Ander nodded, eager to undertake the mission. Jeratt watched the two, eyes narrow, expression hard and unreadable.
“After you do that, don’t come back hem” She slipped a finger into the neck of her shirt and hooked the slender gold chain that held two halves of the king’s ring. In a quick gesture, she removed one half and put it into Ander’s hand. “Now, before you leave, speak with Jeratt-”
Jeratt, glaring at her now.
“-and he will tell you how to get to Lightning Falls. You must go carefully, because you’re returning to the area where Knights have been searching for me and very likely now they are also searching for you. When you come near Lightning Falls, you will be challenged by folk who look like”-she laughed “-who look like us. They’re outlaws like us, but answer the challenge humbly and quickly, no arrogance with these folk. Tell them you are from Jeratt and me, be quick, and show my ring. Tell whoever challenges you that seek a woman named simply ‘Elder,’ and tell her all that has happened here.”
Ander took it all in silently, his eyes on her, lighting in excitement for the mission, shadowing in sadness for having to leave.
“After you tell her that, Ander, tell her Jeratt and I will be home before winter. Tell her things are changing in the kingdom now.”
“I’ll do it all, Kerian. I promise. Just the way you tell me.”
“And you won’t come back. The risk that you’d be followed isn’t great, but it’s a chance we can’t take.”
Reluctantly, he agreed.
“You’re a fool,” Jeratt growled when the boy was gone. “You’re reckless. It’s wrong to send the boy so far alone, with such a mission. He’ll be lucky no one kills him before he gets to the falls. By all the gone gods, you’re a fool, Kerian!”
She flared, hot and high and sudden. “Don’t ever call me that again!”
He didn’t step back; in the sudden silence of the forest, Jeratt held his ground, his face set and stubborn.
“You think you’re not bein’ foolish? Y’think the boy didn’t just turn to fire for you? Kerian, he’s in love with ya. He’ll do anything you tell him, and he won’t be thinkin’ about anyone else but you.” Jeratt shook his head, then spat. “That will get someone killed someday.”
“Getting prescient, like Elder, are you?”
“Wonder why I say you’re a fool, do you?”
She flared again, he laughed at that and tapped his chest.
“I have a year or two more on me than you, Kerian. I haven’t lived in gilded palaces; I’ve lived in the hard world, the place where people die of stupidity, their own or someone else’s. Happens all the time, and I ain’t no seer, I just pay attention to what I see.”
The falling fire lay between them, yet they might have been standing toe to toe.
Coldly, Kerian said, “You are welcome to your opinion, Jeratt. I don’t know if you’re right or wrong about Ander, and I can’t undo a boy’s heart, but I can use him where he can do the best work. He’ll let the others know what we’re doing, let them know to be ready for our return. And hell be away from me for a while.”
Jeratt’s stance relaxed, his expression softened. “Y’did what y’could, I’ll grant it.” He stood in grudging silence for a moment longer. “The plan isn’t all that foolish. I’ll grant it, too.”
“But-?”
He met her eyes. “But y’ should have sent him on a long time ago.”
By her silence, she agreed.
Between them embers breathed faintly. “I’ll not name you ‘fool’ again, but I might be sayin’ one day or another that y’could think something through a little harder. You have a good, keen mind, Kerian. Sharp as a dagger and bright You learn, and that quickly.”
“But girl,” he continued, and she heard the affection in the naming, “y’came out of your king’s palace and walked into the forest with no idea but to find a brother who didn’t have the good sense to be happy about it. Now you’re puttin’ together a plan your king doesn’t know he can dream of. Y’like to leap at the bright idea. Maybe that’s good, but a lot of the time, it isn’t.”
Kerian kicked at the dirt, sending a fine spray of it onto the embers. Jeratt did the same. Between them, they smothered the fire. The half-elf winked.
“Well, even when I think you’re bein’, uh, not too sensible, I’m with you, Kerianseray of Qualinesti. I like the flash of your steel.”
