I've updated all of my previous one-shots, and the chapters of this fic—don't panic, nothing was rewritten! I just felt deeply compelled by my obsessive-compulsive personality and the voices in my head hey! I didn't do anything! yes you did! It's always you! Make her stop! Oh, would all of you just shut up! Seraphina, a little order here? I can't here myself—or anyone else in here—think! to correct all the spelling errors and minor mistakes that I missed or have been pointed out. Case in point: the Riders are formed in Groups, not Companies. That, along with other errors, has been fixed. Thanks!
Disclaimer: I think you've got the point by now; me no own, you no sue. (I don't know where that comes from, but I've seen it around, so I 'borrowed' it.)
Lingering Ghosts
Himura Seraphina
Chapter 10) Blood
Under the night sky, every rustle, every moving leaf, twig, and insect, each scampering step made by creatures which lived and foraged during the darkness, was a distinct sound as loud as the crack of wood. Each noise had a direction and a cause—there, to the left in the pine, a beetle chewed steadily on the woody flesh. Down, to the right, twenty wing-lengths from the base of this perch, a marten slipped out of its den. And—THERE!
Wings opened fully with a single twitch of muscles, and powerful talons clenched, released, and pushed off of the branch they grasped. The owl dropped, falling into a steep glide. Three wing-lengths, two, one—crunch. A deer mouse, having ventured out for its meal, became one, its neck and skull crushed in the owl's grasp.
Four powerful wing beats carried Ni'hul to the sturdy branch of another tree where she settled, pleased, with her night's first catch. It wouldn't be the last, certainly, but was a reasonable start. The mouse went down easily, and she fluffed her feathers up around her while she waited, both for the next telltale sound and for her first meal to settle in her crop.
Sound filled the air, angry stomping and crashing, growing closer. The weasel Ni'hul was listening to shot off into the undergrowth. Several bats shot past her, calling a warning, despite their natural dislike of her kind. Angrily, she fluffed herself up, twisting her head, trying to catch a glimpse of the intruders. This was her territory, and they were disturbing her hunt. The sounds came closer, some familiar, some not; the strike of hooves on earth, the breathing of heavy grazers, and the shrill sound of voices. Of course—two-leggers.
Ni'hul watched from her perch as they marched through her hunting ground, uncaring that they were disturbing the prey. The shiny bits and strange feathers that two-leggers wore rustled and clinked in the still air, causing her to pull her head to her chest. They were loud, though they seemed to be making an attempt at stealth. She shook her feathers out in distain. Two-leggers knew nothing of stealth, or of respecting the People's hunting rights. Even the bats acknowledged this as her territory, and flew softly around her. Whatever they were doing here in the night, she wanted them gone
Daine woke with a start, the heavy feel of a mouse still in her throat, the ring of harnesses in her ears. She wasn't out in the night, hunting, but still wrapped warmly in Numair's arms. Rapidly, she tried to sort out the images and sounds that jumbled in her mind, fixing on the direction they had come from. Sending her mind out, she sought the owl whose mind she had inhabited in sleep, this time by conscious choice.
A quarter mark later, she came back to herself, feeling sweat beading her brow from the effort. Ni'hul was on the barest edge of her range, and she had already worn herself out that day. Two hours was not enough sleep to recover—unfortunately, it was all she would get.
"Daine? What's wrong?"
She should have known he would sense her restlessness. She spared a moment to smile at him before sitting up—still in his embrace, as his arms remained around her waist. "We need to get dressed—there's trouble."
Daine had beaten Numair out of the chamber, making it to Buri's room quickly and banging her fist on the door three times. She waited ten heartbeats, long enough for Numair to reach her, before repeating the pattern. Still, she didn't hear anyone stirring in the room.
She was about to ask Numair if her could get the door open—he was, oddly enough, an adept lock-pick—when the door across the hall swung open. They both turned, expecting to find Raoul—and came face-to-face with Buri, in a very large man's shirt. "Daine? Numair? What is it?"
