by Tim Akers
The ridgeline in question was little more than a fold in the plains, but it was enough to offer some strategic advantage. The field south of it looked strange, as though a city’s worth of colorful trash had been dropped in the snow. Ian pointed at it. “What do you make of that?”
The man stared for a long time. “Flowers, my lord?” he said uncertainly. “And not as much snow. I can see grass.”
“Flowers. No less likely than anything else,” Ian said with a sigh. He sighted the bonfire in the center of the Halverdt camp. “At least they’re staying warm.”
“There is… That’s strange.” The scout’s voice was still tinged with uncertainty, even a certain amount of wonder. “There is a tree in that fire.”
“That is what fires are made of. Burning trees.”
“No, no, not that at all. The tree isn’t burning, it’s…” He scrunched up his face, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. “It’s a tree made of fire. Flame instead of leaves.”
Ian stared down at the camp. Sure enough, he could see a black trunk in the middle of the bonfire, and branches stretching out. The flames dangled from those branches like leaves, weaving through the air.
Just like the tree in Houndhallow. The corrupted spirit of Strife was here, as well.
“We have to get a closer look,” Ian said.
“Won’t be easy.”
“We didn’t come all this way to do easy things,” Ian said. “Follow me.”
* * *
As they left the trees behind, the snowfall grew heavier, and their view of the plains impossible. By the time they started toward Halverdt’s camp, Ian could see no farther than ten feet, and that only when he lifted his head from his cloak. From his place at the head of the line, Ian couldn’t see more than a couple of his own riders. If they got lost or wandered away, there would be no finding them.
This place brought strange memories to Ian. He had already nearly died on these plains, when the witch Fianna rescued him after the battle of White Lake. Cold had nearly killed him then, and that was in the height of summer. It would be ironic if he returned to this place in a different season, only to die in flames.
A snowball struck Ian squarely in the back of the head. He swore and turned around. The sharp-eyed scout behind him sat casually in his saddle, staring hard at Ian.
“What the hells was that for?” Ian asked. The man only nodded to his right, without looking away. Ian looked in that direction.
Four riders emerged from the blizzard, white shields crossed by the red saltire and three tongues of flame. All four were watching Ian and his fellows curiously. Ian turned back to the front, unsure what he should do.
“Hail, patrol! Any sight of the heretics of Cinder?”
“Nothing but snow and bloody… snow,” Ian answered back. “For you?”
“Our swords are still clean, and our vengeance unfulfilled.” The leader spurred his horse, drawing closer. Ian grimaced.
“A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed,” he muttered to himself. He twisted back again, catching the sharp-eyed man’s panicked look. “Right, nothing for it.”
Ian kicked his horse and peeled away, riding hard and blind through the snow. His scouts followed, leaving the other patrol behind. Wind and snow battered Ian’s face, the speed of his passage throwing his hood back, scooping wet slush down onto his neck. He rode quickly through the blizzard, but the faster he went, the less he could see. It was only a few seconds before Ian was separated from the rest of his group. The sound of a horse thundering through the snow followed him, but he had no idea if it came from his own men, or those of the Suhdrin patrol.
A line of thin lights spread out before him. A picket line, most likely belonging to the Halverdt camp. While he hoped to learn more about the bonfire at the center of this camp, screaming in at a full gallop was not a method for success. He veered away, drawing the attention of the guards standing at the picket. A few shouts followed him, but he was gone and back into the blizzard before anyone could follow.
Whatever hope he’d had of sneaking into Halverdt’s camp was blown. His only hope now was to get his men away safely. Ian slowed and turned around in his saddle, squinting against the wind. The horse that was following him grew closer, but wasn’t slowing down.
“The hound!” Ian shouted, waiting for an answer.
A blossom of light shot through the blizzard, framing the outline of a knight on horseback. Even the man’s eyes burned with flames. He was riding low to the saddle, shield up and sword drawn. The flames dancing over his head turned the snowfall into a blanket of mist, further obscuring him.
“Against the night of winter!” the man yelled, charging forward.
