Ashes of a Black Frost

by Chris Evans

  As the backs of the Timolian soldiers disappeared in the swirling snow, Konowa stepped out onto the trampled path and waited for the squad to appear. They should be just a few yards behind.

  As the seconds stretched into a minute, Konowa grew increasingly worried. The rear guard should have been directly behind the 3rd Spears. He drew his saber, conscious of the fact that he was now completely alone.

  “One of these days your impulses are going to get you in trouble,” he muttered to himself. He reasoned that it was likely already too late, but hoped the trouble was something he could handle.

  Realizing his current position was the worst possible one he could be in, he started walking backward while keeping his eyes peeled for the rear guard. “C’mon lads, be okay,” he said, gripping the pommel of his saber tight.

  He shivered in the cold, only realizing a few moments later that it wasn’t the weather, but the black acorn against his chest.

  A soldier appeared out of the snow twenty yards away. “Over here,” Konowa hissed, waving his saber in the air then crouching down as he looked around for the danger. The soldier stumbled as if severely wounded. Konowa could barely make out his form in the snow and couldn’t tell how badly he’d been hurt. His first instinct was to rush forward to help the man, but the stab of ice against his chest was growing colder. The enemy was closing in.

  The smart thing, the proper thing, for Konowa to do was to turn and run back to the end of the column. It was foolhardy to risk his life for one soldier when the entire regiment needed his leadership. Konowa was already running toward the soldier before he’d made up his mind that the smart thing and the right thing weren’t always the same.

  The soldier stumbled again and went down on one knee. The acorn blazed with freezing intensity, causing Konowa to gasp with pain. Ignoring it, he jogged the last few feet to reach the fallen soldier and help him up.

  “How badly are you hu—” Konowa started to ask before his ability to form words left him.

  The “soldier” climbed back to its feet on two gnarled chunks of roots. The . . . tree, Konowa’s mind finally registered, had taken the rough form of a soldier. Its branches were bent and twisted at impossible angles to form a pair of large shoulders, from which two arms hung. Long, sharp thorns for fingers twitched and snapped at the end of each arm. Its head was a thicket of leaves and thorns crafted into something that in the dark and the snow had looked convincingly like a soldier wearing a shako. But as disturbing as it was to see a tree take on human form, it was the bark that froze Konowa’s gaze. It was dragon scale. He was sure of it. The scale had shaped itself to look like a uniform.

  How or why he didn’t know and likely never would, but somehow the sarka har had changed.

  Luckily, Konowa’s instincts were still working even as his mind pondered the impossibility before him.

  Konowa started to backpedal even as he brought his saber up in front of him and slashed at the tree. The stroke missed, which threw his balance off. His boots slipped and he fell backward to land hard on his back. Snow flew in the air hiding the abomination from sight.

  Konowa rolled to his right, burying his face in the snow in the process. He felt the thump of a heavy root slam down on the ground just inches from where he had been. He continued rolling several more times before finally scrambling to his feet, one hand pushing his shako back down on his head as the other held his saber at the ready. He shook his head and blinked the snow from his eyes.

  There were five of the walking sarka har now. Each one looked like a child’s idea of a soldier. Everything was there, but all of it was distorted. In the light of day, their disguise would fool no one, but in these conditions they were more than good enough to get close to a potential victim.

  “I’m not dead yet!” Konowa shouted, mad at himself that he even considered himself lost. He’d been in tough scraps before, where the odds were stacked so high against him he couldn’t see over the enemy’s chips and still he’d prevailed. These were still sarka har, and he had the frost fire at his command.

  “This is why I HATE TREES!” Konowa bellowed, charging forward, the blade of his saber wreathed in black flame.

  The closest tree had no time to parry as Konowa’s blade slashed down across the midsection of its trunk.

  Black ice crystals exploded as blade met trunk. Konowa’s entire right arm erupted in burning pain like he’d been stabbed with a thousand needles. He stumbled backward, barely managing to hold on to his saber. The tree he’d struck was engulfed in frost fire, but whereas normal sarka har quickly burned to ash, the dragon-scale bark seemed to be shielding it from the worst of the flame.

