Page 19 of Winds of Destiny

Kai

It’s cloudy the next day, a rare occurrence outside of the mountains, I’ve noticed. These clouds are mostly mist, low and touching the ground in places. I can hardly see anything beyond our little caravan. Turo stays close to the rest of us for the day because of it—why bother scouting when you can hardly see past the nose on your face? I’m confident in our ability to protect ourselves. Apart from the attack right outside Zephyth, there haven’t been any signs that would give me a reason to think we’re in danger.

Naturally, that’s when reality slaps me in the face.

Camrael’s the one who notices it first. I don’t know why I’m surprised; I’ve discovered, to my delight, that he’s got very sharp senses. “Is that smoke?” he asks, turning toward Turo, who’s walking almost close enough to touch. Something has shifted between them this morning—seemingly for the better, as they’ve even managed polite conversation a few times.

This isn’t a cause for polite conversation, though. Smoke? On the plains? I can’t smell anything, but…

Turo’s eyes sharpen. “Not grass smoke, either,” he says. “I can smell resin.” He looks at me. “This settlement we’re close to, do you remember what the walls are made out of?”

“Mountain pine,” I say, a sinking feeling lodging in my gut. “Expensive, but cheaper than bargaining with Huridell for rock. The entire settlement was encircled by those walls.”

“We need to pick up the pace.” He turns to Camrael. “Will you lend me Lu?”

Camrael looks aghast. “You want to go ahead, by yourself ? How is that safe?”

“No one will see me,” Turo promises. “No one ever does unless I want them to.” He puts his hand on Camrael’s knee. “Please.”

Camrael looks conflicted, but apparently not even he can deny his bodyguard when Turo looks at him like that. He hops down and hands the jaka bird’s reins over.

Turo is astride a moment later.

“Be careful,” Camrael scolds him.

“I will.” Readying his bow, Turo disappears into the mist ahead of us.

Camrael shivers, and I reach out and haul him up into the wagon beside me. “We’re right behind him,” I murmur, then bang my hand sharply twice on the side of the wagon. Weapons at the ready . My men comply, and thus armed, we ride toward whatever danger awaits.

The smell of smoke is pervasive once the settlement is within view, but I’m surprised by how much heat is still left behind. As if the fire has only just burned out. The wall in front of us is demolished, either fallen down or burned to next to nothing where it stands. Inside of it, the settlement is…

I can’t see a single standing building.

This little place, known as Traveler’s Ease, was small but well established, peopled by nine or ten staunchly individualistic families who had eschewed all overtures from Huridell to become our vassals in exchange for more security. They allowed our merchants to stop here while they were on the road, though, and had showed us every courtesy on our way to Zephyth. They’d kept a constant watch and had seemed well defended. Their walls were two layers thick and taller than two men.

And now they’re gone.

“Turo!” Camrael jumps down from the wagon and runs forward, heedless of the heat and the danger. “ Turo !”

I go after him, frustrated at his carelessness but sharing his worry. I know Turo is tough, but whoever destroyed this place did so with a show of force that we can’t match with our current numbers.

Camrael has to roam a bit before he finds a way past the ruins of the wall, and I catch up to him right before he slides through. “Stay close to me,” I say as I grab his arm. He tries to pull away, but I don’t relent. “Camrael.” The warning is a courtesy to him—I will absolutely throw him over my shoulder if I have to, and he knows it.

Turo would agree with me on this.

And it seems that Camrael knows that, too. He nods stiffly and, belatedly, pulls out his sword.

I take the lead as we head into the smoldering wreckage.

There’s what looks like the gatehouse, also burned, to the right. Not five feet away from it is a body lying face down on the ground, a spear in the back and the head nearly separated from the neck. It wasn’t a blade that did it, either—the neck was clearly crushed by something heavy and quick-moving. A little more investigation of the ground reveals my impression to be correct—there are two parallel tracks here, one of them running right over this person’s neck.

Chariots.

“The Kamorans,” Camrael murmurs. Of course his keen eyes have made sense of it already. “They headed north, then.”

“Turo tracked them to the edge of the swamp. How did they turn north from there?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he missed something.” Neither of us believes that. “Or perhaps it was a different group.” That seems more likely, and more terrifying as well. The first war band was bad enough—two of them on the loose will wreak havoc on our caravans and traders.

Now isn’t the time to get lost in thought. There’s nothing we can do for this poor soul—not even a prayer to say for them, since only the great cities have gods. “Let’s find Turo,” I say, and Camrael nods and forces his eyes away from the macabre scene.

