by Jim Butcher
"When aren't there?"
"Exactly. Your nephew is doing well at the Academy, by all reports."
"Really? Has he finally…"
Amara shook her head. "No. And they've called in a dozen different craftmasters to examine him and work with him. Nothing."
Bernard sighed.
"But otherwise, he's performing excellently. His instructors are uniformly impressed with his mind."
"Good," Bernard said. "I'm proud of him. I always taught him not to let his problem stand in his way. That intelligence and skill would carry him farther than furycrafting. But all the same, I had hoped…" He sighed, tipping a respectful nod to a pair of passing legionares callidus, walking from the mess hall with their officially nonexistent wives. "So, what word from the First Lord?"
"The usual dispatches, and invitations for you and the Valley's Steadholders to Festival."
He arched a brow. "He sent one to my sister as well?"
"Particularly to your sister," Amara said. She frowned as they went inside the command residence and up the stairs to Bernard's private offices. "There are several things you need to know, Bernard. His Majesty asked me to brief you both on the situation surrounding her attendance. In private."
Bernard nodded and opened the door. "I thought as much. She's already packed for the trip. I'll send word, and she should be here by this evening."
Amara entered, looking back over her shoulder, her head cocked. "By this evening, is it?"
"Mmm. Perhaps not until tomorrow morning." He shut the door behind him. And casually slid the bolt shut, leaning back against it. "You know, Giraldi's right, Amara. A woman shouldn't dress in tight leathers like that."
She blinked innocently at him. "Oh? Why not?"
It makes a man think things."
She moved slowly. At his heart, Bernard was a hunter, and a man of great patience when need be. Amara had found that it was a distinct pleasure to test that patience.
And even more of a pleasure to make it unravel.
She started unbinding her honey brown hair from its braid. "What sorts of things, Your Excellency?"
"That you should be in a dress," he said, voice edged with the slightest, low tone of a beast's growl. His eyes all but glowed as he watched her let her hair down.
She undid the plaits in her hair with deliberate precision and began to comb them out with her fingers. She'd worn her hair much shorter in the past, but she'd been growing it out since she found out how much Bernard liked it worn long. "But if I was in a dress," she said, "the wind would tear it to shreds. And when I came down to see you, milord, Giraldi and his men would all get to stare at what the shreds didn't cover." She blinked her eyes again and let her hair fall in mussed waves down around her face and over her shoulders. She watched his eyes narrow in pleasure at the sight. "I can hardly run around like that in front of a crowd of legionares. As I told the good centurion. It's merely practical."
He leaned away from the door and approached, a slow step at a time. He leaned close to her, and took the courier's pack from her. His fingertips dragged lightly over her shoulder as he did, and she almost felt that she could feel them through her jacket. Bernard was an earthcrafter of formidable power, and such people always carried a certain sense of purely instinctive, mindless physical desire around them like a tactile perfume. She had felt it when she first met the man, and even more so since.
And when he made the effort, it could cause her own patience to vanish first. It wasn't fair, but she had to admit that she could hardly complain about the results.
He set the pack of dispatches aside and kept stepping forward, and bodily pressed her hips against his desk and forced her to lean back a little from him. "No, it isn't," he said in a quiet voice, and she felt a slow, animal thrill course through her at his presence. He lifted a hand and touched her cheek with his fingertips. Then gently slid his hand down over her shoulder and flank to her hip. The touch of his fingers lingered and made her feel a little breathless with sudden need. He rested his hand on her hip, and said, "If they were practical, I could slide them out of my way at once. It would save time." He leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek, nuzzling his nose and mouth in her hair. "Mmmm. Having you at once. That would be practical."
Amara tried to draw things out, but she hadn't seen him in weeks, and almost against her will she felt the sinuous pleasure of her body yielding and molding to his, one leg bending to slide her calf along the outside of his own. Then he bent his mouth to hers and kissed her, and the slow heat and sensual delight of the taste of his mouth did away with any thought whatsoever.
