A Darkness Forged in Fire

by Chris (chris R. ) Evans

  The dwarf grunted and let out a deep breath as he levered back the steel-reinforced wooden bow located halfway down the barrels. Alwyn edged away, hoping all the while that Yimt knew what he was doing.

  "What, we're just gonna shoot?" Alwyn asked, his voice rising to a squeak. He'd heard about Yimt from other soldiers. The Little Mad One. He'd been in the army most of his life, starting out as a boy drummer at the age of thirteen. Back then, long before Alwyn was born, that was about the only way a dwarf could join the Imperial Army, that or the engineers, the artillery, or a flint knapper. And here it was today and Yimt was still only a private. Alwyn was beginning to see why.

  "What if it's an officer out checking the piquets?" Alwyn asked.

  "Good point. We'll shoot on three." Yimt brought his shatterbow up to his shoulder and took aim.

  "Hang on, my musket isn't loaded," Alwyn whispered furiously, fishing for a cartridge in his pouch. "You really think it's an officer?"

  Yimt turned and made a face at Alwyn. "Course it ain't no officer. Them peacocks strut around like a whore on payday. Whoever that is don't want to be seen, which means we got every right to shoot. Still…it's nice to think it could be an officer."

  Alwyn finished loading his musket and crawled forward so that his upper body was outside the mass of leaves. He took aim, his hands shaking so that the musket bobbed around like a dandelion in the wind. The shadow was moving along the fence line as if looking for something. It was large, very large.

  "Ready…fire!" Yimt yelled.

  There was the click of the trigger, the throaty twang of the strings propelling the darts up the barrels as the bow sprang forward from its bent position, followed by a double crack as the fuse on each dart was ignited by two embedded flints. A fraction of a second later, the two darts hurtled out of the barrels trailing a brilliant shower of sparks that turned the darkness into broad daylight.

  "What happened to counting down?" Alwyn yelled back, then fired, too, the flash and bang of his musket rather puny in comparison to Yimt's cannonade.

  Alwyn heard three heavy sounds, like a butcher slamming a hunk of raw meat onto a marble table, followed by a muffled explosion.

  "We got him!" Yimt exclaimed, charging forward. He ran surprisingly fast on his stubby legs.

  "Wait up," Alwyn cried, stumbling after him toward the fence.

  Shouts rang up and down the line and the sound of running boots could be heard.

  "So what did we hit?" Alwyn asked, slipping on something and having to grab Yimt's shoulder to keep from falling. Yimt said nothing, just stared down at the body before him.

  Alwyn let go and knelt for a better look, then jumped back. Great chunks of flesh and bones littered the ground and dripped off the fence. The head, however, was still intact. "It's…it's a rakke! I don't believe it. I seen one once in a picture book my granny used to read to me."

  "Your granny had one twisted way of showing affection if she was showing pictures of that to a youngster," Yimt said, handing his shatterbow to Alwyn and unsheathing his other weapon, a drukar. Like the shatterbow, the drukar was made for dwarves. The blade reflected no light at all, its blackened finish appearing like a darker shadow in the night. It was a foot and a half long, six inches wide, and angled down at the halfway point, giving it a distinctly talonlike appearance.

  "Granny was from the old country," Alwyn said, slowly edging backward from the scattered remains of the monster spread out before him. "She used to tell me all kinds of stuff about magic, especially the stuff that was evil. And that thing was one of them."

  "Ally, relax," Yimt said, hefting his drukar between his hands. "It's dead."

  Alwyn shook his head. "But it always was dead—at least, long before you and I came along. Yimt, don't you understand, Granny said they died off ages ago."

  Without another word, Yimt brought the weapon down hard, sending blood and gore flying everywhere.

  "What'd you go and do that for? You said it was dead," Alwyn yelled, wiping his face with the sleeve of his jacket, his spectacles once again smeared.

  Yimt kicked the rakke's head hard with his boot. "That's the army for you. You do your duty, you serve the high and mighty, put your life on the line, and what do you get? Monsters." He turned back to Alwyn. "What did I tell you? That news crier had it right with all that talk about darkness and vigilance for enemies of the Empire and whatnot." He struck the rakke again with the drukar. "Well, if we're going to be dumped in it, you might as well learn now. When in doubt, put cold steel in it. Kill it, and then kill it again."

