The Sundering: The Sentinel Part 20

And Kleef knows he and Arietta were meant for each other. He can feel it in the aura of warmth and comfort that s.h.i.+elds them from despair, in the love and joy that armors them against the immorality all around them. As long as they have each other, they are invincible.

Then Kleef feels a strip of cold metal between his fingers, and he looks down to discover that the hand holding his wears a golden ring. It is huge and gaudy, with a setting that holds a moonstone carved into the image of a striking wyvern. The ring is the signet of House Seasilver, and that can only mean he is holding the hand of Grand d.u.c.h.ess Arietta Seasilver.

Now, the love that has been armoring them is gone. No matter how much she might want to, a grand d.u.c.h.ess can never marry a mere watchman. Take him for a paramour, perhaps even keep him in the house disguised as a loyal retainer. But wed? The scandal would weaken her entire house. The Seasilvers would find themselves shunned by n.o.ble and royal alike, quietly demoted to the status of mere merchants-to be tolerated when necessary, but not to be courted or befriended.

Kleef feels the old bitterness seeping back. The only way he can have Arietta is through subterfuge and deception, and he cannot dishonor either of them in such a manner. He would be destroying the very thing he loved.

No sooner has Kleef come to this conclusion than Arietta's hand turns cold. It starts to shrivel and wither, and the nails grow long and yellow. It becomes the hand of a crone. When he gasps and looks up, her face is gaunt and gray and hard. She is wearing a queen's crown, and the light in her eyes has gone dim and malevolent.

"Have courage, Kleef," The voice is soft and wispy and familiar-and it is not Arietta's. "Ask Shar, and I can be yours."

But Kleef has been in these dreams before, and he knows that the words are a diversion-that Yder has found him again. He shakes his head and tries to will himself awake.

Arietta's face grows harsh and wrinkled. Her mouth drops into an angry frown, and she glares at him in hatred.

"Kleef, you could have saved me," she says. "All you had to do was ask."

Arietta jerks her hand from Kleef's grasp, and then he feels it on his shoulder, squeezing hard and shaking.

"Kleef!" This time, the voice was Arietta's, and it was filled not with hatred and disappointment but with impatience. "Kleef, wake up!"

Kleef opened his eyes and found a tent of blonde hair hanging down above him. In the middle was a slender female face with a long nose and full lips. Arietta, as beautiful as ever-with Kleef's head resting in her lap.

Could it be that some part of his dream had been real? Could it be that the Arietta in his dreams had grown cold and cruel not because of their love but because he turned away from it?

Kleef smiled, then reached up to take the hand that was shaking his shoulder. "We can't let them tell us who to love."

Arietta's eyes grew round with surprise. "What?"

"This is important," Kleef said. "Follow your heart. It's the only way to save yourself."

Arietta's jaw dropped. She seemed to study Kleef for a moment without really seeing him, then finally said, "Good advice." She looked up the gravelly slope. "Perhaps I'll take it."

Kleef followed her gaze toward the canyon wall and was surprised to see Joelle clambering into the mouth of a hanging ravine. She had a coil of rope slung across her shoulder and did not look all that tired for a woman who had just completed a fifty-foot climb.

"Where's she going?" he asked.

"Time to leave the river."

Arietta pointed down the canyon, to where a blanket of dark shadow lay thick on the water. It seemed to be spreading, pus.h.i.+ng slowly upriver and creeping along the canyon walls.

Kleef sat upright. "Tell me that's just fog."

"I wish I could," Arietta said. "But we both know it's not."

Stomach knotting and eyes fixed on the remnants of the Shadowfell, Kleef rose. "Where's Malik?"

"Have no fear." Malik's voice came from behind him. "I am here."

Kleef breathed a sigh of relief, then turned to the little man. "We need to get you out of here."

"That's the idea," Arietta said. "As soon as Joelle secures the rope, we're climbing out."

Kleef looked back up the slope and saw that Joelle had vanished into the interior of the ravine.

"We might not have that long." Kleef drew Watcher, then slung the sword's scabbard across his back. "I couldn't do it. I let them in."

"Who?" Malik asked.

"Who do you think?" Kleef replied. "Shar. Yder."

Malik's expression grew angry. "Do not snarl at me," he said. "You are the one who cannot forgive his own G.o.d."

