The Lioness

Chapter Fourteen

Felan stood before the lord Knight, his hand trembling slightly so that the parchment he held out rustled, whispering of his poorly suppressed fear. A line of sweat ran down the side of his face.

“M-my lord,” he said.

Lord Thagol didn’t look up. Before him lay spread a map of the countryside, wide and newly made. Upon the map Felan noted the Qualinost Road, that artery connecting this rural part of the kingdom to the capital and places beyond. Today a wagon of fat sacks filled with grain waited in a secluded place, guarded by draconians and Knights. Others would join it tomorrow and the next day until there were enough to escort to the capital. One would be filled with weapons and war supplies, another perhaps filled with the tribute the dragon loved—ancient treasure. In the south of the forest, where rich manors lay, lords and ladies were beginning to pay the dragon’s tax with the family jewels.

Felan registered a series of small red marks on the map, like check marks ticking off a list. These were the sites of recent encounters between the Lord Knight’s forces and the Night People. In none of these had Lord Thagol’s men fared well, and in the last, the battle near a small creek known as Brightflow, fourteen Knights had died. Two of the outlaws had perished as well, one killed by a sword, the other gone screaming to his death in a pool of acid, the revenge of the kapak draconian he had killed.

Felan swallowed, wishing his hand would steady, wishing for a sip of white wine like that in the Knight’s cup or simply a drink of water. At his hip hung a water flask, but he dared not move to reach for it. The draconian at the door had stripped him of every weapon. He’d endured the dry, cold touch of the creature’s clawed hands, its reeking breath on his cheek as it grabbed away the knife at his belt, the bow and quiver across his back, even the small eating knife everyone in this part of the country carried as a matter of course. He felt that disgusting touch even now, even as, standing before the Knight’s table, and he felt the draconian’s reptilian eyes still on him. He didn’t doubt that reaching for the flask would be a mistake.

He said again, “My lord.”

At the bar, the taverner looked up, an old elf with thickening jowls and thinning silver hair. No one but these four, taverner, Knight, draconian, and Felan, occupied the large common room. Lord Thagol had taken up residence here and made it his command post for the region. If this were another Knight, Felan might have wondered whether the human missed the comforts of the capital, the glittering towers, the good food and quarters. This Knight out of Monastery Bone, though, bore the look of one used to the lack of comfort and the imposition of discipline. Here, in the Waycross, he looked like a man in his element, poring over maps and messages, waiting for the reports from soldiers. He’d been here all the summer long, the winter before, and back to the end of autumn. In all that time, the owner of the tavern hadn’t had payment for the food and wine Lord Thagol demanded for his Knights and draconians, and no elf for miles around came to dine at his tables or drink at his bar. The poor taverner had the pinched, white-eyed look of a man who sees ruin ahead of him.

Felan waited, and Sir Eamutt Thagol put another check mark on the map, his face white in the flickering firelight and shadow. His lips compressed in a thin, hard line. Beside his hand the crystal inkpot looked like a small carafe of blood. Now he set aside the quill pen, moved the inkpot aside with the side of his little finger. When he finally looked up and met Felan’s eyes, the elf’s knees wobbled. His blood changed to ice, washing through him so that he thought the horrible cold would stop his heart.

“Remind me. Do I know you?” the Knight asked.

In his mind Felan heard a sound like footsteps so clearly he almost turned to see who’d come up behind him. He swallowed again, this time harder.

“I am Felan of the Northern Dales, my lord. I—I don’t—we have never met. I have brought a letter—a paper.”

Sweat ran on him now, soaking his shirt. In his mind, he heard the footsteps coming again. He looked over his shoulder, very carefully. No, the draconian stood at its post, a tall, reeking presence in the shadows by the door.

Felan held up the paper, in the dim light seeing the sweat stains on it. None of the ink had been smeared though. He’d taken care to preserve it in a condition to be read. When Thagol took the paper, his fingers brushed against Felan’s.

“M-my lord,” the elf gasped.

Lord Thagol read. The lines were few, the message clear. The bearer was to receive compensation according to the measure of his worth.

