Soldier at the Door (Book 2 Forest at the Edge series)

by Trish Mercer

It wasn’t until well after midday meal that Perrin finally came home and sat dully at the table. He didn’t even notice the stew Mahrree placed before him, even though he hadn’t eaten since the day before.

  Mahrree sat down across from him and reached out to touch his hand.

  He pulled it away.

  “I did get there in time, Mahrree,” he said dully, staring at some distant point on the wall. “I had a very clear thought. And I ran. One clean thrust and it was done. Exactly how we train for it. Perfect.”

  He stared at the wall as if he could bore a hole in it if given enough time.

  “It was too quick. I see that now,” he decided. “I should’ve made him fight. I should’ve made him identify himself. I should’ve just started cutting off limbs to get him to talk—”

  “PERRIN!” Mahrree snapped.

  He stopped and focused on her horrified eyes. The hard lines on his face began to soften.

  “I did the right thing, I know. The doctor said he thought it was his heart. He was eighty-four, after all. Not up to taking surprises. I couldn’t have got there any sooner. That’s not the way to die,” he finished in a whisper.

  “Yes, yes it is, Perrin!” Mahrree told him. “His heart failing while being attacked by a stranger—that’s not a way to die. But peacefully in the arms of his wife? He did say he was happy, Perrin. You made him happy, remember? It was simply his time to go. The Creator said we each have a time to live here, and then we return. And you made that return peaceful, not terrifying.”

  He sighed. “Sometimes I think I understand the Creator, but then there are times like . . .” He paused. “I almost felt it this morning when Zenos . . . I was praying for Shem and the other soldiers, but I should have been . . . I didn’t even think that Hogal—” He went back to boring a hole in the rock with his eyes.

  “Just wait,” she said earnestly. “You’ll feel something different soon. Don’t doubt what you were prompted to do. No matter what was happening today, he most likely would’ve died. It was the manner of Hogal’s passing that you assured. Just feel him, and you’ll know he’s well on the other side.”

  Mahrree could see in the darkness of his eyes that he didn’t believe her. Or want to believe her. But she couldn’t understand why. Already that morning she felt Hogal’s distinct presence nearby, along with her father’s. Sometimes Mahrree wondered if Paradise wasn’t actually all around them. Today, the air was thick with it.

  “I’ve felt him,” she told Perrin gently. “He’s not sad or angry—he’s joyful! He’s still with us. Oh, I wished I could have seen the reunion between him and my father.” Mahrree smiled, recalling the sense of cosmic chuckling that accompanied their presence. “I’m sure they have plenty to catch up on, probably about how they got the two of us together.”

  Perrin searched her face, but his own expression was as hard as a boulder.

  “Perrin, death isn’t the end,” Mahrree tried again. “It’s only a change. And there’s no tragedy in death, only tragedy in failing the Test.” Desperate to see anything else on his face besides his bitterness, she pleaded, “You know that, now believe it! Hogal Densal didn’t fail, Perrin. And you didn’t fail Hogal.”

  Perrin’s eyes brimmed with a depth of sorrow she’d never seen before. “I need to sleep,” was all he said. He pushed the plate away, stood up, and went upstairs dragging the full weight of Edge with him.

  ---

  As Mahrree spoke to Mr. Metz, Hogal’s assistant, a few hours later in the gathering room, she couldn’t stop shaking her head. “Why does something so awful sound so right?”

  Mr. Metz smiled gently. “I know exactly how you feel. But considering they were married for sixty-three years, I would’ve been disappointed in old Hogal if he didn’t come get her. There she sat on the sofa, her friends on either side to help her plan the burial. They said they had a distinct feeling that Hogal came into the room. Tabbit looked up at nothing, smiled, closed her eyes, and was simply gone.”

  Mahrree kept shaking her head, trying to keep her sniffling under control. “It was only on rare occasions that they were ever apart in life. Why should death be any different? But how can I feel such sorrow and such joy at the same time?”

  Mr. Metz gave her a quick hug. “Personally, I’m a bit jealous of them. Think of everything they’re experiencing now, without us! Oh, the questions Hogal could answer for me now,” he grinned.

  But then his grin faded.

  “What about the Major?”

  “He’s trying to get some sleep right now,” Mahrree wiped her tears. “I’ll break it to him, somehow, when he wakes.”

  “Would you like me to stay and help?”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I really don’t know what his state of mind will be when he comes down those stairs. I don’t know if I want to subject you to that.”

  Mr. Metz squeezed her shoulder. “If you change your mind, send one of those soldiers guarding your house to come get me. I’ll be at the Densals the rest of the evening helping with the arrangements.”

  By the time Perrin slowly came down the stairs later that evening, Mahrree knew both Hogal and Tabbit were fine and exactly where they needed to be. Each time she sobbed that afternoon, she found herself laughing a moment later. Mahrree didn’t weep for the Densals; they were far too happy where they were. She could feel their joy so immensely it was almost unfair.

  She had cried for herself, her husband, and her children whose memories of the Densals would be only hazy fragments.

