The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (35 page)

Behind him the 150 horses and riders
maintained a steady gallop, and Shem saw the low hill before
Moorland beginning to take shape in the twilight shadows.

Again, conflicting emotions bombarded Shem.
Taking lives always shook his resolve. He hoped anyone hiding in
the building would escape it before he set it alight. He’d lead the
soldiers to the slaughter, but he didn’t want to be the butcher.
That wasn’t why he signed up.

The small hill loomed larger, and behind it
would be the remains of Moorland sheltered peacefully against the
hills nearly surrounding it, and oblivious.

Shem reached behind him, gingerly pulled out
his torch to raise as a signal, and made sure it he didn’t hold it
too high to catch Hycymum’s banner snapping in the wind. Rigoff and
his division would be following Shem’s group going to the right,
while Yordin and Thorne and two more divisions took the left. In
the mass of darkness moving behind him, Shem made out two torches
bringing up the rear: Fadh and his lieutenant, ready to redirect
any lost soldiers.

Shem raised his torch and waved it four times
to signal his group to follow him around the hill.

Impressively, Yordin held in his whoops as he
waved his torch in another pattern and split off from Shem.

Faster than Shem expected, there were the
structures—many of them lit by lamplights and with smoke rising
from chimneys, indicating that yes, they were indeed inhabited—and
immediately Shem spied his target: the only remaining two-story
building faintly highlighted by the last of the twilight.

Perrin was an excellent mapmaker and route
planner, regrettably.

Shem firmed his grip on the torch and
swallowed.

---

The older man bustled about the room, lining
up boxes, straightening up supplies, and barking out orders.

“
Keep it organized. What
did I say about organization?”

The scruffy men standing against the sides of
the room looked daringly at each other. Someone had to put an end
to his meddling, but no one was about to do it in here with such
ingredients surrounding them.

“
Precision. Organization.
Neatness. Keep clean, keep cautious, or we’ll have a disaster! And
while we
want
a disaster, we don’t want it happening to
us
. Once we get this to Edge, then—”

A noise outside the windows of the stone and
mortared building caused the old man to pause in his efforts to
cover a crate. He looked up as the sound increased—like a rumble of
thunder—and the men he was lecturing frowned and glanced
around.

“
Must be a storm coming,”
one of them decided.

The older man shook his head. “Clear sky
before the sun went down. No wind, no storm. What
is
that?”

“
Maybe Deceit rumbling?”
offered another man. “Did that during the land tremor.”

The older man sighed loudly at their inanity. “Do
you feel anything shaking?”

“
Well I do
now
,”
someone declared.

The older man was about to open his mouth
when he realized that the ground
was
beginning to
tremble—

Someone outside shouted, followed by dozens
more yelling.

The older man squinted out the window into
the vacant lot. Men were streaming toward his two-story
structure—toward any structure—in a panicked run.

Irritated at the commotion, the older man
made his way to the door and yanked it open. Before he could demand
what was going on, he heard a distinct shout.

“
Soldiers!
Soldiers!”

Around the corner of a still-intact building
rushed a swarm that made the old man gasp in dismay. Soldiers,
hundreds of them, all on horseback causing the ground to tremble
and the air to whoosh. Each soldier had his sword drawn, slicing
man after running man, and trampling those who fell.

A horse and rider burst past him, slashing at
him but narrowly missing. The old man dropped to the ground in
shock, watching as dozens more of his men fled into buildings, only
to be chased by streams of soldiers that never ended, and all of
them with blades.

It was the flash of purple that caught his
eye. A banner of some sort, raised high like a flag on a horse that
whipped past him. And stitched on to the purple cloth was a word in
bold, sickly yellow—

EDGE.

“
SHIN!” the old man cried
out. “Slagging son of sow!”

Soldiers and horses poured in from every
corner, hitting buildings with shocking precision as if they knew
exactly where to go.

The man looked wildly around, trying to
discern if any of the soldiers were actually Perrin Shin himself in
direct violation of the probation that they set on him—

Uh, that
the Administrators
had placed
on him—

But there was too much chaos. Men screaming,
running, torches, horses, blades, bodies falling in front of him
with wounds he knew were too accurate to treat.

He scrambled to his feet and raced back into
the building, slamming the door behind him.

His workers paced from window to window,
staring out at the commotion and bumping into the crates—

“
Be careful!” the old man
shrieked, shifting a crate so that it wouldn’t bump or worse, crash
into another. “The last thing we need right now is—”

“
Fire!” cried a man,
frantically gesturing to the window.

The old man rushed to it, along with the rest
of his workers.

That
was the very last thing they
needed right now.

Even more soldiers poured into what used to
be the small village green, now dead and brown, throwing torches
through the windows of the remaining buildings—

“
No, no, no, no . . .” the
old man murmured frantically, spinning and turning and looking for
some kind of solution—

“
They’re coming!” someone
shouted.

The old man rushed to the window as a soldier
on horseback charged toward his building, the hideous purple banner
behind him, flapping.

In the torchlight the old man recognized the
soldier’s face in the fraction of the second he could focus on
him.

“
Quiet Man?!” Brisack
exclaimed.

Zenos threw the torch.

The window imploded.

Doctor Brisack watched in horror as the black
powder on the table next him begin to dance—

Chapter 14
~
“You’re in a lot of trouble, Colonel
Shin.”

P
errin had been
pacing impatiently when the messenger finally returned with the
news he’d been hoping for.

“
Moorland’s infested, sirs!
And completely surprised and overrun! We’re encountering no
resistance at all.” The private slid off his horse to take the
fresh one waiting for him, but first he had to endure the overly
enthusiastic slap on his back from Colonel Shin.

“
YES!” Perrin cried and ran
for his mount.

