War of Shadows: Book Three of the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga

by Gail Z. Martin

  “I don’t want to be the one to tell Mick his brother’s dead,” Verran said with a pointed look. “Carr’s going to push his luck too far.”

  “Agreed, but there’s nothing any of us can do about it, short of locking him up at Glenreith, which isn’t going to happen,” Niklas said. He pulled a small bag of coins from inside his cloak. “Good work,” he added. “This should cover your provisions for a while.”

  Verran tucked the bag into his shirt and grinned. “I’ll take your coin, mate, but we earn our way. The twins put on a good show with all their damn-fool twists and flips, and the other musicians and I usually earn drinks and dinner for our table at the pub. The magic may not be perfect, but I’ve got some of the gift back.”

  “Mind you don’t get too well-known,” Niklas cautioned. “You wouldn’t want anyone to take too much interest in you.”

  Verran chuckled. “No danger of that,” he said. “And we take pains to look appropriately shabby. Just your average down-on-our-luck vagabonds,” he said with a smile.

  “Keep an eye out for Lysander’s supply lines,” Niklas said. “Especially if he’s going to come after us, I want to know how we can cut the bastard off and starve him out.”

  “Will do,” Borya said. “From what we’ve seen, once his priests recruit the Tingur, they go back to what’s left of their farms and villages and turn over anything they can get their hands on to Lysander.”

  “Clever son of a bitch,” Niklas said. “Watch yourselves—mages say there are more storms coming, and bad ones, too.”

  Desya nodded. “No surprise there. We’ve ridden out the last few in barns and cellars. Do you think that once the magic has time to settle, it’ll get better?”

  Niklas shrugged. “No way to tell. Zaryae and the mages are convinced it’s payback for the king’s meddling with the weather before the Great Fire.” His breath fogged with the cold, and the air was bone-chillingly damp, on the cusp between rain and sleet.

  “We’ll keep our eyes open,” Verran assured him. “Good luck with Lysander.” With that, he and the twins headed back to the caravan, and Niklas saddled up for the ride back to the camp.

  Ayers was waiting for him in his tent. “News?” his second-in-command asked.

  Niklas peeled off his damp cloak, standing near the small brazier that took the worst of the chill off inside his tent. He rubbed his hands to warm them as he related what he had learned.

  Ayers nodded. “One of our talishte brought an update from Castle Reach. Folville says the Tingur seem intent on storming the gates at Quillarth Castle, even though they’re hardly armed to breach the walls,” he said. “His bet was it was a ruse to draw you off while Lysander is busy elsewhere.”

  Niklas nodded. “As we figured. We left enough soldiers at the castle that I’m not worried. With the walls rebuilt, they can hold out against quite a bit, and I doubt the Tingur have siege engines handy.”

  Ayers grimaced. “Let’s hope not.” He paused. “Oh, there was one more bit of news, passed through several hands from our man at Solsiden.”

  “Oh?”

  “According to him, Pollard approached Lysander for an alliance.”

  Niklas raised an eyebrow. “That’s interesting. Any idea why?”

  Ayers shook his head. “I suspect it’s because Pollard needs muscle. No word on Lysander’s response, but he seems the type to play both ends against the middle.”

  Niklas sighed. “And we’ll find out soon enough just how good a gamesman he is.”

  By tenth bells, the army camp was quiet. Fires were banked for the night, lanterns were out except for the kitchen tent, where cooks and bakers prepared for the next morning. Three soldiers walked the perimeter on patrol as usual. Which was exactly what Niklas was counting on.

  Inside the tents, the night was far from ‘usual.’ Soldiers sat fully clothed, armored and armed, ready for action, silent in the darkness. Niklas’s small contingent of mages had constructed a passive warding, a protection that would only flare into power if the camp’s boundaries were trespassed by hostile magic.

  “It’s been a candlemark,” Ayers murmured. “What if the Tingur decide to strike another night?”

  Niklas shook his head. “They’ll come. The scouts agreed with Verran. The Tingur are close. And a division of Lysander’s army isn’t far behind.”

  “Let’s hope it’s only a division.”

