Read Online The Black Tower by Steven Montano - Free Book Online

the light from the air.  “I forgot how much I dislike charging into battle.”
    “You’re a soldier,” Gess said with a wry grin.  “I figured you’d love it.”
    “Well, you’re wrong,” Blackhall said, trying to laugh but unable to.  He was twisted inside, gripped by a fear he hadn’t felt in years.  Never once had he been frightened for his life when they’d laid plans to destroy the Black Guild and the Phage.  It wasn’t until after they’d carried out their mission that he’d started to feel this terror, this nagging sense of danger and dread.
    Your soul is dirty now.  Tainted.  You’re getting too old for this, and you know it.  But he couldn’t walk away, not yet.  He still had a job to do.
    “That’s probably a good thing,” Gess told him as they neared the wagon.
    “What is?” he asked.
    “The fact that you don’t enjoy war.”
     
    Syke was a young man with a great deal of scars, a survivor of the southern campaigns against the Tuscars near Tarek Non.  He was short and stocky, with shoulders a mile wide and arms like stacks of bricks.  His brown hair was cut close to his scalp, and a thin beard covered his stony face.
    “Sir,” he said as Blackhall approached.
    “At ease, Major,” Blackhall said.  “What’s our status?”
    Syke’s at-ease posture looked like that of most soldiers at full attention.  A wickedly curved axe was slung across one shoulder and twin blades protruded from cross-guard hilts at his lower back; the man’s armor was more leather than plate, and like the rest of the Steel Company men he looked like he’d have been perfectly at home in a gladiator’s arena.
    “The war wagons are ready,” he said.  “We’ll need a few hours to stow the rest of the equipment.  After my men get some food they’ll be ready to fight.”
    Blackhall chewed on the fact that they’d be in combat so soon.  Part of him still wished the use of cutgates wasn’t possible, that he and his men faced a long march before they’d come to blows with the Iron Count’s forces.  Tension mounted in Blackhall’s back, so rock-hard it felt like a creature had crawled under his skin.
    “Come with us, Major,” he told Syke.  “I want to show you something.”
    The three of them walked to a low wooden table in the middle of a wide open tent near the city gates.  The dirt floor was packed with sacks of grain and arrows, extra shields and pieces of scrap metal the smiths hadn’t been able to fit to the exterior of the war wagons.  A large map was nailed down to the table, detailing all of Malzaria.  Gess had placed blue chess pieces as markers in the Bonelands near Corinth, indicating where the cutgates would deposit them once he and the Veilwardens back in Ral Tanneth opened portals outside of Ebonmark.  Small black rocks had also been set, roughly the same distance from the ruined city but with a more random array. 
    “Gess,” Blackhall said.
    Gess looked at him.
    “What?”
    “Would you please explain the map.”
    “It’s a map.”
    “Gess...”
    “Fine,” the Veilwarden said, and he looked at Syke.  “The blue chess pieces indicate where our forces will emerge when we use the cutgates.  We’ll be able to move roughly a hundred soldiers at a time.  Those units will reunite on the other side.  Since all of our arrival points are within a few miles of each other we shouldn’t be split up for very long.  We’ll divide each unit as equally as possible between your men and the Colonel’s.”
    Syke nodded.  “What are the black markers?” he asked.
    “That’s where the Iron Count’s forces have been spotted by our Veilcraft reconnaissance,” Gess said.  “They just started to appear.”
    “Do we know their numbers?” Syke asked.
    “Three hundred and counting,” Blackhall said.  “Lucky for us they’re being deployed in unfavorable terrain, the quicksand flats near the edges of some fairly deep valleys.  It will take them a bit longer to reach