Firemoon (26 page)

She saw the man and aimed at him. He was rather short and dressed in the manner of a militia fighter. He saw her. Katja loosed the arrow, it flew through the air and buried itself in his forehead.

The man fell without a sound.

Katja again lay down and listened intently. There were no shouts.

She hurriedly crawled towards the body and did her best to drag it into the depression without standing up. Someone was bound to see it if she dragged it all the way to the ditch, and so this would have to do. She would just have to move swiftly.

She crawled to the tents and then finally rose up on her knees. The silence still felt strange to her. The occasional cough or groan could be heard from the tents, but nothing seemed to be going on. Still, there clearly were a few people outside. It would take incredible luck to enter the village without being seen.

She remembered a piece of advice Serdra had once given her about going unnoticed. When many different kinds of people were milling about and no-one was specifically looking for an enemy, the best way to hide was often in plain sight. Why take special note of someone who did nothing to stand out?

Katja retreated as far into the cloak as she could, kept the moonblade in her right hand beneath it, and walked off at an even pace. She didn’t look about much so as not to cause suspicion, and let her ears guide her past people.

Be calm, be calm, be calm
, she told herself.
No tension. Tension can be seen. You are just walking to your tent.

The camp was in a shockingly poor state. She had known that a military campaign was not about comfort, but it would only have taken a minimal effort to make the place resemble a human habitat.

Some of the tents had fallen and no-one had bothered raising them back up or packing them away. Everything reeked of the filth of people and animals, and outside a hospital tent lay amputated limbs that had clearly been there since the first battle. Everything was in disarray, but the people were the worst.

Katja avoided looking directly at the soldiers, but there was still clearly something wrong with them.

The first man to get somewhat close to her wobbled a bit, as if confused. She glanced at him without turning her head and saw a distant gaze in a slack, dirty face. She passed two men who sat by an extinguished campfire, both facing away from her. One was bent over and made a rhythmic noise that resembled soft groans. The other one looked at his own clenched fists and hyperventilated. She heard sobbing from one tent, and then another. Everything was characterized by strange misery and neglect.

Then there was the blood.

At first Katja thought that the pool was the result of more amputations. It was less than a day old and lay outside of a large tent. But she began to see more spread about the camp. In some places it had been splattered on the tents, and in others the splashes seemed to have come from within and been absorbed into the canvas.

As she walked past poorly organized wagons she passed by the scene of something that had clearly been more than regular murder. This much blood couldn’t be gotten out of a single person without great effort. What in the world had happened?

She suspected the answer had to do with the sorcerous aura that blanketed the area. The divide had been weakened here, and would remain weak for a long time. This place had been
corrupted
. And she felt a strange buzzing in her forehead. It was slight, but gnawing, ceaseless and uncomfortable. Could it have something to do with how Peter had taken control of this army? Katja saw no northern banners flying. Only a white one, with a red dragon on it.

The Brotherhood’s paradise
, Katja thought.
A new Vendyha.

Someone issued a quick, childish shriek and then fell silent.

Peter was somewhere in the centre, Katja felt. She was certain her senses could lead her directly to the right house once closer, but first she would need a distraction of some kind. Surely the man had bodyguards, and she wasn’t cocky enough to mean to pass them unnoticed.

She looked around, at the canvas tents that stood so closely together in the chaos. She also saw that embers remained in camp fires and braziers. A large fire was certainly a difficult-to-ignore kind of problem.

Katja glanced about some more but didn’t dare being thorough about it, or to stop walking. She could not afford to draw the eye in any way. Still, she did spot the rope fence that had been put up in the outskirts of the village, among the tents. The horses that the army had brought along had been arranged there in one big crush, and a large bale of hay lay by it.

Katja made a decision and let her feet bring her to the fence. Her ears led her to a campfire, but four men sat there, so she took a turn she hoped wasn’t too sharp and calmly walked to another one close by. No-one sat there, so she quickly bent down as she walked and snatched up a stick poking out of the half-dead fire. Katja did her best to hide it under the cloak without burning herself, and now headed for the hay.

She glanced around, and stuck it into the bale.

YOU prepare for fire,
she thought nastily.

She continued to beat down the urge to run, and entered the village at the pace she had been maintaining.

The sick aura grew stronger, and she knew her goal was within reach. Katja stopped between two houses, where a wagon had been placed and provided some cover. She leaned up against a wall and let herself slide down almost to a sitting position.

The horses began to squeal in fear, as Katja began to hear the crackling of fire. The northerners were slow to react, but the horses soon panicked and she saw smoke rise into the air.

Finally, men began to scream about fire.

Katja couldn’t see the results from her hiding place, but her ears told the story. The horses went mad and broke out of the fence, charging through the cramped camp. The northerners started to react, but by then the flames had already reached the tents. It hadn’t rained in days, and the dry canvas welcomed the fire with open arms.

The fire spread and spread, and chaos took hold. It was difficult to establish order when nothing could be heard for screaming, and men and horses fought to escape the flames.

People ran out of the houses and onto the street. Katja saw feet from under the bottom of the wagon, and heads above it. Some of the horses wound up in the village streets, with similar effects as in the camp.

Katja felt the evil energy stir. It was close. So very close. She expected to be able to see the house Peter was in, if she exited the alley. And he seemed to be getting closer.

Katja drew an arrow from her quiver and nocked it.

If I pull this off... if I pull this off...

