Die for the Flame (15 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
he messenger found Clarian at a scout camp, seated alone in a tent, the front flap rolled up. He was bandaged and was leaning over a map. A brazier smoked away next to him, and a dry blanket was draped over his shoulders. The pain from the lance wound and the subsequent stitches from the physician caused him to hunch over. The lance had sliced across his chest, scoring his ribs, but had not punctured him. The rain continued to douse the land, and the clouds pressed down low and dark.

At the insistence of the messenger, Clarian painfully mounted his mare and rode away from the battlefield, making a wide arc behind low-lying hills. The wind was cold and snapped at his soggy cloak, and the rain fell into his eyes, blurring his sight. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and just managed to jerk his horse to the side in time to avoid a fast-driven wagon careening through the muddy track. The driver, who didn’t recognize Clarian, yelled at him to get out of the way as he swept by.

The riders soon arrived at a camp set back a good distance from the battlefield. Tents were being erected, and wagons pulled in with supplies and soldiers riding in their beds. Fires smoldered as cooks attempted to keep them burning. To the far side were the bodies of the Karran dead, lying in a meadow in neat rows. The messenger led Clarian to a canvas shelter under some trees where Rokkman, Martan, Amran, and several other officers stood staring at a map.

Clarian raised his eyebrows at Martan as he entered. “You’re back.”

Martan, his face drawn and tired, smiled grimly at Clarian. “We destroyed the vermin at their camp in the forest. No one escaped.”

“Are all your troops now out of the forest?” asked Clarian.

“Yes. They are camped here.”

Clarian listened as the other officers gave a brief report on the battle and the status of their soldiers. He was pleased that all had gone as planned. He recognized that the battle had slowed down considerably because of the soldiers’ fatigue and the rain. Both Karran and Maggan were exhausted. But he didn’t want to let up. He was determined to crush them if possible. That meant no rest.

“I want to plan our next attack on the Maggan lines now that we have them stalled and worried.”

“My soldiers are tired,” said Martan.

Tobran nodded.

“The Maggan are tired, too. We can’t let fatigue hinder us. We must destroy them, or they will return again in the future and in greater force and prove smarter.”

“My soldiers must rest, Clarian. They have no fight left in them,” said Martan.

“The Maggan have no fight left in them either. That is why we must continue the attack,” Clarian said angrily. “They are out of water and food. We have the advantage. We can’t give up our advantage. You forget: they outnumber us.”

“Your army has given you all you’ve asked, Clarian. And it cannot give any more until it rests. I have seen them and spoken to them. To ask more now is to risk much,” Rokkman said.

“They can always give more. Even when they think they can’t.”

Rokkman leaned his shaggy face toward Clarian, his lined face drawn and his voice hoarse. “They must rest, at least for a little while. And so must you.”

Clarian didn’t answer but stood pondering the question as he looked from officer to officer as if he was assessing each one’s remaining strength. They avoided his probing gaze, refusing to meet his eyes. He now realized that he could not push them any further this day.

“Very well. Cease all attacks. Let our army rest. Pull back a safe distance. Keep the scouts out to warn us of Maggan actions. But block the road to the forest. The Maggan will pay dearly for its passage before this is all over.” Clarian grabbed a stool and sat down heavily with a sigh of exasperation, holding on to his chest where the wound throbbed, and peered down at the map. He knew he had to plan the next step, but what it should be seemed to escape him. Where was the Maggan’s greatest weakness? His mind seemed sluggish. He closed his eyes.

The officers looked at one another and quietly filed out to attend to their units. Messengers were soon seen galloping off to the battle lines. A young soldier with the archer’s shoulder patch peered into the tent and motioned to Rokkman, who, with a glance back at Clarian, stepped out to hear what the soldier had to say. After whispering, Rokkman and the soldier stared at Clarian for a moment.

Rokkman gently shook Clarian out of his thoughts and took him by the arm under protest, leading him out of the tent. The two of them began following the soldier, walking through the steady rain, the clouds black and menacing in the late afternoon, the cold wind whipping their cloaks about. There were wagons on the far side of the field, with men unloading bodies and laying them out in rows.

“Rokkman, do you know how tired I am?”

Rokkman kept walking behind the soldier without answering, Clarian reluctantly following, their boots sloshing through the mud. Clarian had a bad feeling.

The rain began to fall more harshly, plastering their hair down on their heads.

“Why are we out here?”