  But she didn’t know how to break the news to Perrin. He didn’t look at her or the children while he ate his first food in over twenty-four hours. He eventually gave Peto a little smile when he climbed on his lap. Peto grabbed his father’s face and gave him a slobbery kiss on the lips. That drew a soft chuckle from Perrin as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  Mahrree practiced in her head a variety of ways to tell him about Tabbit. But his spirits seemed so weak she couldn’t imagine crushing him already. She watched him play halfheartedly with his son for another moment. As Peto scrambled to get back down she knew it was time to deliver the blow, and prayed the right words would come out.

  “Perrin, Mr. Metz came by earlier when you were sleeping—”

  “I know,” he said flatly. “Tabbit’s gone too. I overheard.” Perrin forced a small smile. “Actually, I feel much better about that. I couldn’t get out of my head the thought of Auntie Tabbit living alone. Especially after what happened. But how could I be there all the time to protect her?”

  He brushed a crumb off his plate onto the table and watched it.

  Mahrree just watched him.

  “And I couldn’t imagine moving her to my mother’s in Idumea. The trip is so long for such an old woman. She seemed frailer this past year, too. Then I thought, maybe she could come live with us.” He scoffed at the idea. “But I worried that this house would be too noisy for her. We could have used the last piece of garden for her addition.”

  She nodded and sniffled.

  He nudged the crumb to the center of the table. “Then I figured I could post guards at her doors, pay for them ourselves, but she’d feel like she had to feed them all the time.” He chuckled softly. “Then I pictured the soldiers getting too fat and not strong enough to fight off anyone else, or too preoccupied looking at her paintings of trees. She always liked trees.”

  He studied the crumb, flicked it with his finger, and then crushed it into powder with his thumb. “Every option I thought of didn’t sit well. I didn’t know what to do for her. Now I know why. The Creator already had it all figured out. I was trying to fix everything, and I don’t think I ever asked for His guidance. He already worked out her plan.”

  He finally looked up at his wife. “And I couldn’t have imagined a better solution for them. A perfect end.”

  ---

  That night Barker looked watched the alley and waited. It was time, but there was no man. The dog whimpered quietly, and even got up and
went to the fence, looking up and down. He sniffed the air, the fence, the ground, but there was no bacon anywhere. There wasn’t any last night or the night before, either. Probably none earlier than that too, but his memory got fuzzy after that.

  Barker sat down and whined at the alley.

  Nothing came.

  After about an hour Barker turned around and walked disappointedly back to his doghouse, plopped down, and fell asleep.

  ---

  The next morning Perrin gripped the handle of a shovel, waiting for Mr. Metz to finish the service. He felt split in two. One half of him was disturbingly fine with what had happened. Almost in spite of himself, he felt comfort, late last night.

  He’d left bed again to check for the third time on his sleeping children, making sure once more that the bars in their windows were secure. Then he went to the front door to latch the lock again, and that’s when they arrived.

  It was unmistakable, as if the air on either side of him thickened with warmth and joy. Hogal was on his right, Tabbit on his left. In life they were small and stooped, but it seemed in Paradise they both stood a bit taller.

  Tears filled Perrin’s eyes, and his hand dropped helplessly from the lock. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered to them. “I failed you—”

  The response was also unmistakable.

  Oh, you did not, my boy! And you know that. We’re happy, my boy. Perfect and together and happy.

  Please, Perrin, don’t worry about us. We couldn’t be prouder of you!

  The last response was from Tabbit. For some reason at that moment he also smelled berry pie, and he almost smiled.

  He let the tears dribble down his cheeks. “How do I go on without you?”

  Now, my boy—who says you’ll be without us?

  Perrin stood there with his chin trembling and shoulders shaking, feeling the two thicknesses envelop him in warmth. He didn’t cry for them, but for himself. The Densals were exactly where they needed to be.

  After a sweet and gentle minute, they faded away.

  Reluctantly Perrin trudged back to bed, where his wife held him tight and stroked his hair and didn’t say a word as he quietly wept.

  But then there was the other half of him . . .

  The other half that awoke early this morning.

  The other half that didn’t deserve to be comforted, that was raw rage. Perrin once saw a caged bear and now he knew exactly how infuriated it was. He wanted to roar at the trees, claw them all down, then tear into the flesh of whatever he found alive—

  But he was caged. And instead of claws, all he had was a skimpy shovel and an open grave.

  He wasn’t listening to the supposedly consoling words Mr. Metz offered to the hundreds of villagers surrounding them. Perrin was lost in his own head. At times like this he wondered if the reason his build was so large was because he was actually two men shoved into one body. So often he felt divided, as if his heart and head couldn’t agree.

  One part of him tried to follow The Writings and was occasionally jealous of Hogal’s position. His life was all about knowing the Creator and helping others to find Him. He’d done that for Perrin, too, and Perrin wondered if the only way he could keep on that path was to devote his entire life to studying it as much as Hogal had.

  But he couldn’t, because of his other half—the half that was a soldier, almost since the day he was born. This was the part that defended people and governments from those who would destroy, who knew the ideas of the world, clearly and intimately, and could argue anything around The Writings, just as he did when he first arrived in Edge.

