[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] Chapter 35

The Fifth Cohort hunkered down behind their ramparts of wood and earth. Centurion Il’tam watched from his tent as the men and women worked tirelessly to replace the broken sections of the wall and to make the camp whole once more.

The ice storms were getting worse, but it was nothing the Fifth couldn’t handle.

“Tam,” a soft voice urged from deeper within the warmth of his shared tent.

Il’tam turned to look at his fellow Centurion. “What is it, Ryn?”

The younger man looked flustered now that Il’tam’s calm brown eyes fell upon him. Il’tam did his best to soften his features. It wouldn’t do to scare the boy.

He had been raised up on a shield just last month for his bravery. As new as he was to the Legion, he was proving to be more than capable.

However, Il’tam knew the stories circulating about himself and his odd appearance. Brown eyes were not common or natural on Aldim, and this marked him as a person to watch out for.

His deeds both on and off the battlefield had only further spawned such outlandish stories that he had once tried to squash. An effort he eventually gave up.

The harder he fought against them, the more the men and women under his command believed them. Better to just ignore them like the howling of the icy wind.

“Out with it, Ryn, you are among friends here,” Tam told him.

Gos’ryn swallowed hard and nodded. Despite his strength and valor in battle, he still had a baby face. The man would probably never grow a beard, Tam knew the others made fun of him for it, but Gos’ryn was a stalwart soul. He never let it get him down for long.

“This storm is not natural. We should build a more temporary fortification instead of constantly reinforcing what we have. I… do not mean to speak out of turn, sir, but we will be mired here for at least another week or more if my guess is true.”

Hands behind his back, one gripping the wrist of the other, Tam sharpened his gaze on the young man before him. “Is this one of your gut feelings, Ryn?”

The younger man nodded.

His “gut feelings” were quickly becoming the stuff of legend. Even Tam’s stories didn’t stretch that far. Ryn was said to be a Windcaller, somebody who could speak to the winds and listen to them.

When the accursed Shadesblight moved through the world, the currents of the weather shifted around it like a black void. Ryn couldn’t see into those areas, and he soon picked up that he should avoid them.

His timely warnings had saved many lives of the Fifth and beyond.

More importantly than warnings of the Shadesblight–all members of the Legion were Marked to temporarily resist the corrupting effects–was how Ryn could tell when the weather would shift.

Knowing, down to the minute, when the weather would suddenly turn rainy and gray, which was perfect to hide their movements against an enemy location, was a godsend.

Tam listened to his newest Centurion’s advice with the gravity it was due. “So be it,” Tam told him. He turned to the side where a thin young man with straw-colored hair and mismatched eyes snapped to attention in his silver armor. The armor of the Tharuk, the Silver Lance. “Bring my words to the Fifth: all defenses are to be converted to ice element, fire lines are to be drawn in a helical pattern to the center, and barracks are to be shifted clockwise at regular intervals. Understood?”

The young man saluted smartly, nearly knocking the silver helmet off his scrawny head, and then darted out of the tent into the freezing cold.

As much as Il’tam placed faith in Gos’ryn’s predictions, he still said, “I hope you are right about this, Ryn.”

“I am, sir. I do not know if it is because of that Trinic Call or not, but the weather patterns have been in disarray ever since. I cannot get a reading more than a few hours out now, when I used to be able to tell how tomorrow would be down to the minute. I do not know if the… Thirteenth is responsible or not, but the meeting will need to be delayed lest we fall prey to the ice and snow. A week or two more won’t make a difference, will it?”

Il’tam looked out into the white world beyond the tent perched on the hill at the center of camp. The Silver Lance was a perfect fighting machine. Their military might was unquestioned since before the Sinking.

Tribes from all over the Shiverglades beseeched them to cast judgment and render aid. When the rumors of a Thirteenth tribe began to crop up again, Il’tam knew it was only a matter of time before the Legion was sent to investigate.

But never, not in his wildest dreams, would he have ever thought that they would see a Trinic Call, banishing all doubts as to the severity of this gathering.

Not since the destruction of the Thirteenth did all twelve of the Shiverglades’ people come together to cast judgment. It had been one of the few times in the Legion’s history that it had admitted fault and wrongdoing.

The thought of another Thirteenth scared the Senators and Praetors witless. Tam could feel it in the orders they passed, the speed at which they opened their coffers.

The Silver Lance had not marched this fast or so far away from their home in such a number as ever before. Should these Thirteenth people turn out to be as the Legion feared, it would be Il’tam’s duty to crush them utterly.

He would not like it, but he would do his duty. It was who he was, after all.

Already the builders were bustling about the large hilltop camp. Walls grew beneath their spades and the mages reinforced the walls with mana, splitting them at intervals for proper protection and observation. A walkway was built higher up, and at the center of camp, a swirling pair of helical lines were drawn.

Those, more than anything, were a sign that Gos’ryn took the storm seriously. Though Il’tam liked to know everything that went on in his camp, he did not understand the geomantic reservoirs the mages spoke of when describing their use.