The young messenger guided Clarian and Rokkman down the rows of motionless bodies until the soldier stopped over one body and pointed. Rokkman reached down and lifted back the cloak from the dead figure’s face, the gray face of Lillan. Clarian dropped to his knees in the mud beside her and wept, great heaving sobs wracking his body.

Rokkman stood watch over the grief. Lillan looked small in the weak light. Rokkman’s eyes filled up as the cold, sharp wind pulled on his cloak and chilled him. His face looked haggard and old. He waved the messenger away. There was nothing he could do as he stood over the bent figure in the pouring rain.

Messengers and senior officers rode up to Ferman’s tent and ducked down under its flap. Ferman sat on a campstool, sipping a hot drink. Neevan slipped off her horse and stepped under the tarp. As they crowded in, Ferman asked, “Well? Speak up!”

Neevan shouldered past an officer standing in front of her so she could see Ferman without obstruction. “The Karran have stopped their attacks and pulled back on all flanks. The fighting has stopped.”

“So, is the road open to the forest, then?” he asked.

“No. The Karran have blocked the road with brush and trees and even wagons and have placed their forces across it to oppose us. But they are not attacking. They wait,” she said.

“What trick is this?” Ferman snarled, his head twisting from side to side, seeking answers.

A senior officer, a heavy older man with a scar across the left side of his face, spoke out. “I don’t think this is a trick. I think they are as tired as we are, and the rain and mud have taken their toll. I think they are resting.”

“We can’t rest. We must drive through them and get back into the forest!”

“Your soldiers are completely exhausted, Ferman!” Neevan snapped.

“They’ll do as they are told. If I tell them to fight on, they will,” he growled.

“There is no fight left, and Clarian will not let us pass down the road. I say we stop where we are and rest, and let us see what Clarian will do,” she said.

“See what Clarian will do? You mean wait to see what he will spring on us next?” Ferman said with a snort.

“Whatever you do, Ferman, you will not outsmart Clarian,” Neevan told him.

“Keep your mouth closed,” he shouted and stood up, spilling his drink.

“She’s right. We are defeated. Well, for the moment. We must be careful, or we will lose the rest of our army here,” said the old soldier.

“Who says we are defeated?” Ferman sputtered, his hand going to the knife in his belt.

Neevan leaned forward. “You led the Maggan in the Great War against the Karran and lost, and now you lead us again, and we have lost.”

“Get out! All of you! Get out!” Ferman screamed, his face red with anger.

“Give the order to halt all attacks and to rest!” Neevan yelled back at him.

“All right! All right!” He slumped down on his stool, his head in his hands.

The fighting stopped on both sides. Soldiers sought shelter under trees, tents, stretched blankets, halted wagons, or whatever would keep the incessant rain off them. The Maggan had few trees available to them out in the open and huddled as best they could with makeshift tents. Sputtering fires burned and smoked and hissed as cooks tried to fix hot food and drinks.

The rain didn’t stop but continued throughout the day and into the night. The clouds were heavy and black and dropped close to the ground. Everyone and everything on both sides was dripping wet. In many places, the ground was flooded and had been churned into deep mud. The brisk wind swept across the battlefield and penetrated the wet cloaks of soldiers on both sides.

The Maggan had no fresh supplies and little water. So they captured rainwater in their canvas sheets and in anything else they could find. Their rations were thin, and the cook fires provided more smoke than heat or warm food.

The Karran army rested and took the respite as an opportunity to bring up weapons, food, and horses. Supply wagons rolled in, and with the wagons came the Flamekeeper. Clarian sat on a high rock outcropping with a canvas stretched over him surveying much of the battlefield, although he could see little of it through the rain. That night the Maggan fires could be seen, and he made rough estimates of their remaining strength. He refused company and even sent Rokkman away when he made the arduous climb up the rocky slope.

He was engulfed in deep sorrow over the loss of Lillan. He somehow had not previously thought about the possibility of losing her. Seeing her body slumped in the mud with the arrow embedded in her body, her skin colorless with death, cut into him in a way he had not experienced since the wars against the Kobani tribesmen. He had lost many friends, as well as both his father and grandfather, and had become numb to loss. But after the war, as time passed, he had recovered his youthful, happy personality working on the ferry in the company of his Kobani mother, Ranna, and Helan, his aunt. But now he remembered the grief of war and sudden death—reminders that life was tenuous. His mind drifted back to his youth and past wars.

