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“I cannot.” Rorik rubbed his forehead before he met the Crimson Prime Castor’s gaze. “I donotbelieve what Cornelius stands for. I never have. I am not his sympathiser, I just try to maintain a balance, and if that means appearing to agree with him, then I will.”
“I know.” Garrick frowned as he mulled over possibilities. “What if it’s because you don’twantto see it?”
“What?”
Garrick nodded enthusiastically the more he considered the possibility. “You already think he is a spoiled, overly-talented, obnoxious Castor,” Garrick said bluntly, ignoring Rorik’s wince at the honesty. “What if you cannot see it because you grudge it being Cord?”
“Would that be possible?”
“Do you want to see it?” Garrick asked the other male. “Seriously, you need to know within yourself, is it a case of seeing is believing that Cord Lebedev is worthy?”
“Maybe?” Rorik looked ashamed to admit it.
“Rorik, I’m not going to lie, if this is simply a case of jealousy, I will take that a thousand times over you being on Cornelius’s side.”
“All Akrhyn are created equal,” Rorik said firmly. “Prejudice and hate can stay within the human realm; there is no place for them in our world.”
Garrick smiled widely. “That may be the most sensible thing you have ever said to me.”
Rorik glared, and then with a huff, he started to laugh. “I suppose we should go find him before he attacks the Drakhyn single-handedly.”
“By the Ancients, let’s not put ideas in his head,” Garrick muttered as the two Primes went to look for Cord.
They found him not far from the house. He stood over two dismembered Drakhyn. Cord hadn’t worn his robes since they got to Siberia, his Sentinel uniform was enough. He had added a long fitted military coat with a hood—to blend better, he claimed. He watched the two Primes coming towards him, one in robes of white, the other in robes of crimson. They moved as one over the snow, and Cord wondered, not for the first time, if they knew that they wore the wrong robes. Garrick was more of the Pure Cast than he admitted, and Rorik was so benignlyneutralit was a wonder they were Cast in the robes they were. Cord was sure, and had been sure for some time, that the Great Council meddled somehow with the ink vial at the end of a Castor’s final Trial. If he lived through this war, it was something he was keen to explore further.
There was too much corruption in the Akrhyn society, it needed flushed out. Drag it out of the shadows and put it under the light to be investigated. He didn’t care who screamed in protest. Their world was changing, and they needed to change with it or be left behind. He turned from the two Primes as he stared over the ledge to the army below. They had moved in the night, creeping closer to the mountain.
“Why do they wait?” Cord asked his elders quietly. “What are they waiting for?”
“They seem to have been here for so long. They do not move much, but they move,” Garrick said quietly.
They stood in the trees, looking down at the basin below them, the snow long since churned from the feet of the Drakhyn so that it was no longer white. Even the heavy snowfalls no longer covered the ground from the Drakhyn’s movements.
Cord spun suddenly, his sword drawn and ready when the Sentinel appeared through the trees, his cloak of white camouflaging him sufficiently well.
“Sentinel, you should make more noise,” Cord reprimanded him as he put his sword away.
“I didn’t know it was you,” the Sentinel answered. “They moved, but it was not for progress, in the small hours of this morning. We heard screaming, so much screaming.”
“Who?” Garrick asked as he looked back over at the Drakhyn.
“Them, we think,” the Sentinel answered.
“They’re turning on each other?” Cord asked, pushing his feeling of hope aside.
“Wagons came in day before yesterday. They never unloaded them. We thought they were supplies, they could have argued over food. They have to be hungry,” the Sentinel told them wearily. “Or maybe they got tired of waiting on fresh food.”
“It is rare that they turn on each other for food,” Rorik said thoughtfully. “But not unheard of.”
“If it isn’t food in the wagons, and they are eating each other”—Cord frowned down at the camp—“then what’s in the wagons? And how in Delfar’s name did they evengetwagons over this terrain?”
“We’ve been trying to find that answer too,” the Sentinel replied grimly. “There is so much that is unknown. Have you had nothing from Velvore, Mark?”
Cord grunted in amusement. “Do you think he is sending me postcards?”
“Cord,” Garrick warned beside him, his voice low.
Cord heard the rebuke for what it was; not every Akrhyn was as outspoken about the Ancients. “No, Sentinel, I have had nothing from the Ancient Velvore.”
