Die for the Flame

by William Gehler

  A Karran soldier on a fast horse swept in front of her and shot down a Maggan rider and was drawing back another arrow. Neevan notched her arrow, and as the rider’s arm drew the arrow back, Neevan launched her own arrow, burying it deep under the arm. The Karran’s helmet flew off to reveal long, flowing chestnut hair. The rider twisted with the impact, her face white with pain, clutching hopelessly at the mane of her horse, sliding off and disappearing into the darkness.

  The Maggan soldiers rode hard through the forest, hooves pounding, the riders urging the horses on. The leading officers at first were unaware that the column had been attacked in the rear and the column split in half, but riders caught up with them to inform them of the assault. They decided to press on and let the rear of the column handle the attack. They had their orders to get to Minteegan as quickly as possible and rescue their families.

  They decided to rest the horses at the camp and assess whether Karran soldiers followed them. The forest was dark, but with their catlike night vision, they could see quite well. The tree canopy caught up the downpour from the storm above. Big drops fell and a steamy mist rose from the warm forest floor, obscuring the road ahead.

  The Maggan camp suddenly appeared ahead through the misty gloom, and the leaders slowed their mounts and turned off the road into the large, open campsite. The commander was surprised to see dozens of welcoming campfires burning merrily but no one around. The columns followed, and in a few moments the entire troop was dismounting in the clearing.

  At that moment, a hail of arrows met the black-clad Maggan. The arrows streaked out of the surrounding trees and foliage. Well aimed and at close range, they found their mark. Screams and shouts arose from the shocked Maggan soldiers. Wounded horses reared and bucked and fell with their riders. Karran archers, with determination and careful sighting, fired again and again into the ill-fated ranks of Maggan soldiers.

  Those at the rear of the Maggan ranks spun their horses to sprint out of the camp and back onto the road, only to find the way blocked by spearmen, backed by more archers. They were driven back. Every possible escape route into and through the trees was filled with Karran soldiers. In desperation, some kicked their horses forward and tried to run over the Karran soldiers. Arrows and lances flew through the air with their whispering sound. There was no escape. Soon, the remaining Maggan were crouched down in the middle of the camp, shooting back from behind dead horses. Within minutes, the battle was over. The cries of the wounded and dying rose up from the wet, black earth. The camp was blanketed with bodies of soldiers and horses. Karran soldiers picked their way through the nightmarish sight, checking the dead and wounded. Swords rose and fell.

  Martan and his other officers stood by a smoky fire, bloody swords in hand. The rain had lifted, though the heavy droplets continued to fall from the canopy. “We will move down the road out of the forest. Clarian will need us,” said Martan.

  A young officer spoke, “The troops are exhausted. Shouldn’t we rest for a few hours?”

  “No. The Maggan are exhausted, too. That’s why they made the mistake of not scouting out ahead of their column and by walking right into our trap. No. We can’t let the Maggan rest at all. And remember that their main force is marching this way. I don’t want to be in this forest when they get here.”

  “What about the dead?” asked another officer.

  “Leave the Maggan dead for the Maggan to take care of,” said Martan, leaning to one side and spitting.

  “We were ambushed. They were waiting for us,” Neevan told Ferman. Standing there in the night, in the drizzle, wet and tired and defeated, she knew now that all might well be lost. How was it that the Karran were so much smarter than they were?

  With a stunned look on his grizzled face, Ferman stared at Neevan and the few officers that had survived the ordeal. Ferman’s personal staff crowded in close. They were standing under an awning stretched from his wagon and supported by poles. He swallowed hard and blinked his eyes as if to clear them so he could focus.

  “How many soldiers survived?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Fewer than a hundred.”

  “But some of your troops made it into the forest, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, that’s true. But I don’t know their status,” she said.

  “This Clarian has been too clever.”

  “You underestimated him, Ferman,” Neevan snapped.

  “Watch what you say to me!”