"That's enough," Arietta said, crossing to the canyon wall. "The Shadovar were bound to find us sooner or later, and we were still on the river when Kleef went to sleep. If we're lucky, we can be out of here and halfway to Grumbar's Temple before they realize we've left the canyon."

Kleef doubted they would be so lucky, but-at least if he remembered his dream correctly-the Shadovar had not been with him long before Arietta awakened him. Keeping a careful eye on the shadows around them, he followed Arietta and Malik up to the canyon wall.

They did not have to wait long before Joelle tossed the rope down. Arietta made the climb first, pausing twice to twine the line around her legs so she could rest her arms. Malik was not strong enough to make the climb on his own, so he tied the rope around his waist and spent several minutes complaining while the two women hauled him up. Kleef brought up the rear, hauling himself up hand over hand.

He was nearly at the top when the tw.a.n.g of a bowstring rang out inside the ravine. It was followed by a strangled gasp and the scuff of running boots, then another tw.a.n.g.

Malik's head appeared above, peering down over the cliff. "What is taking you so long?" he demanded. "There are orcs!"

Kleef practically flew up the last ten feet, pulling so hard that the rope stretched and bounced each time he grabbed hold of it. By the time he reached the ravine mouth, his breath was coming hard and his arms were trembling with fatigue. Still, he clambered over the edge and rolled, then came up on a knee with Watcher in hand.

The hanging ravine narrowed almost immediately into a slot canyon, and Kleef found himself looking up a rocky, sheer-sided pa.s.sage not much wider than he was tall. Malik was to his right, crouching behind a small boulder. Arietta stood ten paces ahead, peering around a sharp bend. She had an arrow nocked and her bow raised, but had not yet drawn the string back. Joelle was nowhere to be seen.

Kleef went to Arietta's side. A short distance ahead, a pair of orc legs lay on a small boulder, the body above them concealed by another bend in the stony pa.s.sage. Next to the legs, a second orc slumped against the canyon wall. He had an arrow in his throat and a look of surprise on his brutish face. Like the orcs that had been hara.s.sing Faroz's caravan, he was broad-bodied and muscular, with stooped shoulders and long gangling arms. He also wore the same kind of armor-a boiled leather breastplate reinforced with bands of waxed wood.

"Where's Joelle?" Kleef asked.

"Scouting ahead." Arietta gestured at the orc with the arrow in his throat. "What do you think? The same tribe as before?"

"That would be my guess," Kleef said. "It makes more sense than orcs living in the Chondalwood."

"Then the Shadovar must have walked them through the Shadowfell," Arietta said. "There's no way they came through the Chondalwood-not this fast, and certainly not with the treants and satyrs against them."

"I know," Kleef said. "Yder's found us again-and it's my fault."

"Because you had to sleep?" Arietta shook her head. "You stayed awake for five days. No one else could have done such a thing."

"Not because I had to sleep-because Malik's right." Kleef glanced back. The only sign of the little man was the rope snaking across the rocky ground toward the boulder where he was hiding. "I'm bitter and resentful, and Yder is using that against us."

Arietta reluctantly nodded. "You've certainly had reason to be resentful in the past." She pointed at his sword. "But Helm is back now. Perhaps that will make it easier to let go of your anger."

Kleef was still considering her words when Joelle raced around the bend, coming so fast she nearly ran into Kleef.

"Hurry!" she whispered. "We don't have much time."

"Before what?" Kleef asked.

"Orcs." Joelle turned to start back up the narrow gorge. "Dozens, at least-maybe the whole horde."

Arietta started after her, but Kleef remained where he was.

"Why are we going toward them?" he asked.

Joelle paused and craned her neck, looking up the rocky face of the wall beside them. It was as sheer as the cliff they had just ascended-and easily ten times higher.

"Because we can't climb that," she said. "And if we turn back, the only place to go is into the river."

With that, she and Arietta disappeared up the narrow canyon. Kleef was still confused, but there was no remaining behind. He turned to summon Malik and found the little man already on the move, his short sword in hand and a worried look in his eyes.

"I am sure she has a plan," he said. "Even if it is only to limit our suffering by seeing that we die sooner rather than later."

Reluctant to leave Malik alone at the rear of the line, Kleef fell in behind the little man, then checked the agate on Watcher's crossguard. It did not make him feel much safer to see the stone still dark. There could be no doubt now that Yder had found them, so if the Shadovar were not showing themselves yet, it could only mean they were preparing some more perilous trap.

