Ashes of a Black Frost

TWENTY-FIVE

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.

“They’re flanking us, Sergeant!” Konowa shouted again, getting ready with his saber.

“Coming!” Yimt yelled, turning and running back up to Konowa’s position as the last of the green flames went out. He leaned forward with his hands on his knees and gulped in air. “Definitely getting a bit long in the beard for this.”

Several rocks crashed into the boulders around them. “I think they’re starting to figure this out,” Konowa said, ducking as another rock sailed overhead.

“Maybe, but we’re slowing them down, and that’s what matters,” he said, standing up straight and drawing in a deep breath through his nose. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Konowa couldn’t help but stare. “Your caerna. .”

Yimt looked down. “Appears to have burnt right off. Think they’ll dock my pay for damaging military property?”

Konowa touched his flaming saber to the rakke corpses and the copper shavings caught fire, illuminating the night once again. “I’ll make certain they don’t,” he said, leaping to the next rock and making his way up. “In fact, I’ll make sure you get a special stipend specifically for uniforms so you never have to go without ever again.”

“Very kind of you, Major,” Yimt said as he stepped past him and ran ahead. His short, powerful legs and muscular buttocks pumping vigorously as he climbed. “I don’t mind telling you, now I really do notice the chill.”

“I imagine you would,” Konowa said, doing his best to keep pace, but not too fast. Behind him, the sound of rakkes scrambling over the rocks told him the green fire wouldn’t slow them down much longer.

They reached the next rakke corpse and Konowa simply lit it and kept going. The idea of making a stand at each one was no longer viable. Rakkes were ascending the hill all around them. He was sure a few had even got ahead of them, but their fear of what they thought the green fire really was held them back just enough.

“So a barrister?” Konowa said, finding the idea of the dwarf putting on the robes and powdered wigs of the legal profession fascinating and frightening. He stepped on a rock and slipped, twisting his knee. The pain simply added another layer to the blankets of agony covering his body. He bit off a curse and kept going. “Why spend your days in a courtroom with judges and rules? You don’t strike me as the type to prosecute some poor lad who stole a loaf of bread.”

“Prosecute? Major, I have my pride.” Yimt said, huffing as he bounded over a jumble of rocks. “I’d be representing the wrongfully accused.”

A couple of rocks bounced off boulders nearby. Konowa turned to look over his shoulder, but the rakkes were still far enough back to make their aim wild. “Okay, barrister, convince me.”

“Another time, Major. Shadows up ahead on the path,” Yimt whispered, pointing forward. Konowa saw them.

“Is it our group?”

“I don’t think so, because they are coming down.”

Konowa took a hurried look around and didn’t like what he saw. They were hemmed in by boulders on all sides. There was nowhere to run, and they were out of copper-covered rakkes. Growling and scraping noises echoed from all sides. They were completely surrounded. He looked up and could see the fort’s wall a little over thirty yards away. So close.

“Our best bet is to scream bloody murder and charge,” Yimt said, shifting his drukar from hand to hand.

“I thought that was a bad trait.”

“There’s a time and a place for everything, and in this particular time and place, a good old-fashioned berserker charge is just the ticket.”

Konowa flexed his fingers around the pommel of his saber and rolled his shoulders. They still had the frost fire to call on, and they were close enough to the fort that maybe help would arrive in time. It would have to do.

“Ready?” Konowa asked, moving up to stand beside Yimt.

“Time for these rakkes to hear my closing argument,” Yimt said.

Konowa groaned, but smiled. “You might want the Viceroy to write up your briefs. On three. One. . two. .”

A volley of musket fire lit the night, its sharp cracks cutting through the snow-deadened air. Rakkes screamed. Konowa stuck his head over the rock in front of him. Corporal Feylan stood fifteen yards away with Yimt’s squad.

“Hurry, Major, there’s a lot more coming up behind you.”

The pair climbed over the rocks and the fallen rakkes before running as fast as they could up to the squad. Yimt’s soldiers were already reloading their muskets in preparation for another volley. Konowa looked behind him and saw they were in no immediate danger.

“That’s enough. Let’s get back inside,” he said. “The regiment is still out there on the plain.”

A touch on his arm made him look down.

“Probably good for them to blow off a little steam,” Yimt said in a low voice. “With everything they’ve been through, I imagine it feels good to give a little back.”

Konowa thought about that. They hadn’t just seen hell, they’d been battling their way through it from the very beginning. So many good men had fallen. There were wives who would never see their husbands again, small children would grow up without ever knowing their father, and mothers who would grieve for their son for the rest of their lives.

He studied the faces of the soldiers. They were gaunt, their skin chalky white with cold, and their eyes red-rimmed. These were men who had to look over their shoulders to see where they had passed their breaking point, and still they were ready to stand and fight.

Konowa knew time wasn’t in their favor, but to hell with that. “Good shooting, men. A few more volleys should keep them out of our hair for a while. On your own time, tear those bastards a new one.”

There were smiles and grunts of approval as the soldiers continued reloading their muskets. The sound of ramrods rattling down barrels as his soldiers tamped down lead ball and black powder was music to his ears. This was the release they’d been longing for. Finally, and at least for the time being, they had the upper hand.

More rakkes appeared and clambered up the rocks to be met with a withering rain of lead shot. The soldiers began cheering and calling out to each other as they picked apart the charging rakkes.

The sharp vibration in his chest as the muskets spit out their lead balls put a grin on Konowa’s face. The rotten-egg smell of the smoke filled his nostrils. He tasted the bitter powder on his tongue and the constant ringing in his ears kicked up an octave.

The rakkes fell by the dozen, but there seemed to be two more ready to take the place of every one that died. The cheering fell away, and soon the joy of exacting an ounce of revenge became a grim task as wave after wave of screaming, roaring predators climbed over the rocks to get them.

“Major,” Yimt said, “they aren’t going to stop.”

Konowa shook his head in disbelief. The beasts just kept coming. He’d once thought the walls of the fort would be easily defended, but with an enemy like this nothing was safe.

“RSM, get these men inside, now.”

Yimt began barking orders and the soldiers started backing up, taking turns covering each other as they retreated to the safety of the fort. Konowa was the last to step inside, realizing that the fort wouldn’t be a safe haven at all. If they didn’t get out of it soon, it would be their tomb.