The Bladeforge (fiction - reader discretion advised)

[HuManBing]

Perringen's Ultimatum

In the deep winter, I got my first real assignment.

Terrek's man Poltren came in, his hoofbeats marking him before I even saw him on the road. I gave him hay and water for the horse, and a cup of warmed wine by the fire.

He doffed his helmet in my presence, a rare enough sign of respect.

"There's been two farmsteads raided," he said. "Council says nobody had heard from them for a week and sent riders to see. They lost all hands and most of the stock was killed. Terrek thought you might be a good man to help."

I pondered this as I strapped my jerkin on and readied my own horse. If Terrek was sending me out, it meant my expulsion from grace might be nearing an end.

Maybe it depended on how I handled this one. I got my shortbow and stringed it, taking along a quiver of the longer arrows to use against enemy men. Mindful of the wellbeing of my horse, I only packed a shortsword at my waist.

I turned back to the man.

"Are you to come with me?" I asked.

"Only if you request it," he said. "My orders from the council are to let you know. But if you order me to come, I must obey my senior officer."

I smiled wryly.

"I order you to come with me, and no complaints," I said.

He gave a smart salute.

"Yessir."

We rode out quickly along the road, but slowed when we came to the field trails leading to the patchwork farmsteads. The snow was not deep, but it was treacherous, and I didn't want a lamed horse in this weather. We paced carefully upwards, until we got to the pens with the slaughtered sheep.

The central house was a wreck, consumed by fire. Outside on the lawns we found five bodies, all men, lying in their pools of frozen blood. I dismounted and took a closer look at each. None were armed, and it appeared they were all cut down by swordthrusts to the head and shoulders.

The snow made it hard to make out prints. But I figured the men who did this must have been on horseback, as all the cuts were angled downwards to the skull.

By the well, there was the frozen corpse of a girl, her throat cut ear to ear and her legs splayed. Her head leaned back on the lip of the well and her arms were poised on either side of her head as well. There was a strangely prim, even disapproving, look in her dead eyes.

Her dress, cut neatly down the middle of the back, lay flapping in the wind by the well. For modesty's sake, I put it around her shoulders to cover her nakedness, and leant her back against the well's stonework. Though I couldn't say for sure, something about the position of her arms suggested she had been raped by more than one man. It suggested teamwork.

There had been some pigs as well. These were sliced open and bled and roasted on the spot. Whoever did this had killed all witnesses, taken the whatever they wanted as far as food and women, and then torched the house. And then moved on.

I went back to Poltren.

"We're too late," I said. "There are no tracks. Let's see the next farmstead."

He nodded.

* ~ * ~ *

The next farmstead lay over a hill and was on better grazing ground. They had apparently had an alarm, as the corpses outside were all men and not a few had makeshift weapons. The same type of killing blow as before - the downturned slice through skull and shoulder from a mounted assailant.

Dozens of slaughtered animals lay in pens and enclosures. As we drew near, we saw the main house was also burned, but there was a stone annex that had not collapsed.

Close to the house, we saw a dog slinking between the stumps of walls and pillars. Poltren whistled to it, but it didn't approach.

Inside, we found a ruined dining hall with several charred bodies scattered in the middle. We got to the annex, which turned out to be a chapel of sorts. A few books were here, blackened from the smoke and heat but still sound enough. Poltren leafed through some.

"What does it say?" I asked. He showed it to me but I shook my head. He read for me: lists of household stores.

I had an idea.

"Did they note how many heads of livestock they had?" I asked. Poltren found the right book and we went back outside to count the dead sheep and pigs. They were all present - not a single one had been taken away.

"Must have been hungry. Harvest's long over and whatever stores they have must be empty," I mused. "They didn't take anything whole. They couldn't - being on horseback. They must have cooked everything so it would keep, and then taken the choice bits for eating later."

The dog watched us go, receding into the snow like a ghost.

* ~ * ~ *

"What do I tell council?" Poltren asked, in the safety of my watchhouse. He'd pulled his boots off and set them down by the fire.

"Tell them whatever you want to," I said. "But tell Terrek we probably have Master Perringen as a guest once again."

He was silent for a while, thinking about this.

"You know the Temple and Flex have put a bounty on him," he said.

I had not known this, but said nothing.

"Well," he said finally, "I'll tell Terrek you may need some men."

He left.

* ~ * ~ *

The men who came were Lotal, Lellik-jir, Prasti, and Gela-jir. And despite myself, I was truly glad to see them. They settled in noisily at my watchtower and spent the first night drinking and telling stories of the old days.

We started to patrol the farms, more as a means of making sure we'd be there not too long after an attack than for any actual preemptive value. The farmers seemed happy enough to see us, and sometimes we got to camp outside of the wretched cramped confines of the watchtower.

One night a pair of girls came to us with wine and some kitchen treats, and the men spent a pleasant evening with them. Gela-jir could sing and whistle almost well enough to fool birds to come to his window. And Lellik-jir was a mountain of a man, with shoulders broad enough to carry both girls around the shed.

We had been away on our third patrol when we came across the second attack. As before, they had taken only what meat they could carry. But the fires were still burning and the blood was still warm when we got there. Tracks led to the next farmstead over, and we got there to find more of the same.

More importantly, there was a man still alive, though most of his innards were open to the chill air.

"Whoresons... all of them..." he said. "Took my daughters... killed them... took my wife too..."

I looked him in the eyes.

"Which way did they go?"

He raised a hand, bloody from holding his entrails inside him, and pointed. "Towards Celbur's..."

I nodded. I took out a knife from my belt and dropped it down to his hand. He was beyond help, but he deserved the right to choose to make it quick.

* ~ * ~ *

At Celbur's, they had met with more resistance than before, and although there were bloodstains outside, there were no corpses. All the men inside were alive and reasonably well, at least well enough to threaten us if we entered.

We showed them our faces and said we were from Forg. It turns out they had held off the attack and run back into the house. Two men had been injured, but were expected to be all right.

Outside, we examined the damage. They had slaughtered the various animals but had not taken anything, not even the choice cuts.

We found tracks, which we followed until we got to a forest. Then we turned back and returned to the tower.

* ~ * ~ *

There were no more attacks from Perringen's crew until the spring. Evidently they had gotten all the meat they needed from the raids. Once the merchants started plying between towns, however, the raids began again. This time, it appeared, they were going after wealth. The primary theory was that they needed to buy equipment to replace wear and tear.

Back at the town, Dartoraigh had a successor, Prior Kenian. Kenian was well regarded by Bishop Trandamere in Flex, and was given authority to take part in a bait and hook plan. The Temple would send a shipment of its tithes as tax to Flex. Also, they would send a shipment of steel ore to Flex.

We would dress in Templar clothes and ride alongside the convoy, to draw an attack from Perringen.

We accompanied it from the gates of Forg without incident, arriving at the destined wayside inn. It wasn't until we left the inn that Perringen's spies told him where we were. He attacked us on the third day as we were crossing an elevated outcropping.

A shout from the side alerted us first, as the enemy riders came out from among the rocks, disarmingly close. They took out the riders of the ore shipment wagon first, and then came for the tithes afterwards. By that time, we had our hands ready to draw, and did so on my shouted command, shedding our priestly robes and engaging Perringen's men in jerkins and shortsword.

They were lean and haggard, these men, all with long beards. Though they fought with desperation, it was clear they were a spent force. As arm met arm in combat, we forced them back from the road and into the hard rock and scrub of the surrounding terrain.

After we unseated their third man, they all turned and fled. Leaving Poltren to secure the shipment behind us, my fellows and I gave chase.

* ~ * ~ *

They rode hard and fast, too fast, over the rocks. Of their initial number, four came down in falls and lamings as their hoofbeats missed their footing. Each man who fell, we killed swiftly and took their head for proof.

Although two of them drew away, we kept in pursuit, tracking them by the imprints of their hooves and even the stale and leavings of their horses when that failed.

We finally got them at a campsite, where one of them was vainly trying to bind his horse's twisted leg. They both drew on us, and Lotal took one through the back, bringing him down.

The other one shouted at me and hacked my horse's legs out from under me. I went down and came back up and we were fighting face to face.

He lunged for my sword arm, and I interposed my blade down at his hilt to deflect the blow. Following through, I hacked at his side, but he turned his whole body and the shot went wide. Grunting with the exertion, he knocked at my blade and came in just too close.

I brought my knee up into his crotch and stood over him, sword out. He rolled onto his side and held up a hand.

"Perringen, I seize you in the name of the Temple and the governing council of Flex and Forg."

He found his voice.

"Cob, I trust Bela's been feeding you well?"

I stopped and looked at him. Then I recognized Wilmar - all brag and bluster gone. Wilmar defeated, brought to ground with the same man he had sworn to serve.

Behind me, Lotal shouted.

"Cob! We have Perringen! The bounty is ours!"

I turned back to say something - anything - but my voice stuck in my throat. When I turned to face Wilmar again he had gone. I scanned the rocks and saw him clambering up a sheer face, panting from the effort.

For a long moment I watched him, then I sheathed my sword and made my way back to my men.



_

[HuManBing]

Perringen's Lieutenant

With Perringen neutralized, the raids vanished. The bodies of the men we recovered were lice-ridden and bony. Evidently the once-proud son of Belkrestar had fallen on hard times in camping out in the wilderness. It was a sad end, but one that reminded me of the marvels of fate.

Just a few short months before, I had been on the headsman's block, bewailing my lot in life and begrudging Perringen his birthright. And now, as I watched the cart bear him and the remains of his last few loyal servitors back to Flex, I realized that even a lowly miner's son could survive where a lord's son did not.

The Temple's goodwill helped speed my repatriation enormously. Even the parents of the boys I had dispatched at the gates came to me and shook my hands for ridding the town of this new menace, and disposing of the hated Perringen once and for all. In the end, the Temple's full reward came to me - a veritable windfall for any one man.

I spent an insignificant sum of it on new arms and armor for my men, and gave a little extra as surplus salary to their families. Then the rest I gave to the Temple's charities, to help poor children and their parents.

It was the least I could do, having come a long way from begging for apple cores in Flex's shanty towns.

* ~ * ~ *

They had a celebration, as they tend to do when things are going well and the mood struck them. They hung up torches in the courtyards and drank and danced until very early. I sat among the Sons of Forg under Terrek, mindful of the fact that Bela's hearth now had no man to her name. The other men who served with me decided to leave their families to sit with me.

At one point we thought Bela would not show. The men we captured should have included Wilmar among the dead. But he was unaccounted for, and nobody knew where he was. As the widow without status of a wanted political criminal, there was every reason for her to stay at home.

But she did come, holding her head high but saying little. My heart leaped to see her, and I waited until she was seated before rising and carrying the flask of Casper's wine to her table, and pouring it myself to her on bended knee. She gave me only a curt nod, but I saw she rested easier for the evening's meal.

Sootri was with her, and I first saw her seated. But it wasn't till she half-rose to take a plate for Bela that I realized how tall she had grown. She was still nowhere near my height, or Bela's, but all the same I looked at her arms as she carried the plate, and I realized the soot-stained, grubby little girl who had held my hand at the roadside was gone. In her place was a glancing-eyed maiden who moved with a deft smoothness, only tilting her head gently when spoken to, the better to catch the words.

Lotal nudged me.

"Cob, your sister has become very striking," he said.

I turned to him. "Don't say that," I said. "Please."

The moment's awkwardness passed between us and then we were lost to the celebrations once again.

* ~ * ~ *

One of Lindo's uncles came back with good news. Lothgren had been secured against Malarchus, and allied armies had him pinned down at Roshan and Palt. If he made a move away from those cities, he would risking losing everything he had gained up to now.

We redoubled our forgework, to meet the new quotas set by Flex. Throughout the spring into summer, our men abroad fought and sweated and our home guard within the town's walls peened the steel and delivered it onwards to fight the sable banner.

Things were changing in Bela's household too. I had told her first of Varadis' unfaithful ingratitude, and she had sniffed dismissively and said it was good riddance to bad rubbish. Then, I eventually told her the news about Anveran's death. She took it more personally than I'd expected. Her hair suddenly lightened, almost to a grey, and at times I would find her crying silently at the spot in my room where Anveran used to dress Sootri, praying for forgiveness for having ever wished her ill.

She also mentioned that Anveran had been pregnant with Wilmar's child, before the Malarchans took it from her. That surprised me, though in retrospect it made perfect sense.

Though the transformation in Bela's normal earthy toughness was something of a shock to me, it could have been far worse. Sootri was a constant companion to Bela and I often saw the two working together in the house or going out into the town together. Whatever the past may have held between them, it was clear Sootri had forgiven my mother. As the weeks went by, she recovered some of the old spiky nature I'd known from her.

Some, but not all. Sootri came to talk to me at the Sons of Forg barracks one evening, about my mother. I sat across from the meeting table, still marvelling at how much she had changed.

Her voice was better too, though she still tended to swallow her words a little.

"Cof, your mama Vela want' to know - vere is Wilmak? If you know, it could pud her mind at rest. Eek nigh she prays and prays and prays, for hib," she said.

I took her to the courtyard, where we were less likely to be overheard. Walking beside her, I saw her height - she came up to my shoulder.

"She so sad, Cof, you doan know," she said. "Sometime she hear steps like his, she come running. Eek time it' not him. You can't know, Cof. You can't know."

I sighed. Every time I left the town, it seemed Bela's hearth suffered by my hand. First it was Varadis and Anveran, both severed from us in Flex. Now it was Wilmar, who was likely waiting for his starvation death in the wildernesses around Forg.

"Wilmar was Perringen's trusted man," I said. "You remember he was the one to give control over to Perringen during the siege."

Sootri nodded. She was a sharp lass - few things escaped her, despite her hearing disability.

"Well, there comes a time when a man has to pick a side. He picked Perringen. Probably because he wanted to look after Bela and make sure she would do all right by him. Also possibly because the only other choice was the choice of a rebel and a fool," I said - silently adding myself to that roster. "When Perringen lost, Wilmar was one of the few who stayed by his side and fought on, even though he was now the rebel and fool. He served his lord - even though he might have been a poor lord to serve - to the end."

Sootri's eyes widened at the word "end". Her voice quavered as she spoke timidly: "Cof'...?" I raised my hand reassuringly.

"No, he's alive," I said. "Or at least he was in the convoy raid. Lotal was the one who stabbed Perringen. I went after the last one, thinking he was somebody else. But it turned out to be Wilmar."

I paused, chewing my lip.

"He said something. He mentioned Bela's name. And then I saw him and I knew who it was."

We sat down in the lamplight, side by side on a bench.

"Do you remember me training with him? We waited till you were asleep," I said.

Sootri nodded. "You'd get sho many fruises in the morgin," she said.

"Well, Wilmar made me who I am today. He's the reason I'm still alive, and wearing my scars, instead of lying in some patch of dirt. And there were so many, many times I came close to the end. I owe him that much at least," I said. "So... I let him go. Didn't seem right to kill him with the sword arm he trained."

We sat in silence for a moment, and then Sootri leaned in and kissed my cheek - a whisper of a touch so light I barely felt it.

"You are a good man, Cof'. Prenk was wrong - you do know mercy," she said.

I patted her shoulder absent-mindedly, still caught in my thoughts about that fight. Remembering how much I had, indeed, wanted to kill him - to discharge every bruise and ache he'd ever given me.

Sootri was oblivious to the violence of my thoughts.

"Can you fide hib?" she asked. "For Vela. Can you brig hib back to our home?"

I turned to the wall. There was a board where the gang of Perringen all had likenesses up, for the public to see and to take note. Now with that gang broken, there was only one likeness remaining - a dog-eared pencil drawing that looked passably like Wilmar.

A sudden surge of irritation rose to the surface as I thought of Bela's uncharacteristic love for him. Given the woman had such strengths, what could explain the weakness for Wilmar? Was I to go out again and risk life and limb to shepherd a criminal, all because of a frail woman's insecurities?

I reached up and took down the picture of Wilmar and turned to Sootri.

"I'll bring him back to town, safe and sound," I said. "I owe him this."

She smiled then, looking at me under the lamplight, and I saw how she had changed. Something had happened in the play of light and shadow on her face - in the bright, perfect teeth among the dark serenity of her lips, that I knew with a pang I could expect to see suitors for her at our hearth before long.

I gave her a hug and we teetered there for a moment, before she kissed my cheek again and left the courtyard.

I saw Lotal at the door as I came back in. He looked at me oddly, and I regarded him too. I remembered I was still holding the picture of Wilmar.

