by Court Ellyn
“Look, I didn’t mean to imply that you aren’t doing enough. We’ve made it this far. By tonight we should be halfway there, and the scouts have yet to report trouble.”
“Don’t get too optimistic,” Thorn said, eyes sweeping the surrounding hills. “Carah? Have you practiced weaving a veil?”
She glanced away. “Not since last night. I still don’t grasp it.”
“Keep trying,” her uncle ordered. “What else have you got to do? Remember, it’s a spell, not a working.”
“I know, I know. Somehow that doesn’t help. It’s too abstract. Not like moving earth at all.”
“Hnh,” Kelyn muttered, “no, nothing like. Listen to yourselves. You’re making me sick.”
“Don’t feel bad, Da. If I tried wielding a sword like you do, sure I’d cut off my own ear.”
“Stop stalling, young lady,” Thorn barked. “Practice.”
Carah groaned, but tugged the reins and fell behind a few paces. For the next couple of miles, Kelyn heard her muttering to herself. Growls of frustration punctuated the muttering. It probably wasn’t the easiest thing to do, learning a new bit of magic while bouncing about in the saddle on a bruised arse while a dozen curious men looked on. One of whom being the White Falcon. Arryk rode a gray warhorse, the best Kelyn could find. Captain Moray clung to his side like barnacles on a boat. Ten White Mantles went before them, and ten behind. The rest Lieutenant Rance led in the vanguard. Arryk kept half an eye on Carah and laughed when a particularly unladylike expletive gushed from her mouth.
Kelyn turned in the saddle to glare at her. She realized her slip and blushed furiously.
Oblivious to his apprentice’s struggle, Thorn rode in silence, eyes squinting ahead. After a while, Kelyn realized he wasn’t merely concentrating. He’d spotted something. Where the road dwindled into the distance, a black cloud wheeled. Ravens. Scouts came running back. To find the column, the two highlanders had only their ears. They entered the veil and stopped abruptly. The vanguard parted to avoid riding over them, and the scouts scrambled off the road. Kelyn trotted ahead to meet them.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“Not for us,” replied one of the highlanders. “The bogles is long gone. Ain’t pretty though.”
Throughout the afternoon, the column marched through a swath of devastation. An entire village had been gutted and torched. Its name had been Camber, or something like that. The ravens perched on blackened roof beams, squawking and arguing, waiting until the column passed so they could resume their search for scraps. There were surprisingly few bodies. The people had either fled or been taken elsewhere. The bodies that remained reminded Kelyn of the horrors that had befallen Ilswythe’s people. The platform where the crier had called out the latest gossip appeared to have served as a butcher’s block. Bones lay scattered to one side; sun and rain had tried to clean the planks but failed; indefinable bits of gore clung to the wood.
Beyond the village, the ogres had razed one farm after another. Cottages stood empty. Barns and granaries had been reduced to rubble. Winter wheat, miles of it, had been scythed, burned, or flattened. The grain had been almost ripe enough to harvest. In paddocks, the bones of sheep, cattle, and watchdogs stabbed up from the grass, hides and meat stripped. Flies plagued the carcasses. The wind reeked of rot.
The king’s three mastiffs trotted off in search of a prize.
“Leash them,” Arryk ordered. A pair of Mantles broke formation to retrieve the dogs.
While the king was preoccupied reclaiming his pets, Captain Moray trotted toward Kelyn, a flurry of white silk. “My Lord Commander? Shouldn’t we be on high alert?” Something near panic turned his eyes wild.
“When shouldn’t you be?”
“I mean, shouldn’t we prepare to defend ourselves? Or do you mean to keep marching blithely on, no matter what lies ahead?”
Was this march a blithe affair? Laral had warned Kelyn about this bulldog. He could be ferocious, but he wasn’t the sharpest sword in the armory. Loyalty, not brains, appealed to the White Falcon as far his shield was concerned. “With all due respect, Captain, this massacre happened days ago. I doubt the ogres will be back. They took everything worth taking.”
“For your sake, I hope you’re right.” Moray fell back and reattached himself to Arryk’s side.
