Ashes of a Black Frost

by Chris Evans

  Konowa reached out a hand and placed it firmly on the Viceroy’s arm. The cloth was soft and thicker than Konowa had realized. Frost fire began to sparkle along the fabric and he removed his hand before he hurt the man. A wind gust picked that moment to drive a flurry of snow in his face. They were in for a long, cold march. “Then it sounds like we have a little more walking in the snow to do than I thought. Tell me, Pimmer, I seem to have missed out on the procurement of foul weather clothing. How much for one of your robes?”

  The world appeared washed-out and blurry through Alwyn’s open eyes.

  Everything he had known was fading, as if the colors that made life vibrant and fresh now feared to be near him. Even his memories were taking on a patina of gray, diluting the emotions he once associated with them and gave them meaning. He knew that before long the very concepts of laughter, compassion, even love, would be lost to him.

  He would fight it, but he wasn’t sure how long he could resist.

  Alwyn closed his eyes, but his vision didn’t darken. Even with his eyes closed he saw the world, but now as a vast sea swirling and frothing with energy. Major Swift Dragon stood speaking with Viceroy Alstonfar twenty yards away. He saw them clearly; the elf and the man shone like two torches against black velvet. Alstonfar showed as a warm, soft blend of oranges and yellows. The major’s aura was a twisted mess of greens and reds surrounding a metallic black core, a source of energy and power to be directed and used.

  Threads of pulsing force connected everything, and all Alwyn had to do was reach out and pluck one and claim the power for himself.

  He understood the Shadow Monarch better now. The pull of the energy surrounding him was seductive. His right hand began to rise as anticipation coursed through his body. He could use his life force, direct it to better purpose. He could make things right again.

  Alwyn forced his eyes open, fighting back a scream as he did so. Dizziness threatened to topple him. He brought his already raised hand up to his head and squeezed his temples. The pressure felt good, and he shifted his weight to his wooden leg, testing his balance. Pain flared in the stump of his leg and frost fire sparkled briefly wherever the thin wooden branches of the artificial limb touched his flesh. A wave of cold spread throughout the stump in response, and the pain melted away as his flesh went numb. The magic that had once infused the wooden leg was dying, overwhelmed by the growing power of the oath inside him. Already Alwyn could see new black shoots sprouting from dead branches in the leg.

  Before much longer the leg, like the rest of him, would belong to Her.

  Snow gathered on the sand around him and he looked up into the sky. A scouring wind was driving the snow at an increasingly sharp angle as it moved in from the coast. Carried on the wind was the unmistakable smell of Her presence. He shook his head and turned to Yimt only to stop and catch his breath.

  Yimt was gone.

  Thoughts of the dwarf burst through the darkening vistas of his mind and he desperately clung to them, finding strength in the memories of his lost friend.

  “Kill him.”

  Alwyn looked up as the shade of Regimental Sergeant Major Lorian, astride the warhorse Zwindarra, materialized beside him in the gusting snow. Laced with pain, Lorian’s words were more plea than command. Alwyn returned his gaze to follow Major Swift Dragon as he resumed walking among the troops. The Blood Oath that bound the dead to the regiment and Her lived through the major. Killing him, however, would not break it, but it would satisfy an all-consuming need for revenge. “Kill him,” Lorian said again, his voice a cold echo inside Alwyn’s head.

  Lorian’s anguish washed over him in ethereal waves flooding between this world and the next. Alwyn fought for balance again as more shades materialized, their suffering adding to the surging eddies of vengeance that threatened to carry him along until their desire was his.

  Alwyn alone would have yielded to their cries, but he was no longer just Private Renwar. He was more. He had assumed the role of leading the shades of the dead, giving voice to their anguish and their anger. In doing so, he held a power the shades did not. Unlike them, he remained part of both worlds—their allegiance, however confused and harrowing, was his to lead. He hadn’t wanted that, but he had bargained with the Shadow Monarch in his dream, freeing the shades from Her grasp while condemning himself in the process. His task was simple—ensure that Konowa arrived safely to Her mountain. Too late he realized that it had been no bargain at all. Alwyn had hoped that in freeing them he would ease their pain, but the brilliance of Her plan was in its very simplicity. The dead were now bound to Alwyn, and he was bound to Her, and so the Blood Oath was not diminished. Through it all, the shades’ suffering grew.