"Is Captain Terrek back from patrol?" I asked.

* ~ * ~ *

Terrek had a decent degree of respect for Wilmar, despite all that happened. He recalled Wilmar's service to Himlak, and he also accepted much as I did that Wilmar's allegiance to Perringen while Forg was under siege was rational and wise. Furthermore, he held a grudging respect for Wilmar's devotion to Perringen once the insurrection began to fall apart.

"Hell," Terrek said. "It's not his fault he backed the wrong side."

We were able to prevail upon the Temple and the town council to grant leniency to Wilmar, in honor of his past service to the town. I made the circuits of the villages, taking down the wanted posters and putting up the decree of leniency.

Within a week, we had received word that Wilmar had resurfaced and was prepared to surrender himself to the authorities.

I went in person the the little thorpe where the report came from. Wilmar was there, so fleabitten and thin that I found it hard to recognize him. We took him out to the courtyard and unfastened his manacles, and I stood a moment, regarding him coldly as he tried not to shiver - his near-nakedness and my uniform a not unpleasing contrast.

Then I gave him a towel, some soaproot, and a shaving knife.

"Bela has been very worried about you," I said flatly. "You may prepare your toilet to meet her properly."

He took the items and then nodded once, in the closest display of gratitude I've ever seen from the man.

* ~ * ~ *

It helped that I rode with him back to town, his arms and feet free of bonds. Bela saw him return, shaven and clean as any proud citizen, and she immediately regained her hardbitten old ways and backhanded compliments.

Although there was some talk of his reliability, the council solved this problem by giving him a watch post outside the city and a nominal rank.

Things slowly returned to normal. Except for Sootri.



_

[HuManBing]

A Change in the Balance

I was taking a break from training when Lotal brought up my sister again. It had been a cool day, and we'd wrestled outside, first in jackets, and then throwing off our jackets as the sweat and blood warmed us.

"She's really something," he said casually.

I was still panting from the fight, and turning my knee left and right to loosen it up. I didn't know who he was talking about at first.

"This is another girl of yours?" I asked.

"No, far from it," he said. "Sootri. She may need a new name."

"What in Hiteh would she do with another name?" I asked testily. "She likes her current name well enough."

He shrugged. "Sootri is such a little girl's name. If she chose something a bit more womanly–"

"–she'd be half again more man than you," I broke in. "What was that pathetic excuse for an ankle grip you gave me just now?"

Lotal laughed disarmingly.

"Ah-Cob," he said. "You know I wouldn't say anything in disrespect for your kin. But Sootri's very eligible now, and you know it. Look at how tall she's grown. And she has a beautiful smile too."

"I know all this," I said. "She's my sister, remember?"

He held up his hands in mock surrender.

"But think of her prospects, Cob. Most women with her condition, well, that's a problem for a suitor. Will they have to learn to speak with their hands? Can she barter and haggle like a good housewife should, if she can't hear so well? That sort of thing."

This conversation troubled me, but Lotal did have a point. He himself had an older half-sister, and she had settled with a man only last fall. If anybody knew the arcane formulae of matching some given woman with some given man, his family would.

"It's hardly my problem," I said. "You don't see me chasing after girls, why should she go after boys?"

Lotal gave me a cunning, sidelong glance. "Yes, indeed," he said. "Some of the men have been wondering about that too."

I finished drying my hair and looked up at him.

"There was a span of time in Flex when we would go to a brothel every week," I said. "The women there were vile. Starting from the first time, all I could think of was sneaking out to get to the Temple to find Sootri and make sure she was all right."

I threw the towel on the rungs.

"Some men can aspire to higher callings than rutting with women," I said.

Lotal looked away.

"It's things like this that make men fear you," he said. "If you showed any sign that you were like the rest of us. That you enjoyed a good cup of mead. That you appreciated the companionship of a good wench."

I cut him off.

"I love and honor my mother and I've killed people in defense of my sister," I said hotly. "I also delivered my stepfather from the wilds at a time when everybody else wanted him dead. I have shown I'm human, well enough. What more do men need to see? Do I need to eviscerate myself on the Temple steps to prove I'm just another man?"

Lotal nodded.

"This is why nobody will ever approach Sootri," he said. "They're all too afraid of you. Sootri's a prize, that's for sure - but is she worth getting thrown from the battlements? Or ending up with a dagger in the neck?"

He got up and went back in before I could challenge him, rightly anticipating my anger at his words.

"It was a chisel," I shouted after him.

* ~ * ~ *

Sootri was helping bake bread in the kitchen when I visited. Prent was back in town, and Bela had invited him round for a meal. I embraced him at the doorstep.

He had grown a little fuller in his final teenage years, but he was still thin compared to most. He also seemed to have regained some of his confidence and poise from before. Whatever he had seen on the roads, he was growing used to it.

Prent sat outside with me.

"Sootri's getting older," he said.

"Oh, fulmination!" I replied angrily. "Not you too!"

He looked at me.

"What?" he asked.

"Lotal gave me an earful about it. I'm not her keeper. Let her choose a man and then be done with it already," I said.

Prent took out some papers. He sniffed, as if to dismiss my outburst.

"I was about to say she writes very well," he said. "There is an airy grace in the words she writes, perhaps given to her by Mislaxa to compensate for her lesser speech."

He found a sheet.

"Take this, for example." Then, reading clearly:

"Into the starlit night
Dreaming children cast their gaze
Waiting on a shooting star.
But, what if that star is not to come?
Will their dreams fade to nothing?
When the horizon darkens most
We all need to recall there is hope..."

I listened, entranced. Sootri had never said anything like this. Apparently her pen had volumes of loquaciousness that her lips could not form. I looked to the kitchen where she worked, her hair tied in a fetching single braid down her back. What worlds of beauty she must have developed though her years of silence, waiting to burst forth from her soul.

"I'd like to say that I taught her to write like this. But that would be vanity," he said. "Whatever she has, it was granted by divine grace."

He flipped through a few others. "Some of them are hymns, praising the power of Mislaxa and the Temple. As you might expect, given her childhood."

I grunted assent.

"But once or twice she writes about someone else. Take this one."

"The happy days he spent as boy
Are swallowed up by hungry Time.
He does not grieve, he just enjoys
Sweet memories, over a glass of wine."

He chuckled. "She has a rare humor at times."

"Who was that one about?" I asked, suddenly interested.

Prent flipped the sheet over. "It doesn't say."

I held out my hand and he gave me the piece of paper. I looked at it and the squiggles formed and reformed before my illiterate eyes, meaningless as a cipher.

"I'll be right back," I said, and walked into the kitchen.

Sootri's eyes lit up when she saw me. "Hi, Cof'," she said in a singsong voice.

I showed her the poem. "Who's this about?" I asked teasingly.

She took a look at it, and then her face changed and she snatched it away from me. She actually put her hand to her mouth. She turned away, mixing furiously and looking down.

"It's all right, who's it about? I want to know the lucky man," I said. I caught a glimpse of her face. She had turned a bright red.

"No! A lady's bid'ness!" she said pettishly. "Get out!" She picked up a spatula and hit me on the shoulder, and I beat a retreat in mock terror.

Prent smiled. "You have flour on your sleeve," he said. "I take it she didn't tell you?"

I brushed it off, shaking my head.

"Lotal warned me about this," I said. "About how older brothers can be too protective of younger sisters." There was flour on my hand now. I let it be. "He said Sootri was well liked but no young man would go near her for fear of me."

Prent was silent.

"Speak, O hallowed counsellor," I said.

He took a breath.

"There may be some truth to what he says. It may also be good to remember that Sootri can't hear too well," he said.

"You don't say."

"And," he said, ignoring my comment, "she may not want to receive any man."

I sat back. "So what's all the fuss about? Everybody and their younger brother has been pestering me to do... well, I don't know what, exactly... about Sootri's eligibility."

Prent flipped through a few more of her poems.

"She hides much of it well, under the guise of religious fervor and ecstasy," he said. "But I've seen enough in the Temples of Roshan, Palt, and Flex to know what a woman means when she writes words of endearment like this." He held up a sheaf in his hand.

I goggled at them and then gave up.

"I should have learned to write," I said. "Then I'd write paeans to the gods asking them for patience in dealing with mealy-mouthed acolytes who talk about my sister."

"Bela's meal is really quite superb," he said. "It sits very well in the mouth, as you say."

I gave him back the papers and yawned. "Do you think I'm too old to learn to read?" I asked uncertainly. "I feel like such an oaf when Sootri or the others have to read for me."

Prent shook his head. "It just takes time. Anybody can learn it. Though it's easiest for children."

The front door opened, and Bela came back, a basket of fresh fruits at her waist. I went up to her and took them from her and brought them to Sootri in the kitchen.

Sootri made a sour face of mock indignation at me, and I stopped beside her. I put my arm around her shoulder.

"I'm sorry if I made you feel bad," I said. "You know I'd never do anything to hurt you, right?"

She looked away for a second and then looked back at me and nodded. There was something odd in her face that transfixed me. Then Bela came in, and I went to busy myself helping her.

* ~ * ~ *

It wasn't long before Bela stuck her oar in as well.

Unlike the others, though, she was nothing if not straightforward.

"Sootri thinks she's in love," she said shortly. "And it looks like it's you."

I dropped the knife in my surprise.

"Me?" I said stupidly.

"We don't know for sure," Bela said, handing me a cloth to clean the blade with. "You know how she doesn't tell us what she's thinking. But it can't be anybody else."

"How can you tell?"

"Well, she's been asking questions. Like whether you're her real brother or not," she said.

"And am I?" I asked.

Bela blew a wisp of hair from her eyes.

"I doubt it. Her mother was the cousin of Wilmar, and I'm not sure exactly how that goes, but she's not my cousin. So she's not linked to you through my blood. And Wilmar isn't linked to you through anything, really."

I continued cutting carrots. This was something I'd more or less taken for granted. It seemed odd to think that maybe there was no blood relation between us at all.

"Well, that's hardly news. I mean, I would have asked you that eventually, just out of curiosity," I said.

"No you wouldn't," she said flatly. "It would never have crossed your mind because you can barely keep your own aunts and uncles straight. Or those you do meet, you get into trouble with, like Varadis."

I conceded she had a point. "But still it doesn't mean anything on its own."

Bela sniffed. "She asked me a lot of questions about how I met Wilmar," she said. "Also about your father."

I opened my mouth to ask her about my father but she silenced me with a look. "I told her nothing about your father. But I told her a bit about Wilmar. She wanted to know how I felt and what I thought when he and I first saw each other. How I knew. Seemed to me she was taking notes."

"And?" I said. This was a matter of no small interest to me.

"Well, you may not know it, but Wilmar would put himself in danger for me, not once but many times," she said. "He sided with Perringen for that same reason. And when you were too young to remember it, there were bad times afoot when he would steal, cheat, lie, and damn near kill people if it meant he and I were safe. That was the devotion and duty I saw in him, and that's why I devote myself to him, too."

"Interesting. He never seemed to do that for me," I said, with mock distaste.

"Yeah, but you knew how to do all that yourself, you hellion."

"Fair point." Her explanation seemed to clear up a lot of questions I'd had about Wilmar and why she seemed to put up with him.

"So," she said, and then paused. "She wants to know if you're too closely related, which you're not. And she wants to know how I chose a good man, which I said all boils down to whether he'll be reliable in hard times. Both of which seems to cast you in a good light."

She stirred awhile longer. "And then there's the matter of her poetry."

"Poetry?" I asked.

"Prent showed me some. I think there was lots more he didn't show me. Probably to save my delicacy," she smiled. "A lot of it was about the strong deliverer, the arm in which she could put her faith - that sort of thing. But always about a man. And sometimes clearly not a god."

I was silent.

"But one thing's clear to these old eyes. She knows the things you did to keep her safe, and the lengths to which you'd go to protect her. It seems to fit into place that she'd want to share her life with you."

"She only thinks that," I protested feebly. "She's young."

Bela sighed. "And then there's Prent," she said.

I stiffened. "What of him?"

"He has all her poetry. He thinks she's got a gift. He thinks the Temple can use her. And if nobody else claims her, it looks like he'll prevail," she said.

I cast back in my memory. None of the Templars I could remember had women at their hearths. Was their a vow they took for this?

"So that's it? He thinks she'd be a good priestess?" I asked.

Bela put down her knife. "All I can say is, Sootri's a fine girl, and I'd be proud if I were her mother myself. Instead, I've got to settle for the likes of you–"

"Thank you," I interrupted with mock gratitude, as had become second nature to me.

"–don't mention it - and the fact that you're too wedded to your training weapons to even look at a girl," she said. "It'd be a damn shame if they locked her away in a convent somewhere."

I found it hard to argue with that sentiment.

"You know, Prent said I should be a stonemason instead of a soldier," I said. "After that I never thought that I could take anything he said at face value."

Bela finished the leeks and got up.

"If you ever learn to read someday, get those poems off Prent and take a good long look at them," she said. "And tell me what they say. Must be convenient - to be able to tell a person you love them without having to see their reaction. I'm surprised more people don't do this. Maybe I'll give it a try myself."

* ~ * ~ *

Matters progressed. At the fall dances, I was paired with her. Naturally enough, as a brother might well dance with his sister in the deepening dusk under the lights. We sat beside each other at the supper bench, and we made wishes for each other as we bit into the "how-many" bread, counting the seeds.

(I'd wished for the number of men Forg would field to protect her - Sootri had counted twenty-five seeds in my mouthful of bread. Sootri had wished for the bushels of peaches in the harvest - I'd counted out eight.)

My head ringing somewhat with the ale, we climbed high above the town's walls, along the slopes of the hills that were growing barer and barer as the mines wore on.

In a cleft in the rockface, we found our secret cave and went in together. There was a strange feeling in my chest, part dread and part careless levity - as though I were about to do something knowingly wrong. And yet that somebody else had written the order.

I made a fire for us in the cave and we sat on the overhang together, telling stories. She remembered learning to count and read here, as Prent brought her lessons from Dartoraigh that winter. I fished around and found the bundle, still dry after all these years, with my tiny sword from Carrustin's forge, and the holy symbols Prent had carved for her.

She sang a few halting lines from the song Prent had taught her those days - "The Soul Tree" - which he said was named after her.

She didn't remember how she came to be here that time. And I didn't see fit to remind her, of the insanity that had gripped Bela's household when Anveran and Wilmar had their strange affair.

Instead, she told me of the ways she thought of me these days, just as she was grateful for me every day she lived at the Temple in Flex. About how she marvelled and saw the world as full of life when I was around. And when I was absent, everything became flat and grey once more. The hours of waiting, not knowing where I was or whether I thought of her.

Bela had told her that the feeling comes around only a handful of times in a person's life - even when life was good. And given the troubles surrounding us, she had told Sootri not to pass up an opportunity for happiness when Fate presented it.

And so, as they say, here we were. Two young folk, alone in the firelight.

* ~ * ~ *

The stone platform in the cave grew warm with the fire beneath us, and we grew closer. She held me like a lover, running her fingers through my hair and kissing my cheek and then my neck, her light lips seeking my own. In the firelight, I saw her slim body illuminated with a golden radiance - no longer the girl-child I'd carried on my shoulders through the city streets, but nearly a woman.

I closed my eyes... and then it was easy enough to swallow my objections and dumbly play the part, like the bards I'd seen in the taverns, acting as they were some other.

With my eyes averted from her face, I could move my hands across her as though I wished to possess her. Return her kisses as though I desired her. Unbutton and unhasp and press away in space, with only the heat of the fire a reminder of where I was.

She was warm beside me and the feel of her bare skin on mine was strangely comforting, like a blanket. A shiver ran through me. Deep in the corners of my mind, I felt a pull to lose myself in her embrace, to damn the world and all order that flowed from it.

But the moment I opened my eyes and saw her over me, her eyes darkening with her burgeoning emotions, I knew it was useless.

We lay together, naked, for a while, until the futility of it became too obvious to ignore.

And then her eyes grew moist, and she buried her face in my neck, her tears wetting my shoulder. She huddled into me, curling up like something lost or injured. I heard the ragged sobs as her body shivered and my eyes, too, brimmed over with warm trails down my cheeks.

I held her gently, and kissed the crown of her head, and patted her shoulder. I rocked her back and forth and hummed one of the hymns she would sing at the Temple. Anything to ease her shame and sorrow - any consolation a brother could give her.

But it was no use. No use at all.



