Shattered Shields - eARC (11 page)

Lightweaver in Shadow

Gray Rinehart

Across the fog-shrouded valley, from the depths of Rellam Wood, Varrikar war drums welcomed the day. Their deep, resonant blasts echoed off the fog itself.

Tyrol shifted at the sound, his boots still heavy with inch-thick mud that seemed to glue them to the hilltop. He strained to see the signal from Captain Hallern’s position on the right flank. The thin shaft of light wavered through the mist, Milligan’s shapes less distinct than they should have been: sloppy, even considering the fog. Tyrol had to concentrate hard to interpret. “Cavalry formed, infantry in place, sir,” he said. “Enemy positions consistent with scouting. Archers ready…no visible targets yet.”

“Damnable fog,” Marshall Innolik said. “But we’ve used it to our advantage so far, eh?” His horse snorted when the big man stood up in the stirrups, as if that extra height might give him a clearer eyeline down into the mist-darkened valley.

He reseated himself and went on, in that voice that sounded like the murmur of a turning grindstone, his rhythm matching the Varrikar drums a bit too closely for Tyrol’s comfort. “Do we trust the reports? Make the push now? Confuse the bastards? If we wait too long, will they have time to set their lines?” No one responded; they all knew the marshall answered his own questions, in his own time.

The wind shifted, blowing from Rellam Wood, and Tyrol caught the scent of oily smoke from the darkwood incense the Varrikar burned before battle. He choked a little as the smoke bit the back of his throat. Each heartbeat rattled the thin armor of his breastbone, and he guessed that up and down the line his Dvornian brothers had the same hammering inside, urging them to move, to charge, to fight. He touched the hilt of his sword—his father’s once—as if it might support him, and fingered the putty-filled indentation where a red stone had been set, long ago traded away by his mother. His hand itched to draw the sword, to join the others in the front ranks, but at fourteen he was too young and too small, even if he were not a lightweaver.

“Weaver, signal the captain to begin the first phase: release his cavalry to maneuver,” the marshall said.

As if he were about to caress a porcupine, Tyrol opened the lantern’s shutter and began stroking the light. The first time he had tried—when he realized that he had his mother’s gift of manipulation—he had reached too far into the fire to grasp its light; at times like this, the flesh-memory of the blisters on his hands washed over him. He grasped for the heart-memory of his mother tending his hand, and made sure he kept his fingers free of the lantern flame.

Tyrol looked toward the distant hill where Captain Hallern waited. With quick, deft movements, as a common man might tie up a package with string or a musician caress the strings of a lute, he gathered vapor and twisted the watery air to concentrate and shift the lantern’s light. His signals went direct where he aimed, which for now meant to Milligan to pass on to the captain.

Milligan’s reply was succinct. “Cavalry released, sir,” Tyrol reported, trying to keep the sudden exhaustion out of his voice. He stepped away from the lantern just long enough to grab a cold sausage. As the peppery meat began to revive him, he wiped a dribble of grease from his chin.

A couple of paces away, Kelflen rubbed the tip of a drum stick over the drumhead. The whispery sound cut through Tyrol, and his chest seemed to clamp down on his heart. Anticipation shrouded him; he supposed it shrouded them all—Kelflen, Ghilly the piper, the marshall’s advisors and hangers-on, the men on the field below—as effectively as the fog.

Tyrol closed the shutter on his lantern. It had oil enough to last until midday, unless he had to send very many more messages.

The anxious moments piled on one another until the marshall said, “Sound the general advance. We will serve them our best, and see how they like it.”

Kelflen beat out the familiar rhythm. Seconds later, Ghilly’s drones and chanter joined in.

Tyrol barely heard their army’s distant drums and pipes echo the call, so effective was the fog at swallowing the sound; yet the Varrikar drumbeat still came through. Then, as sudden as a pot boiling over, came the distant, inconsistent sounds of infantry and cavalry charging, weapons clashing, innumerable triumphs and dreadful pains delivered to men and beasts.

The fog hung over the valley, and the battle continued unseen.

* * *

The noise of the battle shifted from right to left and right again. Tyrol messaged Captain Hallern twice more, but the troops could not achieve a breakthrough. Kelflen and Ghilly continued to play out signals to the wider army.

A nearby scream of pain and alarm from the slope behind them cut through the pipe-and-drum call.