It isn’t the last body we find, though. The people here fought hard—there are over two dozen bodies with lightweight spears left in them on the main road through the settlement. The houses are harder to bear. The first one we come to is gutted from the fire, but I can see three small skeletons curled against the far wall. They’re so close they’re practically lying on top of each other. Three children, hoping against hope…

I whisper a prayer to Carnuatu even though the babes weren’t among the faithful. If anyone ever deserved to be granted a god’s favor in the afterlife, it’s these innocent souls.

Camrael turns away the moment he sees them. His chest is heaving, his eyes wide enough that I can see white all the way around the irises. I don’t know if he’s about to cry, scream, or vomit. In the end, he doesn’t do any of those things, but he doesn’t look in any more of the houses, either. He’s more concerned with looking for Turo.

In the end, Turo is the one who finds us. We’re at the far end of the settlement beside the back gate and Camrael is close to having a breakdown when, all of a sudden, Turo comes around the corner of the broken wall.

“You!” Camrael smacks him on the arm, hard. “Where have you been? We’ve been looking and looking, I was afraid you were—you—”

Turo reaches for Camrael’s hand and, wonder of wonders, Camrael gives it to him without pause, searching for comfort from his oldest love. If I were a jealous man, I would be burning with envy right now. As it is, I don’t feel excluded because Turo is looking right at me. “There are survivors.” His voice is desperate. “I can hear them, but I can’t get to them. We need your people.”

Finally, something concrete we can do. “Show me.”

Turo nods and turns, heading away from the settlement at a jog. He’s still holding Camrael’s hand. I expect Camrael to take it back, if only to make his way more easily, but he doesn’t. He keeps pace with Turo and doesn’t pull away, just holds on as firmly as he himself is being held. Their grips are so tight their knuckles have blanched. Something is clearly wrong; there’s some aspect of this that I’m missing.

Understanding will have to wait, though. We’re getting close to the ocean, the roar of the waves against the cliffs growing with each step. The people of the settlement are—were—avid fisherfolk, their elders monitoring long lines that stretched from the top of the cliff down to the waves below. The lines are still there, but no people that I can see. Where is Turo taking us?

He follows a barely visible path on the ground until the grass turns to rough, porous black rocks. There are holes here and there, some small, some large enough for a person to crawl into— ah . When he stops in front of one and looks inside, I understand. By the time I reach them, Camrael has already gotten down onto his knees, compassion and pity warring in his face.

“There are at least ten people down there,” Turo says to me. I glance in and can see a few faces looking back up from the darkness, at least ten feet down. “One of them has a broken leg. Two are infants. We need to rig a rope.”

“How did they get down there in the first place?” I ask, appalled at their circumstances but relieved that someone in this gracious place has survived.

“They jumped.”

That far? It’s a miracle more of them didn’t break their limbs or skulls. “I’ll go down and get them ready to be lifted out,” I say. “Lord Turo, can you go and get my—”

“No, he needs to stay. I’ll get them,” Camrael says, scrambling back to his feet. “I’ll go get the others. Give me a moment.” He reaches out and touches Turo’s shoulder without being prompted. He’s been cold to him for nearly this entire journey, and now he’s treating Turo like he did back in Zephyth.

What am I missing?

“I’ll be right back,” he says, and Turo nods. Then Camrael is running away, and I’m left with Turo, who looks strangely blank as he stares down into the hole. Like his eyes are seeing something entirely different from what’s in front of him.

It’s my turn to grab his shoulder this time. “Are you all right?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer for a moment, blinking several times before he finally focuses on me. “Fine,” he says at last. “Are you sure you want to go down there?”

“Someone will have to. It might as well be me.” I’m sturdy enough that a ten-foot fall won’t faze me, and Turo doesn’t look like he has it in him to take that right now. I call down into the sinkhole, “Shift to the side so I may come down!”

“One wrong move from you and I’ll run you through!” a woman’s fierce voice calls back. “If you’re with those bastards, then—”

“I’m from Huridell. My men and I stayed with you not a month ago,” I tell her. “We’re making our return trip and had hoped to stay the night here. Our arrival now is pure chance, I promise you. We don’t intend to harm you.”

There’s a long silence, then, “Fine. But we’ll still be on our guard!”

“Fair enough.” I slide my lower half through the hole, then my upper, which takes far longer than it should thanks to the broadness of my shoulders. I end up scraped on both sides but make the fall fine.