_

[HuManBing]

Part Three: The First Malarchan Reclamation

Captain Cob of Forg

Over the following winter, several changes happened. Malarchus entrenched in Roshan and Palt. Trandamere chose a favored noble house, appointing Captain Taric as the General of the King's Army. And Sootri officially went into seclusion as part of her preparation training in the Temple.

By spring, Taric had cemented his political victory over the restive nobles, especially Captain Nanje, his former superior. He came to Forg to coordinate with Terrek, and to bring a field commander with him on his marches to oust Malarchus from the conquered towns.

Terrek opted to stay behind at Forg, recognizing that Malarchus might attack the town again, and that a skilled defensive strategist as himself would be needed. There were a few mutters at this, suggesting cowardice - but I knew Terrek was right. With only a handful of fighting men, he had held off a Malarchan onslaught in the last battle. He could do it again if needed.

The town council debated who to send, and in the end it came down to Lindo or myself. And Terrek gave his strong recommendation for me, which sealed the question.

We trained and prepared through spring, and once summer came, we hit the roads. I thought a little of the people I had left behind, but all the same I had few pangs for them. Marching once again in columns, a good horse beneath me and good men behind me, I knew once again I was doing what I had been born to do.

* ~ * ~ *

After a week and two days of marching, we arrived at Lothgren. There, Taric met with the Lothgren Castellan, a man named Andeython, and with the aid of an interpreter when the accent grew too thick, he divined the state of play.

Malarchus had taken to raiding many of the surrounding farmsteads to support his army's hunger. Apart from that, there were no signs of advancement from his camps in Palt and Roshan. The siege engines were safe behind the walls, and aside from the sentinels manning the city ramparts, there was no sign of activity within that our spies could deliver.

Andeython was a fairly decent man, all told. He knew his place: he was just an appointed civil leader, not a general. He spoke to Taric with a clear deference and made maps, surveys, and records freely available to us when we needed it. For his part, Taric was a gracious military guest and went out of his way to keep Andeython informed of his intended movements. The armies were quartered in tents outside the Lothgren walls, with plenty of campfires roasting meats and soups from the Lothgren farmlands. Taric noted this to me in a private moment.

"Remember this well, Cob," he said, brushing a wayward strand of hair from his receding pate. "The true measure of a populace's loyalty is how they treat others in bad times. You'll see this sort of hospitality rarely enough, so enjoy it while you may."

After a few more days of meetings and gathering information, Taric decided his main objective would be to secure the fertile Parshelian Valley - a mainstay of the crops in the Roshan province. It was hoped that by driving Malarchus from the grain and stock he needed, the men of the sable banner would starve quicker in their occupied cities. Perhaps this would force them to do something foolish, like chance a direct assault. Either way, it would be another several weeks or so before the King's full army would arrive in the provinces, and by that point it was hoped that we could complete an encirclement and starve them into submission.

* ~ * ~ *

I rode out with Taric and a detachment of riders to survey the lands in Parshelian. The direction of the river meant the valley cut towards a natural bottleneck as it stretched towards Malarchus' holdings. The farmsteads themselves were in flat terrain, well-fed with aqueducts, but the steeper walls of the valley were rocky and could hold a decent footman force of archers. Our spies reported that a detachment of Malarchus' army was here, scattered throughout the buildings as overseers for the captive farmers.

We made quick preparations and descended upon them with the advantage of blinding speed and a set of detailed maps. It helped that the Parshelian homes were large, rambling mansions, spaced sparsely over the valley's mottled fields.

At the first homestead, I split the Sons of Forg into two groups, and we took to the rustling dawn-pendant wheatfields in small groups, sighting through the stalks at the patrols with our bows. Our arrows were finely fletched, and the tips made of Carrustin's unyielding steel. The sheer force of the bowpull was enough to pierce mail and jerkin alike. Most men, transfixed by these strong yew-hewn shafts, dropped to the ground without even a cry, unable to draw breath from the lungs pierced through doubly.

These men we faced, though, were something else. Our first encounter should have been over in seconds - an arcing volley, met with screams and collapses. But these Malarchans were tough. Of the three we saw patrolling, we struck all of them with our first volley of arrows, taking one in the chest and the other two in the limbs. Most men would have dropped squealing - but not these.

Once the initial shock was over, and as we were advancing to them with swords out to silence them, the two still standing grabbed their colleague's arms and dragged him to a ditch in a hobbling gait. They vanished down alongside him, and one got a horn free and raised an alarm call.

Prasti swore beside my elbow, and raced up with his sword out, vaulting over the edge with Lotal a few paces behind.

A metallic clang rang out, and then sounds of combat. I drew level and skidded into the ditch too. In the torchlight, the two injured Malarchans had their swords out, and both lashed and cut and parried against my men. I saw past the cheek-guard of the helmet of one Malarchan - his teeth were bared and his eyes were beading in the flickering flamelight, unheeding of the bloody wooden shaft stuck in his off-hand arm. Spittle and curses flew from his mouth as he rained blow upon blow against Prasti.

And he wouldn't stop until Prasti hacked his arm short at the elbow and ran him through the stomach with his blade.

* ~ * ~ *

Methodically, we went from homestead to homestead, overwhelming every Malarchan we found and putting weapons in the hands of the farmers. Then we moved on. Our attack was well underway in the hours before dawn, and it was already midday when, pushed midway to the valley mouth, the Malarchans began to resist in organized groups. Our pace of attack slowed, but we could afford to commit far more men to each farmstead, and to attack several farmsteads at once.

As the Malarchans were pressed closer and closer to the narrows, their resistance became fiercer and fiercer. By the end of the first day, we had all but a mile's worth of homesteads under our control, and the logistics wagons were already delivering grain away to Lothgren for storage. Yet not a single Malarchan had surrendered - we had had to kill or immobilize every last man who fell to us.

Taking a break, we mapped out the final attacks. Taric and Andeython spoke about the need to cut off any reinforcements from the valley pass. Taric was undecided about pressing the attack in low visibility at night, although we might well be able to push the Malarchans back into the pass. Andeython pushed for us to be thorough and slow. He reasoned that the majority of the spies reports showed that the closest Malarchan fighting force was over two days' march away, and would never be able to regroup in time.

This opinion came down to me, and I met with Taric in private. He was not a big man, and sometimes he brought along a specially sized chair to camp so that he would appear slightly more imposing to his men. He sat in it now and we shared some mulled wine in his tent.

"Captain Cob of Forg," he said. "What is your counsel?"

I put down my wine tankard.

"We should press on with the attack through evening," I said. "We cannot afford any respite to the enemy. Their men have been well trained and will not rout. They will not surrender. In order to defeat them, we cannot rely on a test of will. Only the test of strength will defeat them."

Taric nodded and looked down at his drink.

"Andeython is concerned for the wellbeing of the civilian farmers," he said. "And not without reason. There is a history between Lothgren and Roshan, and not an entirely pleasant one, it seems. Any accidental casualties at the hands of allied armies will not be easy to explain."

I studied Taric. You would not have thought of him as being a good general. He was balding and short, though very muscular. His speaking voice was bland and he had a tendency to reduce everything to facts. But there was no denying he was a straight talker. Perhaps the men under his command appreciated that. Every so often he would say something to the effect of "I'm a strategist, not a songwriter."

"A night raid means we could blame it on Malarchus as well," I said. "Let's liberate them first and then fight over public opinion later."

Taric smiled.

"I do like the idea of pushing all the way to the pass. Malarchus would never feed enough men through there to control this valley again."

He stood up and drained his tankard.

"It is done. Prepare the men. We will advance with torches to see, and blades to whet."

* ~ * ~ *

A few of the farmhands had made it back - the best we could do for scouts and spies - and they reported on the location of the enemy leaders. I brought Lotal, Prasti, Lindo, Lellik-jir, and Gela-jir on horseback to the farm and cut down the gate guards at full tilt, severing necks through the plating as we passed by. We rode through the courtyard and tossed flaming brands on the stable and then the central farmhouse. The men came out and we put them all to the sword. We caught one who had been trapped by a fallen spar, and I dismounted and came to him.

I untied the bundle and out toppled the heads of the high-ranking Malarchans we'd killed. I arranged them before him so he could see their faces.

"Which one is your commander?" I asked.

He spat at me. I repeated my question with my blade beneath his chin, but he ignored me. He seemed to be praying.

With the edge of my gauntleted fist, I broke both his collarbones on each side of his neck. Then I took off my gauntlet and flexed the broken ends against each other, back and forth with careful precision. He started screaming and a foul smell filled the air.

I stopped and held him up by the hair.

"Which one?" I asked. He pointed at one. "What is his name?" I demanded.

"Feristalen," he gasped.

I let him fall back to the ground and put my sword to his eye. He closed his eye but I tapped his side with my boot.

"Look at me," I said. He shivered and looked up at me, and I thrust the blade home.

Everything he knew, each command he had ever followed or shirked, every memory lost or found, flowed out of him via his bloody socket as the burning world melted into blackness.

It took only a moment's work with a shovel to stave off his head and add it to my collection. I wiped my sword and packed up the heads again to take back to Taric.

* ~ * ~ *

By morning, most of the farms were free, and we had won through the center to the valley pass. Several farms still lay out of our control, but the enemy soldiers there were doomed, and they knew it. With a hostile army ahead of them and the pass behind them sealed, they had nothing left but to cause as much damage as possible. Some of the farms were razed and salted by the time we got to them.

And each time, the soldiers put up a terrible fight, even though they must have known it was hopeless.

"Those Malarchan soldiers are tough bastards," Lotal said to me. "I want one, now."

Prasti whistled in assent. "Must be something they feed them," he sad. "Makes 'em foolish to the point they can't see defeat."

"Whatever it is, Malarchus did it good," rumbled Lellik-jir. Then he dumped the corpse on the stake.

It was an idea I'd had, to stake the dead bodies as a warning to the Malarchans. Not only did it show them they weren't invincible, it also demonstrated the ignoble reality of falling in battle to us. It's hard to sing a song of valor when the relevant corpse is hanging from a stake shoved up its back tunnel.

General Taric had been doubtful at first.

"This is going to make them surrender?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "When they see us mistreating their dead, maybe it'll remind them that we do offer surrender terms for the living."

Taric had pondered this and said nothing more. "I won't be giving this order to my men. But do what you please... in the limits of your own column, of course."

He meant the Sons of Forg. We took that order to heart, and by the end of the second day, there was a row of staked Malarchans lining the pass as a taunting reminder that the Thenolites could also be ruthless too.



_

[HuManBing]

The Shambling Ranks at Parshelian

We did not expect a counterattack, as it would have been suicidal and idiotic both. But one came anyway. One morning we woke to the sound of battle as a steady stream of soldiers poured methodically through the valley pass and into the farmland.

Our soldiers at the pass held them off for a while, but it became clear that these ones were doggedly determined, even putting to shame the others we'd seen thus far. They barely glanced at the staked comrades, and merely marched on in their unstoppable ranks.

My scouts reported that they were wearing the colors of Roshan and Palt, which threw us into confusion. I galloped to the front line and saw for myself. Faintly distracted, I bound a kerchief around my nose and peered closer.

"They're not even charging," I said admiringly. "They're just walking into the arrows."

Indeed they were. I watched as a Palt soldier, marching resolutely onwards, took a shaft in his forearm and continued towards us in line with his fellows.

"What in Hiteh's name is going on?" Lotal demanded wonderingly. "How did he get Palt and Roshan soldiers to defect in such numbers? And how did he make them hard as nails?"

Taric brought his spyglass and peered through it, his nose wrinkling in the wind.

"Something's not right," he muttered.

At that point the aide-de-camp came up. The men were in formation, he said. It was time to push them back to the pass in a concerted charge.

Taric remained silent a moment longer. "Something's just... not right," he said. Then, he folded up his glass and turned to me.

"You go in first. Tell me what in Hiteh's name Malarchus is playing at."

We saddled up and rode out, towards the enemy flank, half a mile distant.

* ~ * ~ *

The stench only increased, palpable now in the air as a heavy sickly sweetness in the back of the throat.

Lotal was the first to say it for what it was.

"Oh, hells," he said in a low, sick voice. "They've brought the impossible."

The soldiers, up close, were not quite the impeccable ranks we'd assumed at a distance. They shambled and lurched. The tabards of Palt and Roshan were far from spotless - indeed, many had huge gaping holes where a fatal blow had landed. Many of those exposed a naked wound in the pallid flesh underneath, though the victim appeared not to have noticed. Broken ribs, torn leaking flesh - some even marched with entrails hanging from their armor.

And all the while, the same methodical plod of the boots. The same unrelenting bob of the spear, as they marched onwards.

"They're... they're..." Gela-jir stammered. He turned away and it looked like he might heave.

The horses whinnied beneath us and stamped, the stench unhinging them.

"Fall back," I said, trying to keep my rising gorge from my voice. "We'll meet back with Taric."

* ~ * ~ *

Taric did not believe our reports and sent men of his own to investigate. Back at the tent, Prasti bathed his face in water and Lellik-jir breathed deep of orange peel to get the stench out of his lungs.

Taric's horsemen came back, pale. They corroborated our findings.

"We can't let them through. Call the men to bind their faces and prepare an arrow volley," he said.

I told him that would be useless, but he insisted on trying.

By this time they were uncomfortably close. The archers filed in, knelt, and sent out five quick volleys.

Most of the enemy ranks did not even bother to raise shields to their heads. They kept marching on, unmindful of the shafts that rained down upon them.

I looked to the soldiers at my side. They were clearly rattled. An archer leant heavily on his bow, eyes facing the earth, his mouth open as he tried not to retch.

"General Taric, can you order another salvo?" I asked. I got his spyglass from his tent.

He nodded grimly. "We have plenty of arrows, whatever good it'll do," he said.

I watched through the spyglass as the first wave of arrows fell, then the second, then the rest. I pondered this. Some shields did come up, and it was the same ones each time.

I folded the spyglass and returned it to Taric.

"Sons of Forg," I called. My men came to my side. "Saddle up. I want a closer look."

* ~ * ~ *

Malarchus had clearly trumped us in the ruthlessness scales, and I had only minutes to go before the faltering spirit of our men turned into a fullscale rout. But I wanted to see whether the obvious advantages of his rotten host came with any disadvantages.

We galloped hard and fast to the corner of the shambling army, and then cut quickly across their front as fast as we could, to dodge any arrows. None came. The glassy-eyed soldiers merely plodded on, although a smaller host broke off and stumbled after us for a ways, waving their spears, before returning.

I scanned the enemy army. Then nodded, and we charged as one.

We cut through much of the first rank as we charged across them, staying as best we could away from the spears. I took off a few heads here and there, and maybe an arm or two, with the rest of my swings meeting armor. This time, some enemy sling stones and arrows came from the ranks further in, but they went wide.

"Lotal, stay with me," I said. Then I yelled "Keep it up!" to the rest of my men, who circled and came back with their spears and swords, to mow down yet more walking corpses. Meanwhile, Lotal and I readied shortbows, and rode further in along the side.

A few toddling men broke away and came after me, and I guided my horse with my knees as I sighted down the shaft and released.

The arrow flew straight and true, and hit a certain man marching in the third row right on the breastplate. His head turned towards me in a most lively manner and he scowled and raised his shield.

"Lotal, that one," I said, and we broke apart, targeting the one man from two sides. I set up a steady rain of arrows against his shielded flank, and he must have been sorely distracted, because Lotal galloped back to the front row, and sank an arrow into his neck.

Almost at once, the front right quarter of the enemy line collapsed into chaos. Some of the dead soldiers continued marching. Others stopped. Not a few milled around aimlessly, getting caught and muddled in their peers further back.

"To the sides!" I shouted, and my men followed, parting to either side of the undead army. I plucked the blue sash from my side and waved it at the top of my spear - the sign to Taric to start the volleys.

Then I braced behind my shield as my men did the same.

The volley of arrows from our allies back in Taric's army thudded into the corpses, with little effect but to slow them a little. But from where we were, we saw several live men take a few hits, and stagger. They raised their shields to ward off the second volley, and it was this that allowed me and Lotal to ride around to their flanks and snipe at them.

As more living controllers fell, more of the dead became aimless.

After the final volley, we saw the living men begin a scramble back through the ranks of their rotten allies, heading back towards the pass. Lotal rode up.

"We should go after them," he said.

I thought about this. There was still a sizeable contingent of the dead ones, shuffling inexorably towards our soldiers. And even though we had shattered the aura of invincibility, we still had troops unused to dealing with these monstrous enemies.