  “And Visyna wonders what I have against the bloody forest,” he said to himself, flexing his arm to get feeling back into it. He caught motion out of the corner of his eye and more of the transformed sarka har appeared out of the snow. They marched along the path left by the column, ignoring Konowa just as the soldiers had before. He had to get out of here and warn them.

  That’s when he remembered he had more than the frost fire to call on.

  “Renwar! Get the Darkly Departed off their arses and cut down these damn trees!” He turned while keeping an eye on the burning sarka har and its four companions. There was no sign of the shades of the dead.

  “That wasn’t a request—it was an order!” he shouted into the wind. The black flame on the tree he attacked guttered and went out. Singed leaves fell from its head and it continued to stumble, but it started to come toward him again as the other four fanned out to cut off any chance of escape.

  Konowa turned and started to run, but in the deep snow he knew at once he wouldn’t get far. The sarka har would catch him exhausted and that would be that.

  He turned to face his fate.

  The dawning realization that he was looking at the very real possibility of being killed by a bunch of walking trees brought a snarl of a smile to his lips. His whole life he’d loathed the forest with a passion that bordered and sometimes crossed the line of sanity. It never occurred to him until now that the forest might just feel the same way about him.

  He was charging at the trees before his battle cry pierced the air.

  “Timber, you bloody pieces of lumber! Timber!”

  A pack of fifteen rakkes clustered around the mangled remains of one of their brethren. Despite the blowing wind, the tang of fresh blood hung in the air above the corpse. Normally, the rakkes would have welcomed the chance at fresh meat even when it was the body of one of their own, but not this time. Green insects crawled over and through the rakke’s flesh even as the falling snow buried the body from sight. A primal fear of the green death kept the rakkes at bay.

  Four gray blurs drifted through the snow, coming to a silent stop a few yards behind the rakkes. The pulsing, rhythmic blue light of the Star tree slowed momentarily like an ocean wave retreating down a beach as four dark elves appeared from out of the gloom.

  Even amidst the cobalt-tinged darkness and swirling snow it was clear that nothing about these elves was natural. The points of their left ear tips absorbed what light there was, making them blacker even than the surrounding night. Every joint and limb appeared angular, sheared, and incomplete as if sheets of stone as thin as parchment had been wrapped around bundles of metal stakes. For clothing, they wore only ore-saturated leaves secured with steel-colored vines, revealing far more than they covered. If the elves felt the bite of the cold, they gave no indication.

  Each elf held a long bow the color of rusted iron in its hands. Drawstrings thrummed as they were drawn to their full pull, the limbs of the bows arching back to create grotesque smiles with tongues of thin, black arrows. At this distance, the arrows would pass through the back of a rakke’s skull and continue on through with enough force to embed themselves in another victim.

  Bony fingers flexed and creaked as they curled tighter around the vine-wrapped grips of the bows. Wet, black eyes stared at the assembled rakkes calculating distance and trajectory. With no
eyelids, the orbs shone like polished granite, and with as much warmth. The elves would not miss. They waited only for the command.

  Her Emissary materialized behind the elves. Or rather it attempted to. Parts of it were simply missing, lost forever when that damnable Iron Elf soldier had summoned a vortex of magic and blown it to pieces. It knew pain now as it had never before, and the experience was transcendent. Twice in the life of the creature formerly known as Viceroy Faltinald Gwyn it had served powerful rulers—always in the pursuit of more power—and each time it had suffered greatly. Now, as every shredded fiber of its flesh and soul screamed in agony, it called on the power so horribly earned to rebuild itself one more time. It focused its energies on a dark, fathomless core—the black acorn planted into its heart by the Shadow Monarch.

