From Across the Clouded Range

Never in his life could Ipid remember being so miserable. It was well before dawn, which meant that he had managed only a few rough hours of nightmarish sleep, and yawns racked his jaw in a brutal succession as a result. He had barely eaten in two days and longed for a hearty breakfast with fresh bread, eggs, sausages, and strong coffee – his painfully empty stomach rumbled at the thought. His back and rump were already sore after just a few minutes in the unaccustomed position on top of the shaggy horse he rode, and his entire body stung from the welts and bruises that enveloped it.

  Ipid allowed himself to concentrate on these relatively minor annoyances. They kept him from having to face the real horrors that defined his meager existence. Over the past two days, he had come to know real fear for the first time in his previously comfortable life – the fear that came with the knowledge that his death could come at any moment, from any direction, in any way. That fear was so overpowering and all-encompassing that even pain and hunger were a welcome release from it. The longing for sausages and pain of bruises were minor burdens in comparison to the images of women and children being slaughtered, in comparison to the knowledge that he could be next.

  Denying those fears allowed him to ride through the sea of leather and steel. Huge mounted men were packed around him on all sides as far as the eye could see, yet he continued to deny what was happening in Randor’s Pass, forced himself to deny what he had seen and heard over the past two days, to forget the events that had changed his life forever.

  Near the front of the leather-clad sea, he spotted a whimpering mass of young men in tattered, bloody, mud-stained clothes. Their faces were dirty, streaked with grime, hair matted, eyes vacant. They were crammed together and circled by jostling steeds. Each had a single hand tied to one of several long ropes. Their broad shoulders sagged, strong hands, powerful legs worthless. Most of their heads were down, but those who looked up were wide-eyed with fear and disbelief. Ipid’s heart went out to them – they were just boys, most younger than Dasen – and the thought of their misery nearly dissipated his carefully constructed shield of denial. His insides shook with a constrained sob, but he pushed the emotion down and concentrated on his longing for a soft bed – the only way to help those boys was to keep from being dragged down with them.

  Despite his desire to ignore the boys, Ipid allowed his eyes to search their numbers for one face in particular. He scanned the crowd for some sign of Rynn. He had not seen him since that first night and could not find the lanky young man this day either. Given what he had seen thus far, he feared the worst. These men had already needlessly killed countless villagers, and it appeared that Rynn could be added to that number. A sense of loss and failure washed over him, but he tried not to think about the vivacious young man who had been in his care, tried not to blame himself for his death. At least, Dasen and Tethina escaped, he told himself, had left the village only a few minutes before the attack. He had not seen nor heard any sign of them in the two days since, and he allowed himself to believe they were safe. It was his only consolation, and he clung to it like an infant to its mother.

  Ipid was led to the front of the horde – there must have been thousands of men and horses cramming every inch of the village – until he faced down the road away from Randor’s Pass. It was only then that he registered why he was at his current position. Certainly, this was where Arin would ride, and he was there to continue their lessons.

  Ipid scrambled for the leather-bound book into which he had written the words they had learned thus far. He did not have to look for long; the satchel he carried only contained the book, a pen, a bottle of ink, and one change of clothing just like the ones he currently wore – brown woolen pants that made his legs itch and a similar dull-white shirt. He opened the book and scanned the lists of words but could remember far too few of them.

  Over the past two days the language lessons had progressed at a tremendous pace. They had covered every word he could imagine, going over each in the Imperial tongue then in Arin’s “Darthur” language. During that time, Arin had learned the Imperial tongue faster than Ipid had imagined possible. He seldom forgot a word once he heard it, took almost instantly to the conjugation of even the most complex verbs, and seemed to instinctively understand the intricacies of word order and sentence structure. Ipid held no such gift, and the welts that covered his arms, back, and chest were cruel reminders of his shortcomings – over the course of their second lesson, which had stretched over the entirety of the previous day, he had earned so many welts that he could no longer see the new ones that were inflicted.

  Despite the abuse, the most frightening part of the day had come when he started to understand what was really happening in Randor’s Pass. Prior to that afternoon, Ipid had allowed himself to believe that these men were an especially cruel gang of thieves seeking to ransom one of the world’s wealthiest men, but that illusion became harder and harder to maintain as the day wore on. All the evidence was there. The men themselves were like none he had ever seen. They did not act like kidnappers – there was no talk of ransom or any effort to move their prize from the village. The clamor of horses and men arriving in the hundreds resonated through the village. And as his growing knowledge of the Darthur language revealed, the conversations that continuously interrupted their lessons were about troop movements, logistics, and deployments. They were the conversations that lieutenants had with their general, not the ones that outlaws had with their criminal mastermind. In the end, the only reasonable answer was the simplest. Arin was a general. He was leading an army, an army that could only have come from across the Clouded Range.

  Taking a pause from his vocabulary review, Ipid looked out over the men behind him searching for Arin. He could not be found, but Ipid’s eyes lingered on the multitudes. The village was so full of warriors that it looked like it might explode. They stretched as far as he could see, tucked into every nook and cranny between the burned out remnants of the buildings into the forests surrounding the village and on across the old bridge leading to the mountains. And all of those men looked like the ones that had attacked the village, giants with massive horses and weapons. How many more could there possibly be? And how far would they spread their terror before they were defeated? How many thousands would die in the effort?

  “Goot mourining, Te-adeate Ipid.” Arin’s deep voice interrupted Ipid from his dire pondering. He spoke the Imperial tongue with a severe accent.

  Despite the simplicity of the required response, it took Ipid a long second to gather the Darthur words. Arin did not appear to notice. He turned to the men gathered around him and said a few words that sounded like a request to ride. Those men smiled and nodded their assent. Arin, in turn, nodded to an especially gruesome-looking man at his side, the same one that stood guard outside his tent. The huge, silver-haired man put a great ram’s horn to his mouth and released a single long note. The deafening blast was answered by a roar from the gathered men, and as one, they rode from the village.

  When they were underway, Arin asked Ipid to review the verbs that they had learned to this point. Ipid turned to the section of his book that had been reserved for verbs and began his recitation. “No buch!” Arin growled and added a welt to Ipid’s back.

  Ipid grunted at the blow but shut the book and began to recite all the verbs he could think of, saying the word first in his language then in Arin’s. After a few minutes of recitation and a few more blows, he looked up and realized that he was leading the army. He reigned in his horse, but as it came back into line, Arin reached over and pushed him hard on the shoulder.

  Ipid fell to the road in a heap and was almost trampled by the next horse in line before he managed to roll from under its steel-shod hooves. He dodged one more set of hooves and jumped to his feet. Sore and disoriented, he ran to catch his shaggy mount, but the other horses bumped him with their bodies and bit at his hands and arms. When he finally scrambled back onto his horse, he cou
ld no longer restrain his taut emotions; he broke down and wept like a child.

  Arin cuffed him, adding another split to his already tattered lips. “Te-adeate, be man. Have honor, or I kill you."

  He was not sure how, but Ipid managed to contain his tears and continue his recitation.