by Chris Evans
“What went into the water?”
Renwar shook his head. “I didn’t get a good look, but it was big. I think it had been burrowed in the sand and was forced to leave when we got here.” He pointed to a spot a few yards away.
Konowa was amazed he’d missed it. A large furrow perhaps six yards long and over a yard wide was indeed dug into the sand. Tracks of some kind appeared to lead away from it to the water, but the sand was so disturbed he couldn’t be sure. Was this what he had sensed earlier? Konowa was about to turn away when he noticed other holes in the ground. These were smaller and ragged around the edges, and piles of ash lay at their bottoms. Sarka har had been burned here, but not by the Iron Elves. These appeared to have been destroyed days ago. He reached out a hand and touched the ash. It was the same temperature as the surrounding sand. A recently burned sarka har would still be ice cold.
“Seeing ghosts again, Renwar?” another soldier asked, drawing Konowa’s attention back. The man had a weasely face and stood a bit apart from the rest of the group.
“Zwitty,” Konowa said, the distaste clear in his voice. Zwitty’s desire for distance now made sense—Konowa still remembered the craven indifference with which Zwitty had killed an Elfkynan warrior at Luuguth Jor.
Zwitty jumped to attention. “Yes, sir. Just commentin’ on the fact that young Renwar there has a habit o’ seeing things the rest of us don’t.”
“That’s a load of shite and you know it,” Arkhorn said. “Ally ain’t seen nothing the rest of us haven’t. He just happens to see ’em a little sooner than the rest of us. Kind of odd when you consider the lad’s got the vision of a gopher, but if he says something crawled into the water, then I for one got no plans for going swimming later.”
To a man, the soldiers shuffled a few more feet away from the water’s edge. Konowa had instituted a tradition of allowing the Iron Elves a brief bit of relaxation after assaulting each island, including a swim and a celebratory cookout on the beach. Tradition was going to be broken tonight.
“I sensed five of Her elves on the island,” Konowa said, pointedly changing the subject.
“And I counted five of them gone right back to Her,” Arkhorn replied. “Those gold pieces of the Prince’s are going to get stale before we ever find one of them buggers to have a talk with.”
A headache named the Prince of Calahr blossomed behind Konowa’s eyes. He would have to explain again, for the umpteenth time, why the Iron Elves had not managed to capture one of Her elves alive. So be it. They’d find enough of them on Her mountain once they got there and the Prince could talk to his heart’s content, or until he was torn limb from limb.
Either would suit Konowa just fine.
“Clear the area and head back to the boats. We’re leaving now. Bring the private’s body,” Konowa said, though he knew the soldiers knew the drill. His men just stood there, the shock of what they had just seen overriding everything else.
“Kester, Major,” Private Renwar said. “His name was Kester Harkon.”
Konowa held his tongue. What, did they think he didn’t care?
A voice pitched so that it felt like needles in Konowa’s ears cut through the silence.
“But begging the major’s pardon, what was that? What burned them like that?” Zwitty asked.
Konowa looked around at the faces of his men. How could they despise him more? “I don’t know. Whatever it was is gone, and so are we. Sergeant, get the men moving. Now.”
As Arkhorn barked orders, Konowa walked closer to the place that Renwar had seen…something. Questions piled on top of questions.
Konowa stared a moment longer at the sand, but no answers came, only a growing sense of foreboding. He turned and began following the men back to the boats.
Out at sea, a dark shape slid quietly just underneath the surface. Silently, and without a single ripple, it lifted its head just high enough above the water to watch Konowa’s retreating back. The creature never blinked as it slid back beneath the waves and was gone.
FIVE
If life had ever been easy for Konowa, he couldn’t remember it. Not during his childhood, not when he commanded the first Iron Elves, and not now when he served at the pleasure of the Prince. In fact, things had taken a decidedly downward trajectory for him since, well, always. Just how far down they could go remained to be seen.
He paused in his self-pity long enough to lean over the railing of the Black Spike and vomit.
