Wrath of Lions

CHAPTER 41

Ahaesarus didn’t like this. Not one bit.

He and Turock Escheton stood in a secluded room in the rear of Blood Tower, staring at the man tied to the pole opposite him. The man was dressed in one of Abigail’s nightshirts, which was torn and spotted with blood. There was still more blood on his chin, coating his brow, dripping from his missing left ear.

Oddly, the prisoner was grinning.

Turock grunted, twirling a switch in his hand. “You have something to say?” he asked the bound man. He pointed to the map hanging on the wall, the same one they had taken from the man’s tent in the Tinderlands. “What do those red marks mean? Are there other factions?”

The man spit a bloody wad of phlegm onto the floor and said nothing.

“This is unnecessary,” Ahaesarus said. “This is wrong.”

“Spare me your sermons, Warden,” said Turock.

“I will not. You requested my help, and my council comes with it.”

“Bollocks. I asked for your muscle, and your ability to see truth, not your brain.”

Turock stepped up to the prisoner, reared his hand back, and lashed out with the switch. It whistled as it flew through the air, striking the bound man across the cheek. A new gash opened up, another scar to join the others that marred the left side of his face. Still he remained silent. Turock wiped the bloody switch on his robe, which had been lime green before they’d started but was now crisscrossed with red lines.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice a low growl. “Is the camp where my men captured you the only one? If not, where they are on the map?”

Ahaesarus bristled from the knowledge that he was being included as one of Turock’s men. He might be one of humanity’s Wardens, beholden only to Ashhur, yet he had gone into the Tinderlands at the cranky spellcaster’s bidding, and then he’d hastily summoned him as soon as they returned with their quarry. He had stood silently by with his brethren as the humans mocked and ridiculed the captive after draping the womanly garb over his head. You say you aren’t a soldier, he thought. Yet this is how you act?

“How large is your force?” continued Turock. “What are Karak’s plans? When does the real attack begin? Where?”

All of these questions went unanswered, the grin still pasted on the captive’s bleeding face. The spellcaster huffed in frustration, lashed him with the switch again, and then stormed away.

Ahaesarus was like Turock’s shadow as he paced.

“This is a hard man, wholly devoted to his god,” he said. “Look at him, actually look at him. He has endured trials in his life that far outdo any torment you might bring him. There must be-”

“Is that so?” Turock snapped, wheeling on him, a mad gleam in his eye. “You think I couldn’t give him worse? Let us see, shall we?”

“Turock, no.”

The spellcaster brushed aside Ahaesarus’s hand and stomped toward the prisoner. He began murmuring, the tips of his fingers developing a glow. The bound man stared at him, his grin faltering for the first time in four hours. Ahaesarus, his own anger steadily rising, reached out to stop him, but he retreated when Turock shot him a look. Turock was volatile, and there was no telling what he might do if Ahaesarus tried to be forceful. His words would have to do the job for him.

“You are a good man, Turock,” he said, somehow managing to keep his voice steady. “Ashhur has often sung your praises, as have others in Mordeina. Your people trust you. Do not ruin that praise, that trust, by torturing this man. You are better than that. Do not become a monster.”

“A monster?” asked Turock without turning around. He raised his hand, the glow of his fingertips intensifying to bright flames. “Murderers of children, assassins in the night, a man who lets those he loves suffer and die…those are monsters, Warden. This bastard you see before you…he fits two of those categories. I refuse to become the third.”

He tore open the nightshirt’s frilly bodice and pressed his fingers into the man’s chest. Fire crackled across the prisoner’s flesh, not on the surface but beneath, spreading outward in a pattern like cracks in a sheet of ice. One of the glowing veins split the skin, and a thin spiral of black smoke rose into the air. Sweat beaded on the man’s brow, his neck pulled taut, and his smirk abandoned him, but he remained admirably silent nonetheless.

That silence only drove Turock to try harder.

He pressed his other glowing hand to the prisoner’s temple.

“You say I’m a good man,” he said. “That might have been true at one point.” The gray hair on the bound man’s right temple burst into flame. “But we have lived in turmoil for a year, Warden. A year!”

He snuffed out the flames, took a step back, and then offered a few more words of magic. From the cracks in the stone floor rose tiny vines, which danced before the prisoner’s feet, then plunged their pointed tips beneath his toenails. The man squirmed, grinding his teeth in obvious pain as they drove deeper and deeper into the quick, drawing blood.

“Men, women, and children perish while helping to forge the weapons we need to defend ourselves. I have been kept awake at night in expectation of the next assault. Nature was once full of wonder, but now every bird’s caw, every bat’s tweet, every insect’s chirp might be a signal to rain fiery death down on all I created.”

