by Ken Scholes
“Where shall we meet up after, General?”
Lysias chuckled. “I’m not sure there will be an after, Captain.”
He felt the man’s hand settle on his shoulder, then felt the words his fingers pressed there, though the Gypsy hand-language was still new to him. I’ve not asked what lies north or what comes, but I do need to ask, on behalf of my men, if it is worth the blood it will cost.
No Delta officer would speak to him in such a way, and Lysias found the candor and concern for the men refreshing. Rudolfo expected his leaders to be forthright and even passionate when it came to the men they commanded. And true to the excellence of the Gypsy King’s officers, Tybard had known to ask his question in a way that no others could hear.
Lysias felt for the man’s arm and pressed his own words into the flesh he found there. It may win us this war. Then he followed it up with his voice. “If there happens to be an after, bring your men to the surface if you’re not already there. Beyond that, you’ll know what to do; it will be obvious. We’ll rendezvous at the grave of Windwir.”
“And the wounded who can’t walk?”
He’d considered this as well, and had expected the question. Those few times that Lysias felt uncertain in his command of Rudolfo’s men, he’d asked himself what he thought the Gypsy King would do and based his decisions on that measure. There were plenty of areas where Rudolfo was a brutal, methodical strategist. But his love for his men at times went too far. Still, Lysias hated the words he now formed carefully. “I will tend to them personally.” He offered no further explanation, and Tybard’s bicep stiffening beneath his hand told him that the captain understood. Lysias lowered his voice. “We can afford to have no prisoners taken, Captain.”
The man’s voice was controlled and cool. “Understood, General.”
A hooded lamp guttered to life and cast its light over the group of huddled men. Lysias squinted into it, checking the faces of the soldiers around him. “Pass the word, Captain. I want everyone on their feet and on the march in fifteen minutes.”
Lysias stood from his crouch and cinched the straps on his field pack. Then he checked the hilts of his knives. He’d preferred the saber of an Entrolusian Academy graduate but found that here in the Beneath Places the twin blades of a Gypsy Scout served him better. “I’ll need kallacaine and scout magicks,” he told his aide.
The young man moved down the line even as Tybard moved up it, passing Lysias’s orders as he went. Next, Lysias took in Blakely and Symeon. Neither were actual soldiers; they both bore the soft edges of an Androfrancine scholar out of place in the midst of uniforms and violence. Still, these men were their best hope of taking back the Named Lands. He’d seen with his own eyes what the pathogen they carried had done to the Y’Zirite scout. Once it was delivered into the water, it would multiply rapidly and indiscriminately kill anyone exposed to Y’Zirite blood magicks of any kind.
If this could turn the war, it was worth the cost.
The aide was back now, his hands full of pouches and packets. Lysias took them by fistfuls, pushing them into his pockets. “Now,” he said, “find Lieutenant Reynal and tell him he’s a captain now. Have him ready our men.” He nodded to the two Androfrancines. “Take them with you.”
“Yes, General.”
Then he moved his way down the line, and as he went, he touched the men here and there, spoke to them in a low and reassuring voice, even as they checked their equipment and prepared to move out. When he finally reached the end, he saw the medicos and the handful of men they sat with.
“Find your units,” he told them as they climbed to their feet.
The medicos stared at him. One of them—the highest ranking, he noted—opened his mouth. Lysias didn’t wait to learn if it was a challenge or a question.
“Find your units,” he said again, this time his voice harder.
Then he watched as they moved off. He noticed the slouch in their shoulders and hated himself for adding to it.
Lysias crouched by the first man. He was young, maybe twenty, and he’d been one of the first carved up by the Blood Guard. He already slept under the kallacaine they’d administered for his pain. The field dressings were already soaked through again.
This one will be easy.
Lysias put a hand on the young man’s head, tousling his hair. “I’m sorry, Son.”
Then, he tipped two packets of kallacaine into the soldier’s mouth, washing the powders down with water from his canteen. The man groaned but swallowed it down, and once Lysias was certain, he followed up with a pouch of scout magicks. Even as the man started convulsing and vanishing from view, Lysias was moving to the next fallen Forester.
