Away from the dock, the rocky shore gave way to hard packed ground, topped with stubby grasses and weeds. An abundance of short hills wrapped in white haze impeded my view of the landscape. We moved into them in a procession. I marveled at the organization of the soldiers. Whether they were working, hauling equipment, loading rusty old trucks or wagons, or marching to the Margrave, they remained in orderly formations.
The shore beside the dock, by contrast, had been a swarm of organized chaos, centralized on the two sinking ships. Only a few minutes away, the dynamic had changed. Here, the army moved with a fluid synchronicity, unhurried by the threat of disaster. I guessed that there were around two hundred armed men and women moving with us.
I swayed with the motion of Florian's steady gate. We had packed our saddlebags with essentials and little else. Dylan rode a few paces ahead of me, astride a bay mare. He'd taken special care in selecting his horse from among the other three. She was quick to respond and quicker to bite. He seemed to think that was a good thing, given our circumstance.
Dylan reined back so that we were side by side. “I was thinking, there’s a chance this scenario won’t go the way we’d like it to. You know what would have been a useful defense? My Ability,” he growled the last word, shaking his empty upturned palms.
“I'm pretty sure this isn't the time to have that conversation again,” I said, hoping he'd drop it. The soldiers weren’t close enough to hear, but it wasn't worth the risk. I'd hidden the special pistol and ammunition deep within my bag. They were a boon I couldn't afford to lose.
“You said it would only be one day,” he reminded me.
“Sorry,” I said, not feeling entirely sincere. “I've never used it before.”
“Divine,” he frowned.
The Margrave was just ahead of us now, sitting astride her warhorse. She was an unmistakable presence at the crest of the hill, all dark and sharp with the white fog behind her. A team of five Dragoons loosely encircled her, each of them upon the back of a black horse capable of melting into shadows. Even her mount was taller and more imposing than those in her company. She saw us, and raised a single hand. I wished that had meant we could turn around and wait at the Flying Fish.
“Common Lord Axton, Historian Kestrel,” she greeted upon our arrival. “You were prompt. I appreciate that.”
I didn't know a proper response, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Time spent outside of your presence is wasted, lady,” Dylan said smoothly. He'd demanded respect more often than he gave it, so the phrase struck me as unnatural.
“Thank you,” she said, graciously accepting his complement. “You both look well. Is there anything that you require before we depart?”
Dumbstruck, I didn’t know how to respond, and again, Dylan swooped in to pick up my slack. “We're ready to leave, thank you.”
She nodded once and wheeled her horse about. The soldiers stood at attention when she faced them. A single man was ahead of the rest. He had craggy skin, a broken nose, and battered armor that was polished to a shine. She addressed him, “Gather your men and make a push to take the high ground at Brownreed. When your position is secure, send a man to Rocktree Camp. I'll be there. You know the rest.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
“Bring me good news, Lieutenant,” she warned.
* * *
Our journey was swift and silent. We crossed a yellow field, passing a thick line of men crouched in the grasses like predatory cats. They didn't attack us, and we didn't give them away, so I assumed they belonged to Prince Raserion. For a while I could see the water of the cape again, hugged by tall reeds, cattails and knee-high palms, but we moved off into a forest of dead trees that blocked my view.
“Rocktree Camp,” the Margrave announced.
Tall trees with craggy trunks and bare branches stood sentry around a circle of small wooden structures and clusters of weathered canvas tents. Beyond the bald copse, there were deep gashes in the ground, like open tunnels. A few soldiers were there too, digging. I had no idea why. There was no water to irrigate and this certainly wasn’t farm land. Why else would someone do such a thing?
The others were cleaning their weapons, sorting supplies and eating beside cold fire pits. One of them came to us to retrieve our flesh-and blood horses. He ignored the black warhorses belonging to the Dragoons and the Margrave, and a moment later, the spectral animals flashed into the shadows. They'd been called mimics, cousins to shadow chasers. I wondered where they went when they disappeared into the darkness. Did they simply cease to exist until they were summoned again?
