Wartorn: Resurrection (27 page)

HER FINGERS DRUMMED the pommel of her combat sword, which she had refused to swap for an inferior Felk-issued one. She also didn't think much of their uniforms. She'd retained her bracers and the leather armor that protected her upper body. Such minor variations in gear were common to soldiers in any military, however, and shouldn't draw undue notice.

They had infiltrated the vast Felk encampment by means of magic that Radstac hadn't known existed a lune ago.

Deo wore his borrowed Felk garb with perfect naturalness, the crossbow he'd commandeered from one of the scouts slung casually at his side. He was a dead shot with one, he claimed. Whatever else, he was no braggart.

Radstac knew who he intended to kill with the weapon. Finding that individual in this sea of personnel and equipment might well undo those intentions.

They were walking away from the place where the second mage had opened the corresponding portal, Linking her and Deo's bizarre journey from that small scout camp. Radstac had stayed focused

during that jaunt, narrowing her honed,
mansid-
stimulated senses so that she concerned herself only with the forward step she took and the one which was to follow. Ignore the white chaos all around. Go forward. Step-by-step. Pay no heed to those unsettling sounds in the depthless distance. Reach the far end. It was a simple matter.

Those brief moments had, nonetheless, constituted one of the most disturbing experiences of her life. But her stride and face now gave no signs.

She was listening, waiting for the alarm to be raised behind them. She suspected that Deo, by her side, was doing the same. Those two wizards in the scouting party had arranged for this transport. The one that communicated over distances—the female of the two—had coordinated the opening of the portals with her counterpart here at this camp. Then the wizard who worked the actual portal magic—the male—conjured a ...
breach,
which Radstac and Deo had entered. To emerge here, which evidently was quite some distance from where they'd started. Yet they had walked no more than ten steps. Amazing.

Radstac didn't know, however, if that Far Speak wizard had passed a warning along as well. She might have, even with the sword edge that the bandit chief Anzal had helpfully held to her throat while she performed the communicating magic. Who knew what these Felk magicians were capable of? They were quite unlike the cloistered healers that existed on the Southern Continent.

That bandit gang had at last received their payment for services rendered. Or at least the promissory note that could be redeemed in Petgrad. Deo had put his signature to the document. The bandits were doubtlessly pleased that they hadn't had to personally deliver Deo to the Felk after all. This shortcut had facilitated things.

But it did bring up another point, Radstac mused. What was
she
still doing here?

They heard no alarm. Around them the camp buzzed and bustled, apparently in readiness to move out. It was a staggering number of troops, filling this shallow valley, a larger army than any Radstac had ever seen. She had already known that this war was not a typically petty Isthmus conflict, but seeing the evidence spread so impressively about drove the fact home.

How, she wondered, was all this going to end? Deo's uncle had hopes of raising an army to meet this one ... but it might well be too late for such measures.
Look
at these numbers. And these Felk had magic—remarkably sophisticated magic—on their side.

If they did indeed capture the entire Isthmus, would they be content with that? Something cold rippled through Radstac's innards at the thought. It was a possibility she had not considered before. But it was an eventuality that her cold-blooded mercenary's mind had to acknowledge.

What if the Felk, having conquered this land, decided to invade the Southsoil?

She stayed alert, as she and Deo picked their way along. No one accosted them, which was fortunate.

They had left the Felk scouts in the hands of those bandits. Deo hadn't given any last orders about their disposition, which likely meant that Anzal's band had simply done the sensible thing and dispatched the whole group. Radstac couldn't imagine what else they would do.

And why exactly wasn't
she
doing the smart thing? Accompanying Deo on this final leg of his self-appointed objective to assassinate the commander of this huge army was not a wise decision on her part. Then again, it wasn't her decision. Not really. She was still in Deo's employ ... although she suspected that if she asked to be released, he would grant the request. But she couldn't bring herself to go.

Do the smart thing first. Next, the most economical, the safest, the most self-fulfilling, and the thing that will most confuse your enemies. When all that is done, do the stupid thing.

