Knight and Champion

by Steven J Shelley

  Tanis’s stomach growled as the company soft-footed through more open woodland in the direction of the waterfall. At length they cleared a small rise and worked into the depression on the lee side. It was dry and well protected there - the perfect place to strike camp. Jader spread his arm laterally, giving the signal to do exactly that. Tanis had his mat and kit rolled out in under two minutes - a new record for him. He’d received the kit on his first day - a spark stone, knife, waterproofed poncho, cloth fold for trail bread, a crude bow and ten plain stone-tipped arrows. The treated leather pants and tight leather jerkin had already been put to good use. The chestnut-brown clothing clung to him uncomfortably, especially when he was sweating. Still, the company maintained close-fitting wear at all times. Snagging on a twig could be the difference between living and dying in this forest. Jader and the more experienced rangers sported thick leather jerkins, the kind that looked capable of deflecting the odd ill-timed sword blow. Tanis figured he’d need to stick around a lot longer to receive that kind of kit. If he happened to misplace anything he’d been given, it was gone until it could be resupplied at Border Village. In other words, months.

  Arranging his precious kit in the precise manner he was becoming accustomed to, Tanis felt a surge of pride as he stood and regarded the surrounding forest. Jader may not have revealed his grand plan, but he had been uncommonly generous with his time and knowledge. Tanis was the least likely candidate for ranger in all of the Southern Reaches and it would take years for him to reach a semi-competent level. He simply had no ‘eye’ for the forest. Such skills were subtle, instinctive, taking decades to perfect. Still, Tanis had already progressed in small increments. For starters, he’d learned how to snatch sleep when he could. He could recognize four or five varieties of shrub, but he couldn’t tell whether the pea-sized berries on the coros plant were in their toxic phase or not, or the difference between live and abandoned burrows. Tanis had grudgingly entered into a punishing training regimen that involved a little bow training and a lot of aerobic work. The idea was that he be adequately conditioned before beginning serious weapons training. The brief time he had to loose arrows was mainly spent on looking for them amongst the bracken. He’d already lost two, which annoyed Jader no end. He now protected his remaining eight arrows as if they were his children, belatedly understanding that a ranger’s instinctive first movement after a kill was to retrieve the arrow.

  There was much, much more to being a ranger than Tanis had ever imagined. As a child he liked to picture a bunch of surly hunters stalking into camp at dusk carrying deer carcasses. Only the surly part was accurate. These men and women patrolled the Dawn Forest in the service of the King. As such, they were paid a modest annual stipend which they secured from the Border Village at the turn of fall. Occasionally they were given specific objectives, such as the elimination of a bandit camp or the eradication of bone parasites at the lumber yard. Their overriding mission, though, was the general surveillance of elvish activity in the region. Elves were occasionally spotted in the area, but usually only one or two at a time. Rahal Dane’s company had originally made it through to Guill by taking a circuitous route far to the south, otherwise Jader’s crew would surely have noticed. Tanis stopped short of putting the rangers on the same level as elves, but their forest craft was truly astounding.

  Jader nodded in satisfaction as he inspected the camp. Tanis couldn’t help but wonder why they’d made camp so early in the day. Was there a mission to complete? Something to break the tedium of constant relocation would be welcome. Jader nodded to Adalita, who smiled.

  “You’re with me, boy,” she said, clearly relishing the derogatory use of the term.

  Be careful what you wish for. Tanis anxiously collected his bow and arrows.

  “You planning on heading out there naked?” Adalita asked indignantly.

  Tanis pocketed everything but his sleeping mat. Today’s training would clearly be multi-faceted.

  “Follow,” his surly instructor commanded. They took to a steep goat track up the eastern side of Mastana Falls. Tanis was impressed by the crashing torrent of water spilling over several tiers of smooth rock.

  “Stay alert, boy,” Adalita barked.

  Rolling his eyes, Tanis dutifully followed his tormentor to the summit of the falls, where the stream cut a swathe through sun-dappled woodland.

  “Now,” Adalita said, readying her polished mahogany bow. “Let’s play.”

