A Darkness Forged in Fire (7 page)

T
he cavalry troop wheeled about, placing Konowa and Visyna at the front of their formation. Konowa turned his head slightly to speak to Visyna.

"I thought I saw the air shimmering back there," he said, turning around a bit more.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say it was some kind of mag—" He didn't get to complete his sentence as the horse suddenly shifted underneath him, knocking his left foot out of the stirrup. He started to slide off, then felt her hands wrap around his waist and pull him back.

"You should pay more attention to your riding," she said. Her hands stayed around his waist even after he had his foot back in the stirrup, and he decided keeping his mouth shut was the better course.

Movement far off to the right pulled his eyes away, and Konowa caught a glimpse of black and red fur. He smiled. Jir could trail them from a safe distance and had the speed and stamina to keep up, as long as he didn't try to mark too many trees along the way. Konowa was still watching the forest when the sergeant steered his horse in front of Konowa's, causing him to pull up.

"Um, it's a bit dangerous out here, sir, m'lady, and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind taking the rear of the column? It would ease my mind to know we had an officer of your caliber back there watching out for us, sir." He doffed his helmet to Visyna and smiled.

"You think that's necessary?" Konowa asked, puzzled by the request. Visyna gave his waist the smallest of squeezes, but it was enough to lighten his heart.
"Good idea," Konowa said before the sergeant could change his mind.

He was in such a good mood he decided he might have misjudged the cavalry all these years, their most recent attempt to kill him notwithstanding. To be fair, that was everyone's reaction until they got to know him. He was thinking of telling the Duke how impressed he was with his men when he overheard one of the troopers talking to a mate.

"Bloody hell, I thought the sarge would never get that
bugger downwind."

"You there," Konowa said loudly, startling the man who had just spoken.
"Yes, sir," he said, reining in his mount to ride alongside them.

"I've been away from the civilized world for a while, perhaps you'd
be so kind as to catch me up on what has transpired in the Empire this past
year."

The man's eyes widened even as his nose twitched. Before the trooper could answer, Visyna whispered in Konowa's ear.
"Sergeant Lorian has a rather large horse, I could always ride with him if you'd
prefer."

"On the other hand, I'm sure Ms. Tekoy will be able to fill me in. Dismissed," he said, finding that giving an order after all this time wasn't so hard after all. The trooper saluted and quickly cantered up to the front of the column, leaving Konowa and Visyna alone.

"You really do have a way with people, don't you?" she said.

Konowa tried turning again the saddle, but gave up when more pain lanced across his chest.
"It started at a young age. The point is, or rather, was," he said, waving at the lost point of his own ear,
"that if you were born with a black tip, Her taint was believed to run deep in the blood. To the elves of the Hynta, especially the Long Watch, it doesn't get much worse than that. Not that long ago, they just abandoned a marked baby on the plains beyond the forest to die. So no, if I don't
get along well with others, it might be because most have always wanted me dead.
It tends to make one a little…antisocial."

"But why mark babes? Why would the Shadow Monarch do
such a thing?"

Konowa shrugged. "Only She knows, and She isn't saying. All I know is that's the hand I and the other Iron Elves were dealt, and we've
played it as best we can."

"I was dealt a different hand," Visyna said, moving her hands underneath his shirt and resting them on his ribs.
"Perhaps I can change your outlook on things in some small way."

Konowa raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Her hands probed along his rib cage with care, but it still hurt.

"Easy, woman, they're bruised enough already," he said.

She pulled her hands away from his chest and began rummaging in a small cloth bag she carried.
"Your name, Heer Ul-Osveen, it sounds Calahrian."

"One of the finest in the Calahrian Empire," Konowa said. He shifted his behind in the saddle, trying to find the right up-and-down rhythm with the horse.
"Lieutenant Osveen held off a force of a thousand orcs with only ten men at the
battle of Yacat Gorge. That was during the Border Troubles a century ago."

"Is there a time in the Empire's history that it didn't have border troubles?" Visyna asked.

Konowa let the barb slide. "The orcs could have gone
around the gorge and taken the small outpost the lieutenant and his men were
guarding, but the hairy buggers were compelled to fight, and Osveen and his men
slaughtered them."

"Compelled?" Visyna asked, leaning forward to rest her chin against his right shoulder.

