Aftermath
If Math had done as Alik wanted, he would’ve fled with Kai. Arguably, it would have been the smart thing to do.
He just couldn’t.
Math had to know if anyone survived. He couldn’t just leave.
Kai didn’t question him when he said he wanted to keep going.
She didn’t try to convince him to take a different course of action.
One might argue that she could afford to be magnanimous, since no matter what they found at the campsite, the one thing Math would be unlikely to do afterward was return to Bashan Cenobium.
Or any Rokasmaa cenobium, for that matter.
There were other magical orders besides the Idalliks. None of them were in the Rokasmaa Empire, of course, but it was at least theoretically possible that he might convince the others to take him more seriously.
They would break down that door when they reached it.
Math smelled the battlefield long before he saw it.
It was all too similar to the logging camp but compounded by a factor of ten: more bombard powder, more blood, more offal.
This time, a metallic scent lingered in the air that had been absent from the first scene.
The nearby forest arguably should have been on fire and wasn’t, but it was hard to tell if that was because of the rain that had clearly come down at some point, the will of the Parnathi Queens, or the efforts of various knights before they were slain.
Then they spotted the camp and Math sucked in a breath. Kai gasped.
“Those bastards did it,” Math murmured.
The center of the camp was little more than a crater.
Bombard shrapnel had spread in all directions when it had exploded, likely killing everyone, friend or foe, in a broad area.
Where the command tent had been lay the shattered remains of a gigantic ash tree, shattered and bleeding a green liquid too thin to be sap and the wrong color for human blood.
Math didn’t need to be told that this was a Parnathi Queen.
Just one, though. He saw only a few traces of the second: some broken branches, a cluster of singed leaves. He picked up a blackened acorn, stared at it for a blank, frozen moment, and then tucked it into a pouch.
“Only Oak remains,” Kai said, with a surprising amount of sorrow in her voice. “Although she is the strongest of them.”
Math walked his horse through the camp, caught between searching the bits and pieces for any recognizable signs of identity, and desperately hoping not to find any.
The closer to the center of the camp, the less identifiable those remains proved to be, but that left plenty of knights who had been killed by vines or branches or, even more uncomfortably, magic.
This was not a victory. Part of Math wanted to return to Bashan, just to scream at the damn commanders who had so callously thrown away two hundred of their finest.
He had no way of knowing if the two commanders ostensibly in charge of this attack had also died alongside their men. He hoped they rotted for a thousand years if they hadn’t.
Math couldn’t find any sign of Nuhzar. No sign that he could identify as belonging to his childhood nemesis.
“Math, I found him.”
Math shut his eyes in pain. Then he walked over to Kai.
She stood next to a tree of the mundane and nonanimating variety, looking at something near its base with obvious consternation while chewing on the edge of her thumb.
Math followed her sight line with his own and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Yes. She’d found Alik Nuhzar.
He’d survived the initial explosion, amazingly enough, proving that above all else, he was a tough bastard to the bitter end.
Unfortunately, while he had survived, most of one leg and everything from the knee down on both hadn’t.
No amount of first-circle Wood spells would stop the blood loss from two missing limbs.
He’d bled out while pulling himself away from the crater.
Math squatted down next to the body. “You son of a corpse,” he whispered. “I’ll never forgive you for this.”
He knew tears were running down his face and he didn’t care.
It would’ve been nice to have kept trading nick-of-time rescues back and forth, cussing each other out the entire time. Math had been rather looking forward to it. Maybe they would’ve even stopped pretending to despise each other, although Math hadn’t planned on holding his breath.
He would never know.
He felt the pressure of Kai’s hand on his shoulder pauldron. He touched the back of her hand gently, acknowledging the intention to comfort.
“I’m sorry, Math,” Kai said. “I’m sorry for all of this, but I’m most especially sorry that we cannot stay. It’s too dangerous—”
It was as though she’d finished a summoning incantation. They both raised their heads as a rapid-fire drumming sound—incredibly fast—grew louder by the second.
