by Hal Emerson
The Exile girl moved an inch closer, a sudden, strange jerk that elicited an answering jerk from him, and then his fingers caught and gripped her hand, slowly, one at a time. She continued to stare at him, not even blinking, and he stared at her too, seeing everything and nothing about her. His other hand moved on it’s own, up, up, until it came to rest against the nape of her neck, pushing back the thick curtain of her hair.
She arced her neck, pressing her skin into his palm, and the scent of her, the smell of leather and trail dust, lavender soap and femininity, encapsulated his mind, detaching his consciousness from the controls of his body.
Clothing began to fall to the ground. They both kicked off their boots at the same time. There was a ripping sound and he realized he’d torn her shirt as he pulled it over her head.
“I’m sorry –”
“Shut up.”
And then they were kissing, her lips full and fiery against his. She pulled him to the far corner of the tent, to the cot, blowing out the candle as they went and plunging them into darkness just deep enough to cover them in shadows but not enough to leave them blind.
She removed her tight undershirt, and then her pants, revealing skin. He followed suit, and her warm hands slipped beneath his belt as he traced her scars. He grabbed a fistful of her hair, kissing her neck, and she removed his pants. He picked her up and held her against him before pushing her down onto the cot. She pulled him down to her, and cried out once before locking her legs around his hips.
Chapter Eleven: Travelling North
When day broke, Raven woke alone. Momentarily confused about his location, and assuming by some strange quirk of his sleeping mind he was still in Vale, he looked around and realized dawn had filtered through the tiny holes in the canvas fabric of the tent. He reached over and felt the impression Leah had left on the blankets of the cot: still warm. He stood, the cold air turning his bare skin to goosebumbs, and looked around. There was no sign of her.
Something fluttered on the map table, and he almost ignored it. But as he turned back to gather his clothing, he paused – there was a pen and ink there. Pulling his long cotton shirt from the floor and throwing it over his head, he strode to the table and saw a note, written in Leah’s swirling cursive.
I’ve gone to find Tomaz; no doubt he’s wondering where I was last night. I will see you on the march. I’m glad you stayed.
Leah
He reached down and touched the ink; it had only just dried. He turned back to his clothes and quickly pulled the rest of them on, smiling to himself like an idiot. Anyone who didn’t know her might have been offended by the abrupt tone of the letter, but the fact she’d written anything was a sign of how much the night had meant to her. He grabbed the scrap of parchment, blew on it to dry the ink, then folded it into his pants pocket, the whole while feeling as though at any moment he might lift up and start to fly.
He left the tent just in time, still shoving his right foot into his boot as Aemon’s Blade bounced awkwardly against his left hip, the hilt tangled with his coat and cloak. The camp servants had come to take the tent down – not truly servants, are they? They’re paid five times what an Imperial servant could hope to make in a month – and though they moved out of his way, they quickly set about their work as soon as he had passed.
His first thought was to find Leah again, to catch up to her and Tomaz and ride with them as the army moved out, but as he headed toward the Inner City gate he saw Commander Autmaran and the two Generals in heated conversation to his right, heading toward the rapidly deflating council tent.
Raven’s thoughts darkened, and he realized the night before had been only a brief respite. He couldn’t dwell on it – not now, at least. Something in his chest gave a strange, sideways lurch at the thought, but he ignored it. Leah knew it too – no doubt it was why she’d left.
Maybe on the journey north …
Raven shook his head and moved toward Autmaran, trying to get the images of Leah’s scars out of his head. Scars that highlighted the best of things. Anyone who thought beauty was flawless skin had never been with a warrior woman.
After settling the dispute between Autmaran, Gates, and Dunhold – over whose part of the army got to march first, of all the damn fool-brained things – Raven found that he had been given the “gift” of a horse that had belonged to a member of the Most High. Autmaran informed him that the former owner had generously given all of his former wealth to charity when he had been found guilty of slavery, rape, and murder before choking his life away at the end of a noose in the ruins of the Imperial Cathedral. That wealth had included, fortuitously, twenty-odd horses.
“He’s a handful,” Autmaran said, handing him the reins to a sleek black stallion, “but I know you like black, and he was the last unspoken for.”
Raven grabbed the horse’s bridle as it snapped big white teeth at him. Grabbing the reins, Raven held them away from him to turn the stallion’s head, but the horse twisted and snapped at him again. Raven stepped back and held up his hands, making soothing noises that seemed to calm the beast. Finally, Raven was able to get close enough to place a hand on the stallion’s neck, stroking him carefully, watching the powerful rise and fall of the huge lungs working like bellows.
“I’d say thank you,” he muttered to Autmaran, “but I get the feeling you find this amusing.”
“Not at all,” the man replied. “I just think it’s nice to see a horse and rider with such similar personalities.”
The commander grinned and heeled his dun mare, Alto, down the road, and Raven found himself grinning sheepishly. He turned back to the horse as it snapped at him – Shadows and light, maybe I should name it Biter – and after a few moments of soothing noise and motions, managed to mount. Grabbing the reins, he turned the stallion toward the gate to Banelyn City proper.
