by Paul S. Kemp
Her self-assuredness reminded Cale of Brilla, the kitchen mistress of Stormweather Towers. He suspected she would brook no foolery and liked her instantly.
Cale tilted his head in acknowledgment, while Riven sounded almost embarrassed.
“Not sure I’ve ever heard something I’ve done spoken of in such a way.”
“Perhaps you should do such things more often, then,” she chided. To Abelar, she said, “I am pleased to see you returned.”
“And I am pleased to return to you, and my son.”
She flushed at his words and Cale saw the stubbornness in her eyes give way to affection. She masked it again, and gestured at Elden. “He has awakened twice asking for you. He would like for you to awaken him, I’m sure.”
Abelar nodded, though his face fell and colored. He brushed past her, sat on the bed with his back to them. For a time he simply looked upon Elden. He started to touch him twice, recoiled, finally brushed the boy’s brow. Elden murmured in his sleep.
For a time no one spoke. The moment was too pure for the pollution of words. Thunder rumbled, rain pattered on the tent, and Elden’s hands emerged from the blankets to cradle his father’s hand, the hand that had killed Malkur Forrin.
Jiiris daubed her eyes.
In handcant, Riven signaled to Cale, See.
Not a question, but a demand.
Cale did not understand.
Father and son held each other in the bubble of the tent, each the satisfaction of the other’s need. After a time, Abelar’s body shook and it took Cale a moment to understand that he was sobbing. His tears were a confession.
Jiiris looked to Cale, a question in her own tear-streaked face.
Cale did not answer. He did not want to tell her that they had saved the son but lost the father. She would learn that soon enough. Instead, he whispered, “We must go. Help him as you can. We are his friends. Tell him so.”
She nodded, pushed through the shadows to touch Cale’s hand in gratitude.
Cale and Riven exited the tent, entered the night, the rain. Cale grabbed Riven by the arm, angry for no reason.
“What did you mean in there? When you signed ‘see’?”
Riven faced him, eyed Cale’s hold on his arm. “I wanted you to see what was happening. Understand it.”
Cale released the assassin’s arm. “I understood it.”
“Did you?” the rain pressed Riven’s hair to his skull. “We saved that boy, Cale, but you’ve been wearing a look on your face like we didn’t. Why?”
The shadows around Cale coiled, spun in wide ribbons.
“Don’t deny it,” Riven said. “I’ve been killing men for most of my life. So have you. Reading a man’s face comes with the work. And I can read you as well as any.”
Cale could not articulate his thoughts, the strange detachment he felt, even after saving Elden. He was not himself. Or he was himself and did not like what he was.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not …”
He let the thought die, shook his head.
Riven stepped closer to him. The shadows wrapped them both.
“You lied to Abelar about turning around.”
Cale had no answer. He had lied.
“There ain’t no turning around, Cale. You know that.”
Cale did know it, but he wanted there to be, and he knew that he would tell Abelar the same lie again. He looked into Riven’s face and said, “Sometimes we need lies.”
Riven stared at him, stepped back, his expression as fixed as that of a golem. Green lightning lined the eastern sky, cast Riven’s face in alternating fields of light and shadow. Thunder boomed, once, twice, again, again. He and Riven both turned and the moment was lost.
The distant clouds, cast in streaks of vermillion, blackened the sky, turned it to a void. They stretched fully across the eastern horizon, not mere clouds but a wall of pitch, an absence of light.
Refugees emerged from their tents in ones and twos, looking east to the tenebrous sky, shielding themselves from the rain. Jiiris stepped from the tent behind them.
She looked east as lightning flashed and the refugees gasped. Thunder rolled anew.
“That is not a storm born of nature,” she said.
Cale agreed, and the shadows around him swirled in answer to the churning sky.
Abelar emerged, too. He held Elden tightly against him and put his other arm around Jiiris. She leaned into him and Cale thought that some wall between them had fallen. Faith had been supplanted by something more earthly.
