by Shannon Hale
"I'm going to fight." His face was smooth, almost without emotion. She had never seen him look so old. "I just wanted you to know, so if I go missing, someone would know I was here and could tell my ma."
Enna nodded. Finn returned the nod, smiled briefly, and walked back to his hundred-band. She stayed behind, leaning against a pine for comfort. Before her, the market-square and surrounding woods were dotted with cookfires, points of light mirroring the randomness of the stars. There was no singing. The general hush of many low voices drawn together swept to her on a Forest breeze, as though the Forest sighed disquiet and warning. Enna pressed her cheek against the bark and breathed in the grounding smell of pine. Everything had suddenly become quite serious.
Chapter 5
Geric's bands marched south. Four days, he had said. Four days, the Forest boys muttered to one another. Each night they practiced swordplay around the fires, grunting and slicing and laughing. Enna watched, disturbed by their levity. Two years before, when Isi and her friends exposed the false princess before Bayern's king, her treacherous countrymen had drawn their swords and fought the king's guards. Enna had stood in the midst of that battle, had heard the rush of a thrown javelin, had seen soldiers cut other men down. She could not now forget that the products of fighting were corpses, as well as the haunted looks and shifting hands of the surviving boys who had learned to kill.
Mostly she watched Leifer. He lit the fires each night, and soon all the prince's camp knew of his talent. A boy of fourteen years, eager, always armed, sat beside Leifer and begged to be taught. "I'm a warrior like my grandfather," he said. "I want to light my enemies on fire and please the king."
Leifer glanced up at Enna, who stood by a neighboring fire, frying bread. He shook his head. "I can't teach you. Go on back to your own camp."
The boy left, angry. For a moment, Enna thought she could see a pale corner of vellum peeking from beneath Leifer's overtunic before he pulled it closed. The hand on his chest thrummed eagerly.
"You did right," said Enna, sitting beside him.
"You see," he said, "I'm making you proud already. And you thought all I was good for was chopping wood and finding the nastiest bugs to put on your pillow."
Enna slapped a too hot piece of bread in his hand and laughed at how gingerly he held and cooled it. "Tell me more about the fire, Leifer. Did the talent just happen? Or did you learn something from that vellum you found?"
Leifer's expression hardened. "I don't think we should talk about this."
Enna did not respond, eating her supper and listening to the angry sounds of the campfire biting into a log.
After a time, Leifer sighed, sounding resigned. "You're my sister, my whole family, and the smartest person I know. What you said before . . . if you want me to try to teach you, I will."
Enna hesitated. "No. I think it's dangerous, and I wish you hadn't gotten tangled in it yourself. I mean, think what fire does. It eats things up. It destroys."
Leifer considered. "It does so much more than that."
"And makes smoke that clouds your brain," she said.
"And makes heat and light, and makes the night beautiful and meat taste good, and makes me feel . . . "
"Scorched," said Enna.
"Alive," Leifer said with conviction.
Alive, she thought. His eyes did seem brighter, his skin healthy and pink, not pale from languishing in the Forest shadow. Enna shrugged. Such a gift offered so many opportunities to do good things. Isi had warned her, and she trusted her friend's instinct in this, but perhaps Leifer knew more than she guessed.
Enna threw some sticks into the fire's heart, and they sat in silence and watched them blacken and burn. She had always been drawn to a fire in the night, but she had never considered before that there were things to know about fire, that there was a hidden way it worked, and that holding that knowledge imparted power. And she found herself dwelling on something Isi had said before, how learning animal speech or nature speech was a talent and that some people showed more capacity for it than others.
Does that mean, she thought, since my brother is one of those, that maybe I am, too?
The thought felt right. Each time she contemplated fire, she felt surer that she could learn it and felt a place inside her, a place in her chest, yawn eagerly.
From sunup to sundown, the company marched. They marched on the broad, rocky road, sometimes spilling onto harvested fields. Farming women stood in doorways, their arms around their children, and stared with little hope at the prince's small Forest army, only three hundred strong.
