Three Coins for Confession (2 page)

“Find yourself a new path,” Barien had told him more than once.
“Or you end up walking behind the same people your whole life, whether you see
them or not.”

Over five months of riding the frontier, Chriani had tried not to
think of the path that brought him there. The path he had finally chosen,
setting out on a cold morning from Rheran, seemingly a lifetime ago. He turned
his mind away from that short spread of days that had transformed his life,
like a season of storms had scoured his world and left it remade. Transformed.

Only one other person knew the truth of what had happened to
Chriani. The truth of the path that had changed him, and that truth would stay
safe with her.

No.

The thought came sharply to his mind as it always did. Not a
thing he’d forgotten, but one he had tried to forget. A reminder that in fact,
two other people knew the truth. And in that thought were all his reasons for
wanting to forget.

He set his horse to the left of a rotting nurse stump sprouting a
half-dozen new trees, Chriani not liking the snarled look of the underbrush to
the other side of it. As he did, a familiar itch rose at the forefinger of his
right hand where it gripped the reins. Another memory that wasn’t memory, the sensation
came and went. A reminder in touch and feeling that Chriani had lost that
finger once. Had watched as it was hacked off cleanly by an Ilvani exile, left
to rot on the forest floor.

The animys of restoration had grown it back for him at the end of
his path of change, courtesy of the Prince High Chanist’s own healers. He had
refused them at first when they came to him, intent on owning the injury for
life as a reminder of what he’d been through. They explained it wasn’t an
offer, but an order from the prince high himself. Payment for services to the
crown.

All of it seemed so long ago now. An itch in mind, like the itch
of his once-missing finger. A memory someone else had passed to him, not
something from his own life. A secret he would keep as he kept the secret of
his sight, his hearing. His father.

Another thing he might be killed for if the truth were ever
known.

In the back rank, he was less important as point watcher, his
keen eyes no use where the trails ahead were obscured by a screen of trunks and
low-hanging branches and the constant fall of evergreen leaves. Ambush from
behind was always a risk, but he trusted his hearing to warn him of any
approach or bowshot, even as he focused his sight on the ground at his horse’s
feet.

Something about the trail tugged at his mind, harrying at his
senses without revealing itself. Something wrong, like he’d tried to tell
Thelaur, but he still had no idea what it was. He hung low across his horse’s
neck to scan the dirt and moss of the track, half-thinking about dropping down
to his feet for an even closer look, but not wanting to risk the sergeant’s
wrath.

All at once, he made a fast halt, hauling straight back on the
reins to bring his horse to a stop. As he stepped it backward three paces,
Chriani chopped his hand to his palm three times, loud. The two other back-rank
riders skidded to a stop and wheeled back toward him, even as they echoed the
signal for the riders ahead. To a casual listener, the steady staccato beat
would sound like the fast thump of wings. A grouse sailing clear of some
obstacle before touching down again. It was the signal for
fall back,
imminent danger.
Every bow was ready and nocked, every eye to the trees,
horses guided by knees and instinct as they circled in close.

Thelaur split the line, a smallsword in each hand as she stopped
beside Chriani. He was already on the ground, close up and peering at the sign
that had stopped him.

“Explain,” she hissed.

“There,” Chriani said, though in truth, it was a moment before
even he saw it. From the mad jumble of markings and impressions that movement
and nature laid down on the trail, his senses had caught it even before his
mind could make sense of it. The edge of a single hoof print, a horse unshod.
Regular notches in the leading edge of the toe callus. An impression created,
like three circles cut into a half-moon. “We need to move. Fall back to…”

“Explain,” Thelaur said again, louder this time. Her voice was
ice.

“Ilvani horse track,” Chriani whispered. He marked off one print
beneath circled fingers, shifted back to mark off another. A long pace apart,
the horse moving quickly. The Ilvani rode their horses unshod, trusting to the
strength of callus built up on the soft forest trails, and to varnishes with
which they painted their steeds’ hooves. It was hard as iron and long lasting,
but no Ilmari alchemist had yet been able to recreate it.