He pulled a wool blanket around his shoulders more tightly to keep out the cold. His wound ached, and he was damp from the rain. The food carried up to him by an aide lay untouched beside him. The old feeling of numbness was creeping back into him. It wasn’t hatred or anger toward the Maggan. It was armor against the suffering, so that he would be able to go on and not give up. All he truly wanted was to be back at his ferry by the Blue River and bask in the serenity of the Great Grasslands. He was a frontier man, and he had failed to understand these wars even as he fought against the Kobani, and he couldn’t understand them now, either. It was always the same. Someone wanted what someone else possessed, and the solution was war.

As he sat there studying the night fires of the Maggan below him, his thoughts went back to the day his father told him to gather his weapons and his horse. They were to ride against the Kobani. His mother cried and pleaded with his father, saying that Clarian was too young, but his father said that everyone who could fight must do so, or they might all perish. Ranna wrapped her arms around him and spoke to him in the Kobani language, which she had spoken to him since he was born, telling him to be brave and to call upon the Kobani spirit power to protect him. He was thirteen years old.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

N
early a thousand men and boys and a few women assembled at the ferry that night. The nearby pastures just beyond the barn were filled with the frontiersmen, known as the Grasslanders. The horses were corralled or hobbled in the fields. In front of Clarian’s house, rough-looking men milled about talking softly, others working on last-minute chores—sharpening weapons, filling packs for the pack horses, mending harnesses, and a myriad of tasks.

In the house gathered the officers, led by Clarian’s father, Orlan. They had a map spread out on the table, and they stood over it peering down at the lines representing roads and trails and the markings for homes and villages. Clarian stood against the wall observing with his friend Brinan, a girl who was fourteen years old and lived in a village a day’s ride into the tall grass.

“We think that a main force is heading this way,” said Orlan. “They are striking deep into the Grasslands in the southeast and burning the villages. And they have another force pushing up this way burning farms and towns and running off livestock.”

“And killing everyone,” said a thick-bodied, black-bearded officer named Mendan.

“They are,” Orlan agreed. “We have reports that they are headed this way to take this ferry.”

“What about soldiers from the Citadel?” asked a tall man with long, silver hair.

“The Citadel disbanded most of its army as part of its agreement with the Maggan to end the Great War. They tell us they have no forces to send.”

An older officer pointed at Orlan and said, “We’ll live to regret those terms. You can’t trust a Maggan.”

“Yes, well, I rather agree with you, but we have to deal with the Kobani right now. They want to expand into the Grasslands, and they plan on pushing us out or killing us,” said Orlan.

“I heard the Citadel was sending guards units to help,” said Mendan.

“They did,” replied Orlan. “Several hundred. The Kobani were waiting and ambushed them. We have to do this ourselves or lose our farms, villages, and families. Of course, we can pack up and leave. Let them have all the Grasslands. We could move back to the lands near the Citadel or cross the river into the land of the Madasharan. They’re related to us. And there’s plenty of land over there.”

“There’s plenty of land because it’s all desert,” said Mendan.

The other men nodded, and several sniffed loudly.

“Right,” said Orlan, smiling.

“They’ve not come this far north before in large numbers, just small raiding parties,” said Mendan.

“I think they want the ferry and control of the road east. That would mean the Grasslands would be cut off from the Citadel and all roads in and out. They win this, they win it all.”

“What’s our plan?” asked Mendan. “I’m not giving up my farm to the Kobani!”

Orlan cleared his throat and licked his lips nervously, looking around the room at each one as if he were appraising their stalwartness.

“Well, Orlan?” asked Mendan, impatiently.

“It’s up to all of you, but here’s what I’m proposing. They travel fast because they are a horse people, as most of us are here on the Grasslands. They will attack us in a few days’ time after they destroy the village of Elan, which is a several days’ ride southeast of here.”

“I was born in Elan,” declared a young officer. “We need to defend it.”

“There’s no time to defend it,” said Orlan. “They’ll be confident after they burn it. We can only hope that the town’s folk will abandon it and run. Then the Kobani will ride straight here following the river because that’s the easiest way. There’s no direct road from Elan here. And they won’t be expecting a large force waiting for them. Here’s my thinking. They always send advance riders out to scout the terrain. We will let them through and leave a few men here to fight them off if they decide to try to take the ferry, but we want them to think that the ferry is lightly defended. We want them to report back that the ferry can easily be captured.”

“How many men will they have?” asked Mendan.

“Five hundred. Maybe more.”

“Oooh!” exclaimed someone.

