Wartorn: Resurrection

RAVEN (5)

IT WAS IRONIC. General Weisel was treating her more like a daughter than Lord Matokin, who was her actual flesh and blood. Weisel went out of his way to include her in things. He was interested in her. He trusted her.

Matokin trusted her, too, though, didn't he? After all, he had given her this assignment of spying on Weisel.

But there was something more. Raven was barely willing to admit to it. Weisel made her feel... desired. He had gotten her these new clothes, which flattered her body in a way she had never experienced before. Men now looked at her. She knew what they wanted to do to her and the thought frightened and excited her all at once. She had never known any kind of love in her life, though twice before she had experienced quick, grunting, unsatisfying sex, once in her home village with a boy as outcast and homely as she, and once at the Academy.

The disturbing thing was, she lately found herself desiring Weisel. He was a handsome man, and he radiated power. Raven felt herself longing for him. It was an effort to contain these feelings, which of course she could never share them with the general.

What was perhaps most odd, however, was that she thought she sensed the same feelings from him. Well, maybe not the very same, but there seemed to be a lascivious look in his eyes sometimes. Raven was still very new to reading these sorts of signals, and no doubt her own desires were interfering with her perceptions. But she couldn't completely shake the notion.

She had returned from her mission. She was proud that she had overcome her fears after that first incident with the portals. That had been unnerving. If she concentrated, she could still hear those eerie voices. And, according to the wizards she had met when she came out the far side, hers wasn't a unique experience; others had heard the voices while in transit between portals.

But Raven had completed her assignment, her first as this army's liaison officer. She had visited the scout parties, all but the one whose Far Speak wizard had not responded. The other three squads were by now in proper position around the outskirts of Trael. Weisel's plan awaited only his signal.

She had enjoyed exerting her authority. Those Far Movement mages had been reluctant to go along with the general's plan, though none had outright refused to obey. Raven was satisfied that her visit had convinced them to follow orders when the time came.

She was glad to be back. She headed for her tent to freshen up and eat a meal, figuring General Weisel would summon her when he wanted her. The wizards in her unit were sitting around the campfire, and conversation ceased as she approached; then, recognizing a fellow magic-user, they resumed.

Raven paused, listening. She had made no general announcement about her new status as liaison officer.

"I tell you, it was murder!"

"Despite what the physicians said?"

"They didn't let a proper healer look at the body," said one of the wizards, who was himself a healer.

Raven's curiosity was piqued. She took a step closer to the fire. "What's happened?" she asked.

The mages drew her into the circle, speaking in hushed voices. "A Far Movement mage died—" one started to explain.

"—was murdered," interrupted another.

"—died last night," finished the first. "We don't know anything else for certain. He died in his tent, and the army surgeons say it was a paroxysm of some sort. That's all we know."

"It is not," the healer said. "I've heard the tent where he was found was slit down the side, like a knife had cut it."

Raven frowned, not understanding.

"So that someone else could get inside the tent," the healer went on, "and commit murder."

"That's outlandish speculation," one of the more moderate wizards said. "We're getting carried away here ..."

"What?" one of the Far Speak mages countered. "You think the so-called regular troops don't resent us, aren't afraid of us? You think there aren't some among them who'd like to see us all cut to ribbons?"

"Some," the healer said, sighing. "Not all."

"Something like this only takes one. Somebody to slip inside a tent and—"

"What, exactly? How do you induce a lethal fit like that?"

"Well, he, that is, I..."

The argument went on. Raven excused herself, taking a plate of food into her tent. She hadn't heard about the death, and wondered if it was even true. Plainly the wizards had been sitting there hashing out the subject for some time, no doubt embellishing it with secondhand rumor and vague conjecture made up on the spot.

She shook her head sadly. Whether or not the death had been murder, it was a stark example of the rift that existed between the two factions in this army.

A mage had died, and the first thing everybody thought of was he had been killed by someone from the regular troops. Those prejudices had to be eliminated. It was her job to see that this military became successfully integrated.

Perhaps Matokin had been too hasty in inducting mages into the ranks of the Felk army. A slower course might have been wiser.

Raven bit her lip, setting aside her plate, no longer hungry. What was this? She was questioning Lord Matokin, the Emperor himself

She remembered what Weisel had told her, his personal theory about Matokin's true plans for this war—a war that would never end, that would keep him in supreme power safely back there in Felk.

It couldn't be true. It couldn't.