So do I, Kelyn thought. If the ogres swooped down upon the column, his first instinct would be to grab Carah and run, but his job forbade it. Would he worry less if Carah had stayed behind at Ilswythe? He doubted it. In truth, her presence provided a gentle sweetness that made him happy. And reminded him why he couldn’t afford to fail.
As if she felt his need for consolation, Carah rode up beside him. Her studies of the mysteries of the veil had been eclipsed by the horror stretching out around her. Her cheeks had lost their flush. A wet streak shone on her face. She wiped it dry. “But why the wheat, Da? You said Lothiar was gathering all the food stores to Bramoran.”
Kelyn shrugged. “What stronger statement could he make? He means to control our livelihood. What he cannot have—and dole out as he sees fit—he will destroy. On the other hand, wars of attrition have a more shortsighted goal. If we cannot eat, we cannot fight.”
“But surrender is not an option.”
He cast her a sad smile. “No, dearheart, it isn’t.”
The highlanders reported that the devastation ended at the highway. The broad, well-tended road meandered northwest from Bramoran to the fringes of Avidan Wood, then west toward Leania. Surely a primary artery for Lothiar’s regiments. To be safe, Kelyn sent Laniel Falconeye himself to scout out several miles of the road before agreeing to move his army across it.
The column stopped to wait, like a serpent basking in the sun. Riders dismounted. People bailed out of wagons. Rations made the rounds. Haldred brought Kelyn a strip of salted elk, and Carah returned to the surgeon’s wagon to lunch with the queen.
“The waiting is the hard part, isn’t it?” asked Hal. His feet shifted restlessly.
Kelyn grinned. “I remember that feeling. I guess I’ve learned to wait.” He liked the boy. Hal was a solid block of muscle and determination. Laral had done well with him, training him to temper his ambitions with servitude. Bryden, on the other hand, had been given too much freedom under his cousin Tullyk’s instruction. Seemed Hal was continually scolding the boy for lazy habits and inappropriate attitudes.
“What if we’re spotted?” Hal asked. “Will it come to a fight, right here in the middle of nowhere?”
Kelyn suspected the idea wasn’t exactly disagreeable to the squire. “Wouldn’t do for word to reach Bramoran, would it?”
Hal chewed on that. “Silence all witnesses?”
“A melodramatic choice of phrase, but yes.”
“His Lordship is aware that I haven’t been granted my sword?” As if Kelyn could overlook that fact. In a harness on Hal’s back rode a spiked war-mace weighing three stone. The very idea of swinging it during a prolonged battle made Kelyn’s shoulders throb, but he doubted it gave this tower of a boy much trouble.
“When did Laral plan to have you knighted?”
“Next year at Assembly.” Hal’s tone suggested he understood that it might be some time before Assemblies and other traditions resumed.
“Mmm, yes. Well, we’ll see what we can do. In the meantime, don’t get impatient.” An impossible order, Kelyn knew.
“Will you let me fight, at Tírandon?”
“I have an obligation to Laral to keep you alive. Conditions would have to be ideal. Or extremely dire. So I won’t promise anything.”
Hal’s great shoulders slumped, and Kelyn fought the urge to chuckle. Ah, to be so green again and full of mettle. “Does His Lordship need anything else?”
Kelyn was answering in the negative when the White Falcon called to him. “Lord Commander? A word, if you will.” Stretching his legs amid a staunch ring of Mantles, Arryk looked unassuming in studded leather armor, but underneath he wore a hauberk of hutza mail th
at the dwarves had stripped off an ogre’s corpse and retooled for him. The dark rings glistened green and burgundy. When Kelyn joined him, Arryk led him in a leisurely stroll along the roadside. Moray followed several steps behind. “I am sorry, you know, about all this.” A gesture of Arryk’s hand took in the whole of the blighted countryside. “I suppose I should expect the same sort of ruin across my own lands.”
“That’s a safe assumption, aye.”
“Having seen it, do you think we can put an end to this scourge?”
Kelyn considered for half a heartbeat too long. “I know we will fight to the last man. And you saw what two avedrin can do to a battlefield. I’m optimistic.”
“Are you really?” Arryk didn’t wait for an answer. “And after?”