Enna and Isi rode in a supply wagon with two other Forest women. Normally, Isi would have ridden Avlado, but she said she did not want to take her horse near a battle, and Enna wanted her close so she could care for her when the wind became too much. The Forest women were talking of Tira. Isi did not know all of the history between the two countries, so the women told her of Bayern's belligerent past, up until the current king, of how former Bayern armies had raided and harassed Tira. Now Bayern's new peace seemed a weakness.
"And it is," said Enna. "For here we're caught unprepared, marching south to a war that's begun without us."
Isi nodded. "The king underestimated hate's memory."
"Yes," said a Forest woman, her hair wrapped up in a yellow scarf, "the Tiran remember us brutal, and so we were. They'll not give up until they feel we've bled twice for every Tiran ever killed and paid two bushels of wheat for every bushel ever burned."
The Forest women grew silent, and Isi was anxious. Winds fluttered her hair and clothes, and she looked to Enna as a person might before submitting to water and drowning. Though the day was warm, Enna covered her in a thick blanket, so the only place of contact with the wind would be her face. It seemed to help some. After a time she drifted into sleep, and Enna hopped out of the wagon to walk a bit. Finn marched nearby, and she fell in step with him.
"Good morning to you, soldier," she said.
He nodded and kept his eyes straight ahead.
"Finn, why're you going? You don't have to—"
"I'm going because the king gave me my javelin and shield two years ago, and I want to show I'm grateful and protect things and do some good."
Enna laughed. "You interrupted me. You've never interrupted me before."
Finn did not respond.
"All I meant was, good for you."
They walked in silence for a time. Enna found herself wishing she could talk to him about everything she was thinking, worries for Leifer and the strangeness of sudden war and feelings on fire. She was used to Finn's silences, but this kind did not seem to welcome discussion.
When Enna broke away to return to the wagon, Finn said, "Good-bye, Enna," with real sorrow in his voice.
He thinks he's going to die, she thought. The realization made him seem stronger to her than the brave, foolish boys who believed they were invulnerable. She watched him march on, his face resolute, his hand resting on the hilt of the loaned sword at his hip.
On the morning of the fourth day, Geric called a halt on the breast of a hill.
"They're close enough that the wind knows them." Isi stood on a wagon seat, her arms out, fingers splayed, as though she were a weather vane reaching for every hint of which way the wind blew. "The king's there and a Tiran army. Vast. Men like trees in a forest, swords, the whisk of arrows, the thud of arrows against shields, the soft entry of arrows in flesh, bodies on the ground . . . " She stopped. Enna could only imagine how vividly Isi saw the battle, and her skin ached at the thought of what was to come.
Geric mounted and led the army forward, his horse stepping high as though wishing to canter. The march became swifter. Of the women, Isi and Enna alone did not leave the army for an encampment, choosing to remain in the wagon that would go to the threshold of the battle.
They could hear the noise of battle first—a cacophony of human voices that did not converse and beating metal like a thousand blacksmiths at work. The little army climbed a
hill toward the noise. Enna sat on the wall of the wagon and held on to the sides. The wood squeaked under her hand in the uphill strain. The donkey moaned once. Enna looked at a sky masked by clouds, the air softly wet from recent rain, and observed how the air smelled rich and sweet. It shouldn't be so sweet on a battle day, she thought. It should pour.
The wagon crested the hill, and the noise was suddenly real. Geric called a halt. The captains of the three hundred bands, also on horseback, drew next to him and looked down. The two armies congregated on a withering wheat field, three thousand on the north side, perhaps five on the other. They saw the king leading his Bayern army, their backs to the north. Geric said something to the captains that Enna could not hear.
The four men began to shout the words of a battle song. As they sang, the men behind them gathered on the crown of the hill and joined in. They raised their shields to their mouths and sang into the rounded metal so the sound of the song reverberated and swelled into the valley. The pulsing metal made an eerie call: Tear down the borders, tear down the shores, tear down the walls, tear down the doors, the king to victory, we cry, the king to victory.
