Three Coins for Confession (4 page)

Chriani snatched up the reins of the first horse he reached and
kept running. The animal showed no surprise as it lurched to speed alongside
him. Then he swung himself up to the saddle at a run, digging his heels in to
feel the horse spring forward from trot to gallop. Umeni was screaming
something behind him, but he didn’t bother to hear it. The forest loomed as a
wall of shifting green before him. He didn’t look back.

Chriani felt the anger flag even as the shadow fell once more,
the forest looming around him as he drove the horse through along the same
trail that had led them out of the Greatwood. Behind him a moment before,
there’d been the faint gold of grass and fields shimmering through the trees.
Now his eyes were adjusting to the gloom as he left the brightness of the sky
behind, saw the fainter brightness spread around him where the canopy of leaves
let its drizzle of faint sun through.

He had no idea what he was doing, no idea what he was searching
for. But in that complete lack of planning was an uneasy familiarity, Chriani
knowing it should have bothered him more than it did.

He played the fight back in his mind as he rode, tried to assess
and count off how many of the Ilvani had fallen. How many might be left. Eight
was the number he kept coming back to, so he held it hopefully in mind. He
thought about the risk of ambush, then discarded it. They had let first squad
go, that thought circling in his mind still, tugging at him.

He had no idea where the Ilvani had come from, how long they’d
been following Thelaur’s second squad. But Makaysa and her rangers had appeared
from the trees less than half a league from where Chriani and the others
spilled out from the forest wall. If the Ilvani had wanted ambush, if they
wanted blood for revenge or to pay for the escape of their chosen targets,
first squad would have presented them a perfect opportunity. Instead, the
survivors had vanished.

All he had to do was find them. Simple.

Chriani shook his head, heard all the voices of his youth calling
him a fool in his mind. Barien, Kathlan. Makaysa once, back when both were
tyros. He’d almost forgotten it. A shared watch in the armories one night, and
Chriani trying to impress her by showing off his skill with a thrown dagger
against one of the main chamber’s battered ceiling posts. Except he’d missed
and sent a stack of shields to a noisy tumble. The sergeant-at-arms heard him.
It hadn’t ended well.

In the few times their paths had crossed in the camp, Makaysa had
made no sign that she recognized or remembered him. Probably for the best.

Chriani let his horse slow as the trail took them back toward the
last point of the battle. There, through the gloom, he saw bodies. Two Ilmari
soldiers and their horses, scattered at a distance along the forest’s skein of
twisted paths. One Ilvani horse lay dead a short way off, but there was no sign
of any of the Valnirata warriors that had fallen. Those bodies would have been
dragged away from the battle site, Chriani knew, to be given whatever rites
were practiced in the Greatwood. The Valnirata didn’t return their dead to
their homes or families. Just hid them away in the darkness of the forest close
to where they fell, leaving them to nature but out of sight of enemies who
might desecrate them. Even if he’d had time to look for those Ilvani dead,
Chriani knew he’d never find them.

He dismounted to check the Ilmari fallen, though, saw their
weapons gone and bodies looted. Arrows had dropped them both. Teobryn and
Geran, Kathlan had said their names were. Chriani wouldn’t have known it
otherwise.

The horses had their saddlebags emptied, the Valnirata clearly
taking their time as they fell back. He found the signs of that retreat easily
enough, tracks marking where the light Ilvani steeds had circled before veering
off along a trail that opened up to the north, breaking northeast before it
vanished into shadow.

Within the field of hoofprints as they funneled off to a single
chaotic line, Chriani saw the familiar track. Three circles cut into the
half-moon. He was still staring at it when he heard the sound of horses rising
from behind him.

As before, he knew it wasn’t the Ilvani even before he caught
first sight of movement through the trees. He felt a shard of anger spike,
having counted on Umeni being too obstinate to follow him. The horse he’d
stolen had a standard-issue shortbow clipped to the saddle, light for his taste
but serviceable, and good enough that he could have sent warning shots behind
him. Chriani left it there as he swung on and spurred ahead, though. No point
in giving Umeni any more reason to shoot him in response.