The vines withdrew, retreating into the cracks that had sprouted them. The prisoner huffed for breath.

“I understand how you feel,” Ahaesarus said. “You forget where my kind came from.”

“Yes, you brave Wardens who hid like children in your cages while winged demons slaughtered your loved ones. Forgive me if I don’t have that kind of restraint.”

“That is unfair. We were not given a choice.”

“You’re right,” said Turock. “But we have been.”

With a snap of his fingers, needlelike shards of ice formed in the air around the prisoner. Turock waggled his hands, and at once the shards drove into the bound man’s flesh. He struggled in his restraints, a human cactus prickled from head to toe with crystalline barbs. He uttered the first sound Ahaesarus had heard from his mouth since his capture: he moaned.

“I am a father,” Turock said as he slowly went about grinding his palm against the ice shards, one by one. “I have not seen my three youngest sons for so long, I have forgotten their faces. They were only supposed to be in Mordeina for a month, to tutor under Howard Baedan and spend time with their grandmother. Byron is a man now, eighteen and full of vigor, with Jarak not far behind. And Pendet…our baby…do you know what a year means to a seven-year-old? It is everything. I fear I may never see them again, and even if I do, Pendet might look at me as a stranger.”

“Yet you still have your children here, children who love and need you just as much as they.”

Turock cackled. “Ha! Lauria is married, Cethlynn soon to be, and Dorek is as much my apprentice now as he is my son. I need them, and their partners, more than they need me.”

“Does that not count for something?”

Turock finally turned around, and spittle flew from his lips when he spoke. “Something? Something? I want everything, Warden. I want my children, my wife, my people to be safe!”

“Make it so, then,” Ahaesarus said, a hard edge entering his tone. “If you think your soul is an acceptable price, then so be it. But I will not be an accomplice to this torment. You have turned your back on Ashhur’s mercy.”

“What, you wish me to bake him a cake? Or perhaps draw him a bath and dangle grapes over his mouth?” Turock pointed an accusing finger at the prisoner. “This man would kill us in a heartbeat should we give him the chance, and you wish for me to give him mercy?”

Ahaesarus folded his arms over his chest. “Should he or any of Karak’s children attempt to take the life of myself or any of my Wards, I would strike him down without a second thought. But I would strike him down, Turock, not prolong his suffering. That is the mercy I speak of.”

Turock shook his head. “We need to know.…We have been trapped here for so long.…”

“If you are trapped, it is of your own doing,” laughed the prisoner.

Ahaesarus and Turock both wheeled around. The man was upright in his binds, head cocked, staring at them. The ice shards had melted, leaving him soaked and covered with tiny, leaking red wounds. He winced, flexed his jaw, and then seemed to shake off the pain.

“Your isolation ended when Uther Crestwell died,” the prisoner continued, and he chuckled even as a bit of blood ran down his lips.

Ahaesarus was too shocked to answer. The same could not be said for Turock.

“So those are your first words to us? We’ll see how much you laugh when your balls are gone.”

The spellcaster stepped back and cupped his hand. The blue glow around it intensified, and the prisoner doubled over, finally screaming. Ahaesarus forcibly grabbed Turock by the arm, spinning him around, and the spell died in a cascade of slaps and curses.

“Out!” Turock screamed at him. “Leave my tower now! Leave my fucking lands as well!”

“I will not, Escheton,” the Warden shouted. “The man is telling the truth!”

Turock stared at him, but at last there was a hint of comprehension in his eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“You wanted me to tell you if he spoke a lie or not. He is speaking the truth now. Allow me to question him.”

Turock rolled his eyes. “Fine. You think you can get more of a response than me, then be my guest.”

Ahaesarus approached the prisoner. “What is your name?” he asked “What is your purpose?”

The man closed his lips and shook his head.

Ahaesarus sighed and leaned in close, whispering in his ear.

“I can end this quickly if you cooperate,” he said. “There will be no more torment. Your death will be painless.”

The prisoner’s eyes lifted to him, and for the first time there was no hardness in them.

“My living torment might cease,” he said, “but my soul will burn in the abyss for all eternity should I betray him. My god is noble and mighty. All I have, all I have become, I owe to the one who created me. I would rather hurl myself into the flames than turn on Karak.”

“You want to burn?” Turock asked, stepping closer, fire on his fingertips, Ahaesarus struck him with the back of his hand. The spellcaster stumbled away, holding the side of his face and cursing. The Warden picked up the sword he had laid on the ground, grabbed Turock by the loose collar of his cloak, and pressed the tip of the blade to his throat. The spellcaster’s eyes grew wide.