  “Clarian anticipates our every move.”

  “We must find him and kill him.”

  “Don’t worry, I think he will find you,” she said, and turned and stomped away.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The messenger found Clarian at a scout camp, seated alone in a tent, the front flap rolled up. He was bandaged and was leaning over a map. A brazier smoked away next to him, and a dry blanket was draped over his shoulders. The pain from the lance wound and the subsequent stitches from the physician caused him to hunch over. The lance had sliced across his chest, scoring his ribs, but had not punctured him. The rain continued to douse the land, and the clouds pressed down low and dark.

  At the insistence of the messenger, Clarian painfully mounted his mare and rode away from the battlefield, making a wide arc behind low-lying hills. The wind was cold and snapped at his soggy cloak, and the rain fell into his eyes, blurring his sight. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and just managed to jerk his horse to the side in time to avoid a fast-driven wagon careening through the muddy track. The driver, who didn’t recognize Clarian, yelled at him to get out of the way as he swept by.

  The riders soon arrived at a camp set back a good distance from the battlefield. Tents were being erected, and wagons pulled in with supplies and soldiers riding in their beds. Fires smoldered as cooks attempted to keep them burning. To the far side were the bodies of the Karran dead, lying in a meadow in neat rows. The messenger led Clarian to a canvas shelter under some trees where Rokkman, Martan, Amran, and several other officers stood staring at a map.

  Clarian raised his eyebrows at Martan as he entered. “You’re back.”

  Martan, his face drawn and tired, smiled grimly at Clarian. “We destroyed the vermin at their camp in the forest. No one escaped.”

  “Are all your troops now out of the forest?” asked Clarian.

  “Yes. They are camped here.”

  Clarian listened as the other officers gave a brief report on the battle and the status of their soldiers. He was pleased that all had gone as planned. He recognized that the battle had slowed down considerably because of the soldiers’ fatigue and the rain. Both Karran and Maggan were exhausted. But he didn’t want to let up. He was determined to crush them if possible. That meant no rest.

  “I want to plan our next attack on the Maggan lines now that we have them stalled and worried.”

  “My soldiers are tired,” said Martan.

  Tobran nodded.

  “The Maggan are tired, too. We can’t let fatigue hinder us. We must destroy them, or they will return again in the future and in greater force and prove smarter.”

  “My soldiers must rest, Clarian. They have no fight left in them,” said Martan.

  “The Maggan have no fight left in them either. That is why we must continue the attack,” Clarian said angrily. “They are out of water and food. We have the advantage. We can’t give up our advantage. You forget: they outnumber us.”

  “Your army has given you all you’ve asked, Clarian. And it cannot give any more until it rests. I have seen them and spoken to them. To ask more now is to risk much,” Rokkman said.

  “They can always give more. Even when they think they can’t.”

  Rokkman leaned his shaggy face toward Clarian, his lined face drawn and his voice hoarse. “They must rest, at least for a little while. And so must you.”

  Clarian didn’t answer but stood pondering the question as he look
ed from officer to officer as if he was assessing each one’s remaining strength. They avoided his probing gaze, refusing to meet his eyes. He now realized that he could not push them any further this day.

  “Very well. Cease all attacks. Let our army rest. Pull back a safe distance. Keep the scouts out to warn us of Maggan actions. But block the road to the forest. The Maggan will pay dearly for its passage before this is all over.” Clarian grabbed a stool and sat down heavily with a sigh of exasperation, holding on to his chest where the wound throbbed, and peered down at the map. He knew he had to plan the next step, but what it should be seemed to escape him. Where was the Maggan’s greatest weakness? His mind seemed sluggish. He closed his eyes.

  The officers looked at one another and quietly filed out to attend to their units. Messengers were soon seen galloping off to the battle lines. A young soldier with the archer’s shoulder patch peered into the tent and motioned to Rokkman, who, with a glance back at Clarian, stepped out to hear what the soldier had to say. After whispering, Rokkman and the soldier stared at Clarian for a moment.

