Elizabeth Haydon - Rhapsody - Child of Blood

“What brings you here?” Achmed asked bluntly.

Ashe sighed inwardly; perhaps he shouldn’t have come. Before he could answer, Rhapsody did it for him.

“We invited him, Achmed; you were there.” She turned to Ashe and looked up into his hood, her glance not exactly in line with his eyes, but close. “We’re very glad you came, aren’t we, Jo?” She smiled, and Ashe felt his knees tremble a little.

“Yes,” said Jo.

“When are you leaving?” Achmed asked.

“Achmed! Please forgive him, Ashe. What he meant to ask is how long can you stay? We’ll need to ready accommodations for you.” Rhapsody glared at Achmed and then smiled at Ashe again; he was finding it hard to break his gaze away from her, but it was necessary to keep alert about his surroundings.

“I’ll stay as long as I’m welcome,” said Ashe.

“Thanks for coming; it’s been nice seeing you,” said Achmed.

“Ignore him; he’s trying to be funny, but he’s not good at it,” said Rhapsody, her face flushing with embarrassment and anger.

“I was about to say that I’ll need to be on my way fairly soon anyway,” said Ashe, amused by the kaleidoscope of Rhapsody’s face; it kept turning from an expression of warm welcome to white fury and back again. It was a face he could spend a very long time watching without growing bored.

“We’ve been readying the ambassadorial quarters in expectation of the emissaries of the various lands and factions, now that we have signed a pact with Roland and Sorbold. You should be fairly comfortable there.”

“Excuse me?” Ashe had heard about the rout of the army of Roland; it was impossible to escape the news. He had not heard that they had reached any kind of treaty; the three of them had only been in Ylorc for a few months. It seemed impossible that they could have even begun discussions, let alone signed a pact, when the peace treaty between Roland and Sorbold themselves had taken close to two hundred years to resolve. It was another cog in the wheel, another piece of the puzzle to the influence that these three had.

There were three; a significant number, though Ashe had no real belief in or fear of ancient prophecies. It was as obvious that they were not of this land as it was that Jo had been born here. Still, in the presence of such overwhelming and unique power one could be forgiven for giving in to the desire to believe again in hopes long abandoned.

Rhapsody laughed. “You needn’t sound so surprised. A few weeks ago we signed a non-aggression pact and trade agreements with Roland, and a week later with Sorbold as well. The Bolg will be a force to be reckoned with again, but this time as an economic entity, not a marauding one.”

As if to mock her words, in the distance a clamor went up, echoing through the rock walls. Grunthor dashed from the room and into the hallway, followed by the others a moment later. They didn’t need to go far; the messenger met them in the corridor outside the Great Hall. The Bolg guard was covered with blood.

Rhapsody pulled up short, listening to the exchange between Achmed, Grunthor, and the herald. She felt Ashe stop behind her.

“What’s happening?”

“The Hill-Eye, the last of the renegade tribes, are attacking; idiots. Achmed has been working to bring them into the alliance, but they have resisted, and now they are burning some of the villages of the other tribes that have sworn allegiance to him.”

“Hooray!” came Jo’s voice from behind Ashe. “I’ve been in the mood for a good bloodletting since Spring Cleaning; it’s been so boring around here. I’ll get your bow for you, Rhaps.” She took off at a sprint in the opposite direction toward their quarters.

Ashe touched Rhapsody’s shoulder; she seemed distressed, but not afraid. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Well, you’re welcome to pitch in if you’d like; at these times we can use all the help we can get. The Bolg are only recently organized and tend to panic and disperse when battle comes, especially with the Hill-Eye; they are the fiercest of the clans and bloodthirsty. It’s in the master plan to spare the noncombatants, but it’s not easy to get Grunthor to stick to that sometimes, especially if he’s angry enough.”

Ashe nodded. “I’ll be glad to help you. Just point me in the right direction.”

Rhapsody smiled. “Thanks. Follow me.”

The fires that burned, lighting the exterior causeways of the Teeth, had been fed with rancid fat, contributing to the burning nausea Rhapsody felt encroaching on her lungs. She coughed, trying to clear the smoke from her sore eyes.

She had just delivered a swift, stinging blow to the thigh of the last Hill-Eye guard, knocking him to the ground, when a bony hand encircled her upper arm.

“Look,” the sandy voice directed; even from just one word she sensed irritation.

She turned amid the diminishing mayhem to watch their guest in action. Even within the swirl of his cloak, the training and speed was undeniable.

He was standing alone, as he had been for most of the battle, knee-deep in casualties of his own making, sidestepping the awkward passes of the Hill-Eye with no apparent difficulty. It was almost as if he were trying to avoid killing them in the hope that refraining would be proper etiquette for a guest.

In a flurry of moves much too fast to follow with the eye, Ashe spun, his sword flashing blue in the dark. The remainder of the Bolg on him fell, one by one, like cards.

“He’s good,” Rhapsody murmured, watching him step artlessly in front of Jo, deflecting the blow that had been aimed at her. “I think he’s almost as fast as you, Achmed. Hhmmm. I didn’t think I’d ever see your match. What do you think, Grunthor?”

“Nice form,” the Sergeant agreed. “What about you, sir? Whaddaya think?”

Achmed’s brows drew together as they blackened with anger.

“I think he’s a lot more dangerous than I originally gave him credit for.”

The deepest part of the night had passed. Achmed sat alone in the dark, thinking.

The events of the day had been irritating and disturbing to him. It was not the failed assault on Canrif that bothered him; he had been anticipating the last-gasp attempt to drive him out. He was more troubled by the increasing revelations of the power of this stranger who was haunting their halls, following Rhapsody like a shadow.

He wondered if Ashe’s arrival and the Hill-Eyes’ poorly planned raid were coincidental, especially given what he had seen in the lands around the White Tree and all the way from Navarne to Ylorc. Seemingly peaceful places erupted in strife and bloodshed out of nowhere, to return to foggy bewilderment as they tried to fathom the cause of the violence. The prospect that this danger had entered Ylorc angered him greatly. Far more upsetting, it worried him.

He and Grunthor had met after the assault was quelled. The Sergeant Major only had a short time to talk before he departed with the army to round up the Hill-Eye stragglers and subjugate the last renegade territory once and for all, but he and Achmed had been of one mind in their assessment of Ashe. Prior to seeing him in action, Achmed had written him off as a wastrel, a gadabout with delusions of gentlemanship. Generally his judgments did not prove so wrong.

Whatever else Ashe was, both Achmed and Grunthor agreed there was no doubt that this stranger was formidable. What Achmed couldn’t understand was how he had missed this fact in the first place.

Certainly he had the capability to size up an opponent, to determine by the way one stood or moved what his abilities in combat were, at least. But there was something about Ashe that defied his capacity to do so. There was a haziness to him, a lack of definition or even visibility that made Achmed more uncomfortable than he had ever remembered being. That discomfort was heightened by Rhapsody’s utter obliviousness of the stranger’s odd vibrational cloaking.