Packer’s jaw fell. He didn’t know where to begin. “Scat and Lund are—”
“Yes, Commander Tuth is willing to make allowances for the small inconvenience caused by their demise.”
“But me? How do they know me?”
Ward shrugged. “Spies, perhaps? You’ve been a hero in Nearing Vast for quite a while now.”
Packer looked at the parchment, and Ward pointed out the names. They were impossible to read, but that didn’t stop Packer from trying. Giving up, he looked back over the field, toward the village. He saw figures on the rooftop of the general store, watching. He knew that one of them would be Panna—no one could have kept her from climbing up for a better view. He wanted to talk to her before answering. But only one answer seemed possible. If it was a choice between all-out war and sailing aboard the Chase to Drammun, how was it even a choice? God had answered his prayer, and the prayers of his people. God had saved His people, who had chosen to bow the knee rather than raise the sword.
“I don’t see how I can reject these terms,” Packer said earnestly.
Ward hesitated. He rubbed his chin. “You know, Packer. Your Highness. The way these things generally work is that you ask for a bit of time to prepare a response.”
“Okay, good. How much time?”
The prince turned again and spoke to Tuth. The commander’s eyes glinted as he spoke a few words, pointing first to the stand of trees nearby and then toward the town.
Ward mirrored the gestures.
“Until the shadow of these trees,” he pointed above him, “strike that village.” He pointed to Varlotsville.
“Agreed,” Packer said, nodding, looking at Tuth.
Tuth made another statement, his eyes boring into Packer’s.
“There seems to be one more thing,” Ward offered. “And he seems fairly adamant on this point. If you move your troops off that square, that will be taken as a refusal of the Hezzan’s terms. He seems particularly concerned about tunnels, for some reason. If he detects any movement of the troops, the Drammune will attack immediately.”
Packer had not taken his eyes from those of Huk Tuth. The man had the light of battle burning there now, and this Packer recognized. It was neither distant nor foreign. Packer wanted to give some equally martial response to show Tuth he was not intimidated, but he did not have one to give. “Agreed,” was all he said. And then he turned his back and walked away, back toward Varlotsville.
From the woods behind the Drammune commander, the two brothers lowered their muskets. Dall and Stub Hammersfold looked at one another. Dall nodded. They had no orders to be here, but without a commanding officer they had no orders to be anywhere else, either. After the Battle of the Green, they had traded in their smart uniforms for their more accustomed gear, the leather breeches and jackets, the wide-brimmed felt hats of the woodsmen that they were—that they had been until Bench Urmand found them, learned their mettle, and made them his deputies.
But Bench was dead, and they didn’t particularly like any of the other officers they had met. So they had worked their way through the woods on their own, as scouts, following the Vast armies from a distance, secreted by trees and terrain of their home territory. They were now the only Vast soldiers who knew what had happened to the Vast rear guard, but they did not feel much need to report it to anyone. Soldiers had done their duty, and died doing it. This was not news.
They had been here waiting, watching, for only a few minutes. But they had determined when they arrived that, should there be an attack on the Vast, the short old Drammune general would not live to see it. This was soldiering more to their liking, and they felt it worthy of the legacy of Bench Urmand.
But now, having overheard a good bit of the prince’s conversation with Packer Throme, they decided they would let Huk Tuth live.
“What now?” Stub asked.
“Stay and watch,” Dall whispered back. “It ain’t over yet.”
Stub nodded. “You think there’s any more of them furrin ones sneakin’ around our woods?”
“Mebbe,” Dall offered. “But if so, they ain’t close by here.”
Stub nodded. “They can put up a fight.” He fingered a bruised cheek and a cut lip. “But they ain’t much at sneakin’.”
Dall said nothing more; he just watched Huk Tuth as Stub scanned the woods behind them. Two bodies lay here, their throats slit. Two more lay dead beyond the far ridge. All four wore the black uniforms of the Nochtram Eyn.