  “No, he must live,” Alwyn replied, focusing his thoughts on the shades. These were former comrades, men who had risked their lives for something greater and deserved better than the existence they now endured. All that stood between them and immortal service was Alwyn’s force of will, and he knew he couldn’t hold out forever. Either the Shadow Monarch died, or they were all doomed.

  “He caused this,” Lorian’s shade said as voices of the dead around it howled in agreement.

  “No. She caused this,” Alwyn shot back, concentrating his strength and adding power to his voice. “He is as much a victim as we are.” As is She, he thought to himself. It was Her love for the dying sapling that had driven Her to extreme lengths to save it. That one, desperate act now drove them all to find a way to end it, and Her.

  Shrieking in protest, the shades drifted back into darkness. They could not defy their Emissary. Their agony reverberated in the air for several seconds.

  Alwyn shuddered. Time was against them. Even now they watched the major and he felt their need to destroy him.

  It was becoming his need, too.

  It seemed right. Before long he would know it was right, and then all would be lost.

  “Prepare to march!”

  It took a moment for Alwyn to recognize the command referred to him as well. No living soldiers came near him, and Alwyn understood. He also knew that if Yimt were still alive, the dwarf would be cajoling him to snap out of it and get a wiggle on. The thought almost brought a smile to his face. Marshaling his thoughts and focusing on the humanity that yet remained inside him, Private Alwyn Renwar of the Calahrian Empire’s Iron Elves shouldered his musket, and without waiting for further orders or looking behind him, began to walk to the west.

  From high on a broken rock face overlooking the battlefield, a pair of milky-white eyes followed the procession of human meat marching behind a limping figure.

  Even from this distance, the rakke could sense Her mark on the one leading the men. It was similar, but not identical, to the mark carried by Her Emissary, and it was much stronger than the aura that filled the air around the column of men.

  Every instinct was on fire, urging it to charge down there and tear into all that wet flesh, to feast until its stomach was full. Drool glistened off the rakke’s fangs. Its eyes narrowed to slits as it calculated the fastest path down the rocks that wouldn’t set it tumbling through the air to its death. The way was difficult, but not impossible. Ignoring the snow falling on its raised hackles, it began to shiver, not with cold, but anticipation.

  The rakke leaned forward until it was almost tipping over the edge. Its muscles throbbed with tension as its nostrils flared, drawing in the frigid air and filling its lungs in preparation to charge. It caught the scent of the meat below and almost howled in joy. The procession of men and animals acted like chains with hooks dug deep into its flesh, pulling it closer. It leaned a little more, feeling its body start to fall forward. It would have allowed itself to keep falling, knowing it would then be forced to leap and begin its run, but a thin suggestion of caution slipped through the red haze of wanton hunger, tempering its rapacious needs. It caught itself and leaned back, snapping its jaws in frustration. Reluctantly, it searched the procession with greater care. The rakke could see only the living, but the storm-d
riven snow alternately revealed them, then hid them from view, giving the column a spectral appearance in the night. The rakke knew to be afraid of the shadow ones. It was difficult to be sure if the shades were there or not, and so it eased itself away from the edge.

  Settling back down among the rocks, it turned its head and growled in anger at the glow of the blue tree now dominating the landscape. Everything about the tree was wrong. Instead of offering a wet, dark place to hide in like Her forest, this tree shone light everywhere. It felt to the rakke as if the radiance was worming its way into its skull, slowly killing it with its light. It knew in the most primitive way that the tree was trying to send it back to the nothingness that the Shadow Monarch had rescued it from. The rakke longed for Her power to return here and cleanse the land of this new terrible light. The rakke’s desperation to move away from the tree increased, but it would wait and watch until the enemy left. Only then would it abandon its perch and report back to Her dark elves.

