Forest For The Trees (Book 3) Read online

  “Orders came in, as I’m sure you’ve figured out. My men and the outpost will merge with the Seventh Regiment to resume battle-line duties.” He paused to give the groaners time to finish. “The mercenaries,” Atcheron raised his voice slightly with a brief glance toward Fraser, “will be taking the prisoners to Thoenar for questioning in the company of the Arm.”

  “Like as he’ll be going in the company of us,” a faceless wit suggested from across the crowd. There was general agreement with the sentiment throughout the mercenary ranks.

  “We’ll have to watch our steps,” Fraser interjected. He stepped closer to his clustered men to make his point. “Reports are still coming from everywhere. Any number of those beasts of theirs got loose after their ranks were blown apart in the last battle. They are marauding as they please. We shouldn’t run into any organized resistance, but these monsters are clearly pack animals. I’ll want every man who’s still light on his feet taking turns ranging out from our main force to keep an eye out for them, in addition to whatever scouts the Arm brings along with him. We want to avoid any hunting packs, if we find any.”

  There were several nods throughout the crowd. No one intended to end up as bits of grit stuck between a monster’s teeth.

  Fraser continued. “After we get to Thoenar, there’s no telling where we’ll end up shipping out to next. Spend tonight examining your equipment and fixing what you can. Keep in mind what you need so we can draw as much as we can tomorrow morning before we leave.”

  Several nasty comments were tossed back at the lieutenant regarding this. Supplies were short for the hodge-podge company camping on the road. The bandaged quartermaster from the Eighteenth Outpost was refusing to dole out anything from leather laces to jerked beef short of imminent peril to his person. Especially to the mercenaries who, as he saw it, had no right to consume the army’s supplies.

  Most of the Kings’ equipment needed tending to. Marik was one of the worst off. Nearly all his battle gear had suffered damage. His sword was destroyed, many of the links in his chainmail were fused into a solid plate from the molten steel that had hardened after splashing over it, his half-helm was such a wreck he’d tossed it away as useless and the palms to his gloves had been burned away. He had lifted a new tunic from an untended crate when the quartermaster’s attention had been elsewhere. Other than the odd bits stuffed into his pack, his only possessions in the world were locked away in his closet in Kingshome.

  He felt strangely naked standing without his usual burdens.

  Dietrik nudged him. “Let’s be moving on then, eh mate?” he said when Fraser ducked back into the tent with Atcheron. “There are still several marks until sundown, and I, for one, would rather be elsewhere when the parade returns.”

  Marik agreed. It always annoyed him to see the Arm of Galemar riding back into their little encampment. The man would shine orangey-silver in his immaculate armor under the pink sunset, heading a column of soldiers who, given the talk, apparently believed he had crushed the invaders’ forces single-handedly. Dietrik had lanced Marik’s head about his arrogant beliefs regarding his fighting abilities…yet many of the snide thoughts he’d entertained during that last battle persisted.

  This man, who rode like a gleaming bardic hero, was nothing save a figurehead. A tool of the aristocracy to inspire common soldiers to throw themselves into the monstrous jaws of the invaders’ pets. Tactics that relied on breaking down the walls of an enemy stronghold by piling corpses against the stone until their sheer weight broke the defenses.

  While Marik might not be a warrior worthy of the Arms of old, despite his egotistical thoughts during the Rovasii battle, he still privately maintained that the Arm of Galemar should be a warrior without question. A leader capable of snatching victory from defeat. Truly a living incarnation of the Master Sword he wore at his side.

  If ever Galemar needed the strength of a man born to be the Arm, it was these days.

  * * * * *

  Marik was in a light doze atop his bedroll later than evening. Dietrik sat across from him in the small tent only granted to the mercenaries since there were so many leftover after the casualties the outpost forces had taken. Most of the tents held four occupants. They had the tent to themselves since very few were easy with the idea of sharing such confined sleeping quarters with the mage of countless rumors.