  Rokkman gently shook Clarian out of his thoughts and took him by the arm under protest, leading him out of the tent. The two of them began following the soldier, walking through the steady rain, the clouds black and menacing in the late afternoon, the cold wind whipping their cloaks about. There were wagons on the far side of the field, with men unloading bodies and laying them out in rows.

  “Rokkman, do you know how tired I am?”

  Rokkman kept walking behind the soldier without answering, Clarian reluctantly following, their boots sloshing through the mud. Clarian had a bad feeling.

  The rain began to fall more harshly, plastering their hair down on their heads.

  “Why are we out here?”

  The young messenger guided Clarian and Rokkman down the rows of motionless bodies until the soldier stopped over one body and pointed. Rokkman reached down and lifted back the cloak from the dead figure’s face, the gray face of Lillan. Clarian dropped to his knees in the mud beside her and wept, great heaving sobs wracking his body.

  Rokkman stood watch over the grief. Lillan looked small in the weak light. Rokkman’s eyes filled up as the cold, sharp wind pulled on his cloak and chilled him. His face looked haggard and old. He waved the messenger away. There was nothing he could do as he stood over the bent figure in the pouring rain.

  Messengers and senior officers rode up to Ferman’s tent and ducked down under its flap. Ferman sat on a campstool, sipping a hot drink. Neevan slipped off her horse and stepped under the tarp. As they crowded in, Ferman asked, “Well? Speak up!”

  Neevan shouldered past an officer standing in front of her so she could see Ferman without obstruction. “The Karran have stopped their attacks and pulled back on all flanks. The fighting has stopped.”

  “So, is the road open to the forest, then?” he asked.

  “No. The Karran have blocked the road with brush and trees and even wagons and have placed their forces across it to oppose us. But they are not attacking. They wait,” she said.

  “What trick is this?” Ferman snarled, his head twisting from side to side, seeking answers.

  A senior officer, a heavy older man with a scar across the left side of his face, spoke out. “I don’t think this is a trick. I think they are as tired as we are, and the rain and mud have taken their toll. I think they are resting.”

  “We can’t rest. We must drive through them and get back into the forest!”

  “Your soldiers are completely exhausted, Ferman!” Neevan snapped.

  “They’ll do as they are told. If I tell them to fight on, they will,” he growled.

  “There is no fight left, and Clarian will not let us pass down the road. I say we stop where we are and rest, and let us see what Clarian will do,” she said.

  “See what Clarian will do? You mean wait to see what he will spring on us next?” Ferman said with a snort.

  “Whatever you do, Ferman, you will not outsmart Clarian,” Neevan told him.

  “Keep your mouth closed,” he shouted and stood up, spilling his drink.

  “She’s right. We are defeated. Well, for the moment. We must be careful, or we will lose the rest of our army here,” said the old soldier.

  “Who says we are defeated?” Ferman sputtered, his hand going to the knife in his belt.

  Neevan leaned forward. “You led the Maggan in the Great War against the Karran and lost, and now you lead us again, and we have lost.”

  “Get out! All of you! Get out!” Ferman screamed, his face red with anger.

  “Give the order to halt all attacks and to rest!” Neevan yelled back at him.

  “All right! All right!” He slumped down on his stool, his head in his hands.

  The fighting stopped on both sides. Soldiers sought shelter under trees, tents, stretched blankets, halted wagons, or whatever would keep the incessant rain off them. The Maggan had few trees available to them out in the open and huddled as best they could with makeshift tents. Sputtering fires burned and smoked and hissed as cooks tried to fix hot food and drinks.

  The rain didn’t stop but continued throughout the day and into the night. The clouds were heavy and black and dropped close to the ground. Everyone and everything on both sides was dripping wet. In many places, the ground was flooded and had been churned into deep mud. The brisk wind swept across the battlefield and penetrated the wet cloaks of soldiers on both sides.