Tyrol glanced away from Captain Hallern’s position and forgot to look back.

Near enough that the fog blurred but no longer hid them, a squad of Varrikar climbed up the slope. Lieutenant Pilkus, the marshall’s adjutant, shouted a warning, drew his sword, and ran downhill to meet them. Others of the marshall’s staff followed close behind. Tyrol’s hand found the sword hilt again and even he took a step, but he kept his place by the signal lamp.

Marshall Innolik cursed.

The Varrikar were men, sharp-featured with wild dark hair, but even looking down on them from the hilltop this squad seemed peopled with giants. Yet several of them collapsed before Pilkus and the others reached them; could they be so greatly fatigued from fighting their way around the valley? The lieutenant threw himself at the center of the squad and struck at a behemoth in gray-green armor—but it was a glancing blow, and the big man stepped inside Pilkus’s sword and hacked down at the young officer’s knee. Pilkus screamed as his leg collapsed, but the Varrikar wrapped his arm around the lieutenant’s sword arm and held him upright; he looked Pilkus in the eye as he drove the point of his sword up under the adjutant’s breastplate.

The rest of the marshall’s staff fared somewhat better, and others from the camp joined the melee. But in a moment, two, three, and then four of the Varrikar resumed their climb toward the marshall’s position.

“Dear God, we are undone,” Marshall Innolik said. His shoulders slumped. Then he straightened his back and a fierce purpose blazed in his eyes.

“Drummer, sound general alarm,” he said. “Weaver, signal Captain Hallern to take command. And here”—he flung his leather case to the ground at Tyrol’s feet—“if you live, carry that to Hallern and tell him…tell him I have been proud to serve with him.” The marshall drew his broadsword, as long as Tyrol’s leg, and spurred his horse toward the oncoming enemy. “And so have I been proud to serve with you all,” he called as he descended the hill.

Tyrol forced his attention away from the marshall and onto his work. He raised the lantern’s flame to its brightest. Kelflen’s drumbeat changed and Ghilly’s pipe roared out a new alarm as Tyrol sent his message in quick bursts like tiny lightning flashes.
Overrun here
, he signaled.
Take command
.

He started to repeat the message when Ghilly’s pipes went silent. Tyrol turned.

One of the Varrikar dropped the piper to the ground and hacked at the pipes with his axe. The drones splintered and the hide bag wheezed a final breath.

The soldier stalked toward Kelflen, who stared wide-eyed but continued beating out the alarm.

“Run!” Tyrol shouted, and grabbed the lantern because it was the nearest thing to his hands. He yanked it off its pole and threw it at the huge man. It hit the Varrikar soldier’s hip, and what was left of the oil sloshed out and took flame. The man yelled, jumped back, and beat at his burning clothes.

Tyrol picked up the marshall’s pouch, then took hold of Kelflen’s arm and pulled him away. They ran down the rocky slope, into the fog-strewn valley.

* * *

They picked their way between and around barrel-sized boulders, climbed through a split in one stone almost as large as Tyrol’s mother’s cottage, and crashed through stands of young pines, trading caution for speed as they ran, slid, and fell away from the doomed hilltop. Kelflen’s drum was an early casualty, lost in the first few minutes. Tyrol held the marshall’s pouch close to him, lest he drop it as they made their way.

Trees and rocks took on ominous shapes in the mist.

“The marshall was right,” Tyrol said. “This fog is damnable.”

Kelflen said, “The adjutant said it was a Varrikar invention.”

“Then damn them three times.”

They tried to snake along the line of lower hills that ran generally east toward Captain Hallern’s position, but in the mist the only certain direction was down. Too far down meant into the wide part of the valley, and the worst of the fighting. Tyrol was no longer sure that was where he wanted to be; he told himself that his prime concern should be the pouch Marshall Innolik had entrusted to him, but he wondered if he had lost the courage he thought he had.

“Stop, Tyrol,” Kelflen finally said. The boy’s breath came so heavy he could barely make the sounds. He leaned and then slid down against a boulder the size of a wagon wheel. He still clutched a drum stick in his right hand.

Tyrol understood. Kelflen had been drumming hard before they started running. Tyrol knew that if he had repeated the marshall’s message once or twice more he could never have run so far so fast. He supposed he had been lucky to have only had time to send it once, but he wished he knew if Milligan had seen it.