  It was rewarded with nothing. The acorn had shattered when the soldier had attacked—all that remained of the Shadow Monarch’s gift were cracked and broken shards. Her Emissary’s form mirrored that of the acorn, as did its mind. In its insanity it was finally free, but still the Shadow Monarch’s will filled its thoughts, commanding it to destroy the rakkes.

  “Kill them. They grow too wild and will destroy everything in their path. My lost children must be allowed to return to me alive,” said the voice in what remained of Her Emissary’s head. It understood. The pact She made with the soldier that turned him into an emissary of the dead meant Her power over the fallen was diminished. She needed the Iron Elves brought to Her alive.

  A crease of a smile cracked across its frost-burned face. If Her dark elves looked like mannequins created in an iron foundry, then Her Emissary was the wretched slag that remained. Redoubling its efforts, it coalesced enough of itself from the ether to create a form roughly human in shape. It drew what little power remained from Her gift, but found a new and more plentiful supply in something far stronger—rage. This was an endless well of power it could call its own.

  It stumbled forward, growing stronger with each step. At that moment the wind shifted and the rakkes noticed the terrible being behind them. The elves pulled back on the bowstrings a little more, waiting only for Her Emissary to relay Her command.

  It never came. Instead, as Her Emissary found a rasping, hissing voice barely capable of speech, it only needed to utter one word.

  “Die!” A ragged scythe of ice formed in the air in front of Her Emissary. It reached out and grabbed it, swinging it in a wicked arc faster than the eye could follow. For a moment nothing happened, then as one the four elves crumpled to the ground, their heads falling away from their bodies. Fingers no longer restrained by life released the bowstrings and the arrows flew true, still aimed at the rakkes. The creature knew it had the strength to stop the arrows in midflight, but it did not. Six of the rakkes fell. Those remaining stood rooted to the ground.

  “Build your strength,” the creature commanded. “Soon you hunt for fresher game.”

  The rakkes roared their pleasure and fell on the bodies, both rakke and elf. The remnants of the acorn in the creature’s chest flared with frost fire, but it extinguished them with its madness.

  The Shadow Monarch no longer pulled its strings.

  High above on the canyon wall and undetected by those below, something stirred. A pair of eyes studied the scene on the desert floor through the falling snow. The figure remained deep in shadow as it watched the rakkes tear into the bodies of the dark elves first and then their own kindred. The rakke it had slaughtered earlier was untouched. Stupid, rudimentary creatures that they were, they knew enough to avoid that.

  And here, off to the side and cloaked in shifting darkness, a violently misshapen thing directed the rakkes.

  Interesting.

  Killing one rakke had been satisfying. Killing this pack and its new leader would be . . . enjoyable.

  From deep within a black throat, a green glow came to life. Stalking this prey would be more difficult than the first kill, but not impossible. The green insects began to multiply, responding to subtle signals that a new quarry was at hand. But just as quickly, the signals then weakened. The rakkes were moving off, carrying what meat they could as they began to track west.

  The watching shadow had no choice but to move into the open to begin tracking the rakkes, who no doubt had picked up the trail of the Iron Elves.

  A group of six rakkes detached themselves from the rocks along the ridgeline where they had been hiding and spread out in a rough U-shaped pack. Claw tips extended and fangs began to glisten with drool as they set out after the shadowy figure.

  The hunter was now the hunted.

  “Major, get the hell out of the way!”

  Konowa was so intent on his last charge that the shouted warning went unheeded. He was still several feet from the nearest sarka har when it blew apart in a red-orange explosion. Thousands of black scales cartwheeled through the air followed by flaming splinters. Konowa’s shako was blown off his head and he skidded to a halt, his arms thrown across his face. Only the flaring of the frost fire into a frigid wall in front of him saved him from being cut to ribbons.

  “That’s new,” he gasped, equally impressed by the exploding tree and the frost fire’s reaction to it.

  A familiar ringing in his ears told him musket fire had sounded a moment before the tree was destroyed. The remaining trees seemed oblivious to the fate of their brethren and continued to close in on Konowa.

