Knight Of The Flame

by H John Spriggs

  He wondered if this was how Milo felt when he ran. He was actually looking forward to the next twenty minutes or so.

  Before he'd made a complete circuit, however, the horn blew, which caused a great deal of consternation among the runners: the whistle should mark the switch back to combat, not the horn. When he looked down to the yard again, however, he saw that the lieutenants were waving everyone to come back to the assembly area and that Draya was, once again, standing on the stone.

  Rill nearly gasped in surprise when he saw the prince standing there next to him, speaking some private words to the captain.

  Rill, quick as he was, was among the first to arrive back at the stone, so he soon found himself near the head of one of the columns, standing at attention, waiting for one of the men to speak. By the time the rest of the group had assembled, however, the prince had jumped off the stone and was striding away. Whatever he'd said, it had been for Draya alone to hear.

  The lieutenants nodded to their captain, signaling that the entire company was present. Draya looked quietly out over the assembly for a moment. At this distance, Rill could discern the look of unease on the man's face. The very idea that something could give Captain Draya cause for concern was something that gave Rill a distinct feeling of there being something wrong in the world.

  He was relieved, then, when the faintest smile touched the captain's face. "I think it was less than an hour ago that I told you all how important the coming days are going to be," he said. The smile faded. "It seems they're going to be even more important than we thought. I've just been informed that Black Moon has been spotted at the Greatstones. They're going through, not around."

  Rill could actually hear the silence that erupted. His ears had expected that such news should be met with cries of anguish or nervous whispers but, of course, Draya's engineers were too well-trained for that.

  The silence, however, was as nerve-wracking as any scream. Rill felt a chill rise up his spine.

  "The sighting took place this morning, at the northern edge of the range," Draya continued, "which means that they are either about to cross the mountains or that they're doing so already."

  Rill quickly did the math in his head. He didn't know what Black Moon's composition was like, but if any of it at all was infantry, it meant they could do, at a maximum, forty miles per day. Considering the width of the Greatstones—they had to be traveling through Falmoor's Pass—and the remaining distance from the Greatstones to Kepren, they would be knocking at the gates, at the earliest, in about a week.

  "There is already some snow in the pass," said Draya, "which will slow them some, but be certain that they will be here, at the most, in ten days." He raised an eyebrow at the gathered crowd. "We, however, are the king's engineers, and we do not assume the safe bet. We will assume it will take them five."

  Five days. Rill wondered just how ready they could be. His mind was drawn back to the supposed saboteur in their midst. How much damage would such a person do to their preparations?

  "Those of you who don't like drilling," Draya said, the smile returning to his lips, "are in luck. Drills are canceled for today and for the rest of the time between now and the day Black Moon arrives at our doorstep. I know you all have work that must be done to prepare for our enemy. I will let you get to it. Dismissed!"

  With that, the entire crowd came alive in a flurry of activity. Lieutenants barked orders, people shouted to each other, and men and women ran this way and that, supposedly all seeing to important tasks.

  Only Rill stood still amid the sea of movement. He watched Draya, who was still standing on the stone, watching his engineers get to their work, and tried to get the full measure of the man. He had something he needed to say, and he wondered if the captain would hear it.

  "Come on, Rill," Daniel had his hand on Rill's shoulder, "they need us to work on the chain-makers."

  Rill didn't hear his friend, his attention fixed as it was on the man before him and on the decision he had to make. He supposed he could try bringing his thoughts to one of the lieutenants, but the two officers that he knew wouldn't spare him even a moment's thought. He suspected, hoped, that Draya might.

  "Rill?" Daniel's voice carried concern and irritation in equal parts as Rill stepped away from him and the hand slid off his shoulder.