Even as he slipped the horse at speed into the dark screen of the
trees, though, it was Makaysa’s voice he heard calling to him.

“Blue scout shown green. Blue to green.” North to east.
Announcing that she had seen him, was following his course. Then a louder call.
“Clearmoon’s full light. Chriani!”

Chriani reined to a stop. He lingered for a moment, heard the
others approaching at a trot. Not giving chase.

Clearmoon’s full light
was the call that all was well.
Clear and safe to approach. Its counter, designed specifically to be used by
rangers captured or cornered by the Valnirata, was
Clearmoon, dark night.
Not many of the Valnirata Ilvani spoke the Ilmari language in one of its
regional dialects, so that the rhyme of the two calls made it difficult for the
Ilvani ear to tell which was which. This allowed the hope that a captured
ranger could attempt to sound a warning if tortured into calling allies into
ambush.

Chriani swung the horse around, stiffly cantered forward from
deep shadow to the paler light of the open paths.

Makaysa was leading five of her rangers, nodding to Chriani as
she drew abreast of him. He wondered for a moment where the last rider of first
squad was, then realized stupidly that he was astride that rider’s horse. He
didn’t know the others by name, but if the dark looks they gave him were any
indication, they knew who he was.

“You shouldn’t ride off ahead like that,” Makaysa said. The
familiar smile played across her lips, her eyes bright in the shadows. “Someone
might think I hadn’t ordered you to join me on this sortie.”

Chriani felt a look of profound surprise twist across his face,
fought to quell it as he nodded. Makaysa was covering for him, but what her
reasons might be, he had no idea. Perhaps annoying Umeni was reward enough in
the complex game of ambition and power the ranger guards all played.

“Sorry,” was all he could think to say.

“Sorry what, soldier?” Makaysa had angled herself so that only
Chriani could see her smile widen.

“Sorry, lord.”

“Much better. Now enlighten me as to why I’ve called this
patrol.”

The mockery in her tone shouldn’t have bothered him, but Chriani
felt the faint burn of anger rising in his chest as he turned away. He gestured
to the dark side trail ahead. “The Ilvani looted the bodies, interred their
own, then rode north and east. Not time for a full rest, though. Riding as hard
as they were, they’re moving slowly to cool their horses. With fresh mounts,
we’ve got a chance to catch them. Lord.”

He added the honorific in reaction to Makaysa’s look. He saw
wariness in that look, but also the knowledge that her decision to follow
Chriani through to whatever he was seeking had been made even before she rode
into the forest behind him.

“If they’re retreating, they’re moving for the deep wood.”
Makaysa glanced up from the bottom of the well of green shadow. “We’re losing
the light as it is.” For the benefit of the other rangers, she added, “Loose
formation, ready to fall back. We follow Chriani.”

They rode fast to make the most of the fading sun, Chriani
already knowing that even he would need light by the time they made their way
back. The twilight of day in the Greatwood faded to an absolute darkness by
night, the great trees converging overhead to swallow the pale light of moons
and stars alike.

He’d seen that darkness only once so far, on the night patrol
that had responded to the burning of the shepherd’s root cellar. That was the
first time he’d seen the half-moon hoofprint, clear beneath the torchlight as
they’d followed the trail into the wood, just far enough to ensure the Ilvani
were gone. Away from that torchlight, the night-time forest had vanished even
before Chriani’s eyes. A vast emptiness outside the bright spread of firelight,
the wind shifting branches to wrap each rider in shadow.

With Chriani on point now, they followed the trail easily, the
Ilvani not bothering to hide their passage. Still, he spent as much time
focused on the side trails and open spaces as he did on the twisting main
track, watching for any sign of horses splitting off. He’d seen nothing so far,
though, the Ilvani seemingly unconcerned with being followed.

They rode in silence for the most part, the occasional slap of
hand to palm sounding out a warning that turned out to be mostly shadows. They
saw wolves twice, but only at a distance. These weren’t the great fell wolves
but their smaller cousins, cautious enough that even as a pack, they would
think twice about taking on horses and warriors in concert.