  With eyes half-closed and his mind verging on sleep, Dietrik’s rustling through his belongings were a soothing background noise. He muttered grunts and soft exclamations twice a minute. When he said, “Eh?”, Marik paid it no heed. Soft voices from outside the tent drifted to him, their meanings lost due to the muffling of canvas and distance.

  Peace in wartime. He always enjoyed the way a camp’s normal activities could sooth. Marik teetered on the verge of sleep when Dietrik’s voice slowly reeled him back through the ocean of slumber toward the lands of wakefulness.

  “Ah, indeed.” A slight pause before Dietrik continued with, “Well, you know how the lad feels about all this. It’s safer off to simply carry it around myself with no worries for any...uh, accidents it might encounter.”

  Marik blinked away the blurry images of the tent’s interior. He shifted his head to see Dietrik talking into his pack.

  “I am in no position to say yes or no to that, I am afraid,” Dietrik continued. “I’ve found it is best to simply accept the situation. No point in waging an argument over a trivial matter.”

  Dietrik’s tone had the definite quality of a hidden suggestion. Marik sat up to ask a question, his words coming out as a fuzzy, “Whaz are you?”

  “A moment of your time,” Dietrik told him, while shoving his pack into Marik’s lap. Marik gazed down through the flap and found the silver-rimmed hand mirror lying atop Dietrik’s extra smallclothes. Light emitted softly from the glass.

  Also peering up from the pack’s depths was the cold, irritated glare from stiletto eyes he knew with greater familiarity than he would wish. The chief mage of the crown’s royal enclave pierced him with her glare from across the kingdom…though also from the interior of a mercenary’s travel pack. Celerity’s ire brought him fully awake while his mind fiercely ran through all the possible reasons she would deliberately initiate a scrying link to him.

  Before he could ask what she wanted, she abruptly cut him off with a cold, “I expect that any time I have need to communicate with you, I shall be able to. This mirror was not sent to help you in your ablutions each morning!”

  “I can hear you,” Marik griped back. “All you need to do is talk so we know you’re there.” He paused a beat before adding, “Like now. We know you’re here.”

  She ignored his consternation. “I trust your orders have arrived.”

  “Only today,” he replied. “We’re taking our prisoners to Thoenar with the Arm.”

  “I have further orders for you.”

  A new twist must have recently developed. What else could go wrong? “Dietrik, go get the baron and Lieutenant Fraser.”

  “You will do nothing such,” Celerity frostily ordered before Dietrik could move. “If I wished to pass orders to your commanders, I would do so through ordinary channels. These orders are for you alone.”

  “Me?” Marik was dumbfounded.

  “This goes for both of you,” she stated, her hard eyes flicking left to where Dietrik would have been visible but for a mound of his unwashed intimacies. “Make no mention of this to anyone. When you arrive in Thoenar,” she declared, her gaze returning to Marik’s suspicious visage, “you will report to the palace.”

  Several moments passed while Marik waited for further explanation. When she continued her glare at him, he demanded, “What’s going on?”

  “I will explain when you arrive. Suffice to say that you will be expected at the gate.”

  “Are you going to—” Marik began to ask when she abruptly vanished from the mirror. He stared down at perfectly ordinary reflective glass, the small mirror giving no hint that it could display anything ot
her than what it sat before.

  “The lady knows how to make her point,” Dietrik mused when Marik thrust his pack back into his arms. “Only the question of what point she intended to make remains.”

  “Nothing good for me, you can put coin on that!” Marik flopped back onto his bedroll. “What is the old bat up to this time?”

  “I imagine you will be finding out shortly enough.”

  “Shortly? Dietrik, with this crowd of prisoners on foot, especially with the wounded among them, we won’t reach Thoenar until well after the thaw!”

  His friend shrugged and rolled his pack to the head of his bedroll for secondary use as a pillow. “I, for one, am not so eager for a fresh row. The slow journey will be a pleasant holiday from avoiding the digestive tracks of these living nightmares. We all could do well to take advantage of the rest.”