“I’ve seen this horse before,” he said. “More than once.” It had
been three times, in fact, the memory coming back to him. “The farmstead
patrols. Twice, a week past. Then the first time a week before that, the
half-blood shepherd with his root cellar burned and his flock and best dogs
shot. Each time we followed the raiders’ trail, I’ve seen this mark, lord.”

Chriani used the honorific of rank rarely heard in the presence
of anyone below captain outside the Bastion. He knew in advance how little it
would do to improve Thelaur’s mood.

The iron-hard hooves of the Ilvani horses left marks as distinct
as any boot print, but Chriani was certain he was one of the few in the troop
who ever bothered to read them. The softer dirt of the open fields where the
raiders ventured forth from the forest by night held the tracks best. Here
within the forest, across its tangled floor of leaf mold and loam, dark earth
torn through and pounded down by the horses’ passage, only the barest hint of
the prints could be read. Not enough to note the faint but distinct details
worn into the tread of each Ilvani steed. Not except this one.

“So as we pursue those raiders,” Thelaur hissed, “you’re somehow
surprised to find them ahead of us?”

“Not ahead of us, lord. Beside.” Chriani pointed in the two
directions along the axis of both tracks, then marked out the edge of the
nearest beneath his hand again, hoping against hope that Thelaur would actually
see it. Shadow on shadow, a faint impression in the dark. But it was there, he
was sure of it. “This one, cutting across our path northward, even as we move
east. They’ve slipped off the trail to wait for us while we follow first
squad.”

If Sergeant Thelaur’s look could kill, Chriani understood that he
would have been dead, burned, and spread as ash months before. He ignored that
look this time as he had all the rest.

“They’re setting an ambush, sergeant. We need to fall back.”

Thelaur spit in response. Chriani felt and saw a surge of
impatience shift through the other riders as they edged away.

“Your shadow chasing and your thoughts of yourself as a tracker
try my tolerance,” the sergeant murmured. “You’ve cost us time and light.” She
called out to the others, voice louder than was safe. An edge of anger in her
that Chriani knew was all for him. “East, three and three, before third squad
rides over us.”

She spurred her horse forward as Chriani angrily swung himself up
to the saddle. As the sergeant pressed on ahead of him, an ash-grey Ilvani
arrow took her through the chest.

It happened slowly, as it always did.

The hiss of the arrow and the scattering of leaves were loud in
Chriani’s mind. The warning he shouted sounded out through the shimmering green
shadow of the wood — “Black scout marked! Black scout!” An immobile
ambush. Rangers down. A call for anyone within earshot to fall in, come to the
rescue. But his voice was lost to his own ears as he tracked the flight of
arrows erupting from the shadows to all sides.

He saw and heard eight archers, then stopped counting. He felt
the panic rising from all sides as horses and riders scrambled to get clear,
saw the confusion as the other rangers circled. All new-made guards like him,
younger by two years or more. Panicking now as their sergeant clutched feebly
at the gout of blood that fountained out around the dark shaft, the serrated
hunting head still clinging to fragments of flesh and leather where it had
punched out her back.

Thelaur’s horse took the brunt of a second volley as it screamed
and reared. Chriani had to fight to twist his own horse around, grabbing
Thelaur as she slipped from the saddle. The muscles of his shoulder and back
screamed in protest as he twisted to pull her across him, felt his horse balk
as he turned it hard.

The light of life was already gone from the sergeant’s eyes, the
blood soaking her cloak and armor spilling warm across Chriani’s arm. He hung
onto her all the same as he let his senses loose, felt as much as heard the
hiss of horses moving within the leaves. Almost surrounded, but he saw the one
opening still left to them, marked the sliver of path it held.

“Ride!” he shouted. “On me!” Then with a kick, his horse was off,
the others following close behind.

The sun was well past high, the great roof of limni overhead
eating the daylight hungrily and showering the forest floor with faint stains
of green and gold. Dusk was on its way, the gathering gloom of the forest’s
early night already pursuing them from the east as they rode.

