by Robert Brady
Glynn sighed. “Well, certainly, I can neutralize this,” Glynn said, and stroked the beacon with her index finger. “I assume there is a meeting place for our two groups?”
Slurn informed her they had told Nina they were heading for Andurin, so in fact they could go anywhere else.
He hadn’t been introduced to this new female. Typical of the Uman-Chi, who considered him an animal.
Jack shook his head and took the rod from Glynn. “Run and they’ll just follow you,” he said. “If I were the Emperor, I would have worked out a way for the cities to communicate between each other by now. They’ll cut us off and we’ll be caught.”
“And your plan, Sirrah?” Glynn asked him.
“No matter what they have, they can’t keep up with Little Storm,” he said. “I’ll run him just ahead of their army until I’ve gotten them all out from between you. You regroup back to the Silent Isle and I’ll find you there.”
Glynn’s face was difficult for Slurn to read, but even he saw the scorn. “And how will you get to my homeland, Sirrah?” she asked him. “I think your mount cannot swim.”
Zarshar sighed. Even that made Slurn’s blood boil. To tolerate such a one, over and over, speaking in its arrogance, filled him with a gut-wrenching anger.
“Give him your gold,” the Swamp Devil said. “I think he can muster the wherewithal to hire a boat.”
“He is a hunted Man,” Glynn protested.
“I’ll be that no matter what,” Jack said.
Slurn hissed his agreement. As the sun continued to climb past the horizon, he reminded them they needed to be off, and quickly.
Jack kicked his stallion in the ribs and reached into Glynn’s hand and took the rod. Slurn was surprised—he didn’t expect any of them to be so bold with the Uman-Chi. He felt even more surprised that she tolerated it.
“Is there any way for you to get a message to me, if you don’t end up going to Outpost IX?” Jack asked her.
“I could find a way to use the beacon,” Glynn said. “However, you must discard that as soon as you can. If I replace it, then our enemies will have you as soon as they derive it.”
“Perhaps I might be of assistance,” the other female said. “Extend your hand to me, Jack.”
Jack pulled the reins to his left and Little Storm stepped up to the woman’s charger. Jack reached out his hand to her, and she took it.
Without preamble, she pulled a curved dagger from her belt, concealed in her white robes, and pricked the end of his finger. He gasped as she pressed out a few drops of blood into her palm.
Slurn stood up on his hind legs in time to see the woman’s palm absorb the blood. She looked up into Jack’s brown eyes and said, “I’ve taken a small part of you into my person now. For three cycles of the moon, I will be able to sense you, and to send you images, while your bare feet touch Fovean soil. If you need me, then put your skin to the ground and think of me. If I need you, I will wait for such an event.
Jack nodded. He turned his head to Slurn and said, “Tell Raven I’m alright, and I’ll see her soon.”
Slurn hissed. Glynn didn’t translate, but hardly needed to.
He turned back to Zarshar. “Look out for the dog—she’ll want to follow me and she’ll slow me down.”
The Swamp Devil laid a surprisingly gentle hand on the animal, who warmed to him and wagged its tail. Slurn didn’t expect that. He’d never known any sort of kindness from their kind, especially not toward a lesser creature. A Swamp Devil would be more likely to torture such an animal out of his own meanness.
“I admit I’ve grown attached to the thing,” he said. “I suppose I could be bothered to watch out for it.”
Jack smiled that frightening, toothy smile that Men did. “I’d be forever in your debt,” he said.
A debt to a Devil is no less than the cost of your soul, Slurn thought to himself.
With no more preamble, Jack kicked Little Storm into motion and ran south, away from their destination.
Slurn could already see the changes among these people. Watching the Man ride away, he wondered what else would change.
* * *
“They’re moving,” Nina informed the Duke and Duchess, leaping into their pavilion through the tent slit. She’d already dressed out in her leather pants and halter, daggers on her thighs.
Duke Stowe stirred in his travel furs, his wife clearly naked under the furs beside him. He rolled over onto his back and propped himself up on his elbows.