  A lump had risen in Rill's throat, and it wasn't going away. At this point, it was beginning to choke him. He could feel the pulse of blood through his veins, his heart was beating so fiercely. He thought about everything he new about the krealites, about what he'd experienced and what Caymus had told him. Fire had a hard time burning through their chitinous exteriors, but a flame of sufficient magnitude, one that could burn through solid rock, could hurt them. He knew there was no reason for anyone to listen to a newly-minted second-station engineer's ideas, but this was too important to keep to himself out of fear of reprimand. In his center, Rill felt this might be the single most important moment of his life. He hoped Draya was the kind of man he thought he was.

  When he reached the stone, the captain noticed him and turned to look down. His eyes narrowed for a moment, then opened again. "Rill, isn't it?" he finally said.

  "Yes, Sir," Rill said. He was surprised at how steady his voice sounded. He hoped it stayed that way. This wasn't just about his pride; people's lives could very well depend on the next few seconds.

  Much to his relief, Draya's mouth turned up in an easy smile, though he did raise his eyebrows in a small degree of surprise. "What can I do for you, then, Engineer Rill?"

  Engineer Rill. He never got tired of hearing that. "If you get a chance today, Sir, if you can spare a few moments at some point, there's something in the Gearhouse that I think you need to see."

  Lieutenant Bakkat, a thick-necked bulldog of a man with no sense of humor, stepped forward and grabbed Rill by the shoulder. "Get out of it!" the man said. "The captain ain't got time fer your rubbish. Ain't you just heard there's an army coming at us?"

  Before the big man could drag Rill away, however, Draya raised a hand. "Wait a moment, Bakkat." When the lieutenant stopped and turned to face his captain, Draya narrowed his eyes again. "Engineer Rill, would this have anything to do with the naphthalene that Engineer Daniel received from the foundries this week?"

  Rill supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. The one constant about Draya was that the man did, in fact, seem to know everything that happened in his corps. "Yes, Sir," he said.

  Draya nodded his head and stepped down off the chunk of granite. "I suppose you'd better show me what you've done, then. Come," he said, taking Rill by the elbow and spinning him, "we'll go right now."

  ***

  The only thing that Be'Var really couldn't stand about a hospital was the smell.

  This, however, was no hospital. It was, at best, a makeshift infirmary set up in a building that, as far as he could tell, hadn't been used in years. The dust in the air wasn't helping his patients, and some of their wounds were starting to fester.

  The city of Kepren had been receiving the occasional refugee from the North for several weeks now. The people of Kepren were no strangers to taking care of those whose homes had been lost; the exodus of the Laivusians had seen to that a hundred years ago. This might be more than Kepren could handle, though; the news that the Black Moon Army had been sighted at the northern edge of the Greatstones had heralded a sudden, massive influx of the tired, the weak, the sick, and the wounded.

  Be'Var imagined that, in the last day, over a thousand of them had filtered into the city, and small areas like this—tents set up in and around disused warehouses, crumbling, abandoned homes, and any other spaces where there was room—had been set up at the northern edges of the Guard District to try to cope with them all. The old blacksmith, healer, and master of the Conflagration had offered his services in two of the huge clusters of tents so far, but he was barely making a dent in the need for aid, and there were at least two other camps like this that he hadn't been able to get to yet.
r />   He could scarcely believe the hardships that these people had endured. Each and every one of them was from a city or village to the north of the Greatstones, and so each and every one had needed to cross the mountains in order to get here. Falmoor's Pass, the only direct route when crossing from north to south at that longitude, was long and treacherous, even in the middle of the summer; now that winter was baring its teeth, the snows were beginning to fall. The refugees wouldn't talk to him about the pass, but he heard them talking to each other often enough about the scores of frozen bodies that now littered the Greatstones.

  Not that the weather was behaving predictably, of course. There had still been not a hint of rain in Kepren in all the time he'd been here. The last time he'd seen precipitation of any sort was during that huge blizzard he'd run into when they'd crossed the mountains all those months ago, and he didn't imagine the Greatstones had seen much more weather than that since. Even the temperature wasn't right: they were well past autumn and the air should have been frigid by now.

