Age of War

by Michael J. Sullivan

  He might have been able to kill me, even back then. It was like I was playing with a lion cub, and now it outweighs me.

  Raithe never saw it happen. Everything was too quick. He heard it, though, an off-note, a clang instead of a ping, and one of Tesh’s swords flew from his hands.

  Sebek didn’t let up; he attacked with unrelenting aggression. Tesh couldn’t block both of Sebek’s swords with just his one. The boy caught the first, but the second came across his open side. Sebek was going to exact payment for the fight; he was going to cut Tesh across the chest, leave a mark his opponent wouldn’t forget. But that didn’t happen.

  Tesh slapped the blade away with his bare hand.

  He did it three times before Sebek stopped the fight and lowered his blades. He nodded. “Better.”

  The crowd of sweat-slick men erupted into cheers and shouts of jubilation. Sebek hadn’t been beaten; the match wasn’t even close to a draw. Disarming Tesh counted as a victory, and the kid hadn’t mounted even a single offense in the whole match. But he had held his own, and for the men on that field, it was a victory beyond any of their dreams.

  Sebek flipped Tesh’s lost sword into the air with his foot and struck it with a sharp swing from his own blade, sending the weapon spinning at the kid. Tesh caught it by its handle, and slammed both blades into their scabbards.

  “Well done, Techylor,” Sebek said.

  As if the contest had been the finale, training for that day ended when everyone rushed to clap Tesh on the back.

  Raithe turned to Malcolm. “What’s it mean? What Sebek called Tesh?”

  “Techylor?” Malcolm said. “It means swift of hand, or just swifthand, I suppose.”

  “Great. The kid’s going to be impossible to live with now,” Raithe grumbled.

  Malcolm nodded. “Probably, but you ought to consider yourself fortunate. Next to Nyphron, you’ve got the best Shield in Alon Rhist.”

  Raithe frowned. “Apparently, I’m second best to Nyphron in a number of things.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dreams and Nightmares

  I started writing to chase away demons and to preserve the loved ones I had lost. After all these years, none of that has changed.

  —THE BOOK OF BRIN

  The moist hand clamped over Brin’s mouth. The other one wrapped around her waist, trapping her arms. She was hauled away, her heels dragging across stone as the raow rasped in her ear, “Relax. Don’t struggle. I have you now. Just need to get you back to the pile.”

  Back to the pile!

  Brin couldn’t scream, couldn’t move; she could barely breathe. She tried to kick her feet, but that did nothing to save her. As disgusting as it might be, she tried to bite the hand, but her mouth couldn’t open.

  The thing continued to whisper in a frighteningly reassuring tone, as if it were trying to save her. But it wasn’t speaking to her—not really. “Yes, everything will be okay. We have you now. Just need to get back, back to the pile. Need to get back so I can eat and finally sleep.”

  She felt it lick her cheek.

  “Such a sweet face.”

  She woke up, her heart racing. Something covered her face, making it hard to breathe.

  Brin reached up and found the pillow. Ripping it away, she threw it on the floor. “Stupid thing,” she whispered in the dark, shaking.

  She propped herself on her elbows and took a few more breaths, calming down. The raow was long dead, and Brin was in a pretty little home on Lyonet Street, in Little Rhen. Moonlight entered the window, casting a skewed square across the floor, the wall, and over the feet of the two beds. Roan’s was empty again. Downstairs, Padera was snoring.

  Brin’s nightshirt stuck to the sweat on her skin. She shivered, drawing the blanket around her.

  Just a dream, she imagined her mother saying. Go back to sleep.

  But Brin knew that if she tried, the raow would come again. It always did. Once the raow invaded her sleep, only daylight chased it off. She’d managed to go a whole week this time without a visit. But tonight…She leaned over the edge of the bed and pointed a finger at the fallen pillow. “I blame you.”

