Knight Of The Flame

by H John Spriggs

  "None," said Brocke.

  Korwinder seemed dissatisfied with the answer. "None?" He turned his gaze to the prince. "Your Highness," he said, his tone rising slightly, "a group of a few thousand men and a few of these overgrown insects marches toward us, half of them are hired thugs, and they have no siege engines to bring to bear, and we're meant to be concerned?" He waved his hand around the table. "Three times that many soldiers stand ready to defend Kepren!"

  "Do not underestimate this foe, Duke Korwinder," Brocke said in an even tone. "The mercenaries, I grant you, are of little concern, but these two thousand man, the core of the army, have already crushed several cities the size of this one."

  "How?" said Korwinder, shaking his head. "They're just men, aren't they?"

  "No," said Brocke, his eyes seeming to lose focus on Korwinder. "My Duke, they are not."

  Nobody said a word for a moment.

  "Perhaps," the prince said, looking to Brocke, "your man should show us."

  Brocke nodded, then leaned back and whispered something to the figure behind him. The man nodded, then walked to the font. Brocke followed, and the prince motioned at group to gather around the small pool of water.

  Ambassador Brocke took out his little box again and took another sniff of whatever was in it, then he and the other man both closed their eyes and placed a single finger into the water at the font's edge.

  "This man," Prince Garrin said in a quiet voice, indicating the long-haired stranger, "is a scout for the Summitian army. He was there when Caranaar, the last major city north of the Greatstones, fell." He indicated the water, which Caymus was surprised to discover was turning white, as though a bottle of paint had been spilled into it. "The ambassador is assisting him in placing his memory of the event into the water, so that we may all see and understand."

  Caymus, pressed around the small font along with everybody else, heard Be'Var grunt next to him. Caymus looked over at the old man, but the master shook his head to dismiss the unspoken question.

  When he turned his attention back to the water, he was astonished at what he saw. A dark, moving picture seemed to emerge out of the scout's finger into the water, emanating like ripples from his skin. The image was unintelligible at first, merely a clash of black and orange. After a moment, however, the colors took actual forms, and the scene in the water depicted a city on fire, as seen from a distance of a mile or so.

  The picture seemed to shift violently, left and right, every few seconds; Caymus wondered why that might be until the image changed to that of a hand reaching down into a bag on the ground. Caymus stole a quick look at the scout, looking at the color of his sleeves and at the satchel over his shoulder. It was his hand and his bag. They were actually seeing the burning of this city as this man's own eyes had seen it.

  "The Creveyans call it 'reflecting'." Be'Var was leaning over and whispering in his ear, though not taking his own eyes off the font. "Only the people from the Summit know how to do it, and only a very few of them."

  Caymus wanted to ask more about it, but the scene was changing again as the hand in the water reached up and held a spyglass up to the scout's eye.

  In a moment, the horror of what was happening to the people in the city was magnified in parity with the image. Men in black clothing, with ashen faces and withered-looking hands, were hacking people to pieces. Some of the city's citizens were trying to run. Some were trying to fight. Some had given up and lay sobbing on the ground. Some were already dead. Swords and axes swung and fell, spraying blood indiscriminately.

  A handful of the people, men in bloodied armor, tried to stave off the attack, tried to defend their friends and neighbors, but even when their swords were able to strike home against their tormentors, the blades simply deflected or bounced off their flesh in a way that Caymus found all too familiar. The dark figures simply laughed and let their own weapons taste the flesh of the defenders as legs buckled and eyes went wide with surprise and terror.

  The scout's memory flitted the spyglass back and forth, as though trying to take in as much of the battle as possible. Caymus wondered if he might have been trying to count the attackers.

  He saw the krealites too. They were eviscerating the walls and buildings almost as easily as they were the citizenry. One of them carried two of the ash-skinned men on its back, each of whom stabbed down at people—the ones the beast hadn't managed to kill yet—with spears, spilling blood with every strike. Caymus watched as two crossbow bolts bounced uselessly off the back of the rearmost rider even as he gleefully stabbed an old man through the neck. The rider just laughed harder, then pointed the krealite below him in the direction of the crossbowmen.

