Remove the Shroud: The King's Ranger Book 3

by AC Cobble

  The valaan shrieked and surged out of reach. For a heartbeat, Rew thought it might flee, but he’d angered it. Like all Dark Kind, it viewed people as food rather than threats, and there was nothing more infuriating than your dinner sticking a sword in you.

  Rew assumed so, at least. It’d never happened to him.

  The valaan spun to face him, orange blood pumping from its wrist and streaking down the hole in its back. The ranger didn’t know if it would bleed out from the wounds he’d given it. He’d never thought to let one of the things live long enough to see how they recovered from injuries. Even grievously wounded, valaan were amongst the deadliest creatures he’d ever faced.

  It came at him in a rush, the stump of its arm and its taloned hand spread wide, its mouth open, displaying teeth blacker than its skin, invisible at night.

  Rew swung at its remaining hand, hoping to sever that one as well and disarm it, so to speak, but the valaan had anticipated his tactic and shifted as it charged. He missed its arm as it turned out of range, and now, his longsword was well past it. The valaan hooked its other arm, the one with the severed wrist, around the back of his neck and yanked him close.

  He might have been able to fight it, muscle against muscle, but he wasn’t sure if he’d win. The thing’s cold breath was on his face, and its mouth was opened wide, questing for his throat. In a blink, Rew yanked his hunting knife from the sheath and stabbed up, the sharp steel taking the valaan under the chin a fraction of a second before its jaws locked onto his neck. Rew thrust harder, seeking the creature’s brain. It collapsed against him, its tall body falling on him with surprising weight, as if it was made of steel rather than flesh and bone.

  Rew stumbled back, staggering under the weight, shrugging the valaan off and yanking his hunting knife free. He watched it, not entirely sure if it was dead or not. Regardless of the damage one did to them, the pain they might or might not have felt, valaan fought to the last breath. Gasping for air, Rew waited until he was sure it wasn’t moving any longer.

  “Rew, are you all right?” demanded Anne. “You’re covered in… blood?”

  He turned and nodded. He felt the valaan’s cold blood soaking his back. It must have bled all over him when it grappled with him, but all of the blood was the valaan’s. Its claws had not scored his flesh.

  Raif was standing amidst a pile of dead narjags, his eyes darting to each of the creatures as if surprised he’d already killed them all. Zaine was crouched, an arrow on her bow, looking out into the night in case any more Dark Kind appeared. Cinda was beside the thief, her arms crossed over her chest, scowling at the rest of the mercenaries who were in a tight cluster. They hadn’t taken a step to assist their leader. Only the nameless woman had come to his aid. Anne knelt beside Borace, her hands on the big man.

  Rew lurched to the nameless woman, who lay on her back, her jaw clenched tight, eyes staring up at the sky above them. Her hands were wrapped around her thigh, and blood leaked profusely through the gaps in her fingers.

  “There’s an artery in the leg…” she hissed.

  “If it’d been more than nicked, you would have bled out already,” Rew assured her. Louder, he called, “Anne—“

  “I can’t do both,” responded the empath, her voice already tight with the strain of taking Borace’s pain. “This man is as strong and as stubborn as stone, but those things tore into him like a New Year roasted chicken. Rew, help her if you can. Otherwise, we’re going to have to choose…”

  “Understood,” said Rew. “Cinda, get my pack. Raif, Zaine, stay on guard. Shout if you see anything moving out there.”

  The nameless woman looked into his eyes. “It was so fast. It… I can’t believe it. I’ve never seen anything move like that. It—”

  He placed a finger against her lips, silencing her, then reached up for his pack that Cinda had brought. “Some light?”

  The girl raised her hand, shifting to hide it from the group of mercenaries behind them on the hill, and the pale white-green glow of her necromantic funeral fire bathed the scene. Suddenly, the light brightened, and Rew saw Ambrose standing on the other side of him and the nameless woman. The necromancer was eyeing Cinda.

  “You are your father’s daughter.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I appreciate the light, but…” said Rew, not sparing the man a look.