“We’ll be waiting for them when their main force arrives?” asked Mendan.

“Yes,” answered Orlan, with a sly gleam in his eye. “We will have surprise on our side. We will set an ambush at Sandy Creek Marsh. There is high ground above the marsh, and the creek runs down and feeds the marsh.” He tapped the map. “Look here. I expect them to ride right through the marsh following the old traders’ trail. We’ll attack them from the flank and drive them deep into the marsh and the quicksand. There’s no cover for them. They could try to ride out through the creek, but it joins the river just a lance’s throw away, and no one can survive the rapids there.”

Mendan pounded his fist on the table, shouting, “Orlan! We’ll drive them out.”

“There’s more, Mendan. I propose we divide our forces into two groups.” Orlan leaned over the table and ran his finger down the map. “One group will execute the ambush. But the other group will ride on a forced march deep into the Kobani plains. There is a permanent village called Kila Sem about a four days’ ride from here. Most of the Kobani fighting men are away from home attacking us. Our second group will attack and burn the village. They won’t be expecting us. It’s never happened before, and the village will be lightly defended, if at all.”

“Are you crazy? Attack the Kobani? In their own land?” exclaimed a red-haired officer.

Orlan reached back for a chair and sat down, as the officers began talking all at once to one another, some shaking their heads in disagreement, others nodding. Finally, the discussions died out, and Mendan looked at Orlan, his brow wrinkled in worry. “One question. What if the Kobani intercept us on the way back from Kila Sem?”

“They won’t. They’ll be dead.”

Mendan sighed and glanced around to judge the sentiment of the group. There was little enthusiasm for Orlan’s plan, but no one had a better one. It was bold, each knew that, and each knew that Orlan was a ferocious and clever fighter.

“We will do it, Orlan. May the Flame protect us. Who stays here and who rides into the land of the Kobani?” asked Mendan.

“You will lead the attack into the land of the Kobani, Mendan. I will lead the ambush here.”

Brinan leaned close to Clarian’s ear and whispered, “Which group are we in?”

“With my father, I think. The ambush.”

Outside, Clarian tied his bow and quiver to his saddle. Brinan led her horse over and stood close to him.

“Clarian, I’m scared,” she said.

“Me too.”

She shivered. He put his arms around her, and she clasped him tightly.

Clarian lay prone in the tall, coarse grass that grew out of a sandy dune above the trail that ran through the marshland. The marsh spread out for a thousand paces in either direction, north and south. Directly in front of Clarian, parallel to the trail, behind a line of willows, raged the great Blue River, its roar drowning out all other sounds.

Next to Clarian were the rugged men of the Great Grasslands, a number of boys like himself, and a few women, their bows in hand, lying shoulder to shoulder on the high ground, obscured by a screen of low foliage. Horses and riders were gathered in two groups, one at the north end of the sandy dunes and the other group at the south end, back a good distance from the road so that the horses would not alert the approaching Kobani. Bows and lances were ready as the Grasslanders sat their horses, waiting for the signal to launch their attack.

Orlan, on his stomach and camouflaged by shrubbery, watched the column of fierce Kobani warriors appear, riding effortlessly as only horse people can. The column of riders ten abreast were now splashing through the ground water of the marsh, approaching where Orlan and his men waited in secret. Kobani scouts had gone past two days before and returned, presumably with the information that the ferry was lightly defended. As the Kobani filed into the trap, Orlan scurried back to his horse and the waiting men, several hundred of whom were already mounted in the tall grass. He saw with satisfaction the determined look on the faces of the frontiersmen. Their bows were ready, arrows notched.

The Kobani were an olive-skinned people with long, dark hair. Some of the riders wore bandages, a result of their recent encounter with the people of Elan. The riders were slack in their saddles, some dozing, obviously tired, and their horses plodded with effort.

Clarian’s hands were sweaty and his chest tight as a drum. He licked his lips and did his utmost to remain motionless as he peered through the green foliage at the Kobani warriors. Brinan, who was lying in the dune grass next to Clarian, glanced over at him, her eyes jittery.

The Kobani column was now stretched out over several hundred paces. Clarian was close enough to see the braids of their hair intertwined with red threads and the tattoos on their faces. A young warrior turned his head and seemed to look right at Clarian, who froze. But then the warrior looked away and rode by. The warriors had bows slung over their shoulders, and arrow quivers and lances hung from their saddles and short swords at their waists.