Then there was this. Konowa stared at the green waves below and wondered what it would take to drain the bloody ocean and be done with it. His stomach heaved and he vomited again. For all its power and grace and family history, the Black Spike was still a ship, and ships had the single most unfortunate attribute of having been designed to sail on water. As much as Konowa detested traveling by horseback, riding the waves was worse. After all, you could always shoot a horse.
The ship dipped into a trough between waves, then surged upward, leaving Konowa’s stomach and the last of his dinner twenty feet below. An elf, he told himself—this elf at any rate—was designed to have his feet firmly planted on the ground. Konowa was not—and experience had confirmed this many times over the years—meant to be in a saddle, up a tree, or on the water. Whenever he was, the end result usually found him flat on his back on the ground. The problem with being at sea, however, was that the ground was a hell of a long way below the waterline.
Sailcloth snapped and rigging thrummed above his head. He glanced up. What had been a breeze the last few days was now turning into a steady wind. Billowing clouds on the horizon threatened a coming storm. Captain Milceal Ervod had assured Konowa they would make safe harbor in two days at Nazalla, one of only three cities of any size along the shoreline of the Hasshugeb Expanse, before the storm came upon them.
It couldn’t come soon enough. Assaulting the seven islands had been a bloody and costly affair. Each attack served to satiate his blood lust, but he would have forgone even that for a quicker passage to the deserts. Despite the number of Her creatures he had dispatched by his hand, his anger and his frustration had only grown. For all Konowa knew, even now Her forests were growing again in the blood-soaked sand. The falling Star in the east had unleashed dormant powers across the world, although Konowa was convinced the Shadow Monarch’s hand was also involved. Since then, rumors of other Stars had rippled through the Empire and beyond, but no sightings had yet been confirmed. In a way, Konowa wasn’t sure it mattered. The damage was done. Stars or no, the very idea of change sped through the air. Call it unrest, call it the urge to be free, call it fear of the unknown—the world would never be the same again.
The Shadow Monarch haunted his sleep, though he no longer believed they were simply dreams. Things had been set in motion that were bigger than any of them. Yes, change was coming. Knowing what he did of the world, Konowa found some small comfort in that thought…and a hell of a lot of trepidation.
“Sergeant Arkhorn reporting, sir!”
Konowa turned to rest his back against the railing. The dwarf stood to attention, his caerna flapping dangerously high in the wind.
“At ease, Sergeant, for all that’s good and proper, at ease, and secure that hem.”
“Right you are, sir,” Yimt said, draping his ever-present shatterbow across his front. The back of his caerna continued to wave in the wind.
It took a moment for Konowa to realize what the dwarf had said. “Reporting, Sergeant? I don’t recall asking you to report.”
“Ah, no, not exactly, Major, but I reckoned you would soon enough so I anticipated your command. Sir. Besides, I can’t stay too long down in the hold of a ship. Makes me feel what my great-grandparents must have gone through.”
Konowa suddenly felt less sorry for himself. “So they were—”
“Slaves,” Yimt said. If there was resentment in his voice he hid it well. “Last group shipped over before the royal decree abolishing slavery. Took another fifty years, mind you, before dwarves were granted the rights
of full citizens, but as me mum always said, ‘It’s a long journey for people with short legs.’”
Konowa found himself wanting to meet the mother dwarf who had raised Sergeant Yimt Arkhorn. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her.
Yimt cast a look down at his feet before returning it to Konowa. “I heard stories growing up, all dwarves do, about the conditions in the ships’ holds. Do you know the ship owners actually threw rocks and dirt down there to make the dwarves feel more at home?”
“I didn’t know that,” Konowa said. “I would have thought that might have helped a little.”
The dwarf’s knuckles turned white as he gripped his shatterbow. “They threw the rocks in after the dwarves were already chained inside. Whoever survived and dug their way out was strong enough to work. The rest would be carted out later by the survivors.”