Ian barely got his sword out before the man was on him. The flaming blade crashed against Ian’s guard, spitting pitch onto Ian’s cloak and startling his horse. Small flames pitted his clothes and saddle, but the knight seemed unharmed. He wheeled, swung, shoved his shield against Ian’s riposte, and then hammered his horse into the side of Ian’s mount. In the snow and panic, Ian was nearly unseated, only staying in his saddle by dropping his guard and holding on for dear life. Ian’s horse shimmied to the side. The knight pressed forward.
Strike and strike again. The flame from the knight’s sword was heating up Ian’s blade. His fingers blistered on the hilt; the skin of his wrist scorched. Ian started to sweat, not from effort, but simply from the waves of heat washing off the knight. The man’s horse was flecked with foam. The blizzard swirled around them in a torrent of mist, flakes melting, dripping, turning to ice on the side of Ian facing away from the knight, hissing into steam against the man’s chain.
“Like all pagans, you will die!” the knight shouted. “Like all heretics, you will burn for your sins. The true light of Strife has been shown! The shadows of Cinder must be eradicated from all Tenumbra!”
“I’m not a heretic!” Ian shouted back, because he couldn’t think of anything clever to say. “You’re a heretic! Heretic!”
“Silence!” Swing and counter-swing, Ian’s blade dancing off the man’s shield, their swords coming together in a shimmer of flame. Ian punched the knight in his exposed throat, backing away as he gagged. It was only a brief respite. When he wheeled around, the knight threw away his shield and grabbed his sword in both hands. The flames that traveled along the blade grew brighter, larger, scything through the air with each swing.
Ian was on fire. What started as a few pits of flame had spread, and now his cloak, his tunic, and his saddle all crackled with flame, while bright embers dropped into his horse’s mane. The creature was in a panic, kicking out whenever the knight drew close, forcing Ian to focus more on staying in his saddle than his swordplay. The knight took advantage, swinging wild and hard.
Finally, Ian fell. One of the knight’s blows took him across the shoulders, searing his flesh with hot chain and throwing him from the saddle. He tumbled into a snow bank, which started to melt the second he hit it. The sound of his horse galloping off into the blizzard was soon drowned out by the burning knight’s laughter.
“Do I kill you here, and let the bright lady’s flames burn a confession from your bones? Or do I take you to Lady Halverdt, and let her decide your fate?” The knight came closer, his flames tamping down, until only the fire in his eyes and the inferno of his blade remained. “What do you have to confess, pagan? Are your sins worthy of the avatar’s attention?”
“I am Ian Blakley, son of Malcolm, heir to Houndhallow,” Ian said, standing up. Ian held his sword to the side, hoping to win the man without further violence. “My father has made an alliance with your lady. Take me to them, and let her explain.”
“Ian Blakley, son of Malcolm,” the knight said cheerfully. “That makes this so much simpler. Death here, then!”
Ian rolled to avoid the knight’s downward blow. The flaming steel buried itself in the snow and packed earth beneath. While the vow knight struggled to release his sword, Ian came to his feet.
The vow knight was a living to
rch. Flames wicked off his back, curling into the air in crimson waves that turned the air into mist. His clothes burned, turning to ash, mingling with the snow. The steel of his chain mail shimmered in the darkness.
“You are no knight of the winter vow,” Ian said. “I have known Elsa LaFey, and others. They burn with glory. You simply burn.”
“You know nothing of glory, pagan.” The knight gave up on his sword, leaving it in the snow. As he stepped away, a final blaze of flame traveled up the steel then snuffed out like a torch. The blackened blade pinged and cracked in the sudden cold. He drew a knife, spreading his arms to Ian in greeting. “The days of vows, and meditation, and reason are at an end. These are the days of fury.”
“You really are a heretic.” Ian shifted on his feet, bracing for the knight’s attack. It came quickly, a stab at Ian’s neck, another at his chest. When Ian blocked them both smoothly, the knight scored his dagger across Ian’s wrist, drawing a trickle of blood.