"You're cheating," she whispered a moment later, panting as she slipped her hands beneath his tunic to feel the heavy, hot muscles on his back.
"Can't help it," he growled. He parted the front of her jacket, and she arched her back, the air cool on her thin linen undershirt. "I want you. It's been too long."
"Don't stop," she whispered, though it was edged with a low moan. "Too long."
Boots thumped up the stairs outside Bernard's office.
One at a time.
Loudly.
Bernard let out an irritated groan, his eyes closed.
"Ahem," coughed Giraldi's voice from outside. "Achoo. My but what a cold I have. Yes, sir, a cold. I'll need to see a healer about that."
Bernard straightened, and Amara had to force her fingers to move away from him. She stood up and her balance wavered. So she sat down on the edge of Bernard's desk, her face flushed, and tried to get all the clasps on the jacket fastened closed again.
Bernard tucked his tunic more or less back through his belt, but his eyes smoldered with quiet anger. He went to the door, and Amara was struck by how large the man was as he unlocked it and stood in it, facing the centurion outside.
"Sorry, Bernard," Giraldi said. "But…" He lowered his voice to a bare whisper, and Amara couldn't hear the rest.
"Crows," Bernard spat in a sudden, vicious curse.
Amara jerked her head up at the tone in his voice.
"How long?" the Count asked.
"Less than an hour. General call to arms?" Giraldi asked.
Bernard clenched his jaw. "No. Get your century to the wall, dress uniform."
Giraldi frowned, head cocked to one side.
"We aren't preparing to fight. We're turning out an honor guard. Understand?"
"Perfectly, Your Excellency," Giraldi answered, his often-broken nose making the words thick. "You want our finest century on the wall in full battle gear so that we can beat some Marat around if they've got a mind to tussle, and if they don't, you want your most beautiful and charming centurion doing the greeting to make them feel all welcome."
"Good man."
Giraldi's smile faded, and he lowered his voice, his expression frank but unafraid. "You think there's a fight brewing?"
Bernard clapped the old soldier on the shoulder. "No. But I want you personally to tell Knight Captain Gregor and the other centurions it might be a good idea to run a weapons and arms inspection in their barracks for a while, in case I'm wrong."
"Yes, Your Excellency," Giraldi said. He struck his fist to his heart in a crisp Legion salute, nodded at Amara, and marched out.
Bernard turned to a large, sturdy wooden armoire and opened it. He drew out a worn old arming jacket and jerked it on with practiced motions.
"What's happening?" Amara asked.
He passed her a short, stout blade in a belted scabbard. "Could be trouble."
The gladius was the side arm of a legionare, and the most common weapon in the Realm. Amara was well familiar with it, and buckled it on without needing to watch her fingers. "What do you mean?"
"There's a Marat war party on the plain," Bernard said. "They're coming this way."
Chapter 4
Amara felt a slow, quiet tension enter her shoulders. "How many?"
Bernard shrugged into the mail tunic and buckled and belted it into place. "Two hundred, maybe more," he answered.
>
"But isn't that far too small to be a hostile force?" she asked.
"Probably."
She frowned. "Surely you don't think Doroga would attack us at all, much less with so few."
Bernard shrugged, swung a heavy war axe from the cabinet, and slung its strap over his shoulder. "It might not be Doroga. If someone else has supplanted him the way he did Atsurak, an attack is a possibility, and I'm not taking any chances with the lives of my men and holders. We prepare for the worst. Pass me my bow."
Amara turned to the fireplace and took down a bow from its rack above it, a carved half-moon of dark wood as thick as her ankles. She passed it to him, and the big man drew a wide-mouthed war quiver packed with arrows from the armoire. Then he used one leg to brace the bow, and without any obvious effort he bent recurved staves that would have required two men with tools to handle safely, and strung the weapon with a heavy cord.
"Thank you."
She lifted her eyebrows at the bent bow. "Do you think that is necessary?"
"No. But if something bad happens, I want you to get word to Riva immediately."
