Chased By War

by Michael Wolff

  XXVI

  Ronald Jekai knew something was up by the large gathering at the head of the camp, and was forced to poke and prod through the crowd to his father’s side. No one noticed, hadn’t even thought of his rightful place being his father’s son. Then the horizon shored with the dark gleam of steel against the silver cloaks that winked and flashed in the sunlight and Ronald forgot everything else. The Coicro were here.

  Robert Jekai’s longsword sang the war-song that its’ wielder was known for. Behind him came the rustle of leather, the tightening of frame as knuckles whitened on sword-hilts. And then the tension that stretched seconds to eternities. The waiting.

  The Coicro thrashed upon the horizon like a wave against rock. The air was alive in the distant echo of their footfalls and war curses that grew louder the closer they approached. Mothers slandered as whores. Fathers cast in sinful light. Abominations before the eyes of God, their existence slighting the perfection of His plan. Exactly what the fairy tales depicted, down to the very last word. Still as stone, the Vicars waited.

  It took the Coicro a good ten minutes to march into the Solvicar camp, and when they did all hell broke loose. Arrows rained down upon the poorly defended hills that were the day’s battleground. Swords flashed red as if the steel was still hot from the forging. For those deep in the throes of battle the world had narrowed down to the enemy, rising and falling beneath bloodied steel.

  Ronald found himself dead center in the chaos, quaking in his boots and mind frantic with fear. It had all come so suddenly. Father. First, he’d been here, then he abandoned him. Desperately he looked about for anyone he would recognize. All he saw was dead men, their eyes glassy and staining the ground with their blood. Skulls cloven, intestines wrapped about the spear that gutted them. A hundred more ways to die. Steam misted from his manhood unnoticed.

  There, from the crashing throes of steel on steel, emerged a Coicro with a giant’s height. Beady eyes darted about before settling on the young Vicar, a deep bass rumble screeching from a sardonic grin.

  Father! His voice deserted him. Father! Somebody! Anybody! The slayer’s grim visage filled Ronald’s vision. Move, damn you! But he didn’t. He just stood there, pale as a ghost. I’m going to die. All he could do was piss.

  The Coicro smiled, took a step, staggered, and his head came away from his shoulders, bounced forward and rolled to touch Ronald’s boot. All around him Coicro were losing heads or growing spears and spikes and swords from their chests. They gasped in disbelief and died knowing that their God abandoned them.

  As the Solvicar roared victory four horses emerged from the mist. Something itched at Ronald’s mind. I know that formation. Instead of the single line most farmers took, this group spread out in a V-formation, as though they expected the very mountains to rebel. They were so merciless in their advent the enemy Coicro broke down at this sudden turn. By the time the four warriors approached close enough to be seen the battle was over. And then Ronald recognized the force’s leader. No. Oh no. Not him. Anyone but him.

  But it was. Lean where Richard was heavy, having a panther’s grace to Richard’s caged lion, confidence without the arrogance, his stillness of a still pond where Richard’s silence screamed out his thoughts to any village peasant. His surrogate brother. John Stromgald.

  “Ho, Ronald!”

  “Ho, brother!” Stromgald’s handshake was stronger than Ronald remembered. “You are that surprised to see me, Ronald? Well, I must admit I have been gone for too long. The last time I saw you –”

  “– I was knee-high to a grasshopper.” Ronald was careful not to let the ranker seep into his words.

  Father appeared as though he’d just taken a brisk walk, clasped a hand upon Stromgald’s shoulder. Then the two parted as their different duties set them to different locales. Secret plots are here abound, and we are the ones who will cut them down, Richard said once. The gazes were obvious testaments to games of cloak and dagger. Only, such plots were the deals of evil men. To what purpose did they need secrets? This Ronald was not to know, as he was suddenly trapped in a surge of human bodies that carried him to the mess tent. Soldier after soldier passed in and out of the tent, as gaunt as the food they ate.

