Page 76 of Keeper of the Word (The Unsung and the Wolf Duology #2)

Chapter

Sixty-Nine

TOLVAR

T he battle had been fought with a band from the province of Renn, of all places. Vigilantes who, armed with a WANTED banner and a duty for justice, had stumbled upon the Wolf and his troupe on their way to vow service to the sovereign. None had been left alive.

Tolvar knelt over the hurried grave of one of the Order knights who’d died, unable to glance at Goodsell’s. Goodsell the Good.

His StarSeer’s anguish was palpable. Heat raged from her. After burying Goodsell, she had jerked her head to three Order knights and galloped away with them.

She had stiffly told Elanna, “I will not shirk my last duties. I shall return.”

No one asked what that meant, but Elanna and the other StarSeers seemed to know and had not questioned it.

’Twas dismal.

Over the last few days, from their camp on the hill, out of the way and hidden as much as possible, they’d observed a half-dozen armies, thousands of soldiers, funnel into the countryside surrounding Asalle.

The city had at last been entirely emptied, save for the sovereign, his queen, and the Castle Sidra knights who remained.

All last citizens, retainers, and even servants had been forced from the city.

Tolvar had watched in disbelief as the last of Asalle’s city guards exited, and the main gate closed behind them.

The sovereign’s torch, gigantic and at the topmost tower of Castle Sidra, was clearly visible, even from the makeshift graveyard in which Tolvar knelt.

’Twas always alight. It symbolized the House of Sidra and had burned for a millennium.

But with the remainder of Asalle darkened, it appeared as a woeful candle.

“What now?” Ghlee asked later when Tolvar stumbled back to their camp.

“We wait for Crevan to show, I suppose. He will show.” The Order knights had been making the rounds, scouting the circumference of the area for when Crevan and Turas’s army finally arrived.

Ghlee nodded. “How do you feel?”

Other than the battle that had caught them off guard, Tolvar took extreme measures to rest. ’Twas pure luck that he’d not been forced to fight more. Every muscle ached. His hands couldn’t quite grip as they had before Crevan’s torture. And at times, his limbs went numb.

But he would need his strength before this was all over.

“I am well,” Tolvar replied. “Of course.”

“I know you.”

Tolvar side-eyed Ghlee. “Your point?”

Instead of answering him, Ghlee said, “I wish to tell you something. Even now. Even with all the events that have occurred in your life these moons. I am proud to know you, my friend. You’ve abstained.

You’ve…grown, mayhap the term is.” Ghlee paused.

“You are everything I have always known the Wolf could be.”

“Cease. Say no more, Ghlee. I haven’t the stamina.”

Ghlee gave a side-look of his own.

“And through these moons,” Tolvar said. “You may not have been with me, but—” The Wolf was not one for emotional theatrics. “You are my brother. ”

The two spoke no further. There was no need. Instead, they surveyed the disquieted site together.

The air was thick with war’s anticipation. The sight of so many armies, so many soldiers, and so many torches and campfires was like peering down on numerous villages that had sprouted from nowhere.

Except these came with future bloodshed and senselessness.

That it should all come to this.The majority of Asalle’s citizens had not yet fled but, instead, stayed in their camps, seeming for all the world as if they planned to resettle there.

Stars.

“What is happening?” Ghlee asked, scrutinizing the main gate. ’Twas opening.

Tolvar lifted his spyglass. Through the smallest crack that had been opened in the gate, a woman was pushed out. The gate immediately shut behind her. She stood motionless for a moment and then strode onto the road, appearing like the royal figure she was: Queen Ferika.

Tolvar’s knight’s senses immediately heightened. “She’s unguarded.” He had a thought. “She’s been cast out.”

He and Ghlee exchanged a knowing glance.

As if Ferika’s banishment was a battle horn, the air shifted, and Tolvar perceived its transformation scorch from one army to the next. A rumble started. The tell-tale sign.

Tolvar had experienced war before. And the rumble that shook through the whole of the countryside leveled his senses.

“War.”

Tolvar hesitated. He was bound to the StarSeers. He was a knight of the realm, sworn to protect the House of Sidra. To whom did his loyalties lie?

“Your destiny awaits, Sir Tolvar.” Elanna stood behind them. She inclined her head at the queen in the distance. “But be ready. For anything.”

“I cannot leave you.”

“We are not yet through.”

Ghlee anticipated Tolvar’s move, and the two saddled their mounts. Tolvar did not ask Ghlee to come and did not request that he stay. Stars, ’twas good to have Ghlee by his side again.

