Chapter 62


    The Road South


    The days passed by in a blur. Femira and Landryn couldn’t press on with just the two of them. They were confident they could handle a couple of kraglings with their reduced number but they both mutually agreed it would be foolish to seek it out. From the knowledge Landryn had on the kraglings, there should have been only the one alpha—the kragal. The alpha would have been the matriarch of the colony and without it, the creatures wouldn’t be expanding any further. There were still smaller nests that needed to be dealt with but Landryn decided it was best if they returned to Epilas. The reinforcement parties should already be on their way out this direction.


    They’d left the corpse of the dead Kragal on the beach. Femira had used her edir senses to locate the sword of nythilium she’d formed from Landryn’s armour. As it had when fighting the Kragal, the metal of the blade responded to her edir in that bizarre—almost confused—resonance. She could sense it buried deep beneath the fallen rocks of the sea arch and embedded within the body of the kragal itself. She attempted to recall the metal but it wouldn’t respond. Not at this distance and with so much material between her and the sword. Landryn assured her that no looters would be capable enough to dig it out and dissect the creature to claim the metal. Not before a team sent from the Palace arrived, that is. The scholars at the palace would want to study the kragal and they could recover the precious metal.


    Landryn told her that he had vague and hazy memories of the battle. He remembered the darkness of her stoneshell. He recalled the looming maw of the kragal above them. He had felt his armour dissolving around him as she did the impossible. She explained to him, dissonance of the metal when she reached out to it, and the flashes of images she’d felt through the edir. He’d never heard of anything like it before.


    For four days they travelled back the road they’d come. Femira did her best to shove the surfaced memories of her brothers back into the corners of her mind. She wasn’t ready to unpack any of that right now. She wasn’t sure if she ever would be. Lucky for her, there was plenty of distraction on the journey south. People cheered as they passed through towns and villages. Prince Landryn Tredain and Annali Jahar were collecting renown as the ‘Saviours of the Tidewall’.


    Before, when they’d passed through, mayors and innkeepers would bow and scrape out of duty and respect for Landryn. Now they did so out of reverence for both of them. The first town they passed through, Landryn had purchased new horses for them.


    The kragal’s slain body had been visible under the broken sea arch. Locals used to call the place Temple Beach, for the way the rock formations resembled the spires of a temple. Considering the arch was gone and the enormous shell of a mythological beast now decorated the place, people had started referring to it as Kragalsbane Beach. All across the Tidewall, towns and villages spoke of the shattered shells of kraglings strewn across the beaches that Landryn’s team had left in their wake. Landryn was quick to decorate the achievement of taking down to the kragal as Femira’s—or rather Annali’s.


    In the barracks, soldiers had been taught to withhold any information to local authorities until a debrief could be had with a senior officer. Landryn was as senior as it got in the military and he seemed to have little regard for hiding what had happened from the mayors and town lords that they met on their journey back south. It was clear that he was trying to ease them into believing the threat had been dealt with, that their coastal towns and villages were now safe from sea monsters. But there was another element to what he was doing. He spoke about how the bloodshedders had been trained for this and how exceptional of a fighting force they were. How the crown valued the lives of their people, and that they would be protected.


    The story of how Femira had killed the kragal was a mantra that he repeated at each new place they arrived. Then he would lead into the rest. Femira couldn’t help the pride she felt as Landryn spoke but each time he called her Annali, it was like a spike in her chest. It was a constant reminder of the lies she was telling him. And coupled with it was the lie for why she’d pushed him to continue this far north in the first place. His brother was dead… and she was still hiding it from him.


    She was lying to him about who she was. Would he think so highly of her if he knew? If he knew that she was karasi? The Reldoni didn’t seem to look upon sexual promiscuity with as much disdain as the Keiran did. Aden had told her that many Reldoni highborn had bastards. They were usually well looked after by the noble houses. Often given lower-ranking but respectable military positions, or married off to wealthy associates. They weren’t highborn, like their siblings, but they weren’t hated either. Not like karasi. To be karasi in Keiran was a crime. Especially if you are the karasi of a noble house.


    As they left one town, Femira awkwardly worked up the courage to ask him to stop calling her Annali.


    “You wish for me to call you Vreth, like the other bloodshedders?” He asked, incredulous. The nickname was one she’d held for so long in Altarea that it was synonymous to her actual name.


    “I don’t want to be called Annali,” she replied. Not by you.


    “What would you prefer I call you?” he asked, a playful smile on his lips.


    Stolen novel; please report.


    Femira. “I…” she faltered, “Vreth is fine.”


    “I can’t introduce you as that in these towns,” he laughed, “they’ll think I’m mocking you.” How bad would it really be if she told him the truth? He would understand why she’d kept it from him, wouldn’t he? Garld had asked her to. She’d be betraying Garld’s instruction if she did… And she owed Garld everything. He’d given her the power she now held. He’d taken her from nothing in Altarea and given her prestige and purpose… She couldn’t just throw that away.


