down at him for a few moments, wondering how best to broach the subject with him, before a thought occurred to him: I’m no duke now, no landowner or nobleman; I’m just another troublesome white-eye wagon brat.
He grabbed Vesna by the man’s metal-clad arm and hauled him up. In his surprise Vesna didn’t even try to fight him off. Only when he was on his feet did he shake Isak off, an angry look on his face.
‘Come on,’ Isak said, heading for the line of trees on a rise that was protecting the camp from the wind. Trusting Vesna would follow rather than argue with a turned back, Isak walked over the rise and sat down on an exposed root on the other side. He fished out a tobacco pouch and filled the bowl of his pipe and was lighting it with a brush of the thumb as Vesna appeared and sat down opposite. The white-eye looked out into the darkness beyond Ebarn’s invisible perimeter line. He still wasn’t sure how to proceed, and hoped Vesna would be the first to speak.
‘Well?’ Vesna demanded at last.
Isak shrugged. ‘Just looking to share a pipe with my friend.’ He offered it over and Vesna frowned.
‘You know I don’t.’
‘Ain’t sure of much these days.’ Isak tapped the depressions in his recently shaved head. ‘So much spilled out when this got cracked.’
‘I’m sorry, my Lord-’
‘No, I am,’ Isak interrupted.
‘For what?’
The white-eye turned to face him. ‘Do I really need to say?’
‘No.’ Vesna’s eyes fell. There was a long moment of quiet. ‘I don’t blame you — you know that, I hope?’
Isak nodded. ‘I do. There’s no shame in what you feel, none at all. It’s just a simple fact: I’m here and she isn’t. Death’s hard enough to deal with already.’
It’s hard enough to lose a friend, but a bride too? That’d break most men, and now he’s got to sit with the daemon’s plaything he used to call friend, and every moment’s a reminder that she ain’t coming back.
Vesna’s black-iron hand tightened involuntarily. Isak watched the fist form and slowly be forced open again. He freed his own left arm from the folds of his sleeve and held it up in the pale starlight. It didn’t look so horrific in this light; the scars and bleached-white skin became more of a dream that belonged to someone else.
‘Reckon I’ll glow bright white on my birthday, on Silvernight?’
Vesna gave a snort. ‘If you do, some damn fool will probably try to worship you.’
More silence. Isak found his words were caught in his throat, unable to fight their way through to be spoken.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Vesna asked at last. ‘These plