The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [52]
“Not here. Most live away from the mountains where rain falls more frequently and life is easier.”
His voice was strangely muffled and Geth glanced over his shoulder to look at him. Chetiin was facing backward, looking back the way they had come. “What is it?” Geth asked.
The shaarat’khesh elder turned to face him again. “We’re being followed.”
The road behind them was empty except for the thinning dust of their own passage. The Seawall Mountains receded in the distance, but Geth thought he could see all the way back to the pass. No one was on the road. “Where? And if we are being followed, how are they keeping up with us?”
Chetiin shook his head. “I don’t know where, but I can feel it.” His ears twitched. “And maybe they won’t keep up, but I’ll talk to Tariic anyway. We should set a double guard tonight.”
Tariic listened when Chetiin told him of his concerns, and that night they made camp with the road on one side of them and the steep gullies of a dry forking streambed on two others. They drew straws for watches, Vounn and Ashi excluded because of their inability to see in the dark. Geth drew second watch opposite Aruget. When he climbed from his bedroll, shaken awake by Midian as the gnome retired from his turn on watch, Aruget pointed him roughly to the side of the camp that faced southeast. He had already claimed the northwest side of the camp. Geth shrugged, adjusted his great gauntlet, and went where he was told. The view from either side of the camp was equally empty under the combined lights of the risen moons.
In fact, Geth had no objection to sitting watch on his own. He appreciated being alone for the first time that day. As Midian and the soldier Krakuul, who had drawn first watch, found their bedrolls and their breathing faded into the same easy rhythm as those already asleep, Geth touched the collar of rune-etched black stones he wore around his neck and looked up at the hazy brightness of the Ring of Siberys.
It was the fourth day of Barrakas. Exactly one year ago, the Bonetree hunters and their monstrous dolgrim allies had attacked Bull Hollow, the little hamlet on the remote edge of the Eldeen Reaches that had become his haven after the Last War. They had been pursuing Dandra, and they’d destroyed much of Bull Hollow in their attempt to draw her out. In the process, they had killed Adolan, the hamlet’s defender and Geth’s friend.
Geth squeezed the stones of the collar. With his last breath, Adolan had told him to take it. The collar was a relic of the sect of druids, the Gatekeepers, to which Adolan had belonged. Through his adventures in the months that followed, the ancient magic of the collar had given him protection and guidance, turning icy cold whenever he’d been threatened by the sanity-twisting forces behind the tainted dragon Dah’mir’s power.
Now it was no cooler than the night air, but it seemed to Geth that the stones were very, very heavy. He sighed and let them go. The collar fell back against his neck.
There was a rustling behind him, and he looked over his shoulder to see Ashi silhouetted against the dim glow of the banked campfire. “Can I join you?” she asked softly.
He patted the ground beside him, and she sat. “A year ago,” she said.
Get looked back up at the Ring of Siberys, at the stars and the moons. “You remembered.” She’d been among the hunters who had attacked Bull Hollow.
“How could I forget? I’m sorry, Geth.”
“You’re a friend now, Ashi. You turned your back on the Bone-tree clan. There’s nothing to apologize for. Anyway, you’ve said sorry before.” He watched the sky for a little longer, then asked, “The hunter who killed Adolan—really big, fought with an axe— what was his name?”
Ashi