Chapter 54

Chapter 54: Chapter 54

The provincial city of Aethelgard was a fortress built with the goal of impressing, not defending.

After two weeks of sleeping in damp pine forests and plodding down the empty stretches of the King’s Highway, the city’s white limestone walls looked almost foreign. Here there were no palisades rotting in the mud and no trenches full of dead. The air smelled of roast meat, expensive flower perfume and hearth smoke. No rust, no stagnant water.

I rode Ironfoot up to the great arched iron gates and pushed back the hood of my crimson cloak so the sentries could see my face. Astra shifted on my right shoulder, black eyes sweeping the high battlements with a bird’s unblinking suspicion.

Six city guards blocked the gate. Ordinary men, in polished, decorative chainmail and bright blue tabards that had never touched mud. They leaned on gleaming halberds with the lazy arrogance of men who’d spent whole careers breaking up tavern brawls and squeezing unarmed merchants.

"Halt!" The captain of the gate guard stepped forward and put up a gloved hand. He looked over my lone, mud-splattered horse, my scarred face, the worn leather under my cloak. He didn’t know the uniform. To him I was just a drifting soldier. "State your business in Aethelgard, girl, and declare your weapons. There’s a toll for armed mercenaries crossing the Baron’s threshold."

I looked down at him from the saddle, coiled and calm. I could hear his heartbeat. I could smell the stale ale on his breath.

"I’m not a mercenary." My voice stayed level. I’d promised myself patience on this road. "I’m a Lieutenant of the Imperial Vanguard, riding to the capital on Commander Erula’s direct orders. I need a dry bed, oats for my horse, and a blacksmith’s forge."

The captain sneered and glanced back at his men, who snickered. "A Lieutenant? At your age? Listen, girl, I don’t care if you stole that cloak off a dead officer on the road. The toll is five silver marks, or you turn that beast around and sleep in the woods."

He reached out and took hold of Ironfoot’s bridle.

The destrier snorted hard and flung up his head. I laid a hand on his neck to settle him. My sword stayed where it was, and so did the Ember. I just leaned forward in the saddle and looked the captain in the eye, cold and steady.

"Take your hand off my horse."

"Or what?" He puffed out his chest.

"Captain!"

The voice cracked across the cobbled courtyard like a whip, crisp and cultured. The guards snapped to attention, and all their lazy arrogance dissolved into panic.

An older man was coming out of a nearby guardhouse, heavily scarred, in a fine velvet doublet over a hardened leather breastplate. He walked with a bad limp and leaned on a silver-tipped cane, but his eyes were sharp. None of his men’s dullness showed in them.

This was the Baron of Aethelgard, and he was a veteran.

He didn’t look at my face. His eyes went straight to the silver insignia on my chest, the crossed swords over the shield, and then to the breadth of my shoulders, the thick scars on my neck, the runed bastard sword on my back. The color left his face. He knew exactly what he was looking at. He’d served in the mud, and he knew what a Swelled Bud of the 7th Legion was.

"You ignorant fool." The Baron hissed it, and cracked his cane across the back of the captain’s knees. The captain folded onto the cobbles with a yelp. "That is the Emperor’s Vanguard. The 7th Legion. Get out of my sight before I have you flogged for treason!"

The guards scrambled backward, white-faced, and dragged their groaning captain away from the gate.

The Baron turned to me and bowed low, leaning on the cane. "Lieutenant. Forgive my militia their stupidity. The interior provinces breed soft men. Aethelgard is honored to have you. Please, let me host you at my estate."

I inclined my head. "Thank you, Baron. One night’s rest is all I need."

"If you would honor my table tonight, there’s a matter of security I’d beg your counsel on." His voice dropped, low and close to desperate. "We have a threat my soft militia can’t handle."

The Baron’s estate was a showy sprawl of polished white stone and imported marble. Dozens of crystal chandeliers lit the dining hall in warm gold, and a long oak table sagged under roast pheasant, spiced wine and fresh bread.

