Lonen's War Read Online Free PDF Page B

night, Lonen pulled
the hood closer around his face, paying close attention to his
footing.
    They’d waited for this night, this hour,
charting the moons for the best shrouding darkness. The golems
moved by night as well as by day—as Ayden the Great had discovered
to his sorrow and Dru’s triumph—but low light confused their
vision. It had been a considered gamble, waiting so long, giving
the Báran sorcerers time to replenish the golem ranks the Destrye
had painstakingly hacked their way through. Of course, the entire
war had been a calculated risk, betting the potential future of
their people against their certain destruction. Not much of a
choice in the end, put in those terms.
    So far events had played as predicted. The
Destrye had fully decamped and marched away from Bára for days at a
time, allowing just enough golems to pursue unharmed to convey back
to their masters that the rout continued in full force. The army
withdrew to the far hills, which at least held enough game to
replenish their food supplies, though far less than even Dru’s
declining forests.
    When the moons’ phases allowed, Lonen and
Arnon had peeled off with small troops, seeing them through the
silent lines of their pursuers, then releasing the men under
trusted lieutenants to creep back to Bára’s environs in secret.
Lonen and Arnon then returned to the main force to ostentatiously
march again the next day.
    None of their scholars could be sure how
intelligent the golems were, if they could recognize the faces or
scents of the human leaders, but it didn’t pay to be careless.
Lonen’s hunting dogs knew him from his brothers—why wouldn’t the
golem hounds belonging to the Báran sorcerers?
    In this way they left behind pieces of the
Destrye forces, like the goddess Arill scattering seeds across the
land, orchards growing in her wake. Except the Destrye seeded the
Bárans’ destruction, carefully building over days and weeks.
    Finally, Lonen rejoined all those men he’d
scattered to the winds, taking several days to travel at night and
hide himself during daylight, timing his crossing to avoid the
blazingly fast and lethal bore tides of the bay before Bára.
Somewhere out there Ion, Arnon, the king, and their best captains
did likewise. They’d form a net around the desert city and draw the
sorcerers away from the walls. Scattered thinly enough by attack on
all sides, the defense would have to fail at one point or
another—allowing the crack Destrye squads into the city with a
single mission in mind.
    Destroy the source of the sorcerers’
power.
    Another gamble there, that the sorcerers had
not pursued beyond a fixed range because they dared not go too far
from the source of their magic. In a perfect world, the Destrye
would have spent time on feints, testing the theory, determining
the range.
    But the world had stopped being perfect the
first time the golems raided.
    As Lonen and his men slipped through the
wandering golems who milled about, ghostly white in the darkness,
in a loose defense around the city, he prayed that his squad would
make it through the walls. Not for glory—there would be no glory
this night—but to spare himself the grief of losing another of his
brothers. Or his father. There’d been no word from Natly or his
mother and sisters. No message from any of their dispersed people
on the Trail of New Hope. They hadn’t truly expected any. King
Archimago thought it best to leave no connection between the
refugees and the warriors who went after their enemy. The other
half of their people were as safe as any could make them.
    Still, Lonen’s mind insisted on imagining
their gruesome deaths at the fangs and claws of pursuing golems.
Defended by only a few, the women, children, and elderly would be
easy pickings. They carried little water with them, relying on the
old maps to guide them to oases, so the golems should have no
reason to pursue, but there was always a chance…
    Too many gambles, too much reliance on