"Ke'noran, hold!" Vanyel threw out his hand as if offering it to an unseen person. Recognizing the gesture, Ke'noran looked down at Treyon, who was still lying motionless beneath her. Her head snapped up to look at the silver-haired mage before her. At that moment she felt her shields actually buckle as the impact of Vanyel's magic hit them. For a moment, everything stopped as the two mages' gazes met. Vanyel smiled as he saw the sorceress' eyes widen as she realized what was about to happen.
Ke'noran recovered quickly, however. Raising the wand about her head, she screamed the final word of the spell out as she plunged the stake down at Treyon's unprotected chest.
The wand ripped through the empty air where Treyon's body had been a moment before to shatter on the rocks of the cairn. Now uncontrollably released, the magic contained by the wand surged back though Ke'noran's body. Held in by her shields, it redoubled in intensity, arcing and snapping as it contacted the restraining magic walls. Ke'noran didn't even have tune to scream. In seconds the wild energies had destroyed everything in the area of the sorceress' shields. As her protections vanished, all that remained was a circle of burned ground and two small piles of ash and bone.
Vanyel watched, unblinking, cradling Treyon to his chest, burying the boy's head in his chest to prevent him from watching. When it was over, Vanyel just held him while glaring at the brigands, who had watched the fight at a safe distance. Under his stare, they quickly broke and left for the hills, and silence once again fell over the Forest of Sorrows and the small plain.
"Vanyel... I can't breathe." Treyon gasped from his shirt. Standing up, Vanyel slowly let go of Treyon, watching all around him as if waiting for Ke'noran to suddenly appear from the grave and wreak more havoc. When nothing happened, his shoulders slumped as he relaxed, slowly fading into translucence.
Seeing this happen, Treyon quickly stepped over to Vanyel, meaning to hug him. But when he tried to wrap his arms around the other's slim body, he met nothing but air. Off balance, Treyon just managed to avoid falling over. Before Vanyel could speak, Treyon waved an arm through the middle of Van's body, watching it pass through the misty form as if there was nothing there at all.
Treyon was hesitant to say it, but he did anyway, "What happened... I thought you defeated her." His eyes overflowed with tears again as he thought he realized what had happened.
Vanyel, realizing what Treyon was thinking, was quick to correct him. "No, no, Treyon, that's not what happened. Using so much power so quickly can drain even a legend for a time." Seeing Treyon's expression as comprehension dawned, he added, "Yes, I am the Vanyel of the legends and songs. I have been like this," he pointed a hand toward his insubstantial body, "for decades. I have been a part of this forest for over thirty years, guarding the northern border against bandits and mages like Ke'noran. In a way, I am the forest around me, every tree, every plant, every gust of wind that moves through the brush, I feel it, react to it, as far as I can see. And to things that enter the forest. Ke'noran couldn't kill me or Yfandes, not without destroying every last bit of the woods around us, and that, I think, is next to impossible. But she almost got you, and that was something I never wanted to happen. I had no plans to put you in danger. You deserve better than that."
"Why?"
"Why? Just because of who you are."
"What, I'm just a boy, that doesn't make me anything special."
"Well, then, how about what you can give back to Valdemar."
"As what, a brigand? Vanyel, how can I help Valdemar?" Treyon was growing more and more exasperated.
"As a Herald," came the soft reply.
"What? A Herald? Me?" Treyon's mouth was gaping like a fish.
For the first time since the battle had ended, Vanyel smiled. "Don't you remember me telling you about your Gifts? You need training to use them effectively, and, as you happen to be about the right age to begin, you should get started right away. There's a way station about a half-day's journey from here. Usually a Herald passes by every few days, on patrol for the outlying villages, and he can take you to Haven."
"Training? Haven? Gifts? But I don't know anything about anything. How can I be a Herald? Who's going to believe that I can be anything but a brigand?"
Vanyel let his hand drop to Treyon's shoulder, and for several seconds, the boy actually felt the older man's hand steadying him. "I do. Treyon, you can't stay here, not with us," he said, cutting off Treyon's startled protest. "You need to be around others, to learn all that Yfandes and I don't have time to teach you. Besides, Haven is the place where you're needed, not here."
