Ashes of a Black Frost

SEVEN

The shadow grew in size, filling the area on the road directly in front of Konowa’s musket. “Ready. . Aim. .” He hesitated before uttering the final command. The acorn against his chest was no longer cold. Konowa lifted his cheek from the stock and looked closer.

“Hold your fire! Hold your fire! It’s Rallie!”

Her Majesty’s Scribe appeared out of the dark in a swirl of snow. As it settled, her wagon and the team of camels pulling it became visible, making the sound of the creaking wood clear. She pulled on the reins and brought the camels to a halt. The beasts brayed and spit and shook their heads, clearly agitated. With the reins still bunched in her hands, Rallie stood up and looked at Konowa.

“Bit of a cold night for a walk. I thought you fellows might enjoy a lift.”

Konowa turned to the soldiers beside him to make sure they had lowered their muskets. It had been that close.

“On your feet,” Konowa said, relief making it difficult for him to keep his voice from shaking. “Get in the back and stay alert.”

They ran toward the wagon like a drowning man reaching for a lifeline, and Konowa realized that was pretty much the truth. He walked up to the front by Rallie, ignoring the camels, then turned to make sure all his men were aboard.

A set of large yellow teeth flashed out from the darkness and made a grab for Konowa’s right shoulder.

Konowa shouted and flung himself out of the way, punching wildly and missing. He landed hard on his back and his musket fell from his hand. He fumbled madly for his saber, which was now tangled up in his robe. His shako popped off his head as if the wings on it were giving it flight in the storm-driven wind. The blast of icy air on his scalp cleared his senses.

It dawned on him as he frantically fought to get the blade free that the black acorn hadn’t flared. He sensed several sets of eyes staring at him and he looked up.

“Come now, Major, the darling thing meant no harm,” Rallie said from six feet above him. Her four camels hitched in pairs in front of the wagon stared at him in direct contradiction. She sat back down on the wooden bench and teased out the bundle of leather reins in her hands.

“I beg to differ,” Konowa muttered, scooting back another few feet until he was well out of reach of the-less-than-darling thing’s teeth and hooves. Only then did he risk climbing to his feet, scooping up his musket first and then his shako. He placed it back on his head, all while keeping a wary eye on the camels. He heard a snicker and snapped his head around to look at the back of the wagon. Ten heads looking over the side of the wagon vanished in an instant.

Rallie’s reins snapped and the camels reluctantly turned away from him and began lumbering forward. Konowa let them pass, then jumped up onto the wagon to sit beside her. He set his musket between his legs and turned to look behind him. The soldiers were huddling together to stay warm in between bundles of supplies and what appeared to be at least some of the Viceroy’s things. They had their muskets pointed outward though and were scanning the darkness. None of them risked looking at Konowa, but a couple of them gripped their muskets tighter and leaned forward to indicate their dedication. Konowa growled, but he knew he didn’t blame them. He would have laughed, too, if it hadn’t been him on the wrong end of an angry camel.

“The sarka har can walk,” Konowa said, turning back to face the front, “and throw fire. Oh, and they explode now, too.”

Rallie sawed on the reins and the camels turned to the left, stomping through the deeper snow until they had turned the wagon around and were heading on the road in the same direction as the column. “Rather nifty, that,” Rallie said, her voice revealing more than a trace of fascination. “It seems they found some dragon eggs, Major. Lucky for us a brood nest only held no more than fifteen.”

“Dragon eggs. . Is the regiment okay? Did those trees attack?”

“The regiment continues much as it did before, although I must say the degree of overall jumpiness has risen sharply. Three members of the rear guard made it back in time to warn us and with the 3rd Spears leading the way, they dispatched another six of the sarka har. It was a remarkable sight, but I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”

“No, I have a pretty good idea what that looks like,” Konowa said. “And the Darkly Departed?”

“Stellar service, as always. Private Renwar made sure of it. Why?”

“We could have used their help,” Konowa muttered.

