by Tim Stead
* * * *
Tilian Henn crouched with his back to a tree. Yesterday he and Deran had killed seven men. It had been easy, really. They had sat in trees, hidden among leaves, each covering the other’s position and picking the Seth Yarra patrol off one by one. It had almost seemed like a game, but the reality of it had struck home when they descended from hiding and hid the bloodied bodies in a ditch, covering them with a golden carpet of leaves.
The wolf that was with them watched all this with no apparent interest. It had not helped or hindered them in dealing with the patrol, but instead had retreated to a place where it could not be seen. Now that the work was done it reappeared and watched them.
“I didn’t know wolves were so lazy,” Deran remarked. “Isn’t it supposed to be on our side?”
“And if he’s listening?”
“To us?” Deran laughed. He was right. Why would Narak be listening to them? They were just two warm bodies in a tide of war that was flooding across the land. Armies were marching, battles were being fought or prepared for, hundreds of people were dying. Who would want to listen to Henn and Deran?
They kicked a few more leave over the bodies and when Tilian looked back he couldn’t have said where they lay – just another vanished Seth Yarra patrol in Narak’s sacred, haunted forest. That’s what the Seth Yarra must think at any rate.
They moved back to their position carefully, slipping one at a time from tree to tree, listening for any sound that might indicate an enemy. The wolf followed at a distance.
They’d been here for a week now, living and hiding among the trees. Deran was a forester from Latter Fetch, and together they had made a comfortable nest twenty feet up in an old pine, an elder statesman of the forest. The two of them could not have joined hands about its trunk, but Deran had taught him how to climb it, and they had used branches cut with their swords to build a platform that was concealed to the casual eye. The sweep of the branches kept the morning dew off them and Deran even suggested that a fire would be scattered sufficiently by the great branches above them to be unseen, but Tilian would not allow it. The smell of a fire alone could be enough to draw trouble to them.
They had heard the patrol before they saw it. The men talked loudly to each other as they walked, as though to banish the ghosts that they feared, but Tilian and Deran had slipped away, one behind and one in front of them. They had taken turns shooting, and neither of them had missed.
Now the forest was quiet again. Birds called from the tree tops, and eddies of breeze stirred the topmost leaves on the ground. There were few pines here. Mostly the trees were out in glorious leaf.
Mixed forest is what Deran called it.
Tilian sat opposite the forester, twenty feet away. There was almost no approach that one or the other of them could not see. He reached down to scratch his leg and froze at a warning hiss from Deran. He looked up and almost jumped out of his skin. The wolf was standing two feet from him, staring into his face. It had come around the back with greater stealth than he had thought possible. Its yellow eyes met his.
Seen this close it looked big, but not that big, yet Tilian found its calm, almost human gaze disturbing. This wasn’t a wild animal. It was part of Narak.
The wolf barked three times. It was a peculiar sound to hear from a wolf, so like a domestic dog that it seemed wrong. Tilian shivered. It was the signal. It could be nothing else. He looked across the clearing at Deran.
“The signal, yes?”
“It must be,” Deran said.
The forester turned and ran back to the old pine. It was only a hundred paces away, and he covered the ground in seconds, caution thrown to the winds. A few moments more and he had scrambled up into the tree and Tilian couldn’t see him. He busied himself in preparation.
Deran came back down the tree with a pack over his shoulder and another in his hand. He ran to where Tilian crouched by a pile of dead branches and leaves. They had built a bank, almost a wall of debris, dry and stacked and interlocked like a wicker mound, stretching around two trees, but it was not intended as a defence.
Deran opened the packs and handed Tilian a jar, took one for himself. They broke the wax seals and carefully poured the contents over their stick and leaf wall. They repeated this with another two jars. When it was done they threw the jars away and Tilian crouched close to the pile and made fire on a slab of dry bark with a small amount of dry tinder he had been saving, nursing a flame into life and feeding it until it became hungry, devouring leaves and twigs as quickly as he could toss them in. He and lifted the bark up and placed it carefully on the wall, being sure not to touch the parts wet with oil. He stepped back and watched the fire begin to spread, crawling up and sideways.
“Done,” he said.
The oil caught with a sudden violent rush of air and burning, and Tilian felt the pulse through the air as it drew breath.
“They’ll see that at the pass,” Deran said. The flames were taller than the two men now, leaping up and licking at the trees around which they had been set. Tilian backed away.
“They will soon,” he agreed.
Deran looked around. He didn’t look to happy about being so close to it.
“Which way is east?” he asked.
“Follow the wolf.”
Sure enough the wolf was already twenty paces off, looking back at them. They picked up their packs, lighter now, and followed it. The creature moved slowly, at what Tilian thought of as a fast walk, and behind them the fire began to climb the tree, to spread out along the ground.