  And that’s what most concerned him. He couldn’t reconcile the two halves. Usually they resided in different sections of his heart and head, and didn’t come in conflict.

  But then there were days like this where both sides glared at each other and fought like starving dogs, and he couldn’t kill either of them. No matter how fiercely they contended, both sides still remained, slinking back to their corners and eyeing each other, waiting for the next fight.

  The hardest part of it, though, was that it was the soldier he wanted to destroy, but soldiering was his best skill. While he enjoyed constructing the additions to the house for his children, and could even see himself becoming a builder, that wasn’t what he was.

  To his core, he was a soldier—a destroyer. He’d killed over a dozen men already, and he wasn’t yet thirty-two. Even as a boy when his father gave him his first long knife, the handle felt so comfortable in his palm. Holding a sword was a natural extension. Slicing, stabbing, thrusting—it was all second nature. He practiced only because he loved the feel of the power of the blade, not because he feared becoming rusty. Fighting was easier than breathing.

  And so while last night he felt the warmth and comfort of his great aunt and uncle in his heart, this morning his head had taken over, harder, rougher, and meaner. If they truly knew him, they wouldn’t have come last night. To his core he wasn’t a builder of souls or houses, but a defender—

  No, not even a defender today.

  A destroyer.

  Two more men had died two nights ago, by his hand. No one else was that deadly, and it was draining his soul.

  He had to shift from destroyer to defender, to be better, to prevent. He had to protect everyone—not only his family, but his neighbors, their children, his soldiers, and his favorite corporal who still lay weak and unable to move properly.

  Mr. Metz was now on his knees, asking the Creator to keep safe the grave until the Last Day.

  But Perrin didn’t hear the words. He gripped the shovel tighter and out of the corner of his eye noticed his children, held by his wife and mother-in-law, watching him. They’d been remarkably quiet this early morning, as if they felt the gravity of the day. Jaytsy leaned for him, but Perrin didn’t respond to her.

  Destroyers don’t hold children. Not until they become defenders again. The rage was hot and angry in his head, and now also in his heart. For once they worked together, and it was savage and wrong. He was only an animal now, and he had to work the animal out.

  Mr. Metz finished the prayer, struggled to his feet, and nodded to the workers with shovels, but none of them dared move.

  Perrin knew why. He had a way of taking up too much space, of making others feel there wasn’t enough room next to him even if they were twenty paces away.

  He marched over to the pile of dirt and plunged the shovel’s blade into it with a violent thunk.

  He was supposed to keep them safe, he thought bitterly as he twisted his body to drop the shovel full of earth on the large wooden box. It hit with a dull splud.

  That was part of the reason why he came to Edge—to watch over them. Thunk.

  They were so old, so frail. This was personal. Splud.

  It was his responsibility. His fault. Thunk.

  Perrin shut out everything else but the dirt, the shovel, and the wide box in the hole five feet below him. Early this morning the burial grounds diggers started two holes. He insisted on one. They would go together. They were always together.

  And this was the only way he could keep them safe. Splud.

  It was an overly wide coffin designed for an overly large body. Together their small remains would huddle until the Last Day. Thunk.

  It didn’t matter what Mahrree thought. He could feel her staring at his back. He was taking away the burial diggers’ jobs, she whispered to him earlier as he had grabbed a shovel. Splud.

  The crowd of hundreds was also stunned silent to see the major step up to the hole. Thunk.

  Family and friends were supposed to watch and pray. Not shovel dirt. Splud.

  It didn’t matter to Perrin what they thought. What Mahrree thought. He knew the truth. This was personal. Thunk.

  He did fail them. Hogal and Tabbit Densal, dead. Because he failed to secure Edge. Splud.

  He began to sweat in his woolen jacket. He didn’t care. Someone came after his family. Thunk.

  How did they find
them? Was this the only way to secure them, under piles of dirt and rock? At least they were safe until the Last Day. Splud.

  Only he could do this. Others held shovels, but they had no idea how to use them properly. Thunk.

  No one else in Edge could secure the village. It was all on his shoulders. All his responsibility. Every last one of them. Splud.

  Only him. Only him. Only he could do this. No more destruction. Thunk.

  He wouldn’t lose any more. He alone had to save Edge. Only him. Only him. Splud.

  ---

  Mahrree had always suspected her husband was actually two men shoved into the same body, but as she watched him furiously shovel earth over the large coffin, she changed her evaluation.

  She was actually married to a restless bear, disguised as a man.

  And he wasn’t going to be easy to live with.

  ---

  The High General of Idumea had already planned to go to Edge after receiving the urgent message about the raids late in the evening of the 64th Day. But when word came from their son the next afternoon about Joriana’s aunt and uncle, his wife moved up his timetable and they were on the fastest garrison coach available that evening.

  But first, he paid a visit to the Administrative Headquarters.

  “Nicko, let me give him permission!”

  “Relf, no,” the Chairman said casually as he shifted around some pages on his large desk, bigger than any other in Idumea. He’d made sure of that.

