Messages in Flame
A lton, Dale, and fifty soldiers rode along the wall in a fury, horse hooves thundering and the flames of torches streaming behind them.
Gryphons flew overhead as silent shadows against the night sky.
He worried about rushing off without talking to Marc, but Estral would check on him and see if she could draw out what had caused him to leave the tower so abruptly.
Fires burned high and bright at the breach when they rode in. They’d arrived in record time. Alton halted Night Hawk and took in the scene with dismay. The entire population of the encampment was out moving bodies and tending the injured. A phalanx of soldiers stood guard at the breach.
Corporal Manning trotted up to him. “Sir!”
“Corporal? Captain Rennard—”
“It’s sergeant now,” she grimly informed him. “The captain is fine. If you’ll come with me.”
Alton glanced at the sky. The gryphons swept about the area above the breach on patrol.
He and Dale dismounted their horses and handed off their reins to soldiers.
They had to step around corpses and body parts.
Dale turned icy beside him, looking ahead at nothing.
Was she reliving the battle with the dark Sleepers in which she lost her beloved?
“Dale,” he said, “are you—?”
“I knew many of these people. I worked with them while you were gone. Many of them were my friends.”
Yes, of course they would have been. She’d spent as much time at the wall as he, if not more, and had been in command while he recovered in Woodhaven. She would have been with them day in and day out.
“I’m sorry.”
She did not reply.
They found Rennard near the dining hall, speaking with officers and underlings, accepting reports and issuing orders.
“Captain,” Alton said. “I’ve brought fifty warriors with me, and the gryphons to patrol the sky.”
Rennard looked up. “Sergeant, see that Lord Alton’s people relieve ours at the breach.”
“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Manning pivoted and ran off.
“What happened?” Alton asked. “Was it the wraith?”
Rennard’s expression was haunted. He gave Dale a dismissive glance before fixing his gaze on Alton.
“You gave us the warning from the king,” he said. “I increased the guard, but it was not sufficient.”
“Clearly,” Dale said bitterly.
“Dale,” Alton said in warning.
“What would you have done?” Rennard demanded of her.
“I would have—”
“Silence,” Alton said. Rennard was in shock, he thought, and Dale bore untold, unexpressed grief and anger. “Captain, tell me exactly what happened.”
Rennard nodded and took a deep breath. “It came just after nightfall, the wraith. a shadow of a shadow. Its presence chilled the blood.” He visibly shuddered.
“It was like a corpse awakened from a long sleep, but mightier than any living warrior. When my soldiers attempted to stop it as it strode for the breach to cross into Blackveil, it slew them with its magicked sword. No arrows stopped it and no soldier could seem to land a blow against it. Thirty-three dead. No wounded, for any who engaged it died. It then crawled over the repair work in the breach like a spider and disappeared into the forest. The forest has been...roused since then. The king did not exaggerate the peril of the wraith. I am sorry. We could not stop it.”
“Captain Wallace would have,” Dale muttered.
Alton had never seen her so cold.
“I do not think even my esteemed predecessor could have stopped it,” Rennard said. “And I will remind the Rider she is crossing the lines of insubordination.” The last was stated with a hard edge.
“Do you think I care?” she demanded.
“Dale,” Alton said, “enough.”
“Not nearly enough.”
He took her by the elbow and guided her a few steps away. “I know this is hard for you, that everything has been difficult for you since Wallace’s passing, and you are taking it all out on Rennard.”
“I’m not—”
He gently shook her. “Listen to me. You helped me through a difficult time. Now it’s my turn to help you. But right now, I need Rider Littlepage, do you understand? Rider Littlepage who is a king’s messenger.”
She nodded. “But I don’t have to like him.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Rennard.
“No, you do not, and I won’t ask you to.
I will ask you to set your anger aside for now so we can deal with this situation.
Right now I need Rider Littlepage to ride back to the tower and connect with Trace so the king knows what has happened here. Can you do this for me?”
She held herself straight, chin lifted in pride. “Of course. Anything else?”
“Work with the watch sergeant to put extra guards on the tower in case anything comes through.” This last seemed to return the familiar spark to her eyes. “Go now. Not sure when I’ll return.”
She nodded and strode off.
Rennard joined him as he watched after her. “She does not like me very much.”
“I did not like you at first, either,” Alton replied. “She is very loyal to her friends and those she loves, and you should remember she has been here much longer than you.”
“Perhaps too long,” Rennard said.
“Captain,” Alton warned. He wondered, however, if there might be some truth in that.
He ordered one of his men to Tower of the Trees, second tower west of the breach after Tower of the Earth, to inform Rider Garth Bowen of what had happened so he and Mad Leaf—the tower’s resident mage—could then relay word to the western-most tower, Tower of the Sea, where Rider Ylaine Lottwyne was on duty with the great mage Radiscar.
Afterward, he took account of the dead. Thirty-three good souls lost to the wraith.
Some were youths who should have had many more years ahead of them.
The wraith, he understood, had also murdered many people when it invaded the castle on Feast of Vendane.
He’d been told that it had come looking for Karigan.
Always Karigan, he thought. Why was it always her?
He did not understand how she had evaded such a deadly foe as this wraith when so many others had perished at its hands.
