Sons of Ironstorm - Book 4: Griffon's Stand

Chapter 18: Home

"They shall cast all old hatreds aside and renew bonds most ancient.

With flags of might and light, they will lead the reborn forward.

And battle will be waged against the agents of the Shadow

Until the heavens, themselves tremble

And Darkness cries for mercy."

- from the Norak Utterance, Eleventh Stanza

Snow was falling heavily on the Aramas as the overcast sky overhead shifted uneasily in the early winter wind. Hidden almost completely by those clouds, Ri'im was no more than a bright spot behind the dark grey barrier, though he was nearly at full noon overhead. Besides the keening of the wind across the snow-covered landscape, no animal stirred, or made a sound. It was a typical Aramas winter day, with each passing shade putting more snow on an already blanketed plain.

It was into this eerily quiet scene that sound and motion roughly made an entrance in the form of a seething sa'anish style portal. The shifting light and sound irised open to form the gateway, through which a handful of figures, heavily garbed against the cold, stepped through and out onto the snow before the portal collapsed.

"I've put us at a league out from the western gates of Tal Morun, my capital," Lawrence pulled back the scarf protecting his face from the bitter Aramas winter cold to tersely explain in a gout of white breath. Reaching into his clothing, he pulled a tanned skin map of the city drawn by his own hand.

"At last report, rangers, elements of the Central Army and the king's guard were still holding Caer Aslan and the Tor, here." He tapped the locations out on the map with a gloved finger as he named them. "Mern has the cathedral uncontested, and the Merchant's Quarter, here. The rest of the city was unclaimed."

"So if we were to insert a covert team, we could possibly locate Mern and kill him, without engaging his forces," Duncan thoughtfully pointed out, tugging down his cloak's hood enough to keep the wind from whipping icy flakes of snow into his eyes as he looked at Lawrence's map.

"That would be the ideal situation," Lawrence confirmed with a nod.

"And the kek-kek-kek least ideal?" Qo'sa asked from where he stood beside Stylles in his shimmering picean battle armor. Oddly the picean Pathfinder didn't seem affected by the cold, moving as freely as he did in the warmer climes of the western muraan-occupied jungles.

"Using the vanguard to storm either the western or northern gates, break through and assault the cathedral directly," Lawrence replied, looking over at his fellow Scion. "Without a firm idea of how many of Mern's mercenaries are in the city, or what positions he's holding and defending, such an attack could go easily for us."

"Or brutally bad," Stylles interjected to finish for his king. Like Duncan, Will, and Lawrence, he too was swaddled in several layers of clothing as proof against the biting chill, his breath pluming whitely between wraps of his scarf over his face.

"Tal Morun is a fortress city, made to withstand both direct assault and siege. If Mern has put seasoned soldiers in strategic locations, they will not be easy to remove."

"Why do we not just simply use the Tree Staff to blast our way in?" Mram'met rumbled, his whiskers twitching in anxiety and curiosity. Bare-faced, with only his facial fur as proof against the cutting wind and the biting cold, the big muraan was nevertheless clothed warmly in several layers of stout northerner clothing, borrowed from the northerner King Nar'akaun, who was beginning to assemble northerner and central forest muraan into the army he intended on taking against Dani'cheris. Mram'met, his brother Hhe'muk and the handful of muraan they brought with them to scout were the first of his people on this side of the Rift since the fall of the Cadremoor, nearly 700 cycles ago. So, despite the bone-numbing cold, they were filled with not a little excitement. Hence his rather bold suggestion.