Vardan's Tale
"Holy Falk, Gird, and Camwyn," Linnar Vardan muttered, shivering. She crouched in the ditch her half-cohort had dug in the summer, icy water up to her neck, watching the strange fire race toward her. She had never seen anything like it, the purple-white glare tree-tall, as intense as the hottest fires smiths made. She was going to die—they all would—no wet ditch could protect them from something like this.
It burned like no mortal fire, moving as if it had a purpose, an intent behind it. Waves of heat reached out ahead of it, smelling more like a forge-fire than ordinary burning trees. As it neared, Vardan yelled "Down!" at the patrol, threw her head back under the water and held her breath. It would not be enough; she would die, but—
Violet-white fire flowed over the ditch; for the instant before the water turned to steam and obscured vision, Vardan saw what no mortal had ever seen, the underside of a dragonlet, the fire-colored structures that would be, if the dragonlet survived, breastbone, ribs, heart and lungs and limbs. And she saw the mad eyes, alight with glee. Instinctively, she rolled over, burrowing face-down in the water; she felt heat on her back and legs, and then searing pain, and then cold again as the light passed with the fire.
Desperate for air, she raised her head. All around, but the ditch they lay in, was ash—not a stump, not a branch, but a lane of ash, blowing south on the bitter north wind, dimly lit by the fire that still burned on toward the south. She heaved himself up, surprised to be alive, and heard around her others doing the same—coughing out the muddy water, grunting in pain.
"What was that?" Tarvol asked.
"Sergeant?"
"I'm here. I'm fine." Vardan said. She didn't feel fine, but right now alive was fine, by definition. "Thank the gods." Her back felt scorched, but when she reached back over her shoulder, her fingers met wet leather and shreds of wool, not bare burnt flesh. "All right," she said, hearing her voice regain its accustomed timbre. "Who's with me?"
One by one, they gave their names and clambered out of the ditch, wet, cold, and shaken, but alive. Except for the four who weren't...who hadn't gone all the way under the water.
Vardan blinked back tears. No fire she'd ever seen had done that to human bodies...but it was too late to help them, and she had the others to think of. "Pick 'em up," she said to the others. "My guess is the Pargunese will come this way—we don't want them messing our friends about."
"Where are we going?" Malden asked.
That was the question. They'd been on the way back to camp when they first saw the fire loom and heard that fearful roar...and from the look, it might've passed over the camp. Vardan shuddered, and told herself it was the cold.
"We're taking their bodies into the woods," she said. "Then we'll find the camp." If it's there. If anyone survived, as we did.
Moving the bodies into the woods proved difficult. The strange fire had kindled others along its margins, and that more normal burning left piles of smouldering trees, bushes, debris. Vardan finally gave up looking for a safe place to exit the lane the fire had made, and led her people back to what she thought was the site of their camp, only a short distance from the ditch
Nothing remained. She stared into the darkness, now lit only by the flickering of normal fires to right and left, and tasted bitter ash in her mouth as the wind blew it in her face. No camp. All the others dead, no doubt; she could only hope it had been quick, as quickly as the fire passed over their ditch. No camp meant no supplies: no food—no spare weapons—no clothes to replace the wet remnants in which she and the others stood shivering. They kicked through the ash—not so much as a metal buckle left.
"Well," she said. For a moment she could say nothing more, her mouth dry with the taste of ashes and grief, her heart heavy with something near despair. But she had been at Dwarfwatch during the siege, not yet then a sergeant. She had despaired then—and she had survived because one person had not given up, one person had—beyond all hope—brought rescue and saved those who remained. Paks Yellow-hair hadn't been a paladin then, only a common soldier of Phelan's...and Phelan was now Lyonya's king. Her king.
Vardan's heart gave a single painful beat, then steadied.
"Your box," Kir said. "Sergeant, your box."
Her box, full of a lifetime's collection of jewelry from the south: her security in old age, her delight always. The silver armlets with leaping fish; the gold ring with the ruby, the necklace like a wide silver collar: loot from campaigns in Aarenis that she'd found herself, and traded for, and purchased outright. "Box doesn't matter," she said.