  “Why not?!” High General Shin pounded on the desk.

  Mal’s eyes slowly traveled up to look at the High General, since his fists on the stacks of paper made moving the pages impossible.

  “He’s right, Nicko! For what purpose do we sit on the edges waiting to be hunted? Let him go in and hunt! He’ll sign a waiver, we won’t hold the government or the army liable should he not come back again, and he’ll take with him only volunteers. We can put an end to this nonsense, once and for all!”

  Chairman Mal rubbed his tear duct to remove a speck of dirt. “Relf, Relf,” he droned in a bored manner as he looked at the smudge, “we’ve been through this before. I’ll not give your son permission to enter the forests. The time he dragged that poor lieutenant with him, they were both exceptionally lucky. But it set a very dangerous precedent. Perrin may believe he’s cautious, but what about citizens? Teenagers? Children who might follow in his example? We can’t even assume his luck will hold—”

  “He did it a second time,” the High General interrupted in a quiet voice.

  Mal stopped staring at the invisible speck and immediately shifted his gaze upwards. “I know he did. I saw Neeks’ report—”

  Shin shook his head. “Neeks didn’t know the whole truth. Perrin had a suspicion something was up, and he didn’t go in only a few paces, as Neeks reported. Perrin confided in me that he spent several long, cold nights in the forest waiting and watching until the threat appeared. He killed those eleven Guarders himself, all deep inside the forest. It was dark and snow-covered, and he not only survived but he succeeded—fantastically.

  “Nicko,” Shin suddenly leaned toward him, bracing himself on the desk to face the Chairman whose set face barely contained his fury, “my boy can conquer that forest! I know it! He can train his soldiers and the commanders of other forts, and within a year the Guarders could be eradicated. Think about, Nicko: under your rule, with your direction, the world would finally become peaceful. How would that look in the history books under your name?”

  “You’re more manipulative and deceptive than Querul the Third,” Mal said steadily.

  The High General arched an eyebrow.

  “Your son purposefully went against General Cush’s admonitions, allowed Neeks to file an inaccurate report, and here you’re pretending he did nothing wrong!”

  “Yes, he violated the first rule again, but there were extenuated circumstances—”

  “There’s NO reason to disobey the rules!” Mal shouted. “Even if he could eliminate the Guarders, what would he do about the bottomless crevices? Hot water? Poisonous gasses? And those are only the hazards we can see from the edges. What might be further in? He might be able to rid the forest of the Guarder danger, but he could never cure the rest of it. And the citizens, believing that the army has made everything safer, will wander into those forests and not come back out. That happened before the Great War, High General, and you know it. So how would that look in the history books, eh? Under the rule of Nicko Mal, thousands of citizens died because they erroneously believed the forests in the north were suddenly safe!”

  The High General stood back up, scoffed, and took a breath to tell the Chairman how wrong he was, but Mal kept going.

  “I know what this is really about, Relf. You never cared about those forests until your son moved up there. Now you act as if you’re worried about safety. But the truth is, you see a way for him to distinguish himself. If he conquers that forest, as you naively believe, not only would he be out of danger and his son as well, but who could deny him to become the third High General Shin? Or his son to be the fourth? You want to create your own little rule here, don’t you, Relf? Querul and his descendants, now Shin and his descendants?”

  Shin threw his hands in the air. “Ludicrous! You really think I’m that petty and greedy for power?”

  “I do,” Mal said simply. “We all are. We merely dress it up in the name of altruism. But we’re all the same. We wouldn’t be in our positions if some part of us didn’t crave the power. That’s what all of this is about, Relf.”

  “This isn’t about us,” Shin said, sidestepping the accusation. “But about Perrin. You know he cares nothing for Idumea. He doesn’t see power as you do. Every time I bring up his coming back here to serve, he shuts that right down. He requested to go to the smallest village with a fort available. This has nothing to do with making a name for himself, but everything to do with making the world a safer place. And yes, for his son, and his daughter, and his wife, and everyone else.”

  “High General, I don’t know why you persist in wasting my time,” Mal sighed loudly. “I’ve already given you my answer, and nothing you’ve said has changed my mind. In fact, the revelation that he went into the forest a second time has me quite livid! He violated the first rule of the army, again. If it were any other officer, he would’ve been ushered right back to Idumea for retraining or dismissal, as he was warned. But, High General, you didn’t do that,” Mal’s tone developed a dangerous sharpness. “Not only did you not discipline your son—”

  “I didn’t know about it at the time,” Shin said calmly.

  “But you found out later, didn’t you?”

  Shin didn’t answer.

  “Obviously. So not only did you not discipline your son, you also withheld his deliberate disobedience from me, making you just as culpable.”

  Shin’s jaw shifted slightly, his only movement.

  “For your irresponsible and deceptive behavior, I should remove you from your post immediately!” Mal seethed. “You should be demoted down to lieutenant and given no greater responsibility than counting the horses at the garrison each evening! And at the very least, I should insist that you bring that rash boy of yours back to Idumea where I can keep a closer eye on him and you!”