  Brin wasn’t used to pillows, never had one before. The bag full of feathers collapsed under the weight of her head, folding in and doing its best to smother her. She sighed, frowned, and folded her arms. She wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon. She’d be exhausted in the morning, but there was no getting around it. She was up.

  She started to swing her feet off the side of the bed, but pulled them back at the last second. She spun around on her stomach and carefully lowered her head to peer under the bed. Then she looked under Roan’s. Nothing. Relief and embarrassment washed over her in equal parts. How old am I? She got up and fumbled in the dark, her hands searching for the leather satchel. She had made the carrying case herself. A single piece of goat hide was folded around her stack of parchments and bound up with straps. From the small night table, she grabbed up a handful of quills. Brin had been using reeds dipped in ink to mark on the pages but found the quills better. After employing hundreds of people to strip birds of their feathers for making arrows, Alon Rhist had piles of naked quills lying around. They, too, were hollow, and much more durable than reeds. Thanks to Moya, Brin had hundreds.

  Brin carried the parchments, ink, and quills to the desk by the window and set them down. After a long winter, she had an impressive pile of vellum parchment. Part of the stack was a translation—as best she could manage—of the tablet rubbings they had saved from the Ancient One’s chamber in Neith. She was still working on those, but after translating the metallurgy portion for Roan, she had jumped ahead in order to record more recent events while things were still fresh in her mind.

  She did that a lot.

  Brin first started writing about growing up in Dahl Rhen, focusing on her parents. Then she jumped forward to the trip Persephone led to Neith. She went to great literary effort to eviscerate Gronbach the dwarf, recording his treachery as legendary, the very definition of evil. Then, Brin jumped even further ahead and wrote about life in Alon Rhist. Fhrey and Rhunes mingled about as well as fire and ice, or Gula and Rhulyn, who also had problems coexisting. A number of outbursts had resulted in some deaths. Persephone decided to segregate the tribes before riots broke out. The cold weather helped to cool tempers, but both were warming up again.

  Since sleep wasn’t an option, she thought she’d do some writing, but before starting, she decided to reread the section where the Gilarabrywn ate the raow, her favorite part. The night was cold, and she grabbed a blanket from her bed and was searching for a lamp when she heard voices coming from the street below.

  Who is out chatting in the middle of a chilly night?

  She returned to the window and leaned closer.

  Whoever it was spoke softly, and in Rhunic. “No! I forbid it. And you know better than to be out here.”

  “I’m hungry!” the voice said in a hoarse whisper, just like in her dream. Brin shivered.

  “I’ll arrange it, like I did with Jada. You have to trust me. Haven’t I taken care of you in the past? You need to be patient.”

  “It’s been a long time. I’m tired and need to sleep.”

  “We have an agreement! Spring is here, and the time is approaching. Until then, you need to stay hidden.”

  “I can smell them—all of them—so many. The wind blows south. It’s—it’s maddening!”

  “It won’t be long now. I promise. Then you can kill for me. Now, let’s go back, and don’t slip out again, or we’ll both be killed.”

  With every ounce of courage she could muster, Brin pushed the window open wider and stuck her head out far enough to look down. All she saw were a pair of shadows disappearing around the corner of her building. In the dark of her room barely illuminated by the pale moonlight, she drew the blanket tighter and shivered.


  * * *

  —

  Early the next morning, Brin stood in front of her adopted home, looking up at the bedroom window. The house was one of the many two-story, whitewash-and-timber buildings. This was no warrior’s home. Its carved door, tile-and-stencil work, branching stair banister, and flower beds filled with perennials already beginning to bloom spoke of a place once cherished. Brin felt guilty being there, and in eight months, she hadn’t so much as moved the furniture.