“Ah,” Rallie said, leaving it at that.

“But dragon eggs? How did they find any out here?” Konowa asked, choosing to change the subject. “I don’t recall hearing about dragons in these parts for centuries.”

Rallie didn’t answer right away. When she did, she chose her words carefully. “Do you think me. . mysterious, Major?”

“You’re a woman,” Konowa blurted out before he could stop himself. “I find your entire species mysterious.”

Rallie chuckled. “Oh what I wouldn’t give to see you appointed to the diplomatic corps one day. But truly, do I seem different?”

The heat generated from his close encounters was rapidly dissipating and Konowa shivered, pulling his robe closer around him. “If you’re asking if I think you know a lot more than you let on, yes. Do I think you have your reasons for that, yes. Do I care, not really. You’ve more than earned my respect and gratitude. I have no doubt that if there was something I needed to know, and you knew it, you’d tell me.”

“Why, Major, you’ve made an old woman blush,” she said, and by the timbre of her voice, he could tell she wasn’t joking.

“Why do you ask?” Konowa said. “You’ve never seemed too concerned about what anyone thought about you before now.”

Rallie stared ahead, her cloak billowing as the wind picked up. “I can accept the aches and pains of old age, but losing one’s memory wasn’t part of the bargain.”

Konowa sensed a shift in her mood to something darker. “What are you talking about? You’re as sharp as a box of tacks.”

Rallie nodded, but kept looking straight ahead. “It used to be two boxes,” she said. “I’m old, Major, older than you think, in fact, older than I think I think.”

It was tempting to ask her if she’d been drinking, but Konowa knew better. “We are going to make it through this, you know,” he said at last, hoping it was the right thing to say.

This time Rallie did turn and look at him. Her eyes were misty, but there was a smile on her lips. “That, Major, was the perfect thing to say.”

They rode on in silence with only the creaking of the wagon and the wind disturbing the night. Konowa fidgeted on the wooden bench. He was still keyed up from the battle. His thoughts were a mess. What was up with Rallie? He hoped it was just the cold and the dark. She’d always been a rock; the idea that even she could crack wasn’t something he’d considered. And what of Renwar? He wanted to rail at the soldier for abandoning them to the sarka har, but was it malice on his part, or sound judgment? A rear guard was often sacrificed in order to give warning to the rest of the column. Konowa tried to convince himself that’s what had happened, and failed. He shook his head and tried to think of something else.

“It’s cold,” he said, blowing on his hands before tucking them into the folds of his robe. A sudden thought popped into his head. “Will your creatures survive weather like this? All the ones you let go back at the canyon?”

Rallie turned and looked to the north before turning back. “Dandy and Wobbly are survivors. I’ve every expectation of seeing them again. The sreexes should be all right if they stayed together as a flock, but in this wind it’s difficult to say. Alas, it’s my brindos I fear for. A bit delicate, if you want to know the truth. I fear I coddled them, but they are such adorable animals, so how could I not?”

Konowa remembered the brindos as vicious-looking, armor-plated beasts that would just as soon trample you, but he kept it to himself. Rallie had even named one of them Baby. “If they had any sense, they would have headed south and away from this,” he said, looking around at the snowstorm. “I hear there’s nothing but grassland to the far south once you get through the desert.”

“I do hope you’re right, Major,” Rallie said, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. “They deserve a better fate than to perish here.”

“Don’t we all,” Konowa replied.

The wind blew between them piling up a drift of snow on the wooden bench. Konowa absently pulled a hand out of his robes and brushed at the snow and began tracing out stick figures.

“I believe she’s alive,” Rallie said.

Konowa looked up from the snow. Visyna.

His heart didn’t beat faster as much as it beat stronger, deeper, at the thought of her. He’d done his best not to think about her, focusing instead on the task at hand. The regiment came first. It had to. The lives, and the souls, of each and every soldier depended on him. Who knew what horrors would jump out of the darkness next? Still, if Private Feylan could see a future beyond this, maybe he could, too.

