“Hmm,” said Ezekiel. “May I?”
He held out his hands for the sword. Reluctantly, she handed it over.
Ezekiel turned it back and forth as he looked at it.
“You said it was in the handle?” she nodded.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Neither do I,” she said hoarsely.
Then she got an idea. Her father had loved to leave cryptic messages in different places for her to find when younger. Maybe this message had been waiting for her for four years.
“Give it here, Ezekiel.”
He handed it over, hilt-first, with no comment.
Instead of taking the sword, Sara took advantage of the way it was held out and put her hand on the handle. Gripping it, she twisted to the right. It didn’t budge. She did it to left. Still no movement.
Then she shifted her fingers to the very tip of the pommel. She had barely turned her fingers when the pommel began to glow and turn with her hand. She held her breath as she unscrewed the cap from the sword hilt and peered inside.
“It’s hollow,” she told Ezekiel. “And there’s something inside.”
Chapter XX
REACHING IN CAREFULLY, SARA PICKED up a rolled-up piece of paper.
“Careful,” said Ezekiel. “It could be fragile.”
“It’s at least five years old. I have no doubt it is.”
“Actually,” Ezekiel said, descending into curator mode, his fingers drifting closer to hers, “the dry and contained environment should have protected it. I was referring to the material itself. It looks like it’s made of…rice paper.”
“The texture of the paper does feel oddly stiff and bumpy,” she said.
He nodded. “Rice paper has a rather fascinating curing process. It was first discovered across the seas by servants of the dragons trying to make a special type of insulation but it was too thin for…”
Sara interrupted. “Could we stay on track, please?”
He cleared his throat. “Oh, right, of course. Do continue.”
She looked backed down at the object in her hands.
“Why would my dad send me a note etched on rice paper?” she asked. It was certainly a valid question. It was an odd way of sending a message. Especially, since the material itself was so fragile.
Just then the paper began to float off of her hand of its own accord. It rose to the height of her face, right in the middle of the two of them. It looked so fragile that she was afraid to grab it for fear of the paper crumbling underneath her desperate fingers. Still her hand twitched upward, as if to clutch it.
Ezekiel reached up and grabbed her hand to stop her.
“Because rice paper is the best conductor of time-resistant magic I’ve yet to see,” he said breathlessly while still restraining her hand.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this was clearly activated by—and only by—your touch,” he said excitedly.
The paper unrolled without a crinkle before their eyes.
On its browned page was script written in black ink in swooping lines and dashes.
“Do you know what it says?” asked Sara.
Liebste Tochter,
Wenn Du dies liest bin ich bereits nicht mehr unter den Lebenden. Der Tod, ist sowie das Leben, ist ein natürlicher Zustand.
Ich weiß aber, dass wenn Du dies siehst, mein Tod schon lange vor seinem natürlichen Termin eingetreten sein wird.
Es gibt vieles was ich Dir sagen möchte. Aber ich kann nicht zu viel sagen, falls es in die falschen Hände gerät. Sei im Bewusstsein, dass ich Dich und Deine Mutter liebe.
Finde einen Mann namens Hillan. Suche bei den Flüssen nach Karen.
Sie werden die Antworten haben und Dir helfen den Weg zum inneren Frieden zu finden.
Ich konnte es nicht vollbringen. Aber Du besitzt die Stärke meiner Familie, sowie den Mut der Familie Deiner Mutter. Beeile Dich liebste Tochter. Denn die Feinde welche hinter mir her sind, suchen auch bereits nach Dir.
“It’s in the old language of Algardis,” he said, “before we switched to the modern dialect.”
“I figured,” she said with a frown while looking at the cursive script. “My father said that no true officer of the military was complete without an education in the old war techniques. Unfortunately, most of the memoirs of ancient commanders were written in Deutsch, something that even I have trouble reading when it’s written out like this in blasted cursive swirls and swoops that look more like a child ate too much candy when they sat down to scribble a note.”
He chuckled at the description.
“You mean the child was hyperactive and really unable to focus.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
He shook his head wryly. “Let me concentrate, then, so I can decipher this swirly mess.”
“Be my guest,” she muttered as she watched tensely.
Five minutes passed before she noticed that something strange was going on with the flat paper.
“Ezekiel,” she said with a poke. He was busy translating each word as he went. He then scribbled the words in notebook one-by-one.
“Almost there,” he mumbled.
“Ezekiel,” she hissed.
“What?” he snapped as he looked up.
And then the magic appearing in the paper’s script caught his eye, as well. He dropped the quill as they watched each word light up one-by-one with a golden glow. As each one did, they transformed into the more modern script.
Sara read it aloud as the five-year-old letter from her father unfolded before her eyes,
“My dearest daughter,
If you’re reading this, I have passed on. Death, as Life, is a natural state.
But I know that if you see this, my death has come long before its true time.
There is much I wish to say to you. But not much I can say in case this falls into the wrong hands. Know that I love you and your mother.
Find the man called Hillan. Search the rivers for Karen.
They will have the answers and will help you find the way to peace.
