Path of Blood

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  Juhrnus suddenly became aware of high-pitched shrieking and shouts from outside.

  “Demonballs! Watch them,” he said to Esper, and then fled out of the room.

  He came back into the muddy commons to find Saljane perched on top of Baku. Her wings were raised. As he watched, she leaped into the air, sweeping around the gathered watchers, screeching her fury and diving at the unwary.

  “Saljane!” Juhrnus jumped between her and the man who narrowly avoided her talons by flinging himself to the ground. “Stop, Saljane! I’ll take you to Reisil. Just come with me.” He grabbed Yohuac’s cloak and wrapped it around his arm, holding it out.

  Saljane whipped up in the air, glaring at Juhrnus, and then she dove. She hit his arm as if grappling a rabbit. He staggered and stumbled beneath the blow. Saljane’s talons clamped his arm in iron bands, the points biting through the protective cloak to draw blood. She snapped her beak in his face. The deadly curve scraped his eyelid. Juhrnus froze, and then eased around, holding his arm well wide of his body.

  He entered the room on the heels of the tark. Saljane flung herself from his arm to the bed, nudging the unconscious Reisil with her beak and making low, distressed cries in her throat. Juhrnus pulled the cloak from his arm, wincing. He would have bruises later.

  The tark was a tall, bony man, his knuckles red and knobby, his jowls drooping from a long jaw. He set his bag down on a chair and turned to scan Reisil and Yohuac, who remained unconscious. He wiped his nose with a wrinkled brown handkerchief and tucked it into the sleeve of his robe.

  “Let’s get them undressed,” he said in a slow voice thick with a cold. At Juhrnus’s hesitation, he flicked up a bushy gray eyebrow. “Are you squeamish? Shall I send for someone else?”

  Juhrnus flushed and began wrestling off first Yohuac’s boots, then Reisil’s. The tark muttered under his breath as he stopped to examine bruises and cuts. He paused long moments over the welter of scarlet scars decorating Yohuac’s body before moving on to the fresh wounds.

  Juhrnus’s own gorge rose at the sight of Yohuac’s scars. He could imagine only one thing that could have made such wounds. “Wizards,” he muttered, the word dripping with loathing.

  The tark glanced at him. “Ah.”

  It took nearly two hours for Gamulstark to bathe and dress the wounds. Yohuac had revived and was sitting hunched in a chair dressed in Juhrnus’s spare clothing, both hands wrapped around a cup of broth. He stared broodingly at Reisil’s prone figure. Saljane nestled beside her in the bedclothes.

  Juhrnus stoked the fire and paced furiously around the room, unable to elicit anything more than a one-or two-word response from Yohuac to his questions. Reisil’s unrelenting stillness made him want to chew rocks. At last Gamulstark stepped in front of Juhrnus, his arms akimbo.

  “I am sure your assistance would be appreciated on the walls,” he said. His unrelenting expression allowed no room for protest.

  Juhrnus looked again at Reisil. He wanted to be here when she woke up. Everything depended on her, and there was so much they needed to know. His hands flexed. He wanted to hit something.

  “She will not wake up for some hours, I should think. She’s depleted herself immensely,” Gamulstark added, more kindly. “I will send for you when she wakes.”

  Juhrnus nodded. There wasn’t anything else he could do.

  “She’s not going to . . . ?”

  “Die? No. Not on my watch.”

  “Then I’ll leave you.”

  ~Stay here. Call me if there’s need, Juhrnus said to Esper.

  ~Be careful, was Esper’s response. Juhrnus turned and winked at his ahalad-kaaslane. With any luck, he’d finally get to hit something.

  Chapter 8

  Kebonsat fumed, pacing along the slick planking above the gates of Lion. A peculiar stillness hung thick and heavy over the valley. Not a breath of wind stirred, and Kebonsat’s skin twitched at every stray sound. Now that the rain had let up, even the scuff of a boot or the jingle of a bridle sounded like a trumpet blast. Phantom shapes seemed to move beyond the torchlight, shadows slithering inside shadows. Kebonsat stared, his hands balling into fists, willing the darkness and mist to open up and reveal their secrets.

  “What’s going on?” Metyein came to stand beside him. Mud streaked his cloak and rimed his boots. He’d come through the tunnel from Eagle, where he’d been assessing Juhrnus’s supplies and greeting the new arrivals.