Before parting with Florian, I made certain that I took the satchel with my gun, leather bound book and pen from the saddlebags.
Always carry the book.
“Historian Kestrel, you'll come with me,” Hest said stalking toward one of the larger tents.
Hesitantly, I followed with Dylan trailing along at my side.
“Not you, young Lord,” she said.
He stopped in his tracks and stared after me. I pulled at the night goggles slung around my neck. Had the strap gotten tighter, or was I a nervous wreck?
We entered the tent, and I found myself in a plain room with the barest furniture. A desk was stacked with folded papers and several maps. There were four chairs and a barrel full of axes. Seriously? Who kept a barrel full of axes?
“Your accent isn't like anything I've heard. Where is it you come from?” Margrave Hest asked me the moment we were alone. I continued to find it unnerving that I couldn't see her eyes. She gave me the distinct impression that she was measuring me.
“Mount Yumin,” I recited. Nervous that my lie wasn't convincing, I embellished. “The pace there was too slow for me. I was always bored out of my mind. I'm glad I left.”
Please let that be accurate.
She inclined her head. “Indeed? The place is terribly out of the way. I've never had the cause to go. Yumin exports pig, does it not? You must have come from a hog farm.”
“Yup.” Why not?
“I grew up on Alder Island. Wretched place. My family raised fowl. The smell was unbearable.”
“Believe me, I can relate to that,” I said, smiling nervously. How did I get stuck here without Dylan? If I made the slightest mistake, I'd be dead.
Casually, she sat down in a chair beside the table, leaning her smooth chin against her rent metal knuckles. She looked smaller that way, less imposing. Almost normal. Almost. “I knew the whole place as well as my reflection.”
Now this, I really could relate to. Her description of Alder Island was starting to sound like Rivermarch. “Every bend in the road,” I agreed.
“It was quaint, you know? Simple.”
Right again.
“Yeah, and that's always a recipe for mischief,” I said knowingly.
“I swear to you, as a girl, I got into so much trouble,” she smiled at me. “I was keen for adventure, thirsty for life. I needed to see the world.”
I actually felt myself relaxing. My lie about Mount Yumin became more believable the more I rooted my experiences in truth. Letting go, I opened up to her and expressed some of my troubles from the last year.
“It was the same for me. I loved home, I still do, but I couldn't help myself. An opportunity presented itself, I came here, and it's changed me. I tried to go back and make things the way they were, but it didn’t work. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever be the same girl that I was.”
“You won't. Every moment alters us, adds to us. Some say that people don't change,” she said, stretching and relaxing into her chair. “I don't believe that. People are always changing. Every new experience, every new day, gives you the chance to be better than you were the day before. Stronger, more powerful. We might not be the same simple farm girls that we once were, we might not ever feel contentment in the simplicity of that life, but we can always remember.”
I was taken aback by her wisdom and promised myself I’d remember what she said.
“You
're not what I expected,” I said to her.
“Who did you think that I was?”
“I guess I thought you'd be meaner.”
She laughed. It was scratchy and musical. “And I thought you'd be colder. You know, Historian Kestrel, you remind me very much of someone.”
She thought I'd be cold? It almost made me laugh. “Who?”
“Me,” she said with a sidelong glance. I couldn't see her eyes, but I very nearly expected to see warmth there, some nostalgic fondness maybe.
I didn't know what to make of it. I certainly noticed the similarities in our origins. It was startling, really, but we had to be vastly different. I refused to believe anything else.
“Isn't it wrong for you to talk to people like this?”
Hest tilted her head, running her human fingers over the talons of her other hand, one by one. “Miss Kestrel, I'm not some freshly trained Dragoon, pining for her family,” she said, reaching up to remove the helmet shield from her eyes. I had assumed that the horns on the back of her head were decorative pieces of her helmet. I was wrong. They were a part of her too. Her clear, sharp eyes were smothered and entwined in serpentine metallic growths. The skin of her lower cheeks was taut, holding on to her unnatural cheekbones in strips. Her mouth and jaw looked starkly out of place, surrounded so completely by hideous abnormalities.