Nina had known this man since Lupus had been elevated to King. She’d watched the changes in him, from beaten-down son of a drunken monarch, to over-taxed apprentice to a rising Emperor, to Earl, to Duke, to one of the most important men in the Empire.
With power had come ambition. Tartan stank of it now.
“I would ask if you would treat the Emperor this way, but I know from personal experience that you do,” he grumbled. “When you say, ‘They’re moving,’ I assume you mean these friends of yours?”
“You know I do,” she said. “South, toward Angador.”
That got his attention. “We’ve all but emptied out the garrison,” he said. “With any sort of force at all—”
“Be calm, your grace,” Nina said, crossing the pavilion and taking a seat on a chest. She didn’t like this—too gaudy. Too much ‘stuff,’ too much work to move it. The Emperor slept in little more than a bedroll, perhaps a tent if he brought the Empress. He’d been a common once. He didn’t see the value of opulence.
“They’re only a few. If they recruited all of the rats of Kor, they wouldn’t have a thousand. What could they do with that?”
“Wreak some bloody havoc,” the Duke said. His wife sat up topless from her furs, saw Nina and, wide-eyed, covered herself.
“My lady,” Nina inclined her head.
“Unannounced and uninvited,” Yeral sputtered. “I know the Emperor keeps a loose etiquette—”
“Beloved, please,” Stowe interrupted her. Looking at Nina he asked, “When did they start moving?”
“They have an hour on us, moving fast. Even if Little Storm can keep up that pace, they’ll kill their other horses if they try.”
Tartan stood, a loin cloth his only clothing, and pulled his hose from a pile next to the furs. “It will take no less than three hours to rouse the camp,” he said. “Summon my captains—”
“Done,” Nina told him, a smile on her lips. She’d campaigned with the Emperor before. “And fast riders out to try and catch them. They won’t, but they’ll leave a fresh trail for us to follow.”
Stowe nodded. “Well done, Nina. If you’ll excuse us, then…”
Nina nodded and stood, shooting a glance at the Duchess trying to wiggle into a cloth nightgown under the furs. The Lady Shela would have realized they had nothing amongst spouses and women to hide and just stood to greet her.
With a little extra swing to her hips, she sauntered out of the pavilion. Cooks were already scrambling to put together a fast travel paste for the warriors. The Wolf Soldiers had remained in Lupor, and the Angadorian Knights were no Wolf Soldiers, even if they had the training. More like Eldadorian regulars, not necessarily playing at soldiers, but not the soldiers others could be.
On an order from the Emperor, Wolf Soldiers would be marching in less than half an hour. They’d eat on the way if they had to, or do without, the pain giving them an edge.
She could still feel the talisman Karl carried, moving south. She’d have to tell the Emperor the Hero of Tamara had turned against them. She didn’t look forward to that.
All the while, and off and on for these last weeks, actually a month now, she’d been flashing on that last encounter with the Emperor, where she’d defied him, where he’d beaten her.
She should hate him for that, she knew. She’d like to think Krell would hear of it and be at the Emperor’s throat with a knife, however he’d be more likely to finish on her what Lupus had begun.
No one—no one—raised a hand to Rancor Morde
tur. All threats were destroyed. The Emperor had told her once, “Never leave an enemy standing. Destroy them, ruin them, make others dread their fate. There’s no nobility in being struck back, it just hurts and makes you weaker.”
But he’d left her standing, just hurt her. Afterward he’d sought her out, asked if she still wanted to be here, asked if she thought she had anything left to learn from them. Sent her on this mission.
Because he needed someone he could trust.
She’d wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted her feet up off the ground. Hanging from his shoulders, his arm around her middle, she’d wept into his neck and told him she wanted to be with the royal family.
She would always be Nina of the Aschire, but she was Nina of the Mordetur, too.
Whom he could trust, she thought. That one memory diminished all others. She’d looked into those blue, blue eyes and she’d loved him like any daughter of his issue. She pledged to return successful and he’d believed it.