  Caymus felt anger, pity, and revulsion building up in him. The krealites were bad enough, but now, somehow, these men had become tainted by the kreal as well, had inherited its property of invulnerability to sharpened weapons. He understood now why the Black Moon Army had been so successful, why every city they had sacked had fallen so easily. To the people they had attacked, they were simply invincible.

  If only they knew what he knew. If only he could help these people. He closed his eyes. This image was a memory. These people were already dead. There was nothing anybody could do for them.

  When he opened his eyes again, he started. There, amidst the death and the confusion, he caught the briefest glimpse of a familiar face.

  "I think that's enough," the prince said, gently, to the two Summitians. They each let out a deep breath and opened their eyes slowly, seeming surprised to find themselves in this room with these people. Caymus wondered what kind of effort this 'reflecting' had required of the two men.

  When the tight knot of bodies around the font loosened, the three dukes moved off to one side of the room, next to the fireplace, touching each others' arms, shaking their heads, and otherwise having some manner of private conversation.

  Prince Garrin stepped around Brocke and put an arm on the scout's shoulder. "Thank you," he said. The man's eyes were cast to the floor, but the prince kept looking at him until he brought them up and met his gaze, at which point, he quickly lowered them again.

  "Yes, your highness," he said to the floor.

  Garrin gave the man a warm smile, even though he couldn't see it, then moved back to the table and started looking over the documents that lay there. Everyone else—minus the dukes, who continued their quiet conversation, and the scout, who moved to stand in a corner of the room—followed him and clustered around that end of the table.

  "Two thousand men," the Prince said, "and they're going to raze the city unless we find a way to stop them."

  "Two thousand invincible men," the Keep-Marshal said, his eyes staring at the documents in front of him. He looked up at Be'Var. "Tell me you know something, old man," he said. "Tell me you know how to beat them or why those swords just bounce off."

  "It's an alien element," Be'Var said. "It doesn't work like anything we know in our world." He sighed. "Why it reacts the way it does, I don't know, but..." He met the marshal's gaze with obvious distress. "No, I don't know how to beat them."

  "Blood and bones!" the marshal said, pounding his fist on the table. "I've studied tactics and logistics my entire life! I've beaten back forces three times my size just because I knew what ground to fight from. I've defended the city against overwhelming forces and pressed successful sieges on impenetrable fortresses." He placed both hands on the table and hung his head. "But what I don't know is how to beat back an army when you can't even get a sword in 'em!"

  "They're not invincible," Caymus heard himself say. "Getting past the kreal is hard, but it's possible."

  The marshal immediately lifted his head; the hot gaze he leveled at Caymus made him wish he'd kept his mouth shut. "What do you mean?" he said.

  Caymus cleared his throat to buy himself a couple of moments to compose himself. He was talking to the Keep-Marshal after all, and he wasn't sure that assuming he knew something that the protector of the Kepren fortress didn't was entirely w
ise.

  "The kreal," he said. He raised his hands in front of him, holding one out flat and extending two fingers of the other. "If you try to smash your way through it," he stabbed the one hand with the fingers of the other, "you can't get in. But if you make contact," he placed the fingers on the hand this time, "then push," he looked up and met the Keep-Marshal's gaze as he passed the fingers of one hand between those of the other, "it is possible to get a blade through."

  The marshal stared at Caymus a long while, then turned to Be'Var. "Tell me, old man, does the kid know what he's talking about?"

  Be'Var considered a moment before speaking, giving Caymus a considering look. "While Sleeping Giant here was out," he finally said, still looking at his pupil, "while his body was lying in that room in Flamehearth, the Lords of the Conflagration took his consciousness away to teach him how to fight the krealites. They showed him things I can't begin to imagine." He finally looked back at the marshal. "It's possible—likely, even—that Caymus knows more about fighting kreal than anybody else in the world, Tanner."