“We're no more friends than I am Prince Raserion,” she continued. “If a cleaver fell from the sky and split you in two, I'd sooner laugh than cry. But if it's all the same, I don't have to be your friend to like you. I simply hope our discourse has lent you some meat for that book of yours. Seems worthy to know a little more about the heavy hand that leveled Breakwater, wouldn't you agree?”
And just like that, the comfort I'd begun to feel was gone. I was sharing the tent with a wolf. I nodded in response. My forced smile was as thin as wax paper, but I hoped it was less transparent.
Two men appeared under the flap of the tent. They were dragging a third who appeared to be unconscious.
“Go get some air, Historian Kestrel,” was all she said and all she needed to say. I fled the tent wondering what would happen to their prisoner and glad that I didn't have to know.
C hapter 19: A Sudden Attack
I was given a meal of cold rations, and finding a fallen log skirted by palm plants, I sat and ate the dry bread and salt meat. A few soldiers greeted me courteously as they passed, and I noted how different they were from Dragoons. These men and women weren’t afraid to smile occasionally, or speak to one another. Even so, I wouldn’t have called them casual. None of them lounged or lingered.
I’d just set out to find Dylan, when a single, smooth note ripped through the air so high pitched that it bore into my brain and sent me reeling with dizziness. I clapped my hands over my ears, dazed. Everyone around me was doing the same. The piercing sound faded to silence, but my ears were ringing and my head throbbed. The gunfire came next. Shots tore into the camp, driving through armor and flesh with sickly snaps and cracks.
I dropped to my knees, covering my head with my arms. Every part of me was off balance. I tried to stand, and crashed sideways to the ground. My equilibrium had been shattered.
When I was a child, I'd find an anthill and blow on it, watching the little insects run frantically in all directions. I'd thought it was the only time ants looked confused. That was what Rocktree Camp looked like now. The entire army was scrambling to defend themselves and lacked the focus to accomplish anything.
Something boomed and a soldier cried out, “Cover!”
How could I find cover when I could barely move? I squeezed my eyes shut and reopened them, looking for a better place to hide. There wasn't time. Something plunged into the center of the camp, exploding and sending a shower of dirt twenty feet high. I saw men thrown from the blast like they were little more than broken dolls.
My breath caught in my throat, unsure whether I should see if they were okay or run. I froze.
“Come on! Get up!” someone said, pressing a hand on my back. I blinked up. It was a young man with green eyes and a slight gap between his teeth. “We need to get to the trench, it's too open here!”
Still dizzy, I clambered up to my feet. He put an arm around my waist and helped me run toward the deep crevice of carved ground. It was in the direction of the enemy, and I wondered why we weren't running away.
“I'm not a soldier,” I told him.
“I know,” he smiled. “You're a Historian, and you're going to write about this battle, and how we won. You need to live, and you need to see everything for yourself.”
The trench was just ahead of us now. Other army men and women crawled, ducked and ran, the same way we did, heading for cover. I gasped when a volley of glassy spears arced and showered the ground around us, impaling their victims.
“Gravity!” I cried. “They have Abilities!”
“Yes,” my savior agreed.
“And you don't?”
“We’re infantry, only Dragoons have Abilities. You know that.”
“We don't have a chance!”
“Oh yes we do,” he grinned with confidence. “You'll see!”
I wondered where he got his enthusiasm. People were dying all around us.
Another explosion sent tremors through the ground just behind us and we stumbled. A shower of rocks and dirt came down on my head.
We scuffled toward the lip of the trench. “When you write that book, skip the part about us tripping, but make sure you mention how handsome I am.”