“What,” the Knight asked, “shall I use to measure your worth?”

Felan regretted coming. He wanted to run, to risk that bolting the room, flinging past the draconian and out the door. He held still. “I have valuable information, my lord.”

Thagol looked up. Felan thought, as others before had thought, that the man’s face was so pale it looked like a burn scar. The Knight’s eyes seemed flat, dead, and empty. Felan had to lock his knees to stay standing in place. In his head the footsteps stopped, as though a searcher had come close to what he was looking for.

“And that information is …?”

“The outlaws... the ones they call the Night People. I—I know about them.”

The Knight remained silent, staring.

“I—I have entered their trust, my lord. I know how they work. I know—” He stopped and swallowed, trying to ease his parched throat. “I know that they sweep out of the forest and do their foul work, and I know they vanish into it again, invisible. They are not invisible, my lord, and they are not such an army. The leaders, at the core, are only four.”

Lord Thagol raised a pale brow, interested now. “Four?”

“Only that, my lord. These four are the heart of the trouble in the forest. They plot, and they plan, and they are the ones who call for other men and women to fight and then send them all away again when the work is done.” He looked around nervously. “I know where they are tonight, my lord, and I know they’ll stay there for a day or two.” Emboldened, he moved closer to the table and put a finger on the place a little north of the Brightflow. “There is a glade here, surrounded by tall pines. You wouldn’t think to look for it. From any direction it looks like more forest with no clearing to see unless you stumble upon it. This is their hiding place for now. They will move again soon, either to gather a force to strike or simply to move. For now, they are there, planning. Hiding. Just the four.”

Just the four. Cut off the head, and the twisty, slippery creature preying on this once-quiet corner of Beryl’s captive kingdom would die. Lord Thagol smiled. Felan heard the hiss and sigh of the hearth fire. He glanced at the taverner who did not meet his eye.

“You know this,” Thagol said, “because you have gained their trust? How?”

“I—I worked with them. For a time. For a while.” He spoke hastily now. “Until I saw how wrong they are. Now I am here.”

Lord Thagol tapped the parchment. “With this.”

“I had it from one of your Knights, my lord. When I told him what I knew, he sped me on to you.”

“Very wise of you both,” Lord Thagol drawled. “You won’t mind if I question you a bit more closely, will you?”

Felan opened his mouth to speak. The icy fear that had chilled him upon entering the Skull Knight’s presence now clamped around his mind with terrible grinding claws. They spread each thought wide, as though each were a book. They plunged deep, the icy claws, tearing at his mind. Felan could not do anything but scream.

The draconian turned, barely interested. At the bar, the taverner shuddered and poured himself a drink. The bottle rattled against the glass. No one noticed, and Felan’s scream went on and on, far past the point where his voice turned to rags and blood choked him.

An instant later, he fell to his knees, onto his face at the feet of the Skull Knight, voiceless and begging for mercy.

Like a glacier, the ice in his mind withdrew, and the elf Felan lay in the rushes on the tavern floor, blood trickling from the sides of his mouth, from his eyes, from his ears. His message had been delivered and accepted. Lord Thagol looked at the taverner and suppressed a yawn.

“I didn’t really question him all that closely, you know. All was as it seems, and he is a turncoat. But…” He shrugged. “Well, it seems he was a bit weak-minded.”

He jerked his chin and the elf came out from behind the bar. He dragged the corpse across the floor, silently cursing the blood trailing behind and grumbling about how he’d have to go off to the well now and fill a bucket to clean the floor.

The draconian stepped away from the door with laughter that sounded like snarling. The door slammed shut, and the elf dragged Felan’s body all the way across the dusty dooryard and behind the springhouse where cheeses hung and jugs of milk cooled. He left it there and went to find a shovel. He was all the rest of the day digging in the earth behind the springhouse, far enough away from the spring itself so that the water wouldn’t undermine the mean grave. No one bothered him or called him back to his tavern. Lord Thagol had matters of his own to consider, and he didn’t care about the concerns of taverners or turncoats. The taverner buried the dead in peace, and when he was finished he covered the raw earth with piled stones. Wolves didn’t run often in this part of the forest, but the elf wouldn’t take the risk of the grave being disturbed.