  “Intruders!” A man’s shout and the clang of swords were all the signal the waiting soldiers needed.

  “Go!” Niklas’s voice carried on the night air, echoed by commanders down the line. All of the patrols were locked in battle, and while their attackers outnumbered them at first, those odds were rapidly shifting. Soldiers streamed from the tents, jumped from tarpaulin-covered wagons, and ran to battle from their hiding places throughout the camp.

  “It’s about time we had a good honest fight,” Niklas muttered. The night was crisp and clear, though moonless. Then again, given the number of torches their Tingur opponents were wielding, the soldiers hardly needed moonlight to find their enemy.

  “Go home!” Niklas shouted at the three shabbily dressed men who began to close on him when he joined the fray at the edge of camp. “Leave now, and we won’t follow you. Save yourselves.”

  The only reply was a guttural war cry as the men began to run, holding their scythes and axes aloft.

  The Tingur with the scythe swung wildly, like a drunkard reaping wheat. Niklas sidestepped the man’s first assault, then thrust with his sword, easily getting under the man’s arm, sinking his blade between the ribs before the scythe blade could come close to him. He kicked the man’s weapon hand, knocking the scythe out of reach, then brought his boot down hard, assuring that even if the sword strike was not fatal, that Tingur would not be taking up arms until his bone had healed.

  “Behind you, Captain!”

  Niklas pivoted, just in time to block a swing from a bearded man with a brush-cutting blade who barreled toward him, rage and terror in his eyes. The blade struck Niklas’s sword, sending a shudder down his arm, and he saw surprise in his attacker’s eyes.

  “You should have stayed home,” Niklas muttered, drawing a short sword with his left hand and dealing a series of blows that sent the Tingur back several steps, as the man began to realize that the attack might not be the rout he had expected.

  Blow after blow hammered the bearded man’s blade, quickly enough that he could barely parry. Niklas knew that hand-to-hand, his burly attacker had the advantage. With blades, all Niklas had to do was await the opportunity.

  “Run while you can,” Niklas advised, continuing his onslaught. Down the line, out of the corner of his eye, he could see his men advancing step by bloody step.

  “Not while you breathe,” the Tingur responded. Niklas had scored a deep slice on the man’s forearm, and another to his shoulder, cutting through his thin cloak. He’s got strength, but not speed, Niklas thought. Just wait for the opening.

  The bearded man was tiring. His swings grew more erratic, wider. Niklas saw his chance as the attacker overextended, giving Niklas the opportunity he needed. His first strike took off the attacker’s arm at the shoulder; the second swing took his head.

  Blood-spattered and angry, Niklas stepped over the corpse, ready for the next attacker. One glance told him that the Tingur’s numbers had dramatically decreased. No doubt some had fled for their lives. Judging from the corpses that littered the ground, too many of them had tried to stand their ground, and died for their foolhardiness.

  Intuition prickled at the back of Niklas’s mind. “Close ranks!” he shouted to his men, and the soldiers rallied, filling the gaps in their line.

  Only several dozen of the Tingur still remained. Bloodied and outnumbered, their sharpened farm tools no match for swords, their fates were sealed. From the looks on their faces, they knew it. In better times, Niklas would have called for their surrender and sent them back to their villages roped together like convicts, counting on shame to k
eep them out of the next battle. But their villages were gone, and supplies were scarce, too precious to waste feeding prisoners. He wondered if the Tingur’s attack would bring them accolades from Torven, because their sacrifice brought their mortal master no gain.

  Niklas caught a glimpse of motion in the shadows behind the handful of Tingur still on their feet. “Reinforcements coming in!” Niklas shouted as a wave of newcomers ran for their line.

  These men were not Tingur. Though they lacked the uniform of a proper army, the fact that they were real soldiers was clear in their every movement. The rumors were right, Niklas thought, with a mixture of anger and revulsion. Lysander sends in his greenest troops, the Tingur, to wear out the enemy before his real soldiers attack. Bastard.

  Then the attack came, and there wasn’t time to think at all.

  “You’re in our way.” The soldier stood a head taller than Niklas, with a scarred, shaved head and a smashed nose.

