Ash and Ambition

by Ari Marmell

  “I wasn’t ready to… admit to everything then,” he said haltingly. Then, sensing without entirely knowing how or why that she would welcome hearing such a thing, he added, “Once I had decided, I… I thought seriously of coming to you with the whole story first. But I wasn’t certain you’d see me, and… Well, I was even less certain I could bring myself to relive it more than once. I’m sorry.”

  Mariscal’s grip on his hand tightened fiercely. She started to lean even closer, seemed to catch herself at the last minute. “It’s all right, Nycos.” Her words quavered in the air between them. “I’m just so glad you finally did speak of it. Whatever you need, whatever it takes to help you heal, I’ll do. You know that, right?”

  “Of… of course.” Was it just nervousness, confusion over his situation and fear of another social misstep, that had his heart beating as it was?

  “Tell me,” she said, sitting up straight and clearing her throat, “what duties has the Crown Marshal assigned you, now that you’re… working with him again?”

  “I’m to handle some of the beginner training. New recruits, pages, young children of the nobility. How to properly hold a sabre, basic parries and cuts, and whatnot.”

  Mariscal’s lips turned in a deep frown. “That is beneath you, Nycos. Insulting, even under the circumstances. I’d like to have a word with—”

  “No, it’s all right. I volunteered. I thought it a good way to prove I’m willing to take whatever steps I must to regain the court’s confidence, while still performing a useful task.”

  Also—and in fact, foremost in his mind—had been the theory that this would permit him to learn by watching others even as he was required to teach only the bits of human and Kirresci martial skills that he had already picked up. That this would be a way to hide his own unfamiliarity until he could correct that deficit. For obvious reasons, though, he didn’t share that particular reasoning with the margravine.

  “That’s… That’s brilliant, Nycos! Kind-hearted, humble, and yet perfectly suited to beginning your road back to Laszlan’s favor!”

  “Um. Thank you?”

  Her cheeks had grown flushed, her gaze taken on an almost dreamy cast. “I haven’t felt this hopeful since the day you returned! I feel like you can actually do this. You can make things better—and when you’re Crown Marshal, they’ll be better still. You’ll have your high office, and our differing ranks won’t matter any longer. And then…”

  “Yes,” he said, struggling to match her smile. “And then.”

  He found himself suddenly, almost desperately, wishing Smim were here—but he couldn’t decide whether he needed the goblin to explain to him what was going on, or to protect him from it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Earth trembled, songbirds scattered, and dust billowed like a parting sea beneath the rolling thunder of iron-shod hooves; a stormfront of flesh and bone and steel surged along the road and the surrounding grasslands. The knights and soldiers of Kirresc, their powerful steeds shortening the miles with each distance-chewing stride, charged after those who had dared intrude upon their lands and prey upon their people. Crescent blades bristled, scythes to reap the lives from these foolish foreigners. And in their vanguard, half-standing in his stirrups, nostrils choked with acrid equine sweat as he and his warhorse both broiled in their armor beneath the high midsummer sun, rode Sir Nycolos Anvarri.

  After months of lesser duties, of simple instruction, of standing meaningless posts, of every bit of scutwork not utterly beneath his station, all in the name of proving himself a changed man from the boorish brute who had returned from the Outermark, this was his first assignment of any significance—though it had still been meant to prove uneventful. All the knights of the court took their turn at leading long-running patrols along this border or that highway, a symbol to the soldiers that the gentry, the nobility, the king and his court, stood with them.

  Here, though? Not two dozen leagues from Talocsa itself? This was a quiet stretch of border, a line on the map that few crossed with ill intent. Nycos knew full well that being sent here, while a sign of his improving status, had also been an indication he wasn’t yet to be trusted with anything of import. He should, at worst, have been required to put the fear of the gods into a few tariff-dodgers trying to scoot around border stations on the main roads.

  Then a group of bandits and raiders had crossed that line from Mahdresh, looting—and in one instance, burning—several border towns on the Kirresci side.