Cale thought of Varra, the last woman he had held in his arms. A similar wall had stood between them and he’d never been able to breach it. Faith, or fate, seemed to leave little room for ordinary needs.
“Wizardry out of Ordulin,” Abelar said. “Battle will be on its heels.”
“Look at it,” Jiiris said. “All of eastern Sembia will be caught in it.”
Jiiris was right, and the import of her words caused Cale to curse.
“What is it?” Riven asked.
Cale drew the darkness about him. “Varra.”
Riven looked puzzled for a moment, then recognition lit his face. “Varra? The woman from Skullport?”
“Wait for me here,” Cale said, and the shadows surrounding him deepened. He pictured in his mind the cottage where he and Varra had spent a year, the cottage in which he’d left her behind, the cottage that was or soon would be within the magical storm.
“Cale, we stay together,” Riven said. “I will come with you. Cale!”
Cale hesitated for a moment, nodded, and extended the darkness to Riven.
Abelar stared at Cale, at the darkness, his expression thoughtful.
“Return if you can,” Jiiris said. “We will need you here.”
Cale nodded as the shadows whisked them across Sembia.
Rain drizzled from the dark sky. The low rumble of thunder from the east promised a still heavier downpour. The smell of Saerb, reduced to damp ash, still hung in the air, or perhaps simply lingered in Reht’s memory. The smell of Saerb’s dead, thankfully, did not.
Reht pulled up the hood of his cloak and sloshed through the camp. A few stubborn bonfires tended by equally stubborn soldiers smoked and sizzled in the wet. Eyes watched him pass and he left murmured questions in his wake.
The men had already heard. Reht should have known. Stories went through camp faster than a plague of the trots, even in the dead of night.
He reached the center of the camp where a crowd of soldiers stood around Forrin’s large tent. The pennons on the center pole snapped in the breeze. Lantern light poured out of the tent’s open flap. Reht saw Enken and two others within. He pushed through the press, nearly slipping in the mud.
“They got the general, Reht,” one of the men said as he passed.
“What are we doing about it?” said another.
Reht decided to take a moment to remind the men that they were and remained soldiers, whatever the fate of their general. He stopped, pulled back his hood, and stared into one face after another.
“What will be done about it is what your commanders order you to do. And that will be in due time. Meanwhile, if any man loitering here is supposed to be standing a post, I will personally string him by the balls for dereliction of duty. Saerbian forces are in the field and they could be mustering for a counterattack. Rain and darkness are not armor. Am I understood?”
A chorus of “Aye, sirs” and averted gazes answered his words.
Enken stood with Strend and Hess inside the tent. The rain beat staccato off the canvas. Enken nodded a greeting and Strend and Hess saluted. Hess’s moustache drooped as much as the man’s shoulders. Strend, as barrel-chested as a dwarf, shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
At a glance, everything within the tent seemed in order. There was no blood, no items tossed about. It appeared as though General Forrin had simply stepped out to the privy.
“What exactly happened here?” Reht asked.
Hess and Strend hes
itated, looked one to the other.
“Tell him what you told me,” Enken said to Hess. “Neither of you is at fault here.”
Hess eyed Reht and shook his head. “We heard a shout, Commander, and rushed in. We saw a man—”
“Wasn’t a man,” Strend said, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest.
“The Hells,” Hess said. “It was a man, but not normal. He was dark, with shadows all around him. He saw us, the tent went dark, then he was gone with the general.”
“Shadovar,” Reht said. They had heard that forces out of Shade Enclave had allied with the Selgauntans and Saerbians.
Enken grunted agreement, pulled one of his many knives and ran his thumb across its edge. “My thoughts as well.”
Strend looked nervous, eyed the dark pockets in the corners of the tent. “Shadovar. … I’ve heard things.”
“Tales and naught else,” Enken said, pointing his blade at the young soldier. “Shadovar bleed as well as any and better than some.” He looked to Reht. “We could turn the clerics on to this Shadovar’s scent. Follow him. They must have wanted the general alive or they would have killed him here.”
