The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Yes,” Darius agreed, meeting her eyes and then looking away again, “after that we wandered for a while, dodging enemy patrols, taking a lone scout or two.”

  “Well that’s good then; you were still in the fight and not just wandering aimlessly around,” Falon said encouragingly, as she strangely got the feeling that the Imperial needed it. Whatever had happened in the woods, he clearly was only saying part of it. Most likely, whatever it was, had not been the sort of thing a person would like to relive. She had several such memories of her own from the time in the forest as ready examples.

  The Imperial’s shoulders hunched slightly and he muttered something.

  “What was that?” Falon asked.

  Darius cleared his throat. “I said, ‘after that we stumbled upon the barbarian’s main camp’—although, truthfully, we got the information out of one of the scouts,” he said finally looking up again and meeting her eyes.

  “Ah,” Falon said feeling at a loss. Was Darius, the proud, fierce, war-trained Imperial Sergeant, saying that he had wandered off deliberately? She was having a hard time reconciling her previous image of the Imperial with this new—potentially inaccurate—information. “What happened after that?” she asked neutrally.

  This time the Imperial had no trouble locking eyes with her and holding them. “After that we disguised ourselves as savages, with furs on our backs and grease in our hair, and snuck into the camp,” Darius replied. “It was filled mostly with women and children, and only few old men as guards. After that it was easy enough to use information provided by the scout to locate the tent of one of the wealthier chieftains, and make our way back here with several sacks of loot and treasures per man.”

  “I see,” Falon said slowly.

  “When I said we got lost in the woods, that was true…well, true enough,” the Imperial added. “But after we found the scouts and interrogated the second one, we could have come back at any time. We chose to find the Ice Raider camp,” he finished stoically, looking as if a weight were off him with this last admission.

  Since he seemed done, Falon turned to go as she had a terrible sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. This was not what she had expected to hear from the man.

  “I just told you I led the men on a looting expedition instead of returning to the battle as soon as I had the chance; have you nothing to say to this?” Darius called after her, even going so far as to take a few steps as if to chase her down.

  “Was it worth it?” she asked quietly.

  “If this Prince has ever heard of the Law of Thirds, I’ve seen no sign of it,” Darius said angrily. “He wants half of everything claimed off the field and we can keep the other half to divide as we desire. There’s nothing about setting aside a portion for the rest of our army to share in the splits. It’s every man for himself—with the Prince taking the lions share,” he glared at her. “A proper apportion is a third for the men who gather the plunder, a third for the officers commanding those men, and a final third to be split with the army at large—which is, again, split in thirds for the General, the Officers and then their men, so that every unit that participates gets at least a share of the spoils, no matter where they serve. After the last battle, the men with me lived instead of dying, and the whole company is better for it. So yes! It was worth it,” he said, grinding his teeth mulishly.

  “Then set aside my share and put it in the tent,” Falon said, meeting his glare without difficulty and once again it was Darius who was the first to look away. “As you say, your men lived and I can’t say they didn’t earn their share of the plunder.”

  Darius opened his mouth and then closed it, a pained expression on his face.

  This time when she turned away, the Imperial looked almost defeated. She saw him close his eyes briefly before squaring his shoulders, giving her a salute and turning away.

  She knew that as the Officer she was probably supposed to yell at him, chastise him in some way, maybe by taking away his ale ration and then have him whipped with the knotted rope. From the slump of his shoulders this was probably what he’d expected—or maybe even desired. But who was she to upbraid him?

  After that last disastrous, but necessary, charge, had she said enough was enough and husbanded the lives of her men? Or chosen a wise winning strategy that hammered the enemy for minimal losses to her own side? No. Instead she’d taken them off for yet another disastrous fight—one that far too many of her warriors hadn’t survived, let alone walked away from.