Images of burning trees and exhilarating fear still raced through him, but thinking about Visyna brought memories of her power. He stared out at nothing as he remembered how she infuriated him in the quiet way she held her hurt, aggravated when she raged back at him, and cut when her eyes judged him and found him wanting. But when she smiled. . He realized he was grinning and brought his hand up to his mouth to cough.

“Do you sense something?” he asked.

Rallie stared at him for several seconds before responding. “Not exactly, but nonetheless I believe it to be true. I certainly hope it to be the case, and hope is a power unto itself. It should not be taken lightly.”

“And the others?” Konowa asked, thinking of his parents, his soldiers, and his four-legged friend, Jir.

“I don’t know,” Rallie said. “I thought it best to get them out of the way when I sealed them in one of the tunnels. Perhaps I made a mistake in sending them that way, but at the time it seemed the proper thing to do.”

Konowa reached out and patted Rallie’s arm. As soon as he did it he tensed, expecting frost fire or something worse to happen, but nothing did. “You did what you thought was best. That’s all we can ever do. I’m sure they’ll appear again.”

The chuckle from Rallie caught Konowa off guard.

“I said something amusing?” Konowa asked.

Rallie snapped the reins and the camels brayed in response. “My dear Major, I do believe you’re starting to get the gist of this hope thing after all.”

A single transformed sarka har continued to trudge after the column, its pace slowed by the increased weight of several layers of dragon scale bark. Snow and ice started to accumulate in its branches, weighing it down further. It paused and shook itself, keeping the form of a soldier though it wasn’t sure what that was. It knew, however, that this shape would allow it to continue moving, and that need burned brighter than all others.

It sensed a vibration in the wind. It stopped and raised its branches, opening its leaves to better feel the disturbance. Two objects were approaching it at great speed. It saw no reason to defend itself, however. These were more sarka har. It lowered its branches and began trudging forward again, aware that the objects were now only yards away and closing fast.

Thick branches grabbed the sarka har on either side and lifted it high into the night sky. In its short, violent life the sarka har had never been out of touch with the earth. If it had had a mouth, it would have screamed. Then the other two sarka har let go. The tree plummeted to the earth, twisting and turning end over end as it fell. It smacked into the ground with a thunderous crack. Its trunk snapped in two, its branches broke and thick, brown ichor leaked from a thousand fractures.

The two sarka har landed and approached the fallen tree, tucking in their wooden wings as they did so. Unlike their brethren, these sarka har had transformed into the shape of the dragons the eggs had meant to hatch. Instead of many small leaves they had grown green-brown skins that stretched between branches forming large wings. They had no heads, but where a jaw would be a branch jutted out lined with ten-inch thorns as thick as an elf’s wrist.

Looming over the dying tree, each took turns slashing down with their spiked branch, tearing the stricken sarka har to bits. They grabbed its trunk and pulled, ripping it in half, and then half again. With each cut and tear more of the brown ichor flowed. As it pooled, the two trees moved to stand in it, absorbing the liquid through the remnants of their root system.

As they drank, they grew stronger. The scalelike bark covering their trunks thickened and took on a metallic sheen. More thorns sprouted along the leading edge of their wings.

When all the ichor had been absorbed, the two sarka har unfurled their wings and flapped them a few times. With each up and down movement their pace grew faster and more powerful. With a final pump the two trees leaped into the air and disappeared into the night heading due west.

“Are we there yet?” Private Scolfelton Erinmoss asked. Scolly wasn’t bright, but what he lacked in intelligence he made up for in perseverance. “It’s just that it seems that we should be there by now, shouldn’t we?”

No one answered, leaving the question to chase the darkness beyond the light of their lanterns until it could no longer be heard. Boots scuffed over a thin skiff of sand on the tunnel floor in a mindless rhythm, filling the air with a rasping pulse.