  Tanis nodded, awkwardly retrieving his own crude bow. He didn’t know how these people made it look so easy. Adalita lashed out with her weapon, knocking Tanis’s bow several yards into the bracken. Perplexed, he went to reclaim it but was blocked the female ranger.

  “You’re being tracked by elves,” she announced. “In your sweaty, boyish haste you’ve wasted all your arrows jumping at shadows.”

  Wearing a wicked grin, Adalita stepped in close. Tanis had never noticed how pretty she looked in a certain light. Her shoulder length blond hair often appeared lank and unwashed, but at that moment a shaft of sunlight had smothered it in a warm halo. Pale skin, ice-blue eyes and high cheekbones completed an ethereal glimpse before she opened her mouth and bitter words sliced into him like so many daggers.

  “The elves are close and you’re such a bumbling oaf the trail is at least a mile wide. They’ll be here within the hour. All it’ll take is one shot through your heart. Elves aren’t in the habit of missing.”

  Before Tanis could stop her, Adalita had stripped his quiver and sprinkled the arrows through the bracken.

  “Even you might be able to find the bow you stupidly dropped, but those arrows? No way. So what do you do?”

  Tanis blinked. He had no idea what he should do - the scenario seemed horribly unfair.

  “Run?” he suggested.

  Adalita’s eyes hardened. “You ridiculous child. I wonder whether Jader’s mental faculties are failing him. What was he thinking, drafting a doe-eyed choir boy from some backwater village? Madness.”

  The ranger paused, apparently waiting for Tanis to respond. Just as he opened his mouth she cut him off.

  “You have a fucking knife, don’t you?”

  Any answer at this point would’ve sounded weak, so Tanis simply produced the three-inch stripping knife he kept tucked in the sheath on his hip.

  “Finally,” Adalita sighed. “Go make some arrows. You don’t have much time - the elves are breathing down your neck. You can almost smell their disgusting eustaige husks.”

  Heart thumping as if he was really being stalked, Tanis ran to the nearest sapling, knife at the ready. The fibrous material was tough to strip away. He felt a sharp sting behind his knees - Adalita had hit him with her bow.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” she asked contemptuously. “That plant is only good for smoking.”

  Tanis moved to a different shrub, praying that it was a different species. It was, but his knife slipped off the gummy wood, very nearly slicing his finger open. Again a searing whack behind his legs.

  “The elves are practically on top of you.”

  Tanis tried to picture Adalita and the other rangers stripping wood for makeshift arrows. He took a deep breath and saw what he was after - a pale, spotted young poplar with ash-green leaves.

  “Interesting,” Adalita said at Tanis’s back. He worked the knife furiously, cutting several arrow-length sections of stiff wood. Once he had around a dozen, he sat low in the bracken and began cutting points into the shafts. This he’d seen Jader do before. The head ranger wasn’t content to smoke idly by the camp fire, often producing a hundred perfect arrows by the time he lay his head down. Tanis’s arrows wouldn’t need to be perfect, just capable of causing death. He was well into his third arrow when the knife slipped and dug deeply into his thumb. Blood flowed freely, coating the arrow in red. Adalita belted him over the forehead and then again on the nape of his neck. Before he could even muster his anger he was prone with a mouth full of dirt.

  “Did you know elves can sm
ell blood?” Adalita said softly in his ear. “Bye bye, Tanis La Berne.”

  She tossed his pitiful arrows away.

  “No use to you without a bow,” she said as if he were a slow child. “Let’s assume the elves moved off in a different direction. In other words, a miracle. But in your escape you cut yourself badly. Two minutes before you bleed out.”

  Tanis was sitting by this stage, wondering why he shouldn’t just tell the spiteful bitch to fuck off before beginning the long trek back to Guill. Surely nothing was worth this humiliation? And yet his mind was already cycling through various herbs. He needed a clotting agent and a disinfectant. Cotteril? Medic? He couldn’t see either under the bracken. Bracing himself for another blow to the head, he began crawling through the gently swaying undergrowth. There were no recognizable herbs in the immediate vicinity. A sniffling became apparent - with a shock Tanis realized it was his own sobbing. He reddened immediately, having resolved a few nights ago not to crumble before Adalita ever again. His tormentor usually doubled down on the abuse when he cracked, but this time she was strangely quiet. Suspecting a callous trap, he chanced a look at her. She was looking through the trees to the west. Their position above Mastana Falls afforded a sublime view of the Southern Reaches.