  Ronald tasted nothing. Mechanically he nodded at the rangers’ stray comments; his full attention was upon the tent. Dangerous words, he knew. Why invite a man of action, if not for his skills as a slayer? Ronald had witnessed the ranger’s prowess when he was young. Stromgald was not just a man holding a sword. He was the sword, and it him. Warm hate, mingled with bile, thrummed in Ronald’s veins like fingers feathering harp-strings. How many times had he been set aside like a toy when Stromgald came calling? Why does Father save his praise for him? Robert Jekai. His father. So noble. So wise. So adamant of his vows. A man of the cloth, letting others kill in his place. There was a secret between them.

  It was time to find out.

  “Stop pacing, John. I’m getting sick just looking at you.”

  Stromgald forced himself into a seat. It was only half a victory; no sooner was he upon the chair did the right hand open and ball into a fist. When he ordered the hand to stop, he looked down to see his boot drumming a rhythm into the ground.

  “I’ve never seen you so tense.”

  “I’ve never been so tense, Sylver. This is dangerous ground I walk. I do not know what lies around the bend.”

  Sylver chuckled. “Aren’t you the one who keeps saying the future is not an arrow’s path?”

  Stromgald grunted, then sank into the chair as Sylver’s magic fingers worked his shoulders. “You know, you don’t have to do this. There are many skilled warriors you could contact. There’s Jack Iarumas, or Charles K’co’Lrehs.”

  “None of them are within a league. The battles would swallow the region by then.

  “Listen.” Stromgald grunted as Sylver’s fingers suddenly took on an anxious speed. “This war grows foul. This is no mere skirmish. This is the Solvicar and the Coicro. Two of the Crown’s most endowed instruments. No matter who wins, it will be slaughter. And the men who lose will be hunted down like dogs. Let’s leave this place. Let’s go to Leizar, or Nafaras, or Suibeom. Let’s just forget about this and flee while we still can.”

  She was crying. Stromgald reached up and brushed the tears with a single finger as though each was a fragile jewel. “I cannot do that and remain the man you love. Can you understand that?”

  Sylver wrapped her arms around Stromgald’s chest. “I know,” she sobbed. “I know.”

  Sudden footsteps broke their embrace. Both rangers, so soon pawns of the unraveling skein of events, tensed...only to be broken when a familiar man crossed the threshold. “John.”

  Stromgald blinked. “Lord Jekai.” They clasped forearms for a shake, and then Jekai offered a kiss to Sylver’s knuckles before finally settling into a rough-spun chair.

  “We owe you our lives, son. Sylver, you are even lovelier now than the last time we met.” Stromgald needed only the flicker of his vision to know a blush flooding Sylver from neck to brow. He had almost forgotten Lord Jekai’s silver tongue. Once the elder Jekai talked his way out of war between two warring tribes on the monarchy’s outer edge.

  “I am thinking it was not Providence that led you here.” Jekai gave a warm smile not unlike a loving grandfather. “Sylver, would you mind me stealing him for a minute? Thank you, my dear. Let us walk.” They walked half the border of the camp, with stares digging deep into their backs.

  “Your soldiers seem surprised. Do they ever see you upon a horse?”

  “Do not hesitate, John. Tell me what troubles you.”

  Stromgald elaborated the tale in the reversed world of the versi nest, the battle of its queen and the theft of cursed dragon eggs.
Suspicions lengthened in the ranger’s mind the deeper the story explained. The elder Jekai did not look surprised at any part of the tale. Instead he was resigned, as if told a truth too tiring to rebel against it.

  “Don’t glare at me, son. I’m not the one that pulls the strings around here.”

  “But you do know.”

  “Rumors, John. Whispers over bonfires. Things only a fool would take to heart. And don’t think you can simply charge into the enemy camp. I’ll have soldiers on you quicker than a jackal. You know I’ll do it.”

  Stromgald chose his next words very carefully. “You are right. I will probably fail. As one man, I will fail. Together, though, that is a different story.”

  “There is no “together,” John.”

  “So. You will do nothing.”

  “Have you taken a glance about you? I have been fighting a war, boy. You may not have noticed upon your high horse.”