  Caymus was a bit stunned to hear the words from Be'Var's mouth, though more surprising to him was the realization that, besides a single mitre warrior in Otvia, he probably was the only person in the world who knew how to fight the krealites.

  When Keep-Marshal Tanner looked at him again, Caymus was nearly crushed by the glimmer of hope in his eyes. He knew what the next question would be, and he knew that it would be impossible.

  "Can you teach my men?"

  Caymus sighed. "Keep-Marshal, I spent three months away from this world, but it felt like a lifetime." He paused to let the thought sink in. "It took me a lifetime to learn what I know," he said, "and I had the benefit of krealites to practice on."

  The marshal nodded understanding as the hope burned out. "And we have maybe a week." He shook his head. "With all the other preparations we have yet to make..." He gave Caymus a smile and a tilt of his head. "You're right. There just isn't time." He paused. "Still," he said, "stick around once we're done here? I'd like to hear a bit more about this."

  Caymus nodded and reflected the smile. Tanner seemed a good, intelligent, responsible man. His face seemed carved from sunbaked leather, but his eyes were fierce, penetrating orbs of the whitest blue. He reminded Caymus of an old friend of his father's whom he'd met dozens of times growing up. For the life of him, Caymus couldn't remember the man's name in that moment.

  "That's it!" All in the room turned to look at the prince, who was stabbing his finger at a map on the table.

  "Sir?" said Tanner, when Garrin raised his head with a look of supreme triumph.

  "Falmoor's Pass," exclaimed the prince, stabbing at the map again. "We can get them at the canyon!"

  Curiosity grabbed the room, and everyone, the dukes included, gathered around the map that the prince was indicating. Brocke even motioned for the Creveyan scout to come near again, presumably in case the prince had any questions.

  Caymus looked down. The map was largely topographical, and portrayed a section of the Greatstone Mountains. The section was one that contained Falmoor's Pass, the path through the mountains that, presumably, the Black Moon Army was taking at that very moment.

  The prince, however, was indicating a spot at the very bottom of that pass, a point about a mile south of where the mountains could be said to actually end, but which presented a canyon—more of a large gully, actually—that one had to get through in order to reach the plains of Tebria.

  "You're saying we attack them there, Sire?" said Korwinder. "What good would that do?"

  "No," said Garrin, shaking his head. "We don't need to fight them. We take a small group of men and a few casks of graysilt, we wait for them to show up, then we bury them in a landslide."

  The room went silent a few moments while everyone considered the idea. Caymus wasn't an expert at reading these sorts of maps, the ones which showed the relative elevations of things, but it didn't seem to him that the sides of this gully were steep enough to cause an actual wall of earth to fall atop the invading army.

  Others around the room seemed skeptical also. "Do you really think that will work?" asked Tanner. "I've been through that place a number of times, and I don't know that it's big enough to hold the whole lot of 'em."

  "Doesn't have to be the whole lot," Garrin said, still looking at the map. "Just has to be enough to thin their ranks a bit." The young prince's eye twitched a couple of times. "Maybe a lot."

  "But, Sire," said Korwinder, his mustache twitching, "if blades and arrows can't defeat these men, why would stones and dirt harm them?"

  Before the Prince could respond, Tanner looked up. "Caymus?" he said, "Would it hurt them?"

  Caymus considered the thought, not noticing all the eyes on him. He thought about the way that kreal had felt under his blade, against his hilt, under the heel of his boot, and wondered if a landslide could actually hurt it. "I don't think it would really hurt them," he said, "but, I suppose, you could manage to bury them under it?"

  "They breathe," said Be'Var.

  "Right, of course," Caymus nodded, still looking at the map. He thought back to the Ritual Room in Otvia. "Even if the landslide don't cause them any direct harm, it just might suffocate them."

  Tanner considered the thought. "I suppose, if nothing else, it could buy us some more time," he said, turning to the Prince.

  "Even if it doesn't kill the Black Moon men, themselves," the Prince said, looking up at the Keep-Marshal, "we could at least take out the mercenaries."