That was it. Their duty was done. All up and down the line of the Seth Yarra march his men would be doing the same thing, fires would be bursting out, catching the west wind and eating the great forest, rushing inexorably towards the Dragon’s back, towards the Seth Yarra soldiers.
It was a terrible thing to do, Tilian thought, and for the enemy it would be a terrible way to die, a cruel death full of pain and fear. He did not regret it, though. He had seen what Seth Yarra had done at Henfray, where they had slaughtered hundreds, women and children too, without mercy. For Tilian this was a balancing of accounts, a cruelty for a cruelty, the justice of war.
They walked steadily away from the fire, the west wind singing in the tree tops above their heads and the distant roar of the flames building and blending with the wind’s song.
55. Death of a King
Narak stood, rigid and tense as a bowstring, as close to the edge of the cliff as he could, and closer than Pascha dared. He had given the signal, and now his eyes searched the green ocean of the forest. He scented the air for the first hint of smoke.
Pascha watched him. He had shown no emotion, but this had to be an impossible day for him. Narak was a creature of duty, and his duty was to the forest, his forest which he loved more than anything, except possibly his wolves. Today he was burning that forest. She thought that the tension in his body was not just excitement and expectation, but pain as well, and anger.
“There.” He pointed, and sure enough she could see a distant coil of smoke rising above the canopy. It drifted up, miles away, and bent towards them, thinning as it rose, caught and tumbled by the wind. Almost at the moment it disappeared there were other fires evident, more smoke. They quickly became unmistakable, and Pascha caught sight of a burst of flame, shockingly red against the muted greys and greens of the morning.
It seemed a very short time until a line of fire rose up through the trees, looking for all the world as though some great god had drawn his finger across the earth, causing it to burst into flames at his merest touch. In a way Pascha supposed that this was exactly what had happened.
Narak continued to stare out over the forest, a look of triumph frozen on his face, surprised by other emotions. He was quite still and did not speak for several minutes during which time the smoke from the fires drifted to them and their camp was overwhelmed by the scent of burning wood. The smoke was thick enough to steal what little warmth the sun had, and she shivered. There was a bl
anket on the ground, and she picked it up, wrapped it around her shoulders.
“What now?” she asked.
“Now? Now they burn.” His voice was distant.
“With Skal,” she said. “What do I tell Skal about Telas Alt?”
Narak seemed to have difficulty dragging his eyes away from the spectacle of the burning forest, but he did, and looked at Pascha.
“Skal? Well he can do what he likes. The fire has caught them all. Those who were marching south are still in the forest and they, too, will burn.”
“And the army?”
“I will go to them,” Narak said. “I’ll tell them to turn around and head south to support Skal. If he takes Telas Alt perhaps we can end this. It would be better if they went straight to the coast.”
“Their ships are destroyed.”
“Some of them, but they have more. They will bring more men, but I do not expect them soon.”
She didn’t ask him how he knew this. Pascha had watched the ships burn through sparrow eyes, and there had been a great number of them. Avilian and Afael between them could not have assembled half the number, and those were the largest fleets of the kingdoms.
“I will go, then,” she said.
“As you wish,” he looked back to the forest. Now the fire was in full command, flames leaping to twice the height of the great trees and punching a sheet of grey smoke into the sky where it roiled in the heat before thinning out into a vast, pale blanket that laid itself gently across the Dragon’s Back. She could hear the fire now, crackling and roaring as the wind drove it towards the mountains.
She walked to the top of the path and made her way down to the camp, choosing to walk so that she could think. The path was difficult, and it took some time before she was down among the tents. She was met my Cain.
“He’s done it then,” Cain said. He looked satisfied, but his smile was edged with a frown.
“Yes.” She looked up. The blanket of smoke filled the sky above the pass. It looked so serene. She tried not to think of the fifty thousand men trapped between the flames and the mountain.
“Some may still escape,” Cain said. “The mountains themselves will take the edge off the wind as the fire burns near.”
She nodded. “Narak has said that he will go to the army. Will you remind him? I fear he may forget.”
“I will remind him,” Cain said.
Pascha turned away and walked back to her tent. There were a few things there that she did not want to leave behind. There was her sword, the blood silver blade that she had carried with her since she had taken it from an assassin sent to kill her in Benafelas, a few items of clothing, her bow. It took a moment to fetch them and then she stood and looked at Cain’s wall for a moment. It seemed as though the promised great battle was never going to happen. The cleverness of the wall, the effort of its construction was no longer what it had been. It had ceased to be the fulcrum on which the war turned.
Fifty thousand men. Perishable goods.