  “I wish I knew. We should be out there fighting. She could be hurt.” Or worse.

  The uncanny cry that had pulled Kebonsat away from Emelovi had ended with explosions of color that shook the ground and rattled the walls. These were followed by waves of heat and ice. Kebonsat knew Reisil was at the heart of it. What else could it be? And she faced an army of nokulas. They had streamed past the stockade walls not long after sundown, rank after silvery rank of them, none bothering to hide themselves. Their numbers had seemed endless. And not long after, the battle had begun. It had gone on for hours. Then, as suddenly as it began, silence fell.

  “We don’t know that Reisil needs help. You know better than anyone what she’s capable of—what she did to the wizards in Patverseme.” Metyein eyed the men gathered below. They stood stoic in drenched cloaks, their bedraggled horses saddled. Most had swords, but the pikes they carried were nothing more than sharpened spears. “We are ill-prepared to fight so many nokulas. We’ll wait to see if there is need.”

  “What if she’s trapped, waiting for us to help her?”

  “What if she made it to one of the other stockades? Or she might have destroyed them all. We’ll wait for word.”

  “You don’t think she’s really killed them?”

  Metyein’s lips twisted. “She’s powerful. But it’s more likely that Soka would become celibate.”

  “Send a scout to look for her.”

  Metyein pursed his lips and then shook his head. “I’ve considered it. But it’s a waste of a man. Even if Reisiltark is waiting for rescue, a scout would likely be killed before he discovered that, much less reported back to us.”

  So we wait.”

  “Until dawn and we can see what we’re up against. Unless something changes.”

  Kebonsat swung around and peered again into the darkness. “And at dawn?”

  “We’ll go have a look. How is Emelovi?”

  Kebonsat sucked his teeth. “I didn’t tell her.”

  “Why not?”

  “There wasn’t enough time.”

  Metyein didn’t reply. Kebonsat chafed at his friend’s reproving silence.

  “There was an officious lady’s maid guarding her virtue. I couldn’t drive the girl off long enough to say a dozen words.” Kebonsat sounded more petulant than he would have liked.

  “It cannot wait, Kebonsat. She must learn her new role. Our people need to know she is strong—that she is worth serving. That she will lead them in the battle against Aare.”

  Kebonsat looked over his shoulder. “And if she won’t?”

  “You have to let her choose her own path. She might surprise you,” Metyein said. “Emelovi is loyal to Kodu Riik, and that means loyal to the Lady’s law. Aare is breaking that law by trying to destroy the ahalad-kaaslane. He needs to be stopped, and once she finds out that her father cannot do it, she will find the courage to do it herself.”

  Metyein’s argument made sense. But it made Kebonsat feel only marginally better. Because once he told her the truth, Emelovi would be lost to him.

  He stiffened, disgusted with himself. Coward! The way you are behaving, she would be well justified. You made a choice. You’d make it again. So stand up and accept the consequences.

  He nodded, jaw knotting.

  “It must be soon. This news rots like dead flesh the longer it waits.” Metyein drilled Kebonsat with his gaze. It was the look of a Lord Marshal to his subordinate.

  “As soon as I see her.”

  “Good.”

  Metyein turned and descended the ladder. Kebonsat watched
him go with a tight smile. Emelovi wasn’t the only one donning a role she did not want. Like it or not, Metyein was the Lord Marshal of this rebellion. Of Kodu Riik, when they won.

  Kebonsat turned back to the valley, straining at the darkness again. If they won. If their best chance hadn’t died in this battle of magic. If Reisil wasn’t even now spilling her heart’s blood onto a muddy field.

  He looked up in the sky. Dawn was hours away.

  A guard on watch shouted, and Kebonsat jerked his head down and leaped to look over the wall. Filmy green light bloomed around Raven, the sixth stockade. It rose into the sky in a sheet of gossamer brilliance. He scrambled down the ladder, jumping the last six feet. Metyein was already calling out orders.

  “Mount up. Four men deep, squads of twenty. Archers in front, cavalry next, footspears to the rear. On my mark, archers take down as many as you can. Release at will. When all arrows are depleted, cavalry moves up, with foot spears close behind. We’ll drive the beasts into the wards and break them against the walls. You have fifteen minutes to make ready.”

