Brightly Burning

'We have—troubles ahead,' Pol said tensely, as Ilea responded to the words by wrapping her arm tightly around his chest and taking the reins from him with her right hand. 'We have to get to the pass. Now.'

'You can't—' Ilea protested weakly.

'Satiran can gallop and still keep me in the saddle,' Pol replied, though it was clear that he spoke through pain. 'We don't have a choice.'

Ilea closed her mouth on further protests, just holding Pol tighter than before, as if she did not have as much confidence in Satiran's ability as he did.

Satiran moved into a gallop in a couple of strides with Tuck and Dacerie beside him; Kalira waited until Elenor was secure before doing the same. The headlong pace down the gloomy road left no time for thought, much less guilt, for Lan had all he could do to keep himself down over Kalira's neck and balanced, since he had to compensate for Elenor.

And it was at a gallop that they pounded into the army encampment, a candlemark before sunset.

*

POL wanted nothing so much as to lie down. His head throbbed, the gash across his eyes felt like a burning brand, and he wanted so badly just to have the leisure to mourn his loss—But not now. There was duty, and there was Duty, and Lan was desperately needed. If Lan was needed, so was Pol.

'I don't care!' Ilea protested behind him, as someone helped her down out of his saddle. 'I don't care how much you need him! You get him a stretcher, and you take him there lying down, and I tell you when he's spoken enough!'

Pol wanted to protest but he couldn't. How could he? He could barely sit astride his Companion, even with the help of all the straps. He let himself be taken down out of the saddle and assisted onto the stretcher—and as his head touched the pillow there, he felt tears of relief seeping into the bandage around his eyes.

They carried him into the Lord Marshal's tent. Now Lan was Pol's eyes; all that time that they had spent linked so that Pol could show him the intricacies of his own Gift was serving a dual purpose.

Ilea allowed him to sit up, but only with the aid of several pillows and folded blankets. They sat in the tent of the Lord Marshal himself; the Lord Marshal's Herald watched them solemnly with an unidentifiable expression on his young face. This Herald Turag was a replacement. The Lord Marshal's original Herald Marak had been one of the first casualties of the stand at White Foal Pass. Not dead, but so seriously wounded that he would be months in recovering, and probably lose a leg.

'These new Sun-priests—we call them the Dark Servants—turned up a few days ago; they start in on their business at sunset, and these things howl around the tents all night long. Come morning, people are dead in their bedrolls—and the morale of our troops is being hammered,' the Lord Marshal said. The man looked very much as if his own morale was in jeopardy; there were huge circles beneath his eyes, and new lines of strain in his face. His thick, gray hair, tied back from his face in a utilitarian tail, was lank and brittle, and his beard hadn't been trimmed or properly cared for in a fortnight.

'We're outnumbered, but more to the point, we're at a profound disadvantage,' Lord Marshal Weldon continued. 'How can we fight something we can't see? It strikes in the dark, and no one is safe. They've pushed us back every day, and every night we lose more men to their horrors. One more day, and they're going to break through, and they won't stop until they reach Haven.'

Lan clenched his jaw, and Pol felt it, but the boy was hiding his innermost thoughts.

'Are they out there now—the Dark Servants?' Lan asked. 'Can we see them from our lines?'

'They make damned certain we can,' the Lord Marshal said bitterly. 'You can see them—and their cursed bonfires—from here with no difficulty at all. We've tried shooting at them, but they're just out of range and no one wants to get any closer.'

Pol was suddenly left without eyes—Lan cut off his link. 'Please, my lord, I need to see them for myself,' the boy said, then just got up, brushed through the tent flaps and was gone.

Pol didn't need to see to know that the Lord Marshal was nonplussed at this very junior Herald's abrupt departure.

'My lord—I think we had better follow him,' he said, as the new Marshal's Herald stepped attentively to his side and touched his elbow.

'No—' Ilea said.

'Yes,' Pol ordered through clenched teeth.

The stretcher bearers took Pol outside, following the Marshal, and they all went out into the open air.

Once outside, Pol found Satiran gently shoving the young Herald aside with his nose and taking the latter's place. Now he saw what Satiran saw—which was taking some getting used to, since there was a peculiar blind spot straight ahead, but an enormous amount of peripheral vision; one eye saw Pol, while the other surveyed everything on the opposite side. The Lord Marshal's tent stood on the top of a hill overlooking White Foal Pass, where the army of the Karsites spread out beneath them, an ugly blot upon the white snow. Although it was nearly dark, there was enough light to show more than Pol wanted to see.

Bonfires blazed along the front of that blotch, seven of them in all, and Pol saw why the Lord Marshal had called the bonfires cursed. At the heart of each was a stake, and tied to the stake was what was left of a man. Beside each fire was a person in long, hooded robes; encircling the fires at a healthy distance were other folk in the robes that Pol recognized as being the Sun-priests he was familiar with. Despite the distance, the clear air of these mountains made it easy to make out what was there—and Satiran's eyes were exceptionally keen. Lan peered down at the bonfires, one hand on Kalira's shoulder, standing as still as one of the trees beyond him.

'It's when the fires burn down to coals that the things start howling. The victims in the fires are no one of ours—none from the army, that is,' the Lord Marshal growled. 'We try and retrieve the bodies of our own before they can get to them, and we've seen them dragging ruffians in Karsite rags to the fires and trussing them to the stakes. I'm assuming that the victims are brigands or thieves.'

'Or just some poor fellows who were in the wrong place,' Pol replied. 'Whatever they are—I doubt they deserved—'