The captains called forward, and the Forest bands marched down the hill, still shouting the battle song, their shields lowered now. The action in the valley slowed briefly as faces looked to the new players. The battle was thick. Archers had already dropped their bows for swords, so there was no line of arrows to slow the Forest bands' approach.
Abruptly the song dropped and shouts began. Enna watched three Forest boys cut down before javelins left their hands, and she turned away.
Enna looked at her trembling hands and said, "How is it, Isi?"
Isi closed her eyes. She seemed eerily calm. "The Forest bands, they give our men new hope, surely, but the Tiran forces are greater. For now we're standing our ground."
"The king should've waited to muster more troops before fighting."
Isi nodded. "He was hurrying to protect the people. In addition to four towns, Tira has already taken ten villages."
Enna stood in the wagon to see if she could spot Leifer, but his was one dark-haired, leather-helmeted head among hundreds. Then she saw flames.
Isi's eyes opened wide. "Fire. It's Leifer."
Enna spotted him a little apart, just east of the battlefield, south of his own band. Two Tiran near him were on fire. Her ankles throbbed in memory, and she thought of rushing the field and telling him to stop. Then another fire started, and another.
"He'll draw attention to himself, Isi," she said. "And I don't know that he can control it. Maybe I should—"
A cry burst from below, followed by a wailing and screams of fury. Something was wrong. The Tiran were cheering and the Bayern stumbling back.
"What is it, what is it?" Enna asked anxiously, her eyes scanning the scene. A moment later Isi cried out, her face white.
"Oh, the king," said Isi, "the king has fallen."
Enna could not see his gray mount, his metal helmet, or the ensign of the Bayern sun. The army of Bayern looked smaller. "Fallen? But he isn't . . . is he killed?"
"He tried all his life to avoid war," said Isi, "and to die now, on a battlefield—" Her voice caught in a sob.
The Bayern were screaming savagely and rushing the enemy. The armies of Tira seemed to move forward with confidence. Enna spotted Geric in the crowd, still mounted, still leading the Forest bands from the side. They appeared to have lost some men.
"Geric." Enna felt panic pull her tight like a rope. "Geric's out there, and, and you! They could wipe out the entire royal family in one day. Isi, I've got to get you away."
Enna hesitated, looking out again where Leifer burned, but Isi's danger felt more critical. She hopped onto the bench, searching frantically for the reins. She had never driven a wagon before. "Go, go!" she shouted to the mule, slapping his backside. He shifted his weight but did not move.
A burst of light. And then screams.
Both girls stood in the wagon and looked out on the scene with a mix of horror and relief. One corner of the field was boiling with flame. Entire groups of Tiran soldiers were burning.
"Oh, Leifer," said Enna.
She could not see him in the bedlam, she could see only explosions of fire. Even from the hilltop Enna could hear the burning men scream. New fires flamed up, again, again, again. The tide of Bayern soldiers stood their ground and slowly, slowly, began to push forward.
"The battle's changing," said Isi, exhaustion and disbelief heavy in her voice.
"How can he keep it up?"
Isi shook her head. "He's out there, right in the middle. Leifer himself is burning. Not on fire, exactly, but burning, somehow."
Below, a Tiran leader was shouting. He pointed his sword up the hill at the two girls and then began to climb.
"They think we're the cause," said Isi.
"Well, let's not tell them differently. It'll allow Leifer more time." Enna grabbed a spare javelin and shook it at the soldier. "We'll never stop, you devils!"
Some forty men broke off from the fighting and followed the Tiran leader. One shouted, "Fire-witch!" and pointed his sword at Enna.
"Oh," said Enna. She gripped the javelin and felt very tiny. "Isi, can you?"
Isi closed her eyes and nodded. The wind gusts suddenly had purpose. Enna could feel them circling the wagon like a great finger making rings in a pool. Bits of grass and dirt picked up, and the wind became a nearly visible barrier. One of the Tiran soldiers aimed at Isi and let loose an arrow. It hit the wind barrier and flew wild. Isi did not flinch.