I began to smile with hysteria, induced by the contrast between his easy manner and the violence around us. The howling note flashed over us again, screaming its perfect key into our ears. Invisible needles lanced my brain and I cried out. Electricity bubbled in my hand, uselessly. I couldn't open my eyes. We crashed to the ground together, inches away from the trench. The noise faded, and I gratefully accepted the ringing in my ears as an improvement. Bullets popped into the ground next to me. I jumped at the nearby impact. My head was spinning.
Some things can never be forgotten, no matter how many times you close your eyes or wish, no matter how many years go by. The young infantry soldier that helped me was dead. There was a deep round bullet hole in his chest. Redness surrounded it, fading to deep crimson and a black so dark it could swallow me whole. I don't remember his face, just that he had green eyes and a gap between his front teeth. I don't remember his expression as he lay there next to me, I just remember the wound that had pierced his armor, and that I had never learned his name.
It happened so quickly.
Someone pulled me into the trench. I sagged against one of the dirt walls.
“Katelyn,” Dylan called to me, shaking my shoulders. He looked terrible. His jacket was scuffed with stains and his hair was disheveled. “Are... are you okay?”
I could see that he was having a difficult time standing too. “He's dead,” I babbled. “He's dead. They shot him.”
“Who? Who's dead?”
“I don't know,” I said miserably. Tears ghosted down my cheeks and vanished. “Why do you live like this? Why would anyone live like this?”
“She's in shock,” someone nearby said.
“That means you have to slap me,” I told them numbly.
“I'm not going to slap you,” Dylan said, putting his arm around me the way the soldier had. “Just try t-- get down!”
The trench was packed with people. When everyone crouched and covered their heads, I was jostled to my knees again. The next volley of ice was upon us, along with a few spears of metal. Another explosion pounded the ground nearby and snapped me out of my daze.
“Dylan,” I said, my wits returning fast. “We need to get out of here.”
“Finally,” he said, appearing uninjured. “We agree.”
Prince Raserion's army, though locked down in the trenches and behind cover, were loading their flintlock rifles and returning fire. I carefully peeked out of the trench at the field where our attack was co
ming from. The enemy was marching toward us. From my position, I couldn't tell how many there were. Lots. More than there were of us by far. Even at a distance I could see that the color of their armor and uniforms was bronze and black.
It really did seem hopeless. In a few short minutes, they'd be upon us. Would they line us up and shoot us? Would they listen to me if I told them I didn't belong, or would I just look like a coward begging for mercy? Would they take us away?
There, squeezed in the narrow space against so many other people, it wasn't just my crippled equilibrium that made me dizzy. Claustrophobia gripped me and urged me to climb out and make a mindless run for it. I wasn't that stupid. Steady breaths helped me keep focused.
“I know where the horses are. We have to get back to the camp,” Dylan said.
“It's not safe. We can't get out,” I told him. There was another option, one that I didn't like. “I could fight.”
“No!” he barked. “If you do that, Raserion will take you.”
I cursed inwardly.
“Can you find a safe path?” he asked.
I concentrated, hoping that the Pull would guide me. It didn't. I didn't want to move at all. It was the first time that had ever happened to me. Things were getting worse. “No,” I heard myself say.
The deadly sound returned, driving into my skull.
Not again!
It broke off to silence within a split second. No shots were fired. No explosions.
“Is it a trick?” I heard a soldier ask.
Confused, a great many of us cautiously looked out at the field. A black cloud was sweeping out from the hills beyond the grassland. It descended, moving straight for the enemy troop.
“Dragoons,” soldiers began to murmur. “It's the Dragoons!”
I snapped my goggles over my eyes, rolled a finger over the zoom dial and had another look. They were right! Droves of black warhorses charged from the cover of the forested hills, flanking the enemy. Our relief was palpable. Cheering and cries of joy moved through the trench, reigniting the bravery of the infantry soldiers. The majority of the enemy had turned to face their new threat, but the section of the troop closest to us pressed on in our direction.
Dragoon (War of the Princes Book 2) Page 11