“All right,” Blaine replied. “If you can gather your broods into no more than half a dozen locations, we can guard them during the day.” Jarett looked pleased, and moved to speak. “But,” Blaine cut in, “in exchange, Niklas and I need more talishte fighters with the army, especially if Thrane is going to wipe out anyone who challenges his schemes. Today it’s the Elders. But he’ll come after us, too, since we’re the only real mortal counterweight left.”
“You want talishte soldiers to fight under mortal commanders?” Malin sounded like she had a bad taste in her mouth.
“You want mortals to defend your talishte broods against attackers, and possibly get caught up in a talishte civil war?” Blaine countered. “We’re your only option. Traher Voss has his hands full keeping Castle Reach in check and patrolling the coast for pirates. The other mortal warlords are dead—or working for Thrane.”
“All right,” she said grudgingly.
“That’s not all,” Blaine replied. “You’ll help us select twelve locations with suitable day crypts.”
“But you said—”
Blaine held up a hand to forestall her protest. “We’re only going to use a half a dozen at a time. Every night, different locations, identically guarded. The decoy locations will be just as diligently guarded, except that we’ll be using real mages where the talishte are, and stand-ins at the other sites. Make it a shell game and bet that Thrane doesn’t have enough mortals or mages to just attack them all, all at once. The more decoy sites we have, the better, but we can’t afford to tie up too much of the army when there are Meroven raiders to fight.”
Malin looked thoughtful. “It could work,” she replied. “Talishte are notoriously difficult to organize. We don’t like taking orders. But after the losses we’ve suffered,” she said, with a gesture that took in the ruined burying yard around them, “I think they may listen to reason.”
“Survival is a big incentive,” Blaine said. “We can’t protect talishte who choose not to stay with the group.”
Malin nodded. “I’ll propose it. I believe the other Elders will agree.” She paused. “We’ll need some additional soldiers to help us hunt and strike at Thrane’s broods during daylight. You have Penhallow’s word they will not be needlessly endangered.”
“I’ll hold him to it,” Blaine said evenly. “My men aren’t expendable.”
Malin gave Blaine an appraising look. “We will honor Penhallow’s promise. I can see why he speaks well of you.” With that, Malin vanished into the darkness.
“Well, that was interesting,” Captain Tonnerson observed drily as he and Blaine walked back to where they had left their horses and the other soldiers. Tonnerson was the commander Blaine intended to leave in charge of protecting cemeteries while he headed to the battle with Nagok. “Makes you wonder, when the big bad talishte Elders need help from the likes of us.”
Blaine grimaced. “Not really any different, I guess, than kings and nobles needing protection from soldiers who came from the same villages as the people they wanted to be protected from.”
Tonnerson was quiet for a while. “Want to bet Hennoch’s soldiers are carrying out the attacks?” he said finally.
“I was thinking the same thing.” Blaine smiled grimly. “Maybe he’s just grateful not being sent to attack Mirdalur again.”
Tonnerson guffawed. “Yeah, that didn’t work out too well. How many times has it been now that he’s been sent home with his tail between his legs? At least three.”
Blaine nodded. “Don’t underestimate him. We had superior forces—the Knights of Esthrane and the mages—and when he came after us at the Citadel, we had troops from the Solveigs and Verner, too.” He swung up into his saddle. “Hennoch’s gotten reinforcements, and new mages. Even Penhallow’s a little worried about what Thrane’s planning.”
Tonnerson slid a sideways glance in Blaine’s direction. “Worried? Or just duly concerned?”
Blaine hesitated, thinking about the conversation at Glenreith. “He and the Wraith Lord are taking the threat very seriously. I suspect he’s had enough experience to know things can easily go wrong.”
The next day, Blaine, a team of twenty soldiers, and a mage waited at a dilapidated graveyard not far from the ruins of a deserted old manor. This once-grand home had been deserted long before the Great Fire. Whether it had been abandoned because its owner’s fortunes declined or because of some other personal tragedy, Blaine could not recall. Wherever the living had gone, they had left their dead behind in a sad, overgrown burying yard.
