Chris Evans - A Darkness Forged in Fire

"Alone?" Konowa asked, refusing to believe any of this.

"Not alone," she said quietly, lowering her eyes. "We were attacked by those things and I was captured, and you know the rest."

Konowa was certain that he didn't, not by a long cannon shot, but he decided to leave it alone for the moment.

"By the way, what did you call me there a moment ago? I haven't heard that one before."

Visyna pursed her lips. " Jarahta Mysor. It means bloodless shadow."

Konowa shrugged.

"A being without soul," she said, "an elf not of the natural world. You carry weapons forged in fire, were marked by Her, and serve the Empire that oppresses my people. You have forsaken your destiny and have turned your back on the ruarmana."

Konowa gave her a questioning look.

"Trees. They are the bridge between the sky and earth. Only trees reach both up to the heavens and down into the bones of the land." Visyna brushed another strand of hair from her face and stared at him with intense curiosity. "What is your native name for them?"

"Lumber."

Visyna's eyes flashed with anger. "You are more iron than elf!"

He held up his hands for a truce. "Look, as scintillating as our conversation is, perhaps we could save it for another time?" The pain in his ribs was now a steady throbbing that threatened to pound him right into the ground. "Who knows what other beasties besides rakkes are out here, and I don't want to be around when they smell all this."

Visyna looked as if she wanted to say a lot more, but held her tongue and began to pick up Konowa's belongings from the ground, careful to avoid any made of metal.

Konowa watched for a moment, then put the remnants of his uniform back on, grabbed those items she wouldn't touch, and tramped straight into the forest without looking to see if she would follow. He knew Jir would come along when he was done eating.

After several minutes he took a quick look over his shoulder and was surprised to see her only a couple of paces behind him. She moved with the assuredness of an elf of the Long Watch. Konowa wondered just what would make a woman so clearly enamored of nature serve the Empire, the largest single destructive force in the world. He chose not to dwell on his own reasons; he was in enough pain as it was.

It didn't take long for Konowa to realize he was hopelessly lost. Chances of finding his hut tonight were as remote as the chances of his figuring out just where this day had gone so terribly, horribly wrong. Only this morning he had had the forest to himself, with just Jir and the damn bugs for company.

Now he didn't know what to think about anything.

The reappearance of extinct creatures, Her extinct creatures, speaking one's name, along with a royal decree also with one's name, had a way of changing one's outlook on life.

Looking back to see that Visyna was still close behind, he pushed on through the trees, holding his ribs and cursing each step. He consoled himself that if this was the worst life could throw at him, things could only get better from here.

Konowa chose to believe that lie for as long as he could. He succeeded for an entire day.

Now don't tell me you didn't see that," Private Yimt Arkhorn whispered, peering into the night from around the trunk of a bulbous wahatti tree. Fat, broad leaves like the ends of paddles hung down from the wahatti's branches, providing perfect cover.

"I can't see my hand in front of my face," Private Alwyn Renwar said, feeling in the dirt for his spectacles, once again cursing his decision to join the Imperial Army. Deemed marginal for frontline duty, Renwar had been unceremoniously transferred to about the farthest-flung outpost one could draw-the Protectorate of Greater Elfkyna. As if that wasn't bad enough, when he got there he found he had been assigned to one of the rear-echelon guard battalions, with the noble task of watching over the wagon trains of the Outer Territories Trading Company. The food was terrible, the discipline ferocious, the duty alternating between long stretches of numbing boredom and short, sharp bits of sheer terror (like now), and women most certainly did not flock to his side.

Alwyn despised the army, all three months of it so far. He was thousands of miles from home, sweaty, miserable, and scared, and partnered with of all people a dwarf who appeared to be a couple of batwings short of a potion.

"I never should have taken the Queen's gold," Alwyn muttered, the enlistment coin long since spent, on what he couldn't remember.

"Quit your nattering and look," Yimt ordered, spitting a stream of crute juice onto the ground. The rock spice made a sizzling sound as it bubbled on the dirt. "It's a shadowy thing, real big like."

"I still can't find my specs."

"You don't need specs to see it. It's a sight bigger than Her Majesty's twin jewels and the cushion she rests them on," Yimt said with a lecherous grin.

"I shouldn't even be here," Alwyn said, patting the ground frantically. "Piquet duty for a month and for what? I didn't do anything. You're the one that вЂaccidentally' bayoneted then cooked and ate the officer's goose. All I had was a drumstick."

"Quit your griping, Ally," Yimt said. "Squad mates got to stick together. An' like I told that officer, that goose of his came at me with a right wicked look in its eye. I was defending myself, I was."

"They'll write you up in a dispatch for bravery uncommon," Alwyn said, now scrambling around on all fours.

"My mum would like that. Here," Yimt said, shaking his head in disgust, "it's for certain there ain't no elves in your family tree, with the pair of eyeballs you got." He reached out a thick-fingered hand and pushed a leaf to the side. "The thing is right there, seventy paces and no more. Have a swig o' this drake sweat and take another look."

Alwyn put his hand down and felt his spectacles…covered in gritty crute juice. He quickly buffed the lenses against his coat sleeve before the crute ruined them and put them on, staring with some trepidation at the proffered canteen.

The canteen was typical army issue, made of wood in the shape of a small drum, a large cork stopper at the top. What wasn't typical was that it appeared to be glowing.

"Go on then, it'll clear up your sight right proper," Yimt encouraged, shaking the canteen in front of Alwyn's face. Drops of the liquid sloshed out and hissed when they hit the ground. The sound reminded Alwyn of a snake and a new, horrifying thought occurred to him.

"You checked that we weren't over a viper nest, right?" Alwyn asked, his bowels clenching. He still woke up shaking sometimes, remembering the writhing mass of slick, black snakes that had come boiling out of a hole Yimt had assured him would serve perfectly well as a latrine.

"It's a wild land; you never know what's around the next tree, or down the next hole," Yimt said, still holding out the canteen. "You heard the news crier this morning…all that talk by the new Viceroy about the Empire shining the light of civility among the heathen. That's like taking a lit match into a powder room, and guess who they'll be sending."

Alwyn didn't know what to think. A rider in the employ of the Imperial Weekly Herald had come into their camp on the outskirts of Port Ghamjal just that morning, usually a cause for celebration because it meant news from home. This time had been different, however, the crier speaking in high, flowery language with veiled references to things Alwyn couldn't begin to understand, and none of it sounded good.

"You think the new Viceroy is up to something?" Alwyn asked, still staring at the canteen. "After all the problems with that elf they had before, I figured this one would calm things down."

"Ah, the naheeviteh of youth," Yimt said, shaking his head. "Things have been calm. There ain't a war going on anywhere, leastways not any big ones. Let me tell you, lad, I'll take peace and boredom any day."