  “First time I’ve ever heard a month-long march called a ‘rest’.” He paused to ponder Dietrik’s words before admitting, “I suppose putting distance between us and these black-armored strangers will give us the chance to examine the problem better if we aren’t still personally wound-up inside it.”

  “Any solution had best not include us, if the gods have an ounce of pity in their breasts,” Dietrik snorted. “What were you asking your lady-bane when she so rudely cut you off?”

  “We left Tollaf in town this time since the entire band would be dividing along their squad structures and there’s no need for mages on border patrol. I wanted to know if she was planning to talk to him through her mirror the way she always seems to when my back is turned.”

  “Why do you care?” Dietrik inquired. He propped himself on one elbow.

  “Because Ilona is due to travel back to Thoenar soon. She said that until Kerwin’s inn is completed and during the first year she’s running the new location for the Standing Spell, she would need to shuttle back and forth to her mother’s branch in Thoenar quite often.”

  “Always looking for the chance to dip your wick, eh?” accompanied his friend’s salacious leer. “You’ve grown into a true mercenary after all!”

  Marik scowled back. “Don’t be a jackass! If she hasn’t left for Thoenar yet, then I was hoping she could bring me a replacement sword from Sennet’s stock. The blade I took from our prisoners doesn’t suit me as well as one of Sennet’s.”

  “And your special order? That as well?”

  “If he’s completed it, that would be nice. It’s still sooner than he estimated it would be finished, though.”

  “Perhaps not by the time a letter from you would reach him.”

  “A letter?” Marik rolled his head to the side to stare at Dietrik.

  “Indeed, mate. A few of our own number are still wounded. Glynn has been so busy with ensuring your survival that he’s been unable to spare any excess energy in Healing others. They will, without doubt, return to Kingshome, since our hurried contract with the king’s seneschal left Torrance many openings for loopholes.”

  Marik sat up in consideration. “Fraser was mumbling something about that the other day. Do you really think we can send the wounded home without objection?”

  “I didn’t say that, but I believe that was the gist of Fraser’s intentions. And with such an ambiguous contract, he will talk his way into whatever he wants, if I know him. The wounded will be taking our share of battle loot home for Sennet’s inspection, so why not include a letter to the man regarding the destruction of your second blade?”

  Hearing Dietrik’s amused enunciation made him groan. It may have been destroyed during honest combat, but the armory master would undoubtedly be severely annoyed that Marik had cost him another weapon. “Ilona might be long departed by the time our wounded straggle in. Still, it won’t hurt to ask. I think I’ll ask him to check the records for the first blade I took out of the armory and ask for one as close to that as possible. It’s shorter than my last sword, but I never had any problems with it for close-in fighting.”

  Dietrik nodded. “Your last blade had a complication or two fighting around the buildings in Thoenar. Will you be able to use the smaller sword in combination with your strength working?”

  “I can, if I’m careful. The blade will be damaged badly if I try using it directly against armor. That’s why I need my custom sword. With that, I can switch between them at need.”

  “You had better go and see if you can raid the command tent for writing supplies, then. We will be leaving upon first light.”

  Marik cursed softly and forced his mind to abandon the rest he had been sinking back into. Truly there was no rest for the wicked.

  * * * * *

  Night’s enshrouding cloak wrapped around the encampment sitting on the Southern Road. Flickering torches were scattered between the small army tents to drive away the darkness. All they accomplished was to make the blackness beyond the torches’ nimbus so much the darker, seemingly impenetrable to all but animal eyes. With an unknown number of bestial Taurs running loose in this corner of the kingdom, nighttime had become a trial of endurance. Every slight breeze became the heavy breath of a monster lurking in the nearby shadows, and every distant call of nocturnal predators instantly made seasoned soldiers grip their hilts in sweat-slicked palms.

  Tension gripped the Galemaran men in a vice all the tighter for the men’s fevered imaginations. The memories of the hellish creatures slaughtering their shieldmates without mercy painted the night with possibilities known only to the damned suffering perdition in the hells. Yet the strain rested most heavily on the forms tied at the wrists, huddled back to back in tight groups to ward off the cold. No canvas roof sheltered them against the night, no fire was allowed close enough to provide a burning brand to the hand of desperate men. Winter eve made the men shiver endlessly, adding to the trembles that already plagued them for their intimate knowledge of what would happen if the Taurs did leap from the darkness in a carnivorous frenzy.