  Persephone had insisted they weren’t conquerors of Alon Rhist, but allies, what Nyphron referred to as liberators. A fair number of Fhrey had packed up and walked out. Persephone let them go. Huhana Hill, one of the nicer parts of the city, became the first to empty. That previous autumn when the Fhrey fled Alon Rhist, Huhana Hill became a neighborhood of abandoned houses, and Persephone filled the vacant buildings with surviving inhabitants of Dahl Rhen, creating the Rhune District. Given that most of the other clans had homes to return to, Huhana Hill became known as Little Rhen.

  The house that Padera, Roan, and Brin shared was one of the finest. There were bigger and more elaborate ones, but inch for inch, this one was the most pleasant. Brin was certain that wasn’t an accident. Persephone would have invited them to stay with her in the Kype, if such a thing had been practical, or desired. No one—not even Persephone—liked the stark, cold fortress filled with intimidating male Instarya. More of the Fhrey in the city were female, and while they didn’t exactly welcome the Rhunes, they didn’t protest, either, at least not publicly.

  Over the winter, Little Rhen had begun to resemble Dahl Rhen, if it had died and gone to Alysin. The well in the center of the tree-lined square was frequented by the likes of Arlina, Viv Baker, and Autumn, whose husbands—like most of the able men—were in training and bunked at the fortress. Gifford lived in Little Rhen, too, as did Tressa, Habet, and Mathias Hagger, who was too old to walk up the Hill’s steps alone. Padera was the first to call it Little Rhen, and that’s how Brin—how everyone living there—had come to see it. But on that morning, looking up at her pretty new home, Brin saw that part of town as sinister.

  They had stood right here.

  She looked around, trying to gauge the exact spot where the two speakers had held their conversation.

  They didn’t sound human.

  Brin imagined them as a pair of raow, but that was most certainly the result of her nightmare.

  And they had spoken Rhunic, not Fhrey.

  Near the corner of the block, just below her window, was a flower bed. The four delicate sprouts that had emerged with the warming weather had been crushed, pressed down in the soft dirt. She bent over to look at the depression in the soil.

  “Lose something?” The voice came from directly behind her.

  Heart pounding, Brin shot up and spun so fast she nearly fell. A hand grabbed her forearm, catching her. Terrified, she pulled back and nearly screamed—but it wasn’t a raow that had hold of her.

  “Oh—sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” the young man said, letting her go the moment she was steady again.

  “Shouldn’t sneak up on people, then,” Brin snapped. The moment she spoke, she wished she could take the words back.

  This wasn’t the first time Brin had seen this particular young man. She had first noticed him in the training yard, a place she’d passed each day when delivering Roan’s midday meal. If left to herself, Roan would forget to eat, so Padera and Brin delivered. Would-be-warriors were always practicing in the upper courtyard in front of the smithy, and this young man was always there, even in the snow and rain. On warm days, he’d take his shirt off, and Brin was thankful he was so intent on his lessons that he didn’t see her sneaking a peek his way. His body was pure lean muscle, but it was his smile that attracted her most. As he sparred, a huge grin dominated his face, like he was taking down a giant or slaying a dragon. Something wonderfully wild lay behind such a grand grin. She’d felt the same way about Raithe when he first came to Dahl Rhen. Neither of these men were farmers, shepherds, or woodcutters.

  When she first noticed the young man, she thought he looked familiar. Back in Tirre, there had been a boy, a scrawny kid who lived with Raithe and Malcolm. Brin only noticed him because he was one of the few beneath the wool who was her age, and he came to the few chieftain meetings that Raithe had attended. But the young man she watched practicing in the upper yard, the same one who’d just grabbed her arm, was bigger, fuller, and taller. He sported disheveled locks, dark beautiful eyes, and patches of hair on his cheeks and chin. The boy she knew from Tirre had been covered in a torn, stained rag. This man wore a longshirt cinched tight at his waist by a sword belt holding two blades.