  “Get up, Tanis,” she said tiredly. “Show me where your village is.”

  Tanis climbed slowly to his feet and looked over Adalita’s shoulder. He oriented himself using the Ebbe, a scar across the verdant patchwork of fields and woods.

  “There,” he said, pointing to the cluster of tiny buildings nestled in a copse of oak. “Tavalen was on the eastern outskirts.”

  “I never knew my parents,” Adalita said. “Feyd Bridge was a fucking dump. I owe everything to Jader.”

  Tanis’s gaze followed the Ebbe to the south, where the land became drier, browner. Propping up the southern arm of Ardennia, Feyd Bridge was also visible by the river. Further south, on the far horizon, a hazy smudge ruled the sky.

  “Sandstorm,” the female ranger said. “Skrim country.”

  “Did you ever see any?” Tanis asked, unable to keep the wonder from his voice.

  “Remember seeing one or two dead ones.”

  She looked at Tanis intently, but for once there was no malice in her eyes.

  “Make your decision, Tanis,” she said. “We can’t carry a child who’d rather stand in a marketplace.”

  Tanis didn’t know what to say. He’d never mentioned his talent with money or his aversion to nature, although the latter was patently obvious. As his mind oscillated between honesty and indignation, his gaze drifted beyond Guill. It had become a brilliantly clear day and they could see all the way to the distant Mittel Mountains in the west. A brown plume had risen there, spreading as it was snatched by the wind. A dust devil? A peculiar grey blob sat underneath the plume. Tanis squinted hard and was able to make out speckles of scarlet. There were also hundreds, no thousands of perpendicular objects, like the spines on a giant porcupine.

  “What …?”

  His breath caught in his throat when he realized what he was looking at - an army. Tanis had no skill in gauging military strength but it was a massive host.

  “Orcs,” Adalita said. “You have good eyes. We’ve known about them for over a week. Jader wanted a good look at them before we head south.”

  “South?” Tanis asked. Surely it made more sense to monitor the orcs.

  “We needed to confirm their intent,” Adalita explained. “They’re moving fast - Duskovy Castle within a day.”

  Tanis swallowed. It was hard to picture Guill being overrun with orcs, only weeks after being sacked by Dahal Rane and his company.

  “The elves,” he said. “Their attack had us all looking east.”

  Adalita looked at Tanis with respect. It brightened her face considerably. Tanis felt a curious jolt through his belly.

  “No one was expecting the orcs to advance through the Mittels,” she agreed.

  Now that Tanis knew what it was, the vast grey blob couldn’t have looked more sinister.

  “They can’t take the castle,” he blurted. “Not sure if anyone’s managed that.”

  “They’re razing villages as they go. Jader thinks they’re collecting supplies for a long siege.”

  “What does that mean for us?”

  Adalita turned a sly smile on the fledgling ranger.

  “Us? You think you’re one of us, Tanis?”

  He reddened again, resenting how Adalita could bring him crumbling down without the slightest effort. She couldn’t know that his carefully constructed future, the one he’d nursed in his heart since he was able to dream, was crumbling rapidly. If the orcs somehow accounted for Baron Duskovy, would they continue north to Andra? And most importantly, were they in league with the elves? Were humans about to be caught in an almighty pincer movement? His mind raced with the tactical possibilities.

  “The orcs will make camp under the castle,” he said, surprising himself with the clarity of his thoughts. “King Rosten will need us patrolling the eastern edge of the forest so we can report on elvish movement.”

