A Flight of Ravens

by John Conroe

  Contents

  A Flight of Ravens

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  A Flight of Ravens

  By

  John Conroe

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2021 John Conroe

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  The Demon Accords series:

  God Touched

  Demon Driven

  Brutal Asset

  Black Frost

  Duel Nature

  Fallen Stars

  Executable

  Forced Ascent

  College Arcane

  God Hammer

  Rogues

  Snake Eyes

  Winterfall

  Summer Reign

  The Demon Accords Compendium, Volume 1

  The Demon Accords Compendium, Volume 2

  Demon Divine

  C.A.E.C.O.

  Darkkin Queen

  The Demon Accords Compendium, Volume 3

  The Zone War series:

  Zone War

  Borough of Bones

  Web of Extinction

  The Shadows of Montshire series:

  A Murder of Shadows

  A Flight of Ravens

  A Mischief of Rats (Fall 2021)

  Cover art by Gareth Otton.

  To all the front line heroes of 2020

  Prologue

  It was the pain that woke him. Pain from wounds inflicted by the bear he should never have tangled with, pain in his jaws, bones, and joints, pain deep in his mind and even deeper in his heart. He put the pain aside as he’d been taught long ago and considered other things.

  It was still predawn and very cold, although he did not feel cold as much as he used to. What made it through his fur to his skin was merely uncomfortable and nowhere near as distracting as his pain. He set the cold aside and opened his senses.

  The forest was beginning to wake in the gloom preceding daylight, birds starting to call, wild turkeys roosted in the trees above gobbling to each other, not doubt warning of the danger he represented. Nearby, a squirrel, comfortable in its closeness to an oak tree, rustled in the snow-dusted leaves, rooting around for acorns. His stomach rumbled at the smell of the furry rodent.

  Other scents reached him, the pine under whose boughs he rested, the mold of leaves that cushioned him from the frozen ground, the crisp, clean water that flowed through a small brook not thirty spans away. The wind shifted and swirled, and a new scent reached his sensitive nose. The coppery taint of fresh-spilled blood. Deer. Female and young. With that delicious bouquet came the harsh sour of canine: coyote, the little wolves.

  With a soft snarl that sent the squirrel up its tree and silenced the turkeys high above, he came to his feet and followed the blood spoor. Crossing the brook, he paused to slake his thirst before continuing on his hunt—a hunt for the dead but still a hunt, nonetheless.

  The fickle wind brought him enough hints and samples to set his mouth watering, thick saliva flowing between his gnarled, misshapen fangs, past lips that failed to close anymore, to drip down in long strands to the forest floor.

  He crested a small hill, his motion catching the attention of a trio of canines in the act of feasting upon a still-steaming doe. All three looked up at him and snarled, but each backed away as he descended the far slope. He gave them a deep growl, a warning of lives ended suddenly and swiftly. The three went silent and dropped back even farther, ducking into shadows to hide.

  Knowing them cowed, he opened his newly massive jaws, ignoring the pain of bone rent and twisted far too late in life. With an audible snap, he bit down into still-warm flesh and blood and feasted for the first time in days, perhaps weeks. Hard to tell. His perception of time was not what it used to be, as much changed as he was.

  He ate his fill, almost half the small doe’s body, while the little wolves watched him with glittering eyes from the shadows of the gloomy forest. The sky lightened considerably while he gorged himself, the sky turning purple, then blue as the sun staged itself for its daily ascent.

  Full to the point of pain, he snarled a final warning to the coyotes then turned and moved onward, taking up his journey, the one that drove him all day every day and most of each night, over hill and valley, through thick forests and across rushing bone-cold rivers, up stone cliffs, and between the peaks of ancient mountains.

  It was long past sundown, beyond even the midnight hour, when he finally crawled cautiously over the summit of a hillock that wanted to be a mountain. On the far side of the crest, he stopped and gazed through the darkness at the valley below. Lights, the flames and fires of mankind, illuminated a city tucked into the folds of the land, watered by a river snaking through it and fed by the farms that surrounded it. Haven. Ash Newberry was home, and nobody and nothing would stop him from finding those who were his own.

  Chapter 1

  I woke suddenly, my hand automatically finding the axe next to my bed. I listened and felt, but there was no sound save the gentle hiss of the banked fire and the soft moan of a cold, early winter wind twisting about the eaves of the Knife and Needle.

  I don’t know what had awoken me, but I learned a long time ago to damn well listen to my instincts. Jella had drilled that into me for so long that it was now part of me, impossible to ignore.

  With no immediate and obvious answer to my feeling of misgiving, I instead found myself remembering the day I enrolled in the king’s army. Why that memory?