"Let's mop up," I said. "There's a good dry wheatfield that'll do."

We lured the dead into a field of dessicated wheat husks, and then torched it. The smell of burning rotted flesh kept our men at a distance.

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

The Liberation of Palt

Taric clapped me on the shoulder.

"Well, Captain Cob of Forg, it seems you have a new command to your name," he said. "I've got orders from on high to grant you the honor of working with the Palt Castellan to regain his city."

It was late in the morning, and I was just back from a reconnaissance ride. I had not even washed the dust from my face.

"Castellan Berdavestis will meet you at the resistance camp in the Lantros Heights," Taric said. "You're going to lead an army to liberate Palt." He looked down at his map. "...or what's left of it, at any rate."

I saluted.

"And what will you do?" I asked.

He pointed to the windrise corner of the map.

"I'm going to meet up with the main force of Aurim's army, and we'll take on Roshan." He circled a forefinger around the triangle of the three provinces. "It's time to force Malarchus off of our good earth!"

* ~ * ~ *

Berdavestis was a tall but reedy man, with a boyish face and a build that seemed better suited for oration in the forum than for battle. Later I learned that he spent upwards of an hour each day shaving his face smooth, and having a retainer do the same to the hairs on his back and arms.

When he spoke, there was a haughty pettishness in his nasal whine that I did not care for.

"They say they have sent me a mighty warrior," he said, his accent making the words shrill and quick even in his mouth. "They did not mention that he was a boy."

"I liberated Parshelian Ridge. They sent me to liberate a city," I countered, with more warmth than I should have. "They said nothing about the Castellan."

Lotal came up between us.

"The siege engines are coming by road and will be here this evening," he said. "The supply wagons will need your command by nightfall if they are to leave tomorrow."

I left the tent, weary already of the politics. I gathered my men to me and rode out to Palt to see the lay of the land for myself.

* ~ * ~ *

Palt's outer wall was badly damaged in Malarchus' initial attack, his siege engines pummelling the setwards gate into rubble. But Malarchus had not rebuilt the gate - out of a lack of manpower or possibly just a lack of interest. Silent sentinels glided across the remaining battlements, and some perched precariously on the fallen wall portions with a mindless disregard for their own safety. I strained my eyes and saw that not a few of them had holes in their armor. That was proof enough for me.

I put down the spyglass and circled back to my men.

"No idea how many men there are inside," I said. "But they look like more of the same abominations we fought at Parshelian."

Lellik-jir whistled, a low mournful tone.

"How many of those rotten soldiers does he have?" he asked in exasperation.

"Maybe Berdavestis has numbers for us," Lotal mused. "If they're all wearing Palt's colors, they can't possibly exceed the number of men he lost in the battle."

We looked at Lotal with a strange sense of respect.

"What?" he said, defensively.

"Nothing," I said. "That was a good idea, is all."

Lotal beamed.

"It was the turpentine that did it. A cupful a day polishes the mind and settles the gut," he said proudly.

The moment of regard suddenly came to an abrupt end, as we rode back to Berdavestis' tent, shaking our heads in disbelief.

* ~ * ~ *

"No walls?" he said. "Are you serious?"

We nodded. "He's fielding your own dead men," I said, without preamble. "We need to know how many men you lost."

Berdavestis sniffed. "We lost very few," he said. "The tactical retreat from Palt was orderly and carried out to the very letter of my command, and casualties were minimal."

I sighed. "Do you have any name lists?" I said. "We really need to know this information."

"That is a matter of Palt's policy. I do not share this lightly."

"Fine," I said. "If we assume you managed to keep casualties down to, say, just a score of stragglers, then we have nothing to fear."

I called to Lotal.

"How much is the current strength of the Palt guard?"

He consulted the papers. "Tenscore," he said.

"Well, I see no reason why two hundred Palt men can't lead the charge into Palt. It would be fitting for them to liberate their own city. And the Castellan here has assured me he lost no men, so the dead guards at Malarchus' command wearing Palt colors must be a figment of my imagination. No harm will come from them."

Berdavestis stopped me.

"Wait here," he said tightly.

He came back with some papers in a chest and dumped it at my feet.

"Put them back in my tent when you're done," he said through gritted teeth.

We wheeled the chest into my tent, and I called for Poltren, the loyal servant of Terrek. Rare among army men, he could read, and I'd specifically requested his presence as we left Forg.

He came and pored over the lists, comparing the current resistance camp salary lists against the original.

At length, he came up with a number. It was not a small number. "This is actual salaried soldiers on the Lord's pay."

I grunted. That was a lot of men. "Are we sure they're all actually dead? Could some of them have escaped and gone to ground?"

"Very possibly," Poltren said. "Whenever there's a major materiel loss in a campaign, personnel confidence takes a blow. Like as not, a good number of these men just deserted and went back to the homestead."

"So... realistically speaking, how many would you say died in the town itself?" I asked.

"Fifty-fifty is usually a good number," he said. "But if you want to be careful, best to assume every missing man actually died inside. And is now serving Malarchus."

I whistled.

"Well, we do have one advantage," I said. "These rotten things are no good without their commanding officer. Take him out, and you have a milling group of stiffs."

We did not attack that night, or the day after. I decided that reconnaissance was more important than speed.

* ~ * ~ *

Our spies made their way back to Palt and tried to mingle with the populace. This venture ended after it became clear what Malarchus was doing: he was raising not just the Palt dead to be his rotting servants, but he was actively rounding up nonessential Palt citizens and working them to death crafting arms and armor. Then he raised the corpses again.

It took us a while, but we found out that Malarchus had priests of that forbidden sect - the Cult of Hiteh - in attendance, working shifts to complete the raisings. After two weeks, we made the vital connection: the priests were the commanders of the recalled dead, and they had a limit on their influence. Our spy had personally seen, at considerable danger to herself, a rotational shift where priests would leave raised individuals lined up in corners while they focussed their attention elsewhere.

This suggested that a quick enough action could remove the priest and leave the rest of the dead as inanimate corpses, or even as aimless allies or cover on a battlefield.

Most importantly, our spies confirmed that every single priest was still living. Which meant we could starve them out of their cities.

* ~ * ~ *

We had gotten the siege engines in place and completely encircled the city, when the rotting host began streaming out of the city in two major armies.

"What is this madness?" Berdavestis exclaimed. "They have the upper hand."

I looked through the spyglass. "It could be anything," I said. "Maybe they have too many dead ones to command effectively and they want to bleed off the excess." I put down the glass and readied my sword. "Or it could be that the restless dead make for better chargers than they do sentinels."

We had prepared large faggots of dry hay and kindling, as high in the middle as a man is tall, and held on spools of strong steel chains for just this purpose. Our fight at Parshelian Ridge had demonstrated the effectiveness of fire against them. As they came to us, we fanned out, horsemen in pairs leading the strings of oil-soaked haybales between them. As they drew near, we torched the bales and roped them into the foremost marching lines of shambling figures like a blazing lariat.

Their formations collapsed quickly, and we were left with pockets of furious determined resistance. Some of these were pockets where the dead had suddenly escaped the control or attention of their harried master priests. Others were the elite formations of living Malarchan soldiers, fighting with the characteristic grim fatalism their race showed.

Although we drove them to the city's crumbled walls and scattered them among the farms and villages, they made us pay dearly for each acre of land. Near the end, I led the Sons of Forg on the tedious mopping up sweeps to eradicate the holdouts.

The enemy, still adaptable despite their beating, set several wickedly devious traps for us. Wounded enemy soldiers took to treetops or attics of farmsteads, where they could take down several of our men with arrows before they finally perished for their lord. Some armed themselves with knives and blades and threw themselves down onto our soldiers as they entered buildings.

But the worst such trap was not a Malarchan soldier, but a cursed Malarchan priest. We had cleared out a rural hamlet and stopped for a while at a field piled high with corpses. The place had once been a civilian cemetery, and we thought it apt to torch the fallen heaps of twice-dead Malarchan soldiers there. Gela-jir had gone to a rank bloated pile, when suddenly the mound erupted into a burst of grasping hands, flailing fists, and the unearthly moans of the unnatural foe. By the time we turned to look, Gela-jir was already yanked off his feet. Lotal, the closest, grabbed Gela-jir's legs to try to pull him free of the mass, but by then it was already too late. We barely rescued Lotal, his cheeks and neck scalloped with putrid festering bites and gashes from the unholy host.

Lellik-jir was the one who found the priest, lying in wait among the heaps of the bodies, fingering his cursed Hiteh's amulet, both his legs broken in some earlier fall. We smashed his head in with a rock, and the rotting corpses around us subsided once again, like some loathsome human wave of putrescence.

We took especial pleasure in staking his dead corpse, knees all bent wrongwise in the wind.

* ~ * ~ *

After that assault, our men were terribly shaken even despite our victory. Not a few had seen their own brothers and comrades in arms, lined up against them with vacant eyes.

As for me, I waited on the reports of my spies before committing forces to the final offensive that I knew must come.

Inside the city, there were apparently very few of the undead left. The priests were also largely irrelevant too. All that remained were Malarchus' actual live soldiers, and though they might not be as suicidally brave as his dead ones, they were far more cunning, and would use the close quarters of the city to their best advantage.

Fortunately, this news meant that our men would likely not face the problem of fighting their own former allies anymore. They would get to meet the Malarchan soldiers and express their true feelings face to face.

We decided that the advantage of numbers and equipment was on our side, and the time was right to launch an all-out assault on Palt itself.

* ~ * ~ *

For three days, we loaded and shot off boulders from our siege engines, one every twenty heartbeats, each loosing in rota. We watched as the remaining few walls of Palt cracked, and then crumbled. We continued pummelling the main gates and barbican, and - even over the lamenting objections of the Castellan - the palace itself.

"We can rebuild the buildings," I said. "But we can't bring back lost soldiers. And the more shelter you give the Malarchans when you go in, the more men you'll lose."

Once, they set up a charge against us, and we braced with archers giving way to cavalry. From the saddle, I led the Sons of Forg in great scything runs through their formations, rightly knowing that our horseback advantage would evaporate the moment they won through to our footmen. As it was, only a tight core of their men made it through to our ranks, but they fought like demons and they took an alarming number of men down with them.

"That's the thing," Lotal said admiringly. "Even if you know it's a fight you'd win... you'd still rather avoid it. Because you know it'll cost you dear."

Fortunately, that appeared to exhaust the Malarchans and on the fourth day we marched into the city's ruined streets and tumbled buildings. Malarchus' men had secreted themselves in tunnels and fallen rubble, and they sniped at us at every turn, and every twist.

Some lone operators even caused masonry collapses as we stormed their building hideouts, knowing that they would take out more of our men as they brought the roof down on their heads. All in all, it took a further two days' fighting and just over a thousand casualties more to finally raise the Palt flag in the central square. Of the Malarchan body count in the city, we made it to be between four and five hundred.

But we did not find Count Malarchus himself, nor his elite guard.

I sent word to Taric.

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

Cold Gratitude, The Road to Roshan

I had returned to my tent when Berdavestis arrived with a military police contingent.

"Arrest this man," he said.

A dozen men surrounded me, all wearing Palt colors.

"This is in poor taste, if it is a jest," I said.

Berdavestis shook his head and the men took me out to a stone walled jail. He took the badge of Captain from my breast and then slapped me across the face.

Within a few hours, they had thrown Lotal, Lellik-jir, and Prasti in with me too.

Lindo they held for questioning.

We passed a night of fruitlessly asking the guards for more information. In the morning they convened a court martial and tried us for crimes against the farmers in Parshelian Ridge, crimes against the civilians of Palt, and wanton destruction of the King's property in the protracted bombardment of Palt.

Against me specifically, they levelled accusations of dereliction of duty and desertion, based on the missions that the Sons of Forg under my command had undertaken away from the main body of the army.

Things could have gone very poorly for me had Taric not sent word back. The military action in Roshan was faltering, and he needed reinforcement from Palt. By some stroke of luck, he asked for me personally.

The orders of the General of the King's Army overrode the politicking of a petty Castellan, and I was freed, though not without some reluctance.

Stripped of any recognition or rank for my services to ungrateful Palt, I was sent back with my riders, the Sons of Forg, and nothing else.

Berdavestis saw me off.

"If I ever catch you in Palt again, it'll be your most foolish act," he said.

"If you ever catch me in Palt, it'll be the last thing you do," I replied.

Lotal tugged my arm and we rode off, a band of ragged survivors from a battle nobody wanted to remember.

* ~ * ~ *

We did recover Gela-jir's body. Fearful that Palt's men might desecrate him if we buried him in their land, we carried him in a sheet for two days' travel until we were sure we'd left Palt province.

We found a lonely willow at a crossroads, and we buried him there, along with his armor and weapons off Carrustin's forge.

Standing by the mound of turned earth, I recalled him as a boy, playing with Prent and me in the green yards of Forg.

"I don't fancy telling Prent about this," I said. "They were only cousins, but they were good friends."

Prasti spoke up, his voice only faintly acerbic. "Don't worry about Prent. He's a Templar and he knows where we're all headed. He'll just say Gela-jir left early to avoid the rush."

* ~ * ~ *

We rode onwards to Roshan's outer thorpes and saw the desolation early. Farms, springs, and riversides lay smouldering and befouled. Bloated herds lay, legs stiff in the air, or dotted the landscape in pools of dried blood.

Malarchus must have decided to torch the countryside and croplands, knowing that his army of dead would lose less than our living liberators.

If he thought that cowed our resolve, he thought wrong. Roshan, Palt, and Lothgren soldiers all marched on, their hearts hardened against him.

We converged upon Roshan, and Taric came to meet us. He was thinner than when we last saw him - it appeared that rations were cut now that the foraging teams came back emptyhanded.

I met with him in his tent and told him what had happened at Palt, and of the treachery of Palt's cowardly castellan. He listened and then waved it away.

"These are all past misgivings," he said. "We need to move on from them. We need to smoke Malarchus out from Roshan."

"That is easily done," I said. "Bring up the engines and we will level the place brick from brick."

Taric shook his head. "Right now the best men I have are the Roshan dispossessed. They're willing to fight to the death to liberate their homes and city. Remove the city, and what do they have left to fight for?"

"We will starve them out," he said. "Malarchus and his leaders will eventually need to eat. Though it may take us months - years even - we'll lay siege and take them out through hunger."

I saluted and marched out.

* ~ * ~ *

The siege deepened as our reinforcements made their way to the city. More generals caught up with Taric, and even Nanje, his old rival, came to greet him in the military fashion, clasping their hands over a banner.

Summer changed to fall, and although we had occasional skirmishes with shambling hordes from Malarchus' ranks, we had little to do in general. A shipment of furs came to us at one of the festivals, to better prepare us for winter. A few merchants came to sell us snacks and trinkets, and this grew into a regular thing, then swelled into a trade fair.

Some painted women sidled in too, going from tent to tent for coins. A few times, Prasti found a way to make them come by our tent for free. The other men would laugh raucously and set about them with gusto. During these times I would take my blades and polearms outside and drill with them. Once I went to Taric's tent and talked strategy with him over a game of chess.

Finally, fall settled into a brisk, chill wind - steady and unchanging from the Wastes. We huddled in our tents, and it became impossible to avoid the idiosyncracies of my men.

"This wind is damnably cold," Lindo muttered.

"It comes from Grilom across the Wastes," Lotal said. "Where all the ice is."

Lellik-jir slapped a flea on his arm. "No wonder them Malarchans are such tough little arseholes," he said. "They live with it all the time."

Outside, Prasti was roasting chestnuts over a fire to bring back in a helmet.

A young scout, Kash, piped up. "I wonder if they get homesick," he said. He sounded not a little homesick, himself.

Lotal snorted at this. "Oh, aye!" he said sarcastically. "Pining for the fjords."

Prasti dropped the helmet outside amidst a flurry of growing excitement. I called outside.

"I hope you haven't finished them all already," I said. "We want some too."

Prasti came back, tying his helmet chinstrap hurriedly.

"Captain Cob!" he said. "The Malarchans have quit Roshan and have engaged Nanje's force!"

We scrambled to get into our armor and mount up for battle.

* ~ * ~ *

What happened, as we learned later, was this.

As the living began to die, Malarchus added to his undead army. Once the food was exhausted, he killed off every last Roshan captive and raised them as soldiers.