He murmured something at the end of his work, standing over the mound of earth and stone. It might have been a groan for the hard work. It might have been a prayer. So weary was he that even he didn’t know.

At night, when the taverner lay down in his narrow bed in the smallest room above the kitchen, he listened to the sound of iron-shod hoofs thundering into the door-yard, and he lay a long time awake hearing the raucous voices of a half dozen or more Knights feasting from his larder and drinking his bar dry. He heard them leave again, then there was only silence as the Lord Knight retired, leaving one draconian on guard at the door.

Those vile creatures, the taverner thought, never seemed to need sleep.

Neither did the Skull Knight. Even sleeping, Lord Thagol did not sleep. Lying in the bed of the finest room in the Waycross, he dreamed and dreamed again the encounter he’d had with the elf Felan. There had been nothing in the turncoat’s mind to suggest that everything he reported to Thagol was less than true. Nothing. Not the least shading of exaggeration, not the least shaving of the truth marred the tale. That was the problem. The elf’s presentation of a truthful telling had been, well, too true.

Kerian watched the wink and flash of fireflies dancing between the straight tall pines. She sat barely breathing, not eating. Jeratt poked her with his elbow, and when she looked at him he nodded toward the cheese and bread and apples. Provisions from Felan’s wife, the last he’d brought in the fat leather wallet they’d all come to look forward to seeing slung across the farmer’s shoulder. That had been three days ago, a day before he had volunteered to be the one to take her carefully crafted message to the Lord Knight in Acris. He’d been a day gone, and no one expected to see him back here. They had expected to hear from Bayel, or one of the Night People drifting into camp, that he’d returned home to his farm.

What they’d heard was that Felan’s wife had had no word of him.

“Eat,” Jeratt said. “It’s a bad habit, not eating before a fight.”

Kerian nodded as though to agree, but she didn’t eat. She liked her belly feeling light and empty before battle. She liked the edge that hunger gave her.

The Night People had begun to arrive into the glade like shadows, like night. Farmers and hunters, they knew how to move though the forest so stealthily that they could come upon a doe drinking and get within touching distance. None knew the forest better than these young men and women of the farms and dales. None had a stronger will to fight. They hated Lord Thagol, and they hated the Knights. They loathed the draconians, and here, away from city and the politics of keeping a kingdom whole for as long as possible, they wanted nothing more than to fight, to rid themselves of those who would steal their goods and gains, who would rob them of the dignity they considered a birthright.

“Listen,” Jeratt said into her musing. She looked up and saw he knew her thoughts. “He volunteered.”

Kerian nodded, knowing he spoke of Felan.

“He helped shape the plan.”

“Yes,” she said. “He did.”

“You didn’t send him to his death.” The word out, it hung between them. “You know him. You know why he insisted on going.”

Felan’s wife was childing, the news learned only weeks before. He had been, always, an enthusiastic rebel, happy to do anything for the cause or to pass along information from one farm to another, content to do whatever part came his way. The news of impending fatherhood, though, had fired him with passion. It was not a passion for the kingdom or a kindling at the flame of revenge. Felan wanted only to secure his child’s birthright.

He’d said, “I want my child to be able to walk this land as I did growing up. I want him to know that the forest and all its bounty are his, that what comes of this farm I will leave him—all of it!—will feed him and his own children. I want him to know who he is—a free elf, not the slave of a thieving dragon’s Knights. I’ll go beard the Skull Knight in his own den, if that’s what it takes.”

One after another now, her Night People drifted in. None spoke, not even to greet each other. Kerian took the count of them. There were now thirteen in the glade. Bayel went among them, clasping a hand, slapping a back, wordless greetings. She saw him lean close to a young woman, listening to whispered words. He nodded once, curtly, and came to sit beside Jeratt. He ripped a chunk off the loaf of coarse brown bread the half-elf offered.

“He’s dead.” He looked from Jeratt to Kerian. “Wael at the Waycross saw him die.”