Tyrol let the place they were in soak into him, as his father used to say. The mist robbed everything within a few yards of color or clarity. The scent of clay mixed with moisture and mildew, but the air also carried a gritty gypsum tang and a hint of wild honeysuckle. War drums and pipes still sounded in the foggy distance, though down here it was harder to tell their directions or what they were signaling.

Tyrol bent close to Kelflen and whispered, “We can’t stay here long.”

Kelflen nodded. He kept his voice low. “They might find us.”

“And I have to deliver this.”

“Could we hide now, and move at night?”

“I don’t know this area well enough.”

“There’s a river that runs through the valley,” Kelflen said. “I saw it on the map. Some creeks flow into it from the hills. We could hide along the bank, and get water.”

Tyrol doubted it would be so easy, but he was thirsty—hungry, too, now that he thought about it—and he could not understand maps. He was impressed that Kelflen could.

“How far away?”

“I don’t know,” the drummer admitted. “I’ve gotten twisted around. If we could see better, we would know.”

Tyrol cursed the Varrikar again. Did their manipulators make the fog? That might explain how their soldiers made it so deep into the Dvornian lines without being detected. Tyrol remembered the front rank of the attackers collapsing before Lieutenant Pilkus even reached them. Were they all manipulators?

Tyrol waved his hand through the fog and gently pulled a few vapory tendrils as if he were going to make a lens…and recalled a time when his mother manipulated shadows on the wall to entertain him and his little brother. If he could weave shadows as well as light…

“I have an idea,” he told Kelflen.

* * *

His idea should have worked, but the damnable fog diffused the light so much that Tyrol was unable to do much with it: he made shadows, but they seemed insubstantial, transitory, and the effort sapped him. So they moved as quickly as stealth and fatigue would allow until they came to one of the brooks Kelflen had promised.

Kelflen made a move toward the water, but as much as Tyrol wanted to charge ahead with him, he held them back to be sure no Varrikars were about. The noises of the battle seemed far removed from this spot, but neither of them admitted to being sure of what they heard.

“You drink, and I’ll watch,” Tyrol said, “and then we’ll switch.”

The water was clear as truth, and more refreshing. Tyrol wet his hair after he drank, and as he sat up and Kelflen bent to drink again, a trumpet blast tore the air. It was answered by another, farther away, and another, and then clearly recognizable Dvornian pipes and drums called out.

“Secure the line,” Kelflen said.

Tyrol recognized the next notes. “Do not advance.”

Part of the next signal was overwhelmed by another trumpet, but they got enough of it: form up, retrieve wounded, do not engage.

“Is it over?” Kelflen asked.

Tyrol wondered if he was imagining the growing light or if the Varrikars’ fog was actually lifting. “And barely noon? I think this is only a reprieve.”

They drank more, and huddled in the midst of a stand of young pines where they could see down into the valley. The fog burned away inch by inch, and to their left they saw the hill where they had stood with Marshall Innolik at daybreak. They had not gotten as far as Tyrol thought, or wished.

As the battleground cleared, they first saw the rough shape of Rellam Wood, closer than expected; then its distinct edge; then the bloodied, muddied ground in front of it.

Every standard in the field bore the color and crest of a Varrikar tribe.

* * *

They had come generally east, away from Marshall Innolik’s old headquarters, but neither knew exactly how far they were from Captain Hallern’s new command. Tyrol grumbled at Kelflen for not having a better memory of the map he had seen. Kelflen countered that he had not seen the whole map: other papers had covered parts of it. They stifled their argument by common assent, stole another drink of water each, and moved on.

They crept back up the hill, still angling eastward, from rock to rock to bush to copse to rock. Now that the fog was gone, Tyrol feared some Varrikar soldier gleaning the battlefield would see them in the early afternoon sun. He struggled to move even slower than he had earlier: instinct told him to dash from shadow to shadow, but he was sure any quick movement would catch an enemy’s attention. Tension seized his muscles with the inescapable grip of a hawk striking a field mouse.

At another up-thrust of rocks, Tyrol chanced to climb high enough to look toward Captain Hallern’s outpost. He lay flat and wriggled his way to the edge, where he sighed out almost all of his built-up tension when he saw the Dvornian flag still flying on the far hill.