In spring the Skull Knight Thagol had returned from the east of the kingdom, drawn by news of the Night People. Since then Kerian suffered headaches, and since then she understood that some headaches were the result of hunger, weariness, or injury, and others had no natural explanation. The touch of the mind of a Skull Knight caused these.
Thagol sought the leader of the Night People. Down the avenues of the night, he hunted her in dreams. The strange headaches had started after the first successful raid Kerian mounted against one of the border outposts. These were ugly structures of stone and wood built between the forest and the gorges that scored the earth between the elven kingdom and the Stonelands. Five Knights had died in the first raid, and four more perished when they arrived to relieve the watch. The four who died last imagined the three black-armored warriors they saw on duty were their knightly brethren and didn’t discover until too late that they were five of the Night People in Knights’ clothing. Kerian had ordered the dead stripped of anything useful then left the corpses to rot. This time that tactic, used for gaining weapons and depriving the enemy of steel, did not serve her well.
Soon after, on a dark-moon night, Kerian woke from a dream and sat up shaking, cold sweat running on her.
Shivering with her blankets wrapped around her, she looked up at the sky ablaze with stars too bright to long behold. Across the stony basin, in the night where embers of the outlaws’ fires breathed faintly, she saw the old woman, Elder, whose voice was like prophecy. As though beckoned, she rose and went to the ancient. She sat down beside her. White hair like starlight, shining, Elder leaned close.
“He hunts,” she whispered, her voice low. “He hunts you, Kerian of Qualinesti, on the roads of your dreams. If he catches you, he catches all, even your king.”
“How does he do this? Can you help me?”
Elder didn’t know, but she could help Kerian and did. She knew a way of magic to prevent her dreaming. She knew how to enchant and what spells would serve to protect.
Protected, Kerian also knew loss. She had met the king twice more since that first time in winter, met him in the forest in spring when he called her to warn that Thagol had returned, again at Wide Spreading in early summer. She didn’t dream of him any more, for she carried a bloodstone from Elder, draining her of dreams and shielding her from Thagol’s magic Even so, the Lord Knight didn’t give up his hunt, and though he could not stalk by night, he did well by day, catching psychic scent of her when one of his Knights died by her hand. Somehow he tracked her by the deaths of his warriors. Waking, she had no warning of his approach, his stalking, his nearness, only headache.
Flies buzzed on wounds; sun glared from a hard blue sky. Kerian again looked around her at her warriors. She pointed to one, a lanky Kagonesti youth who wore the tattoos proudly on neck and shoulders. The boy was named Patch, for the streak of shining white in his dark hair. It had grown there on the dire night he learned the news that the Eagle Flight tribe had been slaughtered. He was one of the handful to survive that killing.
“Patch,” she said, “take Rale and go find and kill that Knight.”
His eyes lighted like green fire, and he leaped to do as she bid.
Kerian kicked the wagon; she kicked the dirt. Patch had a lot of hate to lose, and she wondered whether it was right to use that for her own weapon. She didn’t wonder long. Not all her weapons were as trusty as Patch, and she felt her anger rising hotter. Kerian glared around the clearing till she found her target sitting in the dust, bleeding.
“Rhyl, you’re a fool.”
The word rang again, louder, through the forest. On his knees binding the bleeding arm of a wounded companion, Jeratt looked up, then went back to his work.
Rhyl stumbled to his feet, still wiping blood from a seeping head wound, still stunned from a blow he hadn’t seen coming, the backstroke of the dead Knight’s sword, the blow struck a moment before an arrow took the human through the throat. Rhyl looked around at his friends, living and dead. Wobbly, he put a hand on the wagon to steady himself. The bounty of the wagon lay all over the ground, bales of tanned pelts that would have gone to Qualinost, into the shops of leathermen, there to become boots and jerkins and sheaths for swords. Tribute to the dragon.
“Who are you calling a fool?” Rhyl snarled, wiping blood from his face. “One Knight’s dead, and the other will be soon.”
Kerian grabbed a fistful of the elf’s shirt and jerked him closer until they were nearly nose to nose. “I told you we weren’t hitting anything on this road until the supply wagons came down.” She jerked her head at the little wagon. “That look to you like four wagons full of weapons, Rhyl?”
Rhyl spat in the dirt at her feet.
The others, wounded and hale, looked away, exhausted. Jeratt said nothing.
Kerian drew a purposeful breath. The wagon wheels creaked. In the sky the wind rose and sighed through the trees. Beside the broken wagon, the Knight groaned out the last of his blood. One of the wounded outlaws helped another to his feet. There would be ravens soon.
She said, “Getting hard for you, Rhyl, is it?”
He eyed her suspiciously.
“Hard not to just run down the hill and do a bit of thieving like in the good old days?”
He growled a yea or a nay or a leave-me-alone, and spat again.
The hand that had grabbed his shirt now moved to rest on his shoulder as though in friendly fashion.
“You agreed to be part of this, Rhyl. From the first night we talked about this, from the first moment you lifted a bow to kill a Knight, you agreed to take orders from me. You didn’t do that today. You broke out on your own, hit this little wagon too soon, and now there’s two of our comrades dead and if Patch doesn’t kill that Knight there’s going to be word in Qualinost about this. Maybe there will be anyway.”
Rhyl shrugged and twisted a lip to show he was not intimidated, but he backed a step away when Kerian narrowed her eyes.
“Rhyl,” she said, her voice like winter’s ice. “I have to be able to count on you.”
He snorted. “All this for your king,” he said, sullenly. “We burn a few bridges, we plague a few Knights, we lurk around the taverns to pick up crumbs of news.”
Before Kerian could reply, Jeratt’s laughter rang harsh as a crow’s. “Not hardly, Rhyl. You have a fat little coffer hidden in the passage through the falls, all yours and shining with booty. Didn’t used to be more than a skinny crate with nothing but a few brass coins and mold growing in it.”
The first ravens sailed the sky, circling the clearing. Kerian gripped Rhyl’s shoulder and turned him round to see the wounded and the dead.
“Now I have to know-can I count on you?”
She glanced at Jeratt The half-elf shook his head.
Above, ravens shouted, the mass of them darkening the sky. Kerian looked up to see a half dozen of them peel away from the rest They sailed over the forest, westward above the Qualinost Road. A triumphant cry rang through the forest, high and eerie. The hair rose up on the back of Kerian’s arms. Patch had found his kill, and he would be lopping the head from the Knight’s neck even now, using the dead man’s sword to do that.
“Jeratt,” she said, not looking at Rhyl again. “Get things cleaned up here. Don’t make a big job of it Leave the Knight’s corpse, and drag the wagon into the forest Thagol’s going to hear about this, so he might as well see some of our handiwork. Just haul the worst of it off the road so farmers can get by.”