Alvie jumped up from his spot, causing Joss, Barrett, and a half-dozen Order knights to do the same and saddle theirs as well.

“Where are we goin’?” Alvie asked.

Tolvar paused.

“Your path is to the Edan Stone,” Elanna supplied. “Ours lies in the key.”

Tolvar would have to trust his faith.

He mounted Valko, gazing down at the StarSeers, Hux, and what was left of the Order knights.

Hux squinted up at Tolvar. “Glad I am that we’ve had this adventure, Lord Wolf.”

“Adventure. I suppose you received your wish after all.” He flicked Valko’s reins and galloped across the long, wide bridge to save his queen.

They didn’t reach Ferika until midmorning. How she’d managed to stay alive was beyond Tolvar. But through scores of men fighting, he led them to her whereabouts, frantically searching the masses.

Thunder. The twang of bows. The clash of steel. The howls of men. These were the sounds of the world now.

Tolvar tightened his grip on Valko’s reins and raced toward Ferika. A handful of Asalle’s knights circled her in defense. No one attacked her—yet—but the terror on her face was plain.

“Come, Your Highness, I shall take you to safety.” He lifted an arm down to her.

At first, the knights did not wish to relinquish their service of the queen to him, but as the battle thickened around them, and since they had no horses, they assisted Ferika onto Valko’s back.

Tolvar steered Valko backward, only to realize the battles would ne’er allow for an escape back to their camp.

Stars .

Instead, they rode in the opposite direction from where the majority of the citizens had erected their camps.

Once there, Ferika slid off the horse. “A hero until the end.”

“’Tis not yet the end, Your Highness.” He scanned the area, the battles flaring up like wildfires. The heat of hatred and greed was palpable. He wanted no part of it. Mayhap he could be of other use. “We need to gather these people and flee. They will all die.”

Ferika nodded. “Aye.”

They spent much of the day assembling what people they could and leading them a few miles down the West Road.

“I thank you for what you’ve done this day for my people,” Ferika said, at evening’s fall. The barrage of noise had become such a constancy, Tolvar was numb to the ringing in his ears.

“I implore you, my queen, will you not go with them? Lead them to some sort of safety?”

“I cannot leave here,” Ferika said. “Not until the torch is doused.” She nodded in the direction of Asalle, and Tolvar didn’t need to glance at it to know she meant the sovereign’s torch. She meant until Rian had died.

Tolvar was in no position to order anyone at this point, least of all the Queen of the Capella Realm, and so he did not try to persuade her again.

Stars’ shadow, Tolvar had trapped himself and the others.

They had debated if they could make it back to camp with Queen Ferika in tow, but the battles never paused. Never stopped. ’Twas as if the evil that had been brought into Asalle’s countryside fed itself off of the death and destruction and it needed no rest.

The second-best idea—though he loathed it—was to keep to the westside and protect the queen.

Only three battles had shifted and coincidentally struck into them. He could not believe his fortune that no one had spotted and outright attacked the Wolf.

The queen’s presence was intolerable. How to wait upon a queen in a battlefield? Tolvar kept his mouth shut about Queen Ferika loitering rather than fleeing. He studied the sovereign’s torch. He didn’t wish it to extinguish, but blast it, they needed to search for Crevan.

Tolvar was incredulous that Crevan and Turas had still not shown.

“The Curse is everywhere here,” Ghlee remarked.

“Aye,” Tolvar agreed. The back of Tolvar’s neck tingled with misgiving. Yet the torch of the sovereign remained lit even as the city itself became tinted with grey.

They resumed their watch of the main gate.

A few armies had thronged to the giant gate in combat.

They’d been locked in combat there for an entire day.

In the middle of the fray, the two fought to be the first to breach the city.

Two battering rams had already been splintered.

Tolvar surveyed through his spyglass a third snap.

Clack . An impressive sound, even from this distance.

“It holds firm—for now,” he said to Ghlee. He shifted the spyglass to the hill beyond the river. “I still cannot make out the StarSeers or Hux.”

Staying hidden, hopefully.

Ghlee extended his hand for the spyglass. “Get some rest. You’ve hardly slept.”

“How can one sleep in this racket?”

“Still.”

“Fine. But wake me at the first sign of Crevan.”

What felt like mere moments later, Ghlee shook him awake.

“You’d better come see this,” Ghlee said.