Blaine guarded a site where the talishte had actually gone to ground. Tonnerson watched over a decoy cemetery. The twelve burying yards Malin and the Elders had selected stretched from the Wraith Lord’s manor at Lundmyhre to Westbain, where Penhallow headquartered his troops. Those locations were close enough to where Blaine and Niklas had camped their forces that the soldiers could be called back on short notice if there was an attack.
A noise made Blaine suddenly wary. He had hidden his men throughout the cemetery, behind cairns and bramble thickets, in the deep shadows around tall trees and alongside the crumbling stone vaults. Now, the sounds of hoofbeats heading their way was their signal to watch and wait, ready for a fight.
From where Blaine was hidden behind one of the larger cairns, he could glimpse the attackers’ approach. Fifteen men on horseback were heading for the abandoned cemetery. They wore patches on the sleeves of their coats, marking them as Hennoch’s soldiers, though what Blaine could see of their armor looked as if it had been pieced together from bits taken on the battlefield.
“This is the place,” the leader said, gesturing for the others to stop. “Let’s get to it. We’ve got three of these to hit today, and I want to make sure we’re gone by late afternoon.”
The men dismounted, leaving their horses loosely tethered near the road. They spread out, and Blaine was sure their first target would be the large cairn at the center of the graveyard. He waited until the enemy soldiers were well into the burying ground before he gave a clear, sharp whistle.
A curtain of crackling energy shot up from the tall grass, where Blaine’s mage laid a circle to ward the tombs. In the next second, a sudden blast of wind hit with enough force to pick up half a dozen of the men and hurl them into the white-hot current. The raiders screamed as the flame consumed them, twisting and struggling against the power that held them helpless as their flesh sizzled and burned away until nothing but blackened bones remained.
The surviving soldiers cried out in alarm, searching for a way to strike back at their unseen enemy. Blaine’s bowmen rose from the tall grass and let their arrows fly. Mage Aron’s wardings permitted their spelled arrows to fly through the force-curtain, while repelling incoming missiles. So long as they remained within the warding, the raiders could not reach Blaine’s soldiers or the cairns where their talishte patrons slept.
The enemy fighters who had not been swept into the energy-curtain turned and ran. One man stayed behind, his expression grim and determined. He raised his arm, palm out, and shouted a word of power as Blaine’s archers targeted him, sending three arrows aimed for his heart. With a wave of his hand he batted the arrows out of the air, and in the next moment, a torrent of blue fire streaked toward Aron’s force-curtain. For a few seconds, the blue fire vied against the white current, until the force-wall began to buckle, sparking and buzzing as the warding struggled to hold against the attack.
With a roar, the force-curtain fell, and the blue fire streaked past its boundary to hit a small cairn in a burst of fire. Flames engulfed the mound of stones, heating them white-hot, until the entire tomb exploded in a spray of splintered rocks. The attackers turned and gave a battle cry, charging toward the scorched line in the grass where the warding had been. In the same breath, more arrows flew, striking the mage in the shoulder and chest as his attention was diverted. Badly wounded but not yet dying, the mage snarled a curse and readied for another attack.
Aron reached up overhead, shouted
a word of power, and brought both clenched fists down with all his strength. A heavy branch in a tall tree near the enemy mage came crashing down, knocking the wizard to the ground.
The mage struggled to one knee and brought his right hand palm down in a sweeping motion. Six of Blaine’s men fell as if poleaxed, to lie motionless in the tall grass. Blaine ran at the mage, and as the outflow of power left the magic-user weakened, Blaine’s sword whistled through the air, angled for the mage’s throat. A strangled cry was all the wizard had time to make before the blade bit into his neck, but as the sword cut through flesh and bone, an arc of blue fire flashed from the mage’s hand, though his aim went wide, deflected by Blaine’s amulet. The mage’s body swayed, blood fountaining down, and toppled forward, to lie facedown in the dirt.
Blaine turned, sword in hand, as more enemy fighters headed his way. His own soldiers surged forward to join him. The raiders eyed the oncoming line of soldiers and turned to flee, but while the mages had been battling, several of Blaine’s men had slipped around behind, cutting the retreating fighters off from their horses.
