Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (3 page)

“I can hear you,” Marik griped back.  “All you need to
do is talk so we know you’re there.”  He paused a beat before adding, “Like
now.  We know you’re here.”

She ignored his consternation.  “I trust your orders
have arrived.”

“Only today,” he replied.  “We’re taking our prisoners
to Thoenar with the Arm.”

“I have further orders for you.”

A new twist must have recently developed.  What else
could go wrong?  “Dietrik, go get the baron and Lieutenant Fraser.”

“You will do nothing such,” Celerity frostily ordered
before Dietrik could move.  “If I wished to pass orders to your commanders, I
would do so through ordinary channels.  These orders are for you alone.”

“Me?”  Marik was dumbfounded.

“This goes for both of you,” she stated, her hard eyes
flicking left to where Dietrik would have been visible but for a mound of his
unwashed intimacies.  “Make no mention of this to anyone.  When you arrive in
Thoenar,” she declared, her gaze returning to Marik’s suspicious visage, “you
will report to the palace.”

Several moments passed while Marik waited for further
explanation.  When she continued her glare at him, he demanded, “What’s going
on?”

“I will explain when you arrive.  Suffice to say that
you will be expected at the gate.”

“Are you going to—” Marik began to ask when she
abruptly vanished from the mirror.  He stared down at perfectly ordinary
reflective glass, the small mirror giving no hint that it could display
anything other than what it sat before.

“The lady knows how to make her point,” Dietrik mused
when Marik thrust his pack back into his arms.  “Only the question of what
point she intended to make remains.”

“Nothing good for me, you can put coin on that!” 
Marik flopped back onto his bedroll.  “What is the old bat up to this time?”

“I imagine you will be finding out shortly enough.”

“Shortly?  Dietrik, with this crowd of prisoners on
foot, especially with the wounded among them, we won’t reach Thoenar until well
after the thaw!”

His friend shrugged and rolled his pack to the head of
his bedroll for secondary use as a pillow.  “I, for one, am not so eager for a
fresh row.  The slow journey will be a pleasant holiday from avoiding the
digestive tracks of these living nightmares.  We all could do well to take
advantage of the rest.”

“First time I’ve ever heard a month-long march called
a ‘rest’.”  He paused to ponder Dietrik’s words before admitting, “I suppose
putting distance between us and these black-armored strangers will give us the
chance to examine the problem better if we aren’t still personally wound-up
inside it.”

“Any solution had best not include us, if the gods
have an ounce of pity in their breasts,” Dietrik snorted.  “What were you
asking your lady-bane when she so rudely cut you off?”

“We left Tollaf in town this time since the entire
band would be dividing along their squad structures and there’s no need for
mages on border patrol.  I wanted to know if she was planning to talk to him
through her mirror the way she always seems to when my back is turned.”

“Why do you care?” Dietrik inquired.  He propped
himself on one elbow.

“Because Ilona is due to travel back to Thoenar soon. 
She said that until Kerwin’s inn is completed and during the first year she’s
running the new location for the Standing Spell, she would need to shuttle back
and forth to her mother’s branch in Thoenar quite often.”

“Always looking for the chance to dip your wick, eh?”
accompanied his friend’s salacious leer.  “You’ve grown into a true mercenary
after all!”

Marik scowled back.  “Don’t be a jackass!  If she
hasn’t left for Thoenar yet, then I was hoping she could bring me a replacement
sword from Sennet’s stock.  The blade I took from our prisoners doesn’t suit me
as well as one of Sennet’s.”

“And your special order?  That as well?”

“If he’s completed it, that would be nice.  It’s still
sooner than he estimated it would be finished, though.”

“Perhaps not by the time a letter from you would reach
him.”

“A letter?”  Marik rolled his head to the side to
stare at Dietrik.

“Indeed, mate.  A few of our own number are still
wounded.  Glynn has been so busy with ensuring your survival that he’s been
unable to spare any excess energy in Healing others.  They will, without doubt,
return to Kingshome, since our hurried contract with the king’s seneschal left
Torrance many openings for loopholes.”

Marik sat up in consideration.  “Fraser was mumbling
something about that the other day.  Do you really think we can send the
wounded home without objection?”

“I didn’t say that, but I believe that was the gist of
Fraser’s intentions.  And with such an ambiguous contract, he will talk his way
into whatever he wants, if I know him.  The wounded will be taking our share of
battle loot home for Sennet’s inspection, so why not include a letter to the
man regarding the destruction of your
second
blade?”

Hearing Dietrik’s amused enunciation made him groan. 
It may have been destroyed during honest combat, but the armory master would
undoubtedly be severely annoyed that Marik had cost him another weapon.  “Ilona
might be long departed by the time our wounded straggle in.  Still, it won’t
hurt to ask.  I think I’ll ask him to check the records for the first blade I
took out of the armory and ask for one as close to that as possible.  It’s
shorter than my last sword, but I never had any problems with it for close-in
fighting.”

Dietrik nodded.  “Your last blade had a complication
or two fighting around the buildings in Thoenar.  Will you be able to use the
smaller sword in combination with your strength working?”

“I can, if I’m careful.  The blade will be damaged
badly if I try using it directly against armor.  That’s why I need my custom
sword.  With that, I can switch between them at need.”

“You had better go and see if you can raid the command
tent for writing supplies, then.  We will be leaving upon first light.”

Marik cursed softly and forced his mind to abandon the
rest he had been sinking back into.  Truly there was no rest for the wicked.

