Shadow and Flame

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Remember, leave a few for me!” Niklas shouted. Dead or dying riders littered the ground. The tall, swaying grasses had been trampled down and sprayed with blood. Only two of the riders remained, and as Niklas watched, his men made short work of them, running one through and knocking the other from his mount with a deep gash to his thigh and a partly severed left arm.

  “That’s all of them.” Rikard rode toward Niklas with Alsibeth close behind. Niklas turned toward the village, and saw nothing but smoke and corpses.

  “How in Raka did we miss the second half of their men?” Ayers demanded, still flushed from the fight. He had a bloody gash on one arm, and was sprayed with enough blood that for a moment, Niklas feared Ayers had taken a serious wound before he realized his second was covered in the gore of his enemies.

  “We didn’t see them because they weren’t here,” Rikard replied matter-of-factly. “There was no one close. My guess is that they happened into us, perhaps scouting farther afield and returning to base.”

  Ayers thought about it for a moment, then gave a curt nod. “Could have happened like that, I suppose,” he ventured.

  “Geir said he’d join us after he took care of some business with Penhallow at Glenreith. I want him to read the survivors, see what we can learn,” Niklas said.

  “We’ll find the least injured, see if we can patch them up long enough to live until nightfall,” Ayers replied. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Niklas looked to two other soldiers who were within hearing range. “You there. Gather up any horses you can find that the raiders left behind. Those are good mounts, and we’re in need of some.”

  The soldiers headed off, and Niklas eyed the burning village. “Pity we can’t get closer, see if there’s anything we could learn from their camp.” The flaming arrows had torched the thatched roofs of the closest buildings, but the fire had spread quickly in the dry summer heat, so that most of the structures were now ablaze.

  “Every tactic is a trade-off,” he sighed. “I can’t complain. We would likely have lost more men if we’d had to fight them house to house.”

  “Any doubt about where they came from?” Ayers asked with a knowing glint in his eyes.

  Niklas shook his head. “None at all. They fought like Meroven and they looked like Meroven. Gods above! I had hoped never to see one of those bloody bastards again in all my life.”

  “Let’s get the prisoners situated, and get back,” Niklas said. “I want to be in camp before nightfall, in case the raiders have more friends along the way.”

  Niklas watched as his men looted the dead and dying raiders for any weapons or supplies that might be useful. In a ‘regular’ war, such behavior was held in contempt. But the reality of Donderath’s reduced circumstances had elevated scavenging to an art. Make it do or do without, Niklas thought with a sigh.

  One of the raiders lay nearby, his chest still rising and falling as the man struggled for breath. A sword had taken him through the abdomen, and his entrails spilled out in a slick, stinking mass beside him. Niklas drew his sword and approached cautiously.

  “Tell me what you know, and I’ll give you a quick death,” he offered.

  The raider looked up at him, eyes shocky and unfocused. “What I know?”

  “Why you’re here. Who sent you? What you came for.”

  “Food,” the man gasped. “Anything… we could carry. Not much left. Heard it wasn’t… quite as bad here.”

  Niklas let out a short, bitter bark of a laugh. “You heard wrong,” he replied. Then again, he thought, he had no idea how bad things were on the Meroven side of the border.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Captain…”

  “You must have a commander, a warlord, someone in charge—”

  “Nagok,” the man gasped. His color was bad, pale and sweaty, lips faintly blue, eyes wide and white.

  “Who is Nagok?” Niklas pressed, but this time, the man’s lips worked like a fish out of water, and a rattling breath was the only answer he received. Honoring his word, Niklas brought his sword down like a stake through the heart. The man shuddered and went still.

  “We’ve got five men who might live through the trip back,” Ayers said, walking up and eyeing the scene as Niklas withdrew his bloody sword and wiped it on the dead man’s cloak. “No guarantees. If we lose a couple of them, there will still be some left to interrogate. But Geir had better hurry. None of them are in good shape.”