  Adrian Ceylon had far more to plague his mind than fears that the monstrous beasts they had enslaved would return to visit retribution on them. Such a turn of events might be comforting after a strange fashion. It would be an end to his problems.

  He was a prisoner of war.

  Never, not once in his entire dedicated career to king and homeland had he come close to a defeat. Now this!

  That was bad enough, but worst of all, the events leading to this disgrace were still broken and disjointed. His memories were fragmented, and the accounts from his surviving personal guards tallied not a whit with anything else he knew.

  He had given the command to push forward from Kallied and invade the neighboring kingdom of Galemar with all speed? Him commanding the army to disregard caution, to advance without secure supply lines in place, or securing the lands taken until they were locked in the iron grip of the Arronathian Armed Forces? Impossible! It flew in the face of all the military wisdom he’d ever learned or crafted.

  He would have called Bayonne a liar except for the long years of service over which Adrian had come to know the man like a son. Even then he would suspect the man’s story if not for the rest of his guards confirming the tales, each speaking to him separately and clearly without collusion.

  There could be no doubt that his actions were in keeping with the histories his men related. In any other man he would pronounce the decisions to be criminally derelict, and met the fool’s assertions of no memory regarding the actions taken with outright disbelief. What had happened to him?

  Adrian sat in the cold, his wrists bound, sitting back to back with Bayonne. The meager body heat from his fellow prisoners made no discernable difference when faced with the assault waged by winter’s chill legions. Light breeze stole the wafting heat off his clothing, preventing the fabric from warming against his skin. A succubus cold reached up from the bare earth of the roadbed, draining the energy from his legs until they felt as frozen as the stones further off the road, stones that transformed the remaining snow blanket into a lumpy quilt hastily thrown over a bed. Not least of a
ll was the barren wasteland inhabiting the souls of each man sitting with him. Their unexpected lots transformed their spirits into a living embodiment of the Death Season.

  The witching hours. That is what gran used to call it.

  He had not thought of her in long years. Strange it should come back to him under such circumstances. She had never lived as a member of a soldier’s family, and had always insisted on treating him same as the local boys in her hometown despite his future career having been decided since his birth. His father could never have born any son except one who would prove as loyal and steadfast as he.

  Others had insisted that the witching hours were the most dangerous of times, existing on midnight’s stroke on the exact full of the moon. Such times were when anything dark and terrible could happen, especially if one tempted Fate to rewrite your destiny. The village boys, on the few occasions when Adrian allowed his nature to devolve to one more natural to his age and join them, had thrilled with the rebellion of committing those acts warned most strenuously against. They would sneak from their beds to meet in empty groves, holding two mirrors to face each other exactly at the midnight bell to see if an imp really would spring out from the reflected infinities.

  Gran had scoffed at such foolery. According to her, the witching hours were times when a person’s soul darkened under a cloud of despair, turning barren under uncertainty. Such times were the harshest trials through which emergence was never guaranteed. All one could do was fight to the best of his nature and hope to see the sun shine through the fog one day. Even the most desolate wastelands could produce flowers, given time.

  Adrian had accepted her words without much thought. He had assumed he understood her meaning. How ironic that only late in life would the lesson come home with such weight.

  His fingertips brushed across the dirt, over the spot on which he had sat for days. Buried there were his insignia, the decorations for a long career of faithful service. Everything that could identify him as an enemy officer of any rank. Hardest to part with had been the silver eleven-point crown insignia that marked him as the top general; not because it meant casting away the decoration personally bestowed on him by the former king but because it also served as his personal scrying anchor. How would the intelligence officers locate the prisoners? The crack that now split the surface already worried him, causing him to wonder if it were still functional. If the scryers located the anchor later, all they would see would be a bare stretch of road rather than the captured general.