Blood Tempered: Book 1 of the Sword Monk Saga

Blood Tempered: Part 24

Caida stood on the weathered rampart and watched the Roumnan army invest Thunderhead. They were businesslike, and thorough, laying out their camp in orderly rows of tents, with pickets for horses and basic perimeter fortifications–a low dirt wall, sharpened stakes–erected with startling speed. He could see a large work party returning from the wood where he and Olvera had had their altercation, and he had led the knight of Axum to admit something of his duplicity. Another party left camp at the same time, the canvas bags dangling from yokes a clear indication they were going for water from some source Caida wasn't familiar with.

Caida had the feeling the woods outside Thunderhead would disappear entirely in the next few days, leaving acres of stumps. Another price Wyeth would pay for anarchy.

He looked over his shoulder at the courtyard below. Caida was no soldier; Andines were by their tenets precluded from fighting in such fashion. But he could not see how these mercenaries, however rough, could withstand the siege to come. Thunderhead had been built to be defended by small numbers, it was true; only a few enemies at a time could make an assault up the ramp to the northeastern gate, perhaps ten at a time. But the enemy were not attacking from that direction, where gravity, confined space and concentration of arrow fire could easily turn most tides. No, the threat was from the rear, from Wyeth rather than Ardesh, and those who had built Thunderhead had not given, or not been able to give, as much consideration to the western defenses.

Time and neglect had made the situation worse. Now Jaga had a tall but crumbling wall, rather longer and more difficult to defend than he might wish for. There was no moat, and half the merlons along the battlement were gone, tumbled to the courtyard or the dusty ground outside long before. Manning the battlements would be an unpleasant, dangerous task.

Caida didn't care about merlons. Or the investment of Thunderhead. Or much of anything that was going on around him. His crisis of faith had made such life and death matters jarringly unimportant to him.

He looked down at the lady Anya in the courtyard below. That she was a witch was no longer in doubt. Not that he had really doubted. Too many hard men in Thunderhead were genuinely afraid of her to leave room for doubt on that point.

Caida let his eyes linger on her for a time as she completed her magical circle. He pushed his thoughts away from the memory of touching her, the memory of the sight of her naked body. He made himself look elsewhere, and saw the man who had taken him and Olvera into Thunderhead. Korbo Dogrun. Korbo was approaching him, picking his way along the rampart.

"Well, brother," said the hard, homely man once he'd reached Caida, "seems you've landed in the stew along with the rest of us. That is, if you stay. I imagine the Roumnans will give you safe passage if you decide to leave. Though they'll likely want information from you first."

Caida said nothing, just nodded. After a short pause, Korbo spoke again.

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Plan to leave."

Caida considered the question. He tried to imagine going back to the monastery, meeting the abbot, explaining how he had left the princess in a tottering fortress in command of a mercenary band and besieged by the forces of her own country.

He tried to imagine it, and failed utterly. Nothing was as it seemed mere days before, not even Caida himself. Whatever might happen, whatever fate or design it was that had brought him to this place at this time, there was no going back to the world he had inhabited before the abbot had called him to meet Olvera.

The only thing that remained unchanged, it seemed, was the lethal steel strapped to his back. Lethal–yet unblooded, save for the thing he had killed at the base of the Timors. Impervious and indifferent to doubt and confusion, his sword–his soul–existed to part flesh, batter armor, break bone. To end life. Andos's three strictures bound him, it was true: Protect. Obey. Pray. But now even that rock-solid fundament of his existence had been called into question.

What if the Book of Andos was incomplete? Altered?

A lie?

Then only the steel remained to him, and its grim, remorseless purpose.

"No," Caida said at last, long after Korbo had stopped waiting for a reply. "I plan to stay." If only to avoid thinking about what I would do otherwise.