All he knew was that as soon as the first line was done, the frost and snow melted and turned to steam. The air pulsed with comforting warmth akin to the warm highlands where Tam’s lands grew olives and pomegranates by the bushel.

He missed those warm nights spent looking out over the rolling hills. Far from the freezing cold of the lower Shiverglades, his little slice of paradise was without equal.

But when the Legion calls for aid, he would never be found to shirk his duty.

“It worries me,” Tam said, now that they were alone in the tent. His voice was so low that Gos’ryn craned his head to hear.

“The storm, sir?”

“No, Ryn. This business at hand. The Legion, for all their wisdom and might, made a mistake before. Our gravest sin. Now they seek to pass judgment again. How can we know what we do is right?”

The younger man looked curiously at him as Tam turned to face him. “You are young,” Tam continued. “It is ancient history to our people now, but many of us have taken pains to make sure we never pass down such harshness without due cause. The cultists we regularly root out, they are evil beyond measure. Poisoned to the last. But from all I hear, these people who call themselves Bravers… they are only trying to live.”

“They have taken root in the lands of the Thirteenth,” Ryn said. “Surely that is an ill omen.”

“Perhaps,” Tam conceded. “But an ill omen for whom? Themselves, or us?”

Ryn laughed and then went very, very still when he realized Tam had not made a joke. “Surely you jest! There is no way these newcomers could possibly compare to the might of the Tharuk! Even without the others, the Fifth Cohort is enough to snuff them out.”

Tam thought about that. He was older and wiser, much of his youthful patriotism had been tempered in the fires of war. He loved his people, the Legion, and would give anything to defend them. But they were just people.

Perhaps better than most, perhaps not. But they were not infallible. The Senators bickered, the Praetors plotted and conspired, and the Cohorts jockeyed for position and honor. All to the glory of the Tharuk, but Tam did not think his people were perfect.

“Let me pose this to you, then,” Tam told him, pacing back and forth across the packed dirt floor laden with carpets stitched with self-warming runes to keep the cold at bay. “If you were to take a Century, just 100 men and women, and bring them into the depths of the Shiverglades, how long would they survive?”

Ryn snorted. He knew this answer. Obviously Tam was testing him. “As long as they needed to,” he replied dutifully.

Tam shot him an irritated look, saw the shock on the boy’s face, and reminded himself to temper his expression. “Spoken like somebody fresh out of the academy. Now, tell me truly. How long would 100 men and women with a single Centurion to guide them last in the depths of the Shiverglades with no permanent installations and no supply lines from the capital?”

Ryn shifted nervously on his stool. This was dangerous territory, even for the great Il’tam. Yet, the boy clearly respected him and wanted to know where he was going.

“Summer or winter?”

“Winter.”

Ryn hissed through his teeth. “Alone?”

“Utterly.”

“Supplies?”

“Mundane, nothing beyond tier two tools and materials.”

“Well… it would depend on the people, their training–”

“Out with it,” Tam snapped.

“A month at most!” Ryn blurted out.

Tam nodded. “One month, and that is with a group of Legion-trained men and women a hundred strong. With exceptionally skilled people under your command, you could probably last longer. Maybe double that. Now imagine a people who have no experience fighting the Shiverglades. No understanding of the Shadesblight. No protection. No defenses. Absolutely nobody on their side to bring them materials or tools. How long would they last, Centurion Gos’ryn?”

“I would time it in hours, sir. Many have tried. All have failed.”

“Now tell me again how easily the Fifth will destroy a people, by all accounts, hardly a Century strong, who have lived for months in the center of the Shiverglades and not yet succumbed to the wilds? How have they not only managed to cling to life, but from what we were told, managed to thrive? They have buildings. Walls. Defenses. If they had found the weapon of the Thirteenth, we would already be dead, but we cannot rule it out.”

“We are the Fifth!” Gos’ryn told him, surging to his feet, hands balled into steel-backed fists. “Even if we were somehow evenly matched, we outnumber them at least five to one. They cannot overcome those odds.”

Tam nodded, though he was not sure of that himself. The legends of the Thirteenth were shrouded in age and mystery. Those surviving stories were filled with horrors beyond imagining. It had taken all twelve peoples of the Shiverglades to fight against a single one of their number.

I do not have a good feeling about this, Tam thought. We should have brought the Third and Second with us, at the very least.

Now that they were forced to weather out the ice storm, Tam was growing concerned. What if the Thirteenth had summoned it like they did the Trinic Call? What if the ancient enemy of the Silver Lance, Glacia, has woken up from her slumber beneath Frostheart?

The Fifth would be powerless against such frozen might, and the sudden shift in weather was suspicious. More importantly, Tam wondered whether this delay was designed to slow down the march of the Twelve peoples of the Shiverglades and to give time to the Thirteenth to prepare a proper defense?

Such thoughts wormed their way through Tam’s thoughts, gnawing at the edges of his composure.