Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  It took the farm families inviting the rangers to share their communal meal for the animosity of the Brandishear and Aerachi squads to finally melt. As they were in Brandishear, patrols were commonplace through the frontier farmsteads of Aerach, and as the rangers gathered around a large firepit for spit-roasted pig and the last of the season’s sweet corn, their hosts showed a profound lack of curiosity about their presence. The uniforms of Brandishear were noted, with Chriani having briefed all the rangers to explain that they were traveling to the great southern citadel at Doniver to exchange training with the Aerachi. However, the farm folk were more interested by far in tales of raids and Ilvani slain, and the rangers of both principalities were more than happy to share them.

  Chriani spent the meal drifting back and forth between the fire and the tents, bringing food to Kathlan and Dargana while explaining to the farm folk that one of his rangers was resting an injured leg. While at the fire, he spent more time listening than talking, hearing the tales turn bolder as the spiced wine began to flow. He was surprised to find that he had heard of more than a few of the Brandishear rangers’ exploits, including Daellyn and Wilric’s part in defending the southern city of Kaeralith from wolf-rider raids out of the mountains the previous winter.

  He was more surprised by far to hear the tale told by two of the Aerachi rangers. A daring raid into the Crithnala lands in deep winter of the year before, they said. Perhaps the local folk had heard of it? When the Princess Lauresa of Brandishear had been taken by mad monks along the Clearwater Way, it was the rangers of Teillai who brought her home.

  Chriani said nothing as he listened. He marked the names of the two rangers doing the talking — Nyduri and Tenry — and made a point of following them back to the tents as the fire burned down and the watch was set, the farm folk already returned to their homes.

  The Clearmoon had been waxing full since the rain passed, almost daylight bright to his eyes now. He approached the two quietly from behind while they pissed at the edge of the tents’ field of lantern light, trusting to the warmth of the wine and their murmured laughter to cover any sound of his approach. He listened to their talk turn to Dargana, as he’d hoped it would.

  “Too long since I rode the exile lands,” one of them said, Chriani not sure which. “But I’ll tell you true, I’ll see one less Crithnala on this side of the Hunthad the first time Sergeant Sackless lets his Ilvani scut off the leash.”

  Chriani sent his foot between the speaker’s legs, then twisted to drop him. He took advantage of the second figure’s surprise to spin, driving in with a roundhouse kick that sent the Aerachi to the ground beside his friend. Both the rangers staggered to their feet, fumbling the laces of their leggings as they backed up, screaming profanities that Chriani didn’t know. Different customs in Aerach.

  Both stopped shouting when they saw it was him, but he felt quite certain that their silence had more to do with the footsteps racing in from all sides. Rangers of both squads were bringing light, slowing as they circled. In the glare of lanterns, he could see where both Nyduri and Tenry had pissed themselves when they fell.

  Chriani saw Daellyn and Wilric before him, didn’t look to see who else was at his back or how far behind him they stood. Waiting only until the crowd had settled before he spoke.

  “You’re a peace envoy and you’ll act like it. Whether it’s in your nature, whether you like it or not, whether you can even spell peace with all the letters given to you. I hear another word from either of you on Dargana, or on your exploits in Crithnalerean, I’ll send you both back to Teillai slung over the same horse. You have anything to say back to me?”

  A long silence hung. From the corner of his eye, Chriani saw Venry pace around him to draw the two rangers’ line of sight. The lieutenant’s look carried a white-hot rage, but whether it was inspired more by his troops or by him, Chriani didn’t know.

  “I have a question, lord.”

  Jeradien called out from behind him. Chriani turned back, one eye still on the two rangers, wary.

  “You didn’t share much in the way of your exploits at the fireside tonight.” The tall ranger’s voice was ice. “I would have liked to hear of your experience in the field, vast as I’m sure it is.”

  “If there’s ever a day I feel the need to impress you, you’ll know it,” Chriani said. The words were Barien’s, a favorite saying of the sergeant’s when dealing with those he had no interest in dealing with. But before Jeradien could speak again, another voice rose from the shadows.