“How?” Kerian asked, heart plummeting at the news.

“Skull Knight killed him.” Bayel looked away, then back. “Felan delivered the word, however, just like we planned. The Skull Knight took it, and Wael says he swallowed the bait grinning.”

“How?” Kerian said again. Her voice grew colder, harder.

Bayel shook his head, sad and sorry. “The Knight went in for a look, eh? Went into Felan’s mind to see if all he said was true. Wael says Felan held out, showed the bastard nothing to make him suspect we’re diverting his Knights into a trap while the most of us hit the wagons up the Qualinost Road. He let Thagol see nothing but what we wanted him to see.”

That broke him, body and mind.

Kerian looked around the glade. More warriors had arrived. She counted again. Twenty-five—no, twenty-eight. “How many Knights are coming?” she asked, distracted.

“Wael says just the usual detachment that hangs around the Waycross, no more than six. Maybe a draconian or two. Easy pickings. Maybe the Lord Knight himself if he thinks he’s going to cut off the head of us easy, eh?”

Maybe. Kerian hadn’t counted on it, but she had considered it and would have gotten great pleasure to find Thagol himself in her trap. She sat in silence for a while, thinking sadly of Felan’s sacrifice. There would be thirty-five of her warriors here before long. She looked hard at Bayel. “Tell me again—do you think the Skull Knight suspects nothing?”

“Kerian,” he said, gently. “You know Felan. He was a stout heart. He held out, for us, for his child, for the future of the kingdom. Six Knights, maybe a few draconians. They’re going to hit here in the dark hour before dawn. They think they’re going to take four heads back to Waycross and start there what they’ve been doing in the capital. They’re ordering our heads piked so everyone around will know there is no point in resisting.”

Even so silent, twenty-eight warriors made the glade whisper with their breathing, their small motions. Kerian listened as she cast a glance at the sky. The moon had set, the stars shone brightly, but so thick was the canopy of trees that their light did little to illuminate the world far below. The forest would be deadly dark tonight. She sat forward, feeling Jeratt and Bayel draw closer. Bayel’s eyes shone in the firelight. Jeratt sat still as stone, a seasoned warrior preparing to do battle.

“Felan’s dead, something’s changed. I don’t know how, I just know it. I smell it.”

Bayel frowned, not understanding. Jeratt nodded, knowing well what she meant. You feel the danger, you heed the instinct, and you wonder what triggered it later. He winked at her and slapped her knee.

She said, “Thagol’s not going to send a hunting party after us tonight. He’ll send more.”

She pointed to the earth before them, the smooth place where they had drawn their plans. Marks still remained, lines and circles and deep marks where Jeratt had stabbed a stick to emphasize some point.

“We’d planned two hits tonight—one here where Thagol and his men are set to walk into our trap and one here where Jeratt and Bayel plan to hit the wagons camped on the Qualinost Road from north and south.” With one sweep of her foot, Kerian erased the sketches. “Let the bastard Knight come. Let him bring as many Knights as he likes. He’ll find the place empty, no one here but the ghosts of our fires.”

“What are you gonna do, Kerian?” Jeratt asked.

She told him, and he said this would mean she’d not be able to stay long in this forest now.

“We didn’t plan to stay forever, you know that Ander’s waiting at the falls. The others are waiting.”

He knew this, and his approving grin flashed cold and bright. Bayel nodded, and he said he thought the idea was good. Kerian looked past them to the darkness where her Night People stood or sat, checking their weapons.

“It’s time,” she said. “Jeratt, take your warriors. Bayel, you and yours come with me. We’ll meet back here when it’s done.” She looked keenly at one, then the other. “Any questions?”

These two, who with her and Felan had been the heart of the Night People, had no questions.

“Then go,” Kerian said. “Remember who we do this for.”

Once they were four. Now they were three. This was for Felan.