Someone started to do a pretty good job of making himself heard over all the noise, and from the sound he was issuing orders. Then the demonic aura got even closer, and the loud mass out on the street all but fell silent. Peter had stepped out.

Katja broke out in sweat. How best to approach this?

She examined her surroundings and tried to estimate the distance to Peter. Then she took the arrow off the string and put it and the bow between her teeth. She jumped and grabbed the roof edge of one of the houses, and pulled herself up.

Katja felt a mixture of frozen inner stillness and incredible tension as she nocked the arrow a second time. All thought was shut off, and she took the five steps to the house’s front side in a trance.

There he was, completely concealed in a white and gold robe, surrounded by armed bodyguards. Vajan stood next to Peter, looking as dishevelled as most others around him.

Katja pulled the arrow back, and looked down along it at Peter Savaren’s torso.

He looked at her.

The world turned into a black horror and Katja couldn’t feel her own heartbeat. It was as if some terrible force was both crushing and freezing her. The arrow flew off somewhere and Katja fell backwards. The effect let up a bit as Peter’s line of sight broke, and she heard voices shout commands.

“Protect the master! Protect the master!”

The will to live made her roll away from the street and back towards the camp. A group of armed men were already coming her way, and she pushed herself down off the roof, feet-first. She landed clumsily, but she managed to break into a run immediately, into the chaos she had caused.

I failed.

The fire was still spreading between tents, and no organised firefighting efforts had commenced. Some just ran, others yelled at those who were running, and some just seemed to stand in place and blankly observe the flames.

She heard the shouts of those on her heels, but the words drowned in the general din and no-one paid attention to her as she zig-zagged past men, wagons and tents on her way to the ditch.

She looked back once at the edge of the camp, and didn’t immediately spot the pursuers. Perhaps they had lost her.

Katja ran past the body she had left in her wake, and leapt into the ditch. Her life force was back after being almost extinguished by Peter, and she maintained her running pace. Now speed was the issue, not silence. She did not imagine for a second that Peter Savaren and his servants meant to let her get away now that she had exposed herself.

I failed!

The failure hung over her like a black cloud and drained her strength. She hadn’t made good on her big words. Peter lived, and this conflict would continue. The city was still on the chopping block.

Katja hadn’t imagined that seeing the thorn forest again would be such a relief. But she gladly dove into the cover it provided, heedless of the new cuts.

The journey through went relatively quickly. She knew the way this time and didn’t need to go quietly, and so could break down obstacles instead of bending them.

She felt she was about halfway through when she sensed sorcery. That dark, terrible sorcery she associated with Peter Savaren. It seemed to be doing something above her.

Katja glanced up while pushing aside a branch. She didn’t see much of the sky and cut her lip before spotting anything unusual. She turned her attention back to looking ahead and squeezing through as fast as possible.
Something
was coming. Something the world’s most powerful sorcerer believed could kill her.

She was trying to imagine how she could fight a demon in such tight quarters when a spark fell down through the branches before her eyes.

“What?!”

Katja looked back up and saw a reddish-yellow glow over the net of thorns that almost hid the sky from view. Another spark came down and hit a bush next to her. Then three came at once, then five, and finally they began to drop steadily. This was the beginning of a rain of fire.

Katja growled and charged on as fire fell down from the sky in ever-thicker streams. The branches caught many of the sparks, but no few around and on Katja. It was like being in a swarm of bees, and she grunted with fear and pain at every burning sting. The dry plants began to catch fire, and Katja couldn’t see much as she tried to shield her face. She didn’t recognize her surroundings at first, and didn’t give herself much time to find landmarks. She had to get out
now
.

“You will not burn me, snowman!” she screamed through the pain.

The fire continued raining, and one couldn’t really speak of individual sparks anymore.

A bush Katja ran straight into turned out to be sturdier than she had expected, and she effectively had to climb over it. The thorns tore her knees and hands, and the heat kept singeing her skin. She made it over the bush and fell forward, but one foot caught on a branch. Katja yanked hard and didn’t even feel the pain. A spark hit the back of her hand, and she sprang up with a scream and kept on going in a stoop.

She spotted the ‘woman’ who guarded the thorny forest, and threw herself at the first crack in the foliage she saw. One final push brought her out of the thorns, and she collapsed into the rocky hollow.

The fiery rain was limited to the forest and Katja could take a moment to snatch her cloak off. It had caught fire in two places. Then she looked back. The thorn-forest was turning into an inferno. She had made it out at the last moment.

This wasn’t quite over yet, but Katja still breathed easier as she stood up. If she was still being pursued, then getting around the forest would take some time, and they wouldn’t know exactly where she exited. She had plenty of time to make it to the beach and...

Branches snapped and Katja took a few steps backwards with the sword at the ready, a moment before a man burst out through the thorns. He was torn and bloody and burned, with a maddened look in his eyes and a glaive in his hands. It was Vajan.

“Found you!” he screamed, and attacked with wild swings.

Space was limited in the hollow and Katja tried to get past him so she wouldn’t be cornered. Vajan chased her with a reckless frenzy that would have made it easy to kill him if she’d had a longer weapon. But she didn’t, and he continued driving her back and trying to get her up against the edge.

Katja parried a thrust and feinted to the left. Vajan took the bait and slashed in that direction, while Katja darted to the right and swung at him.

It almost did the trick, but he was quick enough to save himself and parry with the glaive. He swung the shaft at her before she could attack again, and then the blade. She retreated and he too took a few steps back, and both stopped moving.