The High Holy Reverend Father Harlowen “Hap” Stanson reined in his horse as he topped the hill. The winding road before him led down the valley and into a thick forest. And the forest was ablaze. Thick black smoke poured from the mouth of the roadway as though from the barrel of a smoking gun. He had been watching this blackness fill the sky for hours now, fearing at first that it was the City of Mann burning to ash. But it was the Hollow Forest burning, from the road here as far south as he could see, and it was spreading northward, to his left.
His horse stamped and whinnied, fearful of the smell, the sound of crackling flame. The next road through the forest to the north was perhaps thirty miles away, and to get there on established roads he would need to backtrack twenty miles or more.
He pondered. He didn’t want to waste that much time. He could try to skirt the forest, going north until he could find a path through the woods without following a road. That would be dangerous. He was no woodsman, and he had an unfamiliar horse. Or he could wait until the fire burned out. How long would that take? He didn’t know. An hour? Days? A week? That was not acceptable. What might Packer Throme do to consolidate his power in a week? There was no opposition a king could not crush, no institution not under his direct control, with the exception of the Church. The Church could not be ordered about by any king. And every king of Nearing Vast therefore must make his peace with her. Packer Throme would be no different.
Hap Stanson patted his horse’s sweaty neck, then rubbed his hand on his robes. Throme. That name had been a splinter in the thumb of the Church for too many years. First Dayton, and now Packer. If the elder Throme had not saved the life of Mather Sennett, rescuing him from the sea years ago, how different the recent history of this kingdom would be. The younger Throme would never have been schooled at swords, would never have stowed away on the Trophy Chase, or if he had, he would have been killed. Senslar Zendoda would be alive. There would have been no war, no abdication, no hanging of a king, no passing of the crown.
It could all be traced back to that shipwreck with young Prince Mather on board. And what had caused the flagship of the Fleet to sink in the dead of night, on simple maneuvers, with the crown prince aboard for nautical training? No one knew. Hap suspected Firefish. So did Dayton Throme, and that had created quite an awkward situation for King Reynard. Throme, simple fisherman that he was, just couldn’t shut up about it. As long as he stayed in his own village and talked only to other fishermen, he was just a fool, ignored even by fellow fools. But once he had gained access to a king, through the rescue of a young prince, he gained confidence. And once he started telling stories around the fireplaces in the pubs, not in fishing villages but in Mann, his seeds started finding good soil. People had listened. Then people had started bringing him information.
Throme had been unraveling the secrets. He had learned that Scatter Wilkins might have met and might even have conquered a Firefish. He had gotten close to connecting the notorious pirate with the respected king. And in those days, secrecy was everything…
But the Crown had an obligation to Throme, and so the usual routes of silencing fools did not seem practical. The Church had stepped in. Hap Stanson had done it gladly back then, sanding down rough edges for Reynard Sennett once more. But the Church had picked up this nasty splinter in the process; and it had festered unseen for years as the Throme boy grew. And now, all of it had led to this loss of the Crown, the amputation of the Church’s right hand. The Sennetts were many things, but as long as they were compliant, or at least pliabl
e, they were quite acceptable leaders.
Now, the Church’s influence was in jeopardy. The Thromes, of all people, held the power of the State. Packer had the ears of the people, and worse, he had their hearts. If he learned now what had actually happened to his own father—no, that could not be allowed to happen. It would cause no end of trouble. Sanding rough edges would not be enough this time. A crosscut saw would be needed to fix this one.
But so be it.
His decision now made, Hap Stanson spurred his horse to the left. He would travel along the forest wall until he could find a trail that might lead him through the woods ahead of the flames. He prayed with confidence that he would find a path through this tangled, burning wilderness his well-traveled road had suddenly become. God had always opened doors for Hap Stanson, even if a few hinges had needed oiling, or a few stuck jambs had needed a shoulder to aid the process. There was no reason to believe anything had changed, or would change.