Then at dusk, he ordered his men to start fires in Roshan, to burn the city to the ground. Then, under cover of night, he had opened the setwards gate. He sent groups of shambling undead out in disconnected scrims to confuse the observers.

Behind the screen of expanding shamblers, Malarchus' true army of living desperate soldiers marched, in more or less a straight line towards distant Grilom. When they hit Nanje's forces, the latter was so confused by reports of the milling undead army that Malarchus' men cut through them easily and were gone to the night before reinforcements from Taric and the other generals could muster.

Nanje counted a few hundred casualties - far less than the bloodbath one would have expected of a man of Malarchus' resolve.

This could only mean one thing: The bastard was trying to escape.



_

[HuManBing]

Malarchus' Endgame: The Rokelbie Incident

There was a river too wide for cavalry and siege to cross, and dangerous for a human swimmer. It arced around the setwards farms, and enveloped Roshan's outer city limits like a protective arm. Of the five bridges that served it, Taric already controlled one, and Castellan Berdavestis of Palt controlled another. Two more were fallen.

I led the Sons of Forg to the final one with all possible haste and found, to our relief, that only a small Malarchan rearguard controlled it.

We came upon them like wolves and within hours we had caught every last soldier. We put them on stakes and then waited for our footmen to catch up. Before they did, a band of Malarchus' horsemen came to the bridge, but saw our banner over it.

They circled and baited, and it was evening before the arrival of our relief force drove them off.

And at that point, Malarchus had nowhere to run to. With the river behind him and half a dozen armies converging on his position, it was only a matter of time.

* ~ * ~ *

We studied the survey map, yellow with age, and looked back up at Breshgard - the Castellan of Roshan.

"Do you have men who know the way there?" I asked. "They will probably have guards."

We were talking about a cluster of springs in the Farhaven Forest - a dense swathe of trees and vegetation nestled in the crook of the river. A single line illustrated the ordinance map's road leading to the vinyard houses.

"Rokelbie had several estates in Farhaven," Breshgard said. "But if Malarchus is in here, we think the vinyard would be it. He came out with horses, and that's where the Rokelbie stables would be."

I looked at the map.

"They'll be guarding the road," I said. "We'll have to go in another way. Find me somebody who knows the forest intimately, and you've got yourself a scouting party."

* ~ * ~ *

The man they found, Rhemos, was actually a convicted poacher who had been sentenced, years before, to the gallows. Malarchus' arrival interrupted his death sentence and might well have given him something akin to loyalty to the man. That is, if the war hadn't claimed his family too.

Now he was happy to help anybody who could avenge him on Malarchus.

We moved through the forest, wearing white-and-brown splotched clothes that Rhemos had gotten for us specially. Though these made us look ridiculous in the fields outside, like some mongrel militia too poor to dye their clothes properly, they were essential in the winter woods. As we found to our own chagrin, we sometimes had trouble seeing each other.

The Malarchans, by contrast, stood out. They still wore their armor and carried their swords, going up and down the road and fanning out in tactical points in the woods. We dodged them easily, letting patience guide us out whenever things got a bit too heavy for our liking.

I must admit, though, lying still with your face down in the brambles while a Malarchan relieved his bladder not twenty paces away went against every instinct I held, in my hotheaded battle-lust.

* ~ * ~ *

It was a full day before we came to the outer buildings of the Rokelbie manse. There were some guards dotted around, but it seemed the Malarchan top command had settled in here. There was the smell of horse dung about the grounds, and small campfires here and there.

Up on the hill, past the vineyard slopes gone to weed, was the main house, where - by all accounts - we would find the elusive leader of the sable banner.

Quietly, we made our way up the denuded hillside, resting at intervals among the frigid undergrowth. The day grew late, and then the night crowded in all at once, as it tends to do in the forest.

Birds called as they hunted, and I was suddenly reminded of Gela-jir, who did near-perfect warbles and shrieks of songbird and raptor alike. It added fuel to my conviction that Malarchus would not live out the night.

Through the spyglass, I saw soldiers marching in threes around the perimeter, and came upon two groups - six in total. If anything happened to any soldier, they would raise an alarm. If anything happened to all three, the other group would came across them quickly enough and again raise an alarm.

We took up positions along the clustered treeboles and brought out our bows in a lull, stringing them expertly. When the first patrol came around, we steadied and aimed and then let loose in unison. Almost before the first volley had hit, I had nocked a second into my bow and pulled that back. A heartbeat later, it too had flown onwards.

By the third volley, our arrows were striking the earth with wet, flat thups. Quickly we scrambled forward and brought the corpses into the ditch, hiding them among branches and brambles. Then we moved on, hunting the second group.

* ~ * ~ *

It was all over within five minutes. We took out the unsuspecting second group, their bodies slumping almost as if falling asleep. We left their corpses in a ditch out of the torchlight, and then scaled the wall to the second story portico.

Lotal came up with the stoppered pots, and we fanned out into the interior, bows and shortswords ready now.

I made my way past an officer, putting an arrow into his chest as he rose out of his bed, and then cutting his throat for good measure. The ceiling here rose, to a wall. This suggested rafters.

Outside, there was a corridor that led in a large open square around the upper bedrooms. Open in the middle was a clear dining pit, where several men gathered, talking over a map. I crept closer and made out the distinctive barbed, dark plated proof of the Sable Lord, Count Malarchus.

The armor lay over a grand chair, and off to the side of the room. Looking around, I saw the owner - a tall man, spare of body but with a muscular tautness that suggested he had not a single wasted fiber in his body. He had close cropped greying hair at the back and sides of his head, but was bald in the middle. His face seemed blunt and almost placid - nothing like the evil demon that his deeds showed him to be. His complexion, like all Malarchans, was darker than most Aurimites, and it made for an interesting contrast when his breath plumed in the chilly winter air inside the vinyard mansion.

They spoke, mapping out crossing points and defense lines in the forest. After a few moment's watching them it became clear - even despite their strange tongue - that they were discussing reinforcement columns making their way to our position from Grilom. I watched as long as I dared, then snuck back to the rooms. From what it seemed, Malarchus' reinforcements were a few days away, on the other side of the river.

So: Malarchus was waiting for reinforcements. It seemed time was against our army. Then again, time was against me, too. It would not take long before people found the guards we'd killed. I had to act before then.

There was a strange, repetitive noise, as faint and intrusive as a poorly handled fan, that flickered against my consciousness as I made my way up a torch bracket and onto the rafters. I made my way to it, climbing up along the partition wall.

I recognized the sound before I even saw it, but I had to look just to make sure. Ignoring the muffled cries of distress and the animal gruntings, I peered over a wall and saw, in what must have been the ladies' chambers, a pair of officers getting to work on a female captive. Her wrists were tied to the bedframe and one man held her ankles apart while his colleague exploited her discomfiture.

I crept closer and saw they were not alone. A naked man, bound hand and feet and gagged, lay on the floor, unable to turn his head away from the spectacle. The bound man seemed Aurimite.

It was remarkably easy to put an arrow into the neck of an unarmored enemy. Even moreso to shoot a man just disengaging from a rape victim.

They fell to the ground, bleeding ichor, and I dropped to the ground. The woman was tied to the bed, a gag in her mouth too. Although she regarded me with relief, I avoided her gaze as I slit both men's throats and ascended back into the rafters.

Our plan didn't call for any survivors - of either side.

I put down a pot and unstoppered it on the rafters at a strategic location.

* ~ * ~ *

I had done all but one of the pots when somebody noticed me. It was a Hiteh priest, dressed in his ridiculous orange robes and skullcap.

He raised the alarm, and the lords at the table looked up at me as I abandoned all subtlety and threw the pot into their midst.

The clay shattered as it hit the table, and in the spray of oil, the candles ignited a sheet of flame. The men scattered, maddened, and went scrambling and shouting a call to arms.

Lotal had done all his and started running back on the rafters, kicking his pots over as he passed. The falling spillage caught the torches and brought cascades of flame up to the ceiling.

A few men came out, some in armor, some without, and tried to stop us. One even got a bow strung and an arrow nocked, before I put a shaft in his elbow and the second into his eyesocket.

Then it was every man for himself as we cut our way out of the rising heat of the building and out to the courtyard again.

* ~ * ~ *

Some guards came up the hill and we picked them off and pinned them down among the winegroves. Lotal and I remained near the gates as they sparked, then caught, and then burned. We shot the first man to come running out, putting an arrow in his leg and then dragging him to us. A few more came out, and we killed them outright. One more man came out after them, but it was hardly worth shooting him - he was a walking mass of flames, crumpling in a screaming mess at our feet.

The rest of the camp got into some semblance of order, and began their approach to the manse. But by that time we had gotten all the answers we needed from our captive, and I had slit his throat, before we melted back into the trees.

We made back towards the Roshan camp, more or less. The Malarchans sent a horseman out to summon back their footmen to the manse, but they then countermanded that order as Taric led his men on a march through the forest and engaged the Malarchans.

Caught between contradictory orders, not even their superior training could save them. The Malarchans turned back to face our oncoming hordes of Roshan and allied soldiers. Moving from tree to tree, they fought fiercely and ground through many of our men. But more than a few key commanders tumbled forwards at their lines, felled by mysterious sniper's arrows that flitted out from the darkness and in through their armor.

By morning, we had won through to the smouldering ruins of the Rokelbie manse, and our army took only two more days to drive Malarchus' remnants back to the river. In a last stand battle that I did not get to personally witness, the Malarchans were annihilated to a man as our enraged host drove them into the waters run red with blood.



_

[HuManBing]

Aftermath

Taric came back from the front lines a hero, rightly feted by his men and well-liked by both Castellans. For a time, we Sons of Forg also enjoyed a lesser celebrity among the soldiers. But after the first two days, I sensed all was not well, and took to sleeping with my side-arm, a specially made shortsword sharp only on one edge, drawn by my hand under the covers.

My vigilance paid off. On the third night, they came to arrest me and my men, as a continuation of the charges they levelled against us at Palt. Only this time, two things were different: one, Taric was suddenly silent, refusing to speak on my behalf, and second, we were armed and refused to go quietly.

On the whole, we managed to avoid killing anybody. But I know I skinned a guard's forearm with my sword in disarming him, and in the frenzied group melee that ended only when I collapsed my tentpole, I may have taken off a few fingers or cut a few shinbones.

Then it was cutting ourselves out and then pelting off to our horses and galloping under cover of night back to Forg, sudden outlaws after two days' celebration.

* ~ * ~ *

"Son. Of. A. Bitch," Lellik-jir said, for the umpteenth time. "I'd like to twist their lily necks in my hands."

Lotal shushed him. Meanwhile, Prasti shook his head in disbelief.

"Why did they accuse us? What in Hiteh's name did we ever do to them?" he kept asking.

"We succeeded where they failed, and that scares them," Lindo said. "You saw how the civilian leaders hate us. For delivering their people when they cannot. And how bad that makes them look to the men who pay their onerous taxes."

I sighed. "It's not just the Castellans either. Even General Taric wants us out of the way."

"Yeah, what's with that?" Lellik-jir demanded. "He of all people was supposed to be a good guy."

I turned away from the deepening sunset. We had made a small fire in a recess among the rocky ground in these badlands. Hopefully it wouldn't draw any attention or attract any pursuers.

"Let me tell you about the politics of our sweep at Parshelian Ridge," I said - and I did. Everything from the concerns of fighting at night and the likelihood of cutting down hapless Roshan farmers. "Taric profited handsomely from having me suggest that course of action. Now that the act proves unpopular, he's let me take the blame."

"But he's just as culpable as you, Cob," insisted Lindo. "He's guilty by omission."

I shook my head.

"It came out of my mouth, and I led the attack," I said. "That's all your average barswill needs to know. The rest of the story takes care of itself."

We were silent awhile, and then Lellik-jir sat back and said a single very rude word, drawing out the monosyllable in uttermost exasperation.

The crude profanity echoed across the rocks and faded.

"...with whom?" Prasti asked. "We left all the whores back in Roshan."

That got a quick laugh, but then we were silent again.

It was Kash, the young scout we'd picked up in Palt, who broke the silence. For some reason, he had tagged along as we made our headlong flight from the Roshan camp.

"If I knew this is how they would treat their soldiers," he said, "I'd have let Malarchus keep the lot of them."

* ~ * ~ *

The ground was hard when we got back to Flex province, and although that helped us a little, it was clear we'd been beaten to Forg by a messenger of Taric. Our likenesses now hung from messageboards in the villages, along with a wanted notice.

The official story, as a sympathetic farmer told us, was that we had deserted the army and then killed Roshan's farmers in the night. Then while hiding out in the woods, we stole credit for a daring raid that Taric led to kill Malarchus. Finally, we had slaughtered our way out from a court martial and were expected to show up back here. Whereupon all good subjects must turn us in for a reward.

We listened to this story with a sense of silenced awe at the sheer perverse falseness of it all. But it was Lindo who recovered first.

"Wait... what proof was there that Malarchus was dead anyway?" he asked, with his usual exacting interest in facts.

"Said they found his armor in the ashes of the fire," the farmer said. "Something awful it was, too - all spines and bolts and barbs."

* ~ * ~ *

We took up at an inn closer in, and noticed that they sent a man out down the road after we got there.

It seemed like one way or another, we were in for an extremely rapid succession of events.

The man came back, but instead of a guard, he brought somebody familiar. It was Prent.

"Hello, Cob," he said. "You've been busy, by all accounts."

We sat and talked. First, he told me that I was certain to be arrested if I stayed near the villages or towns. Then he asked if I wanted to make confession. Finally, when I told him they had spread lies about me, he sat and politely listened as I gave him my version.

When I was done, he said he would try to do what he could.

"I am not one to judge you, Cob, but I will be honest. It would be much easier for me to clear your followers than to clear you. Lindo they will find easier to forgive. Also your men, who were mostly following orders. But you are a controversial man. If I were in your place, I would lie low for a while. The truth takes time to uncover. And when you return, say after a year, it should be easier to repatriate you."

He spoke urgently, and though his words saddened me, I could sense their wisdom.

"Go, and take my men with you and do your best to clear them," I said.

Lotal and the others refused to go, until I told them it was my wish that they do so.

"Remember to stand tall above the lies," I said. "You must plead your innocence, but please remember that I must return one day and plead my own as well."

I embraced them each and then they left.

Prent said I should leave too, and then he was gone.

* ~ * ~ *

Suddenly alone, I felt tired beyond all telling. The waste of my sacrifice and training seemed a distant vague concept - one I was not yet ready to grapple with. I ordered a roast chicken and ate it, along with a considerable quantity of wine.

I climbed the stairs unsteadily and got to my room. The floor spun beneath me and I fell into bed.

Shortly thereafter, there were men in my room and a light in my eyes.

"That's him," one man said.

"He reeks," another said.

They left me with a single guard as I pulled myself into my breeches. I felt numb.

The man leaned in close and chuckled.

"You have a bone in your beard. And you stink of wine," he said.

He filled a basin of water and put a razorblade by it.

"Why don't you attend to the state of your toilet, Cob," he said.

This sounded like good advice, and I got up unsteadily and went to the basin. It also sounded familiar.

"Wilmar?" I asked groggily.

He stepped into the light so I could see him better. It was him after all. He was wearing a uniform and had a shortsword at his waist. His face was strict as usual but he didn't seem to be angry.

"I trust Bela's been feeding you well?"I said, my thick tongue forming words half-remembered from an earlier time. Then, suddenly, my stomach heaved and all the wine came up and onto the floor.

He made a noise of disgust.

"I'll... I'll let you get on with it, shall I?" he said, distastefully. "You've got ten minutes."

He left, shutting the door behind him.

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

Part Four: Enemy of the State

Fugitive

I was dressed and out the window with the razorblade in my pocket and a bundle at my waist, and had made it to the treeline before they came looking for me. But they had dogs, I saw. This reminded me of the cornfield theft on the way to Flex, and I scrambled onwards in a panic.

One good thing about being drunk is that you hardly notice fatigue. One slight disadvantage is the dry heaving and vomiting. I made it to a streambed where I crossed to throw off the scent, but I suspect my puke was strong enough to carry even across that.

I made it onto higher ground and looked back. Their torches were faraway now, and they were shouting to each other to find themselves in the darkness.

It suddenly dawned on me that I was shivering. It must have been very cold.

I untied the bundle of things I'd thrown into my blanket. Leather jerkin, bracers, boots, plates. A pillow. I put on the boots but threw most of the rest out and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, trudging on.