  As Kebonsat approached, Metyein motioned three other men to join them. “Hopefully the other stockades are prepared. If not, rally them and send them after as soon as you can. We march in fifteen minutes. Kebonsat, take Wolf. Jiletes, take Fox. Yilek, you’ve got Hawk, and Nelus, you take Eagle. Go!”

  Kebonsat took the horse a groom held ready. He was galloping before his right foot found the stirrup. The other two men were close behind. Outside the gates they split apart, each heading to rally his assigned stockade.

  “They’re coming, boy. Are ye ready?” Nurema’s whisper was ominous. She pushed up her sleeves and flexed her fingers. “The wards may not hold. Wouldn’t if them nokulas were coming full strength, but they’ve been worn down. Better hope them wizards tore their beasty hearts out.”

  “At least they can be killed.” With four or five men on each creature, they could be taken down. But the cost in human lives would be very high. For every nokula killed, at least two men would die. And then, only if they could see them. When they went invisible . . . Juhrnus remembered seeing the remnants of a hunting party after a nokula attack only a week after they first arrived in the valley. How many beasts it had taken to tear the six men to stew meat, he didn’t know. It could have been just one. After that, any team leaving the stockades had been made up of at least ten men.

  Something shoved him. Juhrnus fell back a step, struggling forward against the steady gust. But the air was turbid and thick. It swelled and pressed against him. His ears felt full of water. He struggled to breathe, smelling the reek of heat and metal, like a lightning strike. Nurema stood on the rail in the space of a crenel, gripping the sharpened spikes on either side, murmuring quick and low.

  The force of the air eased and Juhrnus lunged for the wall, yanking himself up to look over. Forty paces from the wall, ghostly green lights flared and spread, smearing and rippling and then fading slowly in streaking drips. Another buffeting gust of power pounded against him. The palisade shuddered and creaked. He lost his grip and fell to the plank rampart with a grunt. He rolled to his feet, leaning into the pressure and inching toward Nurema.

  “Can you hold them?” he shouted. The sound came out muted.

  Nurema didn’t reply. The muscles in her thin arms corded, and her jaws clenched with the effort of reinforcing her wards.

  Juhrnus hunched down and inched his way down the wall toward the gate tower. The palisade’s foundations were made of log boxes that had been sunk into ten-foot trenches and then filled with earth. Thirty-foot-tall timbers were stripped of bark and then upended before them to create the palisade. More dirt from the tunnels and the remaining dirt from the trenches had been packed on top of the boxes and in front of the walls for stability. Then the barracks and living spaces had been built inside the walls on top of the earth-filled foundation boxes. These took advantage of the palisade wall to save time and timbers in constructing living spaces, and also reinforced the palisade. Even with all that, the palisade continued to shiver ominously.

  Within the gate tower, the guards strained forward, watching through the loops, bows ready.

  “Where’s the Captain of the Watch?” he yelled.

  One of the guards pointed downward.

  Juhrnus dropped down the narrow stairs. He crossed the muddy commons to the barracks that lined the back curve of the palisade. The captain stood next to a sergeant who was loudly beating a length of wood against the wall. The captain wore a leather helm, with strips of green and yellow banding his neckline, biceps, and the tops of his boots. The sergeant was marked by strips of green similarly placed, and a patch of yellow on either shoulder. The gaudy markings made him visible to his men in battle.

  Soldiers poured out of the building past the two men, adjusting sword belts, pulling on coats and helms, and stringing bows. The only indication that they were soldiers were the helms and the strips of green sewn to their sleeves. Otherwise they looked like what they were—farmers, carters, miners, merchants, bakers . . . ordinary men. But their faces were full of determination and courage. Ordinary men they might be, but they were also the defenders of Kodu Riik, the defenders of Honor. Juhrnus nodded approval. He and Metyein and Kebonsat had chosen to call their settlement Honor to lend its new citizens pride and purpose. And it had.

  The hodgepodge militia formed up in ragged lines. The captain turned and spoke to the sergeant, who gave up beating the alarm against the barracks and tossed down the length of wood. The two men marched down the lines, giving orders in each man’s ear. The soldiers peeled away one after another, climbing onto the allure and taking defensive positions. They moved sluggishly, laboring against the waves of power that continued to leak through Nurema’s wards.