Daine blinked at her friend once, twice, and then a third time, as Numair began to chuckle. Buri looked at them oddly, until Numair spoke up. "Apparently, sweet, we aren't the only ones capable of keeping certain types of secrets."
It was Buri's turn to blink, then blush—actually blush, something Daine was certain she had been incapable of doing—as she realized that the door she had answered was not her own. Just when Numair had controlled his chuckle, Buri her flush, and Daine's astonishment had transformed into amusement, Raoul's substantial form came to fill the doorway behind the K'mir.
He saw the situation and sighed lightly. "Numair? Daine?"
"We will definitely talk later, Buri," Daine smiled, then turned solemn. "There's raiders on the mountain trail we found."
Buri went from a slightly embarrassed lover to an intent commander in a heartbeat, exuding authority even in an oversized shirt and nothing else. "Report."
"There's thirty, all mounted, in two separate groups. They're going to reach the base of the trail in less than two candlemarks. They're scouts," she went on, stepping forward, wanting to make her point. A plan had been forming in her mind, and she wanted Buri to see it. "I talked to the horses, and listened to a conversation between the bandits. They'll split up when the leave the path, and scout the entire region, looking for anything worth stealing—goods, food, women—and to see when the spring fairs are, so they can hit people coming and going. They've done it before; the horses remembered doing this a month ago—just before the last strike by the bandits. They aren't expected back for at least a week, Buri. This is a chance—we can take these raiders out quickly, then follow the trail back to their camp. We'd cut their numbers in half, and we'd have a week to plan an ambush on the camp. We could keep civilians out of it entirely, without letting the bandits threaten the villages and farmers hereabouts."
There was a desperation in her voice that had Numair wrapping his arm tightly around her shoulders, and Buri looking at her with compassion and understanding showing through her commander's mask. Raoul met her gaze calmly, only a trace of sympathy in his face. "Daine, you know we'll take any reasonable course that will let us capture the bandits with the least threat to ourselves and our civilian charges."
"And, if this opportunity is reasonable, and presents a good chance to even the odds in our favor, then we'll take it—after due consideration, planning, and after we've gathered all the information we can," Buri added. "We need Lena and Evin to rouse the camp—quietly, with no fires—and we'll need you to either shapeshift and scout, or 'listen in' to the bandit's animals. We'll meet you at the camp in a quartermark," she told Daine, meeting her eyes squarely.
Daine saw understanding in that gaze, and a steely command. She felt the rising panic and desperation, the fear of seeing the same scene that had confronted her one dawn six years ago, fading. She had seen the destruction wrote by raiders and bandits many times in the last years, not to mention the ravages of war, but nothing had brought back to her mind the images of her dead family the way even the thought of farms and cottages near Snowsdale being attacked did. She might hate the people here, but she didn't want them to suffer that—or the relieve the similarities to her own tragedy.
"Of course—we'll see you there," she murmured, meeting Buri's eyes, trying to say with only her gaze that she would be calm, responsible, a Rider—not a frightened, impulsive girl. Buri must have seen what she wanted her to, because the older woman nodded once, firmly, a light smile touching her lips, before turning back in the doorway—of Raoul's room—obviously intending to get dressed.
"Make sure the camp stays dark—and don't wake the town. The last thing we need is to be tripping over panicked civilians." With that tart order, the door swung closed.
Daine felt Numair draw her close. "Magelet."
"I'm fine, love—I just had a moment of, well, memories coming back." She turned her head, letting him see that she was alright. He searched her face intently, relaxing slightly after a few moments, seeing what Buri had. He didn't release his hold on her, however, and for that she was grateful. "Come on—we'd better get Lena and Evin and get to the camp. I don't want to have to face Buri if we haven't followed her orders."
"especially not with Raoul glowering from behind her—a formidable combination," he murmured with an arched brow, his eyes on the closed door. "Very interesting."
"That is definitely going to be an interesting story," she agreed. "We'll have to get it from them later." With that, she turned towards Lena's room. Mundane matters—bandits, bloodshed, and battle tactics—would have to take precedence over her friend's romance. For now, at least.