His good mood was gone almost as soon as he crossed the city’s threshold. For every man or woman who had joined them, there were two or three too sickly, too old, too young, or still too loyal to the Empress to move. They would remain in the city, under a skeleton guard to keep the peace, which, hopefully, would be easy with every pair of strong arms in the city either in Kindred colors, captured and placed in the city’s prison, or burned and buried after the battle.
As they left, Raven saw fear on some of the faces lining the streets; some directed at him, and some directed at his departure. But there was nothing he could do for them, and so he turned his eyes away and tried to watch the street only, as a huge tide of Kindred, a river that swelled with each step as more soldiers came from side alleys and abandoned houses, swept out of the city by the Lerne Gate, heading north.
But for as many as they took with them, there were more they left behind.
How can there be so many to protect?
All told, their departure from Banelyn had little of the pomp and circumstance that saw them on their way from Vale. The army had a grim air to it now, and even the Commons who’d joined them in huge numbers seemed battle hardened. Many of them had seen their homes burned down, and many more had seen their neighbors, sons, husbands, wives, even children, murdered in those flames or by the attacking army. They shook the hands of those left behind, and turned deaf ears to those who begged them to stay.
But despite the maudlin tenor of their departure, Raven saw in their eyes a hunger that devoured grief and turned it into something new. The light was malnourished and sickly, and the hunger made their lean frames and pale cheeks look gaunt, even emaciated. When it shown brightest, it spoke of wildness, like a feral dog that had once been tame. They had seen both sides of the world, looking up at the Most High and the Children all their lives and down at the ditches dug for dying Commons. And now, even when death seemed ready to reap them all in droves, they had their chance to tear down those that had been set above them, and Raven knew, if the others didn’t, that this was what drove many of them to join the Kindred. These were not men and women who fought for the Kindred – they were slaves who fo
ught for freedom, and wronged souls that strove for vengeance.
And so, the only fanfare that saw them from the city was the crying of orphaned children and the hollow looks of those too far gone to care.
We will be back for them, Raven thought vehemently. We will fix it. We must.
As they left the city by the Lerne Gate, moving onto the wide, paved Imperial Road that ran the length of the Empire, Raven’s thoughts turned to the resolve of his fellow Exiles. The Commons were with him for a simple reason: they knew who he was, they knew what he had done and could do, and they had joined the Kindred hoping he would give them a chance at retribution. But the Kindred were a different story. Part of him was glad the others had managed to conceal what had happened to him, at least in part, but another part of him wanted them to know. They had a right to know whom they were following, didn’t they? They had a right to know that he carried a monster inside of him.
Or did it even matter? Would they follow him anyway?
A monster that can kill even an Elder.
In his mind now, when he thought of her, she was never “Elder” Keri. She was just “Keri,” a woman who’d happened to have been an Elder. A woman whose life he’d ended. It was strange, actually. Everything he felt now in connection to her death he had felt before when he’d been forced to kill innocent men. He’d even felt it when he’d killed Henri Perci. But this death went deeper than before; this death meant more. He hated death, hated that he was bound to it, and hated bringing it about, even to those who had tried to bring it to him. But, before, that hate had always been nebulous, vague. The faces of all those he’d killed had blended together, even those of his siblings, and it had become the deed itself more than the doing of it that horrified him. But now that hatred had a name to latch onto, a form and figure he could see when he thought of using the Raven Talisman again, a face that belonged to a woman who hadn’t deserved to die by any stretch of the imagination.
Why is it only now that I think of myself as a murderer?
He was glad he had the others’ word that they would deal with him if it came down to it. That creature was in him somewhere, mindless and cruel, waiting to take over if he should ever let his guard down. It was the part of him linked to the Raven Talisman, and it held him captive to his old life no matter how fast or far he ran.
The part of me that is my Mother.
He’d stopped calling her that when he was around the others; they weren’t comfortable with the constant reminder that he was one of the Children – now one of the last Children, a thought that brought both guilt and pride in equal waves. He shook his head to dispel the thoughts, and tried to focus elsewhere.
The next few days were a blur. The army moved as quickly as they dared, putting one foot in front of the other from the time the first glimmer of sunrise blossomed into a halo over the distant horizon to the time the last ray of sunset slivered into a mullion of light between land and sky. The Scouts brought them no word of any approaching army, nor of any enemy scouts. Even the guard towers along the Imperial Road customarily manned by Defenders were empty, and stood silent watch as the Kindred passed by.
And with every passing moment, the clock that had begun a slow but inexorable countdown in Raven’s head continued to tick. Another minute gone … another hour … another day…
Everyone, from the soldiers to the Elders, was tired. Each march seemed longer, and each night of waiting more unbearable than the last. The days didn’t so much wear on as stretch out, like an elastic band that, at some point, had to snap. Raven had learned that war was about long marches and short battles; even the siege of Banelyn, the longest such battle in recent history, had only taken two days compared to the weeks of marching and the months of preparation. But they had nothing to do but press on, nothing to do but move north toward a battle that seemed as impossible as fighting thunder or punching air. The march seemed to take something from them: every eye seemed clouded with fatigue, every muscle so corded with tension it was only inches away from snapping. Even the peaceful spring nights seemed full of dark and plotting shadows.
