Syth stood over the men attending to Valkarr, shifting from one foot to the other as his wide-eyed gaze bounced from Amric to the now solid core of Stronghold.
“Remember all that talk of wanting to fight you, swordsman?” he said fervently. “Forget every last word of it.”
CHAPTER 13
Amric stepped into the courtyard under a star-speckled sky. He inhaled deeply, savoring his first breaths of truly clean air in over two days.
Syth brushed past and hurled himself to the grass, rolling back and forth with a gleeful howl. Amric looked back at the brooding fortress out of reflex at the man’s careless commotion, but the darkened apertures in the sheer stone face remained as empty and lifeless as the eye sockets of a skull.
In fact, the entirety of the flight from Stronghold had been a study in contrast to their frenzied arrival. On the way in they had been harried and hunted and at the mercy of their deranged guide. On the way out, no other living creature had stirred to obstruct their exit. Before, the hush of the fortress had been like the bated breath of a crouching predator. Now it was instead the cavernous silence of the crypt. Amric did not know whether the Wyrgens had all perished in the collapse of the Fount chamber and the innermost core of Stronghold, or if the survivors had fled to remote corners of the place in the aftermath. In the end, he did not care much which was the case, as long as the foul creatures kept their distance.
Amric drew another deep breath and smiled. Let Syth revel in his regained freedom, anyway. After his months of captivity and his courageous actions during their escape, he had well earned it.
Halthak emerged from the corridor at his back, hollow-eyed and leaning upon his staff. Valkarr appeared beside him, and the pair descended the stairs to the courtyard with slow, deliberate movements. Amric felt a stab of worry at the way the Sil’ath warrior swayed on his feet, but he let none of it show in his tight smile. His friend was too proud and stubborn by far to let the others see the full depths of his fatigue, and any display of concern would only discomfit him.
The warrior’s insides twisted as he considered how close he had come to losing them both. It had been a near thing indeed, according to Bellimar; Halthak came so close to following the Sil’ath into the abyss that Amric made to abort the attempt for fear of sacrificing the man on a doomed cause. The Half-Ork was already lost in his efforts, however, and would not abandon the task. Through it all, the power flooding through Amric somehow kept the other two men infused with energy as well. It held them on the precipice while Halthak put forth a feverish, herculean effort. At last the healer’s bolstered magic won out, snatching them both back from death’s covetous grasp, and they collapsed into well-deserved oblivion.
After hours of slumber, Halthak had awakened to confirm that Valkarr was out of immediate danger, though he was quick to caution that a week or more of rest would be needed for full recuperation. Their provisions were running low, however, as the bulk of them had been left outside with the horses. Furthermore, by unspoken agreement, each of the men wished to put Stronghold behind him as soon as possible. So it was that when everyone was recovered enough to stand, they began the tense, cautious trek through the deserted fortress, aided by their sense of direction and Syth’s fading memory of Grelthus’s maps.
Last to appear at the mouth of the corridor was Bellimar, materializing from the shadows. He paused at the top of the stairs and turned a bold stare upon Amric, as if daring the unasked questions to fall from his lips. The swordsman met his gaze and said nothing. The time for that conversation would come soon enough.
In a welcome stroke of fortune, their horses were still in the squat stable building, unscathed if also very skittish. As he approached and soothed them, Amric wondered how much of the carnage within the fortress had drifted far enough to reach their keen senses out here.
The party left the courtyard and crossed the arcing metallic bridge on foot, with Amric leading the horses. After many hours traversing the tortuous corridors of Stronghold, Valkarr and Halthak were too tired to sit their saddles over such a precarious drop, and the nervous equines were on the verge of spooking as it was. Once they reached the tree-studded bluff at the other end of the bridge, they hobbled the horses and allowed them to graze. They set up camp for the night there, nestled back beneath a scruffy copse of trees. Partially screened from view by the trees, they built a fire and gathered around it to eat and rest in silence for a time. Halthak and Valkarr lapsed into sleep before even finishing their meals, leaving the other three wrapped in their own thoughts.
Amric gazed across the valley at the fortress, a towering black silhouette cleaving the night sky. He looked forward to being much further from that place of death, but there was nothing for it tonight. The high trail along the cliffs was too treacherous to navigate in the darkness. Perhaps by morning Halthak and Valkarr would be rested enough to attempt it, and if not, they would remain here on the bluff until they were ready. At least there were only two approaches to this location, and both were narrow and difficult to traverse with any measure of stealth.
“What next, Amric?” Bellimar asked, his voice pitched low so as not to wake the sleepers.
The swordsman turned away from Stronghold to find the eyes of both men upon him.
“Back to Keldrin’s Landing, for now,” he said. “Halthak and Valkarr need a place to rest that is warm, dry and safe.”
The old man chuckled. “It is difficult to say just how safe the city will prove for us. Morland may not be satisfied with the news we bring back.”
“Morland?” Syth asked, sitting forward. “The merchant?”
“The same,” Amric said. “He had some contact with my missing friends, and pointed us in this direction in exchange for our efforts in locating Grelthus. Evidently the two are-were in business of some kind together.”
The thief slouched back, a look of distaste twisting his features. “I know that full well. It was Morland who paid me to come here in the first place, to steal back some baubles of his from Grelthus. According to Morland, they had a falling out of some sort, and the Wyrgen then refused to return various items that belonged to the merchant by rights.”
“And you took him at his word?” Amric said, lifting an eyebrow.
“Not for a moment,” Syth admitted. “But I believed in the color and quantity of his coin. For the king’s ransom he offered me for the task, these items must have been very important to him. Unfortunately, I did believe the snake when he said that invoking his name would gain Grelthus’s trust. In truth, it had rather the opposite effect.” His expression darkened with anger, and then brightened again into a broad, wolfish grin. “Come to think of it, I am certain I saw some of those items on the Wyrgen’s table, there above the viewing chamber. Quite a pity that we were unable to retrieve them, is it not?”
Amric barked a laugh. “I’m for thwarting the devil myself, but it occurs to me that we are all returning to Keldrin’s Landing having failed in the eyes of a ruthless, powerful man at tasks he had a strong desire to see completed. Bellimar is correct; we are not likely to see the price on our heads lifted when we return.”
Syth’s eyebrows rose. “A contract out on you, eh? Nothing done in half measures with you, is there?”
“It is safest if we travel together until we near the city,” Amric said. “But we can part company before the gate, so that you do not invite a price on your head as well.”