  And when the nokulas broke through? Bows and arrows and swords would be feeble defenses against magic. Juhrnus refused to consider it. One thing they had was plenty of arrows. The nokulas would pay a steep price before breaching the walls.

  As the captain and his sergeant came to the end of the line, Juhrnus stepped in front of them. The burly captain jerked up from his conversation with his sergeant, his broad face annoyed. Seeing Juhrnus, he scowled. Juhrnus bent close.

  “Wards aren’t going to hold! Have to move the women and children to the tunnel!” he shouted.

  “It’s not finished! Nowhere to go!” was the captain’s reply.

  Juhrnus swore. Sending Reisil down into the tunnel would be nothing but a trap when the nokulas overran their defenses. The captain didn’t wait, but strode off toward the walls.

  ~How is she?

  ~She sleeps still. She is restless, came Esper’s troubled response. The tark is worried. She is failing.

  Juhrnus didn’t have to ask to know that Reisil was responding to the magical attack. It had to stop. But they needed help.

  He turned, searching the compound. His eyes snagged on Baku. The coal-drake was pressed again the wall nearest to Juhrnus’s quarters, his head nestled between his front feet. The tip of his tail thrashed back and forth, and his skin radiated a pearly light.

  Juhrnus broke into a lurching jog, fighting the push of the heavy air. He squatted next to Baku, who lifted his head, his lips pulling back in a snarl. Juhrnus ignored the animal’s threat, bending close.

  “Can you fly? Can you bring the others?” he shouted.

  Baku thrust his nose into Juhrnus’s stomach. Juhrnus fell back at the blow, his breath exploding from his chest.

  ~Why? Baku’s voice was a thin thread in his mind.

  He coughed and sat up, holding a hand to his throbbing ribs.

  ~ Reisil can’t take this much longer. I’m going to tell Nurema to drop the wards. When she does, we’ll need help. The others won’t know Reisil is here or that we don’t have wards. They might wait until dawn to investigate. And dawn will be far too late.

  Baku thrust his nose hard against Juhrnus again, blowing a hot, snorting breath.

  ~Why?

  Juhrn
us scowled, and then realization dawned. He set his hand on Baku’s neck.

  ~Can you hear me?

  ~Yes. Why?

  Juhrnus repeated his explanation.

  ~Can you fly?

  Clearly Baku did not want to leave Yohuac.

  ~Yes, he said reluctantly.

  ~I’m going to have Nurema drop the wards. Go quickly.

  Juhrnus scooted back as Baku launched himself up from the muddy ground and into the air in one elegant motion. The coal-drake vanished over the palisade.

  “Hurry!” Juhrnus called after, though Baku could not hear him. He scanned the walls, looking for the captain. He glimpsed a flash of yellow near the gatehouse and plunged in that direction.

  The waves of magic had grown denser and more turbulent. Once he was lifted off his feet, and the palisade groaned with the force of the blast. Juhrnus landed back on the ground, legs splayed wide. He gritted his teeth. Dropping the wards was a huge gamble. It wouldn’t stop the nokulas from continuing their magical onslaught. But the beasts were well-armed with teeth and claws and hides like armor. Tonight was the first time they’d resorted to magic. No one had even been sure the beasts could use it. So with any luck, they’d decide it was easier to use tooth and claw. It was Raven’s best chance. Reisil’s best chance.

  Up on the battlements the captain was circling the allure. Juhrnus was panting and sweating by the time he overtook him.

  “Captain!” he shouted, grabbing the other man’s elbow. The captain spun.

  “I don’t have time for you!” he yelled, and turned away.

  Juhrnus snarled and snatched the other man’s arm again. The captain stiffened, staring down at Juhrnus’s hand. His face mottled red as he swung back around. His lips pinched together. For the first time Juhrnus noticed the stitching of green ivy over the man’s heart. The frayed threads indicated that it had been there for a while. Instantly Juhrnus understood. As far as the captain was concerned, Juhrnus was just another of those ahalad-kaaslane who’d turned against Reisil.

  “We’re going to drop the wards!” Juhrnus yelled against the other man’s ear. Another blast of magic hit at that moment and he staggered, falling into the captain, who pushed him upright. The planks of the allure shifted and undulated as the walls shuddered. Now the captain grabbed Juhrnus’s arm and yanked him close, his chest and chin thrust out. His fingers dug deeply into the tendons of Juhrnus’s arm.