Ashes of a Black Frost

He could just see the shapes of the Viceroy and the Prince atop their camels. Konowa had been offered one of the beasts, but the Prince didn’t insist and Konowa happily volunteered the camel as a pack animal instead. Marching in snow was a frigid version of hell, but it was still preferable to riding along on one of those monsters.

Konowa hunched his shoulders against the wind as the column marched past. It wasn’t a happy sight. Soldiers and animals alike walked with a slow, plodding gait, heads bent low against the elements. There was no singing, no laughing, barely any talking at all. Few even noticed Konowa as they marched past, and fewer still bothered to acknowledge him with a salute or a halfhearted wave. It occurred to Konowa that in his Hasshugeb robe in the dark, he probably didn’t look all that different from any other Iron Elf in the regiment. He hoped that was the case, choosing not to dwell on less charitable ideas.

The camels carrying the Prince and the Viceroy ambled past. Neither man turned to look at him. Konowa made no move to draw their attention. Before long he would have to confront the Prince and snap him out of his sulk, but for now he actually preferred the future king silent and moping. It certainly kept him out of Konowa’s way and let him get on with the business at hand.

A motley assortment of bullocks and camels plodded past towing the naval contingent’s battery of three cannon. Despite the wind and his damaged hearing, Konowa was convinced he heard a good deal of cursing going on. He’d made it clear the guns would travel with them despite having exhausted their supply of ammunition. Pimmer assured him the forts along the trade route they were following were well supplied with gunpowder, among other items that could, in a pinch, be shoved down the barrel of a cannon and fired. The idea of traipsing across a snow-covered desert with no ammunition was clearly not what the naval gunners had signed up for, but it was their lot and they could deal with it.

Behind them and still marching in bare feet were the twenty-three surviving volunteers of the 3rd Spears. Whether it was stubbornness, pride, or a genuine imperviousness to cold, the soldiers from the Timolia Islands refused all offers of footwear or even rags to wrap their feet. Placing these fearsome warriors directly behind the grumbling artillery gunners had been a deliberate move on Konowa’s part. The gunners could grouse all they wanted, but with the 3rd Spears behind them, they would keep the guns moving.

As the 3rd Spears marched past, Konowa squinted to catch sight of the rear guard. He knew they were a squad of scared and unhappy soldiers, but just like the naval gunners, they had to accept it. Konowa had seen the terror and anger in their eyes when he assigned them the task, but there was no other choice. The rear of the column had to be protected, and whoever got that duty knew it was filled with risk. What he had promised them, however, was that they wouldn’t have to shoulder the burden alone. Two other squads were picked to take turns bringing up the rear. Konowa knew it wasn’t time yet to make the change, but he could at least fall back and march along with them for a bit and perhaps pick up their spirits.

As the backs of the Timolian soldiers disappeared in the swirling snow, Konowa stepped out onto the trampled path and waited for the squad to appear. They should be just a few yards behind.

As the seconds stretched into a minute, Konowa grew increasingly worried. The rear guard should have been directly behind the 3rd Spears. He drew his saber, conscious of the fact that he was now completely alone.

“One of these days your impulses are going to get you in trouble,” he muttered to himself. He reasoned that it was likely already too late, but hoped the trouble was something he could handle.

Realizing his current position was the worst possible one he could be in, he started walking backward while keeping his eyes peeled for the rear guard. “C’mon lads, be okay,” he said, gripping the pommel of his saber tight.

He shivered in the cold, only realizing a few moments later that it wasn’t the weather, but the black acorn against his chest.

A soldier appeared out of the snow twenty yards away. “Over here,” Konowa hissed, waving his saber in the air then crouching down as he looked around for the danger. The soldier stumbled as if severely wounded. Konowa could barely make out his form in the snow and couldn’t tell how badly he’d been hurt. His first instinct was to rush forward to help the man, but the stab of ice against his chest was growing colder. The enemy was closing in.

The smart thing, the proper thing, for Konowa to do was to turn and run back to the end of the column. It was foolhardy to risk his life for one soldier when the entire regiment needed his leadership. Konowa was already running toward the soldier before he’d made up his mind that the smart thing and the right thing weren’t always the same.

The soldier stumbled again and went down on one knee. The acorn blazed with freezing intensity, causing Konowa to gasp with pain. Ignoring it, he jogged the last few feet to reach the fallen soldier and help him up.

“How badly are you hu-” Konowa started to ask before his ability to form words left him.

The “soldier” climbed back to its feet on two gnarled chunks of roots. The. . tree, Konowa’s mind finally registered, had taken the rough form of a soldier. Its branches were bent and twisted at impossible angles to form a pair of large shoulders, from which two arms hung. Long, sharp thorns for fingers twitched and snapped at the end of each arm. Its head was a thicket of leaves and thorns crafted into something that in the dark and the snow had looked convincingly like a soldier wearing a shako. But as disturbing as it was to see a tree take on human form, it was the bark that froze Konowa’s gaze. It was dragon scale. He was sure of it. The scale had shaped itself to look like a uniform.

How or why he didn’t know and likely never would, but somehow the sarka har had changed.

Luckily, Konowa’s instincts were still working even as his mind pondered the impossibility before him.

Konowa started to backpedal even as he brought his saber up in front of him and slashed at the tree. The stroke missed, which threw his balance off. His boots slipped and he fell backward to land hard on his back. Snow flew in the air hiding the abomination from sight.

Konowa rolled to his right, burying his face in the snow in the process. He felt the thump of a heavy root slam down on the ground just inches from where he had been. He continued rolling several more times before finally scrambling to his feet, one hand pushing his shako back down on his head as the other held his saber at the ready. He shook his head and blinked the snow from his eyes.

There were five of the walking sarka har now. Each one looked like a child’s idea of a soldier. Everything was there, but all of it was distorted. In the light of day, their disguise would fool no one, but in these conditions they were more than good enough to get close to a potential victim.

“I’m not dead yet!” Konowa shouted, mad at himself that he even considered himself lost. He’d been in tough scraps before, where the odds were stacked so high against him he couldn’t see over the enemy’s chips and still he’d prevailed. These were still sarka har, and he had the frost fire at his command.

“This is why I HATE TREES!” Konowa bellowed, charging forward, the blade of his saber wreathed in black flame.

The closest tree had no time to parry as Konowa’s blade slashed down across the midsection of its trunk.

Black ice crystals exploded as blade met trunk. Konowa’s entire right arm erupted in burning pain like he’d been stabbed with a thousand needles. He stumbled backward, barely managing to hold on to his saber. The tree he’d struck was engulfed in frost fire, but whereas normal sarka har quickly burned to ash, the dragon-scale bark seemed to be shielding it from the worst of the flame.

“And Visyna wonders what I have against the bloody forest,” he said to himself, flexing his arm to get feeling back into it. He caught motion out of the corner of his eye and more of the transformed sarka har appeared out of the snow. They marched along the path left by the column, ignoring Konowa just as the soldiers had before. He had to get out of here and warn them.

That’s when he remembered he had more than the frost fire to call on.

“Renwar! Get the Darkly Departed off their arses and cut down these damn trees!” He turned while keeping an eye on the burning sarka har and its four companions. There was no sign of the shades of the dead.

“That wasn’t a request-it was an order!” he shouted into the wind. The black flame on the tree he attacked guttered and went out. Singed leaves fell from its head and it continued to stumble, but it started to come toward him again as the other four fanned out to cut off any chance of escape.

Konowa turned and started to run, but in the deep snow he knew at once he wouldn’t get far. The sarka har would catch him exhausted and that would be that.