“Ay, Jeratt,” she said. “The dwarf looks like he could use a meal. Me too, for that matter. Anyone been hunting lately, or is it all bone and stone soup?”
On the hills, elves kept watch. No one counted on magic now, for with her going it seemed Elder had taken all her useful confusions. The dwarf Stanach volunteered to take his own turn at watch, and Kerian didn’t refuse him.
What will he say to his thane about all this? Kerian wondered. How will I get him to Gil so he can form some kind of opinion?
Ah, well, that was for another day’s thinking. She looked at Jeratt. Firelight made him seem older; shadows sculpted his face till Kerian might have imagined him twice his age.
“You know,” Jeratt said, “no matter how well you plan our raids, Kerian, Thagol’s going to find you the first time you kill someone. He’s like a dog sniffing down the road.”
She remembered. Absently, she rubbed the bridge of her nose. There was the old pain forming. From old habit, she gauged the headache, trying to know it for what it was. Not Thagol, hunting. Not yet. This time the throbbing behind her eyes was weariness.
“Before we fell apart, we were all over the place, several bands striking at will and no one for him to grab or follow.” He shook his head grimly. “It’s why he started this slash and burn campaign. Figured he’d cut us off from the villagers and the farmers. He did that right. No one was going to risk his life to feed us, no one would shelter us or even give us news for fear of their own lives. Let me tell you, Kerian, it all fell apart fast.”
Kerian nodded, thinking.
“The first time you kill, though,” Jeratt continued, “he’ll catch up with us, Kerian. The first time you kill, hell know it.”
Yes, he would. She’d thought of that. She was considering it very carefully. Her outlaw bands would begin a stealthy campaign. At dawn they would scatter through the forest, making a noose around the capital. They would continue Jeratt’s plan of random strikes, each band falling on targets as they would, in no discernible pattern. Tribute wagons, supply wagons, these were of no moment now.
Now the struggle would intensify. Bridges would be thrown down, roads would be blocked with fallen trees.
Streams and rivers would be clogged. “We will not go so far as to fire the woods,” Kerian said. “That is forbidden, but we will fall on his work details as he rebuilds the bridges and clears the roads, we will kill all the Knights who guard those details. We will give the bastard no quarter!”
They would strike hard and strike without mercy. Slowly, in no obvious way, they would move farther out from the city, farther out into the forest, drawing Thagol’s forces into the deeper woods.
“Jeratt,” she said, still rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I’m not going to be at any one of those raids. I’m not going to kill any of the enemy. When I next come to kill, I’ll kill Eamutt Thagol. If I join a raid, it will be to lop the head off Headsman Chance.”
She paused, gave him a moment to digest that, then said, “Jeratt, where is my brother?”
The question surprised him; she saw it on his face. “I don’t know.”
Kerian shook her head. “Yes, you do. Ayensha isn’t here, and you know where she is, so you know where my brother is. Where is Dar?”
She watched him thinking and watched him choose. He’d held faithful to her trust after she’d gone, without notice, to Thorbardin. He’d done better than that: He’d tried to build the core of what would now become-if all gone gods were good!-the terror of Thagol’s Knights. Yet she saw it now, again as she had a year ago. Jeratt had a deeper allegiance to her brother, to Iydahar who did not trust her or like her king.
“Who is he to you, Jeratt?”
The question surprised him. “Dar? He’s my friend.”
She snorted, unbelieving. “He’s more than that. I’ve seen how you are when he’s around-all of you. It’s like he’s a … I don’t know, priest or shaman.”
Jeratt sat a long time quiet, poking at the fire, chasing bright orange cinders up to the sky. Kerian watched him; she looked at the guards on the hill, then at Jeratt again.
“He’s none of those, Kerian. He’s-he was a man of the prince. He fought beside Porthios, and when the prince vanished and most of Dar’s folk went away into the forest, Dar stayed. You don’t know, Kerian. Maybe you don’t remember how hard the winter was that year, you in your towers at Qualinost. Maybe you looked out your window and saw the snow falling and you thought it was pretty.” He stopped, his eyes gone suddenly hard. “Maybe you scurried out from the silks and the satins of your lover’s bed and thought how cold the floor was when your little foot missed the carpet.”
Kerian drew a breath, sharp and swift.
“Dar is the one who gathered up all of the prince’s broken men and found us shelter in a winter that would have killed us. Broken bones, broken hearts, broken spirits. He took us all as his, when he could have gone away with his kin, with your father and mother and the White Osprey tribe. He healed us and helped us, and when the spring came and he did go away to be with Ayensha and her folk, he never forgot us. He brought us news, just like in that terrible winter he brought us food and healing. In all the years, though we fought for no cause but our own anger and greed, your brother never let us go afoul of the Knights we hate if he could help it, and one day he brought us Elder to keep and care for….”
In silence, he poked at the fire again. In silence, he watched the embers, light flowing across them, like fire breathing.
“He was our brother in arms, Kerian. We were sworn to the prince, and that’s like we were born of the same kin. Dar never forgot that. We owe him everything, and though we’ve sworn to your cause – I’m sorry to say it, we don’t owe you him. Dar wants no part of you, your cause, or your king, and there’s no persuading him. I ain’t going to be the one to go against him. Now, Ayensha will be back in the morning, so you go get some sleep now. We got a bit of work ahead of us, eh?”
Ayensha would be back, so he’d said, but in the morning she didn’t come. Neither did she on the morning after, or the one after that, and on the fourth morning, Jeratt said no more than that the girl must have come to her senses.
“She learned she is childing in the time you were gone. She’s come to her senses now and will not be following you to war.”
He lay upon a bed of bracken, the Skull Knight among his men. They’d made camp in the forest, out of sight of the Qualinost Road heading west. Watch had been posted and turned twice before he’d finally settled to sleep. The forest smelled of fern and earth, and down a thin wind, distantly of draconian. He never let those creatures camp near his Knights. They disgusted most humans, and black-armored Knights were no exception.
Thagol closed his eyes. His disciplined mind let go of the thoughts and concerns of the day. He had plotted his next strike, scouted the village, and deployed his men. It would be a fiery morning, this he trusted. In Gilianost lived a taverner who had given shelter to one of the outlaws, a half-elf on the run from two of Thagol’s Knights, The taverner would find that offense costly.
Thagol settled, and though he had not lain upon a true bed in a month, still he settled easily. He didn’t miss Qualinost, that warren of elves, the very scent of whom turned his stomach. He lay upon the forest floor, the hard earth that hated the very touch of his body, that loathed the sound of his voice. As willingly as he hated Qualinesti, so did Sir Eamutt Thagol imagine the forest hated him.