  “Kill the rest of the wounded,” Niklas ordered. He had long ago lost any compunction about killing in battle. But there was nothing to gain by leaving men to suffer or face predators in their dying hours. He could spare them that, at least.

  “Aye, sir,” Ayers said with a nod, and turned to shout the order.

  Alsibeth came up beside Niklas so quietly that he startled and nearly drew his sword. “What do you make of it?” he asked her.

  “I see… edges of a larger whole,” she replied. “The hem of a garment. The point of a sword. Waves, as they break on the sand.”

  “What does that mean?” Niklas pressed.

  “We don’t see the whole, only the parts,” Alsibeth replied, her voice dreamy and unnerving. “The tide is coming.”

  “Tide?” Niklas asked.

  Alsibeth sighed and shook her head. “I can’t tell you more, at least, not right now,” she said, chagrined. “It’s not like reading the answers from a book. More like stealing a glance at a tally with some parts smudged and other parts covered up… hard to put the pieces together until you have more information, and then, it’s sometimes too late.”

  That’s a cheery thought. “So there’s something bigger to come? Something bigger in the works?”

  She shrugged. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can see. But if I had to guess—and guessing can be dangerous when information is missing—I’d say that the riders are more than they appear. Spies maybe, or scouts. I don’t know just yet.”

  Niklas nodded, reining in his frustration. “If you get any amazing insights in the middle of the night, wake me up and tell me, will you?”

  Alsibeth managed a tired smile. “I will remember that, General.”

  The ride back to camp seemed longer than Niklas remembered it. A supper of trail rations awaited them, but he was too hungry to quibble about the menu.

  “For once, you brought the troops back in reasonable condition,” Ordel, the senior healer, said a few candlemarks later when he stopped by to provide a status report. “Patched up some gashes and cuts, a few bruises and scrapes, but on the whole, not too bad.”

  Niklas nodded, and waved him into his tent. Ordel stepped inside, and Niklas brought a bottle of amber liquid from a trunk at the end of his cot. The tent held only necessities, not even his folding table or campaign chair, which were back at the main base at Arengarte. He preferred having less to strike and set up when they were on the move, but the sparse amenities made him long for the few personal items he left behind.

  Niklas sighed. The raiders almost certainly were going to be a more difficult problem than he had hoped. It might be quite a while before he saw his tattered ‘luxuries’ again. “Have a nip?” Niklas asked, holding up the bottle. There wasn’t enough whiskey in the world to take the edge off life in postwar Donderath, but it helped, a little.

  Ordel nodded and took a swig. “They’re getting better at distilling whatever goes into that stuff,” he said with a nod. Wine had disappeared with the vineyards after the war. Ale depended on surplus grain, and last winter the devastation of the farm fields and the lack of men to work them made for hungry bellies and little left over. Then there was the ‘whiskey’ or ‘brandy’—any drinkable concoction that could be distilled from whatever was on hand. Raw, potent, and sometimes dangerous, it would have to do until more stable times led to more reliable distilling.

  Niklas shrugged. “It works. No one’s gone blind or died, and that stuff gives such a nasty headache that it’s sufficient warning to mind how much you drink.”

&
nbsp; “We managed to keep two of your five captives alive. The others were too far gone to save.” He raised an eyebrow. “Do I need to tell you that my healers take a dim view of saving people just so they can be blood-read and then executed?”

  Niklas sighed and looked away. “I take a dim view of it myself,” he admitted. “Just not sure what alternatives we have. Bad enough if these raiders are just separate bandit gangs. They still require men and resources that could be used elsewhere, and our soldiers can be killed by bandits the same as by warlords.”

  “You’re afraid there’s more to it,” Ordel replied. He wasn’t a soldier, but he had lived among soldiers long enough to think like one.

  Niklas took another slug from the flask, then carefully set it out of reach. “Yep. Alsibeth suspects so, too. And with raiders harrying the western side of the kingdom over by the Solveigs, it could take us a while to secure the borders.”

  “During which you’re not fortifying Castle Reach and helping plant and harvest crops,” Ordel supplied. Niklas nodded.