Following the two women up the narrow pa.s.sage was difficult and tiring. At first, the canyon floor was blanketed in so much soft sand that it was almost impossible to run. After a hundred steps, it became packed with boulders, and they had to clamber and crawl as though climbing through a cavern. Then it sprouted a dense thicket of willow that prevented them from seeing more than a few feet ahead.

The sound of clacking stones and jangling steel began to ring down the canyon. Joelle and Arietta started to hang back with Malik, at times taking him by the arms and dragging him along. m.u.f.fled grunts and angry snarls began to punctuate the approaching noise, and Kleef moved into the lead, certain they were about to run headlong into the front of the orc column.

He was just starting to make out individual voices when Joelle caught him by the arm and quietly pulled him toward the canyon wall. For a moment, he didn't understand what she was doing. All he saw was another rocky face, slightly lighter than the stone around it.

Then she drew him toward the downhill side of the light area, where a curving black line marked the seam between the dark rock of the canyon wall and the lighter stone of a boulder. About twelve feet up, the seam widened into the shape of a wedge, and disappearing into this s.p.a.ce was Malik's boot.

Joelle quickly wedged her hands into the seam, then scrambled to the top of the boulder and reached down for Watcher. Kleef pa.s.sed the sword to her and followed her example, and seconds later he found himself looking up a steep rocky chute choked with boulders, loose stones, and long-dead trees. Malik and Arietta were crouched behind a gray log just a few feet above, side by side with their weapons at the ready. A thousand paces beyond them, the chute ended in a small, circular cliff that looked no higher than the one they had climbed just a short time before.

With the willows rustling down in the canyon and the sound of orc voices practically beneath them, they did not dare risk moving. Kleef took his sword back from Joelle, then lay atop the boulder to watch the orcs pa.s.s.

At first, the thicket was too dense for him to see much more than an occasional double-bladed axe or bear-skull helmet. But soon enough, the willows fell victim to the constant tramping of the orc column, and he could see that the horde was descending the narrow pa.s.sage two abreast. The canyon was too serpentine for him to see the length of the column, but the orcs were moving at a steady pace, and Kleef and his companions were still watching more than a quarter hour later.

When the rear of the column finally came into sight, the warriors appeared to be much larger and stronger than those who had pa.s.sed before. Instead of leather, they were armored in steel scale, and most carried both swords and pikes. And in the center of this bunch marched a huge orc with broad shoulders and tusks long enough to gut a bear. Wearing ornate plate armor and armed with a two-handed sword, he appeared to be their chieftan. Next to him limped a tall, lanky orc in a snakeskin cape over thigh-length chain mail. With a finger bone through his nose and one eye burned out, he was almost certainly a shaman of Gruumsh.

If any Shadovar were accompanying the pair, Kleef saw no sign of them.

As the two orcs pa.s.sed beneath the chute, the shaman suddenly slowed his pace. He started to look up toward the canyon walls-until the chieftan snarled and cuffed him in the back of the head. The shaman grunted and started forward again, but his gaze drifted back to the chute.

Kleef cursed under his breath and gathered himself to spring, but Joelle laid a hand on his arm and squeezed. The shaman limped another couple of steps, then stumbled and finally looked away.

The column pa.s.sed out of view a few minutes later, but the companions remained tense and still until the sound of clattering stones and jangling weapons had faded into nothingness. And even then, when they rose and began to ascend the chute, they said nothing and did their best to climb in silence.

It was a futile effort. No matter how carefully they moved, gravel rattled, stones clattered, and dead branches snapped. Knowing it would not be long before the first orcs reached the end of the slot canyon and pa.s.sed word back about the dead scouts, Kleef kept one eye on the chute entrance. The shaman had clearly sensed something as he pa.s.sed, and when it grew apparent that their quarry had escaped, the chute would be the first place the orcs searched.

The companions were about a third of the way up, ascending a field of rocks, when a head-sized stone rolled from beneath Arietta's foot and came tumbling down the slope. Kleef pulled Malik aside, then watched in dismay as the rock bounced off a boulder and went cras.h.i.+ng down the chute.

Arietta looked horrified by the misstep, until Joelle turned and reached down the steep slope to give her shoulder a rea.s.suring squeeze.

"I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner," the heartwarder said. "And now, we worry only about getting out of here."

