Enemy by K. Eason

Author:K. Eason
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781503934498
Published: 2016-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cardik had been an Alvir city, several wars and another name ago. Some petty thegn’s local seat to which the tatters of the allied Alviri tribes had retreated when it became clear that the Illhari Republic would not be stopped farther south. The city squatted on both sides of a ribbon of water that only counted as a river during spring snowmelt, when it spread out of its banks and smeared mud across most of the valley. The Alviri had counted on that spring flood to save them, to sweep the Illhari back into the Below and drown what their artillery could not crush. They had trusted their walls, and their vats of hot oil, and their godsworn, who said that the Illhari would not prevail against the righteous.

But it had been Illhari engineering in the end, and Illhari conjuring, that had cracked Cardik’s walls from root to crest. Illhari determination and Illhari discipline that had waged war through the winter. Illhari vengeance that had shattered most of the city, dismantled the keep and the temples, and razed the whole Hill. Illhari pride that rebuilt it in Illharek’s image, except for the red mountain sediment that even conjuring could not change.

The conquerors had built roads, too, out of imported Illhari stone and still more red mountain brick. Roads were more efficient than tunnels, and faster to build, and—most important to the Senate—more affordable. Cardik had two. One, the wider, ran south along the mountains toward the distant city of Illharek, threading together the conquered Alviri settlements like beads on a string. The second jumped the river and trailed east and lost itself in the sunrise and the plains. Dekklis had traveled both, and their packed-dirt cousins, with the Sixth. But this homecoming, she marched overland and through the forest, as the first legion soldiers had done, following the Wild’s convolutions at a pace far slower than the most burdened soldier managed on pavement.

She and Istel could have returned on the road much more quickly. Should have, by every regulation and rule. But her companions could not, and Dekklis wasn’t certain if her niggling guilt was because she’d stayed with Snow and Veiko, or because she had considered no other option. The half-blood was healthy enough. But the skrae—Veiko, Dekklis self-corrected—Veiko wasn’t. He’d woken up with the stormwind screaming outside two days ago. Just sat up, fever broken. But he was not well, no, still weak and limping badly. He couldn’t outrun a lame rabbit, whatever I am fine and I can walk and I will manage he insisted. As if everyone couldn’t see the wounds in his leg, as if the cave hadn’t stunk of vomit and shit and sick sweat. As if the fever hadn’t melted flesh off him—that, obvious even to Dekklis, who had not known him before.

“Toadshit,” Snow had said mildly, and shared a smirk with Istel—who still had a gash grinning across his arm and chest—before she’d looked at Dekklis and raised both eyebrows.

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