As my drunken stupor lifted, I regained my sense of time. The sky was lightening by degrees now, and I was so tired I could see spots in my vision.

I sat down at the next stream I found, cupping my hands for an ice cold drink. The spots cleared up but my fatigue remained. I leaned back against a treebole and tried to steady my breathing.

* ~ * ~ *

I woke with a start, with the sun high in the sky. I heard a faint barking sound in the distance, and cursed myself. They were still chasing after me.

I scrambled onwards, away from the sounds of pursuit. I came to a brook and waded through it, though it would make me cold, just to thwart the scent. Then I made a large circle on the other side, to confuse the hounds.

I came across a fallen log and turned it over to get at the grubs underneath. I saved two for fishbait later.

When the sounds faded entirely, I stopped. I followed through the barren trees until I found another stream. I snatched a few strands from my blanket and made a rope. Then with the razorblade, I whittled a crude hook from two pieces of wood, tying it together with string.

I put a fat grub on the end and lowered it deep into the water.

As I fished, I got a sudden memory of my old blind dog from childhood. He used to go rooting cautiously in the forest, his sharp muzzle leading him after prey even though he couldn't see it. I had even hidden my sword under his furs for a while. I strained and strained to remember his name, but it was gone from my mind.

I realized I was crying - real sobs that shook my frame and caused the spit to fly from my stupid mouth. But I caught a fish and then had to make a fire, so there was no time to wonder why.

* ~ * ~ *

For days I stumbled, hobbled, and lurched through the forest, my feet sore and my skin numb from the cold. At nights I would haul my aching frame up into the branches of a tree to wedge myself in for the night, shivering in the blanket and my own bile.

By day, I tried to catch fish and grubs to eat. After a few days, when the sounds of pursuit ceased entirely, I began to circle around from stream and back. I found a more permanent shelter in a small cave by the brook, where a fallen tree shielded the entrance, and a second exit gave me easy escape in case of discovery.

I settled in, grateful for the respite from the cold. I made a fire and cooked some fish I'd caught. Then I had time enough to think about what I would do next.

I had been betrayed.

That much was clear. Even in my worst pangs of hunger and at my greatest scrambling panicked flight from my chasers, my mind still held onto that thought.

I had given my service to my king and to my general, to save two faraway lands, and they had proclaimed me a criminal. That was all there was to it. If I had died in battle, perhaps I would be a hero to them, now that I was no political threat. But I was still alive, and as long as I walked away as a living breathing man from the battle, I would continue to fight another day.

I ate two of the fish and then smoked the rest so they would keep. I had four in total, enough for two days if I paced myself. I sat at the cave mouth and pondered how long I would need to stay out before returning. It occurred to me, with a strong sense of irony, that the last time I had been in the wilderness, I had been prevented from staying there by my guard duty, and the fear that somebody would come looking for me. Now it looked like I would be staying here as long as I wanted - and the longer the better, as far as society was concerned.

I went back into the cave with a light from the fire, the better to examine my surroundings. I hoped to find some access to the surface in the roof, which would leave me with a place to build a fire inside the cave for the smoke to flow out. As I did so, my thoughts turned back to the war, and the treachery of men.

Palt, Roshan, and Lothgren all were glad to see me go, despite my sacrifices for them. Also, Taric had willingly kicked the props away from under my feet, and watched me fall. So that meant Flex was no longer my ally either - at least as long as Taric remained popular there.

That meant that the only place left to shelter me was Forg. And Forg was a tributary to Flex. Moreover, Wilmar had come on orders to arrest me. What would this mean for Forg's allegiances?

I gave up my pondering for the day and wrapped myself up in a blanket and went to sleep, curling up like a ball for warmth.

During the evening, memories of people and places long gone surfaced to me. There was Berdavestis, the smiling shaven castellan of Palt, baby smooth after his early morning appointment with his full-body barber - as my men died in the field to liberate his city. Here was Breshgard, the castellan of Roshan, leading his men into the forest in a last charge after Malarchus was already dead. And then here was the slight frame of Taric, turning to face me, his face a blank as he raised the bloodied helmet of Malarchus' armor. The man whom I had killed, not him.

"Die in your cave, Cob," he said. "Die that I may swallow your memory to my name."

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

Regeneration

I slept in a ranting dream for several days as the fever passed. During that time, I saw a luminous being of exquisite features come to me from the light and bring me sustenance and furs of strange animals.

I cursed and raved at the gods for abandoning their people, at the lords and kings for ignoring the plight of the common soldier, and at the fops and nobles too dim to realize the terrible cost at which their comfort was won for them by others.

I dreamed of Sootri bowing before an altar, her head shaven, and her fragile beauty dulled into a uniform plainness before the altar. Suddenly, she was a young girl again, sitting on my shoulders as we walked through the pastures, carrying Bela's lunches with us as we went to sit by the river. Then a meeting in the cave, and her knowing fingers on my skin - her mouth on mine with a strange, burgeoning desire that both sickened and intrigued me.

* ~ * ~ *

It was light when I woke. It took me a moment to remember where I was, that I was in a cave and not my room at Bela's nor in a camp tent on the warpath.

It took me a moment longer to realize I was not alone. With a start, I saw the hunched figure in the cavelight, glowing eyes regarding me. The splayed digits gently touching the ground before it. The emaciated, almost gaunt, outlines of its body that hinted it might be some savage of the woods.

"I... I..." was all that came from my lips. My first instinct was to draw my sword, but it no longer lived at my waist in its scabbard.

The silhouette shifted and then took a few steps back. As it reached the cave mouth and its features caught the light. I saw an impossibly sleek face, with deep cheekbones and slender to boot. The thing was unmistakably clothed in a light green wrap, and its hair gleamed in the sun. But all the same I looked at the perfect symmetry of its face, and the narrowness of the cheeks and sharpness of the nose, and I knew straight off I was not looking at a fellow man.

The creature held its fingers to its lips, and a light glowed there faintly. Then, when it spoke, I realized with a start that I could understand its words perfectly.

"You are not well, and should rest," it said, in a perfectly moderated tone halfway between a man and a woman. "Your body is frail from exposure, and you carry a great bitterness inside you."

I gave up scrabbling among the rocks. It was clear my weapons were not with me, and in any case, the thing spoke true - I was too weak to wield any arms anyway. I let my head fall back and closed my eyes.

"Good, you should rest," the forest-thing said. "Health of the body will return to you, with my help. But only you can become well of mind again."

* ~ * ~ *

For days I lay, weak as a baby, and the thing came to feed me and change my beddings. It marvelled at my size, for I was larger than any of the wood creatures it had tended to before. It also voiced concern when it turned me gently over and saw the numerous patchwork scars, crisscrossing my back and limbs from years of fighting.

"You have seen much violence in your time, and you are still young yet," it said.

On the second day, I asked the creature its name, and this confused it.

"What do others call you?" I asked.

The creature paused, its brilliant purple eyes hooded slightly as it thought.

"Others have never called me anything," it said finally.

I thought about this.

"What do you call yourself," I asked.

It thought about this.

"The same thing you call yourself. I say 'I'," it said.

The conversation ended on this uncertain note. When it resumed, hours later, I asked it where it had come from.

"Surely there must be others of your kind. Did you ever have a mother?" I asked.

The creature thought back, its eyes telling of a sudden and vast memory.

"Parent, one who bore me, yes - there was once," it said. "Also, siblings too. They are elsewhere."

"Where are they?"

"They dance of sunlight and shadow in the wood, as I do, spread among the trees. I remain here, to watch the wood and bring healing to the sick who walk it," the creature said. "It has been a long time since I met one such as you. And she died seventy four winters ago."

I pondered this. What was this creature, and what did it want with me?

"I try to bring healing," the creature said, brushing a lick of light hair from its ear. I noted, with no small discomfiture, that the ear was pointed. I thought back to some of the stories we'd told about forest sprites and lurching grave horrors alike - all identified by their sharp ears. "Nature is full of pain and suffering, and it takes an act of will to bring joy and comfort to the world."

A few days later I asked it where its family had gone to. It shrugged.

"There are many such as me, but we stay separate," it said. "Gathering and storing in caches throughout the wood."

After about a week, I was well enough to walk again, and I met the creature at the mouth of the cave. It smiled to see me upright, and I was surprised by how slight it was - it barely cleared my shoulder.

"I will return now," I said.

The creature tilted its head. "Return? You will not stay here?"

I shook my head. "There are those whom I must see again in the lands of men. There are duties and obligations to discharge."

The creature nodded. "You still have a bond inside you to the outside. If you stay here, we may break that bond and give you peace for the rest of your precious years," it said.

It sat down and began to fish, a sprig of some savory spice-stalk in its mouth. I sat down next to it and put my elbows on my knees. The day was a deep, impossible blue up above, and the trees were stark against the sky, like a sudden brisk breath in winter.

The creature spoke again. "I brought you back to health, as I must," it said. "I hope you can choose a different path from the one that brought you here."

I pondered this. It sounded tempting - to follow the musings that I had during my watchtower tour, and live with no law or order, master of myself and servant only to my whims. I saw in my mind's eye the carefree routine, of hunts and caches, snaring birds and fish, sleeping easy each night in my own warmth and knowing there was no need to keep a sword by my side.

But all the same I remembered the duties I'd left behind. To Forg, to Bela, and to Sootri. They lived in constant danger, in a land where kings made war in a struggle for primacy. Also, my mind clouded over with thoughts of those who had put me here: Berdavestis, Breshgard, and Taric - all of whom profited richly from my struggles and thought me dead.

"There are laws I must follow, and justice to dispense," I said. "I cannot stay here. I must go back."

"Your laws brought you here, outside of laws," the creature said. "Why not accept it thus?"

"The obligations do not die merely because I am gone," I said. "They may not even die when I die."

I stood up.

"You are generous and kind to a man who has proven himself quite the opposite for his whole life," I said. "I would not pollute you by association."

The creature stirred. "When you go back to your people, remember that you were saved by the mercy of a stranger who had never seen you before, and who will never see you again. Let that thought temper your actions in future."

I nodded, and set off back to civilization with my bundle. I made it to the next ridge and turned back to wave to the creature, but it was gone. All that remained was the river, and the bare trees, covering an empty cave - all among layers and layers of profound silence.

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

Repatriation

I trudged back to civilization, only dimly recalling the way I had lurched, drunk with wine and light headed from exposure. Eventually I emerged in farmsteads, and I took care to stay hidden and to do most of my hunting at dark.

It wasn't until I took up near a hamlet pub that I got actual news about myself. The place was a poor shack, where the same five men came after dark to run up tabs with the barkeep, but the clapboard walls meant I could hear their speech inside with no problem.

Apparently, the Forg authorities were uncertain what to do about me. Though Wilmar had seemed on the verge of arresting me, I learned that he had actually planned to return me to the village to give my version of events before the counsel. Now, they were somewhat more likely to believe in my guilt, given my flight - but there was still a sizeable number of people who trusted me as a brave son of Forg.

The fact that I hadn't shed a drop of my captors' blood in my escape from the hotel helped my reputation enormously. Although I had to stifle a grimace at this - had I been sober when they had come for me, I almost certainly would have cut my way out of them or died trying.

It was another day of walking before I got back to Forg, and I crept up to the watchtower and saw it was Prasti there. He seemed happy to see me.

"Cob! You're alive!" he said.

"Honestly, you boys all say the same damn thing," I said, though I was happy to see him too.

He came out with some rations for me and we talked quickly.

"If you go back, they'll bring you before some counsel thing or other," he said. "Depending, there may be an Aurim Thenolite representative too, which would be very bad for you. Taric made sure that the Thenolites and the King's Court all believe you to be a bloodthirsty maniac."

"So I can't go back?" I asked.

"Give it time," he said. "It'll only take a shake of the trees, and they'll start fearing for their lives and asking any old damn idiot to come and save them from the next big threat."

"...and I'll make sure to be that damn idiot," I finished for him. "Sounds good enough. What do I do till then?"

Prasti thought. "Lotal mentioned it actually. Turns out his family and Lindo have all been arguing hard on your behalf. He said there were a few farming cousins of his that might see to getting you a safe place to stay."

"That's awfully good of him," I said. "Can I see him sometime?"

Prasti nodded. "I'll send word. Quietly, of course. And then we'll get you settled in. Just until the dust dies down."

* ~ * ~ *

As it turned out, Lotal's half-sister married one of the men who trained under Himlak and Terrek. So her house was open to me, with all the blessing of the husband for a fellow soldier.

I am afraid I made a shambling, poor figure as I accepted their hospitality. My eyes were bleary from lack of bathing, and my beard was scraggly and unkempt. I'm sure I stank. But all the same they drew me a bath and gave me a pallet to myself in the rafters of the barn, where there was a crawlspace trap in addition to the two large doors - in case I had to make an escape.

Rithak, the farmer, talked to me about the training and the drills and the fighting. He had been in Forg when Malarchus had attacked, and he remembered me sitting atop the Himlak manse, loosing off my arrows despite my injured leg. He and Kellin, Lotal's kinswoman, made me welcome.

For a while I stayed with them, lying low, and rotating among their relatives' homes to make it harder for the counsel to find me. I went hunting in the forests with my bow and brought back game for them, as something I could do to defray the cost of providing for me. As time went by, I stashed a few caches of arrows, knives, and skins in areas in the woods, so that if I ever had to flee civilized lands again, I would not be so badly off.

To my surprise, the old gang came to me one night when I was at a secondary safehouse, and they brought ales and women. Prasti, Lotal, Lellik-jir, and even Kash from the battlefield showed up. For a convict on the run, I was drawing an alarming amount of attention. But Lotal came to me and told me that Taric had recalled his man on the counsel to return to Flex. Apparently, the politics in Flex were becoming so cutthroat that even Taric himself might fall unless he devoted everything to his struggles.

That meant that Forg's counsel had removed my face from the Wanted boards.

I could have kissed Lotal for that. Although he warned me that the King of Thenol still had me as an outlaw, and that any future Lord of Flex would have to arrest me, I didn't care. Forg still welcomed me for now, and that was enough. My home village had rejected the lies of the battlefield and were willing to call me their son once again.

I settled down with many a tankard of ale and joined in the singing. There were a few lasses too, and they made their way to my bench by degrees as the night wore on. They sang along with me, and they listened with rapt attention as I recounted the most suitable war stories - leaving out all the really bloody bits. I think at the close of the evening's entertainment, and after many, many beers, one of them had even started drinking from the same tankard as me and laughed as our lips met, but then I don't remember anything after that because the space under my bench was nice and dark and quiet and I curled up there and fell fast asleep.

* ~ * ~ *

It was growing warmer and the snows were thawing when the counsel finally sent word to me. They had chosen Prent to bring their message, and in retrospect it was a good idea to do so: he had my trust, and so he would soften the blow of their decision. We walked awhile in the woods as he outlined the situation.

Basically, the counsel sympathized with me and still considered me one of their own. But they were not powerful or influential enough to countermand General Taric's orders. They would agree to give me covert support and to leave me a safe zone in the woods if I wished to camp there. Also, that arrangement would allow them a convenient excuse: that I was too well entrenched for them to arrest me, and that I had the forest under my command.

"It seems we live in a world of compromises," I said, with a trace of bitterness at this. "Any counsel of true resolve would arrest me or embrace me."

Prent's face was grim. "You must understand they have much to lose by offering you this already," he said. "And who knows, Taric may not be around politically next year. If that happens, the King's Army will have a new leader, and they may not care about the rumors that have surrounded you on the battlefield."

I sighed.

"Life was easier as a boy," I said at length. "You knew what was right and what was wrong, at least."

Prent said nothing, but I could feel his attentiveness - a true priest's gift of listening.

"On the battlefield, I have committed dubious acts," I said, picking my words carefully. "But always in the service of my lord. Always with an eye to driving the enemy from the field as speedily as possible."

Prent shifted his weight and sat more easily.

"Bela-jir, there are two main issues you will eventually have to address when you return. The first is cowardice and dereliction of duty. They say you were rarely beside the rest of the army ranks, and furthermore that you tried to rob Taric of the credit of Malarchus' death."

I interrupted hotly. "There is no truth to those - none whatsoever. My men fought better than any other column, I'll wager, and we never backed off." I thought awhile. "We rarely fought in formation with the rest of the army because that was not our mission. We were skirmishers, an elite band of outriders who would circle out and strike the army from the flanks and the rear. Even moreso after that bastard Berdavestis stripped me of my leadership of his guard and army."