  When faced with a similar choice, the Sergeant had taken his men off for a little bit of looting and stealing before coming back to check on the situation. As he’d said, most of the men who survived his last battle lived to thieve the barbarian camp and then walk home laden with loot and plunder. She knew only all too well that the same could not be said of the men she had led after they separated.

  Squaring her shoulders, Falon walked out of the camp. She might not be much when it came to being a leader of men, but while she had the job, she would do what needed to be done. And her sleep taken into account or not, no one kept a Prince waiting. If there was even the possibility that it had been a true message, she owed it to her men to hurry over to the main tent and beg the Prince’s pardon as speedily as possible.

  Bad things happened to those who made Royalty wait. Even if they had a good cause—which she doubted that ‘sleeping in,’ even after several life and death battles, would qualify in the eyes of Prince William—the Royal Marshal held the power of life and death over Falon and all of her men.

  It was a fast walk as she couldn’t manage anything better, and the idea of taking the time to saddle her horse was just too painful to contemplate in her current stiff, sore state.

  Chapter 46: Murder She Wrote

  It took her half the day, and her stomach was grumbling at its complete and utter lack of food since lunch yesterday, to find the Prince. First, when she showed up at the Prince’s tent, they sent her to the coffles where the prisoners were kept penned up—at least, the ones who were supposed to be valuable enough to expect a ransom from their tribes for. What happened to those Ice Raiders not considered valuable enough to be ransomed she didn’t know, nor was she particularly eager to find out.

  Arriving at the coffles, they sent her to Sire Morlan’s tent and though she was pleased enough to catch a glimpse of Erik Knightson outside his uncle’s tent, he was standing guard and had no time for dillydallying with a casual tavern acquaintance—even one that had led the rescue effort for the Lords and Knights back on the hill.

  So after waiting almost an hour to see the Sire, she then found out she had to march all the way to the other side of the camp. Apparently, Baron William, the master of Ice Finger Keep, Lord of the Ice March and widely proclaimed Fist of the North —, not to be confused with another William of the same first name, who was Prince and Royal Marshal of this Army—liked to keep a large tent out with his men while in the field, even if said field was just outside his own castle. And it was rumored the Prince had gone there to speak with the Baron about some urgent matter regarding several of the enemy shamans.

  So, marching her by-then hungry belly and weary feet over to the Baron’s camp, Falon took one look at the large tent that was completely devoid of guards and felt like giving into despair.

  It seemed that her search for the Prince was over, at least until she got some food inside her, because it didn’t look like anyone was in just then and she wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of the day marching around camp looking for a Prince who clearly didn’t want to be found—at least not by the likes of Falon Rankin, Lieutenant and Squire extraordinaire.

  Stepping up to the double tent flaps serving as the pavilion’s door, she knocked on the foot-long board of polished wood which the high and mighty liked to hang outside the entrance of their tent for courtesy’s sake, and then she promptly turned to go, with her duty to report fulfilled.

  There were no guards and the tent was closed up, clearly no one was home
, and she didn’t want to get caught outside loitering. Someone might take her for a thief of some kind. But even more important, she was hungry and planned to stop at the first food vendor she found! She swore to herself that she would even go so far as to eat roasted rat, so long as they didn’t tell her it was actually rat and merely left it unsaid.

  She’d taken two steps when she heard a thump from inside the tent. Falon froze mid-step and worked to suppress a groan, she had almost been able to imagine the skewer of rat— er, unusual stringy goat, in her mouth. Even if the Prince were here she wasn’t sure if it was worth forgoing her meal for any longer. She sighed and turned back to knock again.

  “Baron William? Prince William?” Falon asked cautiously, and when no one answered right away she looked around guiltily before putting ear to against the cloth wall of the tent.

  It sounded like there was a lot of commotion going on, but no one was saying anything.

  Falon’s eyes widened with alarm and her hand went to the hilt of the Boar Knife given her by Vance, the departed Blacksmith.

