Wolf Soldier, page 4
part #1 of Lightraider Academy Series
“She was.” Teegan’s smile faded, and she lapsed into silence.
The star beetles soon faded as well. The watches passed, and night gave way to the gray of dawn, and the hall broke into fragments of dead tree stumps and half columns. The long, rocky steps climbed ever northward, interrupted on occasion by the Rising Road as it meandered slowly east and west.
Tehpa woke on occasion, but not fully. He mumbled and groaned, but the fever kept his mind from breaking the surface of consciousness. At times, he kicked at Connor’s shins. At others, he shook with tittering giggles. This kept up until night fell again. Connor’s legs burned from holding his bareback position. “How long, Teegan?”
“We’ll see Ravencrest soon. Before dawn, I assure you.”
Dawn. Four watches away. Connor sighed, twisting left and right in a futile attempt to stretch one leg at a time. A good distance behind, he saw the star beetles were at it again, the ripple of their blue light racing to catch up. What had Teegan said about Aethia’s contempt for the bugs?
They flash at the first sign of a predator.
“Teegan. The star beetles. Something’s coming.”
9
“Faster, Tiran.” Teegan slapped the two geldings to force them into a gallop and spurred the mare to follow. “We must go faster.” The three horses broke through a curtain of vines onto an open hilltop with a giant willow at the center. Its leaves were blood red, nearly black in the starlight.
Tiran reached the tree first and wheeled his horse to face the others, jerking a vine from its mane. “Enough. This is pointless. There are no goblins south of the peaks, and no Dayspring wolves would dare attack three riders at once. Anyway, we’ve reached Red Willow Hill, the last rise before the cliffs. We’re almost there.”
“Cliffs?” asked Connor, catching up. “What cliffs?”
Tiran merely pointed over his shoulder.
Clouds broke, allowing the two bright moons to spread their light over a sheer rock wall, a jagged break in the landscape. The Anamturas poured over the cliffs and plummeted down into the forest beyond the hill. Short towers held a three-story inn suspended over the falls. Connor had never laid eyes on the outpost before, but he knew it by sight from the parcelman’s tales. “Ravencrest.”
“Built in the days after the barrier rose.” Teegan nodded to the northwest. “The Rising Road approaches there—a gentle slope. But our road takes us straight north to the cliff stairs. Before this watch is ended, we’ll reach the top.”
“And safety, I hope,” Connor added. “From whatever pursues us.”
Tiran gave him a look of pure distain. “Oh, please. Haven’t we—” A thin black shape sailed past, inches from his nose. Another struck the ground short of his horse. The gelding reared.
“Arrows!” Teegan yelled, snapping her reins. The falcon launched itself from her arm, and she turned in the saddle. “Aethia, no!”
Tiran recovered control and spurred his gelding. “Leave her!”
With the added weight of his tehpa, it took Connor a moment longer than the others to get his horse moving. But the gelding still had more power than his little farm mare. He grabbed the mare’s bridle as he passed, pulling Teegan along. “Your brehna’s right. Leave the bird!”
The two horses surged forward together. The falcon let out a shrill cry behind, diving out of the heights. Something answered with an angry shriek.
Teegan glanced back. “She’s fighting them.”
“Then we owe her a debt but not aid. Keep going.”
They hit the trees on the hill’s downslope with Tiran in the lead. In seconds, the trail narrowed. Connor reined the gelding to force Teegan ahead. She frowned, parting her lips as if to complain, and let out a startled cry instead. The mare went down.
Tiran’s gelding went down too, and Connor tried desperately to keep his own mount from running them over. He needn’t have worried. An arrow sank into the gelding’s shoulder, and it crumbled. Both Connor and Tehpa tumbled into space. Connor hit the ground and skidded through mud and rock, pain jarring his torso. The horses lay all around, whinnying in pain.
Teegan appeared, half crawling, cradling her arm. Blood glistened from a gash on her forehead. “Are you wounded?”
“No more than you.” That might not have been true. Connor’s side screamed with every breath, and his neck burned. “Tehpa, where are you?”
