darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,49

without—I had lost mine in the Sylvani Empire some months before, and hadn’t had the resources to replace it until we got to the school. I started hanging things off my sword rig as Maryam began to speak.

“We’ve got all the students collecting their bolt bags and their other gear. I gave them a quarter hour to get ready and meet us in the great hall. Those servants who don’t have immediate duties are either helping out with readying the horses and the agutes, parceling out food for the locals, or have already gone out the gates and scattered into the hills.”

I was glad to hear that we had agutes. The large wooly pack goats would be enormously helpful for getting supplies over the narrow tracks of the southern passes.

“So, we’re ready to move out?” asked Jax.

“Very nearly. The only major task that’s left is to rouse the sleepers and throw open the undergates.”

“Sleepers?” asked Triss.

Jax smiled—a thoroughly predatory expression. “The Kvani will get no joy of this castle. When we took the place over, we knew that the Son of Heaven might send his forces against us at any time, so we made preparations to see that anyone who came for us would have a great deal more to worry about than hunting us through the hills. Loris labored long hours in the deep catacombs that lie beneath the lowest cellars. He created a lure and a trap for the ghouls and night-gaunts that roam the high wastes. It draws them in and lays an enchantment of deepest sleep on them until we need them.”

Faran whistled. “Nasty! I like it. How many are there?”

“No one knows,” replied Maryam. “They’ve been collecting there for seven years. Hundreds at the least, and not one of them has fed since they arrived. They will be very hungry when they wake, and trapped within the walls of the castle by Loris’s enchantments.”

“Setting the dead against a lord of the dead,” said Siri. “There’s a poetry to that.”

“There is,” said Jax, “though we didn’t know about the Son of Heaven when we set the trap. I wish Loris had lived long enough to know how appropriate his work truly was.”

Kelos arrived then. “Chomarr’s gone. Looks like he went out the garderobe to avoid the watch you had set on his room, Jax.”

“It’s barely eight inches across,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I put him there.”

Kelos shrugged. “He widened it a bit, and by hand if I’m any judge of such things. Wanted to avoid any light of magic as he worked, I imagine. At least we have the small pleasure of knowing he had to wallow in his own shit to get out.”

“Five minutes,” said Maryam.

Kelos raised a questioning eyebrow at me.

“That’s when the students meet us in the great hall,” I told him. “At which point, we ride for the temple. Jax, if you’re planning on rousing your sleepers, you’d best get to it. Take Siri and Faran with you. I’d like them both to see Loris’s setup. It sounds like it might come in handy for future arrangements.”

“Sleepers?” asked Kelos.

I was already out of my chair. “I’ll tell you about it as we go.”

* * *

“There’s a party of Avarsi raiders camped out in the valley ahead,” said Xin, his voice quiet in the darkness. “They’re well ahead of the main army of the Kvani—probably sent to cut off the high tracks that lead over the mountains and down through the Evindine watershed to Varya.”

The valley in question lay two days ride west of Jax’s castle. It was a narrow vale just below the only viable route that ran directly between Dalridia and Varya. As with the goat tracks that crossed over from Uln in the Magelands to the east, viable was a term more of art than commerce. It was possible for a hiker in good health to cross from Dalridia to the birth waters of the Evindine, but only during a few scant months in summer, and afoot. Agutes were the only pack animal that could make the crossing at all, and the goats were unsuitable for really big loads.

“Can we get around the raiders?” I asked.

Xin nodded. “Probably, but only if we go shrouded. They’re camped right up into the throat of the pass. Even now, in the early hours before morning, with most of the camp asleep it would be difficult.”

Jax broke in. “That would mean abandoning the agutes and any supplies we can’t carry on