Chris Evans - Ashes of a Black Frost

“Do you know why green fire or insects would frighten rakkes so much?” she asked Chayii.

“Are you asking if I was alive when rakkes still roamed the earth?”

Visyna mentally cursed herself. “I wasn’t trying to imply. . I just meant. .” she sighed and looked at the elf. “Well, yes, I guess that is what I am asking.”

Chayii brushed some snow from her hair and considered the question. “I was not there. There are many things in this world older than I, child.”

Visyna accepted the soft rebuke with a smile. “But I doubt few as wise, or as kind.”

“I have my moments,” Chayii said.

From a few feet below them, Yimt bellowed. “C’mon you mangy bastards! You want fresh meat, I’m right here! Maybe a little gamey, but nothing you brutes can’t choke down.”

Visyna turned to look. Yimt was standing on a boulder, his drukar casually resting over his shoulder, his other hand firmly on his hip and his caerna waving merrily in the wind.

“Oh my,” Visyna said,

“Indeed,” Chayii said. “Quite impressive.”

Visyna didn’t think her cheeks could get any hotter. “We should probably keep climbing,” she said, desperate to change the subject.

“Yes, I suppose we should,” Chayii replied, lingering a moment longer to watch the dwarf. She turned back to climb and saw Visyna looking at her. “I very much love my fool of a husband, but as we say in the Long Watch, ‘You may admire another tree’s nuts as long as you don’t harvest them.’ “

I was wrong, Visyna realized. My cheeks can get hotter.

Up on the hill, Konowa waited by the first dead rakkes, wanting to make sure no one overreacted when they saw them. Even frozen stiff and partially covered in snow, the creatures were still fearsome to look at.

“Just keep following the twine,” Konowa said, ignoring the questioning looks as the soldiers passed by the first bodies.

“Did you kill all these, Major?” Scolly asked, stopping and carefully prodding the leg of one rakke with the toe of his boot.

“They were already dead when we got here, must have frozen to death standing around asking too many questions,” Konowa said.

Hrem clearly got the message and grabbed Scolly’s arm, pulling him away. “C’mon, we need to keep moving.”

“But I want to know what happened to the monsters,” Scolly said.

“Just be glad they’re dead and can’t hurt you anymore,” Hrem said, nudging the soldier on.

“Weren’t they dead before and then they came back again?”

Konowa turned and looked at the corpses. Scolly was a full horn short of a unicorn, but he hit on something that worried Konowa. The rakkes had been dead. Extinct, gone and never to be seen again, until they came back. What would stop the Shadow Monarch from reviving them again and again? The answer was always the same. To hell with his dreams-if he had an ax in his hands when the time came, he’d cut Her down like any tree in the forest.

Yimt’s war cry, sounding much like first volley in a barroom brawl, echoed off the rocks. The rakkes’ reply drowned out anything after that.

“Okay, Sergeant, you little rascal, let’s see if you think it feels like nibbling bunnies,” Konowa said.

“What was that?” Visyna asked as she helped Chayii past the rakkes.

Konowa started. “Ah, nothing. You’d better hurry, it’s about to get very exciting around here.”

“Yes, because up until now our day has been fairly uneventful,” she said while his mother clucked her tongue at him.

“Right, sorry,” he muttered. He watched them go by, making a solemn vow that whether he continued in the service of the empire or not, he would, as a general rule, ensure that neither his parents nor his love interest accompany him out in the field. It just wasn’t good for his elfhood.

“. . between the eyes you smelly furball!” Yimt shouted, arriving at Konowa’s position huffing for breath.

“I’ve been called worse,” Konowa said, drawing his saber as he brought forth the frost fire. His saber lit at once, giving off a shimmering black, translucent light.

“Probably with cause, too,” Yimt said matter-of-factly, “but in this case I was directing my keen observations at the hairy brutes not that far behind me.”

Konowa spied them. “They appear to be suitably enraged, well done,” he said, taking a quick look behind him for the best footing.

“I do have a gift for the oral-torical,” Yimt said, resting splay-legged on a boulder while he sharpened the blade edge of his drukar on the rock between his legs. “You know, sometimes I think my talents aren’t fully utilized in the infantry.”

“Do tell,” Konowa said.

“Well, I’ve been wondering of late if a change in career might be called for. I’m not as young as I used to be. Now don’t get me wrong, Major, I do enjoy the fresh air and the travel and even the chance to meet the natives, although it loses something when you usually end up having to shoot them.”

As eager as the rakkes were to rip them to shreds, judging by the mewling and howling, the recent deaths of many of their brethren had instilled a degree of wariness as they stalked their prey. Still, they continued to climb up the rocks, oblivious even to the macabre sight of their mutilated brethren. They were out for blood. Their claws clicked on the rocks as they came on, growing louder as they jockeyed for position to be the first to sink their fangs into the fresh meat barring their path.

“I’ve been thinking along those lines myself,” Konowa said, a sense of relief filling him as he spoke the words aloud. Maybe it was time to hang up his saber and try his hand at something new, that is, if they did manage to survive this and destroy the Shadow Monarch. “What would you do if you left the army? Between the two of us, we’ve served longer than most of these boys we lead combined. It’s hard to imagine doing anything else.”

Yimt held up his drukar blade and admired the edge. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? After a lifetime of honing our skills in battle, what to do after you parade for the last time and walk out the barracks gates a free dwarf or elf?”

“I’ve a feeling you’ve got an answer.”

“Barrister,” Yimt said.

“Hold that thought,” Konowa said, as three rakkes were overcome by bloodlust and began scrambling over the boulder just a couple yards below them.

Yimt stood up on his rock and hefted his weapon. “Step forth, oh ye wretched and rabid rabble, and prepare to be judged.”

Whether the rakkes understood anything Yimt said was impossible to tell, but his voice was enough to send them into a frenzy. They charged.

Konowa reached forward and touched his saber on the hem of Yimt’s caerna. The coating of copper dust immediately burst into hundreds of tiny green flames. The night turned a sickly green as the flames roared to life.

Yimt leaped from his rock, looking for all the world like a green comet crashing to earth. He landed between two rakkes and dispatched them with quick, powerful blows of his drukar. Konowa fought the urge to join him, knowing his job was to wait.

Rakkes roared and screamed with fright as they tried flee. Yimt was a glowing green nightmare among the rocks, bounding from boulder to boulder cutting down the creatures with brutal precision. Unlike on the desert floor, however, the rakkes were hemmed in by the rough terrain and couldn’t escape fast enough. Konowa lost count after the seventh rakke went down.

“You’re flaming out!” Konowa shouted, noticing the green glow was rapidly dying. “Get back now.”

The rakkes appeared to be noticing it, too. Already, several of them were curving around to climb the hill on either side of them.