An answering groan rose from the brush. Connor and Teegan found their patient behind the dying horses. His eyes were open, a touch of yellow in the irises. “They have us. And now they’ll want to play.”
Tiran came running down the trail at a crouch. “That thing wanted us to run. It drove us into an ambush.”
A light twang sounded from the forest.
Teegan yanked him down, and an arrow split his red hair. A second missile struck the gelding she lay behind with a sickening thump. The horse, drained of its fight, let out a pitiful whine. “Stop it!” she cried, pounding the mud with her fist.
The goblins tittered in the shadows.
Connor gripped his patehpa’s sword and looked to Tiran, who laid his own sword across his chest. Tiran might not be the best of company on the road, but Connor was glad to have him there for a fight. He clearly knew how to handle a blade—far better than a shepherd.
He pushed up to an elbow.
Teegan held him fast. “Wait. Listen.”
The laughing stopped. The goblins shouted to one another in some shrill distortion of the Common Tongue. Hooves thundered on the path ahead. Connor peered over the dying mare and saw a massive charger barreling down the trail, a cart bouncing behind it. A hood shrouded the driver’s face.
Arrows flew. The driver steered his horse and let the cart skip sideways to take the missiles broadside. It rocked to a stop, and he slapped the wood. “What are you waiting for? Get in!”
Needing no further prompting, Connor and the twins dragged Tehpa into the cart and scrunched down on either side of him. The driver cracked the reins. He showed no fear. Much to the contrary, he muttered to himself the whole time, as if a pack of goblins were merely an annoyance. One arrow arced directly toward the man, then veered off to the trees in a flash of ghostly red. As the last of the arrows fell behind, a pair of unseen creatures crashed and cracked through the underbrush, heading toward the threat.
Soon the charger slowed to a canter. The pounding of its hooves on dirt became the clopping of horseshoes on stone, and the cart went up and over a bridge. The cliffs and the roaring falls came into view above the cart’s wooden walls. They stopped. An elderly face appeared above Connor—steel-gray eyes and a weathered but cleanshaven face. “Having a lie down are we? A little rest? Get up! Move!”
Once they had Connor’s tehpa on his feet, the driver led them past the stairs to a railed wooden platform, suspended by ropes from a series of pulleys. He waved an impatient hand at Tiran and Connor. “Pull away, boys. A lift won’t lift itself.”
Both boys obediently grabbed the main rope and tugged, hand over hand, pulling the rig up the cliff face. “What about Connor’s goblins?” Tiran asked between heavy breaths. “Won’t we be exposed to their arrows once we’re above the trees?”
As if in answer to his question, a series of shrieks erupted from the trail. The driver shook his head. “Those particular goblins will never trouble another soul.”
Raising the lift was no easy task, made harder by the wet rope. Or was it some sort of grease? Connor quit pulling long enough for a look at a hand and found it deep red in the moonlight.
Blood. Where had it all come from? The red fingers blurred together, turned sideways. “I . . . I think . . .” He couldn’t complete the thought. He saw the weathered face, the moons, the falls, then nothing more.
10
Connor woke coughing, choked by a tongue as thick and dry as wool. Daylight shined through linen curtains. He was lying on a bed, unable to remember how he got there, wearing nothing but his wool britches and a linen wrapping at his midsection.
Struggling to a sitting position, he saw Tehpa on a bed across the room, rolled on his side to protect the bad shoulder.
“Don’t wake him,” a voice said. “He needs his rest.”
An elderly man sat on a stool in the corner, long legs crossed at the ankle, hands behind his head. Connor pulled the wool blanket to his waist. “You’re . . . the driver.”
The old man bobbled his head side to side, sitting up. “Among other things. I keep the inn here with Glimwick—the Black Feather, it’s called. I saw your lanterns on Red Willow Hill, and so I was halfway down the cliffs to meet you when I heard the horses scream.” He leaned against a staff, grunting with the effort of standing. “By the Rescuer’s grace, I had already prepared a cart for your coming, else I might not have reached you in time.”
“You prepared for our coming?”
