Blackveil (13 page)
Laren folded her hands on the table before her. They were roughened and calloused, and nicked with scars. They looked old to her. Just as old as she sometimes felt, especially when she got up in the morning all aching and stiff. She could appreciate Elgin’s desire to stick to his life out here in the cabin—no need to adapt to the expectations of others, which, she thought, was all she’d ever done. She couldn’t remember a time when there weren’t orders to follow, or to issue. Her life was not her own, yet she did not resent it, for the messenger service gave her purpose.
Elgin was well beyond her in years, but she was now older than he was when he retired. In fact, most Riders left the messenger service within four or five years, if they were not killed doing their duty first. But the calling still clung to her as strongly as it had when she first came to the service some twenty years or more ago. It appeared there was work for her yet to do, so long as she was not cut down in the process.
“There is another reason I request that you come to assist in the training of the new Riders,” she said. “The king is preparing—quietly, mind you—for conflict. He does not know when or how, but he wishes to be prepared.”
“Conflict? Is this about the Blackveil business?”
Laren nodded. She had regularly apprised him of all that had come to pass during each of her visits, and especially the involvement of the Green Riders. “Mornhavon the Black will return sooner or later, and we’re already contending with Second Empire. We’ve word they’re consolidating their forces.” Green Riders had died trying to bring back the information.
Elgin scratched a bristly cheek, deep in thought. Presently he said, “I am an old man. What am I against all that?”
“We’re not asking you to solve the world’s problems,” Laren replied. “Just to help us so we can take care of it. Maybe you don’t remember how young some Riders can be. Our newest boy just turned twelve. Your experience will help give them what they need to survive—prepare them for the storm to come.”
He turned away and she wondered if she said the wrong thing, hit too close to his heart. The cabin dimmed even more and creaked in the wind. Sparkling snow blew through cracks in the chinking and beneath the door. The horses and Bucket watched with ears perked, as if expecting some momentous proclamation.
But Elgin remained silent.
“I’d better get going,” Laren said, rising from her bench. “I want to reach the city before it gets dark. The clouds were building like it might snow again.”
Elgin nodded. “Best take your chestnuts with you. Should be ready by now.”
Shortly after, roasted chestnuts warmed Laren’s coat pockets as she sat astride Bluebird. It was already snowing and it looked like it could really pick up.
“Be careful,” Elgin said from his doorway. Snow mounded the path to either side of him, and a thick layer overhung his roof. “I’ve lost some sheep to critters. Been thinking about getting a dog.”
Laren thought a dog a sensible idea. “You be careful, too, Chief. And if you decide to give us a hand, know that you’ll have the gratitude of your king. And me.”
He made a dismissive gesture and went back inside. Laren reined Bluebird down the path away from the cabin.
“I think he’s interested,” she confided to her horse. “At least he didn’t tell me to go to the five hells.”
Bluebird snorted and Laren slapped his neck.
The snow fell heavily, dropping through the woods in curtains. It damped down the world, blanketing it all in an eerie hush, except for the creak of a tree limb or the thud of Bluebird’s hooves.
Laren was glad the path from Elgin’s cabin was wide enough for his cart, for it made the way obvious in the snow, when a narrower track would have been obscured, the terrain and sameness of the trees disorienting. She supposed if she got lost, Bluebird would know the way home, but it was, nevertheless, reassuring to have a clear path to follow.
She rode on, warm in her fur-lined greatcoat, confident in spite of the weather and the fading daylight. The rhythm of Bluebird’s steady pace and the mesmerizing flurries floating down down down, allowed her to lose herself in an array of mundane thoughts. What was the next day’s schedule? Meetings. There were always meetings, and piles of paperwork, and checking on the progress of the new Riders. Many did not have even a rudimentary education, so in addition to learning court etiquette, how to handle a sword, and ride, they must also be taught writing, reading, figuring, and geography. The long winter had been a bonus, keeping her senior Riders available to assist.
A howl raked the serenity of the forest. Bluebird sidestepped nervously. Caught unaware as she was, Laren kept her seat by sheer instinct. No sooner did she steady Bluebird when the howl came again.
Wolves?
she wondered.
she wondered.
More cries followed, some closer, some farther away, and the hair on the nape of her neck stood.
Ordinarily she wouldn’t be too concerned about the wild creatures, as they tended to shy from people, but with such a severe winter, she imagined they were desperate for a meal. Bluebird was definitely a prey animal, and if the howling creatures were starving, they would overcome their natural fear of her.
She urged Bluebird forward into a trot, peering into the graying forest, and the cries came again, louder, closer, all around her. If she pushed Bluebird into a gallop, wouldn’t it just incite pursuit?
When the cries filled the forest again, they didn’t sound quite right. Not exactly like wolves or coyotes. There was an almost human quality to them.
Groundmites.
“Bloody hell,” Laren muttered, and from the corner of her eye she caught the movement of a manlike figure lumbering among the trees. Manlike, but not human.
Then she saw another and another ...
She drew her saber and jabbed her heels into Bluebird’s sides. If winter had been rough on other creatures, it was certainly hard on groundmites. Starvation must have driven them this far into Sacoridia.
Bluebird kicked up snow as he lunged forward. Laren crouched low over his neck, the hilt of her saber gripped firmly in her gloved hand.