With a great effort, Raven shoved the entire matter out of her mind. She looked down, seeing a big, black bug crawling across the canvas floor of her tent. She stared hard at it, concentrating. A moment later it burst into a little ball of fire.

SOON ENOUGH, GENERAL Weisel did call for her. She approached him where he stood outside his tent and made her report. He didn't seem too bothered by the missing scout party.

When he asked if something else was troubling her, Raven opted from among her choices to tell him about the incident with the portals. Weisel listened, patiently.

Yet all the while Raven felt a budding excitement. She tried to repress it, but being so near the general was inflaming. She felt her breath quickening. What would it be like, she wondered, to touch him?

Then something truly astonishing happened. After General Weisel ordered his aide to assemble the senior staff officers, he lifted a hand and brushed her cheek. It felt as if sparks followed the path his fingertips had traced. Raven's face heated, flushing. She felt faint.

Luckily, she regained herself as the officers gathered, along with a Far Speak wizard, one who hadn't been at the campfire earlier. Weisel was about to give the order that would be relayed to the scouts. The portals were going to be opened. Weisel had told Raven what might follow: it would surely be spectacular.

A new stage of this war was set to begin but all Raven could think of was the thrill, very strong now, of being in the general's presence.

Then, something was wrong.

Raven peered, frowning, at Weisel. The general suddenly looked like he was ... struggling. She couldn't explain it, but she knew in a flash that something had happened to him.

Weisel was trying to move his lips. None of the other officers was yet aware that something was wrong. Raven felt a surge of protectiveness. Whatever was happening to the General, she had to help.

She lunged toward him. As she did, she saw a small, fast movement out of the corner of her eye,

something passing overhead and falling earthward. Still reaching out toward the general, she was suddenly shoved very hard. She landed face first, the impact knocking the air out of her lungs.

Who had done this? But she ignored the thought. It wasn't important. She had to reach Weisel. She scrambled back onto her feet. Only, she couldn't manage it. Her legs kicked uselessly behind her. Her hands dug at the ground, trying to leverage her weight, but it was no good. Her limbs weren't doing what they should. She could barely move her right arm at all.

Something was very wrong indeed.

Time appeared to be slowing, in some impossible way. She could feel her heart beating, but it was an eternity between the beats. She watched a boot step near her out-stretched hand. The dusty leather crinkled as the boot's owner put weight onto it.

Godsdamnit! Raven tried again to stand, her fingers clawing at the dirt now. The place where she had been shoved was at the base of her neck, just above her right shoulder. When she tried to flex that shoulder it wouldn't move right. There was no pain, but she was beginning to think there ought to be. It felt like something was lodged there.

In the distance, voices were rising in an agitated clamor. She saw more booted feet going by, but no one stopped for her. Everything remained eerily slow. She had heard that time could warp itself like this in moments of mortal jeopardy.

Where was General Weisel?

The commotion grew but Raven realized it wasn't in the distance at all. It was going on all around her. She felt cold suddenly, very cold. The light seemed to be fading, as if dusk had come all at once. She strained to make out individual voices from the babble around her.

"Crossbow bolt!"

"An assassin!"

Her struggling limbs were even weaker now than they'd been just an instant ago. She could barely lift her head to keep her face out of the dirt.

"The girl, the young magician—she stepped in front of it!"

"She saved the general!"

Her dimming thoughts were becoming a jumble, and she knew she was ebbing toward something that might be unconsciousness, or might be something more drastic. Even so, she heard and understood that last shouted comment, and it provided the last warmth she would probably ever know.

She found, in the strange stretching of time, that she had the time to reflect on her life. She saw herself as a frightened and awkward child, a disappointment to her mother. She saw herself at the Academy, determined to become the best wizard she could be.

It had all led to this. She liked herself much more as she was now, an adult, with important responsibilities.

She had saved the general. She had stepped in front of the bolt of a crossbow, fired either by accident or intentionally. He would continue to expand the boundaries of the Felk Empire, until all the Isthmus was under one rule. It was an admirable cause. It was the grand vision of Lord Matokin, her father. She wondered if he had ever suspected, for even an instant, that she was his daughter. Maybe her mother would get word to him some day. Maybe he would know, and be proud of her sacrifice.

She had saved Weisel, who had helped to make her own life worthwhile. That made her sacrifice truly meaningful.

Still, she wondered why someone didn't help her. Why didn't... why didn't Weisel pick her up from the ground, hold her, comfort her? She was so cold now.

She found the time for one last coherent thought. Raven wondered if Weisel had given the signal to open the portals and let the dead loose into this world.