"But Sergeant—you always said—" Kir, barely twenty winters, had already shown a talent for not knowing when to keep quiet.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "We matter. Our people matter. Surviving matters, and killing Pargunese matters. That's all." They all had things they'd lost—Kir had kept a braided ring of his mother's hair in his box. She told herself that hair meant as much to him as her finery did to her—and even if it didn't, this wasn't the time to worry about it.
"We'll find some rangers," she said. "When the Pargunese come—because they'll be following this trail, I've no doubt—we'll hold them until the king comes."
"But—we're less than two tensquads, sergeant."
"We're less than two Halveric tensquads," Vardan said. She squinted into the wind. No sign of Pargunese approaching, and with the wind from the north, she would hear them before she saw them in the dark. Would they have torches? "We're going close to the edge-fires—get dry, clean our weapons—and then we'll find a gap in the fires and a place to lay our comrades."
The edge fires were also burning southward, pushed by the wind; when Vardan realized this, she knew they had only to wait a little to get into unburned forest. In the more normal firelight, she and the others cleaned their wet and muddy swords and daggers and warmed up as their clothes dried. Only five blackwood bows remained to them, the others having been dropped as people jumped into the ditch. Most of the arrows had survived and needed only to be wiped dry. Any clothing touching the water's surface had burned; Vardan's own winter cloak, like many others, looked like a ragged collar. Two of the corpses, found face-up, had whole cloaks, sodden with mud.
"We'll have to use those," Vardan said. "Don't know when we can resupply."
"But—"
"And their weapons," she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "They will have all honor later, but for now we have a war to fight."
The muddy cloaks, rinsed as well as possible in the ditch and wrung out, steamed by the fires. Vardan had their dead companions laid out as decently as they could, with prayers to Alyanya, Falk, and the taig. To Vardan's amazement, the earth opened and gently took them in, closing over the bodies as tenderly as a mother folds a sick child in a blanket. Nearby stones tipped slowly over and sealed the grave.
"The Pargunese will come," Vardan said. "Either on that fire-path or through the woods. We'll wait for them here."
Now—hungry, tired, and cold, but eased by the taig's care for their dead, they crouched behind the bulwark of smoking debris, warmed by remaining coals, and waited for the Pargunese to come.
Almost simultaneously, Vardan heard a distant rhythmic sound blown on the wind and someone nearer, in the woods. Vardan didn't know who the nearer sound was. Pargunese scouts? The Pargunese were certainly war-wise enough to have forward and flanking scouts, Vardan knew.
But whoever it was moved more quietly than she thought Pargunese would, never stumbling. Vardan touched Tarvol's shoulder; she could just see Tarvol's nod when he pointed to the sound. Tarvol nocked an arrow and Vardan stood up and spoke the password aloud.
Silence, but for the wind and the distant sound of marching, a little closer now. Then the correct reply, and "Ranger—you?"
"Halveric," Vardan said.
"Bless the Lady," the ranger said. The ranger came within sight now, a shadow among shades. "How many of you?"
"Three hands and one," Vardan said. "The camp's gone."
&nbs
p; "More than that," the ranger said. "Have you bows?"
"Five," Vardan said. "And plenty of arrows."
"Pargunese are coming," the ranger said. "Many, some on foot and some with horses."
"I can hear," Vardan said.
"Rangers on both their flanks," the ranger said. "We've picked off some already, but they have crossbowmen as well as pikes."
"Royal Archers?" Vardan asked.
The ranger sniffed, a sniff eloquent of contempt. "Those next upstream say they were bade stay until ordered to go in case more Pargunese landed. Fifty of them—well, forty, because ten did come, to explain why the rest wouldn't." His voice warmed. "My pardon: I'm Veril. I was at the river; we could not prevent the landing."
"And I'm Vardan, a Halveric sergeant." If the magical fire had struck Riverwash, she might be the only sergeant left for this cohort...if she could call sixteen a cohort. "We were coming back from a two day patrol—late, we kept getting stuck in the marsh—and almost to camp."