I couldn’t do this. But you have the strength of my line and the courage of your mother’s.
Fly swiftly, daughter. For the enemies that seek me, seek you, as well.”
When she concluded, she leaned back, stunned.
“Your father knew about Mercenary Hillan before he died?”
“I think he more than knew about him,” Sara said. “He personally knew him.”
“Is that possible?” Ezekiel whispered in a murmur.
“At this point,” Sara said with a tired yawn, “I wouldn’t doubt anything. I don’t know why I’m so exhausted.”
“The dragonfly,” he murmured as he hunched once more over his notebook. Scribbling down her father’s missive on his pages, she presumed. She had already memorized them. She would never leave something to chance like that again. Files, as she had learned, had a way of disappearing.
“Eating a dragonfly made me sleepy?” she said.
“That and the vision.”
Sara narrowed her eyes. “Ezekiel?”
He looked up. “Yes?”
“What other side symptoms should I expect from this adventurous delicacy?”
“Well…” he began just before alarm swept across their faces. They didn’t have time to move before the paper burst into flames before their very eyes.
Their shrieks did nothing to stop it as they watch their only clue consumed by fire and drift down to their laps as ash.
“Did you know that would happen?” she asked.
“Not the slightest clue.”
They looked at each other, and that was how the captain of the Corcoran guard found them. Ezekiel kneeling on the floor at Sara’s feet, Sara seated on the cot, and both covered in a healthy amount of black dust.
He poked his head into the tent flap without warning.
Sara didn’t startle. She grabbed for her knife at her waist before she realized it wasn’t there and instead gripped air.
>
Captain Simon said, “Recruits, we’re moving out.”
“What? Now?” Ezekiel said.
Simon gave him a wry glance. “Next week, recruit.”
“Oh, great,” said a relaxing Ezekiel. Sara wasn’t so trusting.
“No, you fool, now,” the captain roared. “I do not visit tents of scamps like you for the hell of it. Get your butt in gear and on your horse.”
His head disappeared out of the tent in the next second. Ezekiel startled so much that he scampered to stand, only succeeded in hitting his head on the sloping walls of the tent and easing back down as he looked up at the offending fabric with disgust.
“Well, at least you didn’t fall,” she said.
“There was nowhere to fall,” grouched her tent mate.
She snorted.
Sara said, “My knife?”
Ezekiel looked around at his feet until he noticed the bloodstained weapon on the floor.
Grabbing it hastily, he managed to cut himself on the blade’s edge.
How can one person be so clumsy? Sara wondered with amusement.
By his cries, you would have thought he’d been stabbed in the gut instead of pricked on the finger. Sara hastily grabbed his hand and hushed him. When he still didn’t cease his bawling, she pushed her magic in him to deaden the flesh surrounding the wound.
Another trick she knew. This one was one her father used to keep his opponents unaware of their wounds. If they were bleeding out and didn’t notice it because it didn’t hurt, they died that much quicker.
Ezekiel let out a sigh. “Much better, and thank you.”
“Is there a reason you bawl like a baby?”
“I do not,” an offended Ezekiel yelped as he snatched his hand back.
She rolled her eyes and he said cautiously, “But should you be using your gifts like this?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You know,” said Ezekiel. “First you stopped the blood flowing from your wound. And now you’re staunching my pain.”
“The first was life-threatening. The second was life-threatening.”
“How so?”
“If I didn’t stop my blood from releasing through that wound, I would have bled out in the messiest way possible. It’s not easy surgery to handle a throat laceration.”
“The second?”
She smiled to take the bite out of her words, but she was deadly serious when she said, “If you hadn’t stopped your howling, I would have stuffed something down your throat. We don’t need a bunch of mercenaries sticking inquisitive heads into our tent. Besides…you kind of deserve it after making me eat a dragonfly that nearly choked me to death. Why couldn’t you eat it?”
She waited for an answer.
“Well, um, you see…allergies are a very serious…” he abruptly stopped talking.
Then he closed his mouth, cleared his throat and said, “I don’t really have a great reason. Can’t we let bygones be bygones?”
“I didn’t think you would,” Sara said dryly.
Sighing, Sara grabbed the knife from where he had dropped it and picked up her sheathed sword.
“I’m going to clean these off and pack,” she said as she exited the tent.
“You should do the same and get your friend to take your trunk before it’s too late.”
She heard a cursing Ezekiel move into action as she looked around outside in the noon day. The hill was abuzz with men running to and fro with their weapons clutched at their sides, like a hornet’s nest that had been kicked.
She went over to Danger and cooed at him. “I never would move from my position so late into the evening, but I’m not the captain, am I?”
“No, you’re not,” answered a human voice.
Sara turned from Danger to find Captain Barthis Simon standing a few feet away with his arms crossed.
She narrowed her eyes, heartily tired of people sneaking up on her.
He dipped his head with a calculated smile and looked her directly in the eyes.
“Did you want to ask me something, Captain?”
He tilted his head. “I’ve been wondering why you’ve done everything in your power to push the mercenaries in my camp away.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but he beat her to it.