"Alright then," Buri concluded, "our best night scouts—that's you six," She nodded at a small cluster of Riders, "will track and observe the bandit parties from the base of the mountain path until false dawn. At that point, they'll draw back to where the attack parties will be waiting for their reports. The Group commanders, Sir Raoul, and myself, will confer to make sure that nothing important has come up as a result of the scout's intelligence that will make our attack unwise. Barring disaster, we'll strike at dawn."
"The Own will remain behind, along with Rider Quint, who is acting as our healer," Raoul added. Quint, a whip-thin man with white-blonde hair, sighed lightly but waved his ascent. "We can't be sure that the scouting parties won't be greedy and make for the village, and we can't leave Snowsdale undefended. Rahim," he looked to a tall, solemn-eye Bazhir, "commands the Own in my absence as I will be joining the 5th Group while Commander Buri goes with the 7th."
"Any questions?" Buri asked, looking around at the entire company.
They were seated in a large half-circle facing Buri and Raoul. Daine was sitting with the Riders now, but she had been standing with the commanders while giving her report to the whole company. There were only two lanterns for light, and only that much because the heavy material of the command tent was thick enough and dark enough to block the light from shinning through and being visible from any distance.
"Are we sure the scouts won't be missed by the main party?" One of the Riders asked. "What if they use messenger birds or spell to check in with their camp?"
"They're bandits, Soren, not soldiers, another Rider reminded him. "If they thought of those kinds of things, they wouldn't have turned to raiding."
"No, Clare, he's got a point—the reason our help was requested was because of how organized these bandits seem," Buri reminded them. "How many raiders think to scout their targets repeatedly—or have the numbers to send out thirty men as scouts? Daine and the other scouts will try to find out if there's any communication between these parties and the camp. If there is, we'll reconsider. Anything else?"
There were a few inquiries, but not many. Buri and Raoul were very thorough in their briefings, and everyone who was present was a veteran of at least two years, who could understand not only their orders but also the entire situation quickly. It was not long after midnight when the scouts slipped out of the camp, heading in the directions of the scouting groups, whose locations Diane had pinpointed.
The rest of the Riders were ordered to get a brief two hours sleep before they rode out. Only the commanders and mages, along with the Own's watch remained awake. While Raoul, Buri, Lena, and Evin went over their plans, Daine settled into a corner of the command tent and meditated, falling deep into her magic and sending her thoughts out, into the night.
Hours later, as the northern forest lightened imperceptibly with the still far-off dawn, Daine hunched her shoulders further in an attempt to ward off the chill. This early in spring, the nights held an almost winter-like chill; indeed, winter was barely past and snows could return even into May or early June, while the mountains never lost their snowy blankets. The 7th Group was bundled up well against the cool, keeping their horses close together and sharing the warmth that the huge animals generated. They spoke only in low tones, which the pine forest absorbed easily. Only an expert hunter and tracker would know they were there, even from as close a distance as a hundred yards.
"Are you alright?" Buri murmured from her left.
"Hmmm?" Daine responded, shaking off her stupor. "Oh—yes, I'm fair."
"Your grammar slips when you're exhausted," her friend pointed out. "Numair said to keep an eye on you—I'm sorry, I didn't realize how far you'd drained yourself."
"I'll be fine," she shrugged. "I don't need to shapeshift unless this all goes to hell, and some uninterrupted sleep will set me to rights. Numair shouldn't have worried you."
"He's not here to keep an eye on you, so he wanted to make sure someone did." Buri eyed her sternly, and even without taking cat's eyes, Daine knew the Commanders expression that she would be wearing. "When we've finished here, you are going straight to the inn and your bed. We'll manage without you for a few hours."
"You need to find out where the bandit's camp is," she objected.
"That can wait until tonight, or tomorrow. You're no good to us if you drop. You're for bed, miss."