* * * * *
Jeratt liked the flash of Kerian’s steel, and Lord Eamutt Thagol learned to hate it. Through the end of summer and into the beginning of a late-coming autumn, he found himself having to increase the size of the escort of Knights who accompanied tribute wagons to Acris. What had seemed to be isolated incidents of brigandage began to look like more than that Lone wagons, no matter the number of Knights, were raided with increasing frequence and efficiency, and survivors reported that they were struck by growing bands of elves who fought by no rules any Knight or soldier knew, who seemed to reinvent their tactics daily. Soon he sent to Qualinost for more draconians with the trains that went on to the capital.
Through the summer of hot days and steamy nights, the outlaws became four, and then five and then more. Bayel and Felan left their farms and joined them, and so did others from the dales, men and women who wanted to strike a blow. They never ran as a solid or identifiable group. Sometimes they were eight, nine, ten at a time. After a raid the dalemen would fade away, back to their lives as peaceable citizens of a bleeding kingdom. They came at call, they left when the work was done, and each knew the danger of collaborators, the invisible enemy. Each knew he must not speak with anyone who was not part of the group.
They came to be known as the Night People, for they struck most often at night and vanished into the darkness before they could be identified. They went with soot-blacked faces, their bright eyes the more fearsome. They moved like shadows, like darkness.
The Night People. Kerian spoke the name to her growing band of warriors gleefully, proudly as though it were the name of a renowned fighting order.
“They come out of the woods on all sides,” one dying Knight reported to his lord.
The Skull Knight took the man’s head in his two hands, leaned close so his eyes were the only thing the dying man saw. A great shudder went through the man, and blood spurted from the wound in his side. In his mind, he felt Thagol walking, prowling, searching for something.
He wanted a name. The Lord Knight desired to see a face, a form, to know his enemy. The dying man couldn’t give him that, and in the end the agony of his death didn’t have all that much to do with his wounds.
The Night People changed strategy. They stepped up their raids, killed as many Knights as they could, as quickly as possible, then fell back, drawing the infuriated survivors after them and into the mouth of a trap that had been well set-a wall of waiting elves who let through their compatriots and closed around the Knights, howling terrible war cries, curdling the blood with screams. They killed swiftly, and they left nothing alive behind, not Knights, not horses, not draconians. They stripped the dead of weapons and what equipment they wanted, then destroyed the rest, leaving nothing but corpses for Lord Thagol to claim.
Some of die Night People died too, but their bodies were always stolen away and hidden and buried, so that the occupying force no longer knew who to trust in the dale.
Sitting in the tavern at Acris, Lord Thagol ransacked the minds of his dying men. He sent word to every town and hamlet in the forest, every farmstead in every dale, that the elf who gave him what he needed to know, who brought to him the head of the outlaws, would he richly rewarded-but not even then was he able to learn the face of his enemy.
At last, though, he was able to learn of one strike before it was made.
Chapter Fourteen
Felan stood before the lord Knight, his hand trembling slightly so that the parchment he held out rustled, whispering of his poorly suppressed fear. A line of sweat ran down the side of his face.
“M-my lord
,” he said.
Lord Thagol didn’t look up. Before him lay spread a map of the countryside, wide and newly made. Upon the map Felan noted the Qualinost Road, that artery connecting this rural part of the kingdom to the capital and places beyond. Today a wagon of fat sacks filled with grain waited in a secluded place, guarded by draconians and Knights. Others would join it tomorrow and the next day until there were enough to escort to the capital. One would be filled with weapons and war supplies, another perhaps filled with the tribute the dragon loved-ancient treasure. In the south of the forest, where rich manors lay, lords and ladies were beginning to pay the dragon’s tax with the family jewels.
Felan registered a series of small red marks on the map, like check marks ticking off a list These were the sites of recent encounters between the Lord Knight’s forces and the Night People. In none of these had Lord Thagol’s men fared well, and in the last, the battle near a small creek known as Brightflow, fourteen Knights had died. Two of the outlaws had perished as well, one killed by a sword, the other gone screaming to his death in a pool of acid, the revenge of the kapak draconian he had killed.