"That's all well and good, but what about my needing someone?" Treyon said, sniffing back his tears and looking away at the ground.
Vanyel knelt down beside him, catching the boy's downcast stare with his own gaze. "I'm not going anywhere. Granted, Haven is far away, but if your Gifts manifest like I think they will, pretty soon you'll be able to Mindspeak with me as if I were standing beside you. And by that time, maybe you'll have been Chosen by a Companion of your own."
Treyon was silent for several seconds, then raised his head again, feeling truly hopeful for the first time since he had entered the forest. "I guess we'd better get going, then."
"Let's not rush off quite so quickly. You'll stay with us another night, and we'll set off in the morning." Vanyel said, smiling.
Treyon smiled in return, and the trio walked into the forest, leaving the charred patch of dirt, and the new leaves of grass that were already sprouting behind.
Vkandis' Own
by Ben Ohlander
Ben Ohlander was born in Rapid City, South Dakota, and has since lived in eight states and three foreign countries. He graduated from high school in 1983, after spending a period of time in military school for various infractions. He enlisted in the Marines, where he served for six years as an intelligence analyst and translator in such places as Cuba and Panama. He has since completed a degree in International Studies, been commissioned as an Army Intelligence Officer, and works as a freelance writer. His hobbies include chess, rugby, fencing (the kind not involving stolen goods), and politics. He has coauthored novels with David Drake and Bill Forstchen for Baen Books, as well as several short stories. He is currently developing several independent projects.
Author's Note: This story takes place after the events chronicled in Arrow's Fall and before Storm Warning.
Colonel Tregaron, commander of His Holiness' Twenty-First Foot, was hot, tired, and very pleased as he surveyed the long line of marching infantry. The regiment had made good time, in spite of a sun hot enough to boil a man's brain inside his skull, thick clouds of choking dust that rose with every step, and short water rations. It pleased him that he had yet to lose a single trooper to the heat, even after nine days crossing the badlands, and another twenty trekking from the Karse-Rethwellan border. Most caravans, fat with water and rich food, couldn't make that claim. He shook his head, grimly amused that His Holiness would transfer regiments in High Summer when "Beastly" was the gentlest adjective useful in describing the heat. Still, when the Son of the Sun called, the army marched.
An infantryman, seeing him grin, hawked and spat. "You like eatin' dust, Colonel?"
Tregaron raised his hand, one soldier to another. "It can't be any worse than your hummas, Borlai. I'm surprised your squadmates haven't strung you up as a poisoner." The troopers around the luckless soldier laughed as he mimed taking an arrow in the chest. "I'm struck!" Borlai cried.
Tregaron made a mental note to eat with First Battle that evening, the better to ensure no lasting insult came from his ribbing. Morale had remained high, in spite of the miserable conditions, and he had no desire to see even a small wound fester for want of tending.
He glanced over each rank as it passed, looking for the small signs and minute sloppiness that marked declining morale or increasing fatigue. Some pikes sloped a little more loosely than the prescribed thirty-degree angle and an occasional head drooped, but that was to be expected, considering each sol
dier carried, in addition to a full fifty-pound kit, three days' extra field rations, water, extra throwing spears, and either a mattock, pick, or shovel to dig fortifications. It was no wonder Karsite soldiers called themselves "turtles," for they all carried their houses on their backs.
Several veterans, seeing Tregaron, raised their fists in salute as they passed. A weak cheer rose from the ranks as he doffed his plumed helmet and returned the gesture.
"Aye, lads," he said. "Save your wind for the walk. We've a bit to go before you can laze about." That drew a laugh. There was trouble on the Hardorn border, bad trouble, and even the rawest recruit had heard the rumors of massacred caravans and slaughtered villages. He knew, sure as night followed day, that there would be hard fighting along the frontier before the fall rains swelled the Terilee River and blocked passage. Vkandis willing, he thought, we'll make the Terilee by nightfall and be dug in before the bastards know we're there.