They owned the forest, Kerian and her Night People. They knew every trail, each game path. They knew where the streams ran, where the deer gathered at dawn. They had run here as children, as youths hunting. They flowed through the forest this night like silent dreams, men and women with soot-black faces, warriors dressed in leathers like hunters, hung with the weapons of war. Jeratt divided his force, sending ten into hiding west and east of their camp. Seven went south with him, slipping between the trees, and they went so silently that the nine Knights riding by in the opposite direction never saw them. These were not the six Wael had predicted, but Jeratt considered them no threat. The elves knew the air as wolves do, and they kept downwind so the horses picking their way through the night forest didn’t catch their scent. Jeratt watched them go.

Since the Knights rode by night, they did not go with visors down. They did not go armored, only mailed, for it seemed they wanted to be as quiet as possible. They had dismounted at the head of the trail, where the ground rose and grew stony. They’d led their horses then, with the beasts’ noses wrapped in cloth or covered with a hand to muffle the sound of their snorting. They did not go by with a ringing of bridles and bits tonight. Those had been quieted, too, with slim leather casings on every metal piece that might chime.

Jeratt noted, too, that these were only human Knights. No draconians were with them, for those creatures had no skill at running quiet. The beast-men were gone to the highway or were perhaps still at the tavern.

When the Knights came closest, Jeratt marked the first rider and knew him by his white face and his dead eyes. The Knights went up the trail, and the forest settled back to its usual sounds, the rustle of small things in the brush, the sudden flight of an owl, the sound of something caught in sharp talons and dying. Jeratt looked south toward the crossroad and the little village where Lord Thagol had lately come to rule. He was a half-elf, and that meant he shared in much of the heritage of his elf parent. As could any elf, he was able to see the outline of a creature walking in darkness, the red glow of the heat of its body. Its life force, some said. In the full darkness of a forest night, Jeratt looked and smiled in satisfaction when he saw the distant flicker—only here and there—of a thin red glow, the outline of other elves. There was Kerian, and with her, her warriors, slipping silently, a force the size of his own running south to the crossroad. As he looked, he saw half their number break away, the light of their bodies gliding around to the west in such a way that the two groups would find themselves in position to attack their prey from front and behind.

“Good girl,” Jeratt whispered.

One of his warriors looked up. He shook his head, and they all settled to silence, so still that the high shrill cry of a nightjar startled Jeratt.

“All right now,” he whispered.

From the campsite came a harsh curse, sudden shouting. Jeratt held his people still with one gesture. Another cry, more cursing and the sounds of night creatures fleeing. The bright clash of steel, a sudden scream too loud to be human.

A horse down!

“Hush,” Jeratt said to the restless warrior beside him. “Wait.”

They saw the faint red flickers of men and women in combat. The forest filled with cries now, bellowing human rage and the eerie banshee cries of the Night People.

“Watch,” Jeratt whispered, his lips close to the other elf’s ear. “See.”

See it all, the shape of the battle. Jeratt grinned coldly, and the woman warrior made a small, satisfied sound as, pursued, Thagol’s Knights fled the campsite, all but one on foot. Eager now, Jeratt watched a handful of his men pretend to flight. Swiftly they came through the forest, leaping streamlets, blow downs, boulders, and leading the Knights onto rough ground. In this way, the hunt came crashing through the forest, tearing through the underbrush, the Knights believing themselves in pursuit of ambushing foes. Furious, driven by Thagol’s cursing, the humans tore past Jeratt and the remainder of his warriors, and at the exact moment Thagol passed him, Jeratt sent another nightjar cry into the darkness.

His eager warriors burst from cover. Voices high and howling, in one swift maneuver they blocked the Knights’ pursuit. Turning, the elves circled the five humans, a noose tightening. Afoot, four had no chance against the greater number. Three died at once, the fourth after a flashing steel struggle.

The fifth Knight, Thagol, was still mounted. He abandoned the field before the first Knight died.

Kerian saw her people slip into position, half in the forest shadows beyond the tavern’s dooryard and half in back, both exits covered. She looked for Bayel and found him coming around the back of the tavern. He dropped to a knee beside her at the overgrown verge of the tavern’s wood lot, never rustling leaf or branch.

“Seven inside,” he said. “The taverner, two Knights and four draconians.”