  “Sergeant Chriani took command of his squad outside Alaniver, on the Calalerean frontier, two weeks past when our troop sergeant took an arrow to the heart.” Kathlan stepped into the circle of light. She was in loose leggings and a tunic, like she might have been sleeping, but her hand was set on her sword belt, her rapier hanging there. “He took her off her horse as she died, led two squads out of the Greatwood at speed, firing all the way. Dropped back to lead a sneak attack on their flank that got us clear in the end.”

  She ignored Chriani as she stepped up to Jeradien, green eyes flashing like emerald fire. If she cared that the Aerachi ranger towered almost a full head taller than her, she made no sign. “We left a half-dozen Ilvani dead that day, but Chriani went back for more. He led the capture of four of them, then captured magic in the deep wood that the war-mages are still looking at. Nine days later, he and I were fighting a Calalerean war-band that struck inside Rheran itself. He killed four that I saw, but it was dark. I might have missed one. Later that same night, Chriani sat with the Prince High Chanist and Captain Ashlund of the prince’s guard in private meeting in the Bastion throne room. Now he’s here. You have any other fucking questions?”

  No one spoke. Jeradien’s dark eyes flicked from Kathlan to Chriani with undisguised hatred, but her look cooled when she met Venry’s gaze.

  The lieutenant broke the silence to relieve Chriani of the awkward obligation. “We have two more day’s hard riding ahead of us at least. We should all take our rest.”

  The way he spoke, it wasn’t an order, Chriani noted. Though it looked like doing so had cost the lieutenant significant effort.

  He nodded. “Troop dismissed,” he said.

  Kathlan was the first to turn and go.

  Chriani wandered the edge of the makeshift encampment for a while, wanting to give tempers time to cool and needing to be nowhere within earshot until they did. In the moon’s-light, his eyes had no trouble spotting one of the two he’d attacked — Nyduri or Tenry, he still didn’t know which — slipping into Jeradien’s tent. The tall ranger’s anger made more sense suddenly, even as it suggested that anger wasn’t likely to flag anytime soon.

  From his own rangers, Chriani was surprised to receive actual salutes as he passed Wilric and Jessa on first watch. A subtle change in their attitude toward him, though how much of that was his standing up to the Aerachi and how much was Kathlan’s impassioned speech, he didn’t know. As he slipped to his tent and beneath his bedroll, Chriani found himself suffering from the faint hope that whatever other complications were bound to come his way, leading the Brandishear rangers might have become easier at least.

  He just had absolutely no idea what he was leading them into.

  They crossed the loop of the river again just after setting out the next morning. That second crossing was a military ferry, two squads of guards stationed at either end. They would keep the water on their right now, following it for fifteen leagues more and watching as they drew closer to the wall of the forest, rising to the west. The field maps he had obtained from the Bastion libraries showed that where the river met the Greatwood, it would turn due south. Crossing over into Valnirata territory, and marking the meeting place Dargana had said they were bound for.

  Beyond the ferry, the cart roads grew sparser. The farmsteads began to cluster tight around fortified towns protected by patrols from Teillai and Doniver, the river winding on toward the still-unseen forest. They shadowed that water throughout the day, stopping th
e night at a hilltop farmstead whose houses sat behind a stockade wall that was brightly lit by watchfires even before dusk. As with the previous night, they slept in a quickly assembled camp but ate with the farm folk, then paid for the gift of the meal by purchasing oats for the horses, replenishing the stores that the Brandishear contingent had used up along the Clearwater Way.

  The mood at the evening meal was a great deal quieter than it had been the previous night. That suited Chriani fine.

  As in Brandishear, the folk of the Aerach frontier made no secret of their respect for the patrols of the prince’s guard. Most of the frontier farmsteads held back a fixed portion of their harvest and goods, whether root crops for storage, smoked meats, oats or autumn fruit. They kept it set aside and ready for when the patrols passed, selling it for minimal cost, or sometimes just offering it in thanks.