  There was a crash inside and the tent bulged right above the tent flap. Falon jumped back just in time to see Baron William, the Fist of the North, fall half-sprawling out of the tent.

  His mouth opened and closed like a beached fish’s, and he gurgled something at her even as he clutched the wooden hilt of an iron dagger sticking out of his torso where the ribs ended and the fat of his belly began.

  “Dear Lady,” Falon hissed, jerking out the Boar Knife.

  The opening at the bottom of the tent flaps had been forced open by the fallen and dying Baron, but now a set of hands—one of which held a sword, and the other the cloth of the tent—thrust aside the flaps at the top.

  In a wink of time, Falon had her Shri-Kriv inches from the man’s throat. After all, it wouldn’t do to kill one of the Baron’s loyal guards, but at the same time she couldn’t let an assassin—“You!” Falon and the man said at the same time as recognition dawned.

  It was none other than the Prince standing over the fallen Baron with a drawn sword.

  “Quick, get his shoulders and bring him inside,” Prince William hissed at her, but when he started to lean back, her knife almost seemed to take on a life of its own and followed his movements. Seeing the shri-kriv moving in his direction, the Prince froze in place with his eyes locking onto the weapon.

  “What goes here?” Falon whispered, her eyes widening until she felt like her eyeballs were going to pop out.

  A calculating look flashed across the Prince’s face, and if she hadn’t been paying attention she would have missed it. As it was she now wondered if she’d been seeing things.

  “What are you doing here, Lieutenant?” the Prince hissed under his breath, as if there wasn’t a man lying on the ground between them breathing out his last gasps of air.

  “What am I doing here?” Falon said shrilly. “Why are you standing over a dead body with your sword drawn?”

  “See? No weapon,” the Prince said slowly as he carefully set aside his sword.

  “That is no answer!” Falon hissed, looked to either side like she’d seen rabbits do when trying to spot predators. But there was no one sneaking up on her, and what was more there was still no one else in the vicinity of the tent. That couldn’t be right, could it? There might be valuables inside the Baron’s tent that a thief might like to steal. Why were there no guards…?

  “If we’re to save his life, he needs attention,” the Prince insisted.

  “Save his life?! When you’re probably the one who—” Falon said in a rising voice, not eager to enter a tent with a potential murderer any time soon.

  “Be very careful of what you accuse a Prince of the Blood Royal, Squire,” Prince William said, his face darkening thunderously.

  “But—” Falon wanted to protest, but she knew he was most likely right. To falsely accuse a member of the Royal Family was a hanging offense for the common man…she wasn’t sure about for gentlemen of ‘her’ stripe. But then again, if it came to her word against his, the likelihood of being discovered for a sister instead of the brother she pretended meant she wouldn’t stand trial as a gentleman but as a lady—one of questionable morals, who lied and deceived her way into military service. If they held her as a Lady once they found out, she still might be okay if she could probe her case, but questionable things were said to happen in prison to Ladies of questionable virtue. She felt her heart clench. She couldn’t risk a misstep here, not without being absolutely certain of what was going on.

  “Look, I’ve set aside my sword and you can keep your knife; just help me get him inside and I can explain everything to your satisfaction,” the Prince said, speaking quickly and then without waiting for her to answer, he grabbed the baron by his heels and started dragging him inside.

  Falon stared at the Prince’s sword and, unwilling to take the chance, snapped it up. It was much heavier than her Imperial-style sword, but then she was much stronger when she needed to be by using the power of the Earth—which she probably should have done the moment she saw the Prince standing over the baron with a weapon.

  Inside the tent, the baron moaned, his voice rising to a gurgle in his throat as Falon stepped into the tent. Her eyes immediately caught on the gasping and gurgling baron as he sprawled on the floor. She looked at the dagger sticking out of his chest—a dagger with an ornately carved, wooden handle with a bronze blade, clearly of Ice Raider make.