  Stromgald rankled. His hands were bound by the very oaths he swore to uphold. The irony was sickening. “I will pursue this matter, milord. Have no doubt of that. But as you said, you are fighting a war. May I be so bold as to offer aid?”

  Jekai chuckled. “I am not so old as to reject opportunities. Your talents of teaching would do well for our defense, yet I fear I must give you a different mission. I need you to rally barons to our cause. We need allies, John. The more blades the better. We’re struggling against the numbers of Coicro as it is.”

  Resignation slacked Stromgald’s face. Many were the times he had crossed paths with a baron, and each encounter was more decadent than the last. He said as much to Jekai.

  “I loathe the prospect as much as you, John. Look around you. The men are convinced they will die come the morrow. Not even prayer can lift their despair. We need a victory to unite them, or we will be brushed aside like kindling before those silver bastards.”

  Stromgald nodded reluctantly. “Do you have anyone specific in mind?”

  “Heath Kalam.”

  Carefully the ranger blanked the disgust from his face. Kalam was the kind of noble who saw thieves in his own bed. The elder Jekai spoke of favors the greedy noble would not ignore. Perhaps that would tip the scales in their favor. Perhaps.

  The sky was laced with the purple velvet of twilight when the ranger and his party reached the valley fortress Kalam called home. Stromgald glanced back at his team and found his earlier disgust doubled back on each face. He didn’t reproach them; he knew their faces would be cleaned of rage by the time they approached the manor’s gate. One had to beat a trickster at his own game to avoid having one’s head decorating a pike-crowned wall.

  Distance lessened brought the details to light. The manor was perched upon a hill, its only entry the wavy path that cut through manors of lesser nobles. Stromgald could have easily approached any one noble for information, but already knew the rejections that would be slammed in his face. The nobles here had the curse of being third or even fourth-born, and thus were denied the fortune their elder siblings flaunted like toys. Kalam had embraced the lower-born as his own, and crafted a haven in exchange for loyalty. It was an easy trade to make, given that those who thought to usurp Kalam found themselves decorating the path ascending to the manor, sometimes without a head. All in the business of being a noble.

  The haven was in full prominence upon the top step. It was carved into a granite wall, bound tight in the gossamer of drunken rumor. None alive knew from what ancient depths from which the dark marble was spawned, save those with a Weirwynd’s eye. Stromgald caught the glimmer of manna-made stone. Plenty to make an arsenal of shiisaa. That disturbed the ranger captain more than anything else. What one Weirwynd coveted, scores of other wizards would be nipping at the heels. There would be trouble from that quarter.

  Everywhere from the towers to the stables gold cloaks fluttered in the wind. Solvicar. The guards at the gilt-laced gates looked the rangers as one might regard a limping dog. They seemed indifferent to the chaotic, hyena-like laughter of the drunkard within.

  “We have need for Kalam’s audience.” The guards eyed them as vipers to the bird, but fists rattled upon the doors, followed by the sharp whine of pivoting hinges. What lay revealed was enough to paralyze the ranger party in shock.

  Solvicars, champions of the Lord, roared with the giddiness that only wine could inspire. Expensive wine from the smell. Enough to break songs with various lengths of belching. A thousand more stained white cloaks from slopping flagons. White cloaks. Those new to the order, cheating the vows that guarded Vicars from temptation. Too young to know what they had sacrificed, the fools seemed intent to crush a lifetime’s worth of vice in one night.

  The wine, however, was still a mystery. Curious John bent to fill an errant mug, sniffed and muttered an oath. There was easily a king’s ransom being downed like common swill, and more than enough to reduce a noble to begging on the streets. Watching it all was an elder Vicar, hunched in a plain cloak, and glaring at the wanton drunkenness as though wishing to burn a man alive with but a look.

  “Sergeant,” John began, as the pips above the shepherd’s crook named him so. “We are rangers come to an audience with Lord Kalam—” The words were sliced in half but a grunt and a gesture. A severe disregard for protocol. An ill omen, indeed. And it was growing all the stranger.