He unrolled the grimy travel map he used to plot their daily course. Its scale was too small for any real detail now that they were close to their destination, but the scouts had provided good reports of what lay ahead.
He ran one dirty finger across his short, pointed beard as he studied the map. The Terilee River, hardly more than a stream this time of year, marked the border between beloved Karse and Ancar's Hardorn. It had seen its waters colored red more than once in the past year as the Usurper's bandits raided across its brackish waters. Bodies from those fights were said to have floated as far as Haven, in distant Valdemar.
His staff, walking alongside the regiment, joined him as he rerolled the small map and bent to pick a stone out of his sandal. Cogern, the Twenty-First's Master of Pikes and responsible for the order of the regiment, stopped beside him. Tregaron saw backs stiffen and pikes straighten. They might respect him, but they feared Cogern.
It was well they did. The sergeant had a truly horrible visage. The Pikemaster had been lucky his helmet's gorget and bar nasal had deflected the Rethwellan's blow, or he'd have received more than a maiming and a harelip. Tregaron, then a green lieutenant, had fully expected the Master to feed the sacrificial Fires. He remembered his quiet amazement when the old soldier had not only recovered, he'd returned to duty.
He shook his head. That fight had been almost twenty years ago. He would never see the south side of forty again. Cogern had fifteen years on him, yet the older man did his daily twenty miles, hit the pells, and led the charges with more energy than men half his age. Tregaron had no doubt that twenty years after he was worm-food, Cogern would still be offering tithes to Vkandis Sunlord and defeating Karse's enemies.
The Commander and the Pikemaster stood silently together a long moment, while the staff waited patiently. Their horses, led by cadets, shifted and fidgeted in the hot, dry air.
"They look good," Tregaron ventured.
Cogern spat and grinned. "They'd better," he lisped, "if they know what's good for 'em." He took off his helmet and ran his hand over his scarred head. Runnels of sweat, trapped by the helm's padding, ran down his face, cutting tracks in the caked dust. Drops fell from his chin to stain his rich scarlet sash. "What idiot moves a regiment across the northlands in summer?" he asked scornfully.
Tregaron smiled. "When the Son of the Sun says 'March,'" he started.
Cogern snapped his fingers. "Bugger the Son of the Sun," he snorted. "The fat bastard's lapping up chilled wine and making doe eyes at the acolytes while we grunt along out here."
Tregaron laughed at the aptness of the blasphemy. "You'd best lose that notion before a priest hears you."
"Bugger them, too," Cogern repeated, but softly and with a quick look around.
"How are the recruits holding up?" Tregaron asked, moving the conversation back onto safe ground.
Cogern rubbed his forehead. "This stroll's melted the city fat offa'em faster than drill and pells." He paused, weighing his words. "Their weapons drill ain't upta' par, but it ain't bad either. Not for pressed troops, anyway."
Tregaron didn't envy the "recruits" who filled out the Twenty-First's ranks. They'd used their victory parade through Sunhame to "volunteer" some of the capital's less wary citizens into Vkandis Sunlord's service. Many of the newest lambs had lost their stunned expressions and had settled into the regiment's training routine, which for them included fighting drills and weapons practice after marching a full day and after building the night's camp and surrounding fortifications.
Two lambs had keeled over dead so far, and Cogern had reported they'd probably lose another before they got to the border. The press-gangs were supposed to only draft hale men and a few women, but were also given quotas and limited time. Occasionally, they cut corners, placing the burden on the trainer. The training process usually weeded out the hopeless cases before the fracas started. It pained him to lose troops for any reason, but having them die due to sloppy recruiting rankled him.
One cadet holding the horses mumbled to another. They laughed together. Tregaron stared at him a moment before he remembered the lad's name. The boy, Dormion, was the son of a southlands freeholder sent to the army to avoid the Tithe and, very possibly, the Flames.
"Eh?" Cogern snapped, "what was that?"
"Urn, I said," said the lad, visibly unhappy to have drawn the Pikemaster's undivided attention, "that they don't, uhh, have press-gangs in Valdemar." He paused uncertainly. "Sir," he concluded lamely, after the silence lengthened.