“There is no escape. There is no hope, not for you or your ilk. We will burn you from the earth, one pagan at a time.” The flames traveled up his arm, circling the dagger in a corona, sizzling as it touched the steel. “Strife’s avatar on earth will end your pagan night!”
Ian ignored the knight’s words, focused entirely on the dagger and the flame. The knight was now crying tears of pitch, black liquid bubbling down his cheeks as he fought. But unlike Elsa, the man’s skin was not entirely immune to the heat he was producing. His flesh boiled beneath his tears, and black char gathered at the corners of his eyes. A seam of fire cracked open on the knight’s fighting arm, traveling from biceps to wrist. His chain mail strained over the burning fissure, but the links cracked and ripped apart, sending molten steel across the snow.
The knight screamed and threw himself forward. Ian blocked the man’s flurry of blows, dodging to one side as the flames grew. He punched the pommel of his sword into the knight’s chest, cracking ribs, sending a shower of sparks out, like a collapsing bonfire. Flecks of burning embers sprayed across Ian’s face, forcing him to stumble back.
Streamers of hot fire twisted around the knight’s armor, hissing as the metal cracked, searing the knight’s image on Ian’s brain. Ian turned, shielding his face, as the conflagration consumed the whole knight. His screams disappeared into the squeal of flame and rapid crackle of popping chain links.
The second the flames died down, winter returned in all its fury. Sweat and mist froze on Ian’s clothes, sending shivers down his back, all the way to his bones.
“That is not a glory I would wish on any man,” Ian muttered. He got closer to the dead knight. His armor was plain, unadorned with bloodwrought runes or the symbols of Strife that every vow knight wore. “I’m not sure what he was, but there’s nothing holy about it.”
The knight’s skin was cooked and peeling away in wide chips of ash and ember. As his skin flaked away, Ian caught sight of something that made him uncomfortable. He bent down.
A deep rune was gouged into the man’s skull. On closer examination, there were dozens of smaller inscriptions across the bone of his brow, and down his cheeks. They swirled with ember light, like the last cinders of a bonfire dying away.
“Nothing sacred. Nothing holy,” Ian whispered. The man’s sword lay next to his body. Ian picked it up and sheathed it. He snagged the fallen knight’s horse and swung into the saddle, then turned and started ambling toward his father’s camp. “I must find my father. I must warn him.”
40
“THIS DOESN’T FEEL terribly wise,” Castian Jaerdin said to Malcolm. The two men were on the edge of their camp, with no company but their horses and the snow. They watched nervously as the picket line around Halverdt’s camp peeled open to admit Malcolm. Soldiers from both factions patrolled the small strip of land between their camps, but Sophie Halverdt had established an additional picket line between them. Malcolm hadn’t been inside that camp since Jaerdin smuggled him out, when he was unconscious and wracked with fever, but now a summons had arrived and he was riding in alone.
“Sometimes courage is needed more than wisdom,” he told Jaerdin. “Sophie Halverdt will not release my people from her damned infirmary unless they are needed for battle, and I’m certain they won’t be truly well until they are out of her burning grasp.” He grimaced at the memory of his murderous and joyful rage during the previous battle. Malcolm no longer believed that the spirit that had possessed him was that of Strife, but he couldn’t prove it. “I will press for battle when I talk to Halverdt. All you have to do is get through to Lady Bassion.”
“Our messages have fallen on deaf ears, if they have reached her at all. But I will continue trying. I have heard word of an army gathering in the Fen, as well, wearing pagan garb and skulking among the trees.”
“One war at a time, Redgarden. If Halverdt refuses to release me once I am back in her camp, the army falls to you. I trust you will do what is right.”
“I will do whatever right the gods reveal to me, and probably die in the effort.” Jaerdin sighed. “At least the snow has stopped.”
Malcolm nodded, then rode forward. The twenty yards between camps felt like the longest, slowest charge he’d ever taken. When he was inside the picket, the guards pulled the barrier back into place behind him, and disappeared into their tents. Even with the iron braziers that filled Sophie Halverdt’s camp, the wind was bitter.