“Well, of course I did. I summoned you, didn’t I? Besides, your mother sent me a raven.”
Connor’s eyes widened. “You’re Master Jairun. But you said you were an innkeeper.”
“An aging schoolmaster must do something with his final years. Although, now the Rescuer has called me from retirement, I’ll have to pass those duties on to someone else.” He raised a pair of bushy eyebrows. “How do you feel about young Barnabas? He’ll do, I think, although I’m not sure his horse is up to the challenge.” He crossed the room with surprising quickness, hardly using the staff, and pushed Connor’s head down to fuss with his neck.
“Ow! What’s wrong with you!”
Connor snapped his mouth shut. How had such harsh and disrespectful words escaped his lips? He cleared his throat and tried again. “I mean, what happened to my neck?”
“You don’t know? I see. That would explain why you kept pulling on the lift hoist despite your wound. You failed to grasp its severity.” Master Jairun finished unraveling blood-soaked strips of linen and laid them on the bed. “I mistook this ignorance for bravery. Happens all the time in battle.”
“What wound?”
“A goblin arrow sliced your neck. A deep cut. You lost a lot of blood. I let you sleep for a day and a half so the flesh might begin to mend. Now hush a moment. Let a man work.”
Pain shot down Connor’s spine as Master Jairun laid a hand directly on the cut. “Ond mecheth mi pesha’enu, ond brueth ma av’enu. Ala ethmod kecastig shalomenu, po bulcothrod medicethi’anu.”
A few of his words, spoken in the founders’ language, appeared unbidden in Connor’s mind. Crushed. Wounded. Healed. A coolness seeped into the wound. “You cast a spell?”
“A spell?” Master Jairun began wrapping the wound with fresh linens. “What kind of nonsense are the vale clerics teaching these days?”
“But Mehma said you were a—”
“A guardian, yes. A renewer of some skill too, I don’t mind saying. But not a sorcerer.” He crinkled his nose in distaste. “What I spoke was a prayer, child—a sacred verse—the very words of the High One spoken back to him in supplication.” Master Jairun folded his hands in his lap, leaning left and right to appraise his handiwork. “Unlike foolish spells, prayer depends upon the High One’s will and power, not our own.”
“Yes. Fine. Right. But that . . . connection . . . is why Mehma sent us to you, isn’t it?”
“Yes and no. Mara hoped I could deal with the poison in your father’s blood.” He poured steaming water from a kettle into a stoneware cup, looking at Connor sideways. “The same poison that has now infected you.”
“Poison?” The sting in Connor’s neck sharpened. The arrow. A goblin arrow.
“Yes. Now you see. And seeing makes all the difference. Now. I assume your cleric taught you the two greatest commandments. I’d like you to recite them for me.”
Connor paled. A dark arrow had poisoned him, and this old man wanted him to recite from the Scrolls? “Why should—”
“Recite them!”
The command reverberated in Connor’s chest. He dropped the defiance from his expression. “You shall love—”
“In the Elder Tongue, please, my boy. It forces you to think harder about what you’re saying.”
Connor had to reach deep into memories of Resteram evenings with Mehma to pull up the words. Love. Heart. Soul. Neighbor. As soon as he recognized the verse, he understood what he’d done. “Rumosh . . . um . . . avah’iov bi . . . koth lavechovu ba koth anverovu bo koth se . . . cherovu. Po pelorovu avah’iov ovuneh.”
“Good. Mostly. And you know what those verses mean, do you?”
“Yes.” Connor lowered his eyes. “I do.”
“These are not mere words, child—phrases to memorize and recite. Loving the High One. Loving our neighbor. We are to live that out as citizens of this kingdom. Do you understand?”
“I understand the commands. I understand my harsh words just now were wrong, and I’m sorry for them. But”—Connor lifted his eyes again—“I don’t see how speaking or understanding an ancient verse will cure me.”
Master Jairun returned to his work, adding a spoonful of green powder to the steaming cup he’d poured. “You and I are part body and part spirit. Goblin fungus corrupts both. Herbs heal the body, but the infection of your spirit demanded a deeper treatment.”