  Close by the farmstead stood one of the leaguestones Chriani had noticed for the first time that morning, just beyond the ferry. These were border markers consisting of unadorned standing stones, whose weather-beaten look spoke to how long ago they’d been placed there. From time to time throughout the day, he had also noticed ash-grey Ilvani arrows shot into lone trees well on the wrong side of those stones.

  The Brandishear border held no such formal markers, but Chriani recognized that the true frontier on both sides of the Greatwood was marked off not by stone or trees, but by a near-identical swath of open rangeland that fronted those trees. An empty space into which the settlers of Aerach and Brandishear knew not to tread, understanding that as much as anything else, the border of Valnirata stood where the patrols of Ilmari and Ilvani alike said it stood.

  Their fourth day out from Werrancross, Chriani’s troop sighted that unseen border with the sun at its height. The rough track they had been following broke at last from the Hunthad, curving off east toward the Doniver townships, so they left that track to follow the river across open grassland. League after league, they watched the shadowed wall of the forest slowly appear, curving out and across their path. The muddy course of the Hunthad twisted its way toward those trees, distant and bright beneath clear sky.

  Jessa and Jeradien were riding point, two others from the Aerachi squad up front to keep them in sight. As Chriani watched the dark stain of the forest ahead, Lieutenant Venry spurred up to his side.

  “Is there a meeting point to be recognized?” he asked. “And will we reach it before dusk?”

  “The Ilvani will find us,” Chriani said, remembering Dargana’s words from the throne room. “Hopefully tonight, but I don’t know exactly.” He glanced back to the exile, riding behind him with Kathlan close at her side. “We cross the frontier and wait.”

  Venry’s snort of frustration was audible, but Chriani didn’t bother with a response.

  “With no messages run, how do you expect them to know where we are?”

  “I expect them to be watching from the far side of the river. I expect they’ve been doing so since we left the ferry behind, marking our progress.”

  Venry shook his head with a certain amount of satisfaction. “I’ve had my best outriders watching. They’ve seen no sign.”

  “Neither have I. Which is what makes me think they’re out there. When the carontir along the Brandishear wood want you to see them, you see them.”

  A smirk touched Venry’s lips as he slipped back to the side rank. “Your tactical acumen is impressive, sergeant. I thank you for sharing it.”

  Chriani was hoping, in truth, for contact before dark. But as they advanced along the river and the wall of the Greatwood rose ever higher, he judged the press of wet grey cloud following them from the north and called a halt well before dusk. They had more than enough daylight left to enter the Greatwood, but setting a camp within the darkness of the forest wasn’t something he had any urge to try.

  He sent one of the Aerachi riders forward to call Jessa and Jeradien back. Jeradien returned but sullenly reported to Venry, so Chriani talked with Jessa about potential sites for a camp.

  “We saw just the place,” the scout said. “There’s a ruin, top of a rise due south. Be there in good time, and plenty of view to all sides as long as the weather holds.”

  Chriani gave the order and Jessa led the way. The site was as she described it — a broad, smooth hill with a rough circle of foundation stones a dozen paces across, set with crumbling mounds of rock poking out from under overgrown turf. It made for an excellent observation point and defensive position, even as its tumbled stones would create a break from the wind, rising now from the north. They were still a good distance from the forest, but Chriani could hear that wind stir the sentinel trees of the Greatwood to a steady droning hiss.

  The horses were tended within a narrow poplar grove, the tents pitched on open ground. As the rangers set camp, Chriani wandered the hillside to gaze out at the forest, the swells and valleys of its canopy shifting beneath the light of the falling sun. He was thinking hard about what their next move would be if the Ilvani didn’t make their presence known. Wondering how long the rangers should wait for them, or whether to enter the forest at once. How to set patrols, how far to press into the wood. He would need to talk to Dargana in private, but he knew that any approach to her involved talking to Kathlan first. Not sure it was a conversation he was ready for.

