by Chris Evans
Visyna could only smile. Her cheeks actually hurt because she couldn’t stop grinning. “And now?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“And now I’m wondering when I will have grandchildren?”
Visyna’s grin vanished. “We, uh, we only just—”
Chayii squeezed her arm and smiled at her. “I tease,” she said, “for now.”
Visyna noticed that Konowa had slowed to try and overhear their conversation. She took the opportunity to change the subject.
“What was that green fire and why were the rakkes so frightened of it?” she asked.
Konowa slowed enough to walk beside her. “Copper dust and shavings. It burns green. Seems rakkes associate that with some kind of nasty bug that they instinctively fear. Wish I’d known this a few months ago.”
“Rakkes were extinct a few months ago,” Visyna said.
As if to put a point on her thought a rakke bellowed into the night. Several returned the cry. They were gathering for another attack.
“They’re stupid, but persistent,” Konowa said. “We need to move faster.”
Visyna reached out and touched his arm, knowing it would sting. “Everyone is tired and hurt. We’re lucky to be standing at all.”
Konowa slowed. He turned and looked at her. His face was drawn and he looked every bit as exhausted as she felt. “I know, and I’m sorry, but we really have to get out of here.”
“And you came out here by yourself, for us?”
Konowa smiled. “Not exactly, I did bring one other soldier along to help.”
The ground began to slope upward and she saw the dark outlines of large boulders ahead of her. A shadow detached from the side of one and began to move toward them.
“Konowa,” she said, moving to place her body in front of Chayii’s.
“You don’t have to worry—he’s not dangerous unless he starts talking.”
Like the ghost he should have been, Yimt materialized out of the snow and came to a halt, his metal teeth shining like polished diamonds. “I ain’t dead, in case you were wondering.”
For a minute, the dwarf disappeared as Hrem and Scolly mobbed him. Inkermon and Zwitty eased forward cautiously, their right hands extended for a quick shake, but Hrem reached out and pulled both of them into the scrum and whatever ill-blood existed between the soldiers and their sergeant appeared, at least for the moment, to be forgotten.
“All right, let him breathe,” Konowa ordered, breaking up the reunion. The pile parted and Yimt straightened his caerna and caught Visyna’s eye.
“Miss Red Owl,” he said, turning to Chayii, doffing his shako and bowing his head toward the elf. “Miss Tekoy,” he said as he repeated the gesture. “I understand you did this world a great service.”
“It was him or us,” Visyna said. She saw Konowa’s eyes go wide, then he nodded in approval. She nodded back, wishing Konowa was congratulating her for anything else. Taking a life should never be a happy occasion.
“Damn straight,” Yimt said. “It’s what I’ve been trying to get through this lot’s thick melons from the day I set eyes on them.” He paused as he looked over the soldiers and his smile vanished. “Teeter?”
“He went down fighting,” Hrem said, his voice catching.
Yimt nodded. “Aye, that he would. Well,” he said, clapping his hands together, “we’ll drink to him later. Right now we need to get climbing.”
“You might want this,” Hrem said, holding out the dwarf’s drukar.
Yimt’s mouth opened and closed, but no words issued forth. He reached out a hand and took the blade, staring at it the way Visyna had at Konowa. “I never thought I’d see this again,” he finally managed.
“Sorry we couldn’t get your shatterbow, too,” Hrem said.
Yimt waved away the apology. “Lil’ Nipper served me well, but when Kritton shot me, I lost my grip on it and it cracked when it hit the floor. It was tough, but I had to leave it behind. I did, however, find a rather nasty little surprise in the library that more than made up for it,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
Two rakkes emerged out of the darkness and charged straight at the group, ending the conversation.
Jir’s claws flashed and one of the creatures fell to the snow, its legs tangled in its own spilled intestines. The second met its fate at the end of Yimt’s drukar as the dwarf buried the blade deep into the creature’s chest.
The smell of hot blood filled the air, and the rakke howls grew in ferocity.
“Still works,” Yimt said, trying to pull the blade out. “Now we really need to go,” Konowa said, directing them toward the rocks. “It’s steep and it’s slippery, so watch your step but move as fast as you can.”