“If you get in trouble,” he’d told her, “there is Dilvesh, in Vrek, and there are the Stowes, in Angador. Dilvesh would die bloody before betraying me. The Stowes, I think, are more vassal than friend. I became a father to the boy whose father had betrayed him, and the one became the other.”
She got that. When the time came, she’d done exactly as he’d expected, she felt sure. Now they would move south. Now she would complete a complicated but not inglorious mission.
* * *
“You let him go?”
Glynn was surprised at this Raven, gone so short a time. She sat straighter in her saddle. She had that confidence, that self-control, which marked a Caster of any kind. Nina had begun and then abandoned her training, and now the student had her own ideas.
“Indeed, there was no stopping him,” Glynn informed her, once again. They had rejoined in the shadow of the Salt Wood, and already begun the journey west.
It had been Raven’s first instinct to run off after her aging lover, but that might have proved suicidal with an entire army between them. Glynn had reminded Raven this was not self-sacrifice, but indeed self-preservation for them all. No horse alive save one could catch Little Storm.
Tears streamed her face. Raven clearly yearned for this Jack. She found the reaction on the face of the now-identified Karl Henekhson more interesting.
No wonder he hadn’t wanted the Emperor to see him on that fateful night, when she’d met him in Galnesh Eldador. The Emperor would want long words with the Hero of Tamara, unannounced on Eldadorian soil.
Karl clearly had thoughts on this Raven. Glynn wondered if that could benefit her in the short and the long run.
“Do you think the gaffer can make it on his own back to Outpost IX?” Karl asked her, a sideways look at a stiff-chinned Raven. “I know the horse is capable—”
“Don’t be fool enough to underestimate that one,” Zarshar told Karl, the dog at his feet. “He’s sharp as a claw and deadly as he needs to be. He’ll make the lot of them look stupid and likely beat us to Outpost IX just to remind us who he is.”
Where this affinity for Jack came from, Glynn couldn’t imagine, but if it meant the Swamp Devil had abandoned the idea of killing them in their sleep, so be it.
“And now we have the one who fights as does the sun,” Jahunga said, eyeing Vedeen. “A Druid of our own, to counter the one among the Daff Kanaar.”
Vedeen smiled. “I think you overestimate me, goodsir,” she said. “The Green One is not someone to counter. He is a friend to the world, as I am, and I might remind you again, before you write answers to your song, you must consider the proper questions.”
That irritated Glynn no end. The greatest minds among the Uman-Chi, Angron Aurelias himself, had poured over the song. Druids may be wise, but a candle to a volcano compared to Uman-Chi wisdom, crossing centuries of Life.
The sun fought with the power of Earth and Weather, of course. It warmed and it cooled, it crossed the sky and left it darkened. It fought eventually, not immediately. Of course it was a Druid—she’d surmised no less when first she’d realized their destination was the Lone Wood.
D’gattis had informed her his might was no match for Dilvesh of the Daff Kanaar, in a battle of wills. However, in a battle to the finish, he knew he would prevail. Uman-Chi subtlety and the tactics of hundreds of years’ studies would outmatch what Dilvesh could possible gather in his short breath of years.
So, too, with this Vedeen. She spoke for the Druids and had taken over Dilvesh’s post as guardian of the Lone Wood, but in fact she represented no more than a sprinkling of power and knowledge, compared to her.
So as they rode north Glynn occupied herself instead with this weepy girl and her newfound powers, beginning Raven’s re-training by asking her, “Girl, tell me—what do you think you know about spell casting?”
* * *
Jack rode all day and didn’t sleep that first night they were chasing him, because he was pretty sure they would expect him to. He was one man, scared and tired. He had a horse to think about. He had the ability to be hidden and he needed the sun to see by. So he trusted to the moon, moved slowly and navigated by that, and he followed an ellipsis, not a straight line, using the compass he’d bought for himself in Lee’s Hope.
By making a great arc away from the Forgotten Sea, his path would seem entirely random. Even when they picked up his trail, and he was sure they would, they would never know why he was following it, meaning they wouldn’t get ahead of him.
