With Elami’s piece of advice in mind, the team rode down to the mountain. They did not come at it head on, refusing to place themselves close to the valley itself. The tribes had since marked each mountain as their territory while negotiations continued to be made. In Aiden’s past life, these negotiations had ended in war as most of the situations ended when these tribes met. The Aculs had licked their wounds all the way back to where else they could find acceptance from the land.
Aiden had Fjord in his saddle as they rode down the hills, leaving the boy’s jepat behind on the hill. As for the [Enemy of the Order], he was certain that the man was not done with him yet. Whether the man was following them or not was a different conversation entirely. Another thing he noticed was the absence of whatever had been following them. He was beginning to think that it was perhaps the enemy following them in some way at that time.
As they rode down, Aiden’s eyes continued to drift towards the valley. In the memory—if he could truly call it a memory—that the enemy had shown him, it was at the end of the valley that the mother of the Immortal had finally run into the man. It was there that he had waited for her.
His brows furrowed as another thought came to mind. He turned his head, picking out Rometo from the group.
Rometo’s eyes landed on him at the same time. “I am listening,” the man said.
“I have a question about the Immortal.” Aiden knew a lot from his past life, but he did not remember everything. There were things from this time in his life that he did not know, and there were things even at the point of his death that he had not known simply because he had not cared to know or remember.
Rometo made an intrigued face. “And what would you like to know about the mother of the man that you killed?”
“Is she alive?” Aiden asked.
Rometo settled his hands on his saddle, reins in hand. “That is an interesting question. Are you trying to understand the scope of the enemies you have made?”
“We are not in the Order, Rometo,” he scolded him. “When I ask a question, you can either answer or choose not to answer.”
“Man sounds like a fucking shamanic priest,” Telma muttered under her breath. “Always asking questions instead of giving answers.”
Rometo looked at her for a moment, as if weighing what he could do to her. In the end, he shook his head and returned his attention to Aiden. “The woman is alive, some kind of unimportant consort to the king.”
“Did she not steal from him?” Aiden asked. “And yet, she went back.”
“She asked for his forgiveness.” Rometo shrugged. “And he gave it. Some concessions were made, obviously, but the Order does not pay much attention to the relationship between an offender and the offended unless it affected borders and more than ten people.”
“And what is known of her now?”
“I am not a walking encyclopedia of knowledge, Lord Lacheart,” Rometo said in a tired tone. “I only know so much. I am not the Order.”
Aiden sighed and faced his front, casting his eyes on the mountains ahead and on the ground as the grass slowly gave to sand and dust and rocks. For some reason, it made sense to him. Not Rometo not knowing much about the mother of the Immortal, but the mother returning to the merchant.
For starters, the mother was dead. Whatever was walking around in her skin was not the same person that had taken from the merchant. It was a puppet for the enemy. The question now was what exactly the enemy wanted from the king. Was the mother’s role there simply to watch the Immortal and see how things panned out? Was she nothing more than an observer of an experiment?
His mind went to the creature the master had slipped into the woman and didn’t even bother trying to figure out what it was. For all he knew, it could have easily been an unholy amalgamation of things that had no business relating with each other.
“So, nothing about the woman?” Aiden reconfirmed.
Rometo frowned a little in that way that told anyone that he wasn’t a fan of being troubled to try and remember what was unimportant to him. In the end, he sighed and shook his head. “I can only remember that she was tortured for a while. I believe it was when he became king.”
“And she stayed even when he was done?” Feira asked, aghast.
Rometo shrugged. “A mother’s love. It is not an easy thing leaving your child.”
Aiden could hear it in the man’s voice. He did not believe that to be the reason the woman still stayed. In fact, he was probably certain that it was not.
“Anyway,” he continued. “The Order has no stance on the matter. She is only as important as her son makes her.”
They continued down the path, attacking the mountain from the side instead of the valley. The ride returned to some modicum of a gentle serenity. Aiden was left with his thoughts once more. In them, the enemy tried to make him an immortal.
“Is this task truly more important than the mission of a god?” Telma said, as if she had been holding the statement in for so long and could hold it in no longer.
Aiden looked back at her for only a moment while Ted sighed as if he wanted to knock her out with a well-placed punch.
“There is nothing you wish to gain that will grant you more reward than the mission of a god,” Telma added. “Everyone knows this.”
Aiden said nothing. The reward he would gain from the enemy would better serve him at the frost mountains. He needed to be stronger, always.
“With all due respect,” Ted said with a tired sigh. “Fuck your god.”
Fire lit up in Telma’s eyes, a righteous anger. “Even kings bow in the face of the gods. What is a king to a god, speak less of a mere man?”
“What’s a god to an unbeliever?” Ted muttered with a frown.
“A man must believe in something,” Melvet said casually, as if there was no philosophical depth to the conversation.
“And when he knows what it is,” Valdan added, always ready to back her up. “Then there lies his god.”
Aiden kept his eyes forward, leading his jepat. “And my god is in my home.”
“And where exactly is that?” Zen asked, curious.
“Somewhere too far away.”