“A little help,” Yimt said, struggling to pull the drukar out of the rakke’s chest.
Hrem walked over and placing a boot on the rakke’s rib cage heaved and freed the blade.
“Always nice to have a big, strong man around,” Yimt said, patting Hrem on the forearm. “Now get your arse up that hill and mind you don’t trip on the twine. Oh, and watch out for the dead rakkes. They’re with us now.”
Visyna looked at the dwarf. “There are rakkes up there, too?”
Yimt looked like he was about to explain, but Jir’s growl changed his mind. “Let’s hope we have all the time in the world later to chat. For now, up you go,” he said, shooing her toward the rocks.
“Wait, aren’t you coming with us?”
The soldiers turned when she asked the question, and she could read the concern on their faces. Having just discovered their sergeant was alive, they weren’t about to lose him again.
“Steady now, boys and girls, your old sergeant isn’t leaving. I’m just going to lag behind a tad to keep these critters from getting too frisky and galloping up after us.”
“I’ll stay with you then,” Hrem said, stepping down from a rock and coming back toward Yimt.
“Your heart’s as big as your head, and it’s to your credit, but there ain’t room among these rocks for a big job like you. You just get along and help the others. I’ll be fine, and I won’t be far behind.” He stood up a little straighter. “So now’s the time to follow the twine.”
“Yimt of the warm breeze, it is very good to be in your company again,” Chayii said.
“You flatter me, madam,” Yimt said, “now get your pretty little self up those rocks and take the rest of this rabble with you.”
“Everyone, start climbing,” Konowa said. “Now. And believe it or not, that’s actually an order.”
Visyna’s face flushed, and the familiar urge to snap back at Konowa danced behind her teeth, or maybe it was just the aftereffects of the kiss. This time, however, she wasn’t looking for a fight, but for a way to draw him closer. She longed to feel his body pressed up against hers again. It was beyond infuriating that now that they were together in both presence and emotion, they were still apart because of the oath. She wondered if that fact made her desire for him that much stronger, but she didn’t think so. She wanted him, and she knew he wanted her, too.
“Now off you go,” Yimt said, twirling the drukar in his hands and either not knowing or not caring that it was spraying blood everywhere as he did it. “I will be right behind you.”
Visyna reluctantly turned her back and began climbing. She held out her hand and guided Chayii over a cracked boulder. There was a path of sorts to follow that Konowa and Yimt had made on their way down along with a grubby-looking piece of twine laying on top of the snow. She paused as she looked at the twine closer. It appeared to be flecked with copper as well.
“Do you know why green fire or insects would frighten rakkes so much?” she asked Chayii.
“Are you asking if I was alive when rakkes still roamed the earth?”
Visyna mentally cursed herself. “I wasn’t trying to imply . . . I just meant . . .” she sighed and looked at the elf. “Well, yes, I guess that is what I am asking.”
Chayii brushed some snow from her hair and considered the question. “I was no
t there. There are many things in this world older than I, child.”
Visyna accepted the soft rebuke with a smile. “But I doubt few as wise, or as kind.”
“I have my moments,” Chayii said.
From a few feet below them, Yimt bellowed. “C’mon you mangy bastards! You want fresh meat, I’m right here! Maybe a little gamey, but nothing you brutes can’t choke down.”
Visyna turned to look. Yimt was standing on a boulder, his drukar casually resting over his shoulder, his other hand firmly on his hip and his caerna waving merrily in the wind.
“Oh my,” Visyna said,
“Indeed,” Chayii said. “Quite impressive.”
Visyna didn’t think her cheeks could get any hotter. “We should probably keep climbing,” she said, desperate to change the subject.
“Yes, I suppose we should,” Chayii replied, lingering a moment longer to watch the dwarf. She turned back to climb and saw Visyna looking at her. “I very much love my fool of a husband, but as we say in the Long Watch, ‘You may admire another tree’s nuts as long as you don’t harvest them.’ “
I was wrong, Visyna realized. My cheeks can get hotter.