"Ha, ha!" Enna brandished the javelin and smiled. "Go back or die!"
The Tiran closed their eyes and raised their hands against the thrash of dirt and pebbles but still pressed forward. Their helmets flew off, their clothes whipped about their body. Sometimes a finger of wind pushed out of the circle and knocked a soldier off his feet. Two tumbled back down the hill. The others kept on.
"Is it going to be enough?" asked Enna.
Isi shook her head. The leader slowly lifted his sword against the force of wind, getting closer and closer. The mule eyed him and the windstorm uncomfortably, lifting its front hooves and bawling. With great exertion, the soldier slapped the mule's rump with the flat of his sword.
The wagon rocked, the mule wailed. Enna dropped the javelin, grabbed Isi, and pulled her out of the lurching wagon. As they landed on the hilltop, the wagon tipped, and the mule and its load slid backward down the slope. The wind grew softer.
"Isi, don't let it go, don't."
"It's getting so hard, so many people . . . " Isi kept her eyes closed, and her concentration appeared to cause her pain. Enna stood in front of her as the men neared.
"You harm her and—and the entire field goes up in flames! You fools, you kill her and you die with her."
The Tiran seemed unconvinced. The wind burst again and pushed several men to the ground, but the others still advanced.
"Forest band, to me!"
A beating of hooves, a responding shout, and Geric crested the hill. His sword downed the farthest soldier. The leader turned away from the girls and called his men around him, rallying to take down the prince. But behind him a hundred band of Forest men ran up the hill, hollering and throwing javelins.
The prince led the charge, and the Forest men fell in beside him. Enna spotted Razo and Finn among those still alive and fighting. The swordplay was quick and bloody. From this close, Enna could hear the men scream when metal ripped open their middles, could hear them whimper when a finishing blow stopped their hearts. In a few moments, Enna and Isi's attackers lay in heaps at their feet. The protecting wind dispersed into random breezes. Isi slumped on the ground.
Geric dismounted and took Isi in his arms. "Are you hurt? Are you all right?"
Isi put her face against his chest and breathed out. "I am now. Geric, your father . . ."
Geric nodded and cleared his throat, as if trying to dislodge emotion caught there. His eyes were wet.
A new noise from below caught their attention. Enna and Geric, holding his wife, stood and looked out. The Bayern were cheering. The Tiran soldiers retreated, some fighting as they left, most running for the woods south of the field, toward the villages they had captured and their reinforcements and supplies. Enna could not see Leifer, and amid the shouts of victory, she felt her stomach chill.
"We won this battle," said Geric, his voice disbelieving. "They won't take Ostekin now. We wouldn't have . . . but the fire, Leifer, he changed everything."
"Geric," said Enna, "shouldn't you . . . " She gestured to the fleeing Tiran and the cheering Bayern, who lacked a king to lead them forward to catch and kill their foes before they could regroup.
"I . . . " Geric hesitated. The Tiran entered the woods. "We'll finish it another day."
Enna thought perhaps it was for the best, looking over the field of slain bodies and wounded, the exhausted men of the king's army who had been fighting since dawn, and the body of the king himself, slumped over his downed mount, the Bayern banner thrown over his body.
Enna saw Geric's gaze reach the spot on the field where his father lay slain. His face hardened, and he suddenly looked less like a concerned husband and more like a king. Geric asked Razo and Finn to take Isi to the encampment of women, then raised his sword and shouted atop the hill.
"Bayern, you are victorious! This is just the first battle of this war, so stand together and save the injured. I, GericSinath of Gerhard, king of Bayern, declare this day doesn't end until every acre of our soil is cleared of the Tiran."
"How long'll this day last, then?" asked Enna.
"It feels like forever." He straightened his shoulders and marched down the hill.
Enna left him and ran into the battlefield. The sky growled with thunder, and when rain began to fall it felt only right. Smoke rose as the rain doused the burning corpses. The wounded moaned and wept. A broad-faced Bayern soldier was wading through the bodies and delivering quick deathblows to the gravely injured Tiran. Enna looked away.