This man—maybe in his thirties—regarded him with wide and frightened eyes.
This one will not be easy.
Then Lysias sighed and did the work that he could never order another of his men to do. And while he did it, he heard the music of the dream and saw the seeds borne upon the wind and wished he could go back to that meadow and stand before that great tree, as far from this dark place as he could possibly travel.
Rudolfo
Exhaustion rode Rudolfo as his feet pounded the ground. He felt it in his body—his ankles, his calves, his knees—and he felt it in his muddled mind and the constant roiling of his stomach. They’d run through a night and a day, stopping only for minutes at a time to gobble down the dry, flavorless Grey Guard rations Renard had provided, chasing it back with tepid water. Then they were on their feet and running again.
They’d magicked themselves once more and Rudolfo felt the effects of it. His nerves were stretched tightly, lending a hypervigilance to his heightened strength and enhanced senses. The scout powders weren’t as effective in broad daylight when it came to rendering them invisible, but no one was working in the pastures as they ran, and he and Ire Li Tam steered wide enough of any towns and houses they encountered along the way. Still, now that the Imperial Blood Guard was in pursuit, the magicks they used weren’t going to be enough.
Not now.
As if responding to him, the howling started up again somewhere leagues behind them. Ire had told him to expect the kin-wolves, but it had still jarred him. And each time the howls arose, he found his legs pushing harder, the mournful wrath of their cries driving them north to the Divided Isle’s inner coastline.
The wolves meant that their hours were numbered. Their pursuit also told them that Rudolfo’s absence—and likely his complicity in the assassination of Yazmeera and her officers and Blood Guard—had been discovered. It was easy enough to find something with his scent upon it and set the wolves to it. And doing that gave away the direction he fled, which meant more eyes to evade. Staying off the roads would help that, but it wouldn’t keep the kin-wolves and the Blood Guard that surely ran with them at bay.
Rudolfo felt the slightest tug to the left on his guide-thread as Ire Li Tam adjusted their course. He squinted ahead of them and saw the distant lights of a small city. It was likely Collinsfort, the seat of Collin County, which put them just fifteen leagues southwest of Talcroft Landing.
More howls behind, and Rudolfo suspected there were fewer leagues now between them and the kin-wolves than there were between them and their destination.
And beyond that, he wasn’t sure his body could handle much more. He’d spent his time under the powders off and on, though it was unseemly for a king to use them, but they took a toll on those who didn’t use them on a more regular basis. He’d been magicked now for longer than was prudent. The days following even their briefest usage left him haggard, exhausted and aching from a thousand pulled muscles. And he didn’t have the luxury of succumbing to that kind of misery. He’d need to stay sharp and intent upon the work at hand until they were safely aboard and underway.
They passed the city, angling their way between the widely scattered farms and manors that surrounded it. Once they were clear of the outskirts and had crossed their last river, Ire slowed them and dropped back to run beside h
im. She slipped his hand from the loop and then pressed her fingers into his shoulder as they ran.
Drink on the run. No more stops.
He didn’t trust himself not to stumble and offered no reply. Instead, he heeded her and slipped the canteen from his belt and took a quick sip. Once it was tucked away, she slipped the silk thread around his wrist and moved ahead. This time, the tautness of the guideline pulled him forward at a faster pace that his knees and feet protested until, once again, the howling behind them filled the night.
They’re even closer now.
The terrain around them changed as they climbed the low hills that served as a barrier from the inner seacoast. These were lightly forested, and the climb would slow them. But it wouldn’t slow the kin-wolves. They were made for the rugged terrain of the Churning Wastes, and nothing short of the sea would stop their pursuit.
He felt the line pull right, and he willed his feet to take him where his guide led them. It startled him just how much she had his trust.