She frowned. She would hate to leave Bernard's side in the face of danger, but her duty as a messenger of the First Lord was clear. "Of course."
"Shall I find you some mail?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I'm already tired from the trip in. If I need to fly, I don't want to carry any more weight than I must."
He nodded and stalked out of the office, and she kept pace with him. Together they headed through the eastern courtyard, to the looming, enormous expanse of the wall facing the spreading plains of the lands of the Marat. The wall was better than thirty feet high and thick, all black basalt that seemed to have been formed of a single, titanic block of stone. Crenellation spread seamlessly along the battlements. A gate high and wide enough to admit the largest gargants was formed of a single sheet of some dark steel she had never seen before, called from the depths of the earth by the First Lord himself, after the battle two years ago.
They mounted the steps up to the battlements, where Giraldi's eighty grizzled veterans, the men who had survived the Second Battle of Calderon, were assembling in good order. The bloodred stripe of the Order of the Lion was conspicuous on the piping of their trousers, and though they were dressed in their formal finery, each of the men wore his working weapons and armor of simple, battle-tested steel.
Far out on the plain, moving shapes approached the fortress, little more than dark, indistinct blotches.
Amara leaned into the space between two of the stone merlons and lifted her hands. She called to Cirrus, and the fury whirled between her hands, forming the air into a sheet of bent light that enlarged the image of the distant travelers.
"It's Doroga," she reported to Bernard. "If I'm not mistaken, that's Hashat with him."
"Hashat?" Bernard asked, frowning. "He needs her to patrol their eastern marshes and keep Wolf in line. It's dangerous for them to travel together in such a small company."
Amara frowned, studying them. "Bernard, Hashat is walking. Her horse is limping. There are more Horse on foot. They've got stretchers, too. Riderless horses and gargants. Wounded animals."
Bernard frowned, then nodded sharply. "You were right, centurion," he said. "It's a war party."
Giraldi nodded. "Just not here to fight us. Could be that they've got someone chasing them."
"No. Their pace is too slow," Bernard said. "If someone was after them, they'd have caught them by now. Stand down and get the healers into position."
"Yes, sir." The centurion signaled his men to sheathe their weapons, then started bawling out orders, sending men to fetch out bathing tubs to be filled with water, and summoning Garrison's watercrafters in order to care for the wounded.
It took more than an hour for Doroga's wounded band to reach the fortress, and by that time the cooks had the air filled with the smell of roasting meat and fresh bread, setting up trestles laden with food, stacking a small mountain of hay for the gargants, and filling the food and water troughs near the stables. Giraldi's legionares cleared out a wide area in one of the warehouses, laying out rows of sleeping pads with blankets for the wounded.
Bernard opened the gates and went out to meet the Marat party. Amara stayed at his side. They walked up to within twenty feet or so of the vast, battle-scarred black gargant Doroga rode, and the pungent, earthy smell of the beast was thick in her nose.
The Marat himself was an enormous man, tall and heavily built even for one of his race, slabs of thick muscle sliding under his skin. His coarse white hair was worn back in a fighting braid, and there was a cut on his chest that had closed itself with thick clots of blood. His features were brutish, but dark eyes glittering with intelligence watched Bernard from beneath his heavy brows. He wore the tunic the holders of Calderon had given him after the battle, though he'd torn it open down the front and removed the sleeves to make room for his arms. The cool wind did not seem to make him uncomfortable.
"Doroga," Bernard called.
Doroga nodded back. "Bernard." He hooked a thumb over his back. "Wounded."
"We're ready to help. Bring them in."
Doroga's wide mouth turned up into a smile that showed heavy, blocky teeth. He nodded his head at Bernard in thanks then untied a large pouch with a cross-shoulder sling on it from a strap on the gargant's saddle-mat. Then he took hold of a braided leather rope, and swung down from the beasts' back. He closed on Bernard and traded grips with him, Marat fashion, hands clasping one another's forearms. "I'm obliged. Some of the wounds are beyond our skill. Thought maybe your people would be willing to help."