I sat near the head of it, bathed and changed into a clean formal tunic, with the runed sword still strapped to my back. Myra’s voice rang in my head, telling me to use a fork and not tear into the meat with my hands.

The Baron had another guest.

Across from me sat a young man about my age, tall and broad-shouldered, striking to look at. His fitted tunic was deep midnight blue, worked with silver thread. Not a hair of his head was out of place, and he had the sharp, well-bred jaw of old blood.

Under all that fine cloth, though, I knew the signs at once: the dense, tightly packed muscle, the faint ripple of heat in the air above his skin. He was a Swelled Bud.

"Lieutenant Elvit, allow me to present Lord Luckas of House Vance," the Baron said, gesturing. "He’s passing through Aethelgard on his way to the Crown Jewel, same as you."

Luckas smiled, charming and very sure of himself, and raised his goblet. "An honor, Lieutenant. I’ll admit I’ve never met a vanguard soldier so... captivating. The 7th usually sends us brutes made of scars and bad manners."

His eyes lingered on the pale, starry scars of the rune showing at my cuff. Calculating, but plainly interested. He had a Swelled Bud’s strength, but his Ember had been raised in spotless training yards by expensive tutors, never down in the dark. He had never fought for his life in the mud.

"The Baron mentioned a security problem." I ignored the flirting, kept my tone strictly professional, and turned to our host.

The Baron sighed. "A trained, organized company of mercenaries has taken the northern logging camps. They want a ransom in gold to leave, and it’s ruinous. My militia is terrified of them. Lord Luckas has graciously offered to lead a strike tomorrow and clear them out, but with a vanguard officer here..."

"I’ll handle it tonight," Luckas cut in smoothly, and set down his goblet. He looked at me with a competitive gleam. "Though I’d welcome the 7th Legion’s company, Lieutenant, if you’re up for a moonlit stroll."

I thought about the long road ahead. The Baron had given me shelter and respect, and I owed him something for both.

"We’ll go now," I said, and pushed back my chair.

The logging camp lay three miles north of the city, deep in the pines.

We tied the horses to a tree half a mile short and went the rest of the way on foot. Luckas moved with the quick, coiled grace of a Swelled Bud, one hand resting easy on the hilt of a beautifully made, silver-pommeled longsword.

"You don’t talk much, do you, Elvit?" he whispered as we crouched in the brush, watching the glow of the mercenary campfires. "I find that fascinating. Most soldiers back from the front can’t wait to boast about their kills."

"Nothing in the mud is worth boasting about," I said quietly, and looked out through the leaves.

Thirty mercenaries, and a long way from the ragged highwaymen on the road. These were hard, disciplined men in overlapping iron plate, all carrying the same make of crossbow, and they’d ringed the camp with spiked wooden barricades.

"I’ll take the left flank." Luckas grinned, and the heat of his Ember flared until his midnight blue tunic steamed in the cool night air. "Try to keep up, Lieutenant."

"Wait." I caught his shoulder. My grip was an iron clamp, and Luckas flinched, honestly startled. He couldn’t have moved against it if he’d tried.

"We’re not butchering them while they sit around a fire," I said, and stepped out of the brush onto the open dirt road to the camp.

"Are you insane?" Luckas hissed from the shadows.

I didn’t answer. I walked up the road toward the barricades with my hands empty and my crimson cloak swinging behind me.

They spotted me at once. Crossbows came up, iron bolts leveled at my chest. Their commander, a big man with a greying beard, stepped forward with a hand on his sword.

"Stop right there, girl," he shouted. "You’ve taken a wrong turn."

"I’m Lieutenant Elvit of the 7th Imperial Legion." My voice carried clearly over the crackling fires. "You’re occupying Aethelgard’s land illegally. I’m here to offer you terms."

The mercenaries traded wary, puzzled looks. They knew the uniform, and they knew the confidence that went with it.

"Terms?" The commander scoffed, though his grip tightened on his sword. "We’ve got thirty crossbows pointed at your heart. What terms?"

"Leave the logging camp." I kept my voice calm and formal. "Take your weapons and your horses and ride east. Go now and no blood is spilled. You have a choice, and I’d advise you to take it."

