The Burden of Memory by Welcome Cole

Author:Welcome Cole [Cole, Welcome]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Virtualbookworm.com Publishing
Published: 2014-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

XVIII

THE BOATS

KAELIF FOLLOWED THE TORCHES THROUGH THE SILENT DARKNESS.

He paid no attention to the path ahead of him, nor to the ground beneath his feet. His mind was a brushfire, consumed with the historic duties waiting for him and his comrades in the days and weeks that were to follow. The focus of his thoughts jumped erratically from one disturbing image to the next. He thought of the clandestine meeting in the forest the night before. He thought of Graezon and the Blood Caeyl delivered by the prode. He thought of the unwanted vision imposed by the Drayma, and the terrible ordeal awaiting him and his brethren.

Seth, marching directly before him, glanced back at him. His eyes sparkled unnaturally from deep within his coarse, horsehair hood. He looked almost demonic out here in the moonless night. Kaelif hoped it wasn’t another vision.

“Almost there, Kad’r,” the boy whispered, nodding toward the approaching campfires.

“Speak Pendtish, Seth. The shadows have ears.”

Seth considered the words, then nodded and turned away with his torch held more decisively before him.

Kaelif wanted nothing more in that moment than to put the bloody light out; it was as irritating as it was unnecessary. It would’ve been more efficient to simply follow the path in total blackness, using only their taer-caeyl, and it would’ve been far more comfortable. Unfortunately, the torches were part of the charade, a necessary evil adopted to offset their chance of discovery.

He looked to the rear. Four similarly hooded Pendtish soldiers followed him in dirty leather armor, crude melon-shaped helmets, and oily horsehair cloaks. They’d appropriated their attire from a party of equally coarse, oily Pendt soldiers a few hours earlier. The donors of the gear wouldn’t be missing them anytime soon. Such attire was unnecessary in their current assignment filling a hole.

“Shake it up back there,” Kaelif whispered in Pendtish, “Make some noise. You’re too much cat and not enough swine.”

The warriors immediately fell out of step and began chattering in the crude tongue of the dirty Pendts. They let their torches sag like drunken fools. One of them broke into a Pendtish tavern song. They were immediately convincing.

They were heading south at all risk, following his vision to the dreaded Dragor Field, domain of Lord Prae. It was quickly approaching dawn and they’d ridden the hardest four hours of his life to get this far. Prae’s castle in Eo Naehg Lek, the Crow’s Ghost Keep, was still a week’s travel due south through land that would be heavily patrolled by Prae’s minions and Kaelif’s own people. Their safest approach would be to travel as far as possible by river, a feat requiring boats, boats that wouldn’t be missed. Or if they were somehow missed, boats that wouldn’t likely be searched for.

Phase one of that plan brought them here, to the Pendts’ staging grounds on the banks of the Dragor River. He could have as easily taken the boats from the camps of their own kin a few dozen miles north, but such a

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