The Dreaming Hunt (15 page)

The tenor of the shouting changed pitch, and new urgency entered the distant roars. Faint sounds of metal clanging became audible, and Lenora ordered her healers to fan out. They approached Slaver's Square on the northwestern edge of the city, and the broad boulevard they jogged along opened onto an impromptu battlefield.

It was fully as bad as Raina remembered. She winced as Hrothgar ordered a contingent of healers to stay behind while the rest continued on with him, and she glared at Lenora as the high matriarch directed her to retreat from the square.

It felt strange to run away from wounded and dying men like this. In fact, it felt
wrong
. She moved up beside Lenora. “I think I should go back there and help those people.”

“Other healers were left to help them. You are needed elsewhere.”

Raina frowned. “Why does it matter where I heal? I'm White Heart. I'm supposed to heal them all.”

“Even you have limits. You will be applied strategically to the battle.”

“By whom?”

“By Justinius, if I don't miss my guess. He and his men came into the city earlier today. They spent the afternoon discussing with the governess and Krugar how to best defend the city from just such an attack and redeploying the Haelan legion along the city walls. The timing could not have been better.”

Had the governess listened to Aurelius, then? And just in the nick of time? She fervently hoped so. Perhaps they had a fighting chance of surviving this night, after all.

*   *   *

Will was surprised when Aurelius and the contingent of Celestial Order of the Dragon guardians veered away from the sounds of combat in Entertainer's Square ahead of them. Was he to be spared the terrible dilemma of what to do, after all?

“Where do we go?” Will panted.

“Governor's palace, according to the new defense plan the governess, Krugar, and Lord Justinius drew up this afternoon,” Bruin answered tersely.

This afternoon? That was convenient.

The Mage's Guild was to guard the governor's palace. He supposed that made sense. The orcs would look for the strongest, most capable warriors, with the most status, to slaughter. Those spirits would be fed to the shards of Lord Bloodroot shaped into weapons that the Boki carried. Where else to find the greatest warriors than at the home of the war leader of the entire colony?

Their party arrived at Anton's palace—Will wondered if it would always be known for the man who'd built it instead of the person who occupied it—and the great portcullis was lowered, the iron-clad wood gates behind it tightly sealed. Their party was let in through a one-man postern gate after a tense delay while the locks and bars on the other side were undone for them.

The Mage's Guild party stepped into a courtyard filled with mustering soldiers. It sounded like a giant hive of buzzing bees.

“Come,” Aurelius ordered.

Will followed his grandfather across the bailey toward a tall tower. A soldier opened the door at its base for them, and Aurelius hurried up the stone spiral staircase inside. From here, the city looked peaceful. Quiet, even.

“Report,” Aurelius snapped at the nearest man-at-arms.

“Three-pronged invasion from the north, northwest, and west. Columns are maybe three hundred strong each of Boki warriors, assorted goblins, hobgoblins, ogres, and other greenskins. Our advance scouts report maybe a hundred Boki overall in each column, and there are several Boki mages in each column.”

“Thorns,” Will muttered.

“What?” the guard asked, surprised.

“The Boki call their battle mages thorns. It's a title. Zars are their raiders. Thanes are their equivalent of knights. Kis are their leaders. Like landsgraves.”

“Boki knights,” the soldier snorted in humor. “That's a good one.”

Will cast a grim glance at Aurelius, who shook his head fractionally in warning to hold his tongue. He obeyed but with a sardonic twist to his mouth. If that was all the better the fellow thought of the Boki, yon soldier was in for a rude surprise before the night was out.

Still. He was confused. Why had only a few hundred Boki come to wreak vengeance on Dupree? He knew as well as anybody just how many Boki there really were hidden away in the Forest of Thorns and just how formidable a fighting force they were.

The soldier listed off a half dozen units that had been sent to the Slaver's, Entertainer's, and Miner's Guild Squares to act as mustering points for any civilians who could come out to join them. Will wondered at how many able-bodied men and women would hide in their homes and refuse to fight for the Empire. There was no love lost for Anton Constantine in most quarters, and for sixteen years he had been the face and voice of the Empire in Dupree.