  High General Shin stood at attention. “Major Shin withheld information to protect his wife who was struggling with her last expecting. There was concern that the child would be lost if she experienced excessive stress,” he related formally. “Perrin kept his doings secret from everyone for three moons. Once I learned of the truth, I chastised him severely and even threatened him with losing his position. I felt that I handled the situation appropriately and didn’t see any reason to trouble you with army discipline.”

  “That’s where you were wrong, High General,” Mal told him. “Everything and everyone in the world is my concern!”

  “I was not aware that you felt the need to know everything, Chairman,” Shin continued in his official
tone. “From now on I will provide you details of my days, including all correspondence, communications, my midday meal, and the timings and contents of my bowel movements, if you so desire.”

  Chairman Mal glared at him.

  Shin glared back.

  The High General was far more practiced it at, so Mal looked down at his desk after only a few seconds and started shifting pages around. “While I see no reason to not immediately remove your willfully disobedient son, I’m sure others wouldn’t agree with me. There are those who believe that the army and the Administrators are finally putting up a united front, and considering the tensions in the world right now, it seems to be in the world’s best interest to not give the impression otherwise. Therefore, against my better judgment, I will allow Major Shin to remain in Edge.”

  He held up his finger to stave off the subtle smirk of the High General.

  “But only if he can be trusted to follow all the rules of the army, especially the first one. Otherwise, he’ll be demoted and removed—along with you—and the two of you can enjoy your new positions as stable hands in my barns!”

  “If there’s nothing else,” Shin said unemotionally, “I’ll be on my way to Edge. I’ll be sure to give Perrin your respects.” And the High General headed out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

  The page holding the door wished he’d had a chance to let go of it first.

  ---

  In the coach High General Shin thought nothing more of his disappointing conversation with Nicko Mal, and instead read messages and reviewed reports from the north.

  Three villages had been attacked on the same night. The High General sent two advisors to Mountseen and Quake. Of utmost importance was devising strategies for securing the villages more effectively. The attacks were a highly coordinated show of Guarder strength, and the general hated shows.

  The numbers were remarkable and immense. According to an update he received when they changed horses, Edge, Mountseen, and Quake had a total of twenty-nine residents killed, over one hundred citizens wounded, twenty-two soldiers dead, and forty-one soldiers injured. Twenty-three Guarders were killed by soldiers, and another three by citizens. The general wasn’t sure how to record the numbers of injured or captured Guarders that took their own lives. He would have to make a new column on the forms he’d already printed in order to list the forty-seven suicides.

  “You’re rather quiet this trip.”

  He was surprised to find himself saying that to his wife, rather than the other way around, as it usually was.

  Joriana had been looking out the window for several hours as the scenery sped past. She wiped away another tear. “I just can’t believe they’re gone,” she whispered. “She was like my second mother, he was my other father. Perrin’s last ‘grandparents’.”

  Relf, knowing what was expected, fidgeted uneasily, put his stack of papers on the seat, and moved to the other side to sit next to his wife. After a moment he put an arm around her. He had many strengths, but tenderness wasn’t one of them.

  Joriana leaned back against his arm, and then rested her head against chest, a wisp of her hair catching in one of the many medals, but she didn’t notice. “We could have lost them all,” she said softly as her husband awkwardly patted her arm.

  “But we didn’t,” he reminded her.

  “The little ones! Relf, what if they got our grandbabies?”

  “But they didn’t,” he said firmly.

  “They’re so vulnerable! Why doesn’t he move them to the fort? Why doesn’t he come back to Idumea? He could be second in command at Pools, couldn’t he? Marsh is always quiet, and not so far for us to travel.”

  Relf glanced around the empty coach for witnesses before kissing his wife on top of her head. “He won’t leave Edge. You know that.”

  “Maybe he will now,” Joriana said, struggling to sit up.

  Her husband deftly untangled the lock of hair caught in a brass star on his uniform. She smiled as he tried to tuck it back into her bun, abandoning his effort only a few seconds later.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and gave him a quick kiss.

  He hesitated to return it before remembering no one else could see into the coach. “I’ll talk to him,” he promised. “They know where he lives—surely that ought to scare some sense into him.”

  Joriana sighed and leaned against her husband again. “He’s as brave and determined as you are, so you won’t get anywhere with him.” A moment later she asked, “What did you discuss with Nicko?”

  Relf groaned and rubbed his smooth chin. “Nothing much.”

  “You always say that when it’s something big or disappointing.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Women know these things.”

  “That’s why I rarely take you along.”

  ---

  Late the next afternoon High General Shin took off his cap and dropped it unceremoniously on the large desk in his son’s office.

  Perrin had already shut the door and flopped down in a chair, having told his staff in the outer office to head down the stairs for a while. From previous experience, Perrin was sure the conversation to follow might get a bit loud, and they’d still be able to overhear the best parts even down in the reception area.

  His father sat down next to him and casually put a boot up on the desk. “I expected it to be worse, by the number of incidents reported,” he told his son.

  Perrin scoffed. “I thought it was pretty bad as it is.”