In the darkness, I can barely see their faces. I conjure a spark and let it grow between my hands, taking in the survivors. There’s one grown woman, lying on the ground with a spear in her hands that’s pointed straight at me. One of her legs is badly twisted. Two teenagers flank her, nervously pointing their long knives in my direction, and the rest are children anywhere from ten years old to swaddled babes. All of them are silent, wide-eyed, and numb.

I hold up my hands, taking the light up with me. “I swear to you, we only want to help.” Overhead, I hear Camrael shouting in the distance—he must be getting close. “Will you let me bind your leg in preparation for getting out of here?”

The woman grimaces but nods. “Get the children out first, then do it.”

It takes some time for my men to put together a sling. While we wait, I do my best to distract the children—the horror of what brought them to this hiding place and the pain that their only adult is in clearly frightens them, but once I’m sitting down it’s not too hard to persuade one of them to put my cloak on. “It’s a little big for you,” I tell a girl who can’t be more than five years old, and—wonder of wonders—she smiles at me. “Maybe we can share it with someone else, hmm?”

She nods, and I lift up part of the fabric that’s pooled on the ground and hold it out to a boy. He’s more cautious, and the rock clenched in his hand tells me he’s prepared to lash out if he feels threatened, but eventually he comes over and settles beneath it. The cloth is still warm from my body, and after a second he makes a little whimpering noise and tucks it in around himself and the girl.

A shivering child who can’t be more than two, face streaked with tears, forgoes the middleman and plops herself right down in my lap. She turns her face toward my chest, then frowns. “Ow,” she says.

“Too hard?” I ask.

She nods.

“Hang on.” It takes a few minutes, but I manage to get my breastplate off and set the pieces aside. When she leans against me again, she closes her eyes with a comfortable sigh, and then there’s a rush of movement as the other young children either find a place beneath the cloak or curl up against my body. I even have one lad draped across my back. The teenagers are sticking with the injured woman, but even her expression is grudgingly approving.

“Is everything okay down there?” Cam calls.

“Fine,” I say.

“We’ve almost got the sling ready.”

“That’s good,” I say.

The little girl in my lap shakes her head.

“No, it’s not good?”

“Scary,” she whispers.

My arms are occupied, but I bend my neck down until I can rest my head on top of hers. “Not anymore,” I tell her. “The scary people are gone.”

She perks up a little. “Mama?”

Oh, shit. This is a question I’m not ready to answer. Lucky for me, the sling arrives just then, and soon my men are lifting children up and out of the hole. The woman goes last, pale and trembling after the pain of setting and splinting her leg. There are tears in her eyes, and she grips me hard for a moment as I set her in the sling. “Did anyone else survive?”

I shake my head. “Not that I saw. I’m so sorry.”

She closes her eyes and bites her lower lip so hard it begins to bleed. Then she’s being lifted up, and it’s too late to say something to comfort her. What comfort could I give, anyhow? There’s no mitigating a pain like this, no making it better.

The question is, what do we do with them now? We could bring them to Huridell with us, but when I mention it, the woman—Miya, she says—barks “No” in a firm, uncompromising voice. “We’ve been refusing the king of Huridell’s demands to swear fealty and abandon our home for over two years now,” she snaps. “I will not give in and go there just because our home is gone.”

Swear fealty? That’s news to me. I knew my father was interested in expanding our influence, but I had no idea he was applying so much pressure to our neighboring settlements. That he wouldn’t share this with me, his eldest son and heir, sits poorly, but I’m also not that surprised. It’s been a long time since I’ve fully trusted my father, ever since he delayed my coronation to remain in power. That period of delay is coming to an end, but I still don’t believe he’s prepared to step aside without me forcing him. My marriage to Cam will help do that, will show the powerful among our people that I’m taking my role as their next king seriously. My father won’t like it, but he’s going to have to accept it.

Unsurprisingly, Turo is the one who comes up with the idea of what to do with the refugees.

“You can go to Zephyth,” he says. “We have a spare wagon that will accommodate all of you, and we can give you rations that will suffice as long as you’re cautious with them over the next week.”

“But—our rams!” Rusen exclaims. “We can’t just give them away!”

“Would you rather yoke the children to the wagon and let them pull it?” Turo asks in a calm but dangerous tone of voice. “Because that’s the other option that I see. That, or all of us turning around and accompanying them there.”

I wish we had that kind of time, but if we did that, we’d arrive back home far later than my father expects. For all that he’s a lackadaisical ruler, he isn’t one to accept any excuses from his children. The last thing I need is to get my marriage off to an even more uncertain start with a king disinclined to listen to me and a fiancé confronted with the fact that I’ve been lying to them all along.

“I’ll go.”