  Jella had accompanied me from Drodacia. In fact, she had simply nodded when I had told her I was leaving to travel to Haven for the annual enlistment trials. “Of course, we are leaving,” she had said with a nod. “Now, what are you doing standing about? Isn’t it past time for your evening run up the mountain?”

  Of course, I had immediately run up the mountain behind her cabin, as I did every morning and every night. Two weeks later, we had descended from the Drodacian mountains and made the journey to Haven in the heart of Montshire.

  The morning of the trials, we rode together to the military fields where the testing would occur.

  “What do you see?” she asked as we rode onto the fields and toward the enlistment tables.

  I had already seen my father’s steward, Tupper, talking to one of the higher-ranking officers off to one side. The old aide must have felt our eyes upon him as we approached because he suddenly looked up and spotted me.
But that observation was too obvious. When Jella asked questions, one did well to listen, look, smell, and feel first, think carefully second, and answer thoughtfully third.

  So, I took my time and noticed that more than a few officers were watching our approach with interest. I hadn’t been to Haven in several years, but really, how hard was it to pick me out? How many recruits show up with a Drodacian Forester? Also, Father knew I would be enlisting this year and doubtless wanted Tupper to witness my placement in the trials. Can’t have the boy shaming the family honor, now can we? And I hadn’t been quiet about my plans, telling Brona and mother multiple times over the last two years.

  I noticed a man off to one side, talking with an officer of the royal guard. The lord marshal himself, Kiven Armstrong, who administered the royal city of Haven on the king’s behalf and commanded the city’s constables. That seemed unusual, as the lord marshal had no power over the military. Then the royal guardsman turned and I recognized him with a start. Colonel Erser, head of the royal guard.

  This wasn’t graduation day for the Montshire Basic Military Training class; this was just the trials that would rank inductees and weed out those not even worthy of training. Top officers do not waste their time with the beginnings of a military class; they have much better things to do.

  The obvious answer flowed to my lips and I was about to speak it when I noticed yet one more officer, this one hidden in the shadows, his mottled green and brown cloak fading into the background, the complete opposite of the bright, almost garish dress uniforms of the other military officers that shone in the morning sun.

  “There are a lot of factions here to witness the trials,” I said to Jella.

  “Why? What is that they are here to see?” she pressed.

  “My father’s man is here to see how I do. Father would not want me to perform poorly and cast shade upon the DelaCrotia name.”

  “And?”

  “Colonel Erser is here on behalf of the king, also likely to see how I do. The man in back is an officer in the Ranged Reconnaissance Squadron, perhaps here on a whisper or two from Brona, as she knows my ultimate goal.” I took another moment to pause and think. Eventually, I shook my head. “I fail to think of why the lord marshal is here.”

  Jella gave me a sharp look and I braced myself for her even sharper tongue. Explaining my deductive and tactical failings was almost an art for her and certainly her favorite pastime.

  “I fail to find a reason as well, and that bothers me. I will look into it, even as you show them all what they’re here to see,” she said, turning back to the people in front of us.

  I fought to keep my expression bland, as surprise filled me from head to toe. That was a first, I thought.

  “Were this a real test of your skills, I would demand that you make me proud. But this is just basic selection. If you can’t pass this, I will end you myself,” Jella said, instantly returning me to familiar ground and, in an odd way, settling my nerves.

  “Yes, Battlemaster.”

  Still abed, I tucked my hands behind my head, fingers laced. I hadn’t thought about that day, eight years ago, in, well, eight years. Most of my memories tended to travel to so many other more momentous days instead. Still thinking about the recruitment trials, I rose from my bed and stirred up the fire, adding birch bark and a couple of sticks of pine fatwood to the glowing embers and blowing until flame rose up amid the ashes. Slightly larger pieces of well-split spruce went on next, followed by a couple of hunks of oak and maple. When the fire was burning soundly, I poured water from a pitcher on my chest of drawers into the small cast iron kettle, hung it from the fireplace crane, and swung it out over the hot flames.

  While it heated, I ground caffe beans and poured them into a metal mesh basket that rested in a tripod, a clever and expensive device that Brona had given me, and then set the whole contraption over my favorite clay mug. The device was vaguely scandalous but had no moving parts and was cleared by the church.

  The water would take time to reach the proper temperature, so I chose to get dressed for the day. I pulled on thick trousers, warm socks, and several layers of wool shirts. Next came weapons. My long-bladed belt knife, a punch dagger in each of my boots, and a long, slim blade sheathed horizontally at the small of my back. A small prototype single shot bolter in a clever sheath that hid between my pants and stomach just to the right of my belt buckle, roughly over my appendix. That weapon had a double lock on its triggering system, at my insistence, as it spent a lot of time primed and pointed at portions of my anatomy that I would really, really not like injured. No sword or axe, as carrying those around Haven would attract attention.