  “We’ll fix that for you,” Niklas said between gritted teeth. He launched himself at the man, landing a slash to his forearm. He’s used to people turning tail at his size. He’s come to the wrong place.

  All of Niklas’s fury over the slaughtered Tingur and his annoyance at having a good night’s sleep ruined found expression in his sword. His first strike drew blood. His second tested the speed of his attacker’s reflexes, and the third told Niklas all he needed to know about the man’s reach.

  Niklas dropped back, then feinted left. His attacker was a breath too slow to deflect the slice Niklas’s sword tip put in his shoulder, but he returned a pounding series of parries that scored cuts on Niklas’s arm and nearly got inside his defense. Niklas felt the warm blood seeping through his torn shirt, running down his forearm.

  “I’m going to have your head,” the burly man gloated. “Put it on my pike as a trophy. And I always take a finger from kills, to remember them.” He grinned. “Got fifty so far. Room for more.”

  “Fifty was just another day in the Meroven War,” Niklas muttered. He moved right, but the bald man was faster than Niklas expected, and he scored a deep jab to Niklas’s side.

  “I take the fingers off before the head, so they’re alive when I do it,” the man added. His reach was just a bit longer than Niklas’s, and Niklas barely evaded the swing that went for his neck.

  The cold night air smelled of blood and offal. The torches of the Tingur guttered in the dirt, or lay smoking and extinguished beside their corpses. New torches, borne by both sides, cast the trampled field in shades of flame. They stank of oil and soot, sending a haze of smoke across the battlefield.

  The bald man was broad-shouldered and muscular, with powerful arms. Niklas watched his attacker strike, and as he evaded the blow, he dodged left and behind. He had just a second’s grace, but he gambled that his attacker’s powerful swing came at a price.

  Niklas dove forward, sword angled just under the enemy soldier’s shoulder blade, betting that the man was too muscle-bound to be able to parry in that direction. The tip of his blade sank deep, driven farther by the attacker’s own momentum as he tried and failed to swing at Niklas in a spot he could not reach.

  Niklas’s second blade slid into the soldier’s side, below the ribs, and Niklas gave it a twist for good measure. Warm blood poured from the wound over Niklas’s hand, but his own blood had soaked his shirt and trews, growing sticky in the cold.

  The bald man stumbled, then sank to his knees, and Niklas barely got his blades clear before the soldier pulled him along with him. Wary, Niklas swung again, taking off the soldier’s sword hand at the wrist.

  “No trophies this time,” Niklas said, staggering back a pace. He caught his balance, then lunged, watching as his sword sent the bald head tumbling into the dirt. The body swayed for a moment, headless, then collapsed in a widening pool of blood.

  Despite the cold, sweat ran down Niklas’s back. In the darkness, it was impossible to guess how many men Lysander had sent against them, but he hoped that the spies were right that it was just a portion of Lysander’s troops, and not his entire army.

  Where is Lysander? Niklas wondered, pressing a hand against his side to staunch the bleeding. Or couldn’t he be bothered to come to his own battle?

  Then he saw him. Karstan Lysander looked just as Niklas’s spies had described him: a big man with a thick neck and coarse, fleshy features. He was astride a warhorse, back from the line of battle, watching from an outcropping that was safely removed from the bloodshed.

  Getting his men to do the bloody work for him, Niklas thought. Anger boiled over, and he took a running step in Lysander’s direction, but the pain in his side made him stagger. His hand was still pressed over the wound in his side, slick with blood, and Niklas knew he would not be the one to give Lysander chase. Not today.

  The battle had turned as Niklas fought the bald man. No Tingur remained to be seen on the field, and as Niklas managed to stand, he realized that his men had turned back the assault. A horn blared near Lysander, a call for retreat, not a trumpet call of victory.

  All around him, Niklas’s men surged like a wave behind the retreating soldiers, hard on their heels, giving chase until Niklas heard Ayers shout for the trumpeters to signal a halt. Bloodied, injured, but triumphant, Niklas’s soldiers jeered obscenities at the remnant that withdrew.

