Don Bassingthwaite - Word of traitors

No. Maybe all his friends, but not everyone he knew. Geth looked around himself at buildings that leaned on each other like drunks and realized where his staggering footsteps had taken him. He turned around and found the low stone building that had once been a barn, though for some reason, it and the rest of the world insisted on spinning around him. He reeled up to it and banged his gauntlet against the double doors.

There was no response.

It took the last of his strength but he hammered his fist on the wood a second time. His legs gave out from under him and he slid down to lean against the stone wall. It was enough, though. The door opened and Geth managed a smile as he looked up into Tenquis’s startled gold-eyed, black-skinned face.

“You wanted to have another look at the sword?” Geth said.

Then the tiefling, his door, the street and all of Rhukaan Draal blurred together and he squeezed his eyes closed to shut them out.

25 Sypheros

Away from the city, the number of stars visible in the sky multiplied ten-fold. By turning her back on the few campfires that had been lit, Ekhaas could see far up into the depths of the night. Only a few of the moons had risen and most of those were thin crescents, bringing even greater life to the stars and, drawn like a veil across the southern sky, the bright band of the Ring of Siberys. She drew a deep breath of cool night air, so much fresher than that of Rhukaan Draal-except for the lingering stink of cold, wet ashes.

The burned shell of Tii’ator clanhold clawed the sky above the camp. Around the hill on which clanhold and camp stood, burned fields scarred the gently rolling landscape. In the eastern distance, the dead gray mists of the Mournland rolled under the starlight.

Ekhaas tried to fix the scene in her memory, a beginning to the story she would take back to Senen Dhakaan and to the Kech Volaar. Burned clanhold and shifting mists, pale starlight and bright campfires. Forty warriors drawn from Dagii’s army to accompany their commander forward to a scouting position.

No sign of the Valenar raiders save for ruined clanhold, fields turned to ash, and bodies-dar and animal-left to rot. When they’d reached the hill around noon, Dagii had ordered two pits dug below Tii’ator, one for people and one for beasts. The unfortunate soldiers conscripted to the duty were only just now heaping soil back on the mass graves.

Ekhaas put her back to the stars and the distant mists and looked over the well-ordered lines of the camp. After the games, a swift boat had borne her and Dagii-and Keraal-down the Ghaal River from Rhukaan Draal to a point closer to the village of Zarrthec. With some hard riding, they’d caught up to the bulk of the army. The Valenar hadn’t tested Zarrthec yet, but raiders had been seen from the walls, watching and studying before riding away. The town was filled with refugees from clan- and farmholds like Tii’ator; the tales they carried told of swift strikes, slaughter, and miraculous survival.

“Not miraculous,” Dagii had muttered to her. “The Valenar are letting enough live to spread fear and become a burden on Zarrthec.”

“I know,” Ekhaas had told him in return. “The strategy appears in stories of war preserved by the Kech Volaar.”

He’d given her a slightly mocking smile. “Ban-and now you’ll get to be a part of those stories yourself.”

At Dagii’s command, the body of the army had established its camp about half a day’s ride east of Zarrthec-the better part of two days’ march back from Tii’ator. Small squads of scouts, mostly goblins and bugbear ambushers, had left the forward camp at dusk, fading into the long shadows. Some had gone north toward Baar Kai and Lyrenton. Others had gone south. Most would be back by dawn. Elves saw as well by night as dar, but elf bows would be less deadly in the shifting shadows. Darkness was be a fickle ally in this conflict.

Back in Rhukaan Draal, the coronation should have taken place. Tariic would be sitting in the throne, Ekhaas thought, or more likely presiding over a great feast, all with the false rod in hand. She wondered what Geth and Ashi were doing: joining in the well-deserved revelry or standing nervous guard over the true rod?

A figure detached itself from the firelight and came to her. She recognized Dagii easily from his stance and the limp in his walk. He’d set aside his ancestral armor for plain scalemail-there was little point in letting the Valenar know that the commander of the enemy forces had left the safety of the army. Dagii’s lhevk’mor, the warlord who served him as a second-in-command, had suggested he remain at the main camp, but Dagii wouldn’t be persuaded. He insisted on seeing for himself what damage the elves had wrought on Darguun.

Ekhaas suspected his motives weren’t so noble as he claimed. He wore detachment as he wore his armor, but she knew his blood stirred at the call of battle just as much as any hobgoblin’s.

For a moment, another figure followed him from the fires, but Dagii waved him back. Ekhaas waited until the lord of the Mur Talaan was closer, then said, “Keraal has attached himself to you.”

“More tightly than he needs to,” Dagii muttered, ears flicking. “I took his pledge as a warrior, not a servant.”

Ekhaas looked back to the camp. Keraal had moved into the firelight and the flames glinted on the armor he now wore-and on the chains that still swung from his hip. He had adopted the makeshift weapon as his own. “Legends of the Koolt Dynasty,” she said, “tell of the Marhu Dresin Koolt, who was sold into slavery as a child but fought his way to freedom when he grew and seized the throne of Dhakaan from a wicked cousin. Yet even when he was an emperor, he still displayed his slave brand openly. The expression ‘I would rather be the sum of what I endure than of what I deny’ is attributed to him. Keraal has been your enemy and your prisoner. Now he’s trying to be your ally. Give him time to find his own pride again.”

“I am,” said Dagii, “but I don’t need him at my side constantly.” He glanced at her. “Walk with me a little ways. There is… something you should know.”

She kept her face and ears still, but her heart and belly trembled a little bit at his words. An instant later, she felt like twice a foolish girl as Dagii’s strong face turned dark with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a stammer. “That came out poorly. I meant that there’s something I need to tell you, but not in front of Keraal-” He winced and his ears went back. “Just come with me.” He walked past her, around the hill and down its slope.

Ekhaas followed, embarrassment turning to secret amusement at the thought that Dagii was as flustered as she was. They passed a sentry and Dagii’s was so curt, the warrior ended up saluting her instead. There was something odd about the cuff of leather he wore on the hand that remained still at his side. It seemed thick and strangely knobby. It took her a moment to realize that the thick leather was sewn with soot-blackened bells. She caught up to Dagii and fell into step behind him as they strode through tall grass. “Your sentry is wearing bells,” she said.

“All of them are,” he said. “It’s my idea. A knife or an arrow might kill silently, but even if a sentry falls, he’ll make noise.”

“Clever.”

His ears flicked. “I still have the reliquary of Duural Rhuvet. I sleep with it near my bed. I like to think it inspires me.”

Her tremble and her embarrassment returned. The reliquary-a sealed casket a handspan long and wide made of age-darkened iron bound with gold-had languished for generations as an anonymous trophy in a House Deneith memorial until Ekhaas had rescued it. In fact, it contained the brain and tongue of the last great strategist of the Empire of Dhakaan. Ekhaas had recovered it with the intention of placing it in the vaults of Volaar Draal, but on the day Dagii had ridden out of Rhukaan Draal to attack the rebellious Gan’duur, she’d pressed it on him. She hadn’t told Senen. Ashi was the only other person who knew of the gift.