Evidently Radstac had reached this last point in her personal itinerary of behavior.

Deo's elbow nudged her leather-padded ribs.

"The high ground," he said softly.

She nodded.

He was really going to try it. Find a vantage, find his target. Put a crossbow bolt into the war commander who had led this army to capture half of the Isthmus. Radstac imagined she knew what would immediately follow that assassination—or its attempt. The Felk would seize them, and their deaths

would likely be appropriately grandiose, if they were taken alive. Radstac assured herself that this last wouldn't come to pass. Nor would she let Deo be captured.

They climbed the mild grade. There were still a few tents erected on the ridge.

She wondered why this army had halted. This wasn't a mere rest period; they had bivouacked. She wondered further if they were indeed headed for Trael. Too late in that case for the diplomatic errand Cultat had sent Deo on— and which Deo had abandoned. That alliance the premier had in mind would have to do without Trael. Once the Felk reached the city, its fate would be sealed.

A sergeant, standing on the ridge, frowned their way.

Radstac's hand was still on her sword's pommel. With a pivot of her hips and a fast smooth draw, she could decapitate the sergeant before he uttered a sound. What she would do after that, however, was unclear.

Deo saluted. His manner remained easy. They kept moving. Radstac felt the sergeant's gaze on her facial scars. She stared back with colorless eyes, until he shrugged and turned away.

Deo let out a breath. "I think soldiers are supposed to salute their superiors," he said quietly.

"I'm not a soldier. I'm a mercenary."

They moved along the ridge. Deo was scanning the camp below, blue eyes picking through the tangle. Radstac considered the odds of spotting this army's leader, a lone individual who might not even be wearing identifying insignias, who might not be out in the open, who might not—

Deo stopped. Radstac tried to follow where he was now peering so intently.

"I see officers, a number of them, gathering ... there." He pointed furtively with his chin.

Radstac gazed, eyes narrowed. It was hopeless, just a jumble of troops and horses and wagons and gear. Deo must have keen eyesight, indeed. Then she did see. Distant bodies in the uniforms of officers. They were converging on a tent. She focused there. She saw.

"He's the one," Deo said, voice low and hard, eyes suddenly filled with wonder. He had never expected to get this far, Radstac reminded herself.

She could see the figure, standing out in front of the tent. Emblems of rank on his uniform, his very stance commanding. Someone at his side. Female. Stout. The site was some distance off. It would be quite a shot, if Deo could manage it.

His arm was rising. Radstac caught it, held it. She felt how tensely he gripped the crossbow.

"What," she gritted, "you're just going to shoot from here, right out in the open?"

Deo blinked back at her.

Don't do this.
She nearly said it aloud, though it wasn't her place.

'Take some cover at least," she said instead.

A tent was nearby, its flap open and stirring in the breeze that was picking up. Deo nodded, slipped inside. She followed.

There were a few crates inside, a cot, nothing more. Deo crouched behind one of the crates, cranking the crossbow vigorously, the string tightening, tightening, quivering with the desire to let fly the bolt that he laid in the firing groove. Radstac had never been good with projectile weapons. She liked her blades, liked her hooks. Liked the immediacy that went with them. But those who could handle bows were impressive in their own rights. She hadn't forgotten the notch that bandit archer had taken out of her left ear.

Deo rested on one knee, planting elbows firmly on the top of the crate. He put his eye to the weapon's sights.

Gods,
Radstac thought. He was really going to do it. Up until now this entire episode had somehow remained unreal, like the swirly narrative of even the most vivid dream. Surely something would cause Deo to forsake this ill-ad-vised venture. Surely they would turn back while they still could.

She stepped aside, away from the open flap. The ebbing sunlight was at their backs. The tent's interior was in shadow. This was, she admitted, a good vantage point. It offered a clear shot at the target, though that shot was going to have to be uncannily accurate.

Deo's lips were working silently as he steadied and aimed. Concentrating. Droplets of sweat stood out quite suddenly on his forehead. His shoulders were bunched. Crow's-feet etched around his squinting eye.