  Yet as Niklas looked around, the cost of winning had been dear. Dozens of his own men lay dead among the bodies of the Tingur and Lysander’s soldiers. Blaine’s army had held their own against the invaders, but with the Tingur to strike the first blows, Lysander had exacted a heavy price.

  He doesn’t need to win, Niklas realized. Damn him. All he needs to do is strike, damage, and retreat enough times, and wait for us to weaken. While he sits at a distance, watching it play out.

  “Captain!”

  Niklas managed a tight-lipped grimace in acknowledgment. No matter that Blaine had given Niklas the title of general. For the men who had served with him in the war and followed him across a continent to come home, Niklas would always be ‘captain.’

  “Good work,” Niklas said as Ayers and two other soldiers caught up with him. “We ran them off.”

  “You’re hurt,” Ayers said.

  “Nothing Ordel can’t patch up,” Niklas replied. He took a step toward Ayers, and stumbled. One of the soldiers got under his uninjured arm to steady him.

  “Go find Ordel, tell him to come to the Captain’s tent,” Ayers ordered the second soldier. He turned his attention back to Niklas. “Can you walk?”

  “If we don’t take the long way home,” Niklas said, although he was beginning to feel light-headed, and the edges of his vision were blurring black. He was about to say more, but everything went dark.

  “You’re lucky.”

  Niklas heard Ordel’s voice before he opened his eyes. The pain in his side was nearly gone, though Niklas felt weak, and every muscle ached. “I don’t feel lucky.”

  “If you weren’t lucky, you wouldn’t be feeling anything. You’d be dead,” Ordel reproved him archly. “If you’d lost a little more blood, I guess we could have had you turned talishte, but I’m not sure there would have been enough left for a decent meal.”

  Niklas repressed a shiver. “Don’t even think about it.” He paused. “How many men are down?” He looked at the healer, who was sitting in a chair in Niklas’s tent next to his cot.

  “Enough that I’d prefer not to fight another battle in the next couple of days if there’s a choice,” Ordel replied. “After that, they’ll be fine. If it’s any consolation, we took more of theirs than they got of ours.”

  “That’s something.”

  Ordel nodded toward a small side table beside the cot. “Brought you some food. Eat a little at a time, and promise me you won’t try to get out of bed until I come back to check the dressing on that wound.” He glared at Niklas. “If his sword had gone a bit to one side or the other, I might not have been able to fix you up. Remember that.”

  “I’ll try,�
� Niklas muttered.

  “This came for you, but I thought you should be conscious before I gave it to you,” Ordel said, passing a sealed parchment envelope to Niklas.

  Niklas frowned, looking at the handwriting. “It’s from Blaine.”

  Ordel sighed. “I know that. The talishte who delivered it said as much. What’s inside?”

  Niklas broke the seal and quickly scanned down over the crowded, angular script. He looked up, sure Ordel could read the concern in his face. “We’re to bring the soldiers and meet up with Blaine at the Citadel of the Knights of Esthrane,” he said, glancing at the paper one more time to reassure himself of what he had read.

  “What do the Knights need McFadden for?” Ordel asked.

  Niklas shook his head. “Not the Knights. Blaine picked the Citadel because it’s neutral territory. He’s called Verner and the Solveig twins for a summit. And he wants us there to back him up.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE THE CITADEL OF THE Knights of Esthrane was considered ‘neutral territory,’ ” Piran said as he reined in his horse. Beside him, Blaine eyed the old structure. Deserted a century ago when King Merrill’s grandfather declared the Knights to be traitors, the Citadel was in good condition compared to many structures of similar age after the Great Fire.

  The Citadel’s large tower had been spared in the Great Fire because the building was not home to one of the nobility. Since then, it had endured the magic storms. Here and there, Blaine could see scorch marks, and cracks in the massive stone where a direct strike had hit the tower. Yet the tower’s base looked undamaged beyond the neglect of years.

  A week had passed since the flood in Castle Reach. Blaine’s time had been taken up with negotiations to bring the warlords together, while Niklas and his men had battled Lysander to a standstill. Now, Blaine eyed the skies warily, afraid to trust in the mages’ prediction that they had a few clear days before more storms came their way.