I turn to look at the youngest member of my company. Jeric is unusually stern, almost haunted, nothing of his usual cheer to be seen on his face. Belatedly, I remember that he’s the oldest of seven children.

“Are you sure?” I won’t order him to do it, but I know that it would be good for the survivors to have another adult along with them. “We won’t be able to get you back to Huridell for some time.”

He nods firmly. “I’m sure. I can’t…” He loses his voice as he turns to stare at the smallest of the children, pain in his eyes. “They helped us,” he says quietly to me. “This place was good to us, and these are all that’s left of them. They deserve our help.”

Ah, this soft-hearted lad. I consider it for a moment. It will reduce our numbers, but we’re nearly home. “We’ll give them the wagon,” I say, and that’s that.

None of us stay the night in the wreckage of Traveler’s Ease. My men and I find and stack the bodies for burning while Turo and Camrael see to the survivors’ needs and prepare them for the journey ahead. Turo is good at field medicine, splinting Miya’s leg securely and handing over a sachet of herbs that he claims will make a pain-relieving tea that won’t cloud her head. “You should stay the night with us for safety,” he says.

It’s clear that Miya is on the verge of refusing, but luckily, I’ve got an ally in the form of the little girl who put herself in my lap underground. She’s clearly fussy, on the brink of a complete meltdown, and when she toddles over and holds her arms up to me, I’ve got to pick her up. That settles it, and we make them all a hearty meal and put them in our heated tents for the night. The babies are weaned, thank goodness, and Rusen surprises me by volunteering to care for them tonight.

“Both at once?” I ask in surprise.

“I’ve got five children at home,” he reminds me. “Two of them born together. It’s not the first time I’ve handled more than one babe at once.” He looks down at the children in his arms and his expression goes soft. “Is it the first time? Nooo,” he says with a hum to the babies as he rocks back and forth. “Ba baa, little lamb, close your eyes…” He walks off to sit by the fire, still singing lullabies.

“Will you keep Carew with you for the night?” Miya asks, drawing my attention. Her exhaustion is clear in the slump of her shoulders and the tension in her jaw. “I dread her reaction if we wake her up now.”

Judging from the death grip the girl has on the edge of my shirt, Miya has a point. “I’ve got her.”

Everyone beds down together as the stars come out, and for once I’m not lying next to Camrael. Instead, I’m on first watch with Turo. There’s no way I could fall asleep—and I’ve got a child to look after, anyhow. It’s the first time we’ve been alone together in quite a while, and I decide to take advantage of it. I hand over a cup of fresh-brewed tea from the kettle Morfan started, only satisfied once Turo finally takes a sip. We sit together on the back of the wagon our party is keeping, our feet brushing the grass below us.

“Do you think they’ll make it to Zephyth all right?” I murmur, careful to keep my voice low so little Carew won’t wake up. “I’m not doubting Jeric, but he’ll be the only able-bodied adult among them.”

“They’ll be all right. They know about the cliff road,” Turo says before drinking deeply from the cup. “They won’t be able to bring the wagon down there, of course, but it’s plenty large enough for them to walk along if they get into trouble.”

I’m not following. “Cliff road?”

“You don’t know it?” He looks surprised. “It’s an ancient path carved out of the side of the cliff. It stretches from Zephyth to far around the northern edge of your mountains, where it vanishes into the ice. It’s fallen apart in a few places, but with care, they’ll be able to use it.”

How can I not know about this? “Ancient, you say?”

“Mmhmm. Zephythan merchants have known about it for centuries. It used to be a trail of last resort when the everwinds blew especially hard.”

I shake my head. “It seems there’s always something new to be discovering in this world.”

“Most of it bad.”

“Lately,” I say. “But there are good things, too.”

“Here and there, I suppose.” He finishes off the cup, then stares down at the grass and smiles faintly, letting his leg sway back and forth. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear for a moment that I see a shadow darting away, but it’s gone before I can even muster the breath to comment on it.

“It’s hard to focus on the good things with the smell of the dead lingering in the air,” Turo adds, turning to look back at the settlement. “It’s good those children are leaving tomorrow. They’ll be haunted by this already as is.”

What is it that haunts you? I don’t ask, though. I already know he won’t tell me. “Let me get you some more tea,” I say instead.

“You don’t need to, you’ve got…” He gestures at Carew, now snoring slightly in her sleep. “I can do it.”

Like you ever do anything nice for yourself. “I need to stretch my legs anyway,” I say, and before he can say anything, I stand up, take his cup, and head back over to the fire.

I’ll add some honey this time.