“These aren’t their woods,” Chriani said as he carefully stood. “These are the Calala.” He hadn’t known it before, but he could see it now. Reading the war-marks on the surrendered Ilvani.
“And you’re telling me you recognized them from where we sighted them?”
“I’m telling you Dargana did.” Chriani put pressure to his shoulder but kept his sword at the neck of the wounded Ilvani at his feet. “These are the same as attacked inside Rheran two weeks back. Enemies of the Laneldenari we’re meant to meet. They’ll have been avoiding the eastern Ilvani, same as they’ve been avoiding…”
Chriani’s voice cut off as he kicked the wounded figure to roll over at his feet. He stared at the face looking up at him from the ground. Not an Ilvani. Ilmari, young. An unhealthy pallor to her, hair of dirty gold, cut rough. Eyes of palest blue. It was no face he’d ever seen before, but he knew her all the same by the grey tunic and leggings she wore, the straight-line ritual scars that marked her cheeks.
The wind was rising again, cold. Twisting through Chriani with an ache sharper than the pain at his shoulder. Venry was beside him suddenly, staring down as he paced around the Ilmari. Chriani tried to speak, tried to explain who it was at their feet, but his voice was gone.
Venry said it for him, though.
“Uissa.” The lieutenant spat to the ground. “Working with the Ilvani. What the fated fuck is this?”
From the ground, the prisoner smiled.
Venry had recognized her by the scars, just as Chriani had. The same markings he’d seen on the assassin who had followed him in pursuit of Lauresa. The assassin he’d killed in the Ghostwood, that past closed off behind him. Or so he thought.
“I will tell you of that one.” From where the Ilvani knelt, one of them called out in the Ilmari tongue. “And of our purpose here.” His accent was sharp but his voice was clear. The warrior who had called the surrender. His silver hair fell to frame his face, shrouding eyes that were the deep blue of a summer sky.
“Speak then,” Venry said as he paced back toward the prisoners, angry. Chriani stayed close to the Ilmari, ignored that it should have been him giving the order.
“We are of Calalerean,” the Ilvani said. His tone showed strength but not defiance. “Ordered across Crithnalerean to meet with that Ilmari agent. Ordered to pursue rangers of Brandishear that she had followed across your Clearwater Way.”
Chriani looked toward the horse the Ilmari had been trying to reach, realized as he should have before that it wasn’t an Ilvani steed. A stark difference in its lines and bearing.
“And what were you meant to do when you found them?” Venry asked.
“To observe only,” the Ilvani said. “On my word. To watch interactions between the Ilmari and the Ilvani of Laneldenar. We are trackers, not carontir.”
The statement made a certain amount of sense to Chriani, given how easily the Ilvani had been overcome. Seeing them now in the light, only the leader was in full leather.
“Why did you surrender yourselves?” Venry said. His voice carried a note of disappointment. “Why tell us all this? What do you hope to gain?”
“Because I have no cause to act in secrecy against my kin of Laneldenar. I spoke against these orders from my captains and failed, but I will not die for them. I would return with my riders to our folk, with your mercy.”
Chriani could see the strength in the Ilvani’s blue eyes even from where he stood. A stark honesty there. He and Venry exchanged a glance, Chriani happy to see that the lieutenant seemed to have no more idea how to proceed then he did.
When he looked down again, the Ilmari was watching him. Staring with cold blue eyes.
“One more wounded,” Kathlan called out as she and Dargana approached from the shadows. She had an Ilvani warrior in front of her, hands tied and blood at his shoulder where he’d torn an arrow free. “Found him blacked out. The other four are dead.”
She pushed the silent Ilvani to his knees alongside the others. He dropped with no resistance, made no sound. Dargana took up a position around the prisoners again, Jeradien glaring as she stepped away. The exile ignored the Aerachi warrior. Chriani saw blood still wet on the dagger and the axe in her hands.
“That’s no Ilvani,” Kathlan said as she stepped up to the Ilmari prisoner. “Is she from Vishod?”