*        *        *        *        *

Night’s enshrouding cloak wrapped around the
encampment sitting on the Southern Road.  Flickering torches were scattered
between the small army tents to drive away the darkness.  All they accomplished
was to make the blackness beyond the torches’ nimbus so much the darker,
seemingly impenetrable to all but animal eyes.  With an unknown number of
bestial Taurs running loose in this corner of the kingdom, nighttime had become
a trial of endurance.  Every slight breeze became the heavy breath of a monster
lurking in the nearby shadows, and every distant call of nocturnal predators instantly
made seasoned soldiers grip their hilts in sweat-slicked palms.

Tension gripped the Galemaran men in a vice all the
tighter for the men’s fevered imaginations.  The memories of the hellish
creatures slaughtering their shieldmates without mercy painted the night with
possibilities known only to the damned suffering perdition in the hells.  Yet
the strain rested most heavily on the forms tied at the wrists, huddled back to
back in tight groups to ward off the cold.  No canvas roof sheltered them against
the night, no fire was allowed close enough to provide a burning brand to the
hand of desperate men.  Winter eve made the men shiver endlessly, adding to the
trembles that already plagued them for their intimate knowledge of what would
happen if the Taurs
did
leap from the darkness in a carnivorous frenzy.

Adrian Ceylon had far more to plague his mind than
fears that the monstrous beasts they had enslaved would return to visit
retribution on them.  Such a turn of events might be comforting after a strange
fashion.  It would be an end to his problems.

He was a prisoner of war.

Never, not once in his entire dedicated career to king
and homeland had he come close to a defeat.  Now
this
!

That was bad enough, but worst of all, the events
leading to this disgrace were still broken and disjointed.  His memories were
fragmented, and the accounts from his surviving personal guards tallied not a
whit with anything else he knew.

He
had given
the command to push forward from Kallied and invade the neighboring kingdom of
Galemar with all speed? 
Him
commanding the army to disregard caution,
to advance without secure supply lines in place, or securing the lands taken
until they were locked in the iron grip of the Arronathian Armed Forces? 
Impossible!  It flew in the face of all the military wisdom he’d ever learned
or crafted.

He would have called Bayonne a liar except for the
long years of service over which Adrian had come to know the man like a son. 
Even then he would suspect the man’s story if not for the rest of his guards
confirming the tales, each speaking to him separately and clearly without
collusion.

There could be no doubt that his actions were in
keeping with the histories his men related.  In any other man he would
pronounce the decisions to be criminally derelict, and met the fool’s
assertions of no memory regarding the actions taken with outright disbelief. 
What had happened to him?

Adrian sat in the cold, his wrists bound, sitting back
to back with Bayonne.  The meager body heat from his fellow prisoners made no
discernable difference when faced with the assault waged by winter’s chill
legions.  Light breeze stole the wafting heat off his clothing, preventing the
fabric from warming against his skin.  A succubus cold reached up from the bare
earth of the roadbed, draining the energy from his legs until they felt as
frozen as the stones further off the road, stones that transformed the
remaining snow blanket into a lumpy quilt hastily thrown over a bed.  Not least
of all was the barren wasteland inhabiting the souls of each man sitting with
him.  Their unexpected lots transformed their spirits into a living embodiment
of the Death Season.

The witching hours.  That is what gran used to call
it.

He had not thought of her in long years.  Strange it
should come back to him under such circumstances.  She had never lived as a
member of a soldier’s family, and had always insisted on treating him same as
the local boys in her hometown despite his future career having been decided
since his birth.  His father could never have born any son except one who would
prove as loyal and steadfast as he.

Others had insisted that the witching hours were the
most dangerous of times, existing on midnight’s stroke on the exact full of the
moon.  Such times were when anything dark and terrible could happen, especially
if one tempted Fate to rewrite your destiny.  The village boys, on the few
occasions when Adrian allowed his nature to devolve to one more natural to his
age and join them, had thrilled with the rebellion of committing those acts
warned most strenuously against.  They would sneak from their beds to meet in
empty groves, holding two mirrors to face each other exactly at the midnight
bell to see if an imp really would spring out from the reflected infinities.

Gran had scoffed at such foolery.  According to her,
the witching hours were times when a person’s soul darkened under a cloud of
despair, turning barren under uncertainty.  Such times were the harshest trials
through which emergence was never guaranteed.  All one could do was fight to
the best of his nature and hope to see the sun shine through the fog one day. 
Even the most desolate wastelands could produce flowers, given time.

Adrian had accepted her words without much thought. 
He had assumed he understood her meaning.  How ironic that only late in life
would the lesson come home with such weight.

His fingertips brushed across the dirt, over the spot
on which he had sat for days.  Buried there were his insignia, the decorations
for a long career of faithful service.  Everything that could identify him as
an enemy officer of any rank.  Hardest to part with had been the silver
eleven-point crown insignia that marked him as the top general; not because it
meant casting away the decoration personally bestowed on him by the former king
but because it also served as his personal scrying anchor.  How would the
intelligence officers locate the prisoners?  The crack that now split the
surface already worried him, causing him to wonder if it were still
functional.  If the scryers located the anchor later, all they would see would
be a bare stretch of road rather than the captured general.

Bayonne and Cherrad had helped him conceal the
decorations in a shallow grave dug through the frozen ground with their
stinging fingertips the day after they had been herded like
cattle
to
this lonely camp.  None could guess what these strange savages would do with
them except Adrian would certainly garner special interest if they came to
recognize the prize they had captured.

He was one soldier among many, older than most though
clearly still a capable campaigner.  Every man imprisoned with him were under
orders to treat him simply as one of their own.  It may make no difference
depending on the fate planned for them as a whole, yet the old saying stated
that the gods only helped those who worked hard to help themselves before
imploring for intervention.  Sooner or later there might arise an opportunity
they could take advantage of.