Blaine swung his sword, venting his frustration on the raider, who found himself caught between two lines of attackers. Hennoch’s soldier growled a curse, squaring off to fight since retreat was impossible. Blaine pressed forward with a series of strikes meant to set his opponent on the defensive, and the man returned the strikes with force and skill. It was a more even match than Blaine expected, and he recalculated his next move, relying on the flicker of magic that warned him a few breaths before his enemy struck. That instinct served him well as he dodged at the last second, barely missing a thrust meant to eviscerate him.
His opponent had been so sure of making a kill that he left himself open. Very much alive, Blaine seized the opportunity, delivering one pounding blow after another before he dove forward, slipping his blade between his attacker’s ribs.
Blaine shoved the man hard, driving the sword hilt-deep into his chest, so that the fighter’s quivering body hung suspended from the sword blade, his toes barely touching the ground. The raider gave one final spasm, stiffened with a groan, and then slumped forward, dead.
“That was the most suicidal thing I’ve seen someone do in a long time.” Blaine turned to see Aron standing behind him, glowering. “You ran at a mage—a damn powerful mage—with a sword. Do you have a death wish?”
The battle was over. One empty cairn had taken a direct hit, but the rest of the burying yard was undamaged. Bodies littered the trampled grass, but Blaine was relieved to see that nearly all belonged to the enemy forces. Blaine sighed, and returned his attention to Aron. “No, I don’t have a death wish. I have an amulet that deflects magic.”
Aron moved closer, frowning suspiciously. “May I see it?”
Blaine removed the amulet on its leather strap from beneath his tunic. “Rikard and his mages created it,” he said, holding the piece where Aron could get a good look.
Aron held out one hand, palm facing the talisman, and concentrated. He met Blaine’s gaze and raised an eyebrow. “You got lucky this time,” he snapped. “Amulets don’t hold magic of that caliber forever, and I’m betting this isn’t the first battle you’ve used it in. I wouldn’t trust it against a powerful strike again.”
Blaine let out a long breath. “Point taken,” he conceded, tucking the charm back into his tunic. “And the next time, I want more archers. If we had taken their mage down with arrows, we could have saved ourselves a lot of problems. What about the men who got hit by whatever their mage did?”
Aron gave a lopsided smile. “Our men are in better shape than their men, I guarantee it.” Together, he and Blaine walked over to where the six men had been felled by the enemy mage’s magic. The men were just waking up, struggling for consciousness, but appeared otherwise unhurt.
“Are they damaged?” Blaine asked. Aron knelt next to the nearest man and examined the soldier, then shook his head.
“After I clipped their mage with that branch, he didn’t have the strength to put a lot into his next move,” Aron replied. “He knocked them out, that’s all. Beyond some bruises, they’ll be all right.”
Blaine rose and headed toward where two soldiers regarded the charred remains of the enemy fighters who had been burned by Aron’s protective warding. “Damn,” Blaine said in an awestruck voice. Little was left of the men except for heaps of charred bones. “I’m glad he’s on our side,” he muttered.
“What do you want us to do with the rest of the bodies?” a soldier asked, with a nod toward the bodies that lay scattered around the empty cemetery.
“Leave them as a warning for the next ones Hennoch sends,” Blaine replied. “Put them in a heap for the crows.”
Three days later, Blaine returned to the main camp, leaving the cemeteries protected by his soldiers. The hectic preparations for battle did not quiet down until tenth bells. Blaine took his dinner in his tent. His campaign tent held few furnishings: a cot, a folding desk, a collapsible wooden chair, a trunk, and a small iron brazier, along with a stained carpet that covered the ground. It was enough to provide minimal comfort yet provide as small a burden as possible to move. He had barely finished eating when Niklas poked his head through the tent flap.
“Open for company? I brought whiskey,” Niklas said, holding up a well-worn flask. Blaine waved him in, and Niklas found a seat on the floor on the other side of the small brazier that warmed a pot of tea and kept the night chill at bay. “Here—you look like you could use a slug,” he said, removing the cap from the flask and passing it to Blaine.
Blaine knocked back a mouthful of the raw whiskey and handed the flask back. “Not bad,” he said. “And I brought you another bottle from Glenreith.”
