Chapter 36
After weeks walking beneath the ocean, Ashok enjoyed the feeling of sun and wind upon his face once again.
He was never given to displays of emotion, but for the first time he understood why warriors often made a big show of kissing the ground of their homeland after returning from a long campaign. This was Lok beneath his feet. Fortress was long behind him. As much as this land had done him wrong, it was his country, and the home to the only thing left in the world that he loved.
The underworld’s exit was well hidden in the plains northwest of MaDharvo. Moyo hadn’t known the place names, but from the collector’s secondhand description of the area, Ashok had assumed as much. To the west was Garo, and it was tempting to go there first to teach them a lesson for betraying him to Devedas, but he only considered that for a moment, for in the distance to the north he could make out the hazy outlines of the Akershani mountain range where the Cove was hidden.
“I have returned,” he told the empty countryside, and then began his long walk across the plains.
Ashok ran whenever there was sufficient light. He drank from streams and the occasional puddle, as his Protector gifts would prevent him from becoming ill. There was no time to forage, but every day he found the opportunity to kill something. If there was fuel available, he’d cook it. If there wasn’t, he simply ate the meat raw.
He possessed almost nothing beyond the ragged clothes upon his back. Even his stolen sword had been too badly damaged in the fight against the Dvarapala to be of much use, so he’d left it behind. The lantern, rope, pick, and remaining oil from his journey had been left at the last cache in the down below, as future collectors would certainly put those tools to good use. The less he carried, the faster he could move, and the less time it would take time to get back to Thera. All he had was a collector’s folding knife, Moyo’s fire starter, and a great deal of guilt for being away from his obligation for so very long.
The plains were too deserted. It was if all the people were hunkered down, hiding before a storm. There were no patrols to avoid. He spied a number of casteless villages along the way, but each of those had been deserted or burned. Their state left a taste in his mouth worse than the rancid water he’d been surviving on. He passed towns but didn’t bother to stop. Stealing some horses might have sped up his journey—it would certainly have made it an easier one—except he no longer had the authority to take whatever he needed, had nothing to trade, and was too proud to steal. He may be the most feared criminal in the world, but he was no thief.
It was growing cold, but his body was entirely healed from his ordeal in the sea and dungeon, so he felt strong. Enough of his hair and beard had grown back he no longer looked like a shorn monk, and the strange Fortress clothing he still wore was so dirty and damaged from his journey through the underworld that if a patrol did see him, they’d probably assume he was wearing casteless rags and react accordingly, which meant Ashok would have to murder them all, so it was best to remain unseen.
Each morning, the mountains were a bit closer.
After many days he came across a single lonely tree, and, oddly enough, standing beneath it was a horse.
The gelding wore an Akershani saddle. It was there, contentedly munching the yellow grass, as its rider sat in the shade, back against the narrow trunk. Ashok approached cautiously, but this didn’t feel like a trap. As he got closer, he saw that the fallen rider had been terribly beaten, and every visible bit of skin was covered in cuts and bruises. His hands had been smashed into gnarled, malformed claws.
Remarkably, the man was still alive, and his bleary eyes opened a crack when he heard Ashok’s footsteps.
“I started going home, trying to forget what I’d done,” he managed to croak through a bloody mouth of broken teeth. “How could I? Their deaths are on my head.”
The wounded man turned his palms up, revealing that he had somehow managed to cut his own wrists. Then Ashok saw that a jagged, broken deer femur was still lying at his side, bloody. That must have been quite the feat of determination to saw through his veins since his fingers looked as if they’d been methodically beaten with hammers.
“Why have you killed yourself?” Ashok asked.
“No choice. They made me talk.” He wheezed, then stared through Ashok, as if unsure if this was real, or the phantom of an expiring mind. “I see Ashok Vadal.”
“I am here.”
“The Forgotten’s warrior lives.”
Ashok knelt next to the dying fool. “What happened?”
“The Cove…Bharatas is attacking the Cove.” The man let out a long wheeze. “He carries an ancestor blade.”
Ashok was incapable of feeling fear, but a cold dread came upon him, for he knew all too well what a bearer of a black steel blade could do against rebels, because he had done it himself, a great many times. “What of Thera? Is she there?” Except there was no response. Ashok took hold of the man’s shoulders and shook him, but his head rolled forward, lifeless.
He rose and had to take a deep breath to steady himself. The plains were too vast. The odds of him coming upon this man just as he took his last breaths were no coincidence. Keta’s spiteful gods had wanted him to hear those words, either to taunt him for not being there to protect their Voice, or to warn him to hurry.