The sense of it permeated the Council meetings they had, where the Elders, Generals, and others, all met, with a rotating cast of under officers who came and went as needed. Their discussions were short, often terse, and made worse by the fact Raven refused to dally at Lerne. The others thought it necessary, even in light of the delay it would cause, but he had a gut feeling that warned him against it. Even if his sister had left her Principality, as he expected she had, they would be foolish to walk straight into her lair. Symanta bore the Snake Talisman, but would more aptly be called the Spider; this situation had all the makings of a trap, and Raven would exhaust every other option before being convinced to spring it.
The road they took was wide and unnaturally straight. Unlike the road north from Vale to Banelyn, this road was older, and did not conform to the contours of the earth. Instead, it went through the hills and across the plains that had once been forests, cutting through the landscape instead of following it, dictating its own path in defiance of any natural suggestion. The long, straight line, continuing on into the horizon, unaltered, was eerie, and completely alien to the curves and angles of the natural world. And what made the feeling even worse was that every farmhouse and village they passed along the way was found to be abandoned; every watchtower and guard post was deserted. It was as if the people of the country they passed through had all joined together in a mass exodus ahead of the approaching army and disappeared along the unnatural road, as completely and suddenly as dissipating mist.
The only sentinels along the road were the trees. They stood a lonely watch in a patchwork of large groves, poplar and pine, oak and cypress, but none grew next to the road itself. Raven found himself staring past them often, unable to pull his eyes away from the strange muted space between them. Nothing seemed to move when the Kindred passed; even the breeze fell silent and the trees stopped their wind-whipped whispers. The watching world took on the air of a hushed spectator, and it had sucked in a deep breath, holding it until the outcome of their struggle was decided. Raven wished he could feel a sense of hope in that silence, but he did not, and could not, no matter how hard he tried.
Everything hung on a razor’s edge, and the moment continued to cut them all in different ways. When each day’s sun rose and burned away the morning mist, Raven felt as though another thin piece of his self-possession had been sliced away. He could see the same effect in many of the Kindred soldiers, in the other Aspect bearers, and even in the ever-composed Elders. It was not that they feared attack, nor even that they feared the battles yet to come. It was the knowledge that they were going up against an army that had never known defeat, led by an immortal ruler that had oppressed them for a thousand years. It took something from them, as if every step was part of the building crescendo of a death knell. Had the battle come on them suddenly, as it had at Banelyn, it would have been different. But now, the build up was almost as bad as the fight.
Yet there were those who fought the silence, and it was around these men and women that the rest of the camp congregated when night fell and shadows stopped their progress. Stannit, the former Roarkeman who’d been an Imperial through and through until betrayed by his own leaders, would tell the tale of how Raven and Leah had saved the citizens of Roarke every night around the campfire, and Jaillin would continue it with how the Prince had cut down a thousand men inside the Wall of Banelyn. Leah was a figure of stories too, and Tomaz as well; both found themselves the subject of nightly ruminations as Raven’s right and left hand, and they both, along with Raven, found these stories to be far grander in the telling than they’d ever seemed in the living. Autmaran was praised as a genius Commander on par with his former tutor, the legendary Elder Goldwyn, and both Davydd and Lorna were spoken of as daredevil wonders, a pair that courted death with relish.
The stories gave them hope that while they faced forces beyond their ken, they were led by men and women who
could give as well as they received. Their tones became reverent when talking to the Aspect bearers, and Raven found himself gritting his teeth every time he heard it. That anxiety shortened his temper and made him curt and terse, even when it was decidedly not the time.
“We need to –”
“No,” Raven said, cutting off Gates yet again. “We do not.”
“We must take the city,” the General insisted again, his neck reddening as his mustache bristled. “To leave it open and behind us, that’s insanity!”
“We will win or lose this war based on how quickly we get to Lucien,” Raven said, trying to keep his voice even and his temper in check, though a headache had begun to build behind his temples. “Moving past Lerne is the right tactical move.”
“But it is bad strategy,” Leah said from the corner of the tent. Raven felt heat rush to the tips of his fingers at the sound of her voice, but he tried to keep his feelings under control.
“You don’t need to worry about leaving your own king unguarded if you see a clear path to check-mating theirs,” Spader said, the only one who seemed to see Raven’s plan, from beginning to end, and approve of it. The Elder, with his ever-present glass of amber liquid to match his flowing amber robes, winked at him in a way that showed support, but something less than affection. Their relationship had changed: whereas before he had treated Raven like a favored nephew, now he was more cautious, more wary. The friendly bond they’d shared had slowly begun to mend, however, and Raven found himself grateful for the support.
“A fair point,” Tomaz rumbled.
“I just wish I could see it,” sighed Autmaran. “I have trouble trusting what I can’t understand, and passing by a city we could, ostensibly, take in a matter of days seems like an unnecessary risk.”