They were passing the second of those packs, Chriani watching
their bright eyes as the squad slipped by in silence, when the light changed.
He slowed his horse, held up a hand in warning.

It was an unfelt moment. A subtle shift like the start of a
change in the wind. They had ridden a little over a league, he judged. Behind
them was green shadow, the twilight of the Greatwood’s dusk still hanging.
Before them was a deeper gloom that only Chriani’s eyes could pierce. He saw no
threats, the trail continuing clear and unbroken ahead. Just the darkness.

Tales from the wars the Ilmari called the Ilvani Incursions
talked of the network of trails the Valnirata carved through the deep wood as
shifting day by day, twisting like something alive. A troop’s worth of tracks
would end suddenly in a wall of trees, no way to get beyond it. Open trails
would lead to ambush, or twist around to split a squad up and separate its
riders, leaving them lost and alone.

The rangers of Brandishear patrolled the frontier. They rode the
forest’s edge, watching the Ilvani shadow them with patrols of their own. On
rare occasions, they would slip within the edges of the forest for a day, or a
week. But not since the days of the Incursions a generation before had
Brandishear rangers driven in numbers into the deep wood — the heart
of the forest beyond the relatively open trees of the frontier.

A year and a half before, that had almost changed. An attempt on
the prince high’s life, talk of a Valnirata plot. It had all just been tales in
the end. Chriani had been there.

“We go in there, how do we come out?” It was the rider behind
Makaysa, whispering for her ear alone, but the silence of the forest seemed to
lift and raise his voice to a sharp hiss. Makaysa silenced him with a wave of
her hand, but her eyes held the same question for Chriani.

He made the signal for light, two of the others drawing torches
from side compartments on their saddlebags. These were special issue for the
rangers — alchemically treated by the Bastion’s mages to burn safe
and almost smokeless, and to light themselves when a sharp blow cracked them.
Chriani heard the snap, saw the pulse of firelight spread and shimmer within
the trees.

The other three rangers had bows drawn, the two holding the
torches drawing their swords. All looked wary. Chriani had a bow in hand, but
he shook his head at Makaysa as she pulled a torch of her own. He nudged his
horse closer to her.

“If they’re waiting,” he whispered, “the light will draw them in.
So we work that to our advantage. Send the others wide, the archers behind,
just out of the light. You and I on point. Stay behind me.”

“And how are you and I supposed to see?”

“I’ve got good eyes for the dark,” Chriani said carefully. It was
less than the truth but more than he liked to say. He looked away to avoid
Makaysa’s gaze. “You just need to stay close.”

Makaysa made the finger signals that gave the orders. No
hesitation, no argument, but still no trust for him that Chriani could feel.
Just an instinct for sticking with a course once committed to it. Not willing
to show her uncertainty to the others under her command.

They rode forward as three groups, Chriani leading. The distant
last light of day was a dark grey stain across the trail ahead, but it was
enough for him. The other rangers split off along side trails, pressed through
screens of brush to stay on Chriani’s course when the trails veered.

The trees around them were growing almost trunk-to-trunk in
places, their great boles arcing down to twisted roots that his horse stepped
over carefully. He glanced behind him to Makaysa each time it happened, warning
her with a wave but not sure whether she could see him. Her horse kept the
trail, though, her expression alert. She had a longsword in one hand and her
unlit torch in the other, ready for whatever might lie ahead as she crept
forward with Chriani through the shadows.

He remembered that same sense of readiness in Makaysa from her
time at the Bastion. A kind of expectation in her that whatever was to be
faced, she would face it and persevere. An attitude from the start that
leadership was just another challenge to be faced, and a thing she would claim
when it was time.

He saw that in Kathlan sometimes, though never from the innate
sense of superiority that Makaysa had too often shown as a tyro. And in the
time since he and Kathlan came to the frontier, Chriani had wondered more than
once what it was going to feel like serving under her some day. Kathlan knowing
what she was capable of, rising to that capability through the same
determination that let her face off against every other part of her life.
Chriani falling behind her, under the weight of insubordination and the anger
he would never shake.