Daine sighed, knowing she wouldn't win the argument had she even been inclined to fight. Right now, ten candlemarks of sleep, in a warm bed, sounded as close to the Blessed Fields as possible. Her session of watching and listening to the bandits, both parties, as they had split up as soon as they reached the end of the trail out of the mountains, had taken her down to the dregs of her resources, magically speaking. At least they knew for sure that there was no communication between the scouts and the main bandit party—several of the men did not like being sent out in the cold, having to spend a week making cold camps with little comforts, and had been very vocal in their complaints and allowing her to learn quite a bit about the raiders. Raoul had gone with Lena and the 5th to follow the party that had gone southwest, while Buri, Daine, and the 7th were set on the party heading to the northeast, skirting above Snowsdale and Rockvale. At this point, Daine was useful only as an archer, as even reaching the mile or so to their target's animals was taxing.
"Speaking of bed," Daine began, turning to her friend, even though the night's shadows were too deep to see through, "I think you had best start explaining. Secrets, Buri?"
She could practically feel Buri blush. "That's pot crying 'black' to the kettle, Daine."
"You know, last year when Numair and I came out in the open, it wasn't our relationship that upset or surprised our friends so much as it was the fact that we kept it a secret—and that we'd managed to keep in a secret. Except for you and Raoul—you didn't seem that amazed that we'd done it. I wonder why?"
"Hmmm," was Buri's noncommittal reply.
"So, I've been thinking, mayhaps you weren't shocked at the ability to keep a relationship a secret because you've some practice doing so."
"Perhaps."
Daine sighed. It was fun to tease Buri, but she mostly wanted to know the truth, so she decided to stop tormenting her friend—for now, anyway.
"How long, Buri?"
There was a long, hesitant pause—not at all like the straightforward, bluntly confident woman Daine knew. "Three years."
"Three—Bright Lady! That was the year before the war!" Daine felt slightly dazed—though she remembered to control her voice—and wondered if this was how her friends had felt when she and Numair had revealed themselves. Had Raoul and Buri really been together for three years? "I never would have guessed."
"That was rather the point, Daine," was the dry reply.
She shook off her surprise, more determined than ever for facts. "Let's have it, then. How did you—?"
"We got back to Corus from separate missions at the same time, and didn't want to put up with the nonsense of Court, so we went to his rooms for a drink."
"How did that—oh," she cut herself off, realizing what that meant. Buri and Raoul had gotten foxed, and, being conveniently close to a bed, had fallen into it. "And you just, fell into a relationship?"
"No, we fell into bed. I was—attracted—before, and he claims the same—though I'm a little doubtful, as I'm not much to look at—"
"Don't be ridiculous—you certainly aren't a Court beauty, but you're fair pretty if anyone's a mind to look properly."
Buri chuckled lightly. "Why, Daine, I never knew—all this time, you've carried a torch for me?"
"That won't work, Buri; I live with Numair—it'll take more than that to embarrass me."
Her friend sighed. "Damn. Well, you know how alcohol works—it loosened both our tongues, and we ended up together. The next morning…" Buri paused, thinking, remembering. "Well, we'd scared ourselves, for any number of reasons, starting with how we were friends, ending with that we're both confirmed bachelors for various personal reasons—and in the middle, along with several other worries, is the fact that he's the Lord of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak and I'm just a K'mir warrior. So we pretended it never happened and avoided each other."
"Not forever, obviously."
"No. I—well, I missed him. As a friend, at least. Raoul was the second person from Tortall that I met—Alanna was the first, and she brought Thayet and me here after she found the Dominion Jewel. Raoul came to met Alanna on the way, because Jon needed her. He irritated me, and he obviously didn't know what to make of me; I was young—younger than Alanna by a bit, in fact—and still shocked from the loss of my family and Thayet's mother and the civil war in Sarain, so I was very prickly and difficult—you laugh now, but I was worse then," she added at Daine's chuckle. 'Prickly' and 'difficult'—as well as 'stubborn', 'bullheaded', and 'blunt'—were very accurate descriptions of Buri at any time, and she didn't usually have a recent civil war as a reason. "He seemed to understand that I was very shaken, and was kind to me, without being patronizing—though he still irritated me on principle. This big, brawny man, with rank and wealth, born to privilege—he drove me mad. But Alanna obviously loved him, as a friend, and they were very close. I trusted her judgment, and she told me stories about him, and we became friends. He was one of my only ones for a long time, when I was focused on helping Thayet make a place in Tortall."