Felan swallowed, wishing his hand would steady, wishing for a sip of white wine like that in the Knight’s cup or simply a drink of water. At his hip hung a water flask, but he dared not move to reach for it. The draconian at the door had stripped him of every weapon. He’d endured the dry, cold touch of the creature’s clawed hands, its reeking breath on his cheek as it grabbed away the knife at his belt, the bow and quiver across his back, even the small eating knife everyone in this part of the country carried as a matter of course. He felt that disgusting touch even now, even as, standing before the Knight’s table, and he felt the draconian’s reptilian eyes still on him. He didn’t doubt that reaching for the flask would be a mistake.
He said again, “My lord.”
At the bar, the taverner looked up, an old elf with thickening jowls and thinning silver hair. No one but these four, taverner, Knight, draconian, and Felan, occupied the large common room. Lord Thagol had taken up residence here and made it his command post for the region. If this were another Knight, Felan might have wondered whether the human missed the comforts of the capital, the glittering towers, the good food and quarters. This Knight out of Monastery Bone, though, bore the look of one used to the lack of comfort and the imposition of discipline. Here, in the Waycross, he looked like a man in his element, poring over maps and messages, wailing for the reports from soldiers. He’d been here all the summer long, the winter before, and back to the end of autumn. In all that time, the owner of the tavern hadn’t had payment for the food and wine Lord Thagol demanded for his Knights and draconians, and no elf for miles around came to dine at his tables or drink at his bar. The poor taverner had the pinched, white-eyed look of a man who sees ruin ahead of him.
Felan waited, and Sir Earautt Thagol put another check mark on the map, his face white in the flickering firelight and shadow. His lips compressed in a thin, hard line. Beside his hand the crystal inkpot looked like a small carafe of blood. Now he set aside the quill pen, moved the inkpot aside with the side of his little finger. When he finally looked up and met Felan’s eyes, the elf’s knees wobbled. His blood changed to ice, washing through him so that he thought the horrible cold would stop his heart.
“Remind me. Do I know you?” the Knight asked.
In his mind Felan heard a sound like footsteps so clearly he almost turned to see who’d come up behind him. He swallowed again, this time harder.
“I am Felan of the Northern Dales, my lord. I-I don’t-we have never met. I have brought a letter-a paper.”
Sweat ran on him now, soaking his shirt. In his mind, he heard the footsteps coming again. He looked over his shoulder, very carefully. No, the draconian stood at its post, a tall, reeking presence in the shadows by the door.
Felan held up the paper, in the dim light seeing the sweat stains on it. None of the ink had been smeared though. He’d taken care to preserve it in a condition to be read. When Thagol took the paper, his fingers brushed against Felan’s.
“M-my lord,” the elf gasped.
Lord Thagol read. The lines were few, the message clear. The bearer was to receive compensation according to the measure of his worth.
“What,” the Knight asked, “shall I use to measure your worth?”
Felan regretted coming. He wanted to run, to risk that bolting the room, flinging past the draconian and out the door. He held still. “I have valuable information, my lord.”
Thagol looked up. Felan thought, as others before had thought, that the man’s face was so pale it looked like a burn scar. The Knight’s eyes seemed flat, dead, and empty. Felan had to lock his knees to stay standing in place. In his head the footsteps stopped, as though a searcher had come close to what he was looking for.
“And that information is … ?”
“The outlaws …the ones they call the Night People. I-I know about them.”
The Knight remained silent, staring.
“I-I have entered their trust, my lord. I know how they work. I know-” He stopped and swallowed, trying to ease his parched throat. “I know that they sweep out of the forest and do their foul work, and I know they vanish into it again, invisible. They are not invisible, my lord, and they are not such an army. The leaders, at the core, are only four.”
Lord Thagol raised a pale brow, interested now. “Four?”