Aurelius sighed. “Syreena's too newly come to know who to call upon to rouse the locals to fight. If only Hyland—” He broke off the thought without finishing it.

Will agreed. Hyland would have been able to draw every able-bodied fighter in the city to defend Dupree. But as it was, the new governess would have to make do with Anton's ragtag legion, recently gutted from bottom to top by the defection of Anton's flunkies and followers.

Of course, a bevy of hotheaded lads who merely wished to crack a few green skulls for fun would turn out for tonight's battle. But they would be no match for battle-hardened Boki.

Will commented low to Aurelius, “Maybe there are enough citizens who remember the last Boki insurrection and will fight for their lives before it is too late.”

“Maybe,” the elf replied doubtfully. “Human memories are notoriously short.”

Will winced. Aurelius was right. Already, the Night of Green Fires was mostly an excuse to feast and drink. He'd been but an infant himself the last time the Boki had come to call on Dupree.

Pain began to build in his head, becoming a white-hot ball of agony in the center of his skull, radiating shards of torment outward to encompass his entire being. If it did not abate soon, he would go mad.
Curses, Bloodroot. If this is you, cease and desist. You're killing me
.

*   *   *

Raina nearly plowed into Hrothgar's back as he screeched to a halt in Miner's Guild Square. The barbarian spoke over his shoulder. “Our scouts believe the leaders of the attack are here. If we can hold off this column of Boki, the others may lose focus. Be diverted and ultimately defeated.”

Boki diverted? Raina highly doubted that would happen, but she kept the observation to herself. She followed the high matriarch up the steps of the Miner's Guild to gain a better vantage point on the battle before them.

The noise was unbelievable, the wails and screams of the wounded unbearable to her. But something else came to Raina's ears in the din that made her stop and look around frantically. It was the whispers again. They were urgent, trying to communicate something just beyond her understanding.
But what?
She strained to hear them, to make out their warning, but it eluded her.

“Fall back!” someone bellowed from the middle of the square. The jumble of soldiers and townspeople fighting desperately in front of her stumbled backward toward her position.

“Retreat, Heart!” Hrothgar shouted as the combat threatened to swallow them.

Wounded and dead bodies were strewn across the square. Rather than retreat, Raina pushed forward, calling magic to her hands.

“Not yet!” Hrothgar yelled, grabbing her tabard and yanking her back. “Come with me!”

“But—”

“Go with him, child!” Lenora called. “In battle, the White Heart follows the Royal Order of the Sun's orders.”

Raina scowled. Neither the Heart nor the Royal Order of the Sun commanded the White Heart to break its vow in any circumstances, according to Brother Balthazar and Leland. But new as she was to the colors, she hesitated to disobey.

Unhappy, she fell back with the other healers. She did manage to heal a few minor wounds here and there around her, and she was relieved to see that several healers had lagged behind enough for the Imperial lines to catch up with them and get healing. She watched in admiration as three combat healers threw magic rapidly at the worst of the injured, casting on the fly as they ran.

A high-pitched child's giggle trilled in her ears, and Raina looked around wildly. No child should be abroad in this chaos. He or she would be slaughtered! She strained to hear the child again, and the whispers surged forward, filling her ears.
Go away, curse you! I have to find that child!
But the harder she concentrated on hearing the child again, the more her ears filled with maddening, wordless cacophony.

Hrothgar grabbed her arm and bodily dragged her from the square, ignoring her frantic protests that a child was nearby and in danger. He snapped something about her being the child in danger and left her no choice but to stumble along beside him.

It dawned on her that he was manipulating whom she had physical access to. He was making sure that all her healing went to the colonial forces and none of it to the greenskin attackers. This must have been the strategic management of the White Heart Lenora had spoken of earlier. Outraged, she started to tell him she was wise to his tactic, but the entire Heart contingent took off running full out just then, and she had no choice but to follow along.