The groundmites, no longer attempting to conceal themselves, rushed her and Bluebird, waving clubs and primitive hatchets, their cries chilling. As Bluebird charged by them, Laren saw only a blur of their furred and snarling faces. The groundmites flung themselves out of the forest into the path trying to block her way. She cut one down, then another, blood spraying across snow.
Enough of the creatures scrambled into the path that they obstructed it; others charged in from the sides. Laren spun Bluebird on his haunches only to find the groundmites had cut her off from behind as well. They had effectively tightened the noose around her.
Her only chance was to fight through and make for Elgin’s cabin, and there they might make a stand.
She hacked off a clawed hand that reached for Bluebird’s bridle and blocked a descending hatchet. She drove her saber into the groundmite’s neck.
These groundmites were cloaked in rags and hides, pitiful, really. None appeared to be wearing armor, which improved her chances.
Bluebird kicked one from behind and she heard a wet sound like a melon being smashed. A club hammered her left thigh and she swept her sword over Bluebird’s neck to slash the groundmite’s face. It mewled in pain and fell away.
Bluebird plunged at their attackers, kicked and bit them, trying to break free even as he received blows all over. It only enraged him more and he bellowed a challenge before striking down another groundmite with his front hooves.
Laren was tiring, and she knew Bluebird was, too. If they did not break free soon, they’d be in deep trouble.
None of the groundmites seemed to be armed with a sharp blade, and just as she was thanking the gods for it, a short sword swept at her from out of nowhere, catching her coat. Chestnuts poured from her slashed pocket.
She parried a second blow, then hacked into the skull of another groundmite that clubbed at Bluebird’s face. Her saber stuck in bone, and in that moment, the short sword flashed toward her.
She saw the inevitable. She would fall, and so would Bluebird.
ARROWS
A
s the short sword drove toward Laren, everything slowed. It had happened to her before in battle, this stretching of time, allowing her to absorb minute details. She saw the twitch of the groundmite’s catlike ears, its yellow fangs, and its gaunt form beneath its rags and patchy fur. Yes, it was definitely suffering from starvation.
s the short sword drove toward Laren, everything slowed. It had happened to her before in battle, this stretching of time, allowing her to absorb minute details. She saw the twitch of the groundmite’s catlike ears, its yellow fangs, and its gaunt form beneath its rags and patchy fur. Yes, it was definitely suffering from starvation.
She saw the blade, rusted and dirty and notched. She discerned individual snowflakes drifting down between her and the groundmite.
Even as time stretched, however, she could not free her own sword to block the thrust.
What a pity, she thought, for there was so much left to do, so much left unresolved. She would not be around to support Zachary as his kingship was tested to its utmost. She would not be there for her Riders when so many of them were young and untried.
And what about Melry, on the cusp of womanhood? A difficult age. Laren had adopted her when she was found abandoned as a baby in the Rider stables. Now Laren was abandoning her.
As the sword’s point closed in, hoofbeats that were not Bluebird’s pounded the ground.
“Red!”
Elgin cried.
Elgin cried.
Just before the sword impaled Laren, just at the last, possible moment, Bluebird reared.
The sword missed. It missed and stabbed into her saddle, through leather, into the wooden frame.
Before Bluebird reached the apex of his rear, arrows whispered by her, skimmed so close she felt the trailing air. White arrows slicing through the flurries on a resolute and deadly course.
They were not meant for her.
They were aimed as if to anticipate her movements and Bluebird’s, so perfectly coordinated she wondered if the archers moved through time differently. If everything slowed for them, too.
The arrows thudded into the groundmites and they fell away. By the time Bluebird’s front hooves touched ground again, none remained standing. Groundmites lay piled around her, bristling with white arrows.
Bluebird’s sides heaved and he blew puffs of steam from his nostrils. Elgin sat astride Killdeer some paces ahead of her. Even at this distance she saw how wide his eyes were.
Taking a breath—had she breathed at all during the attack?—she turned her gaze toward the source of the arrows. There, all in white against the backdrop of snow, stood three Eletians, each holding a longbow.
Elgin was the first to move, trotting up on Killdeer and glancing sidelong at the Eletians.
“Red! You all right?”
“I ... I think so,” Laren replied, stunned just to be alive. Westrion was not ready to deliver her to the heavens this day after all. She nudged Bluebird forward, and once she was clear of the corpses of groundmites and the trampled, crimson snow, she dismounted, staggering when she touched ground. Already the exertion was catching up with her, and she’d be feeling it for days. Her thigh throbbed where she’d been clubbed.
Not as young as I used to be,
she thought, as she often did. She wiped the blood off her saber in the snow and sheathed it.
she thought, as she often did. She wiped the blood off her saber in the snow and sheathed it.
Elgin dismounted and led Killdeer over to her. The mare did not look the least bit winded, despite what must have been a hard ride from the cabin.
Elgin looked Laren over as if to make sure she was all right for himself. “I heard that howling,” he said, “and knew you were in for it. Killdeer was practically busting the wall down to get out.”
Laren noted he’d ridden out bareback, hadn’t even taken the time to saddle the mare. He wore his old Rider-issued saber, the sheath and belt well oiled. She guessed the blade was in just as fine shape and honed to a razor’s edge.
“Who are your friends?” he whispered.
Laren glanced at the Eletians. Two were picking among the dead groundmites, retrieving arrows. A third approached, striding effortlessly through—on?—the snow.
Laren recognized her flaxen hair, drawn back in braids and adorned with white feathers. Graelalea was her name. She was sister to Jametari, prince of the Eletians.
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