She nodded then leaned close. “We’re ready. Remember the taverner.”

Bayel’s eyes on the Waycross and the golden light shining out from the windows, front and back, he said, “It’ll be done as you wish, Kerian.”

Someone—or something—passed before the wide window looking into the tavern’s front yard. Draconian by the shape, Kerian thought. It stood too tall to be an elf, the shape of it too grotesque to be either human or elf. The tavern door opened, and the wind shifted. Two draconians came out into the night. She smelled their dry reptilian stink, the bite of the acid reek of their breath. Here, outside the forest, stars shone brightly. The sky was awash with them. Their silvery light glinted from the harnesses of the draconians, metal buckles, polished leather, a bright length of steel as one unsheathed a long knife.

“Got it off that elf,” the creature growled. It laughed, a ripping sound. “Right before his head exploded.”

Bayel moved restlessly. Kerian clamped a hard hand on his arm.

“No,” the other snarled. “Didn’t explode, did it? Bone and brains all over?”

The first draconian shrugged. “Might as well have. Blood pouring out of it everywhere, mouth, ears, and eyes. That lord of ours—” It laughed again. “He’s got a searching way about him, eh?”

They stood for a moment admiring the blade, arguing a little about whether it should have been given over to the Lord Knight and deciding that since Lord Thagol hadn’t asked for it, there was no need to offer. Kerian watched them walk away from the Waycross toward the road. They’d take up guard posts there, she thought. Thagol was gone, probably most of his Knights with him. He was an arrogant bastard, but he wouldn’t leave his headquarters unguarded.

She was right, and when she saw them settled, one at the north-south road and the other at the east-west, she nodded to Bayel.

An owl’s rattling cry tore the night’s silence. One of the draconians looked up, expecting to see the raptor bursting up from the woods, a struggling rabbit in its talons. It looked again then turned to its companion. The other shrugged.

“Bad luck,” it said. “I guess—”

Four arrows wasped from the forest. The draconian jerked as though yanked to attention. It screamed a curse and fell, dying and filling the night with the sting of acid. Four more arrows tore out of the wood. Two missed and one bounded off the second draconian’s scaled hide. The missile fell into the pool of green acid that had been the body of the first, the wood hissing as the arrow died. The fourth took the draconian in the soft underside of its neck.

The draconian howled, clawing at the arrow in its throat. The front door slammed open, a human voice called a question.

Kerian slapped Bayel’s shoulder as the clearing around the Waycross erupted in the high keening battle cries Lord Thagol’s men had come to hate.

Kerian ran into the howling as her warriors converged on the tavern. She heard someone scream, a high shriek that was no battle cry, and she saw an elf die in the terrible embrace of the draconian he had killed. The stink of acid, of burning flesh, hung on the night, and soon the reek of blood joined it.

A Knight filled up the front door, golden firelight glaring behind him so that he was faceless. The light ran on his drawn sword, and Kerian leaped up the two stairs to the long porch, her own sword in hand. One downward stroke, and the man’s blood spurted from a severed hand. His sword fell with a dull thud onto the wooden porch, Kerian kicked it aside, the hand still gripping. In horror, the Knight saw that and finally felt the agony. He howled, and Kerian lunged for him, thrusting. She felt bone scrape her steel, and swiftly she kicked the dead Knight off her blade.

Another scream came from behind the tavern. Knight or elf, she couldn’t tell and didn’t stop to wonder. The swell of elf voices behind her merged with the shouts inside the tavern. Kerian plunged through the doorway, into the chaos of shouting and ringing steel.

“Elf bitch!”

She turned, sword high, and the jolt of a heavy blade striking hers rang all the way up her arm. Kerian fell back a step. The Knight pressed. She let him, moving step and step, maneuvering him until his back was to the door. Behind, she felt the sudden heat of fire, and out of the corner of her eye she saw she was near the hearth. Flames leaped up the walls from behind the bar, roaring and eating the thick oak boards. Even as she saw that, she saw the taverner Wael flee out the back.