Now the Pargunese were close enough that Vardan could hear the sound of horses' hooves as well as men's feet. Her stomach tightened.
"Other rangers will be here soon," Veril said. "I am our forward scout, but I will stay until someone else comes."
"Who commands?" Vardan said.
"No one, really. We rangers act independently. I would suggest moving with the others. How many days' supplies have you?"
"None," Vardan said. "We were coming in to resupply when the fire hit."
"Then you must ask the other rangers. We have caches here and there, but I have no time to show you."
A soft owl call wavered through the trees. "I'll tell them you're here," Veril said, and gave a similar call, but with more modulation. Then he said, "I must go—I must stay ahead of them and give warning. Gods be with you."
In a short time, two more rangers moved up to contact Vardan's group. They had no more information about the general situation than Veril. Down the fire's path torches appeared, their flames streaming in the wind, and a dark moving mass under them. She forgot hunger, exhaustion, cold, at the sight of the enemy. They had set that fire—killed friends—destroyed everything she owned in the world but the Halveric oath-ring on her thumb—and she wanted to rush out and kill—but knew better. She must think...must stay back, with her people, and only harass them.
Vardan herself was not one of the best archers in the group; she gave her own bow to Malden, who was. In the dark, by the light of distant torches, it was difficult to judge range or windage, but she heard the squeal of a horse before the Pargunese were fully abreast—a ranger back down the line of march had hit one. Then her four archers stood and fired as a volley into the flank of the Pargunese, and dashed back into the deeper woods just in time; the Pargunese crossbowmen must have had their bows spanned, for a clattering of bolts high in the branches suggested they'd fired high: the lethal dropping fire Vardan had seen in Aarenis.
A Pargunese yelled angrily; the formation marched on, and the rangers moved with it. One asked "Do you need food?"
"Yes—we lost supplies and all."
"Noldin, take them to the Twostone cache," the ranger said, and another tapped Vardan on the arm.
"Follow me," she said. "Single file."
By dawn, they were deep in the forest, at a small three-sided shelter with a firepit in front and sleeping platforms to either side. In the back wall, between piles of dry firewood, a door led into a storeroom. In that early light, Noldin appeared as a dark-haired woman of medium height, dressed in the usual russet and green. Vardan looked at the little campsite.
"Jacks there, sunsetting," Noldin said, pointing. "Between the rocks. Good water summerwards—spring doesn't freeze; bucket's in the shelter."
Vardan nodded at Tarvol, who fetched a bucket and started off. As the dawnlight strengthened, she looked at her troops...streaked with mud and ash from head to foot, the older veterans with almost no expression, and the younger ones, some of whom had never fought in Aarenis, showing white around the eyes.
"May we build a fire?" she asked. A fire's smoke might betray them to Pargunese, but they needed hot food and cleaning up would be good as well.
"Yes," Noldin said. "They're well past by now." She looked around at them all. "What—how did you live through the fire?"
"Ditch," Vardan said. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. Here, among the healthy forest, the air smelled of cold wet forest only. "When we made the camp, so close to those wet woods east of it, the captain worried about rising water. So he said dig out a little drainage channel summerwards of the camp, to keep us from being cut off on that side. We spent part of the summer and fall on it, dug it out and piled the dirt up for a causeway, and then built a bridge over it. Sure enough, it drained more water, and after the fall rains, had water chest-deep in it. When we saw the fire coming, we jumped in."
"The water saved you?"
"Yes. Most of us." Vardan hoped she would ask no more questions.
Noldin looked at her for a moment, then said, "In the storeroom we have dried beans, trail bread, and meal in casks. Cookpots and a couple of spare mugs and bowls. You will find also a stack of blankets and five spare cloaks. I'm sorry it is not more."
Vardan bowed. "We are grateful."
"I must go," Noldin said. But she hesitated.
"You will eat with us?"
"No—but do you want me to tell any other Halverics I find where you are?"
"Yes," Vardan said. "We cannot stay here long. But when we go, I can leave them word which direction."