Radstac quietly drew her sword. The next moments promised to be lively ones.

She saw Deo's finger squeeze the instrument's trigger. There was still enough
mansid
in her that she could actually see the bolt as it launched. The flanges of feathers— purple and white—shivered as the hand-length metal bolt shot out through the tent's flap.
Twang
went the bow string. Deo let out a sharp gasp, not unlike the sounds he made during lovemaking, Radstac noted.

At that moment it occurred to Radstac what they should now do.

She tugged the flap shut. Deo was rising from behind the crate. "I have to see if I got him!" he cried breathlessly.

She thought she heard voices rising outside. She sheathed her sword.

'Take off the tunic." She wrested the crossbow from his grip, broke the stock cleanly over her knee and jammed the pieces into one of the crates.

Deo had never gotten his rightful chance to be Petgrad's premier. He was instead merely Cultat's nephew, a publicly adored philanthropist, a hero of the people without having done anything, really, to have earned that regard. If he had just now succeeded in killing the Felk war commander, all that would change. He would rewrite his place in Petgrad's—and even the Isthmus's—history.

Whether he had just succeeded or not wasn't important to Radstac at the moment.

Deo shed the tunic. He was confused. He looked like he was actually going into shock, paling, lips moving wordlessly once more. The enormity of what he'd done was overtaking him, Radstac judged.

Her right hand clapped over his mouth, clutching his jaw. Her left moved sharply, snapping the twin prongs from their sheaths in her glove. Fist swinging, a weight of leather and metal. Her hooks caught flesh.

She wrestled Deo onto the cot. He went almost bonelessly. Outside, a commotion was now definitely rising.

Deo kept his jaw clamped when she released it. She was straddling his body. She put pressure on the wound with both hands. The cut was shallow and precisely made.

It was entirely possible, Radstac had realized in a flash of insight, that no one would see exactly where the shot was fired from. A guess could be made from the angle, wherever the bolt landed, but the two of them might actually be relatively safe here. Fleeing the scene would draw attention; and just how were they supposed to escape this camp now anyway?

But
this
might just work.

In a few fierce whispers she explained it to Deo. He listened, teeth gritted.

"We're scouts. We met bandits. You got wounded. We've just returned to camp."

Deo's grimace verged toward a grin. "I play the wounded man, right?"

She resisted the urge to grin back. Now wasn't the time to enjoy Deo's charms. "This won't even mark you as bad as your dueling scars," she said, keeping up the pressure on the wound she'd opened across his chest. Warm blood seeped out over her fingers, dribbled onto the canvas cot, but the flow was already slowing.

She mopped up the blood with her sleeve, then removed the small aid kit from a pouch beneath her armor. She always brought this north with her. She'd mended any number of her own wounds on Isthmus battlefields. She now deftly threaded a needle and started sewing up Deo's gash.

"Can you handle the pain?" she asked, not pausing.

He nodded, once, a short jerk. The alarm outside was growing louder, closer.

They might live through this. They might. It was a good ruse. Those Felk would be looking for an enemy, for an assassin, a sniper. They would find in this tent two soldiers. One hurt, one tending to her colleague.

That was just how Radstac and Deo were discovered a few moments later.

IT WAS IRONIC. General Weisel was treating her more like a daughter than Lord Matokin, who was her actual flesh and blood. Weisel went out of his way to include her in things. He was interested in her. He trusted her.

Matokin trusted her, too, though, didn't he? After all, he had given her this assignment of spying on Weisel.

But there was something more. Raven was barely willing to admit to it. Weisel made her feel... desired. He had gotten her these new clothes, which flattered her body in a way she had never experienced before. Men now
looked
at her. She knew what they wanted to do to her and the thought frightened and excited her all at once. She had never known any kind of love in her life, though twice before she had experienced quick, grunting, unsatisfying sex, once in her home village with a boy as outcast and homely as she, and once at the Academy.

The disturbing thing was, she lately found herself desiring Weisel. He was a handsome man, and he radiated power. Raven felt herself longing for him. It was an effort to contain these feelings, which of course she could never share them with the general.