Cogern feigned a look of utter surprise. "How would you know anything about Valdemar?" He stared at Dormion with the horrified intensity of a man watching a large and potentially deadly insect crawling up his arm.
The other cadets sidled away, leaving Dormion, gulping and pale, alone. "I read it, Pikemaster, in the Chronicles."
"In Val-de-mar," Cogern said, drawing out each syllable sarcastically, "they don't have to fight. That gives them certain luxuries we can't afford." He looked disgusted. "A reading cadet. What will they think of next?" The old sergeant glared at the boy with an expression fierce enough to cow the bravest veteran. "This ain't Valdemar, boy, and you'd best get that through your head! Now get back in your place."
Dormion, pleased to have escaped with little more than a tongue lashing, scuttled away to rejoin the other cadets.
"I'm surprised you let him off so easily," Tregaron said softly. "Usually you just cuff them flat."
Cogern scratched his nose with one ragged nail. "Most of 'em 'are fish. Not real bright, and just waitin' for hooks in their mouths and knives in their guts. Once't a while you get one who sees beneath things. Them's worth keepin' an eye on." He sighed. "I just wish't I could keep him out of the damned books. He's got too much to learn in too little time for that folderol."
He met Tregaron's eye. "I saw the same thing in another lad some years back. Even took a sword for 'im, just to give 'im a chance't grow up."
Tregaron, embarrassed, took the worn rope reins from the cadet and led the gelding toward the standards that followed the lead battle. The regiment's flags marked both the commander's location in the formation and the relics that were the unit's pride.
The lacquered ivory boxes contained the femur of the regiment's first commander, a lock of hair from Torlois the Prophet, and a finger bone from Vkorion, who, before he had become Son of the Sun three centuries before, had struck off his own hand as a tithe for Vkandis. Each relic box also contained a certificate of authenticity signed by a senior priest. Tregaron suspected one pedigree was more the result of bribery than accuracy; Vkorion would have to have had at least a dozen fingers on the severed hand alone to accommodate all of the "verified" relic bones.
Pride stirred in his chest when he saw the regiment's stained and tattered banner. The standard, a gold sun bursting on a scarlet background with the number 21 in blue thread stitched across the center, was flanked by the smaller gold, scarlet, and blue guidons of the regiment's three battles. A fifth bearer carried the pole to which the tokens and names of the Twenty-First's thirty-odd victories had been af
fixed.
Behind that, by itself, came the Oriflamme, the cloth-of-gold standard that was the mark of His Holiness' favor. The regiment had paid in blood for the right to carry the 'Flamme, but it was a distinction that Tregaron would just as soon have forgone.
Beneath Vkandis' Stainless Banner clustered three flint-eyed Sun-priests, the Oriflamme's guardians when it went into the field and the source of Tregaron's worries. Two were from the capital, sent as much to counter Hardorn's magic as they were to protect the flag from dishonor. They wore full priestly regalia, their golden Sun-in-Glory medallions glinting against their black court robes.
The third was a woman, a fact itself of some note in Vkandis' patriarchal priesthood. She wore the simple red cassock that marked her a common parish-tender, even though she was alleged to be at least as powerful a mage as the Black-robes.
Tregaron knew little about her—only that she had been a provincial prefect drafted when the third member of the capital's troika had died of apoplexy. Darker campfire rumors suggested he had died while demon-summoning, a common enough practice among the Black-robes, even if Tregaron didn't believe the story. The Black-robe Priests had warded the northern borders with summoned creatures until Ancar's magi had driven them back.
The tension between the woman and the Black-robes from Sunhame was thick enough to slice and serve on flatbread. He knew the church hierarchy was rife with factional strife, but seeing it made him nervous. All three were above his authority, and he had no doubt that each had the clout to forward a report that, if bad, could cost him his regiment, if not his life.
His worst nightmare was that if the woman reported well of him, the others might speak poorly, to spite her, or vice versa. In either case there would be a black mark against him with His Holiness, and no amount of military skill or booty would erase the stain. He hoped they would judge him only by how he did his duty, but he couldn't be certain their acrimony wouldn't affect their judgment where he was concerned.
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