“That didn’t take long,” Math muttered. “Someone must have seen the smoke.” He stood up. “They can’t find you here.”
“You need to leave, too—”
“I will. Go!” He reached over and channeled power into the bracelet he knew she’d graved for invisibility.
She vanished. Math exhaled at one less distraction to worry about.
Given their location, he could either go into the woods, back out to the main road, or cross the river.
That seemed a simple choice. He magically shifted twice: the first time to the riverbank, and the second time to the other side.
He was sad to leave the horse behind, but he didn’t have a choice.
The horse was faster, but he was infinitely more maneuverable with his magic.
Math was pretty sure that he’d moved fast enough to clear the area before the travel spell on the reinforcements finished, which meant they were unlikely to have spotted him. Running would attract notice, but if he skipped to the right spot, he’d be hidden—
Electricity coursed through his body, excruciating and paralyzing. He fell to the rocky ground, convulsing.
Even through the suffocating pain, he was aware of being picked up by men in plate armor, and dragged back across the river.
Math was kept too weak to spellcast by using a very simple technique: any time he seemed too coherent, an Idallik Knight with a Storm resonance would shock him again. Wood’s weakness was Storm: it wasn’t hard to keep him too paralyzed to take action.
Even so, he was aware of certain things. The feel of the cold water on his legs as two knights dragged him across the shallow river. The noises made by the camp horses, who’d been too far away to be killed in the initial explosion, and evidently were of no particular interest to the Parnathi.
The feel of Commander Talu’s gauntleted fingers on his face as the older man examined him, and then efficiently pulled free the leather straps on his breastplate, leaving Math in nothing but his arming doublet.
The fact that Talu carried one of the Kaliri long arm weapons.
Talu stepped away from Math and raised his voice. “Kaiataris! I know you’re close enough to hear my voice! Show yourself.”
Nothing but the mocking sound of ravens who were waiting until everyone left to begin their feasting greeted that demand.
Talu shook his head in disappointment. He lowered the weapon from where he’d had it slung over his shoulder and walked until he was around twenty feet from Math and the two knights holding him.
When he spoke, it was at a volume that suggested he’d used magic to amplify his voice.
“I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of seeing one of these used, Lady Kaiataris.
I’ve only recently come into possession of this one myself.
It is a truly brutal weapon.” Talu set the stock against his shoulder.
“And if you don’t show yourself by the count of three, you’re going to see what I mean firsthand. ”
“One—” Talu aimed the weapon at Math.
“Two—” He lined up the sight.
“Stop!” Kai called out.
… then boom.
Math screamed. So did Kai.
He could never satisfactorily describe the pain, a sensation at once like being splashed in ice-cold water and dropped into a furnace. In an abstract, distant way, he knew that he’d fallen to his knees on the sharp rocks, and his knees were unlikely to be happy about that turn of events.
Math was reminded of his father’s forge and ugly stories someone had told him—maybe his father, maybe someone else—about old gods who demanded their sacred weapons be quenched in human blood. This felt like how he always imagined that would feel.
“Oh dear,” Talu said. “You seem to have cut that a little close, Lady Kaiataris. Unfortunate that there really is no good place to be injured by a weapon such as this, but I made sure to shoot him in the gut.” He tilted his head to examine Math’s back.
“Looks like it might have passed right through him. Even so, he’ll take a long time to die. ”
“Stop this!” Kaiataris yelled. “I’m surrendering. Heal him!”
“Of course,” Commander Talu promised agreeably. “Once you divest yourself of every single graven object you possess.”
“Don’t,” Math whispered.
Unfortunately, no one was paying any attention to him.
He heard jewelry clinking as it was dropped into a bag, and a familiar, no-longer-comforting voice say, “Thank you, Lady Kaiataris. That was very cooperative. Sivaiik, keep our brother from dying, if you’d be so kind, but don’t heal him enough to give him a chance to do something rash. ”
He felt hands on his stomach, after which everything faded away.