Joelle smiled, and Arietta began to look a little less mortified. The companions began to ascend as fast as possible, doing their best to avoid climbing behind one another so n.o.body would get hit by a bouncing rock. At times, the slope was so steep they had to scramble on all fours, and often Kleef had to boost Malik over a boulder or up an outcropping. Soon, they were all sweating and huffing, but every step carried them visibly closer to safety, and even Malik did not allow his fatigue to slow him.

They were only a few hundred steps from the top when a signal horn rang out below. It was impossible to see their pursuers over the jumble of boulders and logs between them and the chute entrance, but there could be little doubt that the orcs had picked up their trail. Kleef pointed at the crescent of low cliffs that ringed the top of the slope.

"Almost ... there," he panted. "Still have plenty of time."

They scrambled over one more boulder field and found only a short, steep slope of loose gravel between them and the cliffs. Kleef stopped there and climbed onto the largest boulder he could find. Then he turned to study the chute below.

The orcs were starting to come into a view, a swarm of hunched figures clambering over boulders and logs, their weapons slung across their backs, their long arms pulling them up the steep slope almost as fast as a human could run. But as they climbed, they were unleas.h.i.+ng a small avalanche of stones, filling the chute with a torrent of bouncing stones that felled a steady stream of warriors.

Kleef remained on the boulder for a long while, watching the orcs and trying to catch a glimpse of their leader. He knew better than to think killing the chieftan would make the orcs forsake the Eye of Gruumsh, but it might cause a power struggle and distract them for a while-perhaps long enough for him and his companions to deliver the Eye to Grumbar's Temple.

Unfortunately, the chieftan was nowhere to be seen-no doubt because he was too smart to lead the way into such an obvious deathtrap. Kleef waited until the first orcs were halfway up the chute, then jumped off the boulder.

By then, Joelle had climbed the small cliff and was just disappearing over the top. Malik was at the base, waiting for her to toss the rope down to him. Arietta had stayed behind with Kleef and was standing between two large boulders, her bow in hand and her quiver hanging from her left hip.

Clearly, she thought Kleef intended to do this the hard way. He spent a moment studying the boulder field to be sure that wouldn't be necessary, then waved Arietta toward the cliff.

"Malik will be exposed while he's going up," he said. "That will go faster if you're on top, helping Joelle pull him. I can handle things here."

Arietta c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. "Kleef, that isn't necessary," she said. "You have nothing to feel guilty about."

Kleef frowned. "Guilty?"

"About your anger with Helm," Arietta said. "After five days without sleep, you were in no condition to contemplate such things."

"You think I'm going to make some kind of last stand? Against hundreds of orcs?"

"Aren't you?"

Kleef shook his head. "No," he said. "That's crazy."

"Then what are you going to do?"

A soft clatter sounded from the base of the cliff. Kleef glanced toward the sound to find the end of the rope lying in the gravel and Malik stepping over to retrieve it.

"I'm just going to slow them down," Kleef said, waving toward one of the boulders he had selected. "Maybe reduce their numbers a bit. You'll see."

Arietta studied the boulder for a moment, then finally nodded. "You'd better not be deceiving me, Kleef." She started up the slope. "I want you climbing that cliff as soon as we have Malik on top."

Kleef smiled. "As you command, my lady."

Now that a rope was hanging over the cliff, the orcs redoubled their efforts and came up the slope even faster than before. They were still too far away for their slings and crude bows to be effective, but that would not remain true for long. Kleef went to a waist-high boulder resting atop another larger stone, then pressed his shoulder to it and pushed.

The boulder slid off so easily that Kleef nearly fell over headlong. It rolled once, twice-then dropped between two huge monoliths and stopped dead.

The orcs saw what he was attempting and began to break out slings and bows. Kleef picked up a rock the size of his own chest and hurled it down the slope. It bounced off a larger boulder and went arcing through the air, picking up speed as it dropped through the chute. When it hit a second time, it knocked half a dozen smaller stones free, most of which began to roll and pick up momentum. Within moments there were a couple of dozen head-sized stones following the boulder down toward the orcs.

The orcs answered by launching a flight of arrows and stones that was doomed to fall short. Kleef ignored the volley and hurled another boulder down the slope. The result was much the same as the last time, and soon there was a second small avalanche of rocks tumbling down toward the orcs. By the time he had picked up a third boulder, the second was bouncing through the enemy swarm, leaving behind a trail of billowing dust and broken, groaning bodies.