The elves led by Private Kritton marched in front and behind the small band of human soldiers with Visyna. Though there was barely room to walk two abreast, Chayii Red Owl stayed at Visyna’s side. Visyna opened and closed her mouth a couple of times to speak, but each time words failed her. Chayii’s jaw continually clenched and unclenched and sweat beaded on her brow.

“Soon?” Scolly asked again.

Visyna cocked her head to the side then caught herself. She had instinctively listened for Yimt to bellow another anatomically unlikely occurrence involving a unicorn’s spleen, Scolly’s mother in the moonlight, and quite improbably something to do with cabbage. The realization that Yimt wouldn’t be answering added to the darkness.

“No, Scolly, not yet,” Visyna said, a tightness in her chest catching her breath. Visions of the dwarf falling to the floor in the library refused to go away. Anger was still in the future. Right now it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other. She had no idea where they were going or how long they’d been walking. She was beyond tired to the point of feeling light-headed with weakness. She shook the grit from her sandals as she walked, wishing she owned a pair of boots. Her thin cotton leggings and blouse were not designed for a desert environment.

Visyna recognized the beginnings of a downward spiral and tried to find something positive to think about. The caustic feel of the ancient magic in the library was gone, but even then she had little energy left to try and pull power from the air around them. And even if she could, what then? They were heavily outnumbered, the soldiers were stripped of their weapons, and the tunnel was narrow and stretched on far beyond her sight. A fight in here would be a bloody mess with little chance of succeeding. Maybe, she wondered, they were already dead. Kritton couldn’t let them live, could he?

A low, rumbling snarl raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She turned and saw Jir limping behind her, his wounded shoulder causing him significant pain. She reached back with one hand and the bengar came close enough to let her fingers brush the top of his head. It surprised her that Jir should be so docile. She’d expected the elves to kill the beast out of hand, but in his wounded state the bengar appeared helpless. For reasons she couldn’t comprehend, Jir had been allowed to follow them, and he seemed to understand the arrangement and made no outward signs of aggression. It was as if the bengar understood that this wasn’t the right time to seek revenge.

A tongue like bark licked her hand and she pulled it back in surprise. She looked back at Jir, who returned her stare with an intelligence she had never seen before.

“I regret having to invade another creature’s mind, but it was necessary to keep him calm, and alive,” Chayii whispered between her teeth.

Visyna turned to look at her. “You’re controlling him?”

“In a manner of speaking. I have connected with him, drawing out much of his rage and need to hunt,” she said.

“What does it feel like?”

Chayii turned to look at her. Visyna tried to move away and put her shoulder into the tunnel wall. Raw, savage violence flashed in the elf’s eyes. Chayii’s lip curled into a snarl and the muscles in her neck rippled with suppressed energy. She rotated her head slowly, easing her shoulders down.

“I have never partaken of the flesh of another animal in my entire life,” Chayii said, “but it is all I can do not to rip out the hearts of these elves and feel their blood trickle down my throat.” As she said it her hands flexed as if she were extending claws.

Visyna hoped the horror that suddenly welled up inside her didn’t show on her face. She looked around quickly to see if any of the elves had overheard, but no outcry arose. Perhaps, like Konowa, these elves had lost much of their hearing from constant exposure to musket and cannon fire. She knew her own hearing had suffered since deciding to accompany the Iron Elves.

“Do you have a plan on when to release Jir and we can escape?” She opted not to voice her growing concern that they would likely share Yimt’s fate at the hands of Kritton before much longer.

Chayii shook her head. “I am doing what I can to control Jir. It is up to you, my child, to figure out what we do next.”

The hope of a moment before dimmed, but did not die. She’s right, Visyna realized. Thoughts of being little more than a damsel in distress brought blood rushing to her cheeks. I can do this. She brought her hands in front of her and gently began to weave the air. There was power here she could use. She lowered her hands and began to think. Even elves can’t march forever. They would have to stop sometime to rest. When they did she would have to be ready.

“Are we there yet?”

This time Visyna smiled. “Soon, Scolly, soon.”