“Much appreciated,” Niklas replied, taking a swig himself. “Fortunately, things here were quiet while we were gone,” he added, letting the rough liquor burn down his throat. “That’s not going to last for long.”
“At least that shell game at the cemeteries should protect the Elders and their broods and tie up Hennoch’s soldiers for a while,” Blaine said. “If the talishte really are intent on having a civil war, they’re on their own. Not much we can do to help Penhallow—when talishte fight talishte, mortals are outclassed.”
“I remember,” Niklas replied drily. They had both been in enough battles to have seen just what talishte could do in a fight. Even a handful of talishte fighters deployed against strategic mortal targets could turn the outcome of a battle. Supernaturally strong and fast, and with some of them able to fly, talishte were formidable warriors. It was frightening to think about two talishte forces arrayed against each other, fighting at their full capacity. Few mortals who witnessed such a spectacle lived long enough to tell the tale.
“Don’t worry—you’ll have your hands full here,” Niklas continued. “Between Hennoch staging strike-and-hide attacks on our flanks and the Meroven raiders, we’re glad to have the additional soldiers.”
Blaine filled Niklas in on the battle with the Plainsmen and the new alliance, as well as most of what Penhallow and the Wraith Lord had disclosed at Glenreith, everything except for the part about being king. Niklas passed the flask around again, and Blaine felt the whiskey’s warmth relax muscles sore from the fight.
“We still don’t know much about Nagok, the Meroven warlord,” Niklas said. “He’s still pretty much of a mystery. And I’m glad you brought more mages with you. We’ve been having a lot of wild-animal attacks—many more than usual.”
Blaine raised an eyebrow. “You need a mage to take care of badgers and wolves?”
Niklas gave him a look. “Only when those badgers and wolves stop acting like wild animals and seem to be controlled—by someone.”
“Controlled? Are you sure?”
Niklas nodded. “We are now. At first, we couldn’t believe that the animals might be acting with purpose—at least more purpose than scavenging our garbage or getting into the camp kitchen supplies. But the attacks are too frequent, and the a
nimals are too aggressive.”
“No one’s provoking them? Baiting them?” Blaine asked. Niklas shook his head. “And your mages haven’t figured out who’s doing it?”
Niklas shook his head. “Not yet. And that’s worrisome. The mages say controlling wild animals isn’t easy. It’s not something most magic-users can do, even if they’re powerful, because it’s hard to control more than one animal at a time, and almost impossible over any distance.”
Blaine met his gaze. “So you think whoever’s behind the attacks—Nagok or someone else—has a mage with a talent for beast calling?”
“Uh-huh,” Niklas replied. “As if we needed more trouble than we already have, and a talishte war on top of everything.”
For a few moments, they sat in silence. Finally, Niklas looked up. “Do you ever think about what’s going to happen after the fighting stops?”
Blaine sighed. “I’m usually so busy trying to stay alive, I’ve got to admit I haven’t made a lot of long-range plans.” He smiled. “Except for marrying Kestel.”
Niklas chuckled. “Kestel can help make sure you stick around for the long run. I’m surprised she isn’t with you.”
“She’s coming to join us with Rinka Solveig and her troops,” Blaine replied.
Niklas was quiet for a moment. “Back to the question. Assuming we live through all the fighting, what then?”
Blaine sighed and leaned back against his cot. “Go back to Glenreith, I guess. There’s so much rebuilding to do, at the manor, the villages, Castle Reach. We’ve got a long way to go.”
“What of Donderath?” Niklas asked. “Once we get rid of the rival warlords and the rogue talishte. What then? Divide up the Continent among the allies? How does that work—especially in a generation or two from now?”
Blaine shifted uncomfortably. “What are you getting at?”
Niklas gave Blaine a direct look. “Donderath needs a king, someone who honestly cares about rebuilding and who can be trusted not to loot what’s left. Someone who can rally support if we’re attacked. A leader.” He paused. “Do I need to spell it out? None of the other warlords have everything that a good king needs—except for you.” Niklas set his jaw as if he expected Blaine to push back, and looked surprised when his comment did not bring a quick denial.
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