And my grace, he realized. More than that, he’d felt an instinctive and powerful attraction to this lost daughter of House Li Tam. It had surfaced in a noticeable and uncomfortable way the night they’d first met and then again in the hours leading up to the assassination of Yazmeera and her officers. And he knew that just as it was with her sister, Jin Li Tam, his attraction to Ire was a response to her efficient and focused formidability.
Her ruthlessness as well. Perhaps that, he thought, lent a near-feral quality to his unexpected desire. Not that it was something to explore beyond his own awareness of himself. But the timing amused him.
A kin-wolf howled, and this time the nearness of it caused him to stumble. When he did, he pulled his hand back. The guideline snapped. He heard a muttered curse and felt a firm hand seize hold of his wrist.
Rudolfo let her lead him, the branches and underbrush slapping at him as they crested the hill. Here, he could smell the salt air, and the scent of it drove his legs harder as they launched themselves downhill. Ire took his renewed burst of speed and held him to it, pulling him forward as they angled themselves to the northeast and raced for the coast.
He could hear the underbrush crashing behind them and imagined the massive wolves loping their way uphill.
We’re not going to make it.
He and Ire were climbing again and the trees were thinning as they went, though he barely noticed it as he ran with his eyes down. But when he did venture to look up, he saw a clear sky speckled with stars beyond the canopy of trees.
He could hear the snarls and the grass being torn up by massive paws now, and as they crested the hill, Rudolfo became aware of two things. First, below them the lights of a village—Talcroft Landing—cluttered the shore of a natural harbor.
The second thing he noticed was the wind that rose up around them.
With the wind came the softest whistle, and it stopped Rudolfo’s heart, flooding him with a sudden joy that brought tears to his eyes. It was the first notes of the Ninth Hymn of the Wandering Army—a music-based strategy the Gypsies had used since their earliest days in the Named Lands. It had grown to three hundred and thirteen hymns, each designed for a specific military scenario and overwhelmingly successful when executed properly.
He felt Ire Li Tam pulling him around and he pulled back. “These are mine,” he said, tugging free from her grip only to seize her wrist himself and pull her forward.
Behind them, already, the wolves were yelping and growling as a half-squad of Gypsy Scouts fell upon them, but Rudolfo knew that even his best and brightest couldn’t stand for long against the kin-wolves and the Blood Guard that no doubt followed after.
A ghost ran along his other side, and Rudolfo became aware of a strong and acrid odor that set his teeth on edge and turned his stomach. “Hail, General,” a muffled voice whispered. “The Grey-Cloak, Renard, suggested you might be coming this direction and in need of assistance.”
“Hail, Philemus,” he answered, trying not to gag as he did. “Gods, what is that smell?”
“Urine,” his acting first captain said, and Rudolfo heard disgust in the man’s voice. “Now run. Simmons is readying the boat.”
Philemus slipped a thread over Rudolfo’s wrist as they entered the town, and Rudolfo let his acting first captain lead him and Ire Li Tam past the buildings down cobblestoned streets. As they ran, Philemus cut loose with an even louder whistle, and Rudolfo heard it returned from behind them. It meant his men were disengaging now to fall back on their commanding officer.
Somewhere behind them, the tone of the wolves’ howling had changed in its pitch. It no longer had the same driven, focused quality. And it no longer induced terror.
As the scouts fell in at a run around them, the smell grew stronger, and he realized his men reeked of it. Whatever urine it was, it seemed to have had more of an effect upon the kin-wolves than their blades had.
They ran for the darkened docks now, and a shout rose up. Once more, the scouts whispered away as Rudolfo, Philemus and Ire ran out onto the wooden planks, slipping past moored fishing boats as they went. In the distance, in the direction the scouts had run, Rudolfo heard the sound of steel on steel.
Ahead, he saw a crouched figure on the deck of a small boat. As they approached, Philemus slipped the line from Rudolfo’s wrist and whistled again. “Climb aboard, General.”
He climbed into the boat and pulled Ire behind him. A middle-aged balding man wearing a rain cloak straightened. “Well-met, Lord Rudolfo.”