  Nycos had learned much in those months, and he knew precisely how such an event would play out diplomatically. Kirresc would angrily demand Mahdresh keep tighter control of their criminal element. The Mahdreshan government would apologize profusely, but point out that their impoverished society hadn’t the resources to deal with crime within the city-state proper, let alone at the edges of its outermost territories. Never mind that many in the Mahdreshan government were wealthier than that government itself, that it was an open secret their people lived in poverty because of their rulers’ greed. There was simply nothing they could do, and they certainly couldn’t devote what few resources they had to protecting so powerful and prosperous a nation as their neighbor.

  It was, Nycos fumed, an even bet as to whether someone in Mahdresh’s upper echelons was actually getting paid off by these selfsame raiders.

  But so be it. Mahdresh wouldn’t police its own? Nycos and his soldiers were more than happy to do the job, and now, as their trained steeds slowly closed the gap between them and the fleeing brigands on their smaller, weaker mounts, was near time for them to send a message of their own.

  The raiders had fled off road, pounding across the lightly forested grasslands that stretched for miles in every direction—a mistake that Nycos was more than happy to ensure they paid for. True, had they remained on the highway, they might have found themselves trapped between the oncoming knights and the Kirresci border station, but that station would also have served as a clear demarcation between the two sovereign lands. Here in the wild, that line on the map did not so readily translate into real life, and the Kirresci pursuers could see no border that would obligate them to break off their hunt.

  One of the raider’s horses stumbled—not severely, just a brief loss of footing on some bulge or depression hidden in the knee-high grasses—but enough to slow. Nycos kicked his heels into Avalanche’s side, but the warhorse scarcely needed the prod; he had already lengthened his stride, snorting his excitement, at the smaller beast’s stagger.

  Screaming something unintelligible, face slack with fear, the bandit turned in his saddle, raising a heavy broadsword to face the oncoming attack. It made no difference.

  Nycos rose in his stirrups, snapping his szandzsya to the side with lightning speed born equally, now, of months spent in practice and muscles enhanced just a touch beyond human. The unsharpened outer edge of the sabre-spear smacked the heavy sword partway along its arc, knocking the thicker blade out of line. Then, the shaft braced along Nycos’s arm and against his back as he swept it outward, the weapon connected with the raider’s neck.

  Between the rigid grip and Avalanche’s pounding pace, flesh and bone didn’t even slow the blade’s passage. A few rogue drops of blood from the sudden geyser spattered across Nycos’s kaftan, as well as the chain hauberk and reinforcing breastplate beneath, but otherwise he was gone without so much as a hint that a man had died in his passing.

  Up ahead, the Mahdreshan raiders had altered course, guiding their own mounts slightly leftward toward a large copse of trees whose thick boles and even thicker foliage broke the rolling monotony of the grasslands. Many such tiny oases of woodland speckled the region, eventually growing into genuine forest—but that was many leagues distant, east of Talocsa. Here, a copse this size was the closest cousin to forest the land offered.

  Did the Mahdreshans mean to hide within? That was beyond desperate, a foolish and utterly futile gesture. The copse, though larger than many, was too small for concealment, could buy them
a few extra minutes, at most. Turn and fight? The boles would prevent the soldiers of Kirresc from mounting a charge, yes, but the raiders remained outnumbered by opponents both better armored and better trained.

  No, something about this didn’t feel right. Nycos’s instincts—both those of his current form and those remembered from his earlier, predatory life—tapped insistently at the back of his head and along his neck, their demands for attention speckling goosebumps across his skin.

  He raised a fist, the entire company slowing to a brisk canter at the signal. Several of the troops tossed questions or complaints back and forth to one another, worried about letting the brigands escape, but Nycos’s second-in-command on this patrol, a gruff veteran with graying hair, immediately rode to his side so they might speak despite the lessened but still overwhelming drumbeat of the hooves.

  “Sir Nycolos,” she began with a sharp nod.

  “Captain Rahdel.”

  “You’re sensing it too, then, sir?”

  “Indeed. They’re up to something.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any thoughts as to what, Captain?”

  “Not much of use. I might suspect an ambush in the trees—I don’t see how they could have sent word ahead, but I won’t swear they didn’t—but it seems too obvious. And unless there’s a lot of them, the copse wouldn’t provide them particular advantage over us.”