He was the High Holy Reverend Father and Supreme Elder, after all.
The woods were burning.
No beast anywhere is drawn to the raw smell of wood smoke; it signals danger, only and always. And so the animals of the Hollow Forest, large and small, were on the move. The quick would live, the deer and the rabbit, the antelope and the fox, so long as they kept moving and did not allow themselves to be trapped in a clearing, or panicked into running off a cliff or into a pocket of flame. Possum and porcupine and groundhog, these were slow, and the slow would die, unless they were made of stuff that could take to the water. Turtles and otters and frogs and raccoons. Others, those neither fast nor slow, those that could scamper but could not fly, would need luck, or aid in some form, to prevent the firestorm from overtaking them. Among these were squirrels and chipmunks and badgers.
And bear cubs.
A fully grown redclaw bear could move almost as fast as a rabbit. But her cubs could not. And a fully grown mother redclaw would not leave her charges behind. She would lead them, nudge them, even carry them by the nape of the neck, to get them away from danger. She would be in no mood for distractions.
She would have no patience for predators lying in wait as she fled.
The High Holy Reverend Father and Supreme Elder Harlowen “Hap” Stanson had misjudged the difficulty of traversing the woods, even on a clearly defined deer path. Now he lay bruised and broken and bleeding, directly in the path of the approaching flames. He saw the deer and the rabbits as they ran by. There was nothing he could do now but pray, and wait.
How had he gotten into this predicament? He had had a revelation after an hour and a half of following the winding trail, his horse squeezing through thickets that the much thinner deer could manage easily, thorns tearing at his thighs as he ducked branches that the much shorter deer never needed to consider. This revelation came to him long after he had made several choices where paths crossed, choices he was sure he could not retrace in reverse. His realization was this: Deer had no intention of traversing the Hollow Forest. It seemed obvious, too obvious once it was formed that way in his mind. Why he had assumed that a pathway into the woods on one side would inevitably lead out of the woods on the other now completely escaped him. Deer, he now understood, for reasons known but to God, wander aimlessly on paths that lead nowhere.
He lost track of direction. The woods were hilly, and the paths meandered through and around the hummocks and knolls and ridges. The sun overhead was nearly straight up, and he couldn’t see it much of the time anyway for the dense canopy. The position of the sun would be a help within a few hours, but he did not have time to wait for it to tell him which direction was west, and which east. He needed to make it through the forest while there was still daylight, before the fires spread further north. He did not want to be traveling here after dark. So there was really no way to be sure he was going in the right direction.
Until he smelled the smoke and heard the flame.
He knew, or thought he knew, which direction the fire came from. It came from the south. Since he needed to go east, he angled away from the flames, in a direction he judged to be northeast. He left the trails. This line of reasoning was not illogical. But now, as he thought it through, he had another revelation: He had assumed that fire traveled in something of a straight line. This, too, was a fallacy. He knew this because now he could hear the crackling of it approaching him from two sides.
What he didn’t know was that he had not been traveling northeast at all, but southeast, between two fingers of burning woodlands. He had been riding his horse closer and closer to the oncoming flames. He was headed toward a dead end, toward the webbing between two enormous fingers of fire. He was riding into a trap.
His horse knew it. The big bay sensed it. He snorted and pranced, bobbed his head up and down, whinnying as Hap smacked him alongside his neck with the loose ends of the reins and spurred the miserable, stubborn beast with his heels. The bay broke into a canter.
And then a fox shot out of a thicket just in front of him, racing away from the flames. The horse panicked and bolted into a full gallop. Hap held on for a while, dropping the reins and gripping the saddle horn. But the speed of the horse through thick woods, and his own horsemanship, passable at best, presaged the worst.
He did not experience the worst, but close. He hit a branch, not a solid stem of oak that might have killed him, but a huge and springy pine branch that bent, then tensed, then slung him out of the saddle. He landed in a heap on a rock outcropping, the left side of his head banging hard, his left shoulder popping out of the socket as he reached out to soften the blow. Then he rolled off the rock and down an incline, wrenching his right leg, and finally coming to a stop wedged into a rocky crevice in the slope.