  "You were in doubt?" Alwyn asked. The dwarf really was mad if he thought that thing had still been alive.

  Yimt cleaned his blade with a fistful of grass and shook his head. "Naw, it really was dead the first time," he remarked, the bitterness in his voice as acidic as the drake sweat.

  Alwyn looked from Yimt to the rakke then back to Yimt again. "Then what's the problem?"

  Yimt gave the head one more kick and spat. "There's never an officer around when you want one."

  Swinging lanterns appeared out of the night as more soldiers arrived. One stepped forth and surveyed the scene.

  "What have you done now?" Corporal Kritton asked, staring at the fleshy wreckage on the ground. He was an elf, one of the few still in the Imperial Army after the disbanding of the Iron Elves. His words were soft, yet they carried the weight of steel shot in them. "If you shot another water buffalo trying to infiltrate the line, you'll be marching with full packs all the way back to Calahr."

  Alwyn's mouth went dry. The corporal absolutely terrified him. He was only the second elf he'd ever known, the first being the cobbler down the street from his home. Mr. Yuimi had been small, quiet, always bent over a piece of shoe leather whenever Alwyn had stopped in to see if he needed any chores done. No matter how silently Alwyn entered the shop, Mr. Yuimi always knew he was there, tossing a chunk of licorice to exactly where Alwyn was standing without ever looking. Corporal Kritton was equally good at knowing where his soldiers were, but unlike kind old Mr. Yuimi, Kritton never gave you a reason to smile when he found you.

  "It ain't like that, Corp," Yimt said, sounding not at all intimidated by the elf's threats. "We was mindin' our own business, being the ever-vigilant eyes and ears of Her Majesty—"

  "Silence." The elf turned his stare to Alwyn for a moment, then back to the dwarf. In the bright glow of the moon, his face was cast half in shadow, blurring the sharp features Alwyn knew were there. It was his eyes, though, that gave Alwyn the willies. They were green, shining in the night like a cat's.

  "What did you shoot?"

  "Wasn't no officer, not in the least," Yimt said, batting the head toward the elf with the flat of his drukar. "Course, shave its face and put it in a uniform and you might not be able to tell the diff—"

  "Ki rakke…" Corporal Kritton said.

  Yimt looked at Alwyn and made a face that was most unflattering to the elf before turning back.

  "Er, right you are, Corp, it's a rakke," Yimt said, lowering his voice an octave. "Ally here's been going on about them being extinct and all, but I never believed it. You know the stories, how that elf-witch twisted creatures to her will and all. Well, last time I heard, that Shadow Monarch was still perched on that little mountain of hers, so the way I figure it, as long as she's there, these things will be, too."

  Corporal Kritton turned so fast to look at the dwarf that Alwyn thought he was going to attack Yimt. For several seconds Kritton said absolutely nothing, then he smiled, and the contents of Alwyn's stomach froze solid.

  "Her Majesty doesn't pay you for your opinions. I think what we have here is a case of dereliction of duty, allowing an enemy of the Empire to get this close to the lines," he said. "I could have you flogged for this."

  "Flogged?" Yimt said, puffing out his chest and looking at the rest of the soldiers now gathered around them. "All we did was save lives tonight, same as we do any time we get piquet duty, ain't that right, Ally?"

 
; Alwyn tried to speak, but though his mouth opened and closed, no words would come out. An off-kilter dwarf, a monster from a storybook, and a maniacal elf for a corporal, and all because he thought wearing a uniform would impress women.

  "See, Ally's so shocked that you'd think we wasn't doing our duty that he can't even speak," Yimt said, looking up at Alwyn with genuine concern in his eyes. "Tell you what, Corp, Her Majesty can keep Her medal. We'll take our reward in beer and call it square."

  If I'm really lucky, Alwyn decided, I'll pass out before they start to flog me.

  SEVEN

  Konowa chose to believe he was leading Visyna through the forest as the sun was setting on their second day together. It helped keep his mind off his rib cage. And it soothed his ego to believe, as usual, that he wasn't lost

  In the not-too-distant past, he'd led the Calahrian Imperial Army's finest regiment of soldiers into battle, and most important, brought them back out again each and every time. Killing the Viceroy then had been just one more battle for him, one more threat to the Empire destroyed.