  “And if there were a lot, they probably couldn’t all hide there.”

  Her frown deepened. “No. We’d best figure it out swiftly, though, sir. Else they really are going to escape us.”

  Rahdel was right; the raiders were rapidly pulling ahead. Nycos didn’t much care for the idea of breaking into another gallop without figuring out what trouble or trick awaited them, but it was a risk he would take if no other option presented itself. At least the Kirresci warhorses could close the gap again, charging over the relatively flat grasslands…

  Nycos cocked his head. The flat, breeze-kissed, knee-high grasslands.

  He strove to listen, but even with his hearing magnified to supernatural extremes, he couldn’t pinpoint anything beyond the horses, the voices, the distant calls of bird and beast, the rustling of those grasses in the faint summer winds. It didn’t matter, though, not really. He was sure, or at least sure enough to act.

  “Archers,” he ordered.

  Although she must have been running over with questions, the soldier never hesitated, nor did she ask any of those questions save for, “Target, Sir Nycolos?”

  He told her, and she practically lit up with understanding. “I should have thought of that,” she muttered, before turning to bark a few quick commands to the soldiers behind.

  Perhaps a third of the company unslung recurved bows from where they hung upon their saddles, aimed high, and loosed. A small swarm of arrows buzzed through the air, angry wasps hunting prey, to plummet point first into those gently dancing grasses to either side of the trampled path left behind by the Mahdreshan bandits.

  Shooting blind, it was no surprise that none of the Kirresci archers actually hit anyone. Their sudden volley had all the effect Nycos could have hoped for, however.

  It drove the brigands’ own archers, who had lurked prone in the high grasses waiting for their targets to draw near, out into the open. Panicking at their premature discovery, they rose—to their knees, if not their feet—and began to shoot back.

  Against armored soldiers, who had once more spurred their mounts into a furious charge and whose own more experienced bowmen and –women now had visible quarry at which to aim, they had no chance. Two of Nycos’s people fell, true, arrows finding or punching gaps in their hauberks of chain, and for that the enraged knight would see Mahdreshan blood fed to the dry and thirsty soil. Yet in exchange for those two lives, all seven of the enemy who had lurked in ambush perished beneath either Kirresci arrows or Kirresci hooves.

  The fleeing fugitives redoubled their efforts, now, but it was only a matter of time. Their weaker horses tired, wheezing and foaming. With every step the soldiers neared. Nycos didn’t doubt that they were technically within Mahdresh-claimed territories by the time they caught up, but again, lacking any obvious markers, who could say for sure?

  And in the moment, who cared?

  As any cornered animal, once the bandits knew escape was no option, they turned to fight. Spears and heavy chopping swords flew free to clash with szandzsya and sabre. The anger, the desperation, and—in one or two instances—the indignation in their features suggested the raiders were well aware this was a fight they could not win, yet neither were they going down without a struggle.

  All save one. He and he alone continued in his flight, whipping at his steed with vicious but controlled strokes. Fear drove him, yes, but not the outright panic Nycos would have expected from a man abandoning his comrades to certain death.

  Hmm.

  “Archers!” he called over his shoulder. “I want that man off his horse!”

  Then the two opposing forces came together in a deafening clash, and he had no more time for contemplating any foes but those he faced personally.

  Avalanche lived up to his name. Hundreds of pounds of dense muscle and chain barding slammed, screaming, into the enemy. The first brigand fell, his steed broken and driven into the dust by the living boulder upon which Nycos rode, and already Nycos was after the next.

  Most of the soldiers had hefted their shields as the lines met, guiding their mounts with their knees, laying about with sabres or with szandzsya spinning in one-handed grips.

  Not Nycos. Leaving his shield hanging from the saddle, he clutched to the horn with his left hand, fist so inhumanly tight it deformed the leather. So anchored he slid his left foot from the stirrup and leaned far out to the right, his sabre-spear whirling. The first spin severed the arm of a Mahdreshan who had thought himself beyond the knight’s reach; the second opened the screaming bandit’s chest.