“
Colonel?” Brillen said
from the opening of the tent, his arms folded in a fair
impersonation of Mr. Hegek when he waited beyond the school grounds
for escaping twelve-year-olds. “And just where do you think you’re
going?”

Perrin stopped at his horse and held up his
hands. “Just instinct, Karna. Sorry.” He rubbed his forehead,
kicked a rock into the ditch, and squatted, facing west. It was
fully dark now and he strained to hear anything of the battle that
might be ensuing.

“
Anything else, Private?”
he asked the young soldier who had mounted and was now wincing
slightly at what was likely a large red welt on his back in the
shape of a hand.

“
No, sir, sorry. Captain
Thorne sent me as soon as he was sure our surprise was complete.
I’m to return now. Do you have any messages?”

“
No, no. None at all.”
Perrin stood back up. “Wait. Private, what size is your
jacket?”

“
My jacket,
sir?”

Brillen chuckled. “Nice try, Colonel, but no
one would believe
you
are the messenger. Off with you,
Private. Come back as soon as you can before the colonel tears
apart the camp waiting for more news.”

The private nodded and kicked his horse into
a full run back to the west.

Perrin didn’t go back into the tent. Staring
at his map of Moorland only made him want to get there. Even the
bowmen he and Brillen had sent, their newest recruits, could
venture further than the commander of the offensive.

He paced back and forth along the border of
the farm while Brillen, seated on a stump outside the command tent,
watched him. Mischievously, Perrin jumped across a ditch, then back
again. He jumped over to the other side and grinned. “Look,
Brillen,” he taunted. “I’m out of the farm!”

Brillen sighed. “Perrin, get back here. How
old are you, anyway? Now, I won’t tell the Administrators, but I
will tell your
wife.
”

Perrin jumped back across. “Hm. Very good.
You certainly know how to threaten a man.” He kicked at another
rock. They were becoming scarce in the farm this evening, so at
least he was doing some good for someone.

“
I should have insisted on
updates every five minutes,” he said as he headed to the command
tent.

“
Colonel, everything is
probably going better than we imagined. Look around you—no wounded
yet, no additional messengers in a panic. I hate to tell you, but
maybe your plan
was
perfect.”

Perrin stopped right in front of Brillen. “Of
course it was perfect,” he said, affronted. “Every one of my plans
has been perfect. You should know that.”

Brillen chuckled. “Oh, all of them
perfect
, eh? Let’s talk about some of those
perfect
plans
, shall we? I seem to remember something about a captain
dressed in all white heading out into the snowy woods to hunt
himself some Guarders.”

Perrin didn’t even twitch. “Worked
perfectly
, didn’t it.”

“
Except when said captain’s
wife came to the surgery to take home his ‘slashed’ overcoat and
jacket, only to find them in
perfect
condition.”

“
She forgave me.
Eventually,” Perrin said, the corner of his mouth tugging ever so
slightly.

“
Yes, yes, she did,” said
Brillen, looking out into the darkness. “But I’ve always wondered
how it came to be, in this
perfect
plan of yours, that I was
rumored to have been running in the freezing night to the feed
barns and back naked.”

Perrin snorted. “I never said naked in my
cover story, Brillen. I gave you the dignity of wearing your
shorts.”

“
That’s not the version I
heard,” said Brillen, a bit coldly.

Perrin squinted. “Mahrree told you I said you
were naked?”

“
Never heard it from
Mahrree.” There was a glint of antipathy in the lieutenant
colonel’s eyes. “Heard it from my dear bride. Apparently your wife
spoke to my wife when we came up for the Remembrance Ceremony, and
my wife asked me for a
demonstration
.”

“
So did you?” Perrin’s
mouth twitched.

“
Colonel!” Karna said in
feigned fury. “I hardly think that’s an appropriate topic for us to
be discussing at this time.”

“
So you
did!
” Perrin
burst out laughing.

Brillen couldn’t keep his face sober any
longer, and he began to chuckle.

Until they both heard the roar which
interrupted their laughter.

Perplexed, they stared at each other in an
attempt to discern what exactly it was that they heard.

It came like a roar of thunder, but more
concentrated, and oddly, seemed to originate from the ground.
Perrin spun to the west and Brillen leaped to his feet.

The sound grew louder, rumbled over the camp,
and dissipated beyond them just as an orange glow began to lighten
the sky in the west.

“
What the slag was
that
?” Brillen exclaimed.

Perrin shook his head. “I have no idea. It
sounded like one of the mud volcanoes when it erupts, but much
louder.”

The two men looked at each other.

“
An eruption?” Brillen
scowled.

Then they heard it again—another roar, but
this time louder, bouncing off the mountains and echoing around
them with frenetic force. The glowing orange grew rapidly into a
massive smoking mushroom, propelled by a streak of fire rising
bizarrely into the sky.

Perrin lunged for his horse, grabbed the
reins, and mounted.

Brillen didn’t argue. He was right behind
Colonel Shin, scrabbling onto his horse as well. Behind them a few
dozen surgeons and aides came running for a clearer view of the
oddity rising in the west, but Perrin and Brillen weren’t about to
respond to their questions.

The two men dug in their heels, and the
horses bounded eagerly over the ditch into the dark fields toward
the streak of orange fire. While Perrin’s horse was the strongest
one he could find for that venture, it wasn’t as fast as he wished.
Still, it would carry him the distance at a full gallop.

Brillen kept pace next to him.

“
I don’t think that was an
eruption, Colonel,” he called from his horse. “I’ve never seen an
eruption of fire before.”

“
Me neither,” Perrin called
back. “Watch for retreaters.”

“
Are you planning to stop
for them?”

“
No. I’m not stopping until
I reach the source of that flame, Brillen. Report me if you wish,
but I don’t care. You can help the retreaters.”