After? Ah, yes, after, if there was an after. This kind of attrition led to hunger, and hungry bodies were given to plague, discontent, riot, thievery. The consequences of Lothiar’s war would be felt long after peace returned. Whatever that peace might look like. “When we come to that river, sire, we’ll find a way to cross it.”
Arryk’s attention clung to a raven on a fence post. It stared back in a chillingly ominous way. “Whenever I think of my father, I remember his dream of one people. I dreamed of friendship, if not unity. Only, I never imagined this would be our source of alliance. We’ve been too busy fighting each other for a thousand years to remember the real danger. Still, I would almost … almost rather us remain enemies, than for our people to suffer this.”
“Almost?”
Arryk replied with a taut, enigmatic smile. It brought to mind a snow cat circling his wounded brother waiting for him to die so he can feed, and Kelyn reminded himself that a king is trained to see opportunity in every disaster. Behind Arryk’s kind and generous character was a calculating mind. He was his father’s son, no doubt about it. And Kelyn was a fool to lose sight of that fact.
“Brother!” Thorn stood in the shade of a twisted andyr tree, looking decidedly avedra as the wind billowed his robes. With his staff he gestured southward. Kelyn saw nothing in that direction, except a heat wave. A localized heat wave in the middle of a grassy field. The dancing air unraveled. Laniel, along with the three dranithion who had accompanied him, appeared only a hundred yards away, trotting back toward the column.
Kelyn bowed to the king in parting and followed his brother into the field.
“Good news and better news,” Laniel announced. “We saw signs of ogres passing on the highway, but none recent. Hillsides were clear, not a murky lifelight within a dozen miles.”
“Is that the good news or the better news?” Kelyn asked.
“Better news is that we saw a supply wagon bound for Bramoran. It should pass us in less than a quarter hour. Big as a house, going slow, and guarded by only ten duinóvion. We could take it easily.”
“Thinking with your stomach, Falconeye?”
The Elari laughed, a sound as smooth as old red wine.
Thorn, however, was grave. On some hunch, he asked, “Were you close enough to inspect the guards?”
“Within thirty yards, aye.”
“Did they fly colors?”
“A dark red banner with a silver arrow.”
A groan rose from Kelyn’s throat before he could stop it. “You’re sure?”
“I’ve seen the banner many times, passing by my sector of the Wood.” Laniel glanced uneasily between the twins. “Of course, you must know better than I who it belongs to.”
Kelyn breathed deeply to still the sinking of his stomach. “I had every right to doubt your allegiance in regards to your brother, Falconeye. But I failed to mention that I share your burden. The banner belongs to my son.”
“Windhaven, of course,” Laniel said with a nod. “Should we let them pass, then?”
“No, Falconeye, take that wagon. Spare the men, if you can. I want a word with them.”
Thorn wouldn’t be left behind. He unbuckled his sword belt and slid out of his robe. Underneath he wore an Elari’s suedes. He tossed the robe at his brother and buckled the sword back on. With a nod, he led the dranithion in a soft, silent jog across the field. It was odd, seeing him take command of warriors. The air thickened around them until it hid them from sight.
Haldred was right; waiting was the hard part.
They weren’t gone long. Falconeye returned alone to escort Kelyn a quarter mile south. The overstuffed wain and its team of mules languished in the middle of the highway. Seven guards in Windhaven’s livery and two civilian drivers crouched in the shade cast by the wagon, their hands bound. Thorn and the Elarion loomed over them, otherworldly and terrifying with bows at the ready.
The eighth guard lay near the side of the road, a hole burned through his chest. Kelyn glared at his brother.
“What?” Thorn said with a shrug. “You said ‘if we can,’ and I’m not responsible for a man’s idiocy. In any case, the rest surrendered quickly after that.”
One of the guards raised his face as Kelyn approached. Recognition sparked in his eyes. “Goddess spare us, it’s both of them.”
His neighbor knew Kelyn on sight as well. Hell, they had probably accompanied Rhoslyn between Windhaven and Ilswythe for years. “What’s he doing here?”
“You’d best let us go,” said the first. “We are granted safe passage by His Grace and His Majesty. These supplies have been requisitioned by the Black Falcon himself.”
Kelyn crossed his arms and fashioned a glare meant to shred their bravado. “My son is a traitor. The Duchess of Liraness still lives. Which makes you compliant with my son’s treason.”