  Along a narrow ridge to the north, the encircling rubble of the hill was punctuated by three larger standing stones. Part of the gatehouse, perhaps, of whatever fort or frontier guard post this had once been. The stones were too old by far to have been raised during the Incursions. However, many older sites had been rebuilt or repurposed as staging grounds and watchtowers during that conflict, then torn down by the Ilvani as Aerach and Brandishear pulled back from the frontier in its aftermath. Despite their proximity to the forest, there was no mistaking the plain construction of the stone slabs as Ilmari work. Though cracked with age and weather, their original construction was still visible, clean and plain. None of the dangerous beauty the Ilvani imbued into all their craft.

  “We’re ripe for ambush here.”

  Venry’s voice sounded out from behind him, Chriani turning to see the lieutenant pacing his way up the hillside, hand at his scabbard.

  “You know a place half a league from the Greatwood and a day’s ride from the nearest city that isn’t ripe for ambush, I would have been happy to hear about it earlier.”

  “Quick with mockery.” Venry took on a distracted tone as he circled Chriani, creating the sense that he was talking to someone else. “Even quicker to anger from what I’ve seen. No real sense that you care whether it’s guards or officers at the wrong end of your invective.”

  “You have a point to follow the talking, lieutenant? Or is the talking really the best you get up to?”

  “My point, Sergeant Chriani, is that if you’re a sign of the caliber of commission in Brandishear of late, I have great fear for the Ilmar’s future. This close to the Greatwood, when the Ilvani come calling, I don’t plan to be sleeping.”

  “We could set a watch,” Chriani said brightly. “That would show them something. In fact, set the schedule yourself, and make sure you’re on it.”

  Venry stepped closer, voice low. “Pretend to authority all you like. But you’re a simple-minded mercenary with an insignia you haven’t earned, boy…”

  Chriani drove forward and down, slamming his head into Venry’s chest. It was a well-practiced move among the Bastion guard, granting the advantage of leaving your hands and the target’s face unbloodied when the counterattack came. It didn’t help with the beating you’d take, but it looked good when you told the officers later how you’d been jumped without provocation.

  Venry nearly lost his feet as he stumbled back, fighting to breathe and with murder in his eyes.

  “Only one person called me boy,” Chriani said evenly. “And you’re not him. That’s a warning…”

  “Fuck your warning, sergeant, and watch your back. There are a thousand ways to come to harm in the Great
wood.”

  “Is that a threat, lieutenant?”

  “Just advice, lord.”

  “Thanks for that. I’ve seen a few of those ways myself, but I try not to get killed as often as I’m guessing you do…”

  “Lords.”

  Kathlan’s voice clipped Chriani’s to silence, saving him from escalating his taunt in a way he knew he would have regretted. She had slipped up along a narrow track that swept the hillside, a rainwater rill carving a narrow channel through the grass. Her dark look told Chriani she was still focused on what had passed between them outside Werrancross, and that she had been listening to him and Venry since their exchange began.

  “What is it?” Chriani said as he paced away from Venry. His hands were shaking, he realized.

  “With understanding that you both clearly have more pressing personal business, I wish to report that we’re being followed.”

  Dargana was already waiting for them, lying still and alone on a pitched rise to the north of the camp. She glanced back to see the three of them approach, but said nothing.

  “Dargana’s the one who spotted it,” Kathlan said as she motioned Chriani and Venry to follow her down to the ground. “First morning after Werrancross. So much traffic on the road then, I didn’t think anything of it. Until the next morning, and the next. We’ve been watching. Making sure it’s not just coincidence.”

  Chriani scanned the horizon from the adjacent forest to the more distant meadowlands. He saw nothing but the faint shimmer of the wind in the grass, but his silence gave Venry a chance to make his thoughts known.

  “Ilvani.” The lieutenant spat to the ground beside him, ignoring Dargana’s dark look. “You’ve led us straight into…”