Not for the first time Konowa questioned his service to the Empire. “I always thought my people had it the worst when the Empire brought its idea of civilization to our shores. They came primarily for the oak, looking to build more ships like this one,” Konowa said, patting the railing. His rejection long ago by the Wolf Oaks in the birthing meadow still stung. Bloody magical trees had judged him and found him unworthy of sharing their power with him. Still, looking around a ship of this size, he found himself sympathizing, a little, with the elves of the Long Watch. “A lot of Wolf Oaks were lost in their prime. Many bonded elves took their own lives. I lost an aunt and two cousins. It was indeed a dark time.”
The color in Yimt’s knuckles returned. “We all had it the worst. If you aren’t part of the Empire, you’re probably about to be, and joining don’t come easy.”
Yimt took a hand off his shatterbow and began tugging at his beard, a sign Konowa knew to mean a deep and possibly deeply disturbing thought was about to be shared.
“Something on your mind, Sergeant?”
“As it happens, Major, there is. We cleared seven islands filled with all manner of terrors. We lost a few of the boys along the way, though I suppose they ain’t all the way lost, but it amounts to the same thing. And now we’re headed to the Hasshugeb Expanse, a land that’ll cook your eyes right in their sockets, and that’s just at midmorning.”
“You’ve been there?” Konowa asked.
Yimt shrugged his shoulders. “Made port in Nazalla twenty some years ago. Never made it past the local entertainment establishments, though. Found myself in a slight disagreement with a fellow dealing cards off the bottom of the deck. One thing led to another and somehow most of his nose wound up on the floor. They’ve got some right nasty diseases in them parts, I told my commanding officer at the time.”
“Your point, Sergeant?” Konowa said. The dwarf could peel paint from a wall just by talking to it.
“My point is, some of the men now say we have two princes leading the regiment.”
Konowa stood bolt upright. “Who’s saying that?”
Yimt smiled. “Ah, you see, that’s exactly the sort of thing the Prince would say, now isn’t it? The men are concerned, Major. A Star from myths and bedtime stories turns out to be real. So does the Shadow Monarch. Extinct monsters aren’t and the lads think they’re doomed to never really die. But that ain’t what’s really bothering them.”
Konowa knew the surprise showed on his face. “It isn’t? What’s worse than all of that?”
“You,” Yimt said, looking Konowa straight in the eyes. “They need to trust in you. They need to believe that no matter what kind of hell is out there, their commanding officer will do everything he can to bring them home.”
“The Prince is—”
Yimt interrupted Konowa. “The Prince spends most of his time in his quarters with his maps and books. The lads even have a pool going on what we’re really doing going to the Hasshugeb Expanse. Three to one says we’re chasing another Star. Four to one has it we’re going after other assorted treasure for the Prince.”
“I thought you would understand,” Konowa said. “When we find the first Iron Elves, we’ll be whole. They’re the key. We have to find them before She does. With them we’ll be able to take the fight directly to the Shadow Monarch and finish this.”
The dwarf didn’t back off. “And just how, exactly, with all due respect, Major, is that supposed to happen? Near as I can tell, it’s us who are bound by the oath, not them. It’s our boys that are starting to go a bit funny in the head. Why should your elves want to join up for this? If Kritton, that miserable excuse for a soldier, was anything to go by, some of those lads might not be too happy to see you.”
Konowa turned his face to the wind and let the salt spray sting him. The pain brought him some small measure of relief. In choosing to destroy Her forest at Luuguth Jor, Konowa had given up a chance, perhaps his only chance, to break the oath that doomed all soldiers in the Iron Elves to eternal service, and perhaps something worse. By using the Shadow Monarch’s power so cunningly given to him through his father, Konowa had unwittingly done Her bidding. With every passing day, the treacherous pull She exerted grew, though whether that was Her doing or something dark and twisted within Konowa himself he did not know.
Konowa was the only one who truly saw things as they were. There was solace to be found in the fact that the soldiers currently bound by the oath were not the original Iron Elves, and Konowa clung to that thought. Even if he couldn’t explain it to Arkhorn, Konowa knew finding them would mean salvation for both. He would find his original elves and return their honor to them. Combined with the soldiers he now commanded, they would overcome any foe the Shadow Monarch sent. And when Her creatures were defeated, Konowa would lead them to the very heart of Her mountain forest and break the oath for all time, setting them all free.