  The Viceroy had been in league with Her, and of all the things on this earth that Konowa despised—and the list was long—serving the Shadow Monarch was the most foul. Her very existence tainted every elf of the Hyntaland, especially those like Konowa. His hand drifted up by his ruined ear tip before he realized what he was doing.

  What he hadn't realized was that while killing a hundred enemies in battle would earn you a medal, killing in peacetime got you court-martialed.

  "Does it hurt?" Visyna asked, bringing him back to the here and now.

  He quickly brought his hand down. "What? Oh…no, not really. They call it ‘ghost pain.' You forget it's no longer there," he lied, wishing he could stop remembering.

  She tilted her head to one side in a manner that suggested she didn't quite believe him, but let it be. They hadn't been together two full days and already Konowa found himself interpreting her moods by the way she held herself. Flashes of anger were always signaled by a stiffening of her body, a sight Konowa found enticing. Of course, it also meant enduring several minutes of an opinion that wasn't his own, but after a year alone it was refreshing to hear any voice that wasn't his own.

  "I think I see a clearing up ahead," she said, pushing through a wall of vines.

  "Fine, I'll have a look," he started to say as she disappeared through them without waiting. That was the other thing about her. Soldiers obeyed orders. Miss Visyna Tekoy, daughter of Almak Tekoy, most certainly did not—

  "Konowa!"

  Her shout came from the other side of the vines.

  "Are you all right?" He unslung his musket and ran after her without waiting for her reply, ducking under low-hanging branches and holding his injured ribs tight with one arm. A moment later he burst through the same wall of vines Visyna had, and found himself in a clearing, and in trouble.

  The ground shook beneath his feet. Konowa had stepped into a field of low scrub and directly into the path of a galloping horse.

  Its human rider wore the pale blue of the Imperial Army cavalry with bright silver epaulets of chain mail on each shoulder. A gleaming helm of burnished steel wrapped with a band of spotted leopard pelt and topped by a flowing plume of red-dyed horsehair adorned his head. The horse itself was brown with a single white star on its chest, which was growing at an alarming rate as animal and rider charged straight for him.

  Konowa leaped aside as man and horse whipped past, his shouted cry to hold up going unheard. He was still watching the rider when he felt a presence behind him and turned to see another trooper spurring his mount in his direction.

  The second trooper stood high in his stirrups and reached across his body to pull his saber free. The horse galloped forward and veered to Konowa's right, giving the trooper ample room to skewer Konowa on the end of his wicked-looking blade. Konowa remembered the proper tactic: Stay still, then jump to the right and bayonet the horse as it galloped past. Without a bayonet, Konowa's options were few.

  When the horse's muzzle was just feet away, he leaped to his right to keep the man's saber arm on the far side of the horse and swung the stock of the musket at the charging horse's face. The musket missed, but its continued stroke caught the trooper a glancing blow off the top of his knee. The man howled in pain and tumbled from his saddle in a billowing cloud of dust.

  Using the dust as a screen, Konowa ran forward another few steps and surprised yet another trooper, who had expected him to be standing over his fallen comrade. Konowa screamed and faked a blow at the horse's head, hoping instead to smash the stock into the metal chest plate of its rider. The horse lifted its head in surprise and stutter-stepped, causing its rider to pitch forward over its neck. Konowa let go of the musket and grabbed the temporarily off-balance man by the arm and belt, pulling with all his strength. The muscles along his ribs seared in protest, but Konowa held on, and a moment later was rewarded, as the trooper fell from his saddle to land flat on his back.

  A flash of light caught Konowa's eye and he turned to see a cavalry saber arcing gracefully toward his head. Time seemed to slow—Konowa saw everything perfectly, realizing with calm detachment that there was nothing he could do. The trooper was crouched low in his stirrups, the reins clenched between the gloved fingers of his left hand while his right swung the heavy blade downward. One large brown eye of the roan the man rode was just inches from Konowa's face, and he saw his own reflection in it. Then the eye was past and the shoulder of the horse brushed against him and he prepared to feel the bite of the cold steel.

