Seeking the Veil, Part 2

The Last

"We have the gap!"

The fight was close, it was all around, the enemy a horde that never ceased. And yet, they had been pushed back. Within the Veil he worked, and Hestea was not alone. Smallhands and Rufus had joined, Hack and Durtle grunting as they worked the other side. Each one keeping their distance from Hestea, each one covered in blood, sodden with snow and moving like their lives depended on it. Others pushed through, aiding where they could. Grimback was a darting lizard, twisting through, blades flying. Orangebeard was a bellowing bear, chopping as he flung insults, spitting as he split men and then he called to his own, "Yer not men! Yer not tired! Ya will not slow!"

The Veil flickered, a shroud that protected, funneled Hestea's attack, kept him moving. He twisted his grip, swung forward, then back, leapt up, brought his hammer down and swept the feet from another soldier.

"That's me boy! That's me Hammerblood!" Orangebeard laughed as he spun his axes, bald head gleaming, beard alive and bristling.

But the Band behind was shallow, and there were hollows, like holes of men that had been full and now were—

"Gone."

The Sacraith still worked. Hestea glanced up, the dark magi stood with robes billowing on a precipice high up, balanced on rock and ice, too far for axe and too far for arrow. The Saeordin stretched within the narrow valley, filling it, flooding it, their bobbing black heads like some black sea with no distant shore.

The Veil faltered. They would die there — the Band. They all would.

It is like I have said, came an arrogant voice, an unwelcome voice. It is like I told you. But you will not listen.

Hestea grit his teeth, swinging the hammer again, striking a sword, even as the Saeordin swung the other. Hestea brought out his dagger, catching the blade, shoving back against the soldier as he swung the hammer back with a crunch.

They will keep coming. They will always keep coming. This is not your fight. This is not your place. Did you not listen?

Hestea howled, "Shut up, Father. Shut up!"

But the voice was not his, his father was not there, and memory does not chastise.

The cloud upon his vision — this Veil that came at his call — vanished. Rolling away with the wind.

Hestea blinked, looking around. The men still fought, but he saw their eyes now. He saw the set of their mouths. He felt his own fatigue. Wounds and cuts that drained him, hobbled him, made him sluggish. "We are going to die."

And it would mean nothing.

"Nothing." The word was like ash upon his tongue and terror in his heart.

Then the impossible happened. Then Gunter appeared.

Popping next to Hestea with a breath of air, like life, the magus held up one hand, the other upon his chest; the amulet held firmly in his grasp. It was worn with age and crude, like something formed from a village smithy, but Gunter funneled his power through it like it was a fine medallion of gold, wrought by a master, studded in gems and handed down through the ages. Gunter called out louder than thunder, "Pull back," his voice booming.

Then power exploded forward. Saeordin soldiers flew back in pieces, seared in half, like a blade of air cutting across and blowing with a fury.

Gunter met Hestea's eyes and nodded once. "You were right." Then turned back to his work.

He was a Magus, the power of Quan poured off of him like a lighthouse beacon and he had given a command. The men of the Band did not question, they did not tarry, they turned from the gap and ran like jack rabbits before the fox.

Hestea leapt a body, stumbled on a hole, slid on some ice and splashed through mud. A strange humming formed, the vibration loud, settling in Hestea's gut, pushing at him from within. Hestea pushed his legs faster.

But he was not fast enough. The humming intensified, growing and rising, then the crack of power came. It swept him along, pushed him like a gale wind and sent him sprawling across the field . He rose on an arm, turning, gasping, to see the gap of snow and rock slide. Hald's Pass rippled. Each side dissolved.

And not just some small thing, like that of a shattered rock, or like that which Dietra had cast down earlier. This was like the unleashing of the ocean, flooding the gap, rumbling and roaring. And before it all — standing like a conductor, arm out raised as the music rose to a crescendo — stood Gunter. His shadow small, his figure slight, as a white mountain collapsed into the gap, sealing it, a blizzard billowing out.

And then he was gone. "Gunter."