A Memory of Light

“You did well, my friend,” he said. “Your praises will be sung for generations. May you shelter in the palm of the Creator’s hand, and may the last embrace of the mother welcome you home.” He turned to the others. “I will not mourn! Mourning is for those who regret, and I do not regret what we do here! Bulen could not have died a better death. I do not cry for him, I cheer!”

He swung up into Mandarb’s saddle, holding the reins of Bulen’s horse, and sat tall. He would not let them see his fatigue. Or his sorrow. “Did any of you see Bakh fall?” he asked those riding near him. “He had a crossbow tied to the back of his horse. He always carried that thing with him. I swore that if it ever went off by accident, I’d have the Asha’man hang him by his toes from the top of a cliff.

“He died yesterday when his sword caught in a Trollocs armor. He left it and reached for his spare, but two more Trollocs pulled his horse out from underneath him. I thought he was dead then, and was trying to reach him, only to see him come up with that Light-burned crossbow of his and shoot a Trolloc right in the eye from two feet away. The bolt went clear through its head. The second Trolloc gutted him, but not before he put his boot knife in its neck.” Lan nodded. “I remember you, Bakh. You died well.” They rode for a few moments, and then Prince Kaisel added, “Ragon. He died well, too. Charged his horse straight at a group of thirty Trollocs that were coming in at us from the side. Probably saved a dozen men with that move, buying us time. He kicked one in the face as they pulled him down.

Yes, Ragon was a right insane man,” Andere said. “I’m one of the men he saved.” He smiled. “He did die well. Light, but he did. Of course, the craziest thing I’ve seen these last few days is what Kragil did when fighting that Fade. Did any of you see it. .”

By the time they reached the camp, the men were laughing and toasting the fallen with words. Lan split off from them, and took Bulen to the Asha’man. Narishma was holding open a gateway for a supply cart. He nodded to Lan. “Lord Mandragoran?”

“I need to put him someplace cold,” Lan said, dismounting. “When this is done, and Malkier is reclaimed, we will want a proper resting place for the noble fallen. Until then, I will not have him burned or left to rot. He was the first Malkieri to return to Malkier’s king.”

Narishma nodded, Arafellin bells tinkling on the ends of his braids. He ushered a cart through the gateway, then held up a hand for the others to stop. He closed that gateway, then opened one to the top of a mountain.

Icy air blew through. Lan took Bulen off his horse. Narishma moved to help, but Lan waved him away, grunting as he heaved the corpse up onto his shoulder. He stepped through into the snows, the biting wind sharp on his cheeks, as if someone had taken a knife to them.

He laid Bulen down, then knelt and gently took the hadori from Bulen’s head. Lan would carry it into battle-so that Bulen could continue to fight-then return it to the body when the battle was through. An old Malkieri tradition. “You did well, Bulen,” Lan said softly. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”

He stood up, boots crunching the snow, and strode out through the gateway, hadori in hand. Narishma let the gateway close, and Lan asked for the location of the mountain-in case Narishma died in the fighting-so he could locate Bulen again.

They wouldn’t be able to preserve all of the Malkieri corpses this way, but one was better than none. Lan wrapped the leather hadori about the hilt of his sword, just below the crossguard, and tied it tight. He handed Mandarb off to a groom, holding up a finger to the horse and meeting his dark, liquid eyes. “No more biting grooms,” he growled at the stallion.

After that, Lan went looking for Lord Agelmar. He found the commander speaking with Tenobia outside the Saldaean section of camp. Men stood with bows nearby in lines of two hundred, watching the skies. There had already been a number of Draghkar attacks. As Lan stepped up, the ground started to shake and rumble.

The soldiers didn’t cry out. They were growing used to this. The land groaned.

The bare rock ground near Lan split. He jumped back in alarm as the shaking continued, watching tiny rents appear in the rock-hairline cracks. There was something profoundly wrong about the cracks. They were too dark, too deep. Though the area was still shaking, he stepped up, looking at the tiny cracks, trying to make them out in detail through the rumbling earthquake.

