The enemy is four hundred paces away, twenty paces downhill, downwind from Zee, to judge by the flapping of the standards. The Ruthgari army is jogging, keeping ranks. Some of Zee’s horsemen—most still in their teens—are already charging. She sees officers waving at them angrily, calling them back perhaps?—and then, defeated, the officers follow them.
Her line is tearing, some of the clansmen on foot following after the horsemen, spoiling the shots for her archers.
Once the foot soldiers charge, the archers would have to leave off shooting. Instead of a dozen volleys of a thousand arrows each, it would be six.
She shouts something, looking toward the siege-drafters, who have already drafted the great green luxin crossbeam and are filling the barrels of flammable red luxin to hurl at the approaching army.
They—and a dozen other siege-drafting teams—may get off two rounds.
She jumps up on her horse, the sudden movement sickening Kip, shouting something to—Small Bear, that’s his name!
Small Bear says nothing, adjusts his aim incrementally, and looses the huge arrow. A thousand archers follow his lead.
She grabs a torch and rides out in front of her men. Kip thinks she’s shouting. Perhaps all the men are shouting. She throws the torch in a high arc, and her men surge forward.
Her thirty mighty men surround her in seconds.
Something is shifting, sinking deeper—
A flaming barrel of red luxin smashes into the front lines of the Ruthgari, bursting and cutting a vertical flaming slash, crushing men and setting them alight. I draft green off the grasses that will soon run red. To my left, Young Bull and Griv Gazzin are drafting blue and green respectively, swatting arrows and firebombs out of the air, keeping me safe.
I draft a lance of green luxin and kick my stallion’s flanks.
“Enough.”
The sound reverberates oddly.
I don’t seem to notice. The taste of ashes heavy in the air is more noticeable by its sudden absence than it had been in its presence. When did she start tasting? Smelling? Then the smell of ash and sweat and horses—gone. The feel of the saddle between her knees, knuckles tight on the lance.
It goes dark.
Kip blinked, and found his hand held in the crone’s. She’d pulled his fingers off the gems of the card one at a time.
Breathless, Kip looked into her eyes. He could feel the blue luxin leaving him, draining into nothingness, abandoning him, leaving him empty, lifeless.
“I’ll be damned,” she said. “You heard something there, at the end? Smelled? Tasted?”
“A, a little.”
Her eyes lit. “They lied! Of course they lied. Of course. They’re Guiles. But why would he send you here alone? He must have known you’d be discovered for what you are. We must know. Stare at the ceiling.”
The ceiling, which Kip would have noticed earlier if it hadn’t been for the profusion of original cards, was a full spectrum, enameled and shining. “Do you want me to do something? Draft or—”
She took his hand. “Keep looking up is all.” She pressed his fingers onto a card, one at a time. She pushed his pinky down, hard. A whiff of tea leaves and tobacco washed over him. He was about to comment when he felt a bone-deep weariness settle over him. His body ached. Then, as if his ears had been unstoppered, he could hear the creaking of wood and the whooshing of wind, the slap of waves.
He pondered the exact words. It was a cool evening, and the scent of gunpowder clung to the ship and the men. Somewhere on the ship, a woman was weeping, over the dead, no doubt. His room was dark, lit by only a single candle. Outside, silver streaks of moonlight cut the night like a sword. He rolled the quill between his fingers.
His naked hand lay across the parchment, holding it in place. No secretary for this. This was treason. There was a name the missive was addressed to, but the hand obscured it—it ended “-os,” which meant it could be anyone Ruthgari, or one of thousands whose name was Ruthgari even if their blood no longer was.
Then Kip lost all awareness of himself.
“A more advantageous peace may be found on the opposite shore of war. Dagnu is—” I write, the scritching of my quill filling the little cabin until the last word, which is silent. Muted. Odd.
Then the cabin… dark. I feel—Kip feels—Kip felt dizzy. He was back, staring through his own eyes once more.
Janus Borig puffed on her pipe, looking angry. “At age fifteen? No.”
“What the—What the hell just happened?” Kip demanded, yanking his hand back.
“You didn’t tell me, or I could have made things easier for you.”
“Tell you what? This is my fault somehow?” Kip was scared, angry. Was he crazy? What had she done to him?