Prent nodded. "Lotal and the others testified as much."

"As for the Malarchus confrontation, I hardly know where to begin. There is so much falsehood about that man and his death. All I know is that we raided a mansion - the Rokelbie manse - and burned it to the ground with him inside it. There may have been a few civilian deaths too. His officers were in the middle of raping the household's women when we torched the place."

Prent gave me a long, hard look. "Taric's account is similar, but he leaves out any mention of the name of the mansion. And also the civilians who died."

I laughed. "He probably doesn't want anybody looking into the name of the manse and realizing all the locals are dead. His story sounds suspiciously flawless."

Prent nodded. "Pastor Dartoraigh met him, you know. There was enough going on that Dartoraigh knew not to believe everything he said. The counsel trusts Dartoraigh, and now they want to trust you."

I thought about this. Once again, the Temple had saved me, though only partially. Maybe as one got older, the gods left you to shift Fate for yourself.

"The second issue that the counsel is worried about is the matter of civilian casualties," Prent said. "It is said that you have killed many people indiscriminately. Specifically, they point to the liberation of Palt and the battle of Parshelian Ridge."

I shook my head. "Prent, casualties happen in war."

"Then you do not deny that?"

"I deny that my goal was to kill civilians. My goal was to drive Malarchus' men from our provinces. At Parshelian, there were enemy reinforcements on the way. They would have cemented control of a key valley pass unless we fought through the night. In nighttime fighting, it's hard to tell friend from foe - sometimes all you have is a distant uniform to go on. Maybe there were farmers who got caught in the middle... but we absolutely had to take that valley pass by morning. What would you have had us do? Go door to door and ask to see the man of the house? And do you think Malarchus would have observed the same niceties?"

Prent held up his hands. "It's not me you have to convince, Bela-jir. It's the counsel. I can take your words back to them and make your arguments."

"Good, well tell them this. Malarchus proved himself to be a brutal despoiler who would do anything to win. I am not ashamed to say that I proved a better warrior than him. This goes for bombarding the houses of Palt until they collapsed, so that his men were exposed to us. I am sorry for the damage that comes with war, but I am proud that thanks to my work, the provinces are safe again."

We stopped at a stream in the woods and spent a few minutes skimming stones across the surface. There seemed to be little else to say. I was still upset at the calm ease with which Taric and the others had betrayed me, and also at the bovine slowness with which the civilian counsel looked through incidentals such as the casualties of war.

Prent brought me back with one of the few topics that had greater value for me.

"Sootri is glad to know you're safe," he said.

I looked at him. "I'm almost afraid to ask how she is doing," I said.

"...whether you'd find she'd shaved her head? Joined the Temple?" he asked, a smile on his face. "No, she's the same as before. Even more charming, actually. She works with the Temple but she is not a priestess herself. I told her to wait a few years before making the decision."

"Does she have a man lined up?" I asked. This was a matter of some considerable interest to me.

Prent gave me a sidelong look. "Well, it's difficult. What with her hearing and all..."

"...and a murderous bloodthirsty brother on the loose may put the suitors off," I said sourly.

Prent shrugged. "There is that, but that's not the real problem. She just hasn't been interested in anybody. And she's already a teenager. Bela's worried she'll end up an old maid."

"Well, that'll make two of us," I said with a trace of perverse pride. "You don't see me running around after skirts."

Prent looked at me again. "You know, Bela told me something about you and Sootri. I think she was hoping you two might settle down. With each other."

I nodded. "We tried it. It was an unpleasant experience."

"How's that?" he asked sharply.

There was a lull.

"You remember the cave in the hills?" I said. "The one where we spent the winter when Bela went mad?"

"Why do you ask?" he said.

"Sootri and I went there together at one of the festivals last year. We'd been drinking. I suppose we wanted to see whether it would happen for us," I said. "In the end, it didn't."

Prent shifted uncomfortably. "Maybe that's why she prefers to be alone," he said. "That's a shame. I know several boys who like her quite a bit."

"I can't stop thinking of her as my sister," I said. "It just feels wrong. Maybe it's easier for her - she was only very little when we went through the worst of it. But for me she'll always be the grubby little girl that I walked to Flex with."

Prent looked at me sadly.

"Well, I think it's a damn waste," he said.

And then I began to realize maybe he liked her too.

* ~ * ~ *

A few weeks later, I had put up a small camp in the woods, and the old gang came out frequently to train and talk and drink by the fireside. The weather was still cold, but it didn't seem to bother them. Lotal brought greetings from Terrek, and a fine suit of metal armor from Old Carrustin, who was growing lame but still had a strong hammer arm.

Occasionally, we'd get boys from the town hanging around at the peripheries, watching us at our training and our sparring. Prasti set them up a few targets and taught them how to shoot arrows.

As the weather grew warmer, the heralds came back with more news from Flex. Taric's own actions in the battlefield had come under question, it appeared, and the Temple had led an investigation of the men under his command. The outcome of this investigation could well determine the future of the army, and who would be leading it in the summer.

The last visitor to come to see me, in defiance of all probability, was Sootri.

She came late in the afternoon, when we were at work felling some trees to finish a gate for the camp. She went to Lotal first, and he immediately dropped what he was doing to escort her through the sawing and dust-filled chaos of our construction to see me.

I washed myself up and sat down in the canteen tables with her.

"You look well, Cov," she said. Her words had become even more fluid than before, though she still didn't quite get my name right. She was also undeniably, impossibly beautiful - her hair was long and dark, and her eyes were bright above her demure smile. Yet, there was the same quiet bashfulness that had followed her around since childhood. I could see why the men liked her well.

"I've thought of you often," she said, her words only bearing a slight hint of her accent. The way she spoke now sounded exotic. "The others say terrible things about you, but Bela knows she raised you to be a good man. I also know what you would do to protect your own people."

I rested easier. "War makes soldiers of men, and I have indeed done things I would never have done as a civilian. But know that I and all my men force ourselves to these extremes, precisely so that we may one day put down our swords and come home."

Sootri smiled wistfully as I said the last words.

"I'll be waiting for you," she said. "I love you. Take care."

As she left, it struck me that she had said those words to me before - in times of trouble in a distant city.



_

[HuManBing]

The Forest Outlaw

In the space of two months, word of mouth about my camps in the forest had spread. Young boys and grown men alike came to us in the woods with gifts of food and equipment, and in return we gave them training. Basic stuff, to be sure, but still good enough to give them some measure of self-reliance and pride - the man who could wield a spear in defence of his hearth, or the mother who wore a sling at her side and could back it up with sharp stones if she needed it.

Lotal and the others came with salted meats left over from winter, and at one point Prent came to me with a bouquet of flowers in a jar with a strange inscription on the side that (he told me) read "Cov".

I hardly needed to ask who it was from.

Things were well for a while, and then we heard the news from Flex. Apparently, the Temple and its bishop, Trandamere, had completed their investigations, and the auguries and inquisitors had turned up enough evidence to come to a judgment on Taric. The Temple had split the army and placed one half under Captain Nanje's command. Nanje was on the march to Forg, to garrison his army here, free from interference from Taric if the verdict went against him.

We packed up and moved all our operations into the deep forest, and closed the training camps. If Taric had fallen, then Nanje might prove a more reasonable commander.

* ~ * ~ *

The roads became much more active as the final thaws of winter finished and the army marched in. Then the rains came, and the roads turned to mud under the steps of the army's cavalry and infantry columns.

Nanje came to the town. It had been only a year or so beforehand that he stood outside the gates of Flex with a mighty army, barring the way against the Rebel Lord Perringen. His rival, Captain Taric, had been the lowly commander of a secondary attack squad, sent to liberate Forg.

Since then, Taric had been elevated to General of the King's Army, and he had taken most of the credit for unseating Malarchus, while Nanje sat in obscurity.

Now, with Taric under investigation and half of his army taken from him, Nanje's stars seemed propitious.

Captain Nanje himself looked much more the classical picture of a military leader. He was tall, and had commanding tilt of the chin, offset by his severe beard and haircut. He rode to Forg and ordered his men to set up a garrison in some of the fallow fields outside the town. Every day, merchants from the town came and went from the military camp.

Unlike his predecessor, however, Nanje did not possess a personable conversational manner. My informants told me that he rarely bothered to learn the names of people he dealt with, and he mostly addressed citizens of Forg as "Hey, you there."

This news pleased me somewhat. If Nanje was indeed to be the commander of the army, it hardly seemed like he was going to ingratiate himself with my hometown.

We sat this way in an uneasy balance for a few days. Then, as I was washing myself in a chilly spring one morning, the news came from Flex, only hours ahead of the march of a second army.

Taric had been absolved of all wrongdoing. He was coming up to Forg to resume command of the men under Nanje's command, and he had only one mission in his hand: to eradicate the enemy of the state, Captain Cob of Forg.

* ~ * ~ *

We had four days to prepare our defenses as the enemy army trudged through the mud and rutted roads, and finally united at Forg. I sent out a regular rotation of spies and informants to report on the progress of Taric's men up the highway, and we had finished disassembling most of our main workshops and moved them to deeper points in the forest.

The empty camps we converted into holdouts, where our men could control forest space and hamper an enemy advance, although our fortifications were light by design. There would be no way Taric could trundle the cumbersome siege engines through the woods to assault us.

As the army arrived, Taric levied food and requisitions from Forg, playing into my hands yet again. The duties he imposed quickly drew the sour disapproval of the dispossessed farmers and tradesmen, and I saw a number of young men join my camps, having lost everything they had to the army.

We prepared for battle, knowing that terrain was on our side, even if the numbers were heavily against us.

* ~ * ~ *

Taric coordinated a double attack, taking two of our frontline bases. My men fell back as they had been commanded, only exchanging volleys from cover of ambushes. The camps they had held were unwalled, poorly defensible things anyway, and letting the enemy occupy them merely meant that we had more points of contact with them.

I sent spies in who knew the layouts and knew where the vantage points lay to count heads, or catch a glimpse of a face, or eavesdrop safely. They confirmed what I had suspected all along: that Nanje resented this demotion yet again, and that he was in one mind to press on against me with all speed to prove his power, but also was in another mind to subvert and sideline Taric if he could.

We continued to dog their patrols, weaving in and out of the forest with ease and sniping their guards where possible. With our two foremost camps captured, the enemy seemed uncertain how to proceed against us. They tried to send scouts to find us, an exercise that we easily countered with our own more knowledgeable patrols. With supplies coming in from our townsmen at cairns and prearranged caches, we could weather an indefinite campaign.

One morning, I faced restive lieutenants. Bracing myself against a sudden chill, I wrapped a wolfskin around my shoulders and sat among them at a table in our rockside camp.

Lotal was the first to speak, and he outlined our plan to weaken the enemy by raids and sedition before making our decisive strikes. He had been well coached - I had spent nights discussing this with him, and it was understood that he spoke with my mind on these matters.

Lellik-jir was less convinced. Taric and Nanje would grow in strength as time passed, not weaken, in his view. Once they had silenced the grumblings of Forg's men, and patched the rift between Nanje and Taric, they would come after us, and easily prevail in numbers. He advised drawing them out in a series of rearguard skirmishes, and then going behind their lines to assassinate the two generals directly - much as we had with Malarchus.

Among the younger men, Lellik-jir's advice was popular. These were men who had the freshest grievances against the army, and who wanted to avenge them as quickly as possible. They were also the ones I had to be most careful about, as they were untested in battle and a bad rout would lose me their support, perhaps permanently.

I stepped outside as they debated and discussed, and blew my breath out in the air. I watched my breath cloud briefly, and shivered.

Kash, no longer the youngest man in our merry company, came out to me.

"General Cob," he said.

"Just Ah-Cob," I interrupted. "I'm not a general and never was. Arguably, I'm not even a captain either."

He gave me a salute. "I wanted to ask you something that has been on my mind awhile," he said. "When you call these meetings, do you come already having made up your mind? Or do you come to listen and go with what the people have to say?"

I sighed. "It depends. This time, I'm already nine-tenths of the way there. I just wanted to see how my men feel."

Kash sat down on the rocks and looked up at the hoary moon above.

"If only it were as easy as wielding a sword," he said. "That was what I signed up for. Not this politicking and pontificating."

I nodded. "You and me both, Kash."

There was a breeze, and it was strangely chill.

"Damnably cold, of a sudden," I said musingly. "I'd better go back in."

Back in the cliff face, we argued and harangued, and came to no consensus. But I had decided to myself that we would not attack. I went to bed, but woke up for a call of nature some time past midnight.

I slipped on the stone steps and fell on my haunches, in a massed layer of snow. The shock of it was such that I completely forgot the urgency of my bladder as I looked around, disbelieving, at the covers and covers of white silence descending upon us from the skies.

It was snowing. The winter had returned for a last gasp.

* ~ * ~ *

For the first day, we sent scouts around to the camps, ordering them to hold fast. They trudged through the fluffy snow, keeping tabs on the enemy, who remained huddled in their camps, paranoid of the shadows in the woods.

For the second day, there was disbelief and levity. Lotal started a snowball fight in our camp. We stayed in garrison for this day too, saving our warmth and recalling the last days of our campaign against Malarchus.

The snow stopped falling on the third day, and we sent out our scouts among the denuded trees, both to spy on Taric and Nanje, and to communicate with our other camps. Our spy reports showed a flurry of communication between Nanje and Taric directly, but they could not determine what they were discussing.

On the fourth day, we saw a burst of frantic activity in the enemy camps, with soldiers arming and packing and ready to move. My spies couldn't get any sense of where they were going, but by the end of the day only the most barebones defenses remained.

On the fifth day, their army had marched onwards, splitting into five groups, each assigned to one of our camps in the deep forest. They marched with a deadly purpose and direction towards us, and we armed and scrambled and prepared to fight them off.

It was only later that we realized how they had outwitted us.

In the bare forest, with snow on the ground, it was childishly easy to trace the footprints of our spies and scouts and messengers.

* ~ * ~ *

The first three camps came under attack early in the morning on the sixth day. They surrounded our structures and scaled the piked wooden walls with their ladders, winning through by sheer force of numbers. Every man they didn't kill, they captured, for repatriation back in Forg under slavery terms for treason.

They slowed when they got to our rocky hillside camps, as our men fought them with practiced precision, loosing arrows from caves and overhangs.

But they had people behind them, requisitioning heavy pelts and furs for their soldiers to keep warm. We had few winter supplies, and fewer stores of food still. As they beat us back from the edge of the forest and into the center, our forces became more concentrated, but our supply lines to the livestock and crops of the farms grew more attenuated.

After a week, it became clear that they could starve us out unless we cut down on our troops drastically.

In a somber grey morning, I released the irregulars from my service, and ordered them to return home under guise as the peasants and farmers they essentially were. We surrendered the two useless rockside camps, and I remained at the final cliffside fort with my elite guard.

They came to us, swarming up the rockface as we loosed arrows among them. For two whole days we held them off, toppling their men like fruit from a tree, and watching them plummet to their deaths from the sheer face. And on the third day, some of them managed to get above us, and started rolling bales of flame into our cave mouths. Prasti, who was leading the archers at that stage, had to be carried out, his face bandaged with wet compresses and him delirious, calling for the horse that trampled his father.

They took four caves before we made our escape, with Lotal and Lellik-jir taking it in turns to carry Prasti on their backs. We fled into the forest with only our bows, a few blades, and whatever furs we wore to keep us warm. A few stragglers stayed on with us, and they slept alongside us as we shivered in the cold, miles upwind from the blazing caves that we had abandoned to Taric's men.

* ~ * ~ *

We moved on, as the unseasonable, impossible winter weather continued. Lotal said his uncles had talked of a similar freak winter in their parents' childhood, when the spring plantings had been well underway when the snows returned. There had been food shortages and famine then.

And we had finished the last of our food days before, and we were ravenous.

The first man to die of exposure was actually not much more than a boy. He had joined us hoping to win glory in battle, perhaps to impress some girl he had back in the outlying hamlets. He fell asleep in the snow with us but never woke up.

We tried to bury him, but the ground was hard and we ended up leaving his body on frozen earth. We moved onwards and I called for help to the wilds, hoping against hope that the creature that had nursed me to health would hear me again.

We stopped to sleep again, and I told them of the creature, and how they must regard it with respect, and how it might heal their wounds and Prasti's burns as it had healed mine. I told them of its elongated, gaunt features, and the pinpoints of its ears, and the subtle melody of its voice.