They seemed to be cracks into nothingness. They drew the light in, sucked it away. It was as if he was looking at fractures in the nature of reality itself.

The quakes subsided. The darkness within the cracks lingered for a few breaths, then faded away, the hairline fractures becoming just ordinary breaks in stone. Wary, Lan knelt down, inspecting them closely. Had he seen what he’d thought? What did it mean?

Chilled, he rose to his feet and continued on his way. It is not men alone who grow tired, he thought. The mother is weakening

He hastened through the Saldaean camp. Of those fighting at the Gap the Saldaeans had the most well-kept camp, run by the stern hands of the officers’ wives. Lan had left most of the Malkieri noncombatants in Fal Dara, and the other forces had come with few others except the warriors.

That wasn’t the Saldaean way. Though they normally didn’t go into the Blight, the women otherwise marched with their husbands. Each one could fight with knives, and would hold their camp to the death if the need arose. They had been extremely useful here in gathering and distributing supplies and tending the wounded.

Tenobia was arguing tactics with Agelmar again. Lan listened as the Shienaran great captain nodded to her demands. She didn’t have a bad grasp of things, but she was too bold. She wanted them to push into the Blight, and take the fight to the Trolloc spawning grounds.

Eventually, she noticed Lan. “Lord Mandragoran,” she said, eyeing him. She was a pretty enough woman, with fire in her eyes and long black hair. “Your latest sortie was a success?”

“More Trollocs are dead,” Lan said.

“We fight a glorious battle,” she said with pride.

“I lost a good friend.”

Tenobia paused, then looked at his eyes, perhaps searching for emotion in them. Lan didn’t give any. Bulen had died well. “The men who fight have glory,” Lan said to her, “but the battle itself is not glory. It simply is. Lord Agelmar, a word.”

Tenobia stepped aside and Lan drew Agelmar away. The aged general gave Lan a grateful look. Tenobia watched for a moment, then stalked off with two guards following hastily at her heels.

Shell be off into battle herself at some point if we don’t watch her, Lan thought. Her head is full of songs and stories.

Hadn’t he just encouraged his men to tell those same stories? No. There was a difference, he could feel a difference. Teaching the men to accept that they might die and to revere the honor of the fallen. . that was different from singing songs about how wonderful it was to fight on the front lines.

Unfortunately, it took actual fighting to teach the difference. The Light send Tenobia wouldn’t do anything too rash. Lan had seen many a young man with that look in his eyes. The solution then was to work them to exhaustion for a few weeks, drilling them to the point that they thought only of their bed, not of the “glories” they would someday find. He doubted that would be appropriate for the Queen herself.

“She has been growing more rash ever since Kalyan married Ethenielle,” Lord Agelmar said quietly, joining Lan as they walked the back lines, nodding to passing soldiers. “I think that he was able to dampen her a featherweight or two, but now-without him or Bashere watching her. .” He sighed. “Well, regardless. What is it you wished of me, Dai Shan?”

“We fight well here,” Lan said. “But I’m worried about how tired the men are. Will we be able to keep holding back the Trollocs?”

“You are right; the enemy will force its way through eventually,” Agelmar said.

“What do we do, then?” Lan asked.

“We will fight here,” Agelmar said. “And then, once we cannot hold, we will retreat to buy time.”

Lan stiffened. “Retreat?”

Agelmar nodded. “We are here to slow the Trollocs down. We will accomplish that by holding here for a time, then slowly pulling back across Shienar.”

“I did not come to Tarwin’s Gap to retreat, Agelmar.”

“Dai Shan, I’m led to believe you came here to die.”

That was nothing but the truth. “I will not abandon Malkier to the Shadow a second time, Agelmar. I came to the Gap-the Malkieri followed me here-to show the Dark One that we had not been beaten. To leave after we’ve