    “Nevermind,” she sighed. What did it matter if he thought her name was Annali? It wasn’t as though he’d ever meet the real Annali. She was dead… probably. She tried to recall what the woman had looked like. She remembered her from the night in Altarea when Garld had found her. Had he seen the resemblance then? Was it so obvious? She’d foolishly assumed the Reldoni were all slightly blind to the difference between them. But maybe those had just been superficial differences. Annali had been beautiful; she’d had long black hair that fell in waves whereas Femira’s was shorter and usually scraggly when not tied up in a braid. Like most female highborn, Annali’s face had been coated in a mask of makeup. Perhaps underneath it, Femira and Annali did look alike. Annali’s own cousin had said so. Had Honorsword Karas mentioned it right before he’d tried to kill her? She couldn’t recall.


    “What became of Honorsword Jahasa?” Femira asked after a few moments. Landryn seemed surprised by the question. The two were walking, guiding their horses by the reins along a cliff path. Femira had learned that the best way to keep your horse from tiring was to give it regular breaks from your weight on its back.


    “My father decided he was too dangerous to keep as a prisoner.”


    “He was released?” Femira''s head spun in surprise.


    “No,” he replied, flatly.


    “Oh.”


    “The Honorswords were never here for peace. The Emperor doesn''t want peace, he might entertain the idea for a time but he will never be content with it.” He gave her a thoughtful look, “have you ever met him?”


    “The Emperor?” Femira couldn’t help but laugh. She knew it wasn’t an unrealistic idea for a highborn woman like Annali to have met the Emperor of Keiran but the way in which Landryn so innocently asked her that was just too amusing.


    “I’ll take that as a no.”


    “Women aren’t permitted in the Emperor’s Court,” Femira replied, she knew that much at least. If there was one thing that could be relied on for Keiran culture; it was the inherent sexism.


    “Do you think he will retaliate?” Femira followed up, “for killing his Honorswords?”


    “Potentially,” Landryn speculated, “The Emperor, I believe, wants to make a move for Rien. But from what our spies tell us, his his warlords are too busy fighting each other for him to be able to make any substantial moves against us. His Honorswords—while overzealous in their devotion to the Emperor—are too busy maintaining order in Keiran than to be mobilised as a true invading force. If the Emperor was going to go to war with Reldon, he would have done so when we reclaimed Altarea. The Keiran showed they don’t have the unity—or strength—to rally to the aid of their so-called ally. The Honorswords were sent to bluster and intimidate. They were sent as a show of Keiran’s power. I think that the Emperor truly believed that his elite were unique, that only they hold the secrets of soulforging. I would have allowed them to return home, thinking that they’d demonstrated their prowess and frightening us out of any kind of military manoeuvres against them. But then…” he looked at her apologetically.


    “But then one of them tried to kill me,” she surmised. Fuck, she really threw a spanner in the gears there.


    “My father chastised me for defending you. He thinks I should have let the Keiran deal with their own… But how could I? When I spoke out against them at Judgement Hall, I said that you were under my protection. What message would that send to our people?” Is that the only reason you did it?


    “The Emperor’s pride will take a hit, but his grip on power in his own country is too weak and he’s too close to war with the Rienish to fight us too.”


    “Is that what you told your father?” She’d not yet met King Abhran but from what she knew of him was that he valued strength above all.


    “I reminded him that we are Reldoni. We do not yield. We do not bend nor cower before our enemies. We show strength, we cut down our enemies or we die in the effort,” Landryn took on a coldly distant expression as he spoke. Those didn’t sound like his words.


    Later that evening, they reached Innish Head and it was there that they finally met up with the reinforcement contingent that had been sent after them. When Kendrick had arrived at Epilas a week before; injured and with the news of the kraglings. Garld had dispatched another team of six bloodshedders along with the support of thirty infantry soldiers from Mattice’s division.


    Femira recognised some of the bloodshedders. Some were recently soulforged—like her. Landryn gave them an account of the events over the previous weeks. Femira doubted that they would have believed it if she had been the one to give the briefing. They looked at her with a mixture of respect and disbelief after Landryn had told them of the battle against the kragal.


    Landryn and Femira then went over battle strategies with the new team along with how to find and expose the nests. They were also instructed to not engage if they came upon another kragal. A larger strikeforce team would be needed for it if they did come across another.


    “We’re not staying with them?” Femira asked Landryn after the bloodshedders had left to set up their camp outside the town.


    “No,” he replied, “we’re returning to Epilas. The kragal was more… destructive… than I thought it would be. I don’t know how it managed to infest such a significant part of our country, so quickly. Yours and Endrin’s accounts were some of the first reports and that was barely a month ago. If the fomori can spread that quickly, then we need to increase the patrols on our other borders. The plains of Athlin are mostly ignored by our military. Athlin is a wild land, with no King… no unity. This has led us to ignore that border, but if there are fomori in the plains, growing and spreading…” he shook his head, “The War Council needs to make a decision with what we do. If there’s more of these things out there then we need to make a plan.”