  A rush of wind like a scythe through ripe hay whistled in front of Konowa's face and then the horse was gone and he could see the open countryside in front of him. He waited, wondering if the slightest movement would topple his head from his shoulders. Nothing seemed out of place aside from the erratic pounding of his own heart, so he carefully raised a hand and placed it against his neck. He felt sweat and grime, but no blood or cut. Amazed, Konowa turned his head to see the trooper reining in his horse and staring awestruck at the hilt guard of his saber. The blade was gone.

  Konowa looked around and saw the flat chunk of steel lying several feet away in the grass. Everything had now gone eerily quiet. He looked up to see that a group of cavalry, perhaps ten, had hauled in their steeds and were staring not at Konowa, but at Visyna. She was standing near the edge of the forest, holding a branch in front of her like a weapon. The air shimmered around her and Konowa blinked, uncertain that it wasn't sweat in his eyes. When he looked again, the air was normal and Visyna began yelling about frightening a lady and did they know who her father was?

  Before the cavalry could recover from her assault, Konowa bent over, nearly toppling to the ground as more lightning raced through his chest, and picked up the blade portion of the saber. Gritting his teeth, he walked the few paces to the sergeant who only a moment ago had tried to decapitate him.

  The shabraque over the sergeant's saddle was made of a dark-blue cloth with ornately embroidered crests in gold stitching on the rearmost portion. It depicted an arrow in flight aided by a pair of eagle's wings. Konowa recognized it at once as the emblem of the Fourteenth Household Cavalry, commanded by the Duke of Rakestraw, Colonel Jaal Edrahar.

  "You always greet strangers that way?" Konowa asked, holding out the piece of steel.

  "There's been some unrest lately, bandits and such," the sergeant said, letting go of the reins and taking back the blade. "Who are you?" His eyes took in the ragged remains of Konowa's uniform with extreme skepticism.

  "I'm just lost in the woods," Konowa said, "but that is Ms. Visyna Tekoy, daughter of Almak Tekoy. We need to get to a military outpost at once."

  As he talked, the sergeant's roan started to nuzzle Konowa's shirt. It took a big sniff, its eyes went wide, then it whinnied and stepped back.

  "And I need a flagon of beer and a wench to rub my back," the sergeant said, reining in his mount. "You aren't going anywhere until I know more."

  "I've neve
r known Colonel Edrahar's troops to refuse aide to a damsel in distress," Konowa said, looking over at Visyna, who was still menacing the troopers with her branch.

  At the sound of the Duke's name the sergeant looked down at Konowa with a wary expression on his face.

  "You know the Duke, then?" he asked.

  "Know him? Sergeant, six years ago I saved that sorry excuse for nobility at Khundarr Ridge."

  The sergeant sat back in his saddle and pushed his helmet up from his brow, revealing a tanned face dominated by a large, blond mustache, the ends twirled into complete circles. "I was at Khundarr Ridge. The Duke wasn't saved by no savage, it was that officer of the Hynta-elves…bloody hell." Like all good noncommissioned officers, the sergeant covered his shock by shouting. "Right, you two," he yelled, pointing to the two unhorsed troopers who were dusting themselves off. "Seeing as you were daft enough to get your arses knocked off, you can walk back. And right smartly, too," he growled before the troopers could utter a complaint.

  "Can't have an officer walking, now can we, sir?" the sergeant said, gesturing with the now-useless hilt of his saber. "Sir, you take the gelding and your woman can ride the gray mare."

  Konowa smiled and thought of correcting the sergeant. Visyna was most certainly not his woman.

  "Name's Lorian, sir, Sergeant Dhareg Lorian. Sorry for that crack about savages, didn't mean nothing by it. I'll get you and the missus to the Duke by morning. We're bivouacked just over the next hill, a few miles north of Port Ghamjal. We'll have you there in no time."

  Konowa nodded. "I appreciate the offer, but I'm not sure it's wise to leave the troopers out here alone. We came across some—" He started to say rakkes, then thought better of it.

  Sergeant Lorian tipped the helmet a little farther back on his head. "Across some what, sir?"

  "Bandits," Konowa said, "lots of bandits. I'd suggest you don't leave anyone behind." It was strange, but after a year, it was hard to make it an order.