  “Major, over here!”

  Konowa spun around. Several more soldiers had appeared out of the snowy night. He kept his saber at the ready, unwilling to be tricked again by a shadowy form seen in the distance. The soldiers advanced—Konowa relaxed as he recognized them as his rear guard.

  “What in the bloody hell are those things?” Konowa asked when the soldiers came to a stop.

  “We were hoping you’d know,” one of the soldiers said. Konowa recognized him as the young private planning on joining the navy.

  “What’s your name again, son?” Konowa asked.

  “Feylan, sir, Private Bawton Feylan.”

  “Well, Private Bawton Feylan, all I know for sure is never trust a damned tree.”

  As a group, they began to fall back, walking backward to keep the trees in sight the whole time. Six soldiers knelt in the snow and fired their muskets at another sarka har. Huge chunks of bark and wood tore from the trunk in great flashes of flame. One massive arm cracked and fell away, but unlike the tree before, this sarka har remained intact. The remaining five soldiers walked a few more paces, halted, and having reloaded their muskets, took aim and fired at the wounded tree. This time it blew apart.

  “Why do they explode like that?” Konowa asked, resheathing his saber and unslinging his own musket. He banged snow out of the muzzle and unwrapped the leather covering that kept the fire lock dry.

  “Haven’t the foggiest, sir, they just do,” Feylan said. If he was scared he was doing a fine job of hiding it. “It’s like they’re filled with gunpowder or something. Hit them with a few musket balls and you can hurt them, but it takes at least five or six all at once to light ’em up.”

  “A little more dragon than you bargained for, eh?” Konowa shouted at the trees, ramming home a charge in his musket and preparing to fire.

  Instead of advancing, the remaining sarka har converged on the spot where the last tree was destroyed. They unsnaked their branches and began picking up pieces of bark, applying it to their trunks.

  “That’s brilliant, that is,” Konowa said, spitting in the snow. “Not only have the buggers learned to walk, now they’ve figured out how to protect themselves.” He was tempted to add “what’s next?” but the question became moot as the trees began grabbing burning pieces of wood and crushing them into flaming spheres. As the spheres grew, the ends of their branches caught fire and began to burn. The night turned an ugly orange as each sarka har held up its two arms, now transformed into massive torches.

  “Well that wasn’t too bright now, was it?” Konowa shouted at the trees. “You’ve gone and set you
rselves on fire, you dumb bastards. Guess you missed the lesson about fire and wood.”

  The private looked up from reloading his musket and screamed. “Take cover!”

  “I don’t see—” was all Konowa managed before the private tackled him to the snow.

  Konowa looked up from the snowbank Feylan had dumped him into to see the sarka har bend backward as if being pummeled by a hurricane, then whip forward. The ends of their arms splintered and tore from the rest of their bodies to fly toward the soldiers. Konowa stared in total amazement as burning cannonballs of wood hurtled toward him. Did every tree have it out for him? He slammed his head back down and buried it deep into the snow as he tried to burrow to the center of the earth. Searing heat passed over his back, and a moment later the ground reared up and punched him, knocking the breath from his lungs.

  Explosions sounded all around him, accompanied by screams. “Is anyone hurt?” Konowa shouted, spitting out snow as he finally dared to lift his head again. Large black scorch marks dotted the snow for twenty yards in every direction. Flames still burned in several of them.

  “Grostril caught one full in the chest. Nothing left of him but his musket,” a soldier said, his voice trembling. “He was right beside me . . .”

  Konowa tried to picture Private Grostril, but he realized he no more knew who the soldier was than he did the one who had carried the locket in his shako that he had found back at the canyon. It hurt him, both that he had lost another man under his command, and that he didn’t even have a face he could call up in his memory to honor his falling.

  “Major, they’re still coming at us!”

  Konowa got up to his knees and pointed his musket at the sarka har. Sure enough, they had resumed their awkward march forward, smoke streaming from the burned ends of their branches. It was time to get the rear guard out of here.