  Another came at him in a charge, hunched low behind a lance slightly thinner but easily twice as long as the szandzsya. Clearly the brigand assumed him an easy target, off-balance and lacking a shield.

  Confident that none might spot the impossible details in the chaotic melee, Nycos reached out with his own weapon quicker than a striking serpent, knocking her spear aside so the lethal tip passed him harmlessly by, then leapt from his already precarious perch. Inhuman muscle and bone propelled him, fast and far, so that his own armored body collided with hers as swiftly as the galloping horses themselves. He felt the bandit simply give, bones crumbling at the impact. Her spear fell to the grass from limp fingers, and only her feet, wedged in the stirrups, kept the dying raider from following suit. A quick shove solved that problem, then Nycos twisted and sawed at the reins, turning the wildly frantic horse about. He whistled for Avalanche to return to him, hoped the horse could hear him over—

  A second, smaller spear—hurled, not thrust, albeit it from close range—slipped in beneath the cuirass he wore and punched through the chain hauberk protecting his sides.

  And there it stopped, the impact jarring him in the saddle and sending a jolt of pain through his body. Bruising, but otherwise inconsequential. He smiled broadly enough for the stunned young brigand who had thrown that spear to see the gleam of his teeth even through the ventail of Nycos’s helm.

  Not that the man’s shock lasted long, as one of Nycos’s soldiers appeared behind the paralyzed fellow and brained him with a flanged mace.

  That, though of course none knew it, was why Nycos rarely bothered with his shield: Not out of “high-born knightly arrogance,” as some of the lower ranks whispered when they thought he could not hear, but because he trusted to his sorcerously hardened skin to stop most blades or bludgeons already slowed by his armor.

  He found, as Avalanche trotted to his side, that his charge, and the leap that followed, had carried him clear through the small mass of the enemy. He stood now beside that copse of trees and, looking beyond them, could just see the fleeing man some distance
across the plain.

  He was, indeed, escaping now on foot. One of the Kirresci archers had taken his horse out from under him. An impressive shot, that. Nycos owed the company a round of drinks when they got home.

  “Sir Nycolos!” Rahdel rode up beside him as he swung himself back over Avalanche’s saddle. Her helm looked to have absorbed most, if not quite all, of a nasty blow. The rim was bent inward along one side, and even as he watched, she unhooked the ventail—a “veil” of chain that protected the lower face—from one of the cheeks and the nasal guard, pushing it aside so she could spit a mouthful of blood and dust.

  “Are you injured, Captain?”

  “Nothing serious.” She waved back at the remnants of battle. “We cut most of them down on our first pass, sir. It’s just cleanup, now.”

  “Good. See to it that everything’s secure and then come after me!” Without waiting for acknowledgment, he spurred Avalanche forward. The beast sprang eagerly into a run, so that Nycos felt as though the whole world had lurched beneath him.

  It was, in his current life, the closest he could come to recapturing the joy of flying. He would never admit it, but he loved the aggressive creature for that.

  The cluster of lush greenery flashed by, and once again there was only grass and the occasional lonely bole. Avalanche’s hooves tore divots in the gently rolling waves of earth, clumps of sod and individual verdant blades launched back in a veritable wake. In seemingly no time at all they had swept by the bandit’s dying mount and closed inexorably on the man himself.

  He spun, revealing shaggy beard and sun-reddened skin—and a compact crossbow, an intricate weapon not often found in the hands of Mahdreshan criminals.

  Nycos leaned even as he hauled Avalanche’s reins violently aside. The warhorse twisted, nearly tumbling end over end, then screamed as the powerful weapon thrummed and steel glanced off steel with a piercing screech.

  Now the mighty beast did fall, in a roll that might have crushed Nycos’s leg had he not yanked it from the stirrup at the last second. He found himself lying awkwardly beside Avalanche, his legs resting atop the horse’s heaving side. From here he couldn’t see the barding that protected his mount’s chest and head; knew the bolt hadn’t penetrated, but not how badly the armor had been crushed, or how much damage the impact might have inflicted. A hot rage burned in his gut, and he tried to roll aside so that he could stand.