"And you missed being able to talk to him." There was no question in Daine's voice, because she knew it to be truth.
"And argue with him, and train, and grumble about politics and Court, and about the strain of being Commander—yes, I missed him. For months, most of the summer and all of the fall, we just stayed out of each other's way. If we both hadn't been so busy, and often away from Corus, everyone would have notice, but we were overrun with work—and then the barriers fell."
Midwinter's Night, Daine remembered. 'When the barriers fell' had become such a common saying, a prelude to reflections of tremendous change, that it had become the opening line of numerous songs, ballads, and tales. The Collapse had changed all the Eastern lands, bringing a deluge of immortals, more than had been seen in four centuries, and led ultimately to the Immortals War, which had changed everyone's lives.
"We had to work together, almost constantly, and it made that loss of friendship even worse, because we were together, but not the way we always had been. And then—you remember the hurrok attack at Port Caynn that February?"
"The one where you were injured? You could have lost the arm, if those slashes had gone any deeper."
"When I got away from the healers, Raoul came to see me. He was—shaken," Buri murmured, more to her self than Daine. There was a touch of wonder in her voice, as she went from reciting a story to remembering what it was like to fall in love. "He started yelling at me for getting hurt, and it surprised me—and then I got angry and yelled back. I was hurt and tired, and I missed my friend, and he just started shouting, and I lost it. I asked him why in all the realms he'd care if I was hurt, or even dead—I didn't really mean it, of course—and he just froze. Like I'd laid into him with a blade, not words. I was about to apologize, and throw him out so I could cry in private because I was sure we could never even be friends again, and he stated speaking. He used this tone that I'd never heard before, not in battle or when he was reaming out a foolish soldier, or at any time at Court or on the training grounds. It was so flat, but determined, and absolutely controlled. He said he'd had enough—and I thought he was going to say there was nothing left between us. He said," Buri paused, and Daine knew she wasn't in the dark, predawn woods of the Gallan mountains, but in a small bedchamber, hundreds of leagues away in Port Caynn. "He said that he was tired of all of this, of all the worries and hurt, and of trying to forget or pretend; that if we had backtracked to avoid losing our friendship, we'd done a poor job of it, as we hadn't been friends since that night. And that if he was going to lose his best friend because we made a mistake in going too far, he'd rather that he had a chance to actually make that mistake, and to enjoy what ever he could before it ended. He wasn't going anywhere, and that I'd have to throw him out, or tell him to go straight to the Black God, to get him to leave. And I couldn't," she added. "So he didn't go anywhere, and we were friends again, and more."
"Good," Daine said quietly, pleased and glad, and just a little teary from her friend's recital. "He's too stubborn and mean for you to push around, or to put up with you when you get stubborn; and you're to practical to fall over him the way everyone at Court does, so you'll stop him from being too dignified or from getting big-headed."
Buri chuckled. "I suppose—but I'm not stubborn."
Daine's disbelieving silence was her answer to that.
The first rays of dawn crept over the mountain peaks, bringing the hazy half-light of the new day to the woods and valleys. Mist crept along the ground, rising above the trees to be burned off by the pale sun. Fourteen indistinct figures rested at the edge of the woods above a shallow vale, blended with mist and shadow. Formless, they seemed neither male nor female, but otherworldly, like the mythic Shadow Hunters, who rode formless steeds shaped from the winds in an eternal hunt through the northern forests. Below them, a half-hazard cold camp lay, men and horses in temporary repose, waiting the dawn and easier travel.