What was perhaps most odd, however, was that she thought she sensed the same feelings from him. Well, maybe not the very same, but there seemed to be a lascivious look in his eyes sometimes. Raven was still very new to reading these sorts of signals, and no doubt her own desires were interfering with her perceptions. But she couldn't completely shake the notion.

She had returned from her mission. She was proud that she had overcome her fears after that first incident with the portals. That had been unnerving. If she concentrated, she could still hear those eerie voices. And, according to the wizards she had met when she came out the far side, hers wasn't a unique experience; others had heard the voices while in transit between portals.

But Raven had completed her assignment, her first as this army's liaison officer. She had visited the scout parties, all but the one whose Far Speak wizard had not responded. The other three squads were by now in proper position around the outskirts of Trael. Weisel's plan awaited only his signal.

She had enjoyed exerting her authority. Those Far Movement mages had been reluctant to go along with the general's plan, though none had outright refused to obey. Raven was satisfied that her visit had convinced them to follow orders when the time came.

She was glad to be back. She headed for her tent to freshen up and eat a meal, figuring General Weisel would summon her when he wanted her. The wizards in her unit were sitting around the campfire, and conversation ceased as she approached; then, recognizing a fellow magic-user, they resumed.

Raven paused, listening. She had made no general announcement about her new status as liaison officer.

"I tell you, it was murder!"

"Despite what the physicians said?"

"They didn't let a proper healer look at the body," said one of the wizards, who was himself a healer.

Raven's curiosity was piqued. She took a step closer to the fire. "What's happened?" she asked.

The mages drew her into the circle, speaking in hushed voices. "A Far Movement mage died—" one started to explain.

"—was murdered," interrupted another.

"—
died
last night," finished the first. "We don't know anything else for certain. He died in his tent, and the army surgeons say it was a paroxysm of some sort. That's all we know."

"It is not," the healer said. "I've heard the tent where he was found was slit down the side, like a knife had cut it."

Raven frowned, not understanding.

"So that someone else could get inside the tent," the healer went on, "and commit murder."

"That's outlandish speculation," one of the more moderate wizards said. "We're getting carried away here ..."

"What?" one of the Far Speak mages countered. "You think the so-called regular troops don't resent us, aren't afraid of us? You think there aren't some among them who'd like to see us all cut to ribbons?"

"Some," the healer said, sighing. "Not all."

"Something like this only takes one. Somebody to slip inside a tent and—"

"What, exactly? How do you induce a lethal fit like that?"

"Well, he, that is, I..."

The argument went on. Raven excused herself, taking a plate of food into her tent. She hadn't heard about the death, and wondered if it was even true. Plainly the wizards had been sitting there hashing out the subject for some time, no doubt embellishing it with secondhand rumor and vague conjecture made up on the spot.

She shook her head sadly. Whether or not the death had been murder, it was a stark example of the rift that existed between the two factions in this army.

A mage had died, and the first thing everybody thought of was he had been killed by someone from the regular troops. Those prejudices had to be eliminated. It was her job to see that this military became successfully integrated.

Perhaps Matokin had been too hasty in inducting mages into the ranks of the Felk army. A slower course might have been wiser.

Raven bit her lip, setting aside her plate, no longer hungry. What was this? She was questioning Lord Matokin, the Emperor himself

She remembered what Weisel had told her, his personal theory about Matokin's true plans for this war—a war that would never end, that would keep him in supreme power safely back there in Felk.

It couldn't be true. It
couldn't.

With a great effort, Raven shoved the entire matter out of her mind. She looked down, seeing a big, black bug crawling across the canvas floor of her tent. She stared hard at it, concentrating. A moment later it burst into a little ball of fire.

SOON ENOUGH, GENERAL Weisel did call for her. She approached him where he stood outside his tent and made her report. He didn't seem too bothered by the missing scout party.

When he asked if something else was troubling her, Raven opted from among her choices to tell him about the incident with the portals. Weisel listened, patiently.