“Only that, my lord. These four are the heart of the trouble in the forest. They plot, and they plan, and they are the ones who call for other men and women to fight and then send them all away again when the work is done.” He looked around nervously. “I know where they are tonight, my lord, and I know they’ll stay there for a day or two.” Emboldened, he moved closer to the table and put a finger on the place a little north of the Brightflow. “There is a glade here, surrounded by tall pines. You wouldn’t think to look for it From any direction it looks like more forest with no clearing to see unless you stumble upon it This is their hiding place for now. They will move again soon, either to gather a force to strike or simply to move. For now, they are there, planning. Hiding. Just the four.”
Just the four. Cut off the head, and the twisty, slippery creature preying on this once-quiet corner of Beryl’s captive kingdom would die. Lord Thagol smiled. Felan heard the hiss and sigh of the hearth fire. He glanced at the tav-erner who did not meet his eye.
“You know this,” Thagol said, “because you have gained their trust? How?”
“I-I worked with them. For a time. For a while.” He spoke hastily now. “Until I saw how wrong they are. Now I am here.”
Lord Thagol tapped the parchment. “With this.”
“I had it from one of your Knights, my lord. When I told him what I knew, he sped me on to you.”
“Very wise of you both,” Lord Thagol drawled. “You won’t mind if I question you a bit more closely, will you?”
Felan opened his mouth to speak. The icy fear that had chilled him upon entering the Skull Knight’s presence now clamped around his mind with terrible grinding claws. They spread each thought wide, as though each were a book. They plunged deep, the icy claws, tearing at his mind. Felan could not do anything but scream.
The draconian turned, barely interested. At the bar, the taverner shuddered and poured himself a drink. The bottle rattled against the glass. No one noticed, and Felan’s scream went on and on, far past the point where his voice turned to rags and blood choked him.
An instant later, he fell to his knees, onto his face at the feet of the Skull Knight, voiceless and begging for mercy.
Like a glacier, the ice in his mind withdrew, and the elf Felan lay in the rushes on the tavern floor, blood trickling from the sides of his mouth, from his eyes, from his ears. His message had been delivered and accepted. Lord Thagol looked at the taverner and suppressed a yawn.
“I didn’t really question him all that closely, you know. All was as it seems, and he is a turncoat. But…”
He shrugged. “Well, it seems he was a bit weak-minded.”
He jerked his chin and the elf came out from behind the bar. He dragged the corpse across the floor, silently cursing the blood trailing behind and grumbling about how he’d have to go off to the well now and fill a bucket to clean the floor.
The draconian stepped away from the door with laughter that sounded like snarling. The door slammed shut, and the elf dragged Felan’s body all the way across the dusty dooryard and behind the springhouse where cheeses hung and jugs of milk cooled. He left it there and went to find a shovel. He was all the rest of the day digging in the earth behind the springhouse, far enough away from the spring itself so that the water wouldn’t undermine the mean grave. No one bothered him or called him back to his tavern. Lord Thagol had matters of his own to consider, and he didn’t care about the concerns of taverners or turncoats. The taverner buried the dead in peace, and when he was finished he covered the raw earth with piled stones. Wolves didn’t run often in this part of the forest, but the elf wouldn’t take the risk of the grave being disturbed.
He murmured something at the end of his work, standing over the mound of earth and stone. It might have been a groan for the hard work. It might have been a prayer. So weary was he that even he didn’t know.
At night, when the taverner lay down in his narrow bed in the smallest room above the kitchen, he listened to the sound of iron-shod hoofs thundering into the door-yard, and he lay a long time awake hearing the raucous voices of a half dozen or more Knights feasting from his larder and drinking his bar dry. He heard them leave again, then there was only silence as the Lord Knight retired, leaving one draconian on guard at the door.
Those vile creatures, the taverner thought, never seemed to need sleep.
Neither did the Skull Knight. Even sleeping, Lord Thagol did not sleep. Lying in the bed of the finest room in the Waycross, he dreamed and dreamed again the encounter he’d had with the elf Felan. There had been nothing in the turncoat’s mind to suggest that everything he reported to Thagol was less than true. Nothing. Not the least shading of exaggeration, not the least shaving of the truth marred the tale. That was the problem. The elf’s presentation of a truthful telling had been, well, too true.
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