  Relf shrugged slightly. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, you did an excellent job containing the situation. All the men did. And no deaths here, either.”

  “Except for Hogal and Tabbit,” Perrin whispered.

  “Yes,” Relf sighed. “Your mother was going to spare no expense on their burial markers. At least they went together. Your mother felt great comfort about that.”

  “So did I,” Perrin said.

  “And that Corporal Zenos—he’s your baby handler, right?”

  Perrin chuckled softly for the first time in days. “Baby tender, yes. I’m still amazed he stood at attention for you at the surgery wing. First time he’s got up on his own since he was injured.”

  Relf nodded. “I’ve been known to bring even dying men to their feet,” he said soberly.

  Perrin snorted.

  “Your village is putting forth a valiant effort to clean up. Physically, they seemed to be in relatively good condition. But mentally? Perrin, I saw a lot of scared eyes out there on our tour.”

  “I know,” said Perrin quietly. “Twice we’ve kept the Guarders confined to the forests, but this time? Failure.”

  Relf reached over and bounced a fist lightly on his son’s leg. “Twice you’ve kept the Guarders confined to the forests, but this was only a matter of time. You’ve got an immense task in front of you. You’ve won over the villagers again, I could see that much. They looked at you today with such awe,” he winked with pride at his son. “But to make them feel secure again? That’s going to take some doing.”

  Perrin nodded. “Mahrree said the same thing to me. We’ll come up with something, I’m sure.”

  “Son,” Relf began, “I’ve been thinking a great deal about this on the way up here. You know how sometimes people joke that the world’s out to get them? In your case, that’s true. It knows where your family is, and you’re the only one in the world that can keep them safe. This was far too calculated on their part. Never before have I known Guarders to be so organized to coordinate this in three villages at the same time. And they’re no longer working in pairs, either. Something’s changed—their methods, their leadership . . . something.”

  “So we need to change too, Father. Our current strategies are useless. But I do know something that would work.”

  The High General squinted. “What?”

  “Let me go into the forests to find them!” his son whispered. “I know the woods—”

  “NO!” Relf cut him off. “T
raditionally we have—”

  “Why should that matter?!” the major demanded. “And since when do you care about upholding the traditions of the army? I’m telling you, the forests are not what we’ve been led to believe. The trees are actually the safe parts, it’s easy to see where the dangers—”

  Relf exhaled loudly. “Major Shin, we’ve been through this before. The Command Board has specifically—”

  “Why is there a committee deciding your every move, High General?” Major Shin’s voice was thick with irritation.

  “ENOUGH!” the High General bellowed at him.

  His son didn’t recoil, but met his glare. “Yes, it is enough. Enough of our sitting around and waiting like impotent, incompetent—”

  The High General pointed at him. “You watch your mouth, boy! Things are better now than they ever were under Oren. I have more influence—”

  “Then prove it!” his son challenged. “Give me permission to go into the forests, let me find them, eradicate—”

  “Are you insane?” the general hissed. “You really think Nicko Mal would allow that?”

  “You just said things are better, so are they?”

  “I said better, but not perfect, son!”

  Perrin grumbled and turned to face his father. “Why do you let him push you around?”

  Relf arched an angry eyebrow. “What did you just say?”

  Perrin clenched his left fist.

  So did his father.

  “Why do you do whatever Nicko Mal tells you? You’re head of the entire army! Stand up to him! Insist that—”

  “Insist WHAT?” High General Shin bellowed. “That I be in charge?”

  “That you do your job!” Major Shin shouted back, glad that no one was in the outer office. “That you secure the world! Look, you have 15,000 men now; let’s take, say, five thousand of them and swarm that forest! I can teach the men the hazards, then we go in there and eradicate the Guarders once and for all.”

  “Nicko would never agree—”

  “Forget Mal!”

  “I can’t!” the High General shouted. “Take a few guesses what would happen if I went directly against his orders!”

  “You’d succeed!” Major Shin said with a devious grin.

  “He’d see it as a direct challenge to his leadership!”

  “So challenge him! You have 15,000 men, General.”

  “And then what, Perrin? Then what? Who’s in charge next? Who sets himself up as leader of the world, with the army backing him?”

  Perrin continued to grin manically at his father.

  Relf recoiled. “I will not be King Relf, Perrin,” he said quietly. “Nor should you be the next king.”

  Perrin’s grin fell. “That’s not what I want.”

  “It better not be. No one man can handle all that power. We have plenty of evidence of that.”

  His son brooded as he slowly deflated. “I’m only suggesting that you would do a much better job. Mahrree would do a much better job—”

  “It’s complicated,” Relf cut in. “We don’t have to go through this again. There was a reason I insisted on so many Administrators. Mal intended to take the throne with two advisors. He wanted to be king himself—I’ve told you that. But I wouldn’t support him taking over from Oren unless the power was spread among twenty-two others. I figured with that many men he just might choose three or four that were thoughtful enough to talk sense into the others. So far it’s been functioning. Not perfectly, but acceptably.”

  Perrin’s shoulders drooped. “I know,” he whispered. “I agree. Sort of.”