  What had started as a chore became the most anticipated part of her day. After dropping off the food for Roan, Brin would linger in the yard outside the smithy, watching. Each day she hoped he would notice her, but he never looked her way. During the long walk back home, she daydreamed about the day they would eventually meet. Most scenarios involved him making some blunder, falling perhaps. He’d feel foolish, look awkward, but she would smile and make light of the misstep, assuring him it happened to everyone. Then he would invite her to take a walk. As they strolled through some lovely forest—not that there were any within two days’ travel—she would tell him about her book. She’d talk about language, writing, and the story she had found on the tablets from Neith; the young hero would be so impressed that he would fall in love with her. They would marry, have children, then grandchildren, and finally die in each other’s arms, wrinkled and gray.

  Reality was quite different.

  “I wasn’t sneaking. I just—”

  “You certainly weren’t announcing yourself from afar.” Brin didn’t know why she said it. She was nervous, off-balance, and the words just came out—and they came out angry.

  “Well, I—ah…” He looked awkward, then glanced at the house. “I was looking for Roan, the metalsmith. I heard she lived around here.”

  “She does.” Brin then eyed him suspiciously. “What do you want with her?”

  “I want to be fitted for armor.”

  “Oh,” Brin said stupidly. Having saved her from falling, he remained close. She could have leaned out and kissed him. The thought hovered in her mind, forming a terrible distraction. Catching herself, wondering how moronic she must look staring his way, she blinked. “Ah…Roan works up at the fortress in the upper courtyard. She lives here—is supposed to at least—but she spends all her time over there.”

  “Yeah, I know,” the pair of lips, dark eyes, and open shirt said. “But I was just up there and…”

  “And what?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t see her anywhere around. So, I thought maybe she came here. And then I found you on all fours groping around the ground, so I—”

  “I wasn’t on all fours! And I most certainly wasn’t groping!”

  He held up his hands. “Honestly, I don’t know what you were doing.”

  “If you must know, I was looking for footprints.” Another sentence she wished she could take back. This conversation is not at all like I imagined.

  His eyes narrowed. “You were…what?”

  “Never mind. Roan’s not here.”

  The young man hesitated, then finally nodded, turned, and walked away.

  You’re such an idiot! Brin screamed in her head. Great impression. Maybe if I’d actually been eating the dirt, if I’d had a mouthful of soil that was spilling in clumps over my lips and was—

  “Why were you looking for footprints?” The young man had stopped. He was staring back at her.

  “I heard people talking below my window last night. I—I was wondering who they were.”

  “And you thought you could tell that by their footprints?” He lifted his own foot and looked at the bottom. “You can do that?”

  She scowled. He was making f
un of her now. He thinks I’m an idiot! Great. “No.” She felt her heart sink. “Please, just leave.” She felt so awful she might cry and absolutely didn’t want him to see that.

  He turned to walk away again, but once more stopped. “Okay, so you have to tell me, or it will bother me all day. Why were you looking for footprints? How would that help you identify who these people were?”

  I hate my life.

  Brin didn’t say anything. She didn’t trust herself to talk anymore, and thought he might just leave if she remained silent. He didn’t. Feeling stupid—no, she was well beyond that—she sighed.

  I never had a chance with him anyway. What was I thinking? I wasn’t—I was dreaming. Look at him! Gorgeous, strong, dashing, and those eyes—those eyes! And then there’s me, a pale twig with no shape, an orphan who spends her days scribbling nonsense with discarded quills. He never was going to be interested in me. I might as well light the pyre under that dream and just let the whole thing burn.

  “I—I was looking for footprints that weren’t human.”

  “Are Fhrey feet that different?”

  “Not Fhrey.”

  He looked at her, puzzled. “You mean…wait—what do you mean? A dog or something?”

  She shook her head. “Dogs don’t talk.”

  He stared at her, eyes narrowed, his head tilted slightly to one side. “Then…what do you think was below your window last night?”

  Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it!

  He walked back to her. His expression was exactly how she pictured he would look as she captivated him with tales of her literary prowess just before he fell in love with her. But that wasn’t going to happen now. She sighed and gave up. “A raow.”