  Gnashing its teeth and ripping at the rocks with its claws, it stayed in place. It would endure the agony of the blue light and go hungry. Soon enough, it would be able to hunt again, and when it did, its prey would know true agony before it died.

  The rakke was so consumed with rage that it didn’t notice the shadow that suddenly appeared behind it. A soft, gurgling sound like that of water in a mountain brook was swept away by the wind before it reached the rakke’s ears, denying it a final opportunity to escape. A single spark of dull green blossomed into a teeming mass of phosphorescing globules from deep within the shadow. They clustered into a roiling ball as they surged up a black throat and into a gaping maw.

  A sudden shift in the wind brought the scent of something sweetly caustic and distantly familiar to the rakke’s nostrils. Its bowels turned to ice water as a fear it had long forgotten shut down its ability to think. Primal instinct took over. It bared its fangs and hurtled its body to the left as it unleashed its claws to slash at the horror behind it.

  The rakke was a blur, swinging its massive arm out in a wide arc. The explosive force of its move would have torn plate armor like parchment, but its claw met only air. Without the weight of flesh and blood to slow the momentum of its swing, the rakke overrotated and pitched backward toward the rock-strewn desert floor far below. Instinctively, the rakke pushed its legs out to brace itself, but found only open air behind it and began to topple over the edge. It flung out its right hand to grab on to anything, but by now its body was too far away from the rock face and already beginning to accelerate.

  The rakke accepted its impending death on the rocks below with relief. Anything was better than falling prey to the green death stalking it.

  The swirling green mass spit forth from the shadow, hitting the rakke in the chest even as it fell.

  The green globs separated on impact. Each uncurled, revealing tiny legs and a sharp beak shiny with acid. A hissing sound enveloped the rakke as the tiny creatures released their toxin and began to burrow into its flesh.

  The rakke screamed as it tumbled through empty space, savagely ripping at its flesh wherever the minute invaders touched it. Arterial spurts of blood arced through the air as it dug its claws deep into its own rib cage. Howling in agony, it began pulling itself apart in a desperate attempt to get at the burrowing green creatures. Its heart pumped furiously as they crawled ever deeper, burning voraciously through sinew and bone.

  The rakke was dead before what was left of its body hit the desert floor with a squelching thud, scattering the pieces in a wide, wet crescent.

  Konowa looked up at the canyon as they marched past. Were those rocks falling? The wind howled and whatever it was got lost in a swath of snow that blocked his view, muffling all sound more than a few feet away. He considered pushing his senses outward using the power of the black acorn, but as he felt no urgent warning from the frost fire, the effort didn’t seem worth it. Stomping his boots hard enough in the snow to make the soles of his feet sting, he kept marching, hoping that eventually the process would warm him up.

  I miss the heat of Elfkyna, he realized, shocked that he could ever think that. The whole time he’d lived in that accursed place he’d wanted to be anywhere else, but now that he was, Elfkyna didn’t seem all that bad. He reached up and knocked some snow off the wings of his shako. Snow in the desert. He no longer felt like laughing about it, but cursing would waste too much energy. He settled for sighing, and tried to look ahead to where Private Renwar marched at the head of the column. Tiny orange lights bobbed in the gloom. He knew he was seeing the burning ends of cigarettes cupped in soldiers’ hands so that the palm of the hand protected the lit end as they marched. Smoking on the march was prohibited, but Konowa wasn’t about to say anything. They deserved every bit of comfort they could find, and if an enemy could see the glow of cigarettes, it was already close enough to see them.

  He could just make out an area of darkness with no telltale orange lights, and realized that would be Private Renwar. He squinted and saw the dimmest of outlines of the limping soldier. He walked a good ten yards in front of the column, alone and yet not alone.

  With Renwar out front, it meant the Darkly Departed would be, too. It was a thought that provided Konowa with less comfort than it had just a day before. It wasn’t jealousy, he told himself, but a growing concern over where Renwar’s loyalties lay. The understanding between Konowa and Renwar was fragile at best, and Konowa knew it couldn’t last. The private was bound to Her now in a deeper way than even Konowa, and that could only lead to a very dark end. Killing the first Viceroy had been a clear and necessary duty. What remorse he felt for doing it focused solely on the terribly unfair banishment and disgrace his act had brought down on the original Iron Elves. To kill Private Renwar though would be something else entirely . . . but he knew that time might soon be upon him.

