4: Blood & Ashes

Air hissed through her teeth as she raced through the tall grass. Her bow, nocked and ready to draw, swung side to side with every stride. The evidence of battle grew, the screams and stenches that haunted her nightly.

Drawing on her amber beads, she drew out the esse from two of them and channeled it into her body. The hunger and aches from the long vigil faded, and an insistent vigor rose in their place.

She pressed on faster.

Deep below, a dragon roused and aimed a burning eye at her. She longed to reach for Clouded Fang, but blocked him out instead. She had to keep him at a distance. She was being rash enough without relying on an uncertain titan.

The fallen watchtower loomed from the shadows, backlit by fires spreading through the camp. Shadows danced across the grass as warriors fought and slew each other. Stop to consider them for even a moment, and she feared icy death would inundate her lifesense.

Leiyn surged up the ashen mound, then skidded to a halt as the battle came into full view.

A stalemate had blossomed. Though most of the Suncoats were half-dressed, their numbers surpassed the plainsriders, and they attacked with equal measures of discipline and savagery. Their line, though untidy, held against the plainsrider push. An underfed and unshaven lot, they fought with the ferocity of cornered beasts.

This night, they would live or die. By how they fought, they knew it.

The element of surprise was not Altun and his men’s only advantage. Spry and experienced, they wielded assorted weapons against the soldiers. For every fallen plainsrider, three Suncoats lost their lives.

But the night’s result was far from determined. Entrenched behind shields, spears, and a stake barrier, with crossbowmen providing support from behind, the Suncoats had halted the advance. Drill and coordination compensated for what they lacked in individual skill. Plainsriders, like rangers, trained for solo combat. Though Leiyn’s concept of military strategy was basic, she knew enough to realize if the Ilberian line was not broken soon, the Suncoats would likely repel the assault.

Wincing with each wound inflicted, Leiyn climbed the ruins of the wall next to the fallen watchtower. From there, she had a view of the soldiers sheltered behind their shields. Raising her bow, Leiyn sighted her first target along the back of their rank, an arbalist aiming at Altun. Anchoring her hand at her jaw, she held a moment to judge the angle, then loosed. 

The arrow flew, barely visible until it sprouted from the Suncoat’s chest, punching through coat and steel. The man spun to the ground, black staining his lifefire.

Death reached into her mind.

“Fesht!” She staggered, nearly slipping down her precarious perch, before withdrawing her mahia from the dying man. Gasping, Leiyn tried catching her breath as she shook away the creeping sensation. Surrounded by death, it felt all but impossible. Her magic flitted to each snuffed life as if she might fix it—or consume its fading succor.

What’s wrong with me?

Surging back to her feet, Leiyn pulled back her mahia as much as she dared, limiting her focus to dozens of paces around her. Nocking and drawing, she sighted a second marksman and exhaled, trying to steady her shaking hand, then loosed.

Her arrow shot past her target, a tremor sending it too high.

Startling, her target ducked for cover behind a tent. Leiyn cursed under her breath and tried to force herself to calm. As if that was likely to work.

Not now, Firebrand!

No time for frustration or bafflement—she had to keep dismantling the ranged support. The plainsriders had gained a little momentum; lose it now, and they would be driven back. The Lodge would remain in Suncoat possession. 

She could not allow that. Tadeo’s bones and those of the other fallen were littered across those ashes. Trampled by the boots of their killers, or those like them.

She would be their revenant. A ranger returned from the grave, come to avenge them. A revenant did not suffer from the death it dealt. It killed without mercy.

Don’t feel, she told herself, drawing again, limbs trembling. Don’t feel any of it.

Only a few crossbowmen remained in sight. As she sighted one, two turned, quarrels pointing at her. A third—the man who had evaded her before—emerged, his weapon loaded and leveled.

“Shit!”

Leiyn pivoted back around the fallen watchtower, sliding on the detritus as she went. Three cracks cut through the din. Bolts flashed through the air where she had stood just a moment before.

She was already scrambling back up. With their quarrels loosed, she had the advantage; a bow was quicker to reload than a crossbow. All three men had bent out of sight to load fresh bolts, but she spotted another just cradling his for a shot.

Moving quickly, outpacing her hesitation, she loosed. As her arrow flew, she heard his weapon release.

A plainsrider spun to the ground. A split moment later, her arrow caught the Suncoat in the neck.

Leiyn rocked back, mahia reaching for both dying men at once.

“Legion take it all!” she spat as she clawed back control. “Focus, damn you!”

Even with her magic flitting about the battlefield, she sensed the trio of crossbowmen emerging from cover. Aiming for her. She had seconds to decide her course.

Leiyn raised her bow, then blanched before their lifted weapons. She spun back away.