  “But you’d rather I had helped earlier?” replied the necromancer. “Perhaps I should have, but I have little skill with battle magic. I might have made things worse.”

  “Rew,” called Zaine, “they’re leaving.”

  Cursing, Rew spared a look at the mercenaries’ backs. The remaining men and women were marching off into the dark without a word to their injured companions or to Rew and his party. Lord Fredrick was the lone person remaining near the campsite, his cloak wrapped around him tight, his eyes darting between the departing adventurers and Rew and the others.

  “There’s no loyalty when you fight for nothing more than coin,” said Ambrose. “At least they didn’t try to take ours, eh? With the big man down, that could have gotten nasty, but I think you put fear into their hearts, Ranger. They’d rather face the rest of the journey coinless than face you.”

  Rew ignored Ambrose. He rooted through his pack, searching for his herbs and other medicinal supplies.

  Smiling, the necromancer admitted, “Ah, yes. You’re right to think I’ve no loyalty either. I don’t have it. Not to you, not to Borace, but I’m not stupid enough to think I’m better off in the night with those seven fools. I’m staying with you, Ranger. I will help as I can.”

  “You had better.”

  “Of course,” purred Ambrose, letting the soft glow from his hand brighten, as if the light he was shedding was the big contribution he could offer.

  Rew pulled out a packet of herbs, some thread, and a needle. “Can you sustain a fire with heat?”

  The necromancer looked down at his hand. “Ah, no. Funeral fire is cool, cold, sometimes.”

  “Go help Anne with Borace, if you actually can,” muttered Rew.

  The necromancer turned to go.

  Rew ripped up a handful of grass from the soil beside him. He tied it into a knot and he ignited it.

  “King’s Sake,” murmured Cinda.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” grumbled Rew.

  The red-orange glow of the burning grass flared unnaturally bright, illuminating the bronze-armored woman in front of them. Her eyes were closed now, and her breath was coming in short, erratic bursts. Her hands and forearms were soaked in blood, and the crimson liquid painted her from the waist down. Rew was growing quite worried that the artery in the woman’s leg had been opened wider than he had skill to repair. The light revealed more blood than he’d expected. He studied the woman’s leg, between her tightly clenched fingers. He sat down his sewing needle and thread.

  Rew drew his hunting knife. He unstopped one of the flasks he’d gotten from Bressan and poured the liquor along the length. Then, he stuck the blade into the fire of the grass he’d lit.

  Cinda watched, tittering with worry.

  Rew began prodding at the woman’s leg, taking care not to jostle her hands or loosen her grip on the injury. If he took time to sew her up, he suspected she’d bleed out, and he wasn’t sure he had the skill to do it anyway. The cut was deep, the damage extensive. He had herbs that would help slow the flow of blood, but they took time to be ingested. There were others that could be applied topically, but he’d have to make a poultice, which meant boiling water and several minutes mashing the ingredients together. If Anne could not assist, with the supplies he’d brought and their limited time, there were two choices—a tourniquet or fire.

  He pushed the woman’s armor aside, feeling her upper thigh. It was thick with muscle, and he grimaced. He thought he could likely get a strap around and cinch it tight enough to stop the bleeding, but he wasn’t sure. If it wasn’t tight, if it didn’t stop the bleeding, the woman was going to die. If she didn’t die
right away, she might lose her leg if they had to keep the tourniquet on long, which given their precarious situation, was just as good as dying. He needed Anne’s advice, but she’d told already told him they would have to choose.

  Quietly, Rew told the woman, “I’m going to try and cauterize the wound. It’s going to hurt.”

  The woman opened her eyes and looked at him where he was kneeling between her legs. “Last time a man was there and said it was going to hurt, he was wrong. I gave him the night of his life, and he was the one aching the next day.” The nameless woman’s eyes flicked toward Cinda. “You blushing, lass? What’s this ranger been teaching you?”

  Rew figured if the woman could jest, she could live. “Move your hands, and don’t bite off the tip of your tongue when I do this.”

  She closed her eyes again and moved her hands, her jaw clamped tight.