  The Maggan had no fresh supplies and little water. So they captured rainwater in their canvas sheets and in anything else they could find. Their rations were thin, and the cook fires provided more smoke than heat or warm food.

  The Karran army rested and took the respite as an opportunity to bring up weapons, food, and horses. Supply wagons rolled in, and with the wagons came the Flamekeeper. Clarian sat on a high rock outcropping with a canvas stretched over him surveying much of the battlefield, although he could see little of it through the rain. That night the Maggan fires could be seen, and he made rough estimates of their remaining strength. He refused company and even sent Rokkman away when he made the arduous climb up the rocky slope.

  He was engulfed in deep sorrow over the loss of Lillan. He somehow had not previously thought about the possibility of losing her. Seeing her body slumped in the mud with the arrow embedded in her body, her skin colorless with death, cut into him in a way he had not experienced since the wars against the Kobani tribesmen. He had lost many friends, as well as both his father and grandfather, and had become numb to loss. But after the war, as time passed, he had recovered his youthful, happy personality working on the ferry in the company of his Kobani mother, Ranna, and Helan, his aunt. But now he remembered the grief of war and sudden death—reminders that life was tenuous. His mind drifted back to his youth and past wars.

  He pulled a wool blanket around his shoulders more tightly to keep out the cold. His wound ached, and he was damp from the rain. The food carried up to him by an aide lay untouched beside him. The old feeling of numbness was creeping back into him. It wasn’t hatred or anger toward the Maggan. It was armor against the suffering, so that he would be able to go on and not give up. All he truly wanted was to be back at his ferry by the Blue River and bask in the serenity of the Great Grasslands. He was a frontier man, and he had failed to understand these wars even as he fought against the Kobani, and he couldn’t understand them now, either. It was always the same. Someone wanted what someone else possessed, and the solution was war.

  As he sat there studying the night fires of the Maggan below him, his thoughts went back to the day his father told him to gather his weapons and his horse. They were to ride against the Kobani. His mother cried and pleaded with his father, saying that Clarian was too young, but his father said that everyone who could fight must do so, or they might all perish. Ranna wrapped her arms around him and spoke to him in the Kobani language,
which she had spoken to him since he was born, telling him to be brave and to call upon the Kobani spirit power to protect him. He was thirteen years old.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Nearly a thousand men and boys and a few women assembled at the ferry that night. The nearby pastures just beyond the barn were filled with the frontiersmen, known as the Grasslanders. The horses were corralled or hobbled in the fields. In front of Clarian’s house, rough-looking men milled about talking softly, others working on last-minute chores—sharpening weapons, filling packs for the pack horses, mending harnesses, and a myriad of tasks.

  In the house gathered the officers, led by Clarian’s father, Orlan. They had a map spread out on the table, and they stood over it peering down at the lines representing roads and trails and the markings for homes and villages. Clarian stood against the wall observing with his friend Brinan, a girl who was fourteen years old and lived in a village a day’s ride into the tall grass.

  “We think that a main force is heading this way,” said Orlan. “They are striking deep into the Grasslands in the southeast and burning the villages. And they have another force pushing up this way burning farms and towns and running off livestock.”

  “And killing everyone,” said a thick-bodied, black-bearded officer named Mendan.

  “They are,” Orlan agreed. “We have reports that they are headed this way to take this ferry.”

  “What about soldiers from the Citadel?” asked a tall man with long, silver hair.

  “The Citadel disbanded most of its army as part of its agreement with the Maggan to end the Great War. They tell us they have no forces to send.”

  An older officer pointed at Orlan and said, “We’ll live to regret those terms. You can’t trust a Maggan.”

  “Yes, well, I rather agree with you, but we have to deal with the Kobani right now. They want to expand into the Grasslands, and they plan on pushing us out or killing us,” said Orlan.