“Agreed,” Reht said.
Hess looked like he’d eaten bad beef. “He warned us not to follow.”
Reht and Enken stared blades at the boy. “What? Who?”
“The Shadovar.”
“And?”
“And … that is all,” said Hess and looked away.
Enken grunted in disgust, took Hess by the back of his cloak, and shoved him toward the tent flap.
“You left your balls out in the rain, soldier. Get out there and find him ’ere I see you again.”
Reht, Enken, and Strend chuckled at Hess’s expense as Hess sulked his way out of the tent. The moment he stepped outside the questions from the loiterers flew as heavy as the rain.
“Lorgan has not reported back,” Enken said. “That leaves the rank to you or me.”
“Fight you for it?” Reht said.
Enken smiled, showing his chipped front teeth. He sheathed his knife. “I would, but we can’t afford to lose you.”
Reht chuckled.
Enken said, “You’re longer in the Blades, anyway, known the general and the men longer. You take it.”
Reht considered that, and nodded. While he had always been a tactician, a leader of small units, not a strategist, he could assume command until the overmistress replaced Forrin with another general.
“When Lorgan shows, he’ll rank me and can have it.”
“If Lorgan shows,” Enken said. “His silence bodes ill. Meantime, keep a light around you. Shadovar seem to have a liking for anyone leading this army.”
Reht smiled but it was forced. To Strend, he said, “Take Hess and get me Mennick and Vors, and the rest of the Talassans. Let’s find out what happened here.”
Strend saluted and started to bound from the tent.
“Wait,” Reht said, and Strend stopped.
“Sir?”
“Bring the Corrinthal boy back with you, too. If Vors has a problem, you bring him to me.”
Strend nodded and hurried out, and they heard him call for Hess.
“Vors,” Enken said, and spit as if the name itself left a foul taste.
Reht thought that said everything that needed saying. He walked the confines of Forrin’s tent, trying on his new rank, looking over Forrin’s personal effects. Forrin had traveled light, still a mercenary footman despite his rank.
“Blade and armor are gone,” Reht said to Enken.
“I noticed.”
“Could be the general put up a fight before Hess and Strend entered the tent.”
“Could be. But if so, it wasn’t much of one.”
“Bold, taking him out of his own tent,” Reht said.
Enken nodded, his expression thoughtful.
Reht didn’t have an eye for clues or a head for mysteries. He’d leave it to Mennick and the priests. He turned his thoughts back to his men, his army, things he understood.
“Extra discipline with the men for a time, to keep things in order while they stomach the news. We’ll need to get word to the overmistress.”
“Agreed to both,” Enken said. “If she replaces you with someone political, I think the Blades will take it ill.”
Reht nodded, listened to the patter of rain, and pondered his course. A third of his forces under Lorgan had not reported back. Likely they had been delayed by the weather or cut off by Saerbian forces. He knew a sizeable force of Saerbians had mustered on the shores of Lake Veladon. He suspected Endren Corrinthal was among them.
Reht was inclined to meet them in the field. He knew that Forrin’s orders had been to raze Saerb and disrupt any potential muster of Saerbian forces. They’d razed Saerb but at least a partial muster had gone forward anyway.
“I am tempted to move against the Saerbians at Lake Veladon.”
“The commanders will support that,” Enken said. “Gavist and I had been advocating as much with Forrin before … this.”
“Well enough. It’ll give the men a focus. Call the commanders together.”
Enken saluted, grinning through his beard the while, and stepped out of the tent.
“Reht has command until further notice!” Reht heard him shout to the gathered men outside. “Pass the word.”
They would assemble the army with the dawn and formally announce Reht’s promotion with all the assembled commanders at his side. He expected no resistance. He knew he was respected, even liked. He’d led many of the men in the army personally, fought beside them, bled beside them. They would follow him for as long as he had command.
But in the privacy of his own thoughts, he felt himself smaller than the task, a halfling in a giant’s boots. He did not have Forrin’s nose for strategy. The weight of authority felt heavy on his shoulders. He’d have to rely on his commanders.