  “I don’t think he’s going to make it,” Prince William confided, both hands raised into the air as she swung toward him, her shri-kriv clenched in a white-knuckled grip.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  “The Baron and I were conversing—somewhat heatedly, as we were wont to do, I’ll admit, as any fool would know the Baron and I were not the best of friends,” Prince William said.

  “He’s not yet dead,” Falon said, looking at the baron as he weakly clasped the dagger in his gut.

  “Of course there’s still hope; forgive me,” the Prince said and then gestured to the other side of the large tent.

  Unwillingly, for fear of being attacked herself, Falon looked and saw the bound figures of two savage shamans with a third crumpled in the corner with his throat slit. The bonds on his hands were partially undone, so that one of his hands was essentially free.

  “While we were speaking with heated voice,” the Prince said pointedly.

  “I heard a little before I knocked,” Falon said, and then felt a flash of fear at the shuttered look that swept the Prince’s face.

  “In quiet, yet heated voices, so that if there were spies lurking outside the tent—as spies are known to do,” he said giving her a pointed look.

  Falon flushed at the insinuation. She was no spy! But she did have to admit it looked suspicious. Then her eyes tracked back to the ornate hilt of the dagger stuck into the Baron and stuck there as she tried to process the situation with her increasingly numb mind.

  The Prince snapped his fingers in front of her face and Falon jerked back, lifting her shri-kriv defensively.

  “While we were otherwise engaged, primarily discussing their fate,” he went over and kicked the dead shaman,

  “this one,” the Prince continued, pointing at the one he had just kicked and, apparently unsatisfied with his gesture, kicked him again, “used a knife he had secreted on his person to slip his bonds. He then used said weapon to most foully stab the Baron’s person before turning on me.”

  Falon stared wide-eyed at the Prince, and once again her eyes drifted back to the gut-stabbed Baron. She figured there was no way the Fist of the North would survive until moonrise, not with the amount of blood leaking out of his body. There was a vastly larger amount of blood pooling around the knife on his belly and torso than there had been when she’d first seen him, and she found herself oddly dispassionate in her appraisal of the scene.

  “I am as much a victim here as the Baron; the only difference is that I had the great fortune to be th
e shaman’s second target. I suspect he had no way of knowing that the younger, more vital man,” Falon’s eyes, which had started to drift away, jerked back to the Prince with disbelief at the self-serving, almost boastful tone when he spoke of his youth and vigor, “was the true leader of the army.”

  He paused and gave her a searching look, which Falon was able to meet and hold only because she’d had a lot of practice meeting and holding a man’s stare since joining the army.

  “You do believe me of course…don’t you?” he asked tensely, and Falon could feel her life teetering on a knife’s edge. Accuse the Prince, and right or wrong her world—nay, her very life as she knew it, as well as the lives of her family—would be over.

  “I was never a friend of the Baron,” Falon said in as steady a voice as she could manage, and in that moment she felt something inside her break.

  “It’s like that, is it…” the Prince said.

  “I wasn’t here when it happened, but I can see dagger and the dead shaman; the stage speaks for itself,” Falon said, slowly gesturing to encompass the tent. The next words were difficult to get out, and she almost choked on them, “My apologies for my actions, lord Prince. I didn’t understand.”

  “It is but a trifle,” Prince William said as he looked down at her shri-kriv and then back up at her with a lift of his brow.

  It took her trembling hands three tries to get the knife back in its sheath, and she even pricked herself the second time. But it was just a small nick to the belly through her shirt, so she ignored it and the tiny red bloom she was certain would be removing from the shirt later on.

  “You might be expected to give a statement. Now, I realize this is all coming as something of a shock, but the Baron is a widowed man with no children or close cousins. There will be questions,” the Prince said with a level look, “especially since, in my office of Royal Lord Marshal, I have the right—the duty, even—to ensure a suitable candidate is ensconced to protect the Frost March. Such an installation would be subject to the King’s final approval of course, before we leave.