  His father nodded. “We’ll never have a perfect system. Only if the Creator were in charge would everything be equal and fair, I suppose.”

  “Nicko Mal is no Creator!” Perrin pointed out.

  “Neither am I,” Relf reminded him. “No one is. Maybe a Guide could have done it, but those are long gone. The Administrators and the army watch each other like two hawks guarding a field of mice. For the past five years it’s been working better than anything we had under the kings. And Nicko Mal has upheld your grandfather’s very wise law: No man is allowed in the forest. And . . . I uphold that law too.”

  Perrin clenched both fists in earnestness. “Father, let me go one more time, in secret—”

  The High General’s face twisted in red rage, but his voice was low and threatening. “Major Shin, you do it again not only will you be thrown out of the army, but so will I! And then who can we trust to keep the northern border here safe? Who then will keep Nicko Mal in check in Idumea? Not Cush, I assure you that. He’s practically Nicko’s lap dog. If the two of us go down, so will the rest of the world. Guarders or no Guarders, we’re back to the reign of kings, and neither of us would be in position to fix it!”

  Perrin slumped back into his chair. “There’s got to be something—”

  “There’s NOTHING, boy! Get that through your head! We’re trapped, but we still have influence as long as we work within the system. You care about this village? About Edge? Your family? Then work within the laws! You want to save the world? Then let’s save it! The legal way!”

  Major Shin sat in gloomy silence for a minute, staring out the windows. Eventually he rubbed his forehead. “Grandfather wanted me to go into the forests.”

  Relf’s mouth twitched. “How do you know that?”

  “He told me. When I was twelve. He told me about freeing Querul the Fourth’s servants.”

  His father nodded slowly. “One of his greatest successes, and only a handful of people in the world know about it. I’m surprised he told you.”

  “It was because he thought I might some day . . . have your position,” Perrin said uncomfortably. He couldn’t say the title. Not for the first time, the idea of becoming High General left a foul taste in his mouth. “He wanted me to know that sometimes there’s only one man who can go over the wall to find out what’s really happening and put a stop to it.”

  “He went over the wall,” Relf said appreciatively. “Literally. Climbed up and over that stone wall around Querul’s compound—now Mal’s—to show the servants there was no danger on the other side. Quite a deed for a man of his girth,” he added with the smallest of smiles. “They followed him most reluctantly. Then, a couple of moons later, they all wrote him letters of gratitude. He showed me the letters. Told me that’s what it meant to be the High General: to rescue the abused, to protect the innocent, to safeguard the citizenry.”

  “Exactly!” Perrin smiled. “I’m trying to follow Pere’s example.”

  “But he never told you specifically,” Relf’s tone turned sharp, “to enter the forests, did he?”

  Perrin refused to meet his father’s intense gaze. “It’s what he intended me to do. What he was alluding to in our conversation.”

  “But it’s not what he said!” Relf bellowed.

  Perrin closed his eyes in exasperation. With his eyes, yes. But not with his mouth . . . “No,” he finally admitted.

  The men sat in frustrated silence until Perrin finally broke it. “So I need to fix this, but I can’t go back into the forests? No one’s safe—that much is clear. Not the world, not Edge, not my family—”

  “I know that,” Relf said, now also more composed. “And I have a proposition. The fort at Pools needs a new major. You’d be third in command, but very soon you could be second—”

  “Pools?! So close to Idumea?”

  Relf smiled partway. “Your mother would love to have you and your family so close by.”

  Perrin shook his head. “It’s so crowded! And Hycymum—”

  “Bring her along,” Relf said. “She’d love it and you know it.”

  Perrin kept shaking his head. “But Mahrree wouldn’t, and I certainly wouldn’t. You know how I feel about the city—I want to be as far away as possible from it. I’m staying in Edge, and that’s all there is—”

  “So move Mahrree and the children to the fort,” Relf interrupted, “if you’re so worried about th
eir safety. There’s room. You can even take Hycymum. Put them in the guest quarters for now, until you can build a proper house in the compound. Something large, impressive—”

  “No, Father. Not the fort. Mahrree would never agree to that—”

  “Even to save her children’s lives?”

  “I don’t want my children raised in the fort!”

  “Why not? You were!”

  To avoid that debate, Perrin sighed. “Father, you’re missing my point. I can’t only secure my family . . . I need to secure all of Edge. Our house was actually safe during the raid. Even if they killed the soldiers on guard, there’s no way they could have made it into the house—”

  “Consider moving to that new housing area they’re building,” Relf cut him off again. “They’ll be putting in an eight foot high block wall around it all, and it will have a gate—”

  “Not the house again . . . Look, that housing area is too far from the fort, and you know that. No, Father,” he closed his eyes and groaned. “I can fix this—all of this. If only I could just—”

  Relf’s eyes softened. “Perrin, even if Nicko Mal wasn’t in the way, I won’t allow it. Not as High General, but as your father. Son, you were lucky before, maybe even protected, but now? It’s suicide. We don’t even know how many Guarders got away. Considering how many they attacked with, the forests and mountains may be teeming with Guarders, and even if I gave you thousands of soldiers, we may still be outnumbered!” he whispered.