He found a bottle of Forrin’s wine and two tin chalices in a small chest. Spurning the chalices, he pulled the cork with his teeth and took a long swallow directly from the bottle. It’d be the last he had for a time.
A commotion from outside the tent rose above the sound of the rain. Reht set down the bottle and started out but before he did Strend burst into the tent, dripping rain, breathless, his face red from exertion.
“Speak, boy,” Reht said.
“They killed Vors, too,” Strend blurted. “And the Corrinthal boy is gone.”
“Damn it.” Reht strode past Strend and out of the tent. The weight of two dozen gazes settled on him as he emerged. He stopped and looked his men in the eye. He kept his tone even but authoritative.
“Stand your posts, stay alert, and do your jobs. We will avenge all that has happened.”
Nods and grudging acknowledgements from all around.
Reht saluted, was answered in kind by all the men in sight, and walked through the camp. As he passed, men saluted, hailed him as commander. Word had spread.
On the way to Vors’s tent, he met Gavist, a skilled junior commander who could not yet grow a full beard. Gavist, too, saluted him.
“I am tired of that already,” Reht said.
Gavist smiled.
Reht said, “The general is taken and Vors is dead.”
Gavist’s young face showed no emotion. “I heard as much.”
“Anyone else?” Reht asked.
“Not that I’ve heard,” Gavist said.
“Precise strike,” Reht said.
They fell in together and marched through the camp. By the time they reached Vors’s tent, they trailed two score soldiers in their wake.
Othel stood at the entrance to Vors’s tent and greeted Reht and Gavist with a nod. Reht was thankful Othel didn’t salute.
“Ugly in there, Commander,” Othel said.
Reht stepped through the tent’s flap and looked inside.
“Tempus’s blade,” he swore.
Vors lay on the ground in the center of the tent, his breastplate at his side. A
spear impaled his guts, stuck out of his body like an oriflamme. His open eyes, glassy and swollen from a beating, stared upward at nothing. His mouth hung open in an unfinished scream of pain. Blood caked his lips, his beard. The pungent, sour stink of blood and worse hung thick in the tent.
Vors had died in pain, prolonged and deliberately inflicted. He would have taken a quarter hour or more to die with the spear in his belly.
Gavist chewed his upper lip, as if feeling for the nonexistent moustache with his teeth. “Looks personal. And why take the boy?”
“The Shadovar are allied with Selgaunt and Selgaunt is allied with Saerb,” Reht said. “The Corrinthals are important among the Saerbians. Rescuing the boy makes sense, either to earn goodwill or use as leverage.” He nodded at the slaughter. “Not sure why the assassin would do it this way, though.”
“Vengeance for the boy?” Othel said.
Reht thought it might be possible. “No one heard anything?”
Othel shook his head.
“What is it?” some of the soldiers shouted from outside the tent. “What happened in there?”
Reht made his expression neutral, stepped out of the tent to face them. They blinked in the rain. “Vors is dead. A spear through the gut.”
Expressions turned angry, fists shook. No one had liked Vors except his fellow priests, but he had been one of their company.
“Someone pays for this in blood,” boomed a voice from the crowd, and the four other Talassans in the army, their unkempt hair flattened against their heads by the rain, wild eyes glaring, elbowed their way through the press.
Reht stepped forward to meet them, cut them off from entering Vors’s tent. The big warpriest almost bumped him. Almost.
“Agreed, Kelgar. But it happens my way, and only on my orders.”
The tall warpriest’s wild eyes fixed on Reht. Spit flew when he spoke. “And who are you to me?”
Reht eased forward into Kelgar’s space, nose to nose. The men watching fell silent. The priest stood a hand taller than Reht, and a stone heavier.
“Your commander, which means you follow my orders. Understood?”
“A Stormlord is dead, murdered.” More spit.
“He is. But in this army, you answer to me first, to your god second. Otherwise, you ride off now. Find the slaughter you seek somewhere else.”
