A Darkness Forged in Fire

FOUR

Not more than thirty yards away across the clearing crouched four rakkes around a fallen tree.

Four seven-foot-tall, boulder-shouldered, black, scraggly haired rakkes all staring at Konowa with milky eyes deep-set in scarred, leathery faces.

But rakkes were extinct.

What Konowa was seeing was impossible, yet he knew they were rakkes. He'd seen the drawings on stretched hides handed down from generation to generation, heard the ancient tales, even held a skull of one of the creatures in his hands. They had lived high in the mountain, coming down like nightfall to ravage the land below. The elves of the Long Watch had hunted them down and destroyed them. Centuries ago, and an ocean away.

Yet all of that meant nothing now. Four rakkes were only thirty yards away from him. They stood up as one, teetering slightly in this new bipedal stance, like drunks one round away from falling. Long, curving claws slid out from pawlike hands that hung down by their knees.

The largest of them opened its mouth to reveal long, yellow fangs glistening with saliva. It screamed a high, mewling cry and the other three responded in kind, shaking the forest floor.

It was a sound as cold and black as the depths of time it should have been lost in.

"Cawwnnnawahhhh…"

Konowa's chest heaved, his breath rushing out as forcefully as if he'd been hit with a cannonball.

The largest of the four rakkes had clearly said his name. The creature's mouth contorted with the effort as it struggled to pronounce it, its tongue more used to moving around lacerated flesh than words.

"Cawwnnnawahhhh…"

He should have run away. It was the sensible thing to do.

Konowa fired his musket, then ran straight at the rakkes, screaming for all he was worth.

There was a loud crack, followed by a huge billowing cloud of acrid-smelling smoke flecked with sparks as the musket bucked in his hands. The musket ball passing through the chest of the rakke saying his name with a wet thwack, blowing out chunks of eerily white spine through the now gaping hole in its back.

Running hard, Konowa grabbed the musket by its warm muzzle and swung the weapon in a smooth arc at a second rakke's head. The musket struck flesh and bone, jarring Konowa's arms and shoulders and cutting off his yell as he bit his tongue. The closest rakke went down whimpering, its skull crushed like an eggshell, one white eye pulped and oozing down its cheek. Konowa laughed then, a habit he had in battle, tasting the salty liquid of his own blood in his mouth. He swung a low backstroke at another rakke, feeling the satisfying crunch of bones travel up the musket and into his own.

A set of claws whistled by his head and Konowa dove forward, ducking underneath. His right shoulder slammed into the body of a rakke, and he pivoted onto his heels and brought the muzzle of the musket upward with all his strength.

The rakke screamed as the steel barrel slammed into its stomach, but without a bayonet on its end the musket only enraged the beast. The rakke wrapped both massive arms around Konowa and crushed him to its chest. Konowa was lifted off his feet and swung wildly through the air as he desperately tried to let go of the musket and reach for the hatchet strapped to his calf. He heard a crack-and a bolt of lightning exploded in his chest as one of his ribs snapped. His head growing lighter by the second, Konowa finally pried his hands free and reached for the hatchet. His fingers crawled along his leg in a weakening search as the grip around his chest tightened.

He found the handle, only to have it drop from his fingers as he was physically pounded into the ground. Konowa's breath rushed out of him in a scream, and he lay helpless on his back, waiting for the end to come.

A pair of milky eyes came down to hover inches from his, and he could smell the putrid raw meat of the rakke's last meal. Konowa smiled in one last act of defiance.

Jagged white teeth flashed in front of his eyes and hot, steaming blood splashed across his face.

When he focused his vision again, all he could see above him were stars. Konowa drew in a shuddering breath and propped himself up on one elbow.

Jir held the rakke by the throat, shaking the massive beast like wheat in a storm. When Jir was satisfied it was dead, he opened his mouth, letting the rakke's body fall to the ground with a thump.

Three more dark forms dotted the clearing, and the smell of blood and death thickened the air. Calling on the last reserves of his strength, Konowa staggered to his feet, using his musket as a crutch. Jir looked up at him and bared his fangs, a chunk of rakke flesh hanging out the side of his mouth.

"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.