I stopped, short, as Lotal came back to camp. He had a bloody bag with him, and he shivered from the rigors of the hunt.

"We have some meat for supper at least," he said.

He stoked up the fire and fried some liver and kidney, dividing up among all of us. It wasn't till halfway through that I realized what I was eating, and by then it was already too late to refuse it.

* ~ * ~ *

Prasti's burns stopped him from seeing clearly, but we were able to lead him onwards by the hand once he got well enough to walk. We withdrew further than any map ever showed.

It was around this time that I found a familiar stream, and we followed it, leery of the cracked ice surface. Trees, putting forth their leaves, suddenly stood bare - betrayed by the weather. We broke holes in the river and fished, much as I had done when I stumbled through here pursued by Wilmar's dogs.

It was another day or so before the last enemy scout fell back and the forest was silent again. We'd wrapped our feet in leaves to stave off frostbite, and followed the river.

Every so often, I called for the creature in the woods.

"Are you there? I have an injured man who needs your aid, and the blessing of the forest."

No answer ever came. I recalled the creature's last words to me - that I would never see it again. I wondered at this, at what perverse twist of fate would allow such a one as the creature to save my life once, but then refuse to save it again. Was I spared from Wilmar, simply so I could die at the hands of Taric?

We found the cave where I had rested, and I showed my men the niches where the creature set down its light, and the part of the riverbend where it sat with its fishhooks. That reassured them - I think my talk of a creature of the woods had unnerved them - but still we saw nothing.

We stayed a few days, mercifully unspotted, and Prasti took off his wraps and was able to see again. But although his eyes were clear, the skin of his face was a puckered, hairless mess. Scars blotched his cheeks and bent his lip upwards in a gnarled sneer. He would never be handsome again.

We regained our strength and restrung our bows and decided to head back to Taric. To die fighting, if that was what the gods intended.

Before leaving the cave by the river, I turned to the forest and cursed the creature.

"Damn you, half-human. You saved me once, but only to leave me now... to gnash my teeth, and despair, and die."

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

A Homecoming, Humbled

The snows had started to harden into icy drifts as we headed back. There was a profusion of tracks, set to glassy hardness with the weather, and we followed those. But even though we slowed and advanced cautiously, wary of an ambush, we saw nobody.

Days later, we got back to the cliff-face lair, which now stood bare, like a fleshless skull, in the scorched landscape. Not a soul stirred there. After hours of watching and scanning it from a distance, we went back inside, swords drawn and bows taut.

"What in Hiteh's name are they playing at?" Lotal asked. "They should be waiting for us here."

We looked around and everywhere were signs of a hurried break-camp. Bones from meals lay discarded. Bloody bandages were left in the snow. Here and there a poteen was spilled, the wine inside a slick patch of ice on the snow now.

"They just upped and left," Lellik-jir said.

We made camp in one of the least damaged caves, eating some smoked fish and sleeping on the uneven stone floor. I dreamed of a field with flames that swept across to a marching army, then swept through them - and the army did not break step or even blink. I woke to the smell of cooking, as Kash roasted some little wood critters over a fire.

We went cautiously back to the other rockface camps, and then to look at the forest camps. Not a single person was there. They had withdrawn from the forest as if they knew I was dead.

Or as if there was something even more urgent afoot.

"Think of it this way," Lotal said. "Taric had nothing to fear from you. You had been sitting in the forest calm as a chestnut, and making no trouble for anybody. So the whole military circus was just a way to make peace with Nanje. They've broken your camps. It doesn't matter that they didn't get you. It's time for them to go home and crow."

I shook my head.

"Taric knows I'm a survivor. He knows I'd do what it takes to win, even if he can't bring himself to do it," I said. "He knows he has to kill me, stake me, show me dead to the world. That's the only way I won't be around to make trouble for him. And he knows that, just as well as I know he knows."

Lotal looked at me. "So why doesn't he?"

I chewed my beard.

"Dunno," I said at length.

The forest thinned, and we got to the outlying settlements of Forg again, and we fanned out and made ourselves very scarce. Lotal and I went as a pair to his half-sister Kellin's place and found her alone with the baby.

"Lotal," she said sadly when she saw him. She seemed happy that he was alive, though not as surprised as one might expect. "They took Rithak."

By this she meant her husband.

"Where?" Lotal asked. "And who?"

Kellin turned back to the grizzling child at her breast.

"They recalled the army a few days ago. Everybody thought you were dead, as they hadn't announced your capture. But they reckoned you were as good as gone, and so they mustered and levied and they've gone to Palt now."

I was so surprised I forgot myself.

"Palt?!" I almost shouted. "What's the army got to do at Palt?"

Kellin gave me a beseeching look with her eyes as the baby at her breast started crying at my raised voice.

"They said the sable army had returned," she said. "Palt's Castellan requested them weeks ago but they had been busy. Looking for you."

Lotal and I both shouted, this time.

"Malarchus?! But he's..."

"Sable banner?! They're gone..."

Kellin shushed us fiercely and took the child upstairs. We heard her humming and cooing as we whispered in a furious counsel.

"You saw him die. We were both there in the fire."

"No, nobody saw him die. We saw him in the Rokelbie manse as it burned. And we know nobody made it out alive. But we didn't see him die."

Lotal sucked his fist, and swore virulently.

His sister reappeared above us, her face red. She mouthed an emphatic order to us, silently, to get out of her house in Hiteh's name.

We hustled out.

Lotal circled outside, hands in his hair, and the same vulgar curse pouring forth from his lips repeatedly. Finally, he sat down and held his head in his hands.

"The obscenity bastard just WON'T obscenity lie down and obscenity die," he hissed.

"You should calm down," I said. "Your sister meant it."

"I obscenity HIS sister and I mean it," he said hotly. "I obscenity in the milk of his mother," Lotal shouted to the stars.

A window opened up, and I stepped back from Lotal, as if fearing the lightning bolt. As it was, his sister threw something at him and it hit him on the nape.

"What in Hiteh's name..." he said, and picked it up. It was a brush. "Who throws a brush?" he asked hotly.

"You need to quiet down with the impotent hysterical whining," I said evenly. "Honestly, you're almost as bad as Perringen."

He looked at me, suddenly silenced. The barb had hit home. Then he nodded.

"The bastard is dead. We killed him," he said in a low voice.

"I'm not arguing with you," I said.

"We burned him in the house."

"You and me both," I affirmed. "It was touching."

"So. What's all this about the sable army?" he demanded, his voice rising again.

"I don't know. But put your head back on your shoulders, and swallow your gall like a man, and maybe we'll live long enough to find out, eh?"

He paced awhile and took several deep breaths and then came back to me. His cheeks were still livid with anger and exasperation, but he was composed otherwise.

"Let's reform the crew. Lindo may be able to help," he said.

I clapped his shoulder.

"That's more like it."



_

[HuManBing]

The Siege on Forg

Lindo could indeed help. With the return of Taric and Nanje to the town, he went into hiding with Bela again, and as his family was once again placed under house arrest, he remained safe with an anonymous miner's wife.

That meant he had to help out with the housework and the chores, but when all was said and done, he managed to avoid being drafted to march with the army to Palt. We got word to him through one of the cloth merchants who always stopped by the house to sell to Bela. Lindo sent a trusted message boy named Settajir to the wall one night, and Settajir joined the men there in a game of draughts, intentionally losing badly to them to keep them occupied while we crawled over and made our way to Bela's house.

We crawled into the vegetable garden and threw a stone at the window where Sootri stood, peeling carrots. She gave a little squeak of surprise when the first stone hit, which Lotal found so endearing that he tried it again, despite my silent and frantic injunctions. Sootri did not squeak again and Lotal stopped after the second stone, as Bela came out angrily with a rolling pin.

"Bela," I whispered. And this time, my mother jumped instead, her hair flying as she spun around to me.

"Boy!" she said, her hand on her chest. "We thought you were..."

"No time for that," I said. "Is Lindo in?"

Bela swallowed. "Yes, he's in the cellar. Watch out, though. Nanje's still in town."

I had heard as much from the peasants at the thorpes.

"Where's Wilmar?" I asked.

"He'll be home for dinner," she said. Then, with a sudden fearful look that I had never seen in her face before, she clasped my shoulders. "Boy, get out. If Wilmar finds you here, he'll turn you over to Nanje, and have you skinned alive."

"I'll only be a moment," I said. But she held me firm.

"Wilmar's an officer now, a sergeant," she said. "He reports to Captain Nanje and no other. He's already had four young ones hung from the walls because they had helped your outlaws."

That stopped me. I began to realize the danger I was in. I looked at Sootri, who was staring at me, her face ashen white and her mouth a thin pink line in her face.

"Lindo," I said. "I will talk to him. Then I will go."

* ~ * ~ *

We hashed things out in a hurry that night. I would raise a host, and Lindo would get Settajir to let us in one night when the time was right. We would free Lindo's family and take the town back from Nanje. It would be just as we had done before, to proud, foolish Perringen.

On my way out, Bela caught me by the ear and smacked me hard across the face.

"Listen well, Boy," she said in a voice of steel. "Wilmar will kill you if he finds out. And yet you still go ahead. Damn you for doing this, and damn you for making your mother choose between the two men she holds dearest. It might have been better if you had died in battle, like you seem to be in such a damnable rush to do."

I opened my mouth to protest, and then saw with a start that her eyes were filling with tears.

"Mama, I..." I began. Then stopped, as she burst into weeping. This was more or less the first time I could recall her crying over me.

"Boy, you happened to me," she said, in a strangled sob. "I love you more than the world... but you must know that even though I bore you, I did not choose you." Her voice broke in her crying, and she had stuttered a bit through the tears before she could continue. "I chose Wilmar. And if the gods make me choose between you and him, don't think for a minute that you've got this one in the bag, you heartless little swine."

With that strange malediction, she let me go, her face collapsing, and I hurried out, stunned. Sootri wrapped her arm around Bela's shaking shoulders, strangely, as a slight figure next to my mother's solid height.

Sootri glanced my way, and gave a sad wave of her hand as we left - two women who loved me, each to their own private detriment.

* ~ * ~ *

Back in the fields and forests, we rebuilt our camps, confident now that Nanje and Taric both had bigger fish to fry. The cold snap gave way to a sudden, brilliant spring that almost seemed mocking in its warmth. Certainly, Lellik-jir had no sense of humor as the priests shook their heads over his toes, frozen purple with frostbite, and commenced with the amputation.

Every week or so, I got a message from Lindo, passed to the cloth merchant by Settajir. The written message came from Lindo, and Settajir read it and transcribed it into a pattern of dots and squiggles that corresponded to the pattern of the cloth.

It was an ingenious plan, and young Settajir was the one who came up with it. It certainly fooled me, who, being illiterate, couldn't even read my own name uncoded without Sootri's help. Gram, one of the boys who had spent some time under Dartoraigh's tutorship learning the script, was able to help me decipher the words.

After a month, we had about three score men and boys ready to fight Nanje. Unlike Taric, Captain Nanje seemed to have no inclination to keep tabs on me at all. There were no scouts, no spies, no patrols to evade. It was simply as though Nanje thought that his mere presence would ensure peace.

What did happen was Nanje finished the construction of his fortress outside Forg, and he moved most of his Flex-raised group there. This further deepened the rift between him and my townsmen, who regarded him as a vain and aloof commander who had to be humored at best and who looked down on the town he was assigned.

I began to understand why Trandamere had gone back to Taric, despite the controversies surrounding his handling of the war. At least Taric, for all his yeomanlike appearance and treacherous ways, was an able leader.

Taric also knew when to commit his forces. News of the battles against the enemy came back, and were equal parts frustrating and preposterous. Word was that the banner army was now fielding numerous cadaverous soldiers mounted on terrifying skeletal steeds. Others said that the army was composed entirely of women. Yet more reports said that Malarchus was seen personally leading charges against Palt.

In the midst of all these contradictory reports, one thing was becoming clear. Taric needed more men. He sent word back to Forg and Nanje grudgingly approved several columns of footmen and cavalry. Then somebody mentioned that those men would get to serve under a general, and Nanje's jealousy got the better of him.

He set off himself with most of the men in the fortress, heading chillwards to Palt, with who-knew-what harebrained plan for glory in his mind. The Flex garrison at the fortress was on a skeleton crew, and the actual army count inside the city was less than a hundred.

With about sixty men under my command, and the support of the townsmen, we would have a decent chance at rising up against Nanje's men and retaking Forg. I gave the nod to Settajir through the cloth merchant, and we gave the order to move out.

* ~ * ~ *

We armed and made some more of the splotchy-colored clothing that we had seen Rhemus the poacher wear for disguise, only this time we dyed them green to blend in with the grass and woods. Then at dusk, we headed to the town's walls, where Settajir had arranged for a bar fight inside the town to draw the attention of the guards.

We would go to the wall and climb up on ladders specially padded to keep us silent on the rungs, then overcome the guards at the gate, and open a side door. All we had to do was to allow our sixty men to enter the town, and then we would be home free.

Settajir had a friend of his, a serving wench who was known to carouse with the soldiers, stand in the setwards tower with a lantern to give the all-clear to our approach.

We got to the wall and saw her lamp burning. The sound of laughter, and even more distant sound of fighting, came over the wall in the spring time evening air.

I nodded to my men, and we started hoisting the ladders up. The light went out, and there was a commotion on the walls.

Lotal hissed at me, and I nodded, to show I had heard him. Then suddenly, dozens of lanterns opened, and I saw a fully armed militia host on the wall looking down on us.

"Hiteh's hand!" Lellik-jir bellowed. "Drop the ladders! Take them down!"

We scrambled, abandoning our plan, as my mind raced. Who had betrayed us? There was the code, and there was the merchant. To be sure, there were people inside taking part in this plan... but Settajir had told me they were doing this without realizing they were helping us. Chantra would have come to sleep with the soldiers anyway, and old Rudrick was always starting fights at the bar whenever anybody talked about Rashidian ale.

A voice from the battlements stopped me.

"Cob, is that you?"

I looked up, scanning for the face that I knew I would find. Only one man would have that voice.

"Bela been feeding you well, boy?"

I found him. Wilmar stood, arms at his side, surrounded by militiamen holding bows. And there was more.

"You left some of your worthless crap in the town," he said, and gave a wave of the arm. "Let me give it back to you."

Four bodies fell from the crenellations, then jerked to a halt in midair as the nooses tightened and snapped their necks. One was a fat man, still bearing the rich fineries of a merchant's garb. Another was a grey-haired grizzled lout, his nose red and pocked and his beersoaked tongue hanging from his mouth in a death jeer. The third was a plump-limbed woman, feet twittering in the air beneath her workstained apron. And the fourth was a fair-limbed boy whose eyes once read the Common script and whose fingers wove a coded message into cloth every week.

I lost control of myself. One moment I was aghast in the pale transfixed glare of recognition, and the next I was sprinting headlong towards the wall, hurling abuse and ranting at Wilmar. I loosed two arrows, uselessly, at his militia, and when my bow snapped in my fury I hurled the broken sticks up at him too.

He took my impotent rage with a half-smile.

"Give it up, Cob," he said, when I was struggling against Lotal and Lellk-jir. "Your plucky little insurrection comes to an end here. Put down your toy swords and your wooden horses, and leave the fighting to the King's Army."

He gave another wave, and his men cut the ropes, letting the four bodies fall ignominiously to the ground, limbs askew and necks stretched.

"Destiny has moved on from you, Cob," he said. "But in case you don't understand the concept, here's another. Your town has left you. Your mother and sister disown you. And while your country isn't busy fighting a real war, it thinks you're a tasteless joke."

I had half-drawn my sword despite Lotal's and Lellik-jir's best efforts, but this last sentence from Wilmar stayed me. Up above, the militia's arrows glinted in the light. They were smiling at me, indulgently almost, as if enjoying the show I had put on for them. But I realized it would only take a slight provocation for the joke to wear thin, and for them to loose their arrows at me and all my men.

I let the sword fall back into its scabbard, and I shoved Lotal and Lellik-jir off my shoulders. I drew myself up to my full height and called my response to Wilmar.

"You have a scar on your back that runs from between your shoulder blades to your right buttock," I said clearly. "There are two bones next to that scar, where your pelvis meets your spine."

I watched his discomfort. Evidently, he was fighting the impulse to feel for himself.

"Remember that location well, Wilmar, because that is where I will snap your spine in two. We'll see how well you tumble your women after that."

I turned and walked away, giving them my back, daring them to loose at me.

They never did.



_