“No more,” growled Ahaesarus. His menacing tone scared even himself. “This ends now. Leave this tower. Leave the prisoner to me. If he cooperates, you will know all you wish to know. If he does not, he will not see the sunrise. Am I understood?”

Turock nodded, though his entire body looked ready to explode.

“Good,” Ahaesarus said. “Now leave.”

He spun the dazed, red-haired man around and guided him to the door. Opening it, he pushed Turock out to where his son-in-law Uulon stood guard, blond hair matted and eyelids at half-mast. The young man was shocked to attention by their sudden appearance. Ahaesarus gave Turock a shove and shut the door quickly behind him. With that done he leaned against the wood, breathing heavily. What he’d done was rash, dangerous. Turock had proven himself to be powerful in the ways of magic. Had he not been taken off guard by Ahaesarus’s sudden aggression, the Warden might have found himself set ablaze, transformed into a mudskipper, or worse. Breathing out a sigh, he barred the door and returned to the prisoner, who stared at him, an odd look of gratitude on his battle-scarred face. With a twinge of sadness, the Warden remembered something Eveningstar had told him one evening, after Ahaesarus had expressed frustration about his progress with Geris. The boy had been drifting in his studies, but each time Ahaesarus lashed out at him, the child would draw inward and stop speaking.

“Sometimes saying nothing is better than saying the wrong thing,” the great betrayer of Ashhur had said. “There is only so much silence a man can take.”

It was time to put those words into practice.

Ahaesarus pulled up a chair and sat across from the bound man. He asked no questions and expected no answers. All he did was sit, his gaze never leaving the prisoner’s face. For a while the man was admirable in his fortitude, standing tall in his restraints, his blood-splattered chin held high. But after what felt like an eternity, when the sounds of the first stirrings in camp came seeping through the thick walls, he began to crack.

“Wallace,” he muttered, his voice raspy.

“Say again?”

“Wallace. My name is Wallace.”

“Thank you, Wallace.” He stood, retrieved a pitcher of water from the table in the corner, and poured liquid over Wallace’s parched lips.

There was silence again for a few moments, until Wallace, some of his many wounds still seeping blood, sighed deeply and closed his eyes.

“Karak forgive me,” he said.

“For what?” asked Ahaesarus.

He took a deep breath.

“I will give you two questions. You are a Warden, so you will know that what I say is truthful. After that I will say nothing more, and I ask that you end my life quickly. I do not wish to endure more of the angry man in the funny cloak.”

“Very well,” Ahaesarus said, inclining his head. The aura seeping out of this Wallace told him he was a man of his word. No matter what he or Turock did to him after those two questions were asked, they would get no more answers. The amount of discipline he showed was breathtaking. If this is the type of dedication Ashhur must face…

He retook his chair and threw one leg over the other, his mind racing. Wallace leaned his head back against the post, closed his eyes, and waited.

Settling on his first question, Ahaesarus asked, “How long have you been in the northern deadlands?”

“Too long,” the prisoner replied. His eyes opened sleepily. “Though in truth, it must be eighteen months, give or take. I was the trusted council of Uther Crestwell, whose authority I supplanted after his death.”

It was the truth. Ahaesarus almost asked how many were in his force, which should have been the first question, but he snapped his mouth shut. Wallace was laying a trap for him, one he could ill afford to fall into. Two questions. He cursed his stupidity.

He nodded instead.

“Anything else?” asked Wallace again.

“One moment.”

He mulled it over, trying to craft the one question that would give him the most information. There was simply too much he needed to know. He could ask for Karak’s plan, but Wallace was an underling, a man in command of a force stationed far from those assaulting from the east. It was unlikely he would know anything but his own group’s role. Ahaesarus closed his eyes and prayed to the god who had saved him, asking for guidance. The right question came to him almost at once, and his eyes sprang open.

“How will you rejoin Karak?” he asked.

Wallace sighed, a tired smile coming across his dry lips.

“We won’t,” he said. “My duty ends here, on the banks of the Gihon.”

Again, it was the truth. Ahaesarus gaped at him. “What does that mean?”

“Two questions, no more. You have your answers. Now fulfill your promise.”

Ahaesarus stood once more, his thoughts whirling in his skull. He hovered in the empty space between the prisoner and the door, unsure of what to do. Had he doomed those he had been sent here to protect? He buried his face in his hands, praying again for guidance.