  The frost on the glass windowpane caught my eye as I readied myself, and first I looked at it, studying the fingers of crystal ice, and then I looked through it to the world beyond. There, way in the distance, were those very military fields of my memories. Immediately, my thoughts tumbled back to them.

  “This morning, we will test your basic fitness and this afternoon, we will test your skills for combat, both armed and unarmed, then your horsemanship if you happen to have use of a horse and tack,” an army sergeant had told the assembled applicants. “At the end of the day, we will let you know who we will select this year.”

  In times of peace, the kingdom’s military is very picky about who it recruits. Those stringent requirements tend to be loosened a great deal whenever war breaks out.

  Immediately after that little speech, the instructor led us through a grueling set of exercises, then on a ten t-span timed run, and immediately after that, he put us through a long, difficult obstacle course, also timed.

  At midday, we were given a half hour to select a meal from a table of cheeses, breads, cold meat, apples, dried berries, and various nuts.

  Based on Jella’s advice from the night before, I ate sparingly, keeping to just some bread and an apple, washed down with water. Some recruits feasted like it was their final meal. Jella’s warning turned out to be wise, as immediately after lunch, we were paired off and told to fight empty-handed until one of each pair submitted to the other. The winners were paired off again and the fights continued. More than one contestant was forced to bow out because of stomach cramps.

  At the end of the combat bouts, it came down to just me and a big kid from a farm near Haven. My matches before this one had been fast and certain, but this time, I was up against a boy both bigger and older, who looked like he lifted cows all day, every day.

  I had trained with father’s men-at-arms in battlefield grappling and hand-to-hand combat almost since I could walk, and had trained with Jella in the Drodacian combat art of wogando for the last two years. In the end, I won the contest, but it took three times longer than any other fight I’d had, mostly because the farm boy knew a surprising amount about unarmed combat. That skill, combined with his size and strength, made him by far my toughest opponent. Add into that a very high tolerance for pain and I had almost had to break his right arm to get him to yield the fight.

  “Great. Both of you get some water and get back here. We start sword and staff next,” the sergeant had said after the boy finally slapped the ground in surrender.

  Walking over to the water barrel side by side, we didn’t say a word to each other. At the barrel, I waved the other boy to drink first, which I think surprised the kid. He drank and offered the dipper to me. “I’m Ash,” he said.

  “I’m Savid.”

  The rest of the afternoon was spent in controlled contests of blunt sword and padded staff. Ash was quite skilled with a quarter staff, fighting me to a draw three out of four times, but he knew next to nothing about swords. By the end of the fighting, we had both acquitted ourselves well and simultaneously formed a rock-solid respect for each other.

  “You did passable, apprentice,” Jella allowed when I finally rejoined her. The day had been exhausting, but I ended up taking the top spots in both the armed and unarmed combat trials, came in fourth in the riding tests, and finished the timed run and
obstacle course within the top ten times for each. My name had been called when they read the selected candidates, as had my new friend, Ash Newberry’s.

  “Did you find out why the lord marshal is here?” I asked her.

  She nodded and pointed across the field. Kiven Armstrong was congratulating a large boy on his success. When the boy turned sideways, I could see that it was Ash.

  “The kid you’ve been buddies with all day is his nephew by his sister.”

  “Which explains where he learned to fight.”

  “Yup. He is the youngest son. His older brother will inherit the farm, so he has that in common with you as well. Kiven has no sons, just daughters, so he is very focused on his nephews. All pig shit, if you ask me. Girls can be much smarter fighters than men. But I will admit that the boy has combat potential for certain,” Jella said, watching Ash.

  Back in my now warm bedroom, the water in the pot was bubbling and I used a heavy leather glove to remove it from the crane and pour it into my caffe maker. The mug filled with the deep brown beverage as my nose was filled with its rich fragrance. Why had I woken up thinking about Ash? We had entered military basic together, then went through infantry training and finally, we were both selected for Ranged Reconnaissance. From Basic to Despair, we stuck together, had each other’s backs, and learned a great deal from each other. Ash had been my trusted second with every unit that I commanded, till he ran his own. And now Ash was missing, more than a month past due, and I was too much the realist to think I would ever see my friend again. I had searched for him and his murder the entire time, using all the resources of the Shadows as well as my own skills at Finding. Nothing. Two weeks ago, I had called it, adding his name to the roster of fallen RRS on the wall behind the bar downstairs. I had spoken to his wife, now a widow, and begun the process of getting her death funds and her widow’s stipend. Why was I still dwelling on him?

  Draining the mug and rinsing it with more water from the pitcher, I poured the rinse water into the potted forest fern on the stool by the window and headed out.