* * * *
Skal insisted on Avilian scouts. He was a colonel and a minor lord, and Terresh was a king, yet he had the larger force and his men were more disciplined. It was not that he doubted the Telans’ courage, rather the opposite. He needed men who would obey their orders if they encountered the enemy, and those orders were to get back to Skal and warn him. He rather feared that Telans would prefer to stay and fight. Terresh, of course, insisted that Telans also act as scouts. It seemed to be a point of pride with the king, and perhaps he did not quite trust Skal and his Avilians. It meant that they were over-scouted, if that was possible, but Skal didn’t mind. It compromised any attempt at stealth they might have wished for, but on the other hand it made them look like a larger force than they actually were.
They rode through a countryside that showed few signs of the war. The fields were tilled and planted, the vineyards were pruned and showing green. It was all very peaceful. Terresh had found a banner somewhere, the blue and gold of Telas, and he had it raised as they crossed the land. People came out to see what was happening when they saw the banner. It told them that these were not Seth Yarra troops, and it seemed that the people of Telas still had some regard for their king, because they cheered when he passed.
Just outside a small town, Himmeran by name, they met a body of soldiers. They were Telans, about five hundred of them. They looked weary and battle scarred, but they were overjoyed to see Terresh and Hestia. They were commanded by a captain, a rugged man with a thick, black beard and battered armour, who rode out in front of his men to see who it was that approached with a blue and gold banner. When he caught sight of Terresh he slid out of the saddle and knelt in the road.
Terresh dismounted and lifted the man to his feet, asked him for his story. The man told it, and it was typically Telan, brief and to the point. They had been camped north of Benafelas with a matching guard of Seth Yarra when news had come in that the ships of the Seth Yarra fleet had been burnt. On the same day, by happy chance, they heard that the king had left Telas Alt declaring for the Benetheon.
The commander of the Telan force, a major Maylan, had watched as the Seth Yarra split their force, half of them rushing to the port and the rest left to watch the Telans. That had been a mistake. Maylan had promptly attacked what was left of his guard, killed them all, and began to march north. They had suffered losses, but only a couple of hundred.
The remaining Seth Yarra force had followed them, and caught them three days later, only to lose the ensuing battle. The Telans had lost another three hundred and Major Maylan had been killed. Command had fallen to Captain Emmar, and he had led them here, and now placed himself and his men at the king’s disposal.
There was no denying that it was a boost. Not only had their force increased by five hundred, but the news that a thousand less Seth Yarra were abroad in Telas was also very welcome. Emmar, however, had spotted that a large number of the troops with Terresh were Avilian.
“Indeed,” Terresh said. “This is the second regiment of the Seventh Friend under the command of Colonel Hebberd, Lord of Latter Fetch. They have fought alongside us and shown themselves staunch allies.”
Emmar did not look impressed. He studied Skal darkly for a moment. “My brother fell at Fal Verdan,” he said. “And your name is know to me as one who commanded there,” he said.
Skal knew what that meant. Telans were unspeakably precious about their honour. In the past they had been famous for their feuds, pursued over generations, and only recently eradicated as a way of life. The chance that Skal had been responsible for this man’s brother’s death was all the excuse the man needed to call him out. Terresh, however, did not permit the grievance to go any further.
“Captain,” he said. “If you see this as a matter of honour I command you not to pursue it as long as there are Seth Yarra alive in our kingdom.”
As a prohibition it left something to be desired. Skal expected that he would have problems with this Captain Emmar, probably until one of them was dead, and he would have preferred to get the thing out of the way.
“As you wish, Lord King,” Emmar replied, but he cast another dark look in Skal’s direction before remounting his horse and calling his men up to join the king’s army. Skal didn’t worry too much. If Emmar came to him demanding satisfaction he would kill the man. Skal had met one or two duellists in his life who could have bested him. The wolf for sure, and probably Aidon, but Emmar looked easy. He was strong and probably quicker than average, but Skal was confident of his own ability.
That same evening Skal was preparing for sleep in his own tent when he was surprised by a slap on the canvass. He’d posted two men outside, so he didn’t expect any trouble, but all the same he picked up his sword and dagger before calling out for whoever it was to enter.
Passerina stepped through the opening. She looked at his naked blades.
“Having trouble with the locals?” she asked, smiling a wry smile.
“Just one that I know of,” he replied. He
put his weapons down by his bed.
“You said that you would wait,” she said.
“A day. You promised to be back in a day. I had to make a decision.”
She looked at him as though measuring his reply. “Fair enough. You made a rash choice, but it’s worked out well for you. Narak’s trap caught the force they were sending south, so they won’t be coming. All dead.”
“All?”
“And the rest of the army.”
“All of them? Gods, what did he do?” Skal was shocked. Fifty thousand men had gone north. All dead?
“He fired the forest,” she replied. “They all burned.”