  “Now,” he said in a normal tone again, “your family needs you. Edge needs you. So does your mother, and so do . . .” His voice trailed off, but Perrin knew what the end of the sentence would have been.

  “So how can I secure Edge from an enemy I can’t even flush out?” he groused.

  Relf allowed for one of his rare smiles. “There’s a reason you were made the youngest captain ever, and now one of the youngest majors ever. I have complete faith in you that you’ll solve this problem, without doing anything dangerous that would risk your life, or garner the attention of Nicko Mal, or cause me to lose my position.”

  Perrin narrowed his eyes. “He’d really do that? Remove you?”

  Relf nodded once. “Promised me I’d be working his mansion’s stables if I gave you permission to go back into the forests. I already asked him. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too. I didn’t realize that Mal had . . .” He sighed in disappointment. His father had been thinking along the same lines. Had Pere Shin ever told his son Relf to go into the forests? Perrin couldn’t help but wonder. Still, Relf was right; Nicko Mal had the power to remove both of them, and then where would the world be?

  There was no other option but to work within the system, as flawed as it was.

  “I’ll do what I can to make you proud, Father.”

  The High General looked down at his hands and whispered, “I already am, Perrin.”

  ---

  That night as Perrin and Mahrree laid down in bed, they both sighed.

  Mahrree chuckled sadly. “I think yours was heavier. So what did he say to you?” She’d been preparing for the worst. For the past three days Perrin had been growling, snapping, and planning. When he came home late that night, he seemed a bit mollified—or maybe it was dismayed—and it was the first time he hugged his children since the burial. High General Shin’s inspection had changed something.

  “I’m guessing the same thing she said to you,” Perrin smiled sadly. “What did my mother want us to do?”

  “Move away,” Mahrree sighed again.

  “To?”

  “Idumea. Their house. She said it was large enough, and you could be posted to the garrison,” Mahrree shuddered.

  Perrin chuckled. “Well, that’s far more ambitious than what my father suggested. He wants to repost me to Pools, just north of Idumea. Said we could even move your mother with us.”

  Mahrree scoffed. “She’d never leave all her friends, and she’d never let us leave without her! So,” she started hesitantly, “what did you tell your father?”

  “That I’m not leaving Edge.”

  Mahrree rolled over and grabbed his arm to squeeze it. “Thank you!”

  He kissed her. “So I’m assuming you told my mother we’re not going either, right?”

  “Of course! Um, but I am curious,” she started slowly again, “What did he say about your idea of taking several thousand into the forest? Since you haven’t said anything, I’m assuming that . . .”

  Perrin stiffened next to her. “Request denied.”

  “Why?”

  He grumbled quietly. “Because we don’t know their numbers. They may have far more than we do, and we could be overwhelmed.”

  “They may not, too,” she pointed out. “Not that I want you to go back into the forest,” she assured him, “but if there were thousands of you, your chances at success seem rather good. I mean—”

  “He’s right,” Perrin whispered in defeat. “I’ve been thinking about it. We have no idea what’s beyond the boulders, how many are hiding up in the mountains. There could be tens of thousands, just waiting to ambush us. Every last one of us could be wiped out. Then the world would be overrun, and then . . .”

  Mahrree propped herself up on her arm. “So that’s why we should find out what they’re up to now! It’s completely unjust—their society is having problems, so they’re stealing and killing us to fix their crisis? And we’re letting them? Maybe . . . maybe we could even help them. If we could only uncover the truth, only find one to interrogate and figure out what all of this is about, we could change everything! You’ve told me before, it just takes the right man to go into there and—”

  “The rule is,” Perrin interrupted resignedly, “no man is allowed into the forest. Who I am to go against my grandfather’s laws?”

  A thought was forming in Mahrree’s mind about her husband, but it was too disgusting to utter. Instead she blinked at him in the dark, but he seemed to be studying the ceiling.

  “But you violated that law last year—”

  “Prevailing circumstances overruled that law,” he cut her off. “At least in my mind they did.”

  Mahrree was stunned by his sudden spate of rationality. “So why not now?”

  The previous thought she tried to ignore grew stronger and more repulsive in her mind. She felt her upper lip curling, but fought down the idea that came with it. He was her husband, after all. He was the bravest officer—

  At least, he was.

  “What went on in that conversation with your father?”

  He didn’t respond. He just lay there quietly. Brooding. Spineless.

  She hated seeing him like that.

  He could do so much more. He only needed the right kick to his conscience.

  “Perrin, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I’ve never known you to be c—”

  “Cowardly?!” he snapped.

  His tone startled her. He could have burned down the entire forest with his heat.

  “Cautious,” she clarified in a frantic back peddle. “I was about to say cautious. That’s never been your style.”

  “Well it has to be now!” he said bitterly, and rolled away from her.

  Mahrree just stared at him, utterly perplexed and disillusioned.

  He wasn’t cautious.

  He was c—

  Chapter 13 ~ “Are you that Guarder spy?!”