  Immediately, Rew snatched his hunting knife by the bone hilt and slapped the fire-hot steel against the woman’s dark skin where the valaan and slashed her open. Her flesh sizzled, and she screamed, her back arching, her body convulsing. Rew leaned on her, holding her leg flat on the ground as he pressed the scalding blade against her, burning her flesh, sealing the wound.

  “Rew?” called Anne, shouting over the woman’s screams. “Is everything all right over there?”

  “Not really. Give me a moment,” he yelled back, nearly thrown off by the woman’s twisting and thrashing. He looked down at her. “Your first time?”

  She spasmed once more and then passed out.

  14

  As dawn broke, Rew’s hands were clamped firmly beneath his armpits, his cloak wrapped tightly around him, and he was moving in a slow circuit around what they were calling their camp, though it was only a place in the grass where they’d dropped their packs and fallen asleep. It was one hill over from the scene of the battle—as far as they’d been able to take the wounded.

  His breath billowed from his mouth, thick with vapor, then trailed behind him like a flag. He could feel walking through the tough grass that he was following a path he’d already worn, but he could hardly see his soaking wet boots when he looked down. They were hidden beneath a heavy layer of mist that clung to the top of their hill and obscured everything else around them. It was as if they were stranded on an island out in the sea, the mainland lost in the distance. He grunted. The analogy felt too close to the truth to be comfortable.

  Rew kept walking, following the circuit he’d trod crowning the top of the hill. The path he walked would be obvious to any trackers looking for them, and he would have chastised his rangers for doing the same, but the two-dozen dead narjags they’d left in a pile several hundred paces away weren’t exactly hard to find, so he’d forgone his normally cautious habits when it came to leaving traces of his presence. It was luck, not stealth, that he was trusting to keep them safe.

  The night before, Lord Fredrick, after receiving stern admonishments and vague threats about how they could not defend against another attack, had cast a glamour about the hill. The nobleman had been reluctant to admit he was capable of such a feat, but Rew strongly suspected he’d done just the same, except on a much larger scale, to conceal the attack against his father’s army. Rew didn’t mention that theory, as he hadn’t wanted to antagonize the nobleman, but he figured if Fredrick could summon enough low magic to hide an army, he could hide their small group.

  Fredrick, when he finally agreed to try, had firmly insisted that while his magic could steer away human eyes, he did not believe it would fool the Dark Kind. Even though he still demanded the man cast the spell, Rew had to admit that was a fair point, which was why he was on patrol.

  He exhaled, and the cloud of his breath joined the mist that clung to the land like a blanket. Around them, finally with the glow of the sun, he could see caps of other hills shouldering through the fog, and he could see the faint smear that was the road, cutting through the land and off into the gray beyond his vision. It was quiet, the thick air stifling any sound. Not even his own boots were audible as he walked. A dozen armies of narjags could be circling them, and he would have no idea, except that he felt nothing. Nothing at all, except for the flickering warmth of life on the hill in the center of the circuit he walked.

  There was a rustle, and he turned to see Zaine rising to her feet. She was picking at her clothing where the dew had dampened it and the fabric clung to her. She bent and gathered the blanket she’d been sleeping beneath. She wrapped that around herself, though Rew guessed it was just as damp as the rest of her attire. With the silent steps of a thief, Zaine left the others and came to join him on his patrol. They both looked out toward the horizon, where the sun was lighting the mist like a sea of flame. Staring across toward the horizon wouldn’t do them much good if they were attacked, but Rew couldn’t see anything at the bottom of the hill anyway, and the sunrise was pretty.

  “You think she’ll survive?” wondered Zaine, nodding toward the sleeping figures of their companions.

  Rew shrugged.

  “I saw you fight that… thing.”

  “The valaan.”

  She nodded. “It moved so fast, like… like I don’t even know. I don’t know how you did it.”

  “Clean living, faith in the Blessed Mother…”

  Zaine snorted then caught herself. In a fierce whisper, she said, “I don’t know how you did it, but I know it wasn’t that.”

  Rew grinned at her.

