Bones of the Empire Read Free Page B

headlong at them.
    It had not been voiced, but they all knew the Turessian Liris would be coming for them sooner or later, bringing with her dozens if not hundreds of corpses. She had escaped after Turess had come to their aid, but she knew they were in the area. The leader of the Turessians, Dorralt, would see to her repeated attempts to come after them. He could not risk them trying to fulfill the albeit ridiculous prophecy that they could do something about his attack on the nations. His resolve was most likely hardened further by knowing his brother, Turess, was alive again. More than once Estin had wondered if handing Turess to Dorralt might actually spare their lives, but from what he had seen of the Turessians, he doubted it would prolong their lives by more than a few minutes.
    Around midafternoon the second day of hard travel, Turess turned his horse and headed more northeast. Yoska and Raeln stopped the others to watch him go, and soon Turess stopped and looked back. Saying something in his language to Yoska, he pointed toward a distant section of evergreens that grew atop a hill or mound of some sort, far off the path they had been taking.
    “Crazy dead man says we can cheat,” Yoska explained, pausing to wait for the inevitable glares from Estin and Feanne, demanding he tell them what Turess had actually said. “Okay, he really say we can use old mines to bypass much of borderlands. They were tapped out and abandoned during his time. He thinks if they exist yet, we can go under the enemy for a time. If they collapsed, we use hills to hide and rest. The mines themselves end near areas that were to be mined later, giving us good chance of staying below ground nearly half the distance to the temple, which he feels is where we will find his brother.”
    “You expect to use two-thousand-year-old mines safely?” asked Raeln, glowering, his ears flattening back in annoyance. “I wouldn’t trust dwarven halls that old, let alone these.”
    Turess seemed to understand the objection and said something more.
    Yoska quickly translated. “Now he says you seem ignorant of his people’s fine crafting skills. They enlisted the most skilled of the dark elves and dwarves in their lands. He believes the mines are intact. I also think ‘enlisted’ is a polite way of saying slave, yes?”
    Turning in his saddle to look at Estin and then Feanne, Raeln appeared to seek any objections from them. Having none to give him, Estin shrugged. Feanne squinted at the hills, offering nothing.
    “Very well,” Raeln told the group, though he sounded to Estin to be deeply skeptical. “We’ll follow Turess through the mines. At the first sign of trouble, I want everyone to run for the nearest exit and scatter for a half day once you get out of the mine. We can try to meet up again after we lose any pursuit.” When no one replied, he added, “That is not a request. I’ll keep fighting until you all run, so if you don’t want to get me killed, you’ll run away. Hopefully, we find nothing.”
    The group began riding again, this time with Turess taking the lead. As fresh snow fell, they descended slowly into a bowl-shaped section of land where the existing snow cover was even deeper, gradually making their way toward the hills on the far side. At the foot of those hills, Estin made out dozens of huts, sheltered from much of the snow by the evergreens uphill from them. The sudden darting shapes of fleeing elk to the north drew his eyes briefly, but once he was sure of what was moving, he returned his attention to the huts.
    “An old mining village,” Raeln mentioned as they kept riding. “That wouldn’t have survived two thousand years. Be ready for anything. Turess can’t know this place as well as he thinks.”
    “It might be one of the old Turessian cities,” offered Dalania, giving them a halfhearted smile, likely meant as reassurance.
    “Looks like a mining village,” replied both Raeln and Estin almost in unison. They