  “Too many threats, not enough of us to go around. And you know that, sooner or later, Reese and Pollard are going to show up again,” Niklas said.

  Ordel looked over his shoulder at the dimming light just visible through the slit in the tent door. “It’ll be dark soon.”

  Niklas nodded. “Geir knows how to find us.” Left unsaid was just how tired he was of fighting, how weary he had become of killing. He did not have to put it into words. Ordel knew, and shared the feeling. Niklas listened as Ordel made his report. Just as he finished, Ayers rapped on the tent pole in lieu of a door and stuck his head inside. “We’re past sundown,” he said. “Geir’s arrived.”

  Niklas and Ordel exchanged a look and got to their feet, following Ayers from the tent. Ayers had cleared a tent to give them a private space to interrogate the two bloodied men, who sat bound to poles in the ground.

  “Good hunting today, I see,” Geir said.

  “Tolerably good,” Niklas allowed. “Problem is, we’ve had repeated attacks by raiders coming across the Meroven border. This group we fought today was too professional to be brigands. What I’d really like to know is, are they scouts? And if so, who’s the real enemy?”

  Geir nodded. “And questioning in the usual manner revealed nothing?” Niklas knew that Geir disliked forcibly reading a captive’s blood. He was willing to use his talishte abilities to aid their cause, but he had already made it clear that he was not a weapon to be wielded as they pleased.

  “By the time we had the ability to ask questions, they were already in bad shape,” Niklas said. “They fought hard, to their credit. But I need to know what I’m up against, if I’m to make the best decisions for Blaine on where the troops deploy.”

  “Then let’s see what we can find out,” Geir said. He walked toward the prisoner nearest him. The man appeared dazed, and Niklas wondered whether Ordel had dosed both prisoners with mild sedatives, something innocuous to talishte, to spare the men pain and fear.

  “Do you know where you are?” Geir said quietly, bending down to one knee so that he could look the first captive in the eyes.

  “Prisoner,” the man mumbled. “Donderath.”

  “Very good.” Geir’s voice was languorous and comforting, and Niklas knew from having watched the process before that once Geir met the prisoner’s eyes and used his talishte ability to compel cooperation, the prisoner would tell Geir anything he knew.

  “Answer a few questions, and then you can rest,” Geir said in a honeyed tone that made the man relax against his bonds, gaze fixed on Geir with a vacantly hopeful expression.

  “Yes,” the man slurred. “Questions.”

  “Why did you come to Donderath?”

  The man sat slack-jawed for a moment, as if it took longer for him to retrieve the memories. “They said there would be food, weapons, cattle, women,” he replied, his voice vague and dreamlike.

  “Who said?”

  “Commander.”

  Geir gave the prisoner a patient smile. “Were the cattle for you or for your commander?”

  “Gather, for troops.”

  Niklas frowned. Geir, however, remained smiling at his compliant prisoner. “How many troops?”

  “Lots.”

  Geir glanced toward Niklas, who nodded. When Geir turned back to the man, he met the prisoner’s gaze. “You’re going to rest now. Sleep soundly,” he said with compulsion. “Feel no pain.” The badly injured man slumped in his seat, eyes closed, fast asleep. Geir took his left wrist and lifted it, palm up, to his mouth. He made a clean bite, and drank slowly from the man’s blood.

  The other prisoner had been turned so that he could not see. “What’s going on?” the second man cried out with as much energy as he had left. “What’s he doing? Oh gods! What are you doing?”

  After a few moments, Geir lifted his head and laid the man’s wrist back on his lap. Not a fleck of blood remained on his lips. Niklas moved to speak, but Geir shook his head and moved around to where the second prisoner sat. “Sleep,” he said quietly, and the worried prisoner relaxed, leaning forward in his bonds, head lolling. Once again, Geir drank from the man’s wrist, stopping while the prisoner was still breathing, though both captives had paled, and the first man’s lips were tinged with blue.