"Osveen had been a playwright before joining the army. His greatest claim to fame was creating amusing limericks for his plays. Ah, but you're
the daughter of the great Almak Tekoy. Perhaps your ears are a bit too tender
for something like that."

Konowa swore he could feel the skin of her cheek turn hot.

"My ears are in fitter shape than yours," she said.

"You wound me, madam."

Visyna went back to rummaging. "So tell me one of
these limericks."

Konowa readjusted again in the saddle and gave it some thought.
"Let me see…

A
steward entered the throne room and quietly placed a cup of evening tea before the Viceroy. Gwyn clasped it prayerlike in both hands, curling his fingers around the cup. He had changed from his traveling clothes. The light from the lanterns bounced crazily off the coronet that now rested on his head, a delicately worked crown of white gold studded with jewels representative of every foreign land he had visited as part of the diplomatic corps, and incorporated into the Empire.

Protocol demanded that the crown be smaller than Her Majesty's, and it was, barely. No fool though, he wore a second, much smaller and more modest coronet when traveling to Calahr, or on the rare occasions the Queen ventured forth to survey Her lands.

The light also highlighted his exceptionally pale skin, stretched taut across a delicate bone structure that bespoke his pure heritage, something many in the High Court were sadly lacking. That was the problem with empires—the bloodlines of the conquered lands mixed with that of their masters, polluting everything. In time, he would deal with them. For now, though, he focused his thoughts on his immediate situation.

Within the starched precision of his uniform, he forced his body to relax until no outward sign of movement could be detected. It was a trick he'd picked up early in the diplomatic corps and had used to great effect on many occasions. Without need of a mirror he saw himself perfectly: velvet-green jacket with gold facings, his slender shoulders made larger by two wide epaulets, blood-red aiguillettes of fine silk braid hanging down from each, gold-plated buttons in double rows running the length of the jacket's front, and around his waist a brilliant white belt from which a thin rapier hung in a scabbard of wrought silver. It was like looking at a painting, an effect Gwyn desired, for under the table his legs shook nervously in their riding breeches and calf-high leather boots.

He had scheduled a meeting with the commander of the cavalry forces in Elfkyna to commence an hour ago, but the Duke had not yet arrived. Gwyn knew it was deliberate. Why the Queen had allowed a despicable lower-caste peasant to rise so high in her army escaped him, but it was indisputable that the bastard knew how to fight.

Gwyn sipped sparingly at his tea until the voice of a retainer telling someone
"this way" signaled the arrival of the Duke. The Viceroy turned slightly in his chair to offer a chiseled profile to the scoundrel.

"Good evening, my dear—" Gwyn started to say, then stopped. A green-uniformed corporal wearing the distinctive
"Crown and Wagon" patch from one of the Outer Territories Trading Company's regiments stood just outside the ring of lanterns.

The elf came to attention and saluted.

"What is the meaning of this? Who are you?" Gwyn demanded.

The corporal lowered his hand. "Corporal Takoli
Kritton, part of the piquet detail, your grace. There was a disturbance in front
of one of the posts tonight. A rakke, sir."

"Are you drunk, Corporal? I've always found a firing squad a quick cure for that." So, the rumors about the last Viceroy were perhaps not the idle chatter he'd once thought.

The corporal didn't blink. "I am not drunk, your
grace."

Gywn considered the elf. His voice was soft, his movements slow and deferential, but something told Gwyn you wouldn't turn your back on him. It was the eyes, or more precisely, the fact that they revealed nothing at all, and Gwyn prided himself on being able to plumb the depths of souls and learn their weaknesses.

"Really?" Gwyn said, affecting boredom. "Yet you
interrupt me with stories of extinct creatures. Very well, if what you say is
true, bring it to me."

The corporal took several steps forward and placed a large haversack on the table. A dark stain grew at its bottom, and an oily fluid began seeping onto the table.

"What's this?" the Viceroy asked, recoiling from the bag.

"Its head."

The Viceroy didn't bother opening the haversack. He didn't need to. Wheels began to turn in his head as he worked through the ramifications. The last Viceroy had been in Her service, and Her power was clearly expanding.

Yes, he could use this.