The Knight brought his sword down. Again she felt the blow up to her shoulders. She fell back another step, but the Knight’s sword held hers now, pressing her with all his strength. She did not try to match him. She seemed to yield, to weaken before his greater strength. His eyes lit with furious hatred. She stepped back again then swiftly turned, her sword describing a bright circle in the fiery light. Overbalanced by his thrust, the Knight stumbled, and Kerian came about so quickly she thought it likely he never felt her blade slip and turn between his ribs.

“Kerian!”

She turned to see Bayel, his eyes wide.

She turned again and saw a draconian rushing at her from the flames of the burning tavern. The last one, and she dared not engage it, for to kill this thing and be anywhere near it dying was to die herself.

“Get down!” Bayel shouted.

Kerian dropped, falling to her knees in the blood of the dead Knight.

An arrow screamed overhead, then another. Each missed, and she heard the sound of Bayel being flung to the floor. Kerian rolled and saw the sooted face of Thullea, a woman of the northern dales. A silver flash overhead, a dagger flew. The draconian screamed and fell, an elven blade through its eye.

Kerian scrambled to her feet and shoved Bayel out the door.

They found no chaos there, only the eerie silence after killing and two Knights surrounded by the Night People. Wael the taverner shivered in the chill dark as his tavern burned.

“Good,” she said. “Now we’ll settle down to wait.”

They did not wait long. The stars had hardly moved in the sky before Kerian heard the approach of Jeratt and his men. He came with only thirteen, for three had been killed in battle. “We got the rest of ’em though. Caught ’em ragin’ back when they knew they’d been fooled. “

He looked down at the dusty ground. “Didn’t get the big one, though. Killed five of the Knights, left the others bleedin’ in the forest… and Thagol, I don’t know how, but he got away.”

Kerian listened and didn’t say anything for a long while. Fire leaped to the sky, her Night People reunited, and the two bands spoke amongst themselves of the deaths they’d suffered and the deaths they’d dealt. She’d wanted Thagol to see this burning, this ruin. She wanted to kill him here where he’d killed Felan. She wanted to settle that debt and all the debts the Skull Knight owed her from the moment he murdered her cousin and piked her head upon the bridge in Qualinost.

Fire roared, and the heat of it made her men drop back to the crossroad itself, taking their prisoners and poor Wael with them.

At last, Kerian looked up. “Kill them,” she said to Jeratt, jerking her thumb toward the Knights. “Someone take Wael to a safe place.”

Jeratt spat. “And the Skull Knight?”

“He can watch the burning from wherever he’s hiding.” She looked around, at her Night People and the fire. “We’re not finished this night.”

Jeratt understood. He and Bayel gathered half the warriors and sent them out into the forest, running silently through the forest and up the Qualinost Road. Kerian took the rest and paralleled their run across the highway, deep into the wood. Both halves of her force came upon the encampment of tribute wagons in the dark hour before dawn. Six Knights and four draconians heard the single piercing call of a nightjar. Some looked around for the bird, startled, others only heard it in their sleep in the instant before the Night People fell on them. Half the Knights died before they knew they were under attack. The draconians died instantly of arrows through the eye, their deaths causing the agonizing deaths of anyone else near. Kerian herself cut the dray horses loose and sent them into the forest. She, Bayel, and Jeratt handed out weapons from the little wagon filled with that treasure, and scooped up four pouches of coin from another. One she gave to an elf to deliver in secret to the taverner.

“The rest is for Felan’s widow. Give her a good sword, and give her these pouches of steel. Tell her they are her child’s inheritance from his father.”

They fired the wagons, leaving behind nothing of use.

Before the smoke could travel far, they separated, two dozen and more warriors returning like shadows to their homes, some far-flung, others nearby. They would not come out to fight again; they would vanish into the population, become simple farmers and tradesfolk.

“For now,” Kerian told them. “For now, until you hear otherwise.”

For now... they murmured, all in agreement as she went among them, clasping hands, clasping arms.

“And you?” asked one, the eager young woman who had fought beside Jeratt in the forest.

Kerian grinned, bright and feral. “The next time the coward Thagol hears about us, he’ll know that all this kingdom is our battleground.”