  Be'Var suspected the building he was in now probably started life as an old guard post. The rotting sections of wood on the stone walls looked as though they had once held arrays of swords and polearms. He was glad that the walls, at least, seemed to be in no danger of crumbling away in the next few seconds. He crouched down next to a man who had propped himself up against one of those walls under an old, dusty shelf and quickly passed his healer's eye over him, assessing his patient's condition.

  The man seemed to be in about his mid-forties. He was thin, though not dangerously so, and would probably be tall if he were standing. His eyes were closed, but the ragged movements of his chest were evidence that he was alive. Strips of dirty cloth were tied around his chest, probably concealing some manner of grievous wound, likely on the left side, considering how tense that side of his body seemed to be. The thing that was of greatest concern, though, was how deathly pale his face was.

  Gently, Be'Var reached out and touched the man's shoulder. Instantly, though without any sign of shock or surprise, dark blue eyes snapped open and looked at him. "I'm a healer," Be'Var said. He indicated the man's paltry bandages. "Can I help?"

  The man heaved a big sigh. "Please," he said. His voice held no hint of gratitude or of pleading, nor of any fear. Be'Var might have been offering him a glass of water for all of the emotion in the words.

  Be'Var didn't like voices like that. They usually meant the patient had given up.

  As gently as he could, he untied the strips of cloth. He didn't actually need to see the wound in order to heal it, but getting a view of it would help him determine what, besides the stitching of flesh, the man might need from him.

  When he found the gashes, long and red, on the man's chest, Be'Var had to keep himself from shrinking back. Whatever had made the wounds had managed to miss any vital organs, but the angry, crimson skin was already turning black in some places. However successful Be'Var's efforts at piecing the flesh back together might be, he didn't think there was much chance that this man would survive the week.

  "Where are you from?" he asked as he reached out, opened a conduit, and brought the singeing heat to bear on the wound.

  The man didn't look at him. "Miragor," he said, distantly. He then turned his head and smiled at Be'Var. "Heard of it?"

  Be'Var shook his head.

  The man nodded. "It isn't surprising," he said. "We're not on most maps, just a small town along the Deradin River." His expression changed slightly. "We were a small town, anyway," he said. "I don't suppose there's much left of it now."

  Be'Var didn't say anything. He'd heard this story, or others very much like it, several times already in the last hour. If the man wanted to tell him more, he would. If not, Be'Var wouldn't pressure him by trying to awaken memories that were best left alone.

  "There were so many of them," the man continued, gazing off into space. "The horizon was a sea of black as they approached. It was a long while before you could tell the men from the bugs."

  This was something else he'd learned today. The Black Moon Army was largely constituted of men, actual human beings, though many of them had dark, ashen skins, as though part of them had been taken over by the kreal. Most of those men were foot soldiers, though there were some cavalry among them, riders of the insects.

  Be'Var wondered if any of the men in that army had dead eyes. He suspected that anyone who'd gotten close enough to tell hadn't survived to report back.

  Of course, there were the krealites, too, those giant insect-like monsters that had become so prominent in Be'Var's life. Estimates of their numbers ranged from the dozens to the thousands, so he still wasn't sure how many of the things they would eventually have to deal with.

  "That thing that led them, though," the man's face took on a darker visage, as though terror was slowly finding a home there, "I can't believe such a thing is allowed to exist." He reached out and grabbed Be'Var's arm. "It was enormous!" he said. "Black as the darkest night, it stood at the height of three men and was twice that big from side to side!"

  The man paused for a moment, waiting until Be'Var looked up, met his eyes, before he continued. "The walls around our village have kept out intruders for centuries," he said. "But this man, this thing! It just reached up and pulled the wall down like it was paper, and the bugs came flooding in and started killing everybody."

  Be'Var only nodded, not letting himself react to his patient's disquiet. To feed the man's anguish over whatever horrible scenes he was remembering would only drive him to madness.