A quarrel whished by, close enough to rob her of breath. She waited for the second and third to follow.

They never came.

Silently railing at herself, Leiyn slid down the ashy slope and ran around the tower, searching for a fresh vantage point. The Suncoats had her previous location pinned. A new one could buy her the time needed to take them out. 

If I can steady my damned aim.

She went a score of strides away from the brunt of the fighting, the darkness hiding her movements. As she moved from the fight, her mahia seemed to settle. Cautiously, she extended her lifesense around her, watching for ambush. 

Staked barricades remained in her way, but the arbalists’ previous positions came into view. By both eyesight and magic, she detected one marksman still aiming at where she had been. Waiting for her to emerge.

Don’t botch this, Firebrand.

She held her breath as she slowly rose, arrow trained on the Suncoat’s eye. Letting the air out in a steady hiss, she quieted the clamor inside her, then loosed.

The man’s head rocked back, his crossbow cracking as its quarrel thudded uselessly against the ground.

Her mahia kicked like an overeager hunting dog, but Leiyn was ready for it. Reining it back in took only moments now. She had grown too used to the quiet. Battle calluses had peeled and torn away.

No longer. Once more, she had to numb herself to all she did.

Weaving between the spikes of the barricade, Leiyn advanced on the remaining Suncoats with a nocked arrow, lifesense picking out the two crossbowmen left, crouched and reloading. Moving behind a tent, she kept her bowstring loose, waiting for her moment.

The plainsriders stole it from her.

The Gazians roared as they broke through the Suncoat line and flooded into the camp. Altun led the charge, his limp disguised by his quick stride, his scarred face lined with fury. She watched his hammer rise and fall, crunching through the head of the first arbalist and sending a wave of darkness through the Suncoat’s lifefire. Then he was charging the second, round shield lifted as the man rose and aimed, a mere dozen paces away. Close enough for the quarrel to pierce a compromised shield and kill the man holding it.

Leiyn had drawn and loosed before she could have a second thought.

Her arrow caught the Suncoat in the throat. He fell, limp as a strawman, his life bleeding into the ground. Taking a moment to steady her reaching mahia, Leiyn turned to find Altun’s gaze on her. He gave her a nod.

Despite the reluctance plucking at her chest, she returned it.

Turning away to scan the area for any lingering foes, she found the battle was quickly concluding. With their defenses dissolved, some of the Suncoats had run, but to no avail. Their own barricades slowed them enough for a group of plainsriders to cut off their escape. Those who did not keep fighting threw down their arms and fell to their knees, hands raised in surrender.

Leiyn lowered her bow and retreated beyond the Lodge’s borders. Altun had been true to his word, but there was still opportunity for treachery. Standing amidst the tall grass covering the hill, she watched as weapons were collected and hands were bound. Less than a dozen Suncoats remained, and all looked to be wounded. She grimaced as she noticed how young some of them were, scarcely old enough to be called full-grown.

War spares none, Tadeo had said one night as the rangers prepared for potential dangers. The young least of all.

The plainsriders had suffered their own toll. Only three lay completely still, but a dozen had taken dire injuries and were being tended to. This victory had come with a great toll.

But whose victory is it?

She could help those suffering. Xepi had taught her enough of healing that she was confident she could keep all but the most grievously wounded alive.

Yet Leiyn kept her distance. None were dying, and it would put her in a compromising position besides.

There was a deeper concern. Little as she wished to admit it, her mahia had been a liability during the fight. Until she mastered this newfound sensitivity, she could not risk using it unless there was no avoiding it.

At length, Altun turned and, spotting her, picked his way across the battlefield. When he came within a dozen paces, Leiyn half-raised her bow in warning. He halted. Blood covered the leather plates of his lamellar armor and dripped from his hammer and domed shield. He stood with the sloped shoulders of the weary. Yet it spoke to his skill that his esse showed only the slightest wounds taken.

“I have done as claimed, Ranger,” he said in Ilberian. “Do you trust me now?”

Leiyn forced a low laugh. “I’ll wait to hear what the Lord Governor has to say first.”

The plainsrider nodded, seeming to have expected no less. “If you have an audience with Lord Mauricio di Siveña, tell him what happened here. Altan Gaz keeps her promises, as does the Baishin.”

Her lips curled. After all she had suffered at the hands of plainsriders, the words were too ironic not to sneer.

“And tell Premier Itzel of Folly as well,” Altun added. “She requested a report.”

“Never fear. She’ll know.”

Leiyn backed up a step. It would be better to leave before more plainsriders were freed from their duties in case they meant to pursue her. Before she had taken another, though, Altun spoke again.

“And Ranger, if you see Batu Khatas when you travel south, give him my best.”

She bared her teeth, then turned and fled into the night.

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