She’d been pushing the company for the better part of a few weeks-first south along the beach, where their longboats had come ashore, then east into the heart of the thick woods, following her tracker’s suggestion. The Qualinesti Forest was huge, and finding a mob of goblins and hobgoblins in it would not be an easy task necessarily. But Bera did not doubt she would meet with success eventually. She’d sent two more scouting parties ahead the previous day, both with skilled trackers.
“I hope your faith in me is well placed, Commander,” Isaam said. “And I hope we find the goblins soon. This is not my element.” The sorcerer was obviously struggling to keep up with her.
Bera continued to watch the tracker, who was ranging farther ahead; she glimpsed only a splotch of black from his tabard. They were looking for clues as to whether the goblins had passed that way. It had been some time without a sign. They could be going in circles and following a wild boar for all she knew.
“It is not my element either,” she whispered.
It could have been late afternoon or early evening when the tracker lost whatever trail he’d been pursuing. The forest was more shadows than light, and Bera’s men stumbled over roots and caught themselves on thorny branches. They were all in physically fine condition, but the pace and the terrain had worn them down.
The tracker shook his head. “Commander, there is nothing else I can see to follow today. Rather than proceed blindly, I’d like to stop here. In the morning, when the light is better, I might see something my tired eyes are missing now.”
“Very well, Eloy. We’ll resume in the morning.” Bera planted her fists against her waist and fixed him with a glare that told him it really wasn’t all right. “Stop for the day!” she called over her shoulder.
“Thank the gods,” Isaam muttered.
“There’s a clearing ahead, Commander. Not big enough for all of us, though.” Eloy shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I caught sight of a stream there.” He gestured to the north. “About fifty yards.”
“Refill your skins,” Bera continued. “Wash and rest. Eloy, you and Virlan take a dozen men and find meat to supplement the evening meal.” Normally she would let her scout rest, but his failure to conquer the trail did not sit well with her. “Do not come back until you’ve secured enough meat to feed us all.”
He was quick to gesture to twelve fellow knights and disentangle himself from her icy gaze. Bows in hand, the squad melted into the foliage.
Minutes later, Bera was carefully folding her tabard on a rock. She removed her gauntlets and arm pieces, and after her men started settling nearby, she tugged off her breastplate and straightened the padded armor beneath. It was a signal to her men that they could remove their armor as well.
“May I join you?” Without waiting for a reply, Zoccinder stripped to his padded armor and sat next to her.
“They have several advantages over us, these goblins we pursue.” Bera wiped at a spot on her leggings. “Small, they can move more easily through these woods.”
“And they haven’t such heavy, hot armor to contend with.”
“Aye.” She offered him a thin smile.
Zoccinder was the most imposing knight in her unit, easily seven feet tall and heavily muscled. He looked wholly formidable in either a suit of plate mail or his sweat-stained pads. He’d arranged his armor carefully in front of him, the chest piece of which had bluing on it-something a highranking officer might wear, not someone of Zoccinder’s low rank.
Bera guessed he had some ogre blood in his veins, as he’d spoken the language to captives several weeks past. But he’d not claimed such a heritage in his records, so she kept her speculation to herself. He’d told her he was twenty-six years of age, but she believed him to be at least five years younger, as his face was boyish and unlined and he lacked the scars of someone who had served in the order longer. Twenty or twenty-one then, she decided. That would make her twice his age.
He rested his hand on her thigh.
“We will find them, Bera, these goblins who vex you.” He kept his voice low, his dark blue eyes fixed on hers. “Isaam or the trackers will find them. We will have them.” He pointedly addressed her by her first name, she noted, no longer as commander. “It should not take many days.”
“I detest them, you know, goblins. Horrible-smelling, hideous creatures that look vaguely like men. They chatter in a vile-sounding tongue that reminds me of wild dogs yapping.”
“They’re not wholly monsters, Bera. They do wear clothes, for example.”
She gave a clipped laugh. “What clothes I’ve seen them in hang in tatters.” She paused. “Many of them have eyes yellowed like they’ve got a disease.”
He didn’t say anything else but rested his battle-axe across his legs, the haft atop her knee. The weapon was singular, a keepsake from his grandfather, he’d claimed. It-and the blue-colored armor-proclaimed him as being from a family of some means, and his bearing bore that out. Isaam had whispered to Bera once that the Dark Knight’s axe reeked of magic. Bera figured that Zoccinder would tell her about the axe in good time.
That Zoccinder, who preferred to be called Zocci, had not risen up higher through the Dark Knight ranks was a sad testament to past behavior-that is, several recorded incidents of insubordination. Others would have been drummed out of the order for his offenses. However, he was a superb fighter and proficient in many languages. His courage and bloodlust were equaled in her unit only by her own. And he’d done nothing to gain a black mark on his record since joining her company.
“A walk, Bera? To that stream Eloy mentioned?”
She nodded and did not protest when he extended a hand to help her up. The other knights had been witness to the growing attraction between the pair, all wisely keeping silent. Zocci took his axe along.
The stream was barely in sight when he pulled her close and angled his head down to meet hers. His skin glowed with a thin sheen of sweat. She noted again that there wasn’t a blemish or scar on his handsome visage, despite the number of battles he’d been in during the past several months. He was pure, unspoiled.
And twice his age, Bera knew she was.
She had a husband and a grown daughter at home.
He kissed her like her husband never had, his lips at the same time dry and supple against hers and somehow in that instant sapping all the strength from her. His free hand cupped the back of her head.
She was his commander, a veteran Dark Knight, decorated where he had been demoted, praised where he had been reprimanded.
He was half her age.
The axe rested against his leg. His thumbs traced patterns on her neck, and after a moment, he raised his head and softly blew on her eyelids. She had lines at the edges of her eyes, a mark of her years on Krynn. Did he notice them? she wondered. Did he think about the years between them? Did her men?
She heard men splashing in the stream and suspected they could see her. A moment more and she didn’t worry about it as Zocci tugged her down behind a stand of lilies and onto a bed of ferns.
Isaam barely acknowledged Bera’s return to camp.
The sorcerer sat cross-legged, shoulders hunched and back humped like a man decades older; his concentration was directed at a small crystal globe nested in the folds of his robe in his lap.
His oddly thin fingers hovered above the crystal, darting down but never quite touching it, rising up, then flashing down again. His rhythmic gestures reminded Bera of a musician playing an instrument. His lips moved, but if he talked, she couldn’t hear him. There was the snap and pop of a large fire, over which five deer and a large boar were spitted, and the quiet conversations of groupings of knights. The venison filled her senses and made her realize she hadn’t eaten since the previous night. Zocci would bring her some.