I meant every word. I thought of Elara, and of the rows of iron markers in Shepfold. I didn’t want to kill thirty men tonight if I could help it. I wanted them to walk away.

The commander stared at me for a long moment. Nobody made a sound. I watched him weigh the 7th Legion against the fact that I’d come alone.

Greed won.

"Fire!" he roared.

I didn’t draw my sword. The rune on my right arm flared white, and the starlight laid out the path of every bolt in an instant. I wouldn’t have to dodge them all.

A wave of heat roared out of the treeline on my left, and Luckas came out of the shadows like a torch flung into dry grass. He had none of my rune’s cold precision, but he had fire to spare. The silver longsword was out, the whole blade roaring with orange flame fed by his Ember. He met the volley head-on, the blade too fast to follow, and burned the bolts’ wooden shafts to ash before they reached me.

"Diplomacy failed, Lieutenant!" Luckas laughed, a wild, giddy sound, and charged straight into the barricades. The spiked logs burst into splinters against him.

And then we were in it.

I drew the runed bastard sword, and the Mystic Runes of the Sky hissed blue with static. I went into the camp behind Luckas.

Luckas fought wide and showy. I fought the way the Vanguard does, short and exact, with nothing wasted. A mercenary lunged at me with a pike. I stepped inside it, turned the shaft aside with the flat of my blade, and drove the pommel into his temple. He dropped like a sack. A swordsman went for my blind side; I spun, caught his wrist, twisted until the bone snapped, and kicked him away.

I watched Luckas out of the corner of my eye. He was good, I’ll give him that: perfect, schooled form, the flaming blade cutting through armor and flesh as if neither were there. And reckless. He fought like a man nobody had ever punished for a mistake.

One mercenary feigned a retreat and drew him on. The noble overreached on a flaming cut, and two spearmen hidden in the shadow of a logging tent thrust for his exposed ribs.

The rune caught the trap a heartbeat before it sprang.

I poured the starlight into my legs and crossed the muddy camp in one streak. My left shoulder hit Luckas in the chest and threw him clear of the spears. Both spearheads struck sparks off my right gauntlet as I knocked them aside together. I clamped the shafts under my arm and sent a burst of static down the steel. The two mercenaries locked up, eyes rolling back, and the shock dropped them in the dirt.

Luckas scrambled to his feet, flaming sword sagging as he stared at me. The confident smile was gone.

He looked at the mercenaries I’d taken apart without killing. He looked at the pale starlight leaking from my right eye, and I could see him replaying how fast I’d moved. Then it reached him: we shared an evolution, and nothing more. I’d been forged somewhere he couldn’t begin to picture.

The rest of the mercenaries could see it was hopeless. Their trap was broken and their men were dropping by the second. The commander flung his sword into the mud, fell to his knees and raised his hands.

"We yield!" His voice cracked. "We yield!"

I lowered the bastard sword slowly, and the blue static died off the dark steel. I took a deep, slow breath and pushed the Ember’s violent heat back down into my chest. I hadn’t lost hold of myself.

Luckas came up beside me, the flames dying on his silver blade, chest heaving. He didn’t spare a glance for the surrendered mercenaries. He was looking only at me.

The rivalry was gone from his eyes, and what had replaced it ran deeper. Fascination. Infatuation, no mistaking it.

"I’ve trained under the best swordmasters in the capital." His voice was quiet, all the arrogance gone out of it. "I’ve never seen anyone move like that. What are you, Elvit?"

"Just a soldier." I sheathed the sword and looked up at the night sky, and felt Astra’s far-off, steady warmth.

"My retinue is following along the King’s Highway." He stepped closer, smelling of perfumed oils and scorched air. "It’s ten days’ ride to the Crown Jewel. Travel with me, Elvit. Let’s finish the journey together."

I looked at him. Arrogant, reckless, and he’d thrown himself into a volley of crossbow bolts without a second thought. The road ahead was long and lonely.

"Ten days," I said, and turned back toward the horses. "Try to keep up, Lord Luckas."