  Heads around the table nodded, though none of those heads belonged to the three dukes. "Your Highness," said Korwinder, plaintively, "it's just such a stretch, such a risky undertaking." He squinted his eyes. "I don't know that I would want to commit our forces to such a thing."

  Prince Garrin looked a dagger at the duke, but held his tongue. "You don't have to," he said, eventually. "I'll go."

  Everyone seemed, to Caymus, to speak at once: Brocke, Tanner, and Be'Var expressing concern, the dukes expressing outrage. Garrin held up a hand to silence them.

  "I'll take my personal guard with me," he said. "That way, I won't be pulling any resources from the regular army." He looked around the table. "Even if it doesn't hurt the bastards too much," he continued, "at least I won't be hurting the city's defense."

  "My prince!" Duke Korwinder's face was red with agitation, the color standing out behind his white whiskers. "You simply cannot go gallivanting off into the mountains on a whim!" he shouted. "You must be here! You must aid in the city's defense! You are the Protector-Champion of Kepren and you will be needed!"

  "My dear Duke," said Garrin, controlling his voice, "you have argued with me at every turn about the need to protect this city. When I made it clear that we needed more men, you fought me. When we needed more supplies for the men we do have, you fought me. This time, I will brook no argument."

  "You cannot go!" Korwinder yelled. "You are needed here!"

  Caymus was physically flinching back from the confrontation, the air was so thick with tension and anger. Garrin seemed about to launch into a tirade when a tiny voice broke through the momentary pause. "Where are you going, Son?"

  Caymus, and everyone else around the table, turned to the spot from which the voice had come. Standing behind the font at the end of the room was a frail-looking old man in a stained, white nightshirt. The man was hunched over, as though suffering from some form of rheumatism. His white, wispy hair and beard were long and unkempt. His skin was white. His legs shook from the effort of standing.

  Judging by the smell in the room, Caymus thought the stains on the nightshirt were likely the result of the man's own incontinence.

  All in the room were silent. The anger in Prince Garrin's face evaporated instantly, turning instead to concern and a kind of incredible sadness, as he slowly stepped toward the old man. "Nowhere, Father," he said, gently. "I'm staying right here." He took the man by his brittle-looking arms and slowly walked him back out of the door.<
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  The man had appeared so suddenly, so startlingly, that it was several moments before Caymus put the pieces together. The frail-looking man had been Lysandus, King of Kepren! The thought was sobering. Caymus had heard rumors that the king was ill, that Garrin was largely ruling Kepren on his behalf, but he couldn't have imagined that such a powerful man could look so ragged, so tired, so old.

  The space remained silent for some time. Nobody seemed willing to speak or, indeed, to even look at the other faces in the room. Nobody had been prepared to see the king that way. Caymus marveled at the strength Garrin must have had to bear what was happening to his father, much less his city.

  Eventually, after several minutes of quiet, the door opened again and a stoic, quiet Garrin returned. Caymus was surprised at how different he seemed now. His eyes were sad, yet resolute. His mouth was set in a firm line, betraying nothing other than the will to control his emotions. Merely a few minutes ago, Garrin had been the mighty, young prince, filled with claims to greatness and the promise of glory; now Caymus saw a king, a leader of a nation with the weight of an entire city upon him.

  The Prince's eyes stared at nothing. They weren't vacant, but rather they seemed filled with thoughts and emotions that he dared not speak of or act upon. His breathing was slow, deliberate, measured, as though he was using his own breath to steady himself, to try to maintain a grip over deep wells of feeling. Caymus could see why people liked having Prince Garrin as the Champion-Protector of Kepren. Despite the man's occasionally lax-seeming and playful attitude, this was a man who could maintain control in even the most desperate situations.

  "I'm faced with the real possibility of losing my kingdom, of getting the people under my care murdered by otherworldly forces," he finally said. With that, the prince finally focused his eyes on the others in the room, moving his gaze from face to face, until he finally settled it on Korwinder. "I'm not going to lose," he said, with not a hint of agitation, "without having first done everything I possibly could to save it."