Yet all the while Raven felt a budding excitement. She tried to repress it, but being so near the general was inflaming. She felt her breath quickening. What would it be like, she wondered, to
touch
him?

Then something truly astonishing happened. After General Weisel ordered his aide to assemble the senior staff officers, he lifted a hand and brushed her cheek. It felt as if sparks followed the path his fingertips had traced. Raven's face heated, flushing. She felt faint.

Luckily, she regained herself as the officers gathered, along with a Far Speak wizard, one who hadn't been at the campfire earlier. Weisel was about to give the order that would be relayed to the scouts. The portals were going to be opened. Weisel had told Raven what might follow: it would surely be spectacular.

A new stage of this war was set to begin but all Raven could think of was the thrill, very strong now, of being in the general's presence.

Then, something was wrong.

Raven peered, frowning, at Weisel. The general suddenly looked like he was ... struggling. She couldn't explain it, but she knew in a flash that something had happened to him.

Weisel was trying to move his lips. None of the other officers was yet aware that something was wrong. Raven felt a surge of protectiveness. Whatever was happening to the General, she had to help.

She lunged toward him. As she did, she saw a small, fast movement out of the corner of her eye,

something passing overhead and falling earthward. Still reaching out toward the general, she was suddenly shoved very hard. She landed face first, the impact knocking the air out of her lungs.

Who had done this? But she ignored the thought. It wasn't important. She had to reach Weisel. She scrambled back onto her feet. Only, she couldn't manage it. Her legs kicked uselessly behind her. Her hands dug at the ground, trying to leverage her weight, but it was no good. Her limbs weren't doing what they should. She could barely move her right arm at all.

Something was very wrong indeed.

Time appeared to be slowing, in some impossible way. She could feel her heart beating, but it was an eternity between the beats. She watched a boot step near her out-stretched hand. The dusty leather crinkled as the boot's owner put weight onto it.

Godsdamnit! Raven tried again to stand, her fingers clawing at the dirt now. The place where she had been shoved was at the base of her neck, just above her right shoulder. When she tried to flex that shoulder it wouldn't move right. There was no pain, but she was beginning to think there ought to be. It felt like something was lodged there.

In the distance, voices were rising in an agitated clamor. She saw more booted feet going by, but no one stopped for her. Everything remained eerily slow. She had heard that time could warp itself like this in moments of mortal jeopardy.

Where was General Weisel?

The commotion grew but Raven realized it wasn't in the distance at all. It was going on all around her. She felt cold suddenly, very cold. The light seemed to be fading, as if dusk had come all at once. She strained to make out individual voices from the babble around her.

"Crossbow bolt!"

"An assassin!"

Her struggling limbs were even weaker now than they'd been just an instant ago. She could barely lift her head to keep her face out of the dirt.

"The girl, the young magician—she stepped in front of it!"

"She saved the general!"

Her dimming thoughts were becoming a jumble, and she knew she was ebbing toward something that might be unconsciousness, or might be something more drastic. Even so, she heard and understood that last shouted comment, and it provided the last warmth she would probably ever know.

She found, in the strange stretching of time, that she had the time to reflect on her life. She saw herself as a frightened and awkward child, a disappointment to her mother. She saw herself at the Academy, determined to become the best wizard she could be.

It had all led to this. She liked herself much more as she was now, an adult, with important responsibilities.

She had saved the general. She had stepped in front of the bolt of a crossbow, fired either by accident or intentionally. He would continue to expand the boundaries of the Felk Empire, until all the Isthmus was under one rule. It was an admirable cause. It was the grand vision of Lord Matokin, her father. She wondered if he had ever suspected, for even an instant, that she was his daughter. Maybe her mother would get word to him some day. Maybe he would know, and be proud of her sacrifice.

She had saved Weisel, who had helped to make her own life worthwhile. That made her sacrifice truly meaningful.

Still, she wondered why someone didn't help her. Why didn't... why didn't Weisel pick her up from the ground, hold her, comfort her? She was so cold now.

She found the time for one last coherent thought. Raven wondered if Weisel had given the signal to open the portals and let the dead loose into this world.