They joined the others in observance of the battles. Something had altered, although ’twas difficult to see at first. He worked to gain a sense of what it was, but soon, Tolvar discerned the alteration.

The giant army of the Earl of Anscom had at long last arrived. They plowed their way through the others.

“Stars. That probably means that Crevan and the Edan Stone are all the way over there. ”

“And close to the Seers,” Alvie added.

Siria’s skirt.

They prepared their horses, leaving behind any supplies they’d obtained from Asalle’s citizens, and decided that three Order knights would stay with the queen.

“Are you certain you will not flee, Your Majesty?”

Her answer was to gaze at the sovereign’s torch.

Tolvar stilled himself from shaking his head and instead surveyed the horde of soldiers, steadying Valko’s prancing at the same time. He took a breath.

A noise crept from behind. Out from the trees, soldiers wearing Norwell and Anscom uniforms attacked. He shouted to the others, but ’twas too late.

The attackers pounced on them, and before Tolvar could act, five Order knights had been dispatched.

Tolvar pivoted Valko to face the onslaught only to witness the queen be run through.

“Your Majesty!” he cried.

She glanced at the sovereign’s still-lit torch before meeting Tolvar’s eyes. A last command to save the realm. Even as Ferika’s life was extinguished, she appeared regal.

Tolvar commanded Valko forward, his focus on his sword hand’s grip.

The first soldier he downed almost caused him to lose his grip. He tightened it, silently cursing himself. He would avenge his queen!

The others rushed to the fray, and it did not take long to down the rest.

Joss yelled, “We need to retrieve the Edan Stone!”

She was right. He called for Ghlee and the others to follow.

But from the corner of his eye, Tolvar noted the retreat of a man combing back through the trees.

Turas!

Tolvar sprang Valko into action. He halted the stallion in front of Turas. The Earl of Anscom flung his hands into the air.

“Tolvar! I surrender! ”

Tolvar slid from the saddle, his sword already in hand.

“Traitor.” Tolvar swiped his sword and opened a gash in Turas’s chest. The man howled and hunched protectively. “Coward.” Tolvar slashed his sword again making two gashes bloom red on his forearms.

“Cease!” Turas yelped in pain; his eyes pled with Tolvar’s. “I surrender!”

Tolvar’s sword plunged through Turas’s chest. The man choked out a grunt.

“I told you I would kill you,” Tolvar said, disengaging his sword from Turas’s body. The life went out of Turas’s eyes.

Tolvar’s sword hung at his side. Stars, he was already spent.

“M’lord!” Joss sat tense on her steed. “We must get the Edan Stone.”

“Aye.” Tolvar mounted Valko and followed Joss to the others before directing them toward Anscom’s army, which Crevan obviously led alone.

In the midst of the battlefield, his nostrils flared under the odor.

Sweat. Blood. Men’s innards. The foul smell of bowels being released upon death.

War. Slowly, they zigzagged through the clash of men.

Earls against their neighbors. Neighbors against their friends.

Friends against all reason. Grenden against Lenfore.

The facial expressions he trotted past were made of rotten intentions, repugnant deeds, and repulsive outrage. ’Twas disgraceful. ’Twas misguided.

’Twas war.

Evening laid to waste. The Falling Leaves Full Moon had begun its ascent by the time Tolvar had fought through the masses. He thought he could make out the form of Norwell and a few Brones he recognized from his time in imprisonment. Crevan could not be far.

Someone cried out, and Tolvar caught a soldier pointing toward the city.

The torch of the sovereign had been doused. King Rian was dead.

Men, comprehending the act, paused, glancing about as if in a stupor. Tolvar noted more than one man was marked with a dark trace across his neck. One man began sobbing.

But the moment lasted only a few breaths.

In the distance, a battering ram’s thump restarted.

He glanced behind to see if Ghlee, Alvie, Joss, and Barrett were all still with him. Shockingly, they were.

The scourge of battle whipped back into action, and this time, Tolvar found himself unable to escape it.

Men from stars only knew attacked anyone who stood before them.

The drive of forces caused the group to retreat from where Turas’s army still marched down the field, hacking down person after person.

The Curse of Adrienne. Of course. ’Twas feeding their strength.

“Wolf, watch out!” Ghlee yelled.

A spear plunged toward Tolvar. He barely managed to block and avert it.

Exhausted. He was already exhausted. And as the battle drew them farther and farther from Anscom’s army, and thus Crevan and Edan Stone, Tolvar wondered how his strength would see him through this night.