Even her swordmaster abilities would not have been enough to stop it, and yet she survived, for which he was profoundly grateful, but he didn’t think he was getting the whole story.
He continued to meet with officers and menders, particularly eyewitnesses who told him the wraith’s blade glowed with an otherworldly gleam, and how it repelled arrows. The wraith had not spoken, nor shown any emotion they could see. It killed any who stood in its way, then crossed the breach.
While Alton made the rounds, the gryphons intercepted two antesheys and chased off a third. A cloud of restless anxiety pervaded the air. The screeches and cries of the beasts of Blackveil were more lively than usual while the despair in the encampment deepened.
He approached the wall where it met the repair work of the breach.
The rockwork in the breach was of ordinary inanimate granite.
He hadn’t the ability or desire to sacrifice the only magical beings he knew, his fellow Riders, or anyone else, to it so their souls could become guardians.
When he placed his palm against the actual wall next to the breach, he sensed the dismay and alarm of the guardians and, worse, the slow fading death of those where the cracks were the most severe.
In a concerted attack, not only would the ordinary stonework fail, but so would the surrounding wall, and if he couldn’t convince Marc to repair it and stop the spreading of cracks, even more would crumble.
He hummed to the guardians in hopes of reassuring them, of adding his strength to theirs, while trying to hide from them his burning anger.
“Where’s the ladder?” he asked a soldier when he was done.
“Sir?”
“The ladder. I am a messenger, and I want to send a message.”
The soldier tried to dissuade him, and when he refused the order to fetch the ladder, Alton found it himself. He ordered a different soldier to fetch him a bow, arrows, and rags dripped in fat. When these items were provided, he knotted the rags around the arrowheads.
Sergeant Manning hurried over when she caught wind of his plans. “Sir, I don’t advise climbing up there tonight. The forest is very active.”
“I know. But I am tired of these attacks. We sit here just waiting for the next. A response is required.” As useless as it will be, he thought.
“I’ll go up with you,” she said.
“No.”
“Then I’ll hold a torch for you.”
He nodded. “That would be welcome.”
He hesitated before climbing the ladder.
Memories came back of another time he had climbed atop the breach and was pushed off into the forest by an agent of Second Empire.
As he began to climb, the wound from which he’d so recently mended began to throb.
A flash of memory of the dark Sleeper thrusting its sword into him caused him to pause and gasp.
Breathe, he told himself. Breathe.
“Everything all right, my lord?” Manning asked.
“Fine, fine.” He hastened up the ladder, stepped upon the repair work. The creatures of the forest muted. The forest itself seemed to still as if it watched. Watched with thousands of pairs of eyes. He could see nothing but a sea of mist dimly lit by moonlight as it drifted among the treetops.
A gryphon alighted beside him and surprise nearly cost him his balance.
“Mhirr,” it said, and folded its wings.
“Oh, Bob,” Alton replied, “you gave me a fright.” His galloping heart started to slow to a fast trot.
Bob the bobcat gryphon who, if not as domesticated as Whiskers, stayed near the breach. He was a reassuring presence even if he made Alton’s nose itch. The other gryphons circled above.
“Are you ready, sir?” Manning asked.
“Yes.” He lowered the top of one of the arrows to the torch she carried. The flame caught on the fat-soaked rag with a satisfying whoosh.
Bob’s eyes glowed green in the light.
Alton faced the forest once more and nocked the burning arrow to his bow. “This is for Estral Andovian, the Golden Guardian,” he told the forest, “because those who worshipped you stole her voice and father from her.”
The hush of the forest deepened without even a soft slither or rustle to be heard.
It was dead quiet. The only sound was the twang of the bow string propelling the burning arrow through the sky.
A streak of light tailed its descent until it was swallowed by the mist. He had no illusions about the arrows doing any damage.
No matter how many fire arrows he sent, they would do no harm because Blackveil was too damp, too rotten, to burn.
It was, he knew, more about assuaging his own anger, and but a paltry gesture that would barely catch the attention of Mornhavon the Black.
He nocked another arrow spitting with oily flame. “This is for Dale Littlepage and Captain Wallace, and their sundered love. Your dark Sleepers murdered the captain.”
The arrow sailed over the treetops, and faded as it dipped into the vapor. This time there was a distant shriek of something it had hurt or killed.
Lucky shot, he thought.
Of the third arrow, he said, “This is for all those who have perished at the hands of your fell servants.”
It flared like a comet as it ripped into the mist.
He paused over the fourth arrow, then murmured, “This is for Karigan G’ladheon, whom you seek to torment. She will come for you, as will I, and we will have our vengeance. All the people of Sacoridia will stand against you.”
This arrow soared higher and brighter and farther than the others before it descended deep into the forest.
The forest erupted with bestial cries and the treetops shook and rattled. Alton stood defiantly atop the breach with moonlight etching his form against the night.
When finally he climbed back down to the ground, Rennard was there to greet him.
“That was foolish,” the captain said. “You made yourself a target and have stirred them up, and now we must brace ourselves for another attack.”
Alton had delivered his message that he no longer feared the forest, and that Sacoridia would stand against anything Mornhavon threw at them.
“Yes,” he said, “there will be more attacks. Let them come.”