  Finally, Geir stood up and turned to the others. “Both men are dying,” he said quietly. “They bleed inside.” He looked to Ordel. “I would consider it a personal favor if your healers can give them a deep sleep from which they do not wake.”

  Ordel nodded. “We can do that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Niklas had seen Geir fight in battle, watched him snatch enemy commanders from their horses and rip them limb from limb in the air to terrify their troops. Yet he also understood Geir’s distaste for killing, especially when the victims no longer posed a threat. As if he guessed Niklas’s thoughts, Geir raised his head and looked at him.

  “I’ve done much worse,” Geir replied to the unspoken comment with a bitter smile. “But I prefer to choose from whom I feed, and to do so without killing when it can be avoided.”

  “I’m sorry for the circumstances,” Niklas replied. “But it was the only way we’ll find out what’s really going on across the border.”

  Geir nodded. “And this time, it was for the best. I was able to read what the men had seen, even if they did not understand the import of what they witnessed. Their thoughts are focused on filling their bellies and bringing back cattle—or women—as spoils. But they are part of a much larger whole. Large enough to warrant being called an army.”

  “And their commander?” Niklas pressed.

  Geir thought for a moment. “Their commander is not the real power. He reports to someone else, who also reports upward. A chain of command, to the warlord Nagok. The prisoner wasn’t telling the whole truth about looking for spoils to carry home. Some of his missions have been spying, to uncover conditions on this side of the mountains and report back.”

  “So the raiders are carrying tales back to someone with a bigger army,” Niklas summarized. “A warlord,” Niklas added. “Damn.”

  “I’m afraid there’s more,” Geir added. “The prisoners have only seen the warlord at a distance. They are too unimportant to know more about his plans. But I saw the rally, where the men glimpsed their lord. He had talishte advisers.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TALISHTE DID THIS—TO OTHER TALISHTE?” BLAINE asked, aghast at the destruction. He stood in the middle of an old cemetery that looked as if it had been the target of a massive lightning strike.

  “What do you think?” Malin Jarett’s voice was icy, and there was no missing the sarcasm.

  “I think that whoever did this used magic,” Blaine replied evenly, sensing the residue of power. “But that doesn’t prove that they were—or weren’t—talishte.”

  “Do you know of anyone with powerful mages who’s out to kill talishte right now?” Jarett asked, clearly annoyed. “This is Thrane’
s doing—I’m certain of it. He and the rogue Elders are going after the broods of any talishte who refuses to align with him, or who aligns with Penhallow.”

  The graveyard held dozens of cairns and stone vaults. Most of those vaults lay broken and soot-streaked, their pieces scattered across the scorched ground. In places, individual graves and larger burial mounds had been dug into or blasted open.

  “With the Great Fire, we lost the crypts that sheltered us beneath the manor houses,” Jarett said. “Now we make do with what we can find, even if that means taking refuge in places like this, since tunnels and caves aren’t always an option.”

  “I’m not sure how my army can protect your people from this,” Blaine said, staring out across the devastated burying yard. “Not unless you plan to gather them in one place, which would increase your risk.” He shook his head. “There are hundreds of graveyards across Donderath. We can’t possibly station troops and mages at each one.”

  “I know that,” Jarett snapped. “And believe me, asking for mortal help sticks in my craw. But my people have to take their day-rest somewhere, and while there’s danger having a group in the same burying grounds, there’s also a risk to going off alone.”

  “You believe Thrane is using mortals to attack during the day?” Blaine asked.

  Jarett nodded. “I know he is. Cowardly, but true. He’s saving his broods for real fighting, after he’s done everything he can to reduce our numbers.”

  Blaine looked out across the countryside. Nature had already begun the work of repairing what was damaged by the Great Fire and the wild storms. Last year, when Blaine and his friends returned to Donderath, the land and its villages looked storm-torn, burned, and blasted. Now, at least some of the fields were green with crops, livestock with their young grazed in pastures, and villagers set about repairing the damage to their homes and barns. If Thrane has his way, it will all be for naught, Blaine thought.