“We both know,” Konowa said, “I can order these men to do whatever it takes, but I hope with your help they’ll follow me because they know I’m right, and because they trust me.”
“Well, as my dear ol’ mum is wont to say, “In for a tail, in for a dragon.’ I can keep the lads focused, for now. A little rest stop in Nazalla certainly wouldn’t go amiss either. After a few weeks floating around out here with only horror islands and nightmares about trees to keep them busy, they’re starting to lose the polish off the old crystal ball.” Yimt took a step closer to Konowa and lowered his voice an octave. “But, Major, when we do go for our stroll in the desert, I hope for all our sakes those elves of yours are there waiting.”
Yimt stepped back and sniffed the air. “You know, I think I’ve breathed enough salt out here to never need it again at the dinner table.” He stood to attention and saluted. “Evening, Major.”
“Sergeant,” Konowa said, watching the dwarf walk away.
Konowa turned back to watch the sea. The wind threatened to lift his shako off his head and he reached up and took it off, letting his black hair blow wild in the coming storm. A steely glint flickered in his eyes and a trace of frost fire sparkled in his hands. Soon, he would be reunited with the original Iron Elves. And with them, the regiment would be unstoppable.
Konowa held on to that thought as he heaved his guts over the side, cursing every drop of water in the ocean as he did. It almost made him long to be back in the forest.
Almost.
SIX
A ship-of-the-line on the high seas is a marvelously graceful and robust creature. Ribs of oak fully twice as thick as a man’s chest, miles of rope tendons, acres of canvas muscle, teeth of brass and iron able to tear apart anything that came within their grasp, and skin of pine, copper, and tar make it the single largest collection of manmade parts ever assembled.
A ship-of-the-line is, however, an equally delicate collection of parts that is forever perched perilously in the water on a thin keel, like a walker on a rope stretched taut across a cliff. Balance is everything. Should it tip too far to either side, it would begin a downward fall into the deep abyss.
Alwyn preferred the open water. The knowledge that his life hung on the slender threads of the craftsm
anship of the shipwrights, the vagaries of the weather, and the skill of the Black Spike’s crew filled him, perversely, with a sense of calm. Everything changed when he set foot on shore. On land his anguish was boundless, as if it grew from the very depths of the earth and flowed through him. Out here, however, he found a certain peace, although the nightmares of Her remained.
He could almost convince himself there was still a chance things could return to the way they were before.
Someone coughed and Alwyn looked up from cleaning his musket, setting aside the rag coated in brick dust he’d been using to buff the metal to a bright sheen. The black flames of the frost fire burned away blood and other fleshy bits—a neat trick all the soldiers had quickly put to use—but rust in the salty sea air bloomed orange and red every night on any bare metal left exposed. In the army, there was always something a corporal or sergeant would give you grief about.
The surviving members of Yimt’s section were grouped around one of the ship’s sixty-eight-pounder carronades on the upper gun deck. It seemed appropriate to Alwyn that Sergeant Arkhorn would secure them a spot on the ship near a weapon characterized by its short, powerful, and temperamental nature. Firing a sixty-eight-pound cannon ball at a low muzzle velocity meant the projectile didn’t fly all that far, but it hit with a vengeance. The slower speed resulted in the shot splintering any wood it struck instead of punching a hole straight through. The result was absolute havoc as a shower of deadly splinters sprayed forth from the impact. Unsurprisingly, the carronade had earned the nickname Smasher. No, Alwyn was not surprised at all that Yimt had chosen this as their home on the sea.
Most of the Iron Elves were quartered deeper in the ship, and it occurred to Alwyn that he rarely saw Yimt go down there. He was rarely here on the upper gun deck either, preferring instead to stay topside. Perhaps the dwarf enjoyed the waves and the wind.