“The order of Uissa, squire,” Venry said. “She’s a mercenary, and most definitely not from Vishod. Not that they haven’t tried to worm their way into his court. Political intrigue and assassination is their specialty. My Duke Andreg has routed out their hidden holds for years, along the Hunthad close to Teillai. Whatever we do with the Ilvani, that one won’t tell us anything. You’d be best to kill her now.”
He said the last to Chriani, who felt his sword shiver in his hands. The Ilmari smiled again.
“Kathlan, rope.” Chriani sheathed his blade as he grabbed the Ilmari’s hands, rolled her onto her stomach again. She stifled a cry as he tied her tight, the arrow still in her leg and shifting each time she moved. It was a straight-through wound, painful but not life threatening. Chriani broke the shaft clean at both ends, pulled it through carefully. The prisoner shook with the pain, but the bleeding wasn’t bad.
“They tried to kill your princess. Uissa.” Venry said it almost as an afterthought. “My Duchess Lauresa. Before the wedding, they thought to settle old scores with the duke. He smashed their main hold at High Summer last as retaliation, sent them running for the frontier.”
Chriani saw Kathlan nod, remembering that story. A good tale, as tales went.
“Laóith irnáera!”
Dargana’s voice shattered the hiss of the wind, the clash of weapons following. I kill the laóith! Chriani stood to see her gone from the prisoners, all of them watching her instead where the exile faced Jeradien at the edge of the torch’s shimmering light. The two of them were hammering at each other with bloodstained steel. Dargana pressed hard, swinging from both sides, but Jeradien countered with blinding speed.
Chriani saw the same look in both their eyes. Both striking with deadly intent, each of them ready to kill.
Venry was running for them, shouting for both of them to stand down, but not even Jeradien seemed to hear him. Chriani sprinted in, his shoulder flaring with pain as he drew his sword and swung between them to crash off their blades, throwing off the timing of their strikes. He dodged Dargana’s furious counter, twisted in to hook her leg and send her down. Jeradien lunged in but his own sword flicked up to her chest, forced her to a stop.
They stood frozen that way for what seemed a long while. Venry was at Chriani’s left hand, his own blade out as Dargana slowly rose.
“The two of you fought back-to-back a moment ago,” Chriani hissed. He heard the anger in his voice that matched the cold fire in Jeradien’s eyes. “What in fate’s name…”
“Chriani…”
He glanced over to Kathlan, saw her nod to the ground. A bloody display there. An Aerachi dagger, close to the two archers Chriani and Venry had first dropped. Jeradien had been collecting their ears as trophies.
Dargana spoke up from behind him, words for Jeradien. “Touch these bodies again, laóith, and I’ll carve out your heart.”
“I invite you to try.”
“Enough!” Chriani lowered his blade and pushed Jeradien back. She responded with a lunging forehand blow to his face, Chriani barely managing to roll with it in time. The backhand follow-up would have caught him, but Venry stepped in to grab his ranger. It looked like it took all his strength, his voice cold at her ear.
“That was your troop sergeant you just struck. This ends now. Stand watch on the prisoners.”
Chriani rubbed his chin as Jeradien went limp in her lieutenant’s grasp. She nodded as he let her go, ignoring Chriani as she scooped up her dagger and stalked off toward where the bound Ilvani still kneeled. All of them were watching darkly, Chriani saw.
“For the actions of my guard, you have my apologies, lord.” Venry’s voice car
ried a sense of formality, but Chriani had no idea whether it was for Jeradien having hit him or for the trophies she’d been attempting to collect in the first place. “I trust I’ll have your apology at some point for all of us being forced into this battle despite your order to fall back.”
Chriani ignored Venry as the lieutenant paced away, calling to Kathlan instead. “See if the Ilvani have a store of arrows. We can make use them.”
“Yes, lord.”
Chriani couldn’t tell what she was feeling as she turned away.
“Dargana,” he called. He stepped to the bodies, pushing one onto its back with his boot. Their sightless eyes looked up at him, green and amber.