  Konowa’s footsteps broke through the building layer of snow and crunched in the frozen sand beneath, momentarily throwing him off balance. Regaining his footing, he pulled the robe from Pimmer a little closer around his shoulders and leaned into the wind. The cloth was surprisingly good at keeping out the wind, yet wasn’t burdensomely heavy. Konowa still marveled at how little he had had to trade in exchange for the garment. The Viceroy had simply asked that Konowa dine with him once they reached the small fortress at Suhundam’s Hill. Konowa had readily agreed, though it was no real barter at all. Still, Pimmer’s beaming smile and his training in the Diplomatic Corps where negotiations came as naturally as breathing made Konowa wonder if there was perhaps more to the trade than he realized.

  A new flurry of snow snapped Konowa’s attention back to the here and now. The snow was falling in ever thickening sheets, so that for most of the time Konowa found himself marching alone. He did enjoy the peace and quiet it afforded him, but as second-in-command, he knew he couldn’t indulge in such luxury for long. Someone had to lead, and the Prince was still in no condition to do so. Slapping the hilt of his saber in annoyance, Konowa halted and turned to look back over the column.

  He could just see the shapes of the Viceroy and the Prince atop their camels. Konowa had been offered one of the beasts, but the Prince didn’t insist and Konowa happily volunteered the camel as a pack animal instead. Marching in snow was a frigid version of hell, but it was still preferable to riding along on one of those monsters.

  Konowa hunched his shoulders against the wind as the column marched past. It wasn’t a happy sight. Soldiers and animals alike walked with a slow, plodding gait, heads bent low against the elements. There was no singing, no laughing, barely any talking at all. Few even noticed Konowa as they marched past, and fewer still bothered to acknowledge him with a salute or a halfhearted wave. It occurred to Konowa that in his Hasshugeb robe in the dark, he probably didn’t look all that different from any other Iron Elf in the regiment. He hoped that was the case, choosing not to dwell on less charitable ideas.

  The camels carrying the Prince and the Viceroy ambled past. Neither man turned to look at h
im. Konowa made no move to draw their attention. Before long he would have to confront the Prince and snap him out of his sulk, but for now he actually preferred the future king silent and moping. It certainly kept him out of Konowa’s way and let him get on with the business at hand.

  A motley assortment of bullocks and camels plodded past towing the naval contingent’s battery of three cannon. Despite the wind and his damaged hearing, Konowa was convinced he heard a good deal of cursing going on. He’d made it clear the guns would travel with them despite having exhausted their supply of ammunition. Pimmer assured him the forts along the trade route they were following were well supplied with gunpowder, among other items that could, in a pinch, be shoved down the barrel of a cannon and fired. The idea of traipsing across a snow-covered desert with no ammunition was clearly not what the naval gunners had signed up for, but it was their lot and they could deal with it.

  Behind them and still marching in bare feet were the twenty-three surviving volunteers of the 3rd Spears. Whether it was stubbornness, pride, or a genuine imperviousness to cold, the soldiers from the Timolia Islands refused all offers of footwear or even rags to wrap their feet. Placing these fearsome warriors directly behind the grumbling artillery gunners had been a deliberate move on Konowa’s part. The gunners could grouse all they wanted, but with the 3rd Spears behind them, they would keep the guns moving.

  As the 3rd Spears marched past, Konowa squinted to catch sight of the rear guard. He knew they were a squad of scared and unhappy soldiers, but just like the naval gunners, they had to accept it. Konowa had seen the terror and anger in their eyes when he assigned them the task, but there was no other choice. The rear of the column had to be protected, and whoever got that duty knew it was filled with risk. What he had promised them, however, was that they wouldn’t have to shoulder the burden alone. Two other squads were picked to take turns bringing up the rear. Konowa knew it wasn’t time yet to make the change, but he could at least fall back and march along with them for a bit and perhaps pick up their spirits.