Firebrand

Donal and Rye moved through the underbrush, and in their black uniforms, they vanished into the night. Only the rustling of branches minutes later announced the return of one of them.

“Donal says for you to come,” Rye said.

They followed him toward the light, which turned out to be a lantern sitting on a rock, its flame weak in the heaviness of the dark. Bodies of half a dozen Second Empire soldiers lay about on the ground.

“We’ve a mystery,” Donal said.

Zachary saw what he meant soon enough. The bodies lay unmarked by any violence, not a drop of blood on them, but their faces were contorted in some agony.

“There is more,” Donal said. He took the lantern and passed it over a hole in the ground. “It’s a Second Empire trap.”

The lantern light gleamed off the eyes and fangs of groundmites crumpled at the bottom of the hole, a deep pit. There was no evidence of obvious violence upon them, either, other than the fact that they had fallen into the pit. It was not deep enough to have killed them, just to contain them. In the tangle of limbs was one who looked more prominent than the others with finer furs and necklaces of teeth. On the whole, these ’mites looked better fed than one would expect after so long and hard a winter.

“A mystery, truly,” Zachary said, wondering if these were the same ones that had brought him to Grandmother, “but one we cannot solve right now, for we must go on.”

They left the lantern to mark the pit so others would not fall in it, and before they left, he noticed that much of the vegetation surrounding the bodies and pit appeared to be dead—no needles on the evergreens, the underbrush dry and brittle.

• • •

They caught up with the fighting and found, with dismay, the River Unit was being pushed back. Two soldiers rushed toward them with a wounded man between them. Zachary realized with a start that it was Treman, blood staining the front of his tunic.

“Stop, stop,” the captain told his soldiers. “Put me down.”

“Captain,” Zachary said, striding up to him as he was lowered to the ground.

“Sire . . . Met a stronger defense than expected. Our front rank . . . falling apart. Rennard, you must . . .” His head lolled to the side. Either he’d fallen unconscious, or was dead. Rennard blanched.

Zachary wasted no time. He grabbed Rennard’s shoulder. “Come, we must reverse the situation.”

Donal tried to convince him to stay back, but he did not listen. Rennard looked shaken, and he practically dragged the young man with him. Donal and Rye helped form a wedge, with Fiori falling in behind, to force their way through melees in an attempt to reach the front. Even with his eyes well-adjusted to the night, it was not easy to distinguish between friend and foe.

Metal rang against metal, there was the splash of blood, the cries of the wounded and dying, but as Zachary surged forward, he became singularly focused on reaching the front. His sword took on a life of its own, a scythe to reap a bloody harvest. The killing joy came upon him. There were no politics to restrain him, no betrayals to feed doubt. He harnessed all the unexpressed rage that had built up over the years, at the helplessness he’d felt during his captivity, and used it against the enemy.

Second Empire had little in the way of armor, and he threw himself against its warriors. They were too easy to kill, like bugs to be squashed. A thrust to the gut here, the razor’s edge hewing off a head there. He gloried in the spray of their life’s blood upon him.

His Weapons fought to keep up with him. He’d lost track of Rennard and Fiori, somewhere behind him, but felt the troops rallying around him, following his example, pressing back the enemy.

A spiked cudgel descended toward him and he sheared off the arm of the warrior who wielded it. He did not pause to provide the killing blow, but moved on to the next, and the next, stepping on and over bodies to reach the enemy. No longer a man governed by reason or empathy, he was a force of skill, strength, and bloodlust. If any steel touched him, he did not feel it. If anyone stepped in his path, he cut them down.

He soon broke into a clearing, his nostrils flared, and he searched vainly for another enemy to slay. The soldiers of the River Unit flooded in around him, and he raised his sword high above his head.

“Forward! Forward till the enemy falls!”

His words were greeted with a great shout from his soldiers, and they surged after him.

He paused when he felt a cold pinprick upon the heat of his cheek. And then another. He blinked and turned his face up toward the sky as snowflakes sifted between the limbs of trees, drifting this way and that as air currents carried them on their wayward course. For a brief moment, Zachary Hillander came back to himself, remembering how, as a small boy, he took joy at first snowfalls, at the games he would play, his cheeks ruddy and mittens soaked through from building armies of snow soldiers. It was a brief moment only, before he once more scented death on the air and the fury took him again.

BREAKING THE IIRE

The slaves were in place, about fifty of them chained together in the chamber they had worked so hard to dig out. It would most likely become their tomb. Leg irons were bolted to the floor so they could not escape. They were dirty, hunched and beaten. One or two coughed, someone sobbed, most looked resigned, and there was the one who looked fierce. Beneath the dirt caked on her face and the tangle of hair that hung over it, Grandmother recognized her, the agitator, the one who would have no kings. No emperors, either. Lorilie Dorran.

“Are you going to slaughter us now that you’re done with us?” Lorilie demanded.