Holding up a hand, he said, “Don’t give me that whiny spiel about them picking on you. Throwing stuff into your tent and cutting the straps to your saddle. Because I’ve checked. No one touched your things. And the second morning before you mounted up, one of the urchins noted something curious.”
Sara stiffened.
“He saw a woman, petite and with a large sword on her back, fiddling with those same straps on a mounting block,” the captain said. “Now, it was still an hour before dawn, so he couldn’t be sure who it was. But I’m fairly cognizant of the people in my company and I don’t have many short women serving for me.”
She looked at him with calm eyes. Waiting for him to say it.
“I think you cut your own saddle and wrecked your things. Then I think you blamed your comrades,” he said, “but what I can’t figure out is why. Why you’d go to such lengths to be seen as a snot-nosed brat and get my people to despise you.”
He paused.
She waited.
“Do you have anything to say?”
“Nothing good.”
A cold look crossed his eyes and he stepped forward to stand directly in front of her face. “Whether you want to be here or not, whether you want to survive this battle or follow your ancestors into death or not, you will stop sowing discord in my camp. You will integrate yourself as a full member of this team and you will do so promptly. Because if you don’t, I will have your back whipped for insubordination until the ground beneath your spread feet turns red with blood. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Captain.”
He stared into her eyes as his nostrils flared wide in anger. He spun on his heel and left without a further word. She was left staring at his back as he crossed the ground in angry strides. When she turned back to take care of Danger, she saw something more ominous in the captain’s wake. Ezekiel stood there with his arms full of saddlebags for his horse as a man hastily carted off the trunk behind him for who knows where.
“Ezekiel,” said Sara, her face stricken. “I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”
“I know,” Ezekiel said thoughtfully. He bit his lip.
She came forward. “It’s not like it sounds.”
“You mean you didn’t lie about those people doing all of those horrible things to you?”
She stopped. She couldn’t tell him that she hadn’t. She wouldn’t lie. But she wouldn’t tell the truth, either.
That was all right, though. Because she didn’t have to.
Ezekiel gave her a sad smile. “I know why you did it.”
She stared at him. “Why?”
“To protect the others. You don’t want anyone close to you, do you? You’re afraid of going berserk. Afraid of the curse of the battle mages.”
She stiffened. A way out had presented itself. A way out that was most of the truth. Just not all of it.
“Yes,” she said finally.
Ezekiel dropped his saddlebags and held out his hands as he walked forward. Unfortunately, he hadn’t dropped the bags to either side of his body but rather straight in front of his feet. He fell head over heels to land with his face planted on her boots with a muttered, “Ow.”
She stifled a laugh and helped him up.
He gratefully took it, dusted off his pants, and said without missing a beat, “Don’t you see, there are others to help you. I’m here, and the battle mages present surely will have some insight.”
She grimaced. “Maybe.”
“Even Captain Barthis Simon himself,” Ezekiel said with a waggle of his eyebrows.
Then she couldn’t help but bursting out laughing. “Yeah, I don’t think he wants to see me anytime soon.”
Ezekiel shrugged. “He will soon enough
.”
“And why is that?” said an amused Sara.
“Because we’re going to make you the best loved mercenary in this entire company,” he said with fist pump that knocked his glasses in the dirt.
“I’d like to see you try.”
Then the war elephants began trumpeting and they had no more time to talk. Scrambling, Ezekiel went to tear down his tent and Sara hefted his saddlebags under one arm while carrying her weapons with the other. Putting the blades on a nearby large rock, she set about securing Ezekiel’s bags to the mare he had named Desire.
She watched him fight a losing battle with one side of the tent that he should have rolled up before proceeding to the other.
She chuckled into Desire’s side at the sight.
“I’ve got it!” came the triumphant declaration from her curator-turned-mercenary moments later.
Then Sara froze. She had thought of Ezekiel’s as hers. She hadn’t thought of any person that way since her group of friends, co-conspirators, really, at the training camp of her youth had abandoned her and her family in their hour of need.
Slowly she rose and looked over at Ezekiel Crane. Really looked at him. He was the exact opposite of the four fighters she had considered hers before. He couldn’t fight worth shit, couldn’t defend himself, was more book-smart than street-smart, and got into tiffs with just about anything stationary.
But then she smiled. Because the warm pit in her stomach didn’t lie. He was hers.
Then and there, Sara Fairchild swore that come hell or high water, Ezekiel Crane would leave the battlefield alive.
She didn’t swear anything about herself. Because she couldn’t. But him. Him she could make sure of.
Turning from Desire, Sara went to clean her swords and get ready.
It was time to move out and move on. She needed to make some friends, and fast. Ezekiel’s life depended on it.
Chapter XXI
AS THEIR CONVOY MOVED ON in the evening, night was already falling.
Ezekiel’s Desire trotted beside her own Danger as they moved forward at a comfortable pace.
Then the troops moving forward halted.
The sound of rustling armor and clinking chains moving about, as the mercenaries strained forward in their saddles to look around their fellow man, told Sara that no one else knew why they’d stopped either.
FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy Page 320