The Viceroy allowed himself to feel a moment of joy before he reined himself in and looked back at the corporal, making a more thorough appraisal. The elf slouched slightly, as if trying to make himself appear less than he was. He wore his long black hair tied in a queue, but again, it was his eyes that gave Gwyn pause. A Hynta-elf, Gwyn decided, his complexion as dark as that of some of the elfkynan. You never could tell how old these elves were, unless they looked ancient, and even then one never really knew. This one appeared to be in his midtwenties, not that that meant anything to him.

Gwyn needed to know more. "And how is it you came to have its head while still retaining your own?" He motioned for an elfkynan to place the haversack on the floor beside him and mop up the mess.

"I personally ordered my men to be on the watch for anything peculiar tonight, your grace. I felt something wasn't
right."

The Viceroy smiled, an act without any intent to put the elf at ease.
"Elves and their senses. It's like having bloodhounds, and house-trained at that," he said, peering down at the floor by the elf's boots as if to verify his own statement.

"Sir," the elf said, his cheeks coloring.

The Viceroy smiled. Elves were rare in the army, rarer still in the days since the Iron Elves were disbanded. This one was clearly a remnant of that disgraced horde. He wore his shako set at just enough of an angle that it marked him a veteran of more than one campaign, but not so tilted that it would catch the ire of an officer. It almost served to hide the fact that the point of one ear was missing, another telltale mark of a former Iron Elf. Seven wound stripes were sewn above the cuff of his left sleeve, a rarity among the cannon fodder they assigned to the Trading Company—typically the bastion of drunkards, fools, and cowards.

Gwyn was certain the elf before him was none of those. No, he was something far more dangerous.

The only other obvious flaw was an irregular dark band that ran the full way around the left sleeve of his uniform.
"That dark mark, there, on your coat, what's that?"

"Just a stain," the elf said, his eyes looking everywhere but at the Viceroy.

Gwyn suppressed a smile. "Actually, it looks to me
like a patch was once sewn there, a very specific patch, I think, one of leaves,
if I had to take a guess. Tell me, Kritton…is it?"

"Sir," the elf said, refusing to take the bait.

"Corporal, what unit were you with before joining the company? A wizard's assistant perhaps, or a scout? Hmmm, no, you carry a musket so you certainly aren't
a pureblood. No self-respecting elf would carry metal, would they?"

The elf's body grew even more rigid, but his voice remained neutral.
"Regular light infantry, sir."

"Come now, Corporal," the Viceroy said, enjoying himself immensely,
"the army spends a great deal of time and money instilling pride in one's regiment. Are you saying you don't
remember which one?"

"The Iron Elves, sir."

"Ah, the
shamed
regiment," Gwyn said triumphantly.
"Must have been a terrible blow, having the regiment dishonored like that. Your
commanding officer turning out to be a traitor to the Empire. Cast all elves in
a rather poor light."

"Sir," the corporal said, clearly restraining himself.

"Quite," Gwyn said, suddenly growing tired of the sport. He had bigger fish to fry tonight.
"Job well done, Corporal. I'll make sure to circulate a note regarding it
tomorrow, might help your officers see you in a better light. Dismissed."

The corporal threw a parade-ground salute at Gwyn, then wheeled about and marched away, forcing several elfkynan to scramble out of his path.

Gwyn raised his cup to his lips but stopped short of drinking, considering how he might use this latest incident to his advantage. The mind of the masses was a simple thing to manipulate. Play to their beliefs, invoke their various gods and deities, then vanquish their foes, real or imagined, and claim righteous benediction from said god or spirit and reap the rewards.

"It's all too easy, isn't it?" he said out loud. The table shimmered in the lanterns' glow in reply. He brought the cup to his lips and stopped in horror. Bits of gore from the haversack floated in the tea. A sly one. He might have a use for this elf yet. He was debating whether to have him called back when the sound of boots echoed off the ruined walls of the palace.

"Ah, the popinjay has a new roost. Interesting aroma, Viceroy," the Duke of Rakestraw said, striding into the light.

Red hair fluttered around his head like ribbons of blood, framing a face so scarred that it was difficult to pick out the line of his mouth unless it was open. A heavy, curved cavalry saber, known by friend and foe alike as Wolf's Tooth, hung from a sabertache slung down over one enormous shoulder and was of no more cumbrance to the duke than fleas on a dog.