“Your promise, Warden,” said Wallace.

Ahaesarus ignored him. “Please, Ashhur, I am your humble servant. Give me your wisdom.”

He took a deep breath, leaned his head back, and stared at the ceiling. He felt a presence then, as if another entity were looking through his eyes and weighing his options, with him. As the presence retreated, a vision entered his mind, and a hornlike bleating sounded, so deep and loud that it shook the stone walls surrounding them. He looked over at Wallace, whose eyes were wide with bewilderment.

“What was that?” the prisoner asked.

A second, then a third, then a fourth bleat joined the first, until the air was rocked by a relentless concussive assault. The barred door shook on its hinges, and voices shouted from outside, demanding entry. The Master Warden heard a voice in his ear, a command to travel south, and his body flooded with relief.

“What was that?” repeated Wallace, sounding desperate.

Ahaesarus offered a prayer of thanks to his distant god, then turned to the prisoner.

“No questions,” he said. “Your reward is waiting.”

He placed his huge hands on either side of Wallace’s head and jerked it violently to the side. The man’s neck snapped, severing his spinal column. His eyes bulged from their sockets, his final breaths bursting forth raggedly. Ahaesarus released him, let his head dangle on his fractured neck as bloody spittle dripped from his mouth. He felt sick at the sight of the body, the very first life ended by his hands, but he did his best to shove aside his feelings of guilt. Ashhur forgive me for this horror. He rushed to the door, threw aside the bar, and opened it to find Turock, Uulon, Judah, and Grendel standing there panting. Meanwhile, the bellowing hornlike sounds continued to blare.

Turock was enraged when he spotted Wallace’s dangling corpse.

“You killed our prisoner!” he shouted.

Ahaesarus shoved him aside.

“I gave him mercy,” he answered, approaching his two fellow Wardens. “And he told us all we needed to know.”

“And the sound?” asked Judah. “What is it?”

“The battle cry of the grayhorns,” Ahaesarus said with a nod, thinking of what Ashhur had shown him in his vision. “Grendel, get the others. We are leaving this place.”

“You can’t do that!” protested Turock, following on their heels as they strode down the corridor.

“You told me you wished for me to leave.”

“I changed my mind!”

Ahaesarus didn’t answer him. They walked out of the tower and into a morning that was nearly blinding in its brightness. The people of the camp all seemed to be awake, glancing around in confusion as the grayhorns’ bleating continued to sound. Only after Grendel ran off to gather up the other Wardens did Ahaesarus turn to face the spellcaster. He continued to follow the path alongside the mountain as he looked at Turock, heading toward the rise that hid the camp from view. The greyhorns were much louder here, almost swallowing all other sounds.

“We are done here,” he said. “Our duty lies to the south, in Mordeina. That is where we are needed most, as are your spellcasters.”

Turock shook his head.

“But what of those across the river? What happens when they attack? You came here to assist us! Are you saying you wish us to abandon our homes?”

“I came to assist Ashhur,” he shot back. “To protect Paradise from destruction.” He waved his arm back toward the river. “This is merely a diversion. The force gathered in the Tinderlands is a distraction, nothing more. Karak or Jacob or someone decided the best way to weaken Ashhur’s defenses was to thin out his resources.” He looked down at the strange man, whose bloodstained robe billowed around him as he struggled to match the Warden’s much longer strides. “They consider those you have trained to be the biggest threat to their victory, so they will continue to torment you and keep you guessing. Those across the river are willing to give their own lives to keep you out of the way. They know they cannot win against those you have trained, but they do not care.”

The man grabbed his arm, halting him in place. “Wait. Are you saying…?”

“Yes. It is a ruse, Turock. A grand ruse to keep you and your students out of the way. You have been played on all sides.”

“The prisoner told you this?”

Ahaesarus smiled. “He did not need to.”

He scaled the hill before them and gazed out across the grayhorns’ grazing fields. Turock seemed calmer now, displaying a dutiful sort of pride. It takes acknowledgment of your talents for you to listen? Ahaesarus felt pity for the man.

“Your home will not go undefended,” the Warden said. “You will stay behind with half your apprentices and whatever townsfolk choose not to leave. The others will join me and my fellow Wardens…and them…on the trek to Mordeina.”

Turock’s gaze shifted to the field.

“Oh my,” he said, jaw slack. “Where are they going?”

Ahaesarus watched the massive wrinkled hides of more than a thousand grayhorns as they marched south, disappearing into the distance, their bleating fading away.

“They are going to the same place as us,” he said. “The capital of Paradise. Ashhur is forming his army.”