Once he was inside the camp, Malcolm kept his eyes open and his fingers crossed. For all he knew, his soldiers were still incapacitated. Halverdt surely wouldn’t agree to battle if a third of their allied forces were sick in bed. Malcolm had recovered, but only because Jaerdin had snuck him out of Halverdt’s camp.
Malcolm’s worries disappeared as he rounded the corner. Sir Doone stood at loose attention by the side of the road, her back to what must be the infirmary tent. Malcolm nodded in her direction.
“Come to fetch us, my lord?”
“I am here to discuss the matter with Lady Halverdt. She insists you must still be watched closely, and that you are all happy in your accommodations,” Malcolm answered. “You’re looking well, at least.”
“Tell Sophie it’s too damn warm,” Doone said. “That tree is giving me fever dreams.”
“Gods pray we will be free of it soon enough,” Malcolm said, then hurried on. If Doone and the others were of sound mind, that was one burden off his mind. Now to lift the other.
The lane opened into the camp’s central courtyard, and the burning tree. The light and heat of the strange tree were felt throughout both camps, but with the intervening picket and pavilions, Malcolm had never gotten a good look at it. Up close, it was as strange as he believed, and as terrifying as he feared.
The tree might have been an oak, but its leaves were flames, and its trunk glistened black and slick under the fire without being consumed. Waves of heat washed off it, pushing against Malcolm as he rode by. After a few seconds he was sweating through his linens. A few seconds more and he was riding faster, just to get away from the black and burning tree.
He wasn’t able to get far. Sophie’s pavilion was at the head of the clearing, tent flaps thrown wide to the tree’s glory. A rank of vow knights stood outside the pavilion, their armor glowing in the reflected light of the burning boughs, apparently completely comfortable despite the heat. Malcolm dismounted and strode into the tent, throwing off his gloves and cloak and loosening the collar of his doublet.
“Gods, woman, how can you stand that heat?”
“Pure heat is good for the soul. I would ask how you tolerate the dark and cold of Tener, but you are born to the night, so it’s no wonder you are comfortable in its embrace.” Sophie sat on a pile of silk cushions at the head of a table laden with food and wine. She was still in her fine chain armor despite the gentleness of her surroundings. A handful of advisors sat around the table, including at least two vow knights. Malcolm walked to the chair furthest from the tree, turned it so his back was to the flames, and sat down.
“I glory well enough in summer, but that doesn’t mean I sleep on a bed of coals, or light my evening reading with a bonfire.” Malcolm looked around the room, happy to see at least a few of the advisors looked as uncomfortable as he felt. When he saw the face of the vow knight seated next to him, however, he had to suppress his shock. “Sir LaFey?”
“Lord Blakley,” Elsa said. She didn’t look herself. The angry scars across her cheeks were starting to heal, and her hair was longer and softer than he remembered. “It is good to see you well. I feared you were dead.”
“Last we spoke, you were accompanying my son from the Fen Gate, in search of Gwen Adair. What became of that mission?”
Elsa glanced to the head of the table, with just enough worry in her eye to put Malcolm on edge.
“Perhaps we should speak of that later. Your son was well last I spoke to him, but much has happened since then.”
“Sir LaFey does have an interesting history, doesn’t she?” Sophie purred. “So many important things and important people have passed through her care. And here she is, with us, at the end. Right where she belongs.”
“If I could know this was the end, I would be glad,” Malcolm said. “My bones are tired, and the battle has been long.”
“I promise you, Houndhallow, your struggle is nearly complete.”
“Enough of this,” Malcolm said, standing. “I came to a council of war. So let us make our plans. Lady Halverdt, it is necessary for me to have my knights at my side. I appreciate all that you have done for them, but I have healers and priests in my camp, as well.”
“This is not mere sickness. They have been touched by the glory of Strife, as were you. They cannot be healed by bedrest and earnest prayers.”
“If they should be healed at all,” a heavy-browed man said. “Why would you want to heal away the blessing of the goddess?”
“Whatever happened to us, blessing or curse, it was brought on by one of your adherents, Halverdt. Sir Galleux kindled the spark that turned my people into fire.”