Noldin disappeared among the trees like a wisp of smoke. Vardan told off her troops for the necessary chores, and by midmorning everyone had eaten at least some meal moistened with hot water and had a mug of sib. She let half of them sleep, dirty as they were; the others, she set as rotating sentries, with those off watch cleaning themselves and inspecting their weapons by daylight. She felt better when she'd washed the bitter ash from her own face, when she'd brushed the now-dried mud from her uniform, and exchanged the useless scorched frill of her cloak for one of the rangers' cloaks.
In midafternoon, she woke the first group and put them to work, and then slept until the turn of night. She woke with a clear idea of what she should have done, and what she should do now—send someone to Chaya to tell the king what the current situation was, take the rest to Riverwash to link up with Captain Talgan. But last night's situation would have changed by now—surely the rangers would have sent someone to Chaya. She forced herself out of the shelter and then heard the rattle of sleet falling through the branches.
"Sergeant?" Ganeth, the watch-first, spoke at once; he was huddled by the fire; it hissed when a bead of sleet hit it.
"We'll need to move tomorrow," Vardan said, wondering as she said it if that would be possible. If the sleet turned to heavy snow, if the clouds hid both the sun and Torre's Necklace by night, they could be lost in the forest. She was no ranger, to feel the taig and its guidance. The maps she'd had burned with the camp. "Unless it snows," she added, sighing. "I'll take over, Ganeth. Go in and wake sentries; I'll tell the others they're off-watch."
Flurries of sleet and snow alternated the rest of the night; at dawn the ground was powdered white. The troops looked better for sleep and food and cleanliness. They made breakfast smartly, straightened the campsite, and looked to Vardan as if they expected her to know what to do next.
Three hands of them, and herself. What could three hands do best?
The winterwards sentry hooted the alarm, as near to an owl's call as he could. In that instant Vardan knew one thing they could do: kill Pargunese who did not outnumber them. She signaled in Halveric hand-talk; her troops arranged themselves and moved out.
The Pargunese they saw skulking through the forest looked as desperate as she had felt the day before. Four hands of them, half with pikes and half with crossbows. They stopped every few steps; they muttered in Pargunese, pointing this way and that.
They were lost, that was
clear, and they did not agree on something—direction? Intention? They did not seem to expect an attack—or had no discipline, which she did not believe, having seen the Pargunese marching.
Vardan's troops let them come closer...closer. Then three ravens flew from a tree with loud cries, and the Pargunese looked upward. Vardan signaled. Her five archers took five of the Pargunese crossbowmen, two from one side, three from the other. The other crossbowmen bent to span their bows, but too late—five more arrows and they were all down, wounded at least. The pikes, five ahead and five behind, drew quickly into a circle, pikes out, but were too few, and on uneven ground. The Halverics stepped forward, swords drawn. The Pargunese yelled—for help? Curses?—and again the Halveric archers drew, shot, drew, and shot again. At that range, the Pargunese armor—whatever it was under their winter cloaks—did not protect them, and they fell, dead or wounded, the pikes clattering to the ground.
Vardan watched as her troops finished them, collected the weapons and stripped the corpses. Twenty warm woolen cloaks, heavy knitted tunics, woolen trousers, boots, gloves, helmets...her own people would not go cold now. And they had ornaments—earrings, neck-rings, arm-rings, all in designs Vardan had not seen except on a ship-captain in Immerdzan. Her people glanced back. "Go ahead," she said. "They owe us."
The Pargunese had carried packs as well, stuffed with hard rounds of bread, dried fish, dried meat, unfamiliar hard orange cheeses, and small stone jars of something that stank like rotting fish. Besides pikes they had short swords with a different shape of blade from the Halveric swords, and some had small axes strapped to their packs.
"Take it all back to the ranger shelter," Vardan said. "We can leave something for the rangers, after all."
By the time they had done that, and hauled the Pargunese corpses farther away, snow was falling again and daylight was almost gone. That second night in the ranger shelter felt very different; meeting and killing the Pargunese meant that being where they were had a purpose. The next morning, snow flurries made Vardan decide to stay where they were another day rather than risk being lost.