  “How long do you think before we can travel?” asked Zaine.

  He felt his lips curl down, and Rew shook his head. He didn’t know. Too long, though, if he had to guess. They’d killed a valaan and two dozen narjags, but Baron Appleby was worried about thousands of the foul creatures, and if there were thousands of narjags, that meant there had to be plenty more valaan, too, since the one they’d faced had been with a small patrol. If the valaan were limited, they wouldn’t waste their numbers on patrol. They would use narjags, like the shaman the party had faced heading to Falvar. That this valaan accompanied the patrol itself, rather than a deputized narjag, was terrifying. That their group almost fell to the one valaan and a handful of narjags made it worse. Against a bigger group of the Dark Kind, not all of them would have survived. King’s Sake, he wasn’t sure they all had survived. The nameless woman had been teetering on the edge of life for hours, and now, they wouldn’t have the questionable help of the other mercenaries. The mercenaries they did have were injured, more a hinderance than a help.

  Lord Fredrick would be little help as well if his glamours didn’t work on the Dark Kind. If he had other skills, he hadn’t admitted them. The nobleman tried to appear mysterious about his ability, but Rew guessed the man truly had no other magical talent. In the time the children had spent in Yarrow, and during the battle against Baron Worgon, he hadn’t shown anything other than illusion and a willingness to stab someone in the back.

  Rew put the necromancer Ambrose in the same category. Supposedly, he had been collecting wraiths from the barrowlands for Baron Fedgley, so he must have some skill, or he wouldn’t have lasted a day in the barrows, but he hadn’t lifted a finger against the Dark Kind. One possibility was that the man needed the fresh power of the recently departed to cast his magic. If that was the case, it meant by definition, Ambrose’s help would come too late.

  Evidently, Zaine must have felt much the same. She was staring at the necromancer like she meant to stick one of her daggers into him. “Do you think—“

  Rew waved a hand to shush her. “He’s awake. Their kind rarely sleeps. It’s quite possible he’s listening to us.”

  Zaine glared at the necromancer, and sure enough, he rolled over, and his eyes blinked open. Ambrose yawned, pretending he had just woken. Rew waved for the man to join them.

  “Can I help you?” asked Ambrose innocently when he finally wriggled free of his bedroll and moved to walk beside them, the damp chill of the morning giving him no bother.

  “Next time we’re under pressure like that, you’
ll help,” said Rew, convinced that the man had been eavesdropping, which did nothing to improve the ranger’s opinion of him.

  “Well, as you know, it’s not so simple—“

  “You’ll help, or if I survive, I will kill you myself,” interrupted Rew. “Everyone in this party will do everything they can to protect all of us, or they’re not welcome. And keep in mind, you know too much for us to leave you behind, don’t you think? Do not test me, Ambrose.”

  The necromancer pouted.

  “And as we find time,” said Rew, pointing a finger at the man, “I expect you to tutor Cinda.”

  “Hold on—“

  “You could try and slip away to join your former friends out there,” said Rew, gesturing out at the rolling mist, “but I doubt they’ll get far before they encounter more Dark Kind. You spent some time with them. How do you think they’ll fare against a valaan? Maybe that will make them better company. You could do a little necromancy, eh? Go the rest of the way to Carff with a gaggle of animated corpses walking in your wake?”

  He wiggled his fingers under Ambrose’s nose.

  Stepping back, the necromancer held up his hands in protest. “You leave me no choice, but even if I had one, I’d stay with you, Ranger. I’ll stay, and I’ll help. I’m one of yours now, through and through.”

  Rew snorted, shaking his head at the man’s claim. He asked him, “One of mine, is it? Tell me of the woman, then.”

  Ambrose blinked at him. “She’s ferocious in bed, so I’ve heard. Overheard, I should say. Quiet nights at our lonely camps weren’t so quiet or so lonely for her. I’ve seen her fight exactly as often as you have, and it was impressive. She carries herself with confidence, so that was no great surprise. Truth, even before yesterday, I would have wagered on her to best Borace in battle or the bedroll. She gave him more than she got, that’s for sure.”