“Master Simmons,” Rudolfo said. He inclined his head as he did so, though he knew the man couldn’t see him.
Philemus and the others were scrambling into the boat now as well, and once they were aboard, two young men cast them off. Rudolfo heard nails on the dock and looked up to see three large forms slouched at the shoreline, whining and growling as they raked the wood surface with their paws.
Rudolfo released a held breath and realized he was still holding Ire’s hand. He squeezed it once and let go. “We’re away.”
“Not quite yet,” Simmons said. “We’ve still got the Y’Zirite Navy to contend with.”
They’d rowed far enough out to raise the sails and now angled the boat toward the mouth of the harbor. The night wind caught them and drew them along as Rudolfo lay back. The exhaustion from it all—the mad, magicked sprint from Merrique County to here, preceded by the stress and strain of both the Council of Kin-Clave and the feast to commemorate his taking of the mark—settled over him like a heavy quilt, and he found his eyes drooping more and more as he slowed his breathing.
He didn’t realize he’d slipped into sleep until he was jarred awake by sudden activity on the deck. “We need to get you belowdecks, General,” Philemus said as he shook him gently. “And you need to remagick.”
Rudolfo’s stomach twisted at the sudden awakening and the thought of taking the powders again so soon. He climbed to his feet and took in the sea around him in the gray light of predawn. Approaching fast from port was a long, dark vessel that he recognized as Y’Zirite.
He moved toward the hatch and stopped when a tremendous tearing sound reached his ears across the water. He looked toward the vessel that pursued them and blinked. Now, it was two vessels, but something seemed odd about how they moved. No, he realized: Something had split the Y’Zirite ship into two pieces that now rolled to the side and took on water.
A large object moved through the wreckage it had created, growing as it rose up from the sea before them. Rudolfo had no frame of reference for something like this, and he watched, slack-jawed, as it slowed. The beast was made of metal and something like a serpent; deep inside of it, he could hear gears spinning as it was propelled through the water. It came alongside the fishing vessel as Simmons and his men scrambled to the sails and rudder, but Rudolfo knew—and suspected they did as well—that it was not something they could outrun.
Still, whatever it might be, it was at least an enemy of their enemy. And it showed no signs of treating
them in similar fashion.
The metal sea beast slowed further even as the fishing boat increased its speed and an impulse seized Rudolfo. “Bring us around,” he said.
As the ship came around, slowing itself, the metal creature stopped entirely. A low whine started up from deep inside, and slowly, its large metal mouth began to open.
Standing in it, dwarfed by the size of the creature’s gullet, a metal man waited. But this was like no metal man Rudolfo had ever seen. It looked more like his men’s descriptions of the Watcher, only instead of dark and pitted and ancient, this looked brand-new and made of such a polished silver that it perfectly reflected its surroundings. Its red eyes cast a smudged and bloody glow.
“Lord Rudolfo,” it said, “I would hold parley with you regarding a most urgent matter.”
Then the metal man turned and limped back down the beast’s throat.
Jin Li Tam
With the rising sun behind her, Jin Li Tam walked the ranks of her two squads with slow and measured steps, pausing before each woman to make—and hold—eye contact.
The Y’Zirite scouts stood at attention in their loose-fitting dark silk uniforms and running boots, their hands resting against the sides of their legs, not far from the two knives each wore—silver for ceremony and steel for combat. Each also stood with packs upon their backs, ready to mobilize at her word. And within those packs, she had no doubt she would find every part of a Blood Guard’s kit, clean and in working order, ready for use. Still, for this inspection, Jin was unconcerned with their equipment or their appearance and the neatness thereof.
I need to see their eyes. Most were hollow and dark-circled. Some were red and bloodshot. But all of them so far held what it was she searched out: enraged resolve.
Satisfied, she returned to the front, where their captain waited with Sister Elsbet. She met the officer’s eyes after a glance to the older woman and saw the sorrow and anger that danced there. “Your Blood Guard is impressive,” she said as she inclined her head.