He was bleeding from the left side of his head. His right leg from the knee down was pinned under him, the knee torn and twisted. His left arm was broken in two places. He couldn’t move. He was in a crack that broke the otherwise smooth decline of the hillside. He was only six inches below ground level, but he couldn’t raise himself. He was stuck. He was invisible. And he was in extreme pain.
He lay that way for a long time, wondering what God intended to do with him, quite sure the Almighty would not let him die this way. He was, after all, Harlowen Stanson, High Holy Reverend Father of God’s own Church. He was the Supreme Elder of every congregation large and small, in every neighborhood and every village in the kingdom. No, this was not how the Almighty took His appointed workmen home.
And then the bear cubs appeared. They clambered over the rocks and rolled down the hill in a playful heap without even knowing he was there. They stopped almost on top of him. Hap laughed, amazed that such cute little things, not much bigger than puppies, could appear from nowhere without a care in the world. One of them noticed him, and sniffed the air nearby. Hap reached out a hand to give the little thing a pat. Here was God’s handiwork, and more than that, God’s message, telling him that all would be well, that the Almighty was in control of His creation yet, and He watched out for all living things. Hap would not be abandoned.
And then came momma.
“Gentlemen, please rise!”
The Quarto looked at one another, faces grim. Slowly, all twelve men in the Great Meeting Hall of the Hezzan rose to their feet. They had prepared as best they could for their second encounter with the woman Talon, but they had learned caution from the first. They had intended then to sentence her to death, but instead had made her the empress of all Drammun. Now, as part of her Court of Twelve, seated within the power structures of Drammun, their real drive for the throne would begin.
“The Hezzan Skahl Dramm!”
Talon flowed into the room. She wore new leather robes, rich brown edged with oxblood and fur. Her straight black hair was no longer ragged; it had grown to cover the scarring of her scalp. Not yet long enough for the traditional braid, it was trimmed closer on the right side than on the left, where she wore it tucked behind her left ear, the flat of which bore the triple earring of the wife
of a Hezzan. The heavy battle scar that fell from her left eye down her cheek and onto her neck was set off by her crown, a delicate braid that wrapped her head at a line just above her eyebrows, three fine strands of precious metal loosely interlaced, one gold, one silver, and one brass.
“Welcome,” she said, as she remained standing behind the Hezzan’s chair at the truncated corner of the table. “Please, sit. We have urgent business regarding the war.” She watched the peevish Pizlar Kank, the leader of the Quarto, take his seat opposite her. Beside him was the bookish but bloodthirsty Zekahn Irkah, and next to him the solid, ruthless Dorn Rodanda. And next to Rodanda sat the newest member of the Quarto, Tcha Tarvassa, a small, lizard-skinned man with a patchy beard and narrow eyes that peered out from heavy, red-rimmed eyelids.
“A significant development requires your earnest attention. Vast warcraft has improved considerably. They have outstripped the Drammune in one important regard, which will prove our undoing unless we address it.”
Brows furrowed, questioning looks were exchanged.
Talon’s dark eyes pierced each of her ministers as she looked at them in turn. Her eyes lingered when they met those of Tcha Tarvassa. Behind his thick eyelids was a subtle mind constantly in motion. He had until recently been the highest-ranking official of the Infiltrators, and Talon knew he had been chosen by the Quarto to help counter the cunning of Sool Kron and his yet more cunning mistress. Her eyes also lingered on Zan Gar, the young cannonball Zealot who had been her husband’s minister, and who had been the first to join the conspiracy to murder her. Gar had been released from the royal prison just this morning, and just for this meeting. She saw unbridled hatred in his eyes. This was good. She returned the look without emotion, a predator measuring her prey.
The Trophy Chase Saga Page 93
