Velixar raised an eyebrow. “How many, and what side?”
“Thirty. Twenty-three of ours, seven Wardens. And the wounds on ours are too clean and sharp.”
“Swords and knives?” Velixar asked.
The captain nodded.
It made sense. The Wardens who’d defended the city had brandished spears, hand-fashioned bows and whittled arrows, and stone axes. The weapons that Lerder’s master steward kept stowed beneath Ashhur’s temple had never made an appearance.
“I gather,” said Velixar, “that when our men search the town’s armory chamber they will find it bare.”
“We already have, and it is indeed empty.”
Velixar looked to the west, imagining the frightened people in flight.
“The townsfolk took the weapons with them when they fled,” he said.
“Does this worry you?”
Velixar laughed. “Not in the slightest. What they did was folly. By fleeing with the steel weaponry, they doomed the Wardens to a quicker death. We will still catch them.”
Wellington seemed to accept that answer, but then he fidgeted again, his gaze dropping to the ground.
“What is it?” asked Velixar. “Spit it out.”
“I searched the rookery, High Prophet,” the captain said. “It is empty.”
Velixar let out a sigh.
“Of course it’s empty,” said the young soldier with the scar below his eye. “Did you not hear the birds take flight when we first arrived? Did you think no one would bother to alert the rest of Ashhur’s kingdom of what happened?”
Wellington glowered at the soldier, who hastily kneeled before him.
Many apologies, Captain,” he said. “I spoke out of turn. I must still be on edge from the battle.”
The captain raised his hand to strike the young soldier, anger burning in his eyes, but he seemed to think twice when he noticed that Velixar was staring at him. Wellington slowly lowered his hand.
Velixar couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Ashhur has known of our plans for months now. The news will not surprise him in the least.”
“And he will have prepared his defenses, am I right, High Prophet?” the young soldier asked.
“What is your name, soldier?” Velixar asked, more and more intrigued by this youth with each passing moment.
Straightening up, the soldier jutted out his chin. “Boris Marchant.”
“Well, young Boris, look around you.” Velixar gestured toward the destroyed rubble of the wall. “What defenses? The God of Justice knew this town was one of two places we might cross, given the narrow width of the river here, and yet he left his children to die. Those same children abandoned the Wardens, refusing to even leave them with true weaponry to fight us. Ashhur’s children are frightened and confused-little more than beasts pissing themselves as they cower before an angered master. Of course Ashhur has prepared defenses, but we’ll tear them down, every brick, every stone.”
Boris and Captain Wellington both bowed; then the captain excused the trio to oversee the scout parties that were combing through the town in search of provisions they might take. He struck Boris in the side of the head as they walked away. It was a just punishment for publicly scolding his superior, but Velixar understood Boris’s response. Combined with the soldier’s actions on the battlefield, it made the young man rather interesting. He promised himself to seek the soldier out later.
Disappointment struck Velixar again. The town had fallen in six hours. Six hours. Lerder was the hub of trade in the west, the only town in all of Paradise that had even the slightest chance of protecting its borders. The cache of steel weapons from the elves, combined with the huge population, should have been sufficient enough to provide a fight. With a properly built wall, a little training, and a decent harvest, the citizens could have held out for a month, perhaps longer. Instead, less than a hundred of Karak’s soldiers had perished while taking the town.
“Do you even care?” Velixar wondered, thinking of Ashhur’s face from his distant past. “Or have you foreseen your defeat and chosen not to fight it?”
As the sun climbed the sky over the next few hours, Velixar ordered his soldiers to set down sturdier ramps on the Rigon’s high western bank, to allow the rest of their ranks passage onto flat land. The slow procession began in earnest as two hundred horses, five hundred archers, four thousand soldiers, and sixty supply wagons crossed the newly constructed bridge. Once across, they maneuvered up the ramps and over the dismantled remnants of the wall, trundling through the heart of the crumbling town. Not a board or even a pebble came loose from the bridge during the march, the result of a god’s magic combined with well-trained craftsmanship. It remained so until Karak himself crossed just past midday. When the god stepped onto the moist bank, he turned and lifted his hand. The bridge immediately shuddered and collapsed, countless tons of rock and wood falling into the river. The boulders sunk while the current quickly carried the planks downstream.
Velixar glanced up at his deity in curiosity.
“Should we not have left it intact for our return?” he asked.
Karak swiveled, taking in the sight of the sacked town. “We can raise another bridge if necessary, my Prophet,” he finally said. “For now, I find it best to eliminate an easy route of escape into our own lands.”
“I understand, my Lord,” Velixar replied with a bow.
The soldiers began stacking timber over the corpses, pouring from clay jugs a sticky, flammable concoction over the various hovels and buildings. The last of the supply wagons rumbled away, heading toward the main column, which awaited a mile or so down the western spine of the Gods’ Road. Velixar remained behind with his god and a small regiment of men to take care of one final piece of business.
The surviving Wardens were bound hand and foot to the front stoop of the inn. Eighteen in total. Velixar ambled past them, studying each face, remembering each name: Loen, Crenton, Gabbrion, and Mordecai, among others. None of them spoke or so much as glanced his way, keeping their eyes fixed instead on the blood-splattered grass before them. Bareatus was there too, the Warden who had greeted him when he’d returned to Safeway from his journey to the Temple of the Flesh with the corpse of Martin Harrow strapped to the back of a donkey. So long ago, thought Velixar. Much had transpired since that day, and he was a completely different man now…if he could be called a man at all. More and more he understood himself as something greater, something transcendent.
He reached the end of the line, where the broadest of the Wardens knelt, his arms tied behind him at such an extreme angle that his back was arched. Yet this specimen showed no visible signs of discomfort and, unlike the rest, he did not bow. His head was thrown back, exposing his thick neck and broad chest. With his platinum hair, crystal blue eyes, and porcelain skin, he could have been a very, very tall member of House Crestwell.
“Ezekai,” Velixar said. “You look well.”
Ezekai had been the Master Warden of House Gorgoros before Bessus, Ashhur’s first child, had sent the Wardens away from Ker. He was towering and headstrong, a natural leader. And unlike most of his brethren, Ezekai had received training as a soldier before fleeing his home world. It was fortuitous-and imbecilic on Ashhur’s part-that he had been wasted on such a feeble defense.
“Any final words, Warden?” came a booming voice from behind Velixar. As Ezekai looked up at Karak, who stood with his hands on his hips, his godly head blocking out the sun, his eyes grew somber.
“Why?” the Warden whispered.
Karak ignored the question. Instead, he stepped in front of his High Prophet, grasped Ezekai by his hair, and wrenched back his head. Ezekai made not a whimper, simply staring up at Karak, tears running silently down his cheeks.
The god released him.