When the sun rose he made camp, picking out what might have been a farm at one point, abandoned now, flat places in the earth with tell-tale lumps where someone had once built what settlers had called a ‘soddy.’ He hadn’t heard any pursuit, no baying dogs, no thundering horses. Those following him would be back there, he felt sure, but that didn’t bother him if they could never catch him.
If they got ahead of him, he was sunk, and that was what he couldn’t allow. He still had his falchion but knew he wasn’t good enough to fight real warriors.
Of all of the things he could be missing, he felt lonely for the dog. He hadn’t had one in a long time—a little Springer Spaniel named, “Molly Malone.” His wife had gotten her in their divorce. He’d actually created reasons to go see her in order to visit with the dog and throw a stick for her.
This new one had been wet-mouthed like Molly, less of a character but more of a companion. She seemed to have a need to touch people to be comforted.
Jack yanked the saddle from Little Storm’s back and began to brush him down, working out the giant sweat stain from his back and shoulders and from the girth under his ribs. The horse had run quiet all night, the same pace, not a sound from him. Jack had rested him for what he considered to be about ten minutes every hour. For all Little Storm seemed to care, he might not have bothered, but an overworked horse could collapse or run himself lame, he knew, and his whole life depended on the mount now.
Little Storm began cropping grass the moment Jack stopped brushing him, letting him pick his hooves for pebbles. Jack spent a half hour poking around but didn’t even find a woodchuck for company. Finally he lay down on his bedroll with his head on his pillow, closed his eyes to the rising sun and lay still, waiting for sleep to take him. He felt exhausted and expected it to come quickly.
“Good morning to you,” he heard in his mind.
That gave him a start. He leapt up and saw no one, heard nothing but the stallion munching grass where he’d picketed it.
“We’re resting,” he heard again inside his mind. The voice was gender-neutral, he saw nothing but blackness in his mind. “I thought I might find you finally—you must have ridden all night.”
“Who is this?” he asked himself. He had no idea if something or someone could hear him, but he didn’t think that he should speak out loud.
“Why, who do you think it is, great bear?” the voice asked. “I told you I could speak to you this way, when your body touched the ground.”
Jack felt immediately suspi
cious. The Druid would have just said who she was. This seemed like a trick Nina would play, maybe even Shela. He forced himself not to think of the Druid’s name as he thought, “Glynn?”
He almost wanted to think, “Melissa,” but that meant giving up her name, Shela might not know yet that Raven was spell casting.
“You are clever,” the voice said. “But Glynn made no such claim. Think back to the moment behind the ridge, before you took the rod from her hand.”
Okay, only Vedeen would know that. He felt his shoulders relax as he settled back into the horse blanket. “Why play games like that?” he asked.
A chuckle in his mind. “Because you must be careful in this world, my friend,” she told him.
“Alright,” he thought, “finish this: In nomine patri, et fili.”
Nothing.
“Still there?”
Nothing. Jack waited. He remembered the Swamp Devil’s reactions to those words. Maybe he shouldn’t have used them.
Maybe that was exactly what he should do.
His mind stayed quiet. He thought it might be a good time to get going, but in fact if his enemies were on to him, then this was the best time to stay pat.
Wondering these things, he drifted off to sleep despite himself, his last thoughts that he wasn’t as young as he used to be.
Chapter Four
On the Run
Perched atop the sidesaddle of her Eldadorian charger, moving north to a ship and, perhaps, home, Baroness Glynn Escaroth had come to hate a word, spoken either in Uman or the language of Men.
That word was, “Why;” the favorite of her energetic protégé.
“Because magic obeys certain laws?” she informed Raven, sitting her own charger side saddle in her Andaran raider outfit, oblivious to the fact she was telling the world she thought she was pregnant.
Raven frowned. She had come to call this ‘the waiting stage.’ The girl would frown, as if angry at the power of the gods, and then restructure her attack, and come after Glynn on another front.