  The leader, the dark figure that stood at the head of the Black Moon Army, was another problem entirely. He'd heard seven accounts of him—it—so far, and they ranged from describing a figure the size and shape of a man to that of a huge, quivering mass of arms and spikes, the size of a building. The blackness of him though, that was what all the stories had in common. They all agreed on the utter blackness of him.

  As Be'Var finished burning away as the flesh that was too infected to be saved, then sealing up the last of the skin that would never close up on its own, the man looked away, dropped his arm, and calmed down. "The smell, though," he said, closing his eyes. "It was like all the flowers in the meadow bloomed at once, so sweet." He settled himself back against the wall. "If it hadn't been for all the killing, it might have been pleasant."

  Be'Var sighed as he took the strips of cloth that had been holding the man's chest together and replaced them with a bandage that, he hoped, would let the dying flesh heal itself properly. He didn't think it would, though. He'd seen enough wounds to know that this one would eventually turn completely black and kill its host. He could almost feel life's vital energy draining away by the second.

  He stood, pushing the bloody, rank strips of cloth into a sack filled with such things. Caymus had told him about the sweet smell, too. He'd personally never noticed that kind of odor from the krealites before, but then he'd never been that close to one that wasn't on the brink of death, nor encountered so many of them at once.

  "Sir?"

  Be'Var, who had been walking away, stopped and turned. The man's eyes were riveted on him. "What are they?"

  Be'Var frowned, shook his head, and looked away. "They're the end of everything we know, my friend," he said. "I just hope we can stop them before it's all gone completely."

  When he looked back, the man was nodding, his eyes closed. Be'Var sighed, wondering if hope was something he should even be considering.

  A low moan brought the master out of his thoughts, and he quickly stepped a few paces and crouched beside his next patient, a woman who had curled herself up into a dark and musty corner.

  She was hardly more than a girl, at most in her early twenties. Her short, black hair was matted against her head and her arms were covered in dirt to the point that it was hard to make out her skin tone.

  She hid her face in her hands, but Be'Var could see that she was visibly shaking and suspected that she was trying to hold back tears. "Miss?" he sa
id, trying to make the word come out gently. He said it again when she didn't respond.

  Eventually, he had to reach out and touch her arm to get her attention. The moment he made contact with her skin, however, she bolted away as though struck by lightning, scurrying backward, trying to push herself as far into the corner as possible.

  Be'Var lifted his hands away, holding them up for her to see. "I'm not going to hurt you, child," he said. Before he could ask if she was hurt, though, she started wailing and shouting in a language he didn't understand. Her face was a mess. Pink streaks, where tears had cleaned some of the dirt away, covered her cheeks and red spots dotted her chin and forehead.

  She was hysterical, in obvious despair, and he couldn't understand her. He thought he recognized the language, though he couldn't quite place it.

  When she stopped wailing, put her hand over her mouth, and started simply crying, he spoke again. "I'm sorry, child," he said, "I don't understand you." He heaved a big sigh. "I don't suppose you speak my language, do you?"

  "It is the Tower's language," a voice said from over his shoulder. Be'Var turned to see Aiella, her familiar blue dress replaced by a man's tunic and trousers, her hair tied back in a thick tail. She knelt down next to Be'Var. "Rather, it is a dialect that is spoken in villages far from Creveya, the Tower, far from the lake itself. Many of the people who live there do not speak any language that is not their own."

  Be'Var was going to ask her if she could speak the young woman's language, but by the time he'd opened his mouth, she was already doing so, pointing at herself and Be'Var, in turn, by way of introduction. As Aiella pronounced the foreign words, the filthy girl looked up at her in seeming disbelief, wiping her cheeks with the palms of her hands. Sudden hope erupted in her eyes. Be'Var had never been so glad to see Brocke's daughter. He wondered how it was she'd come to be here, among the sick and the dying.