“Dargana!” His voice was cold as he called her again, saw the exile step up through the shadows. A faint sense of relief twisted through him in response to the lack of gold in the Calala Ilvani’s eyes, but it vanished quickly under the weight of an uncertainty that was channeling anger now. The familiar feeling of losing control. “Do you feel like telling me why we just attacked an Ilvani band of superior numbers in the dark? I ordered you to fall back…”
“I don’t take your orders, lord.” Dargana’s voice carried a degree of venom Chriani hadn’t heard since the time she’d tried to kill him. “I saw them well enough to recognize their war-marks as Calala. Them following us meant your plan to engage them by daylight might have brought every Ilvani of the lóechari down on us.”
“They’re not the cult. You saw their eyes.”
“I see them now. I wasn’t taking chances then.”
“Not your decision to make…”
“I don’t wait on your decisions either, laóith. At the first sign of the feint you planned for tomorrow, they would have run. Kathlan’s the only one in either of your squads who can ride, but an Ilvani of the Muiraìden will outride even her by day or night. Coins or no, these are the Calala that hunted you in the Greatwood, and in Rheran. Your prince’s magic isn’t hiding you as well as you…”
“Lieutenant!”
Jeradien’s strangled cry rang out over the hiss of the wind. Chriani heard a stark terror twisting through her voice.
By the time they got to her, Venry was already there. Jeradien was a half-dozen strides from the Ilvani prisoners, scrambling back and on her knees. Her sword had fallen at her side, both hands shaking as she scribed the moonsign against her breast, over and over again.
Three of the Ilvani were on their feet, twisting their arms behind them, tearing futilely at their bonds. The other three were convulsing, their limbs twisted with a violence that drove them across the ground, arched their backs and legs as they thrashed.
“Chriani irnash!” The Ilvani leader screamed it, the muscles of his arms and shoulders knotted tight. Chriani heard his wrist break as he tore through the ropes that bound him. “Lóech arnala irch niir!”
In the eyes of the leader and all the Ilvani, a golden light blazed.
Chriani had time to step back before the Ilvani reached him, charging full speed and hitting hard. He had no weapon in hand but managed to get his arm around Chriani’s throat, choking him as they both struck the ground. Chriani’s longsword came up, stabbing in hard to take the Ilvani in the shoulder, force him off. It took two more strikes, hammering awkwardly from the ground, to end him.
Movement at the edge of his vision. Dargana was attacking, the Ilvani shrieking as she cut them down. He heard a bow sing, saw Venry shooting. Behind them all in the darkness, the dead moved. From the two archers that Jeradien had cut, a voiceless rasping rose as their lungs emptied, a dread tattoo beaten on the ground by their flailing limbs.
Then all was quiet again.
“Blood and moonsign.” Venry still had an arrow nocked, but he raised his bow so he could roughly scribe that sign himself. Kathlan came in from the shadows at a run, a clutch of Ilvani quivers stuffed with arrows in her hand. She stopped short, stared.
Chriani stepped over the body of the Ilvani leader, looking down to where the bright gleam of gold still filled his eyes. In his hands and mouth, he saw the flash of coins, the same golden light gleaming in the hands and mouths of all the dead around them.
Chriani had listened to the leader. Had heard his words and the honesty in them. It hadn’t been a trick, he told himself. He knew that with a certainty he couldn’t understand. The power of the cult was in all the Ilvani’s minds, but they hadn’t known it until the magic of the coins claimed them.
Chriani remembered the Uissa prisoner, spun around as if he expected her to have fled during the chaos. She was still on her side, though. Staring at the dead Ilvani with a rapt expression. A fascination in her gaze that set a chill in Chriani’s heart.
When he looked back again, Venry was staring at him, dark eyes blazing.
“He called your name,” the lieutenant said. His gaze shifted from Chriani to Dargana, then to Kathlan. None of them showing the anger or the fear that marked him or Jeradien. “You know this. You’ve all seen this before.”
Chriani nodded. “It’s magic of an Ilvani cult. We’ve seen it in the western Greatwood, and in Rheran.”
“And you thought to say nothing…”
“I’ll say what I have to say when I call it time to speak.”
“This is a trap, you fool! You lead us into Ilvani territory with their agents following. Ready to surround us the moment we enter the wood.”
“They’ve been following for three days, Venry. If ambush was their plan, they could have done it at their leisure. We’re in empty frontier. Plenty of cover, no witnesses. This is why we’re here. These are the Calala that the Laneldenari oppose. This power is what they fear. Why they want peace.”