“Gold scout marked!” someone behind him was shouting, setting
their westward trajectory back toward the forest wall. The voice was punctuated
by intermittent arrows flashing past them, Chriani marking their trajectory as
he shifted the squad’s course, trusting his horse to hold the trail. A single
glance back showed him the Ilvani, riding bareback at speed. Their armor was
green leather when they wore it, but many of the Valnirata rode only in light
cloaks of mottled green and grey, their clan war-marks set across them in
twisting lines of black. Their fleet horses were painted patchwork with mud,
letting mount and riders all but fade away unseen within the shadows.

He needed to make sure the rest of the squad stayed close, even
as he had no idea what he would do if one of them fell. He was desperate to
retrace the route they had followed into the forest, knowing the disaster that
would come of hitting one of the Ilvani’s dead ends at speed. He was even more
desperate to reach for the horse bow at his hip, but it was taking both hands
and all his strength to hold Thelaur fast across the saddle. She hung head down
and limp, the blood that dripped from her caught on the clutching wall of
leaves and branches as it whipped past.

“Red scout stands!” came a familiar voice from the trees ahead.
Rangers holding, countersigning Chriani and the other riders’ approach. Too
close.

Something twisted in his stomach as he shouted, “Break right!”
Not one of the rangers’ codes, but just a desperate warning. He hauled his
horse hard to the side, felt it scramble off the path just in time.

Thelaur had been right. Third squad had almost ridden them down
in the time it had taken Chriani to fail in explaining the tracks he’d seen.
They were scattered across three sections of trailhead, ranked around a broad
grove of new limni growing within a hollow marked out by the crumbling stumps
of three once-great trees. Six riders led by Umeni, ranking guard of the troop
under Thelaur.

One of those six riders was Kathlan, sitting her horse at Umeni’s
right hand. It was her voice Chriani had heard. He was afraid suddenly, felt a
chill trace up his spine. He was aware of his breathing, the pounding of his
heart as Kathlan expertly slipped the chestnut mare she rode back and away, giving
him and the others room as they slewed their foam-flecked horses to both sides.

“Ilvani!” he shouted, to Kathlan and Umeni and all the rest.
“Through the grove! Shoot from cover!”

The rangers at his back continued on their course with a sureness
that surprised him, Kathlan following suit as she turned her horse and spurred
ahead. But the attention of Umeni and his other riders was focused entirely on
Thelaur slumped across Chriani’s horse. Her sergeant’s insignia was barely
visible in the gloom.

“Report…” Umeni said as he tried to get his horse in front of
Chriani’s. He was Thelaur’s second, had control of the troop by right in her
absence.

“Move!” Chriani struck Thelaur’s horse on the flank, driving it
forward as he rode past.

They had bows drawn and arrows nocked, horses twisting between
the tight screen of the trees as the Ilvani shifted behind and around them. The
hiss of arrows was a moment’s warning, the haze of dark shafts arcing toward
them from three directions. Even to Ilvani eyes, though, the screen of trees
was a wall that those shafts were shattered and split off against as fast as
they were fired. As they always did, the Valnirata warriors fought in an
unsettling silence. No battle cries, no orders called out. No sound from the
dying.

A warning shout against spell-fire came from somewhere to
Chriani’s right. Spellcasting was second nature to the Ilvani, but the
war-mages of the prince’s guard were few and far between. He saw knives of
white light flash within the trees, heard the cries of rangers and horses as
they were struck but ran on.

Kathlan was racing hard and close beside him. She was the best
rider in the troop, and showed it by the way she twisted her horse through
brush and undergrowth. She might be the best rider of all Chanist’s rangers one
day. But even so, Chriani had to fight the urge to vault toward her, hold
himself in front of her as if that would make any difference to the peril
riding hard on their heels.

“Folk get strangely stupid,” Barien had told him once.
“Protecting what they love.”

Even held to his own saddle, Chriani was conscious of trying to
cover Kathlan as he swiveled toward the targets he still couldn’t shoot at.
Those were unfortunately plentiful, his eyes pulling detail from the shadow,
counting fifteen Ilvani in a wide formation. He had seen four of them hit so
far, the rangers catching them through breaks in the trees, when something
changed.