The Shattered Land_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [111]
Pierce remembered nothing of his birth, but he had heard of this practice from other warforged. Cannith artificers and craftsmen would stage wargames, setting warforged against warforged in full battle. It prepared the ’forged for the true experience of battle, for the painful sensations of injury and deactivation. Most of the fallen could be repaired—though occasionally a soldier would suffer an injury too severe to be restored.
“From the beginning, they used us to die in their stead. I was trained to kill princes and lords, but it was warforged who suffered the first blows from my blades.”
He couldn’t remember these wargames, but Pierce had certainly fought other warforged on the battlefield. All five nations of Galifar made use of warforged soldiers. Keldan Ridge was the only time he’d faced an army of warforged, but he’d destroyed many enemy warforged in the heat of battle. The momentary thought of Keldan Ridge reminded him of the strange scout, Hydra. What was his tie to that accursed place?
“Tannic was pleased with his work,” Indigo continued, “always close at hand, always suggesting ways our performance could be improved, but he grew careless with his choice of words. Looking back now, I think that he considered us his children. One day he was explaining human anatomy, pointing out the swiftest ways to kill a human, and he encouraged me to strike at those killing points, and so I did.”
“You struck your creator?”
“I killed him. They had grown careless: there were mage-wrights ready to repair the warforged, but no healers for the humans. When I watched his blood spread across the tile floor, I understood death for the first time. I knew what I was, and I knew the weakness of the flesh, the vulnerability of those who had created me.”
“I’m surprised they let you live.”
She didn’t shrug, but Pierce could hear the ambivalence in her tone. “We were too valuable for such things. My adamantine blades were probably worth more to the forgehold than he was, and it was his poor choice of words. Even then, I believed that my purpose was to serve the house and the nation it would sell me to. I began to imagine the others who would fall at my blades, and I took greater pleasure in the rest of my training, but it was years before I realized that I could choose who would live and who would die.”
“As long as Harmattan agrees with you.”
“Do not worry about Harmattan showing mercy to flesh and blood, brother. If he spares a breather, rest assured he has a reason.”
They fell into silence again. For a moment Pierce saw Lei’s face in his mind, but his thoughts were interrupted by noise—a massive figure crashing through the jungle.
Harmattan was coming.
Wake up.
It was Jode’s voice. Faint, distant, but as familiar to Daine as the voice of his father.
Wake up!
The scent of smoke was strong in the air. He could hear a rhythmic pounding, the sound of metal on metal—a column of armored soldiers, marching nearby. There was a terrible pain in his left thigh, as if he’d been stabbed. His other injuries seemed to have vanished.
He opened his eyes.
The night sky was hidden by dark clouds, lit from below by distant fires, but Daine knew that light wasn’t coming from an elven city. He could hear torn tents flapping in the slight wind, and he could feel a rough pallet beneath him.
This was Keldan Ridge. The camp on the hill.
He sat up, sending a pulse of pain through his injured thigh. “Jode?”
The campsite was deserted, and Jode was nowhere to be seen. He rose slowly to his feet. The sound of armored footsteps grew louder, and he saw that a column of warforged was marching in a circle around the camp. These were the warforged he’d fought in the battle, and they formed a moving wall of metal bristling with blades and spikes.
“This didn’t happen,” he said, only half expecting an answer.
“Are you certain? Perhaps you just don’t remember it.” The voice was an all-too-familiar purr. The woman standing next to Daine pulled her hood back. Her silvery-white hair reminded him of the wretched