They burst into governor's square, and Raina couldn't help but screech to a halt in dismay. On one side of the square, a crowd of soldiers and townspeople clustered. They looked jittery, yelling catcalls and insults across the square. On the other side of the open square, a restless mob of Boki and assorted nonhumans stomped and grunted, yelling back their own insults and invective.

The whispers were louder than ever here, and she actually clapped her hands over her ears to block them out. The noise grated like sandpaper against her eardrums, and no amount of ignoring it made the voices go away. She was losing her mind. They would drive her mad if they did not quiet. Desperate to distract herself, she stared at the battleground before her and focused intently on how the forces were laid out. If healing on battlefields was to be her future, it behooved her to understand how lines formed and moved and how commanders deployed their troops.

It looked as though the governess had elected to concentrate all her forces on a single, great confrontation with the Boki. One fight for all the gold. It was a dangerous strategy. Although she supposed the alternative, letting the Boki hack away at the remains of the Haelan legion bit by skirmishing bit, wasn't any better a choice.

“We must make our way around the square to the Imperial Army lines. Be quick now!” Hrothgar ordered.

Raina hesitated. From here, she would have a clear path straight to the front lines when the two forces closed on one another. That would be where the worst of the casualties would happen. Her healing would be of most use there.

Lenora spoke sternly to her. “Do not mistake the neutrality of the White Heart for aiding the enemy.”

“Exactly who is the enemy here?” she retorted. “We invaded their lands and slaughtered their people. This is retribution. While I do not condone that, either, the Boki are the aggrieved party.”

The high matriarch spoke low and urgent. “Now is not the time or place to debate politics. You are Heart. The Heart serves the Empire. To do otherwise would be disastrous, not only for every member of our order but for common people everywhere. They need us. And to serve them, we must stay clear of the Empire's wrath.”

She might not like it, but she could not fault Lenora's logic. Exhaling hard, she followed the Heart party around the square. With a heavy heart, she allowed herself to be herded behind the lines and managed.

Hrothgar and the others would make sure to put so many of their own wounded in front of her that she would never reach the Boki wounded. Or she would be so depleted of mana—the magical energy to fuel her spells—that, by the time she got there, she would not be able to heal more than a handful of the enemy.

She only hoped the White Heart emissary to the Boki, Balthazar, was somewhere behind that seething mass of Boki warriors. He would even the scales at least a little.

*   *   *

“We must go,” Aurelius murmured to Will. “Syreena's troops will need every bit of help they can get.”

That was no jest. To Will's eyes, watering from the pain in his skull, this battle looked to be a disaster in the making. The colonial forces didn't stand a chance against a Boki force of the size converging in the great square before them. Not to mention, the invaders looked and sounded
pissed
.

Flashes of memory of the night his parents were killed and his village torched intermingled with images of Boki dying in droves, their bodies lying in literal piles before the secret cave entrance that led to the Sleeping King. Rage and terror pounded through him, and he felt himself coming unhinged. He could not do this. He
must
do this.
Kill. Show mercy. Run. Fight
. His mind whirled crazily, the whole world atilt around him.

As if Aurelius read his mind, the elf muttered, “Do not overthink it, boy. Live or die. Kill or be killed. Once you enter combat, do not hesitate, do not question. Just fight to win.”

Ty used to say the same thing in almost the exact same words. The advice resonated within him, settling the encroaching madness. He supposed, at the end of the day, it was not a bad thing to respect, or even like, a foe on the battlefield. It lent a certain honor to the exercise of beating each other's brains out.

He breathed deeply and attempted to empty his mind completely. If only he understood his symbiosis with Bloodroot more fully, mayhap he could exert more control over these increasingly frequent episodes of internal conflict—

Now was not the moment to think on that.

No thought. Just action. Fight. Win. Live.

Aurelius arrayed his mages in the second rank of troops where they would be close enough to the front to cast magic at their foes but not within weapon range of the Boki. Will also noted that the Celestial Order guardians and knights stayed close enough to collapse back around Aurelius and defend their guildmaster at a moment's notice.