  “John?”

  Mykel LeKym. The legendary Lazarus. And the handmaiden so coveted by Queen Christina. “What are you doing here?” A twitch of movement rounded Stromgald so fast the world was a blur. “Wait a minute. What are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you too,” Mathias Tolrep answered. He looked at Lazarus, and in that look Stromgald read nervousness. They have history, he realized. A bargain that perhaps left the privateer with the short end of the stick. But that was difficult to imagine, given the two men parted in opposing directions. Yet there was something about Lazarus that lend truth to the rumor of the man being in two places at once. And yet Stromgald found himself leaning closer to the rumor instead of common sense.

  Then Stromgald noted the various colors of the men lining behind Tolrep. “So, you’re the Polyglot Crusader I’ve heard so much about.”

  “The what?”

  “The Polyglot Crusader.” A moment of climbing confusion. “The pirate who leads a crew of ragtag men descended from all walks of race?”

  “I was just getting my ship back!” Tolrep looked horrified. “I haven’t done anything like that! How the hell did this spread –” Realization cut him short. Slitted, smoldering eyes fastened onto a certain fuzzed blip towards the line’s end. “I’m going to kill him.”

  Mykel frowned. “Kill who?”

  “Funny Jack.”

  “Funny Jack? Who’s Funny Jack?”

  “My translator. When I get my hands on him...” He blinked as the librarian’s dead arm blocked his path.

  “Not now, Matt. Remember why you came here.”

  “For the crew. Right. First, I get the crew sanctuary. Then I’ll strangle that conniving bastard.” Stromgald and Mykel exchanged looks over Tolrep’s head. Humor was always a strange bedfellow.

  “Hey!” Tolrep called out. Immediately all talk amidst the multihued crew was cut short. “Form up into groups. I’m going to talk to this overseer.” Instantly the rabble clustered amidst themselves, right down from shade to age. The only sound was the lazy breath of the sea.

  “You went on only one mission?” asked Mykel.

  “Yeah. Why does everybody find that odd?”

  “Because they’re obeying your every word as though you’ve been leading them for years.” Stromgald cackled. “Even my unit needed months before any kind of respect developed. And you did this in one mission.”

&
nbsp; “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

  “You see where we have cause to doubt you,” the librarian added.

  “Believe what you want. I don’t care.” His forehead creased with realization. “Wait a minute. Why are you following me?”

  “Personally?” Mykel asked. “I just want to see what happens next.”

  “It’s trivial,” Stromgald added. “But...yeah. Same reason.”

  “Idiots,” Tolrep muttered. They were finally at the door. Three heavy raps on the polished frame. Nothing. Three more raps. Nothing.

  “Uh, Matt...”

  “Be quiet. You just have to be patient.” Another three raps. Again, nothing. “God damn it. Are they all deaf in there?”

  “Matt!”

  “What?”

  “That’s the out-house.”

  “Oh.” Stromgald shook his head. Tolrep was handling the new stress well, considering the stampede of events that ran over him. Now I know why Orson picks on the rookies. The reverie cut off as a young white man opened the gates, his face already twisted with scorn and contempt. He does not want to be here, the ranger captain glared at Tolrep. Just get on with it.

  “May I help you...Sirs?”

  “My name is Mathias Tolrep, of the vessel Tennant. I ask sanctuary of this household so that my crew can spent a night without the possibility of getting their heads blown off.”

  Subtle, Stromgald thought. Really subtle.

  “We do not shelter anyone who associates with pirates. Good day.”

  Tolrep snatched the door ring with one hand and pulled it out of the butler’s hands. “Look, I’m not looking for trouble. I speak the truth and...”

  “You’ve already wasted enough of my time.”

  Again, the doors swiveled clothes; again, it was blocked by an outstretched arm.

  “I think you should listen to him,” Mykel said quietly. “He’s not the sort to fool around.” Stromgald eyed the librarian in a new light. There was a fire in him that had not been there in their last sojourn. Perhaps it was from protecting the handmaiden. Perhaps.