  Adalita’s smile was radiant. Amazing what a little competence could achieve. For the first time Tanis wondered if he actually belonged here with Jader’s rangers. Whichever way he looked at it, Ardennia was now at war. The labyrinthine politics of that scenario eluded him, but one thing was for certain - his dream of becoming rich was just that. Whether he liked it or not, he was now a fighter. A defender of the realm, even. All he had left was the kinship he shared with his new “family”. The land he loved looked set for war, which meant that every Ardennian would be putting their lives on hold, perhaps forever.

  “I’m not a natural,” he said slowly. “But you have me, Adalita. I’m sorry if that’s a burden.”

  Her eyes glowed with a warmth he never knew existed.

  “It was only a burden until a minute ago,” she said. “Glad to you have you aboard, Tanis la Berne.”

  She gripped his forearm, ranger style. Tanis made sure his returning grip was just as firm. He bristled with pride - somehow, this felt right. It was also extremely daunting. The Dawn Rangers were now in danger from all sides. If his skills didn’t improve soon, he’d be easy meat in this forest.

  “Let’s finish the session,” he said decisively.

  Adalita grunted her assent, wading through the bracken to retrieve his bow.

  “I won’t be easing up on you,” she said as she handed it over. “But you won’t have reason to call me a cunt.”

  Tanis reddened yet again, but then he saw the mischievous smile.

  “Too easy,” she chuckled. It was true. The day he stopped reacting to her bait couldn’t come soon enough.

  “Herbcraft,” she said, “is the most important day-to-day forest skill you can learn. Forget combat for a moment - herbs can sustain, heal, boost or kill. You’ll need to know them all.”

  She knelt down in front of a wonderfully intricate red orchid.

  “It’s not just what you harvest,” she said, gesturing to the flower head. “But when.”

  Tanis held the lower petal tentatively, then whipped it away when an ugly spider clambered over the stamen. It looked poisonous and aggressive. He smiled, adrenalin coursing through his veins. There was so much to learn. Adalita leapt to her feet in one, powerful movement.

  “Creepers,” she continued, wandering through the bracken. “Pick the right species and you have twine. Useful for bundling and traps.”

  To demonstrate, she stripped a hanging vine and tied the ends to a pair of trees. The trip hazard lay under the bracken, almost impossible to see. Point made, she slashed at the vine with her knife.

  “Wouldn’t want to bring Jader down,” she said with a faint smile.

  The pair walked in silence as they made their way up a small rise. The surrounding woodland seemed quiet and peaceful. Though he didn’t yet have the requisite skill to assess the forest, Tanis had learned to read the level of danger through the
body language of the ranger in front of him. Right now Adalita moved with an easy grace, setting his mind at ease. Rejoining the stream that fed Mastana Falls, they followed it up a cool gully. They were effectively standing at the foothills of the Furan range.

  “Are we far from the lumber camp?” Tanis asked. He knew the site was critical to the supply of raw materials throughout Ardennia, particularly the capital.

  “Two hours trek,” Adalita replied. “Slow down.”

  Tanis hadn’t noticed that his companion was now crouching low in the bracken. He joined her. She pointed through trees shrouded in noon shadow.

  “Havas bee nest,” she whispered. “Best eating in the Dawn Forest.”

  The ranger drew her bow in a wonderfully fluid motion. Tanis didn’t even see her nock the arrow but there it was, primed for release.

  “When you’re looking down the shaft, take a deep breath,” she said. “But make sure you release on the first plateau or the killer’s moment is lost forever.”

  There was the slightest whistle and the arrow was humming gracefully through the air. The shaft pierced the bulbous nest’s upper stem and lodged itself in a tree branch. The nest dropped like a stone. Thoroughly agitated, hundreds of bees rose as one.

  “Get down low,” Adalita said. “A minute or two should do it.”

  The intimidating buzz was overwhelming, but Tanis didn’t dare look up. At length the cacophony faded and the way seemed clear.

  “Quickly,” Adalita said, launching herself across the bracken.

  Tanis followed, alert to straggling bees. Adalita laid a cloth square on the grass and dipped her hand into the nest’s exposed underbelly. Tanis almost swooned from the smell of the rich honeycomb shards she pulled free. Adalita passed him a piece and he sucked on it gratefully. It was startlingly good.