“And this deeper treatment is counsel?” Connor found the idea difficult to swallow.
“Spiritual battle has much in common with physical battle. No one should face either alone. We are to carry one another’s burdens. With counsel, we have laid bare the attack. Now you must allow the Helper within to join the fight. A regimen of prayer”—he tapped the spoon on the edge of the cup and set it aside—“and reconciliation should do the trick.”
Connor allowed himself an embarrassed smile. “I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you.”
“There you go. An excellent start.” Master Jairun pressed the mug into Connor’s hands and raised it to his lips to make him drink. “And don’t worry about your father. I’ll have him right as rain before you say your goodbyes on the last leg to the academy.”
The academy? The bitter fluid pouring down his throat prevented Connor from protesting. He hadn’t come as an academy potential. The herbs went to work quickly. Connor’s head swam, and he had no choice but to lay back, letting Master Jairun draw the covers about his shoulders. I only came for Tehpa’s sake, he tried to say. But the words never left his lips, drifting instead across his fading consciousness as the sunlit room dissolved into a white haze.
11
The haze parted. The patch of light from the window had shifted a good deal across the floor, and there was a long shadow within it. Someone stood behind Connor, having turned him on his side to get at the bandage on his neck.
“Master Jairun?”
“No.”
Connor flipped over and came nose to nose with a young man his own age with deep-set eyes and jet-black hair, spiked with a fragrant red paste in the tradition of the western boatmasters. “You’re a . . . a fisherman.”
“Of course. All people from Lin Kelan are fishermen. Every single person.” His visitor frowned at him. “I was a scribe, actually, in the Second Hall. My father gave me to the clerics as an apprentice a year before I reached the age of reckoning.” The boy twisted a cobalt ring around a finger for a long moment, as if lost in thought, then met his eyes. “I am Lee Trang. Call me Lee.”
Connor sat up, wincing. “And now you work here, for Master Jairun and Glimwick?”
“Don’t be absurd.” Lee turned him by the shoulders and tugged at the edges of the dressing. “Headmaster Jairun is letting me help with your care. I never dreamed I’d see battle wounds so soon, not to mention a goblin bite. The spacing between the fangs, the flesh torn by the forward teeth, it’s all very intriguing.”
“Headmaster Jairun.” The formality of it stuck in Connor’s foggy mind. Here was a fisher-scribe talking like an Assembly clerkmaster and performing medicine at a mountain outpost. “So, you’re a potential. You got a letter too.”
“Same as yours. I arrived a day early.” The scribe finished his work and released him. “We’re going to be lightraiders, you and I—brothers of the Order. Exciting, right?”
The longer Connor stayed at Ravencrest, the more he’d have to make excuses. He needed to get out of there, back to Stonyvale and his sheep. He wrung the blanket in his hands. “I can’t go. Tehpa is injured. Mehma will need me.”
“Oh.” The air left the fisher-scribe’s chest like water from a burst flask. “So few have come. And now we’ve lost our only goblin slayer?”
Connor had expected disdain, not disappointment. It had never occurred to him that the other potentials might be counting on him to answer the call. Who needed a shepherd in an order of warriors?
“Your clothes are on the chair,” Lee said, turning for the door. “Supper’s in one tick.”
Supper. Connor felt the gnawing hunger left by a day and a half of starvation. But he had no desire to face the others over a meal. “I’d rather eat up here. Could you bring me something?”
“I told you. I don’t work here. Headmaster Jairun says you eat downstairs or you don’t eat at all.” Lee walked out and slammed the door.
Near the first watch of evening, Connor descended a mahogany stair, pausing halfway down to peer through the balusters. How many potentials would he have to face just to settle his growling stomach?
A steady, rhythmic ring filled the Black Feather’s great room, accompanied by the cracking fire and the drone of the river passing under the floorboards. Tiran sat by the hearth, running a whetting stone down his blade. Lee sat across from him along with another potential, twice as big, with thick arms of deep brown and the tall boots of a Huckleheim miner. The miner had his nose buried in a leather-bound text. The scribe stared into the flames, twisting his cobalt ring.