Dull silver spurs sparked against the stones as the Duke quickly crossed the floor, his black riding boots flashing as only polished leather cavalry boots could. His pale-blue surcoat was open at his midsection, revealing a black sash wound around his stomach—Rogolth's Banner. The gall, Gwyn fumed, to wear a fallen orc king's personal standard. Did Rakestraw think showing off the spoils of one of his cavalry's murderous rampages would influence the events of the evening?

"My dear Duke, how good of you to make an appearance," Gwyn said, releasing his grasp on the cup and giving the soldier a measured wave.

The Duke smiled, a jagged crease across his face that looked as vicious as the blue eyes that glared back at Gwyn.

"I haven't all night, Viceroy," he said, walking a complete circuit around the rubble-strewn throne room before choosing a chair directly opposite Gwyn. He sat down with a thump, then rested his boots on the edge of the table.

Gwyn grabbed for the cup and succeeded in spilling more on the table, ruining the effect of the light across the dragon's maw.

"The days of quietude in the Empire are at an end, I'm afraid," Gwyn began, motioning at an adjutant to clean the table again.
"Her Majesty's long and benevolent reign over the masses is being challenged. It
falls to us to stop it."

The Duke flashed a ragged smile. "Her reign, or the
challenge to it?"

"Very droll, my lord Duke, but I do not find this the least bit amusing. I came to Elfkyna expecting to find order, and instead am shocked to find chaos." He decided not to mention the rakke.

"Chaos?" the Duke asked, his voice rising. "The only
chaos I know of was the riot you caused in the bazaar this afternoon. Fifteen
dead. What are you playing at, Viceroy?"

Gwyn spread his arms wide. "I assure you, this is no
game. Rebelliousness is spreading like a plague, and I have begun what you and
the rest of the Imperial Army have been unable to do. The natives will learn to
stay in line, or suffer the consequences."

The Duke's head was already shaking before Gwyn finished.
"You think slaughtering a bunch of civilians is going to cow them? All you've done is stirred things up. I'm already hearing about unrest across the city. When news of this reaches the northern tribes, they're
bound to react."

"They already have, weeks ago as it turns out. My
information indicates an army from the northern tribes has moved down the
Shalpurud River and begun building a series of small outposts. These forces are
disrupting our trade routes and making it difficult to take out material to the
coast."

The Duke huffed. "Your information comes from my
scouts. This army is more mob than anything else. They hardly pose a real threat
to the Empire."

Gwyn allowed the smallest of sighs to escape his lips.
"That is why diplomacy is best left to those who understand the finer points of
things."

The Duke motioned as if to leave and Gwyn hurriedly continued.

"The
Imperial Weekly Herald
is reporting that all foreign powers should leave Elfkyna. That is nothing less
than a call to arms against the Empire."

"Over a period of fifty years! Frankly, I think they're
a bit timid about it all."

Gwyn couldn't believe anyone could be this obtuse. "The elfkyna are not at all capable of self-government. Not now, not fifty years from now, not ever. I've studied their history. Tribal warfare racked this land for centuries. Only under the benevolent rule of this Empire has peace and stability existed long enough for real progress to be made, and this talk of rebellion threatens it all." A part of Gwyn listened rapturously to his own performance, marveling at his skill.

"The only talk of rebellion appears to be coming from you," the Duke said, his eyes drilling holes into Gwyn.

Gwyn sat up a little straighter. The Duke was perhaps not as obtuse as he had first suspected.
"I don't think you appreciate the severity of this." He motioned to another adjutant. The elfkynan stepped forward carrying a long, leather tube which he upended on the table. A beautifully tanned sheepskin hide slid out, which the adjutant carefully unrolled.

"Fortresses have sprouted up along the river," Gwyn began, standing to better point to the map,
"here, here, and here. Worse, my spies report that elfkynan rebels have occupied
the fortress Taga Nor and are rebuilding its walls. Truly, the situation is
grave."

The Duke leaned forward slightly to get a better look at the multihued sheepskin and snorted loudly.

Peasant
, Gwyn thought, staring lovingly at the map.

The entire Calahrian Empire was laid out like a jeweler's wares. Strips of real gold foil delineated the outer boundaries of the territory controlled by the Empire, while beaten silver represented the major rivers. Mountain ranges made of crushed rubies gleamed and Celwyn, the Calahrian capital, sparkled with all four carats of a rare obsidian diamond.

"You could feed a village for a year with the baubles on this thing," the Duke murmured.