nothing moved on the mountainside. Far below, the Kez camp glittered with campfires. Taniel heard the crunch of rock beneath well-worn boots as the others joined him.

They were on the road just above the entrance when one of the donkeys brayed behind them. Taniel felt his heart leap into his throat. He dropped to a sitting position, the barrel of his rifle resting on his foot so he could sight down the mountain. He waited for a Kez head to come into sight, for shouts of warning and then the trumpet of a general alarm.

A few minutes passed. He looked back at Bo and Gavril. Gavril’s face was unreadable; Bo looked annoyed.

Bo signaled to Taniel, and then touched a finger to the middle of his forehead. Taniel nodded.

Taniel opened his third eye. The brief dizziness passed and he turned his attention to his surroundings. The chalky, colored residue of sorcery covered the entire mountain like spatters of whitewash on the ground beneath a freshly painted fence. It was all old magic, though, and had begun to fade. He looked toward the tunnel.

What he saw there was not old, and it had certainly not begun to fade. Twin streaks of color passed through the ground, under his feet, and up the mountain. Taniel closed his third eye and scrambled down the rocks to the tunnel, Ka-poel right behind him.

“What…? Taniel!” Gavril whispered. Taniel ignored him. He climbed up above the tunnels, and dropped down to the ground at their entrance. Above him, Ka-poel clicked her tongue. He checked for enemies before gesturing to her. When she jumped down, he caught her and set her on her feet.

Two gaping holes faced him on the mountainside. The darkness was too deep even for a Marked’s senses, but he suspected what he might see. A pair of tunnels, each about a foot taller than a man, bored out completely by sorcery as if by a gigantic drill. He sighted along the tunnels, up the mountainside, and guessed at their destination.

Bo and Gavril joined them after a minute.

“There’s no one here,” Gavril said, bewildered.

“Thanks for pointing that out,” Bo snapped.

“Shut up,” Taniel told Bo.

“Where are all the sappers? Where’s the Privileged?” Gavril said.

Taniel lifted a hand. “Up there.”

“You mean they’re finished?”

“Yes.”

“And they come out…?”

“Above the Mountainwatch,” Taniel said. “Up on the ridge. Last night I thought I saw something up there. I dismissed it as a trick of the moonlight. Now I don’t think I was seeing things.”

Gavril stared up toward the ridgeline far above them. “The sorcery required to carve these…”

“Julene,” Bo said. “And probably half the Kez Cabal along with her.”

“Then why didn’t they attack yet?” Gavril said. “The northeast pass is barely guarded. There’s not even a watch on that wall half the time. They could have hit us from up there with a thousand men and there’d have been little we could do about it.”

“She doesn’t care about the Mountainwatch,” Bo said. “Never has. What she cares about is getting to the top of the mountain.”

“It still doesn’t make sense,” Taniel said. “She could have destroyed Shouldercrown and then headed up the mountain. Unless…”

“She’s in a hurry,” Bo finished. He stared up toward South Pike’s peak through the darkness for several moments. “I’ve heard stories floating around the cabal, as old as Kresimir, that the most powerful Privileged could use the auras of other planets, the moon, the stars, and the sun to amplify their sorcery. She needs the summer solstice.”

Taniel felt sick to his stomach. He took a shaky breath. A quick hit of powder helped. “But,” he said, “even if she’s in a hurry, why didn’t she tell Field Marshal Tine about the tunnels? How could she hide them even from him?”

“I think there’s more going on in the Kez camp than we know,” Bo said. “Julene is using the royal cabal, for certain. Perhaps not Tine, though.”

Gavril scratched his chin. “How could she hide this? And if she didn’t tell him about it, why two tunnels?”

“She hid it from us,” Taniel said. “And I think this is a backup plan. If she can’t summon Kresimir, she still wants to be able to take the Mountainwatch. I don’t think she banked on us just walking down here to find it.”

They stared at the tunnels in silence for a few moments. “Can she really summon Kresimir?” Gavril asked.

“She can try,” Bo said. “Whether she’ll be successful… that all depends on how many Privileged she has with her.”

“I don’t like the idea of waiting to find out,” Taniel said. He turned to walk back up to the Mountainwatch.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll need some supplies if I’m going to chase her up the mountain.”

Bo caught up to Taniel faster than he expected. “That’s suicide,” he said. “She must have thirty or more Privileged with her. Maybe Wardens and soldiers. Once they get wind of you…” He snapped his fingers. “Gone.”

“I’ll not let them get wind, then.”

They reached the others and told them of the situation.

“I’m going after Julene,” Taniel said.

“You mean, the one powerful enough to summon God?” Fesnik said.

Katerine crossed her arms and gave Taniel a look that clearly said he was an idiot. “I suppose you’ll tell us next that you’re going alone, as it’s too dangerous for the rest of us.”

Taniel barked a laugh. “Pit, no. Anyone can come that wants. I don’t want to die on that cold son-of-a-bitch mountain alone.”

Bo nearly choked. “I’ll go,” he said.

“Like pit you will,” Katerine snapped.

“Get off it, woman,” Bo said. “Julene’s got to be stopped.”

“Let the Marked do it.”

“I’ll go with you too.” Rina’s quiet voice almost made Taniel jump. She stood off to the side, quietly holding the leashes to her dogs. “Where Bo goes, I go.”

“Don’t you…” Katerine began.

“I said leave off!” Bo said.

Gavril looked torn. “I should,” he started, then fell silent.

Gavril wanted to come with them, Taniel realized, but the Mountainwatch was his responsibility. If Field Marshal Tine resumed the attack, Gavril needed to be there to rally the defenders.

Taniel said, “Your responsibility is here.” A thought occurred then. “Will the Novi monks let them pass?”

“I don’t know,” Bo said. “If they don’t, Julene will level the monastery.”

“Shit,” Gavril spat. “They are good people.” He turned to Mozes and Fesnik. “Set the powder.”

They pulled back past four of the redoubts before they lit the blasting cord. Taniel watched the spark of flame work its way down the mountainside. It didn’t take long for the trail to reach the tunnel. The whole mountain rumbled when the powder went off, and Taniel felt dirt slide beneath his feet. The last redoubt toppled into the remnants of the tunnel. Within minutes there were more lights in the Kez camp, and sounds of commotion rose from below.

They returned to the fortress. Taniel and the others collected more weapons and met back at the northeast gate a half hour later. The group was bigger than he’d wanted: Bo, Rina and her dogs, Fesnik, Mozes, and another eight Watchers – rough-looking men he’d seen around the camp.

“We shouldn’t take so many,” Taniel said to Gavril.

The big Watchmaster stood by the gate, clearly still torn about whether to accompany them. “You’ll need the manpower,” he said. “If you get into a fight, spread out across the hill as much as you can. If the worst happens, send someone running to let us know the pit just spewed all over Adro.”

“Will do,” Taniel said.

“Good luck.”

Preparations were finished. Taniel approached Ka-poel. She held her rucksack on one shoulder.

“Any chance of convincing you to stay here?” Taniel said.

Ka-poel planted her feet.

“I thought not.” Taniel sighed. “Let’s go.”