A third guard squirmed on his haunches. “We’re just following orders! His Grace had a writ from the king. We saw it. We heard it read.”
“Which makes you the traitor, Commander,” said the first, cocksure.
Kelyn couldn’t argue with that. Instead, he decided to feed these men some facts they may not have considered. “The king is nothing more than a puppet in the hands of our enemy. And my son with him. If you remain loyal to my son, I have no choice but to hang you. That you are traitors to Her Grace is secondary. My primary concern is to keep you quiet.” He paced in front of them, letting them stew. What would Rhoslyn prefer he do? He turned and added, “Or you can join us and help us free Aralorr from a monster.”
Thorn glanced sidelong at him, but didn’t argue.
“We’ll hang anyway,” said the cocksure guard. “If you lose and we live, the duke will hang us.”
Kelyn clucked his tongue. “A pessimist. We mean to win.”
“Every side means to win.”
“Very well.” Kelyn gestured at a row of old elms that paraded beside a hedgerow. “Pick your tree, gentlemen.” He turned to one of the dranithion. “You, what’s your name?”
“Dannevir, sir.”
“Dannevir, is there more rope in the wagon?”
“Wait!” shouted the squirmer.
The duke’s man swung a foot, struck his neighbor in the shin. “Coward!”
“I don’t want to hang! I got kids to feed. And this is the War Commander and Thorn Kingshield! You ever heard tell of them lying? And those Leanians didn’t do nothing to us, and we plundered them anyway. The king’s gone mad, I tell you, and His Grace, too. Long live the Duchess!”
Kelyn waved a hand. “All right, all right, shut up. Laniel, get this one to his feet and unbind him. The rest of you, decide quickly. You’re wasting my time.”
In the end, the two drivers agreed to add their wagon to the War Commander’s train, and six of the seven guards decided that fighting was better than hanging. The guard who argued in favor of the duke took a long hard look at the row of elm trees and finally capitulated. Grudgingly, he climbed to his feet.
Without warning, Thorn’s staff arced and struck the guard between the shoulder blades. He toppled like wheat on harvest day. Cursing, he tried to rise again, but Thorn’s foot settled on the back of his neck. The foot pressed deep as he leaned down and whispered, “Listen, swine.
I know your thoughts. If you plan to harm my brother or anyone else loyal to him, I will personally end you. And I will enjoy it. Do we have an understanding?”
The guard spat dust from his mouth and grunted, “Yes, sod it!”
Thorn released him, and Kelyn reached down and plucked him off the ground, even dusted off the man’s uniform, which seemed to surprise the guard as much as being clubbed from behind. “Dannevir, did you find rope?”
The dranithi glanced nervously at the Evaronnans. They glanced nervously back. “You still want me to look?”
Kelyn gestured at the dead guard. “We’ll hang that one. Beside the road where he can’t be missed. The rest of you, take off your livery. Pile it over there under that tree. You’re the Duchess’s men. Remember that.”
~~~~
25
That evening, the snake curled about itself. Despair was a thick skin to shed. The camp remained under orders of silence, but that silence went deeper than mere obedience. Kelyn felt it like a heavy wet blanket draped across his shoulders. While soldiers, squires, and aides rushed to raise tents before dark, Kelyn gathered his commanders. “I fear our march through a wasteland today has disheartened the lot of us. Take a turn among your companies. Encourage them. Work their despair into rage, if you must. It’s healthier.”
Eliad and Lady Ulna headed off toward the Aralorri camp. Lord Rhogan went to deliver the message to Queen Briéllyn first, to recruit her support. Young Daxon lingered beside Kelyn’s deflated pavilion, his mouth working with bottled words.
“Is there a problem, Lord Ulmarr?” He tried to find the boy’s father in his face, but Kelyn had only seen Lord Degan from across a battlefield until the day he lopped off the man’s head.
“No, no problem,” Daxon replied, then about-faced for the Fieran camp.
Kelyn watched him go, wondering about the words he had swallowed. The young man wanted to distinguish himself, that was apparent, but Kelyn suspected Daxon didn’t like the idea of depending on the man who’d executed his father in order to accomplish it.