"And honored." Bernard signaled Giraldi to take over seeing to the injured among the Marat, while grooms came forth to examine wounded horses and gargants, as well as a pair of bloodied wolves. "You're looking well," Bernard said.
"How is your nephew?" Doroga rumbled.
"Off learning," Bernard said. "Kitai?"
"Off learning," said Doroga, eyeing Amara. "Ah, the girl who flies. You need to eat more, girl."
Amara laughed. "I try, but the First Lord keeps me busy running messages."
"Too much running does that," Doroga agreed. "Get a man. Have some babies. That always works."
A sickly little fluttering stab of pain went through Amara's belly, but she did her best to keep a smile on her face. "I'll think about it."
"Huh," Doroga snorted. "Bernard, maybe you got something broken in your pants?"
Bernard's face flushed scarlet. "Uh. No."
Doroga saw the Count's embarrassment and burst out into grunting, guffawing laughter. "You Alerans. Everything mates," Doroga said. "Everything likes to. But only your people try to pretend they do neither."
Amara enjoyed Bernard's blush, though the pain Doroga's words had elicited prevented her from blushing herself. Bernard would probably think she was just too worldly to be so easily embarrassed. "Doroga," she said, to rescue him from the subject, "how did you get that wound? What happened to your people?"
The Marat headman's smile faded, and he looked back out at the plains, his countenance grim. "I got it being foolish," he said. "The rest should first be for your ears only. We should go inside."
Bernard frowned and nodded at Doroga, then beckoned him. They I walked together into Garrison and back to Bernard's office.
"Would you like some food?" Bernard asked.
"After my people have eaten," Doroga said. "Their chala too. Their beasts."
"I understand. Sit, if you like."
Doroga shook his head and paced quietly around the office, opening the armoire, peering at the bricks of the fireplace, and picking up several books off the modest-sized shelf to peer at their pages.
"Your people," he said. "So different than ours."
"In some ways," Bernard agreed. "Similar in many others."
"Yes." Doroga flipped through the pages of The Chronicles of Gains, i pausing to examine a woodcut illustration on one of them. "My people do not know much o
f what yours know, Bernard. We do not have these… what is the word?"
"Books."
"Books," Doroga said. "Or the drawing-speech your people use in them. ' But we are an old people, and not without our own knowledge." He gestured at his wound. "The ground powder of shadowwort and sandgrass took the pain, clotted the blood, and closed this wound. You would have needed stitches or your sorcery.": "I do not question your people's experience or knowledge, Doroga."
Bernard said. "You are different. That does not make you less."
Doroga smiled. "Not all Alerans think as you."
"True."
"We have our wisdom," he said. "Passed on from one to another since the first dawn. We sing to our children, and they to theirs, and so we remember what has been." He went to the fireplace and stirred the embers with a poker. Orange light played lurid shadows over the shape of his muscles and made his expression feral. "I have been a great fool. Our wisdom warned me, but I was too foolish to see the danger for what it was."
"What do you mean?" asked Amara.
He drew a deep breath. "The Wax Forest. You have heard of it, Bernard?"
"Yes," he said. "I went there a time or two. Never down into it."
"Wise," Doroga said. "It was a deadly place."
"Was?"
The Marat nodded. "No longer. The creatures who lived there have departed it."
Bernard blinked. "Departed. To where?"
Doroga shook his head. "I am not certain. Yet. But our wisdom tells us of them, and warns of what they will do."
"You mean your people have seen such things before?"
Doroga nodded. "Far in the past, our people did not live where we live today. We came here from another place."
"Across the sea?" Amara asked.
Doroga shrugged. "Across the sea. Across the sky. We were elsewhere, then we were here. Our people have lived in many lands. We go to a new place. We bond with what lives there. We learn. We grow. We sing the songs of wisdom to our children."
Amara frowned. "You mean… is that why there are different tribes among your people?"