Up on the hill, Konowa waited by the first dead rakkes, wanting to make sure no one overreacted when they saw them. Even frozen stiff and partially covered in snow, the creatures were still fearsome to look at.
“Just keep following the twine,” Konowa said, ignoring the questioning looks as the soldiers passed by the first bodies.
“Did you kill all these, Major?” Scolly asked, stopping and carefully prodding the leg of one rakke with the toe of his boot.
“They were already dead when we got here, must have frozen to death standing around asking too many questions,” Konowa said.
Hrem clearly got the message and grabbed Scolly’s arm, pulling him away. “C’mon, we need to keep moving.”
“But I want to know what happened to the monsters,” Scolly said.
“Just be glad they’re dead and can’t hurt you anymore,” Hrem said, nudging the soldier on.
“Weren’t they dead before and then they came back again?”
Konowa turned and looked at the corpses. Scolly was a full horn short of a unicorn, but he hit on something that worried Konowa. The rakkes had been dead. Extinct, gone and never to be seen again, until they came back. What would stop the Shadow Monarch from reviving them again and again? The answer was always the same. To hell with his dreams—if he had an ax in his hands when the time came, he’d cut Her down like any tree in the forest.
Yimt’s war cry, sounding much like first volley in a barroom brawl, echoed off the rocks. The rakkes’ reply drowned out anything after that.
“Okay, Sergeant, you little rascal, let’s see if you think it feels like nibbling bunnies,” Konowa said.
“What was that?” Visyna asked as she helped Chayii past the rakkes.
Konowa started. “Ah, nothing. You’d better hurry, it’s about to get very exciting around here.”
“Yes, because up until now our day has been fairly uneventful,” she said while his mother clucked her tongue at him.
“Right, sorry,” he muttered. He watched them go by, making a solemn vow that whether he continued in the service of the empire or not, he would, as a general rule, ensure that neither his parents nor his love interest accompany him out in the field. It just wasn’t good for his elfhood.
“. . . between the eyes you smelly furball!” Yimt shouted, arriving at Konowa’s position huffing for breath.
“I’ve been called worse,” Konowa said, drawing his saber as he brought forth the frost fire. His saber lit at once, giving off a shimmering black, translucent light.
“Probably with cause, too,” Yimt said matter-of-factly, “but in this case I was directing my keen observations at the hairy brutes not that far behind me.”
Konowa spied them. “They appear to be suitably enraged, well done,” he said, taking a quick look behind him for the best footing.
“I do have a gift for the oral-torical,” Yimt said, resting splay-legged on a boulder while he sharpened the blade edge of his drukar on the rock between his legs. “You know, sometimes I think my talents aren’t fully utilized in the infantry.”
“Do tell,” Konowa said.
“Well, I’ve been wondering of late if a change in career might be called for. I’m not as young as I used to be. Now don’t get me wrong, Major, I do enjoy the fresh air and the travel and even the chance to meet the natives, although it loses something when you usually end up having to shoot them.”
As eager as the rakkes were to rip them to shreds, judging by the mewling and howling, the recent deaths of many of their brethren had instilled a degree of wariness as they stalked their prey. Still, they continued to climb up the rocks, oblivious even to the macabre sight of their mutilated brethren. They were out for blood. Their claws clicked on the rocks as they came on, growing louder as they jockeyed for position to be the first to sink their fangs into the fresh meat barring their path.
“I’ve been thinking along those lines myself,” Konowa said, a sense of relief filling him as he spoke the words aloud. Maybe it was time to hang up his saber and try his hand at something new, that is, if they did manage to survive this and destroy the Shadow Monarch. “What would you do if you left the army? Between the two of us, we’ve served longer than most of these boys we lead combined. It’s hard to imagine doing anything else.”
Yimt held up his drukar blade and admired the edge. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? After a lifetime of honing our skills in battle, what to do after you parade for the last time and walk out the barracks gates a free dwarf or elf?”
“I’ve a feeling you’ve got an answer.”
“Barrister,” Yimt said.
“Hold that thought,” Konowa said, as three rakkes were overcome by bloodlust and began scrambling over the boulder just a couple yards below them.