Feira looked around, her eyes going to the mountains. “Are you sure it’s alright for us to just be having conversations? I thought we need to be more quiet about this.”
“They already know that we’re here,” Aiden answered. “They have not attacked because the Aculs wonder if it would be better making friends of us than enemies and the Nevati are wondering if they can make use of us as the enemies of their enemies.”
“You’re well studied.”
Everyone paused to look at Feira. It was in the way she had said it, as if in awe. Their attention made her blush and look down, unable to meet anyone’s gaze. “He just knows a lot,” she explained.
“A lot of nobles know a lot,” Telma pointed out.
“True,” Feira agreed. “But I’ve met noble boys. They know a lot of useless things that simply make them sound important. Lord Lacheart’s knowledge is practical.”
Aiden looked up at the sky above. “I know a lot of useless stuff that makes me sound important too.” Then he looked at her with a grin. “Would you like me to regale you with my knowledge through lexicons that abound?”
He had meant it to sound cringeworthy but Feira’s deepening blush proved that she found it to be anything but that.
“To be young and full of life,” Melvet said in a wishful voice, as if reminiscing on something beautiful.
Aiden said nothing to that, facing his front and riding along. “Let’s try and get into the secret path before nightfall. We will be safer that way.”
“And if we don’t?” Elami asked.
Aiden looked back at the group, remembered the number. They were nine where the [Enemy of the Order] had counted eight.
Was it some kind of premonition?
Was the man telling him the future?
If they didn’t make it there before nightfall, then there was a chance that the enemy’s count might as well have been a premonition.
“Let’s make it before nightfall,” Aiden repeated. It was all the response he had.
…
Jakkam watched from his place at the top. There was a quiet hate in his heart as he watched the new intruders ride down on their jepats. At first he thought they would head down into the valley, but he had been wrong, they came, trying to meet the mountain at an angle.
The skirmishes that most often heralded the wars were currently at a rest now. The Nevanti had sent two emissaries in the last week and the Aculs had sent one. Whatever the chiefs were trying to make happen, he was not a fan of it. The Nevantis were nothing but useless cattle given intelligence, they were a slave tribe. Their duty was to bend the knee or die.
That the chief was trying to make peace over the mountain was already a grave sin against their ways.
“You think theys knows that we here?” Atob asked from where he was squatted behind a boulder.
Jakkam shook his head. “They will need the knowledge of the gods to know that we man the mountain. They do not.”
But it bothered him still. His heart bled and his blood boiled. He had watched the fight between them and the group that had gone after them. With [Distant Eyes], he could see leagues ahead for a period of time. And what he’d seen in that battle had bothered him.
His eyes focused on the one man, the strongest of the group. He could not shake how easily the man had crushed Elta’s skull as if stepping on an insignificant insect. He was as cold and detached as he was powerful.
Swallowing the fear that tried to mix in with his hate, his eyes moved over to the next most dangerous person. He assumed the man to be the magical expert of the group. He hoped the man would not have the [Mage] class, as [Mage]s were a tough lot to deal with. However, seeing how quickly the man had moved to cast his glyphs and runes and spells the moment that one member had disappeared told him all the dread he needed to know.
Something had taken a member of their team and in the chaos the leader of the small Acul party had chosen to take advantage of it. However, while the group had fought, the single man had continued to cast his spells in the grass. It did not take any magical education to know that the man had been working to counter whatever magical trap his teammate had fallen into.
Then there was the team work and trust among them. The [Mage]—Jakkam chose to err on the worst case scenario—had not even lifted a finger, trusting his team to keep him alive.
And the team had. More interesting was that the [Mage] had also found success in retrieving his teammate.
Now there were two variables Jakkam had to work with. The first was whatever trap had taken the teammate in the first place because he was aware of no such thing. The second was the capability of the [Mage].
If the [Mage] was powerful, then he hated to admit that negotiating with them would be a better move than making enemies of them.
With a deep frown on his face, he looked to Atob. “Go,” he said. “Pass the message to the chief. We have a possible [Mage] coming to us.”
Atob nodded, unhesitant. The boy was always without hesitation. Then he sprinted away, leaving only Jakkam to keep watch.
And watch he kept, eyes ever sharp. The group were talking, having a conversation as if nothing mattered, as if they were completely fine. As if they had not just slaughtered people with families and intruded upon lands that did not belong to them.
Where, he wondered, are they trying to go?
Why were they meeting the mountain at an angle? Surely they did not intend to climb. Then again, they had left behind one of their jepats, so clearly they were not hesitant to leave their steeds behind if they did not need them.
But a climb would be suicidal.
One did not so easily reach the top of the mountain.
Careful, Jakkam, he warned himself.
Just because it was difficult, it did not mean that a person could not reach the top. The real problem was that if they reached the top, then they would interrupt whatever the chief was doing up there.
“I can’t let them reach the top,” he told himself. “[Mage] or not. They cannot—”
His blood froze in his chest and his hold on his spear tightened a little too hard. From so great a distance the man who’d crushed a person’s skull as if it didn’t matter turned his head.
And looked at him.