Clarian’s hands began to shake. He held them down on the ground. It seemed as if his father would never give the signal to attack. In the middle of the Kobani column, several older, gray-haired warriors rode into view wearing short red capes draped over their shoulders.

The first arrow buried itself into one of the wearers of the red cape. That was the signal. There was no shouting, no war cries, from the Grasslanders. They just began shooting from their hiding place on the high dunes, firing down into the Kobani at close range. Cries of alarm swept through the Kobani. Riders fell screaming, and horses went down kicking and thrashing. Many of the Grasslanders stood up from their camouflaged place of hiding and began firing rapidly, one arrow after another.

Kobani leaders began shouting. Some kicked their horses forward and began galloping toward the head of the column, and some spun their horses around and began racing back the way they came. At that moment mounted Grasslander bowmen swept in at both ends and blocked all paths of escape.

A group of Kobani lashed their horses up the dunes where Clarian and Brinan and others were frantically firing away. It all happened in moments. Suddenly a Kobani warrior burst through the protective brush and impaled Brinan with a lance. Clarian shot an arrow into the chest of the warrior, who rolled off his horse into the sand. A warrior on horseback slashed at Clarian with his sword. The blow glanced off Clarian’s bow and sliced into the right side of his face, from eye to jaw. Blood shot down his shirt. Clarian danced away, tripped, and fell down the slope of the dune into the heaviest fighting of the fray. He still had his bow but had lost his arrows. He landed next to a downed Kobani horse. He pulled the Kobani quiver off the saddle, drew an arrow, and from behind the dead horse began firing into the melee all around him.

He could see his father charging at the head of a large group of Grasslanders down from the high dunes and into the midst of the confused Kobani. The Kobani turned and rode to escape in the only direction from which there was no attack—farther into the marsh and the quicksand as Orlan had planned. The Kobani never had time to mount a counterattack. As they splashed their horses deeper into the marsh and quicksand, they became bogged down as their horses floundered. Riders dismounted and tried to run, only to be caught by the grip of the quicksand.

A Kobani warrior spun his horse around and charged Orlan, his lance low. Orlan dropped his bow and unsheathed his sword. The horses collided. As Clarian watched, the lance brushed Orlan’s shirt, and Orlan’s sword cut through the air where the Kobani had leaned out wide to the side. Orlan’s horse slipped in the marsh and faltered, falling to its knees, frantically trying to regain its footing. As Orlan jerked on the reins, the lance caught him deep under the ribs. Clarian shouted out in anguish as he saw his father’s face twisted in agony. Orlan dropped off his horse into the marsh. Other riders rushed in, and Clarian’s view was obscured, but he knew what he had witnessed.

The Grasslanders rode slowly after the Kobani at a leisurely pace, remaining out of the deeper areas of the marsh and the quicksand, and they began carefully picking the warriors off one at a time. In an hour, it was all over. Horses and Kobani were crying out as they were sucked under the quicksand. Others died from grievous wounds as they lay in the shallow waters. Some made it to the river and dove in, only to be swept away into the rapids by the fast-moving current.

The bodies of the Kobani who were not consumed by the quicksand and some who were seriously wounded were dragged to the river’s edge and kicked into the pull of the powerful torrent to be carried downstream into the rocks.

Clarian sat by Brinan, crying—crying for her and for his father. Her eyes flickered at him as she choked and died in his arms.

The Grasslanders gathered up their dead and wounded. They buried the dead in the sandy soil above the dunes, and Clarian watched as Brinan was wrapped in a cloak and placed in the trench with the other dead. Brinan’s father was away with Mendan, riding deep into Kobani territory. Clarian decided to take his father’s body home to the ferry.

The young girl tapped Clarian on the shoulder, startling him for a moment, bringing him back to the present and out of his reverie. The rain fell softly on the dripping tarp. The memory of the Kobani war closed, and he was back with the new war and the hated Maggan. The girl’s blond hair was tied back, and she had a bow slung over her shoulder with an arrow quiver on her back and a patch depicting a white flame on the left shoulder of her blue tunic. Her childlike face expressed deep respect as she leaned over Clarian. “Clarian. The Flamekeeper has come. He waits for you,” she said in a small voice.

He nodded and studied her fine features. “What is your name?”

“Mishan.”

“You are a scout?”

“Yes.”

As he looked at the young girl, he thought of Brinan.

“Where do you come from?”

“Beyond the Great Grasslands. Why do you look at me so, Clarian?”