Chris Evans - A Darkness Forged in Fire

"Easy, boy, I'll never be that hungry," he said, carefully sidestepping the feeding bengar to check that the other three rakkes were once again extinct. The large one that he had shot was clearly dead, the fist-sized hole in its back already swarming with flies. He could see the same was true of the second one he had hit, and Jir was making a meal of the third's innards. That meant Jir must have also killed the fourth one.

Konowa looked around for the body, spying one crumpled twenty yards away. He limped toward it, but immediately saw that something wasn't right.

As he got closer he realized it was an elfkynan woman. So where was the fourth rakke? He looked back at Jir, but the bengar showed no sign of unease as it ate. The fourth creature must have fled and never looked back.

Konowa let go of the musket and stumbled the last few feet to the woman's side, kneeling carefully while still holding his aching ribs. The woman lay facedown, dressed in huntsman's garb of toughened linen dyed brown and green. Like most of her people, she had dark skin, darker even than Konowa's. With only starlight and his own elvish eyes, Konowa could just make out the intricate pattern of tattoos that adorned her arms. A single plait of long brown hair with dull-looking bits of pearl woven in it snaked down her back and lay in a coil on the ground. Bracing himself for what he would find, he grabbed the body by the shoulders and gently turned it over.

Only the ingrained reactions of a warrior saved him as a thin stiletto dagger flew up. Konowa jerked forward so that the flat of her palm, and not the blade, hit the side of his neck. Before she could thrust again, Konowa butted the top of his head into the side of her face and rolled out of range.

A startled yell pierced the meadow and Jir growled in surprise, lifting his blood-stained muzzle into the air, spewing bits of meat. Konowa fought to stay conscious while he looked around for his musket. He finally spotted it, but it was too far away. The woman was already on her feet and advancing toward him when she suddenly wobbled and sat straight down, the stiletto tumbling from her hand.

Konowa's eyes went to the dagger. The blade gleamed unnaturally under the starlight, and he realized it was polished wood, not unlike the oath weapons of the Long Watch. He looked back at her and waited a moment to see if dropping the dagger was a ploy, but she just sat there, her eyes unfocused. The head butt must have done the trick after all. Choosing caution as the better part of valor, he sat perfectly still and concentrated on regaining his breath. While he did so, he studied the woman across from him.

She was definitely no elf. Konowa stared at her alluring face, drawn in by the almond-shaped eyes. He guessed she was no more than twenty, although the elfkynan's exotic look meant matrons in their fifties could look much younger. Whatever her age, her smooth, dark skin and full lips were a wonderful change after having only Jir's furry face to stare at. And then there was the matter of her rather quick reflexes. Konowa tried to chuckle, the absurdity of the day growing by the minute, but the effort sent stabbing knives through his chest and he gave up.

When the pain finally subsided to a more manageable level of agony, Konowa slowly stood. Speaking Gharsi, the most common of the twenty-three languages spoken in Elfkyna, Konowa hoped he could make himself understood. "I don't want to hurt you," he said, "well, again, anyway." Each word was a sharp stitch in his rib cage.

The sound of his voice jarred her back to sensibility and her eyes narrowed. She scooped the dagger from the ground in one swift motion. Konowa remained still, hoping she didn't have the strength to come at him again. He wasn't sure he had any left to fend her off if she did.

"Who are you?" she asked, answering in the common tongue of the Empire, marking her as educated. She risked a quick glance around the meadow. "And what are those things?"

"My name is Konowa," he said, slowly lowering his hands. "Those things…are rakkes. Creatures perverted by a dark magic. They were supposedly destroyed a long, long time ago." Suspicion made him cautious, despite the pain. "Their master was an elf-witch…"

Her eyes narrowed. "I saw no elf-witch," she said coldly. She looked over at the dead rakkes scattered about the clearing. "So why are these things here, now?"

Konowa stared at her for a long moment before answering, trying to gauge her sincerity. He finally decided she wasn't responsible for them…though he hoped his reasoning went deeper than his immediate attraction to her. "I couldn't begin to guess," he lied, refusing to contemplate why and how one of them called his name. "They shouldn't be. They're supposed to be extinct."

"So you keep saying," she said, the skepticism in her voice plain.

"Well, if something's extinct it should bloody well stay extinct, right?" Konowa said, suddenly exasperated by it all.

She opened her mouth to say something else, then paused, looking at him with renewed interest.

"Your name again?"

"Konowa," he said, feeling a sudden sense of dread.

"Colonel Konowa Heer Ul-Osveen of the Iron Elves?"

If blood could freeze in this steaming cauldron of a land, Konowa's did. Only minutes ago he'd thought his past was as dead as rakkes were supposed to be.

She looked up at him with eyes as green as the forest around him, and he saw his doom in them.

"The slayer of the Viceroy?" she asked again, finally sheathing her stiletto and rising slowly to her feet.

"Among others," he said, sinking to the forest floor.

She walked over and looked down at him. "I've been looking for you."

She took a deep breath, brushed a strand of hair from her eyes, and from within the hunting jacket she wore pulled a thin paper scroll bearing a large wax seal, which she expertly broke with a fingernail. Konowa closed his eyes and prayed for deliverance.

"Konowa Heer Ul-Osveen, by royal decree as dutifully witnessed this day in the Greater Protectorate of Elfkyna of the Calahrian Empire, you are hereby ordered to resume your commission as an officer in Her Majesty's Imperial Army effective immediately. Oh, and sir," she continued, a look of concern crossing her face, "I strongly suggest that at the first opportunity, you take a bath and put some clothes on. Your time of communing with nature is at an end."

Konowa sighed. If anything was to deliver him from this fate, it was probably out lost in the bloody forest.

No."

She let the scroll roll up with a snap and kicked a nettle with her foot, sending it bouncing toward Konowa and forcing him to turn over onto his side. He winced with pain as tiny flashes of light popped and winked before his eyes. Despite the fresh reminder of his ravaged rib cage, he noticed for the first time that she wore delicate-looking sandals of woven green grass revealing portions of her slender brown feet. She couldn't have walked far at all in those, he realized. "You will report to the nearest encampment at once," she said as if speaking to a slightly dull child. "Besides, we'll be safer with the army than out here in the forest with those extinct creatures around."

He ignored the bait, focusing instead on the fact that there was no tremble in her voice, no hint of fear at all. Not even the sound of a bone snapping flustered her as Jir tore through a rakke's pelvis. Perhaps, he conceded, what they say about women is true: They are tougher.

"Is the army near?" Konowa asked.

"They were three days by horse to the south, on the other side of the Jhubbuvore," she said, naming a river Konowa vaguely remembered crossing years earlier. "But that was over a week ago. Where they are now I do not know. We should start at once-you are clearly in no condition to fight off any more of those beasts."