The sun's face touched the horizon and, in a single moment of perfect silence, the world breathed, lingering in the first beat of the new day. No bird sung or rodent scampered, the earth greeting the dawn.
A cry tore through the mist and shadows, echoing in the silence, shocking all who heard it. It was a shrieking scream, like nothing made by beast, bird, or human, and make shivers run down the spines of all those in the camp. They froze, unable to reach for weapons, as the primal call echoed, trapping them.
With Buri's K'mir battle cry still in their ears, the Riders sprung their mounts, bursting from shadow into the pale light, blades and bows drawn. Amman, one of the Riders, released a hawk-like cry, the battle call of the Bloody Hawk tribe, followed by cries of 'Tortall' and 'The Queen's Riders'. By the time the raiders had shaken off tier stupor and scrambled onto their mounts, the Riders were upon them.
It was fast, vicious, and bloody. Most of the blood belonged to the bandits, but they fought like desperate men, without rules or mercy. While the Riders were under orders to incapacitate instead of kill when ever possible, their enemy took away their choice by refusing any form of surrender. Even injured, unhorsed, they would continue to fight, forcing Riders to shoot those who went to the ground to protect their comrades from having their mounts killed with daggers, swords—even sticks—to the underside.
Even as the dawn mist evaporated, the Riders were left amid a bloody battlefield, no less terrible for its small size. All fifteen of the raiders were dead, and four Riders were injured, plus three mounts. None were life threatening, but Relan had gash to his scalp that bled profusely, and Kali had a worrisome sword-wound to the leg.
"Damn it," Evin muttered, looking out over the blood-splattered earth. "They just didn't give up or give in."
"In Galla, accused raiders are handed over to the lord's justice," Daine said softly, catching the attention of the party. "Any one accused is given a trial—brief, with no magistrate and no appeals—and, if found guilty, is hung at the next sunset. They're hung, not from scaffolding, which usually breaks the neck, but from a tree, and are levered up in the air with the noose, so that they strangle to death—no exceptions, no second chances, and no death rites. It takes them a while to die," she reflected quietly, remembering the only such hand she'd even seen when, against her ma's orders, she'd snuck to the edge of town. She'd been eight, and it had given her nightmares for weeks—and she'd never again chosen to witness an execution.
There was an uneasy silence among the Riders; not regretting that which had been necessary, but reflecting on the fact that, in the face of this information, the mornings events would be repeated the next time they faced the bandits.
Soon, though, duty, training, and reality surfaced, and the troublesome future disappeared into the practicality of the now. Buri spoke with Raoul using the speaking spell, discovering that, while the 5th also had injures, among which included a concussion, broken arm, and two serious blade wounds, and that the bandit party to the south had reacted in a similar fashion to this one, both groups were intact. Then came the particularly unpleasant task of burying the bandits.
A funeral pyre large enough to burn fifteen bodies would be visible for miles, between the flames, smoke, and clear mountain air. There was also the risk of the fire spreading, even using a magical fire and shielding the blaze. Leaving the bodies was unimaginable—this much fresh meat would draw every large predator and scavenger for leagues, leaving the surrounding civilians at risk. The only option was to bury the dead, a dirty, exhausting matter. No matter how well trained, how experienced the Riders were, dealing with the aftermath of battle was gruesome. Daine thanked the gods that there were no Stormwings here; she no longer begrudged them their natures or place in the world, but seeing them in action right now would simply be too much.
It was two groups of weary, bloody, and soiled men and women who returned to the camp just after midday, carrying their wounded and leading the mounts and belongings of the dead raiders to be given to the village and the Lord Holder. Daine had moved beyond exhaustion into a state of physical, mental, and magical numbness that she hadn't felt in many months. She was slumped over Cloud, unaware of those around her, even of Cory's shocked, concerned face—only Numair, his eyes dark with concern and his face tight with worry, registered. When he approached her, she reached out a hand to him, which he took, eyes questioning.
"I'm not hurt," she managed, trying to smile for him—only to see his expression darken a heartbeat before the world went black, and she collapsed into his open arms.