It was part of the truth at least. Venry’s reaction said it wasn’t enough, though, even as Chriani saw a flicker of insight in the lieutenant’s eyes.
“He called your name,” Venry said again. “Pursuing rangers of Brandishear, he told us. You fought Ilvani in Rheran, your second said. A war-band in the Brandishear capital.” The lines of connection were tightening in the lieutenant’s thoughts, Chriani seeing it. “The Ilvani are following you.”
“Yes.”
“You will tell me what’s going on here…”
“When I call it time.” They were all the words Chriani could summon up, his thoughts scattered as points of darkness in his mind.
Venry spat to the ground as he turned away. He helped Jeradien to her feet, directed her toward the horses. “Cut the Ilvani steeds free, but keep the horse the assassin tried to flee on. We ride back now.”
The horses of the Ilvani took no other riders, and all rangers knew of the peril in attempting to rebreak them. Tales were told of war-bands pushing as far as the outskirts of the frontier cities to reclaim horses stolen by the Ilmari — and to kill those who had taken them. Chriani nodded his agreement to Venry’s order, but the lieutenant wasn’t looking at him as he paced away.
“Help Venry,” he said to Kathlan. Dargana had already disappeared into the darkness.
“Chriani…”
As Kathlan stepped close to him, Chriani heard the fear in her voice. However, the surge of nausea that whipped through him told him it wasn’t just the fate of the Ilvani that had affected her. He looked to the quiver she held out to him, saw a single black arrow set in a side pocket.
He motioned her to drop the quiver to the ground. He had to send his foot into the black arrow three times to shatter it, but the dark touch of its magic passed like shadow before sunlight when it was done.
“Help Venry,” he said again. Kathlan nodded as she slipped away.
Alone, Chriani dropped to his knees beside the dead Ilvani leader. His shoulder was aching again, the spill of blood cooling there. He searched the body carefully, a kind of numbness settling across his mind. He saw his fingers moving but wasn’t really conscious of it, feeling them trace out the seams of pockets and compartments, slip within the lines of the Ilvani’s light leather.
Beneath a closed flap within the warrior’s ga
untlet, Chriani found the hunter’s heart hidden. This new talisman was strung on a chain of thin steel links rather than leather, but like the talisman Chriani carried, its rough-edged bloodstone was dark within its golden claw.
As he watched, the golden light in the Ilvani’s eyes faded. Left them the same bright blue as before.
He tried to make sense of it, tried to shuffle the pieces rearranging themselves to unknown patterns in his mind. In the deep winter of his journey to Aerach, the order of Uissa and the Ilvani of Calalerean had attacked each other. Their animosity had saved Chriani and Lauresa, in fact, the Calala taking vengeance for Uissa’s forces donning the livery of Valnirata warriors to pretend that the Ilvani were behind the attempt on the princess’s life. A bond between both factions now made no sense.
They were tracking him. He felt the truth of that. Someone else in the troop might have been their target, but if they were seeking someone else, the hunter’s heart should have shown light. With the talismans dark, they must have pursued Chriani by stealth and observation alone. But for how long? Or was there other magic at work here now, powerful enough to overcome the protection of the badge at his waist?
Chriani slipped the second talisman to one of the pockets of his belt, made the moonsign absently. When he glanced over, he saw the Uissa prisoner watching him.
The sound of hoofbeats rose to mark the Ilvani horses set free, then faded quickly as they disappeared into the darkness. Kathlan came back through the center of the camp, scooping up her torch. Chriani saw Venry and Jeradien circling past the edge of the light to head toward the distant rise and their horses beyond. Venry was leading the prisoner’s horse at a run, Jeradien making the moonsign behind him. Chriani stalked over to lift the Ilmari to her feet, pushing her ahead of him as he followed Kathlan’s light.
They raced back along the same track they’d taken by day, Jeradien and Kathlan carrying torches to front and rear. Chriani kept his bow drawn, Venry leading the Uissa prisoner’s horse with the prisoner slung across and lashed tight to its saddle. No one spoke.
Three Coins for Confession Page 23