Yimt stood up on his rock and hefted his weapon. “Step forth, oh ye wretched and rabid rabble, and prepare to be judged.”
Whether the rakkes understood anything Yimt said was impossible to tell, but his voice was enough to send them into a frenzy. They charged.
Konowa reached forward and touched his saber on the hem of Yimt’s caerna. The coating of copper dust immediately burst into hundreds of tiny green flames. The night turned a sickly green as the flames roared to life.
Yimt leaped from his rock, looking for all the world like a green comet crashing to earth. He landed between two rakkes and dispatched them with quick, powerful blows of his drukar. Konowa fought the urge to join him, knowing his job was to wait.
Rakkes roared and screamed with fright as they tried flee. Yimt was a glowing green nightmare among the rocks, bounding from boulder to boulder cutting down the creatures with brutal precision. Unlike on the desert floor, however, the rakkes were hemmed in by the rough terrain and couldn’t escape fast enough. Konowa lost count after the seventh rakke went down.
“You’re flaming out!” Konowa shouted, noticing the green glow was rapidly dying. “Get back now.”
The rakkes appeared to be noticing it, too. Already, several of them were curving around to climb the hill on either side of them.
“They’re flanking us, Sergeant!” Konowa shouted again, getting ready with his saber.
“Coming!” Yimt yelled, turning and running back up to Konowa’s position as the last of the green flames went out. He leaned forward with his hands on his knees and gulped in air. “Definitely getting a bit long in the beard for this.”
Several rocks crashed into the boulders around them. “I think they’re starting to figure this out,” Konowa said, ducking as another rock sailed overhead.
“Maybe, but we’re slowing them down, and that’s what matters,” he said, standing up straight and drawing in a deep breath through his nose. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Konowa couldn’t help but stare. “Your caerna . . .”
Yimt looked down. “App
ears to have burnt right off. Think they’ll dock my pay for damaging military property?”
Konowa touched his flaming saber to the rakke corpses and the copper shavings caught fire, illuminating the night once again. “I’ll make certain they don’t,” he said, leaping to the next rock and making his way up. “In fact, I’ll make sure you get a special stipend specifically for uniforms so you never have to go without ever again.”
“Very kind of you, Major,” Yimt said as he stepped past him and ran ahead. His short, powerful legs and muscular buttocks pumping vigorously as he climbed. “I don’t mind telling you, now I really do notice the chill.”
“I imagine you would,” Konowa said, doing his best to keep pace, but not too fast. Behind him, the sound of rakkes scrambling over the rocks told him the green fire wouldn’t slow them down much longer.
They reached the next rakke corpse and Konowa simply lit it and kept going. The idea of making a stand at each one was no longer viable. Rakkes were ascending the hill all around them. He was sure a few had even got ahead of them, but their fear of what they thought the green fire really was held them back just enough.
“So a barrister?” Konowa said, finding the idea of the dwarf putting on the robes and powdered wigs of the legal profession fascinating and frightening. He stepped on a rock and slipped, twisting his knee. The pain simply added another layer to the blankets of agony covering his body. He bit off a curse and kept going. “Why spend your days in a courtroom with judges and rules? You don’t strike me as the type to prosecute some poor lad who stole a loaf of bread.”
“Prosecute? Major, I have my pride.” Yimt said, huffing as he bounded over a jumble of rocks. “I’d be representing the wrongfully accused.”
A couple of rocks bounced off boulders nearby. Konowa turned to look over his shoulder, but the rakkes were still far enough back to make their aim wild. “Okay, barrister, convince me.”
“Another time, Major. Shadows up ahead on the path,” Yimt whispered, pointing forward. Konowa saw them.
“Is it our group?”
“I don’t think so, because they are coming down.”
Konowa took a hurried look around and didn’t like what he saw. They were hemmed in by boulders on all sides. There was nowhere to run, and they were out of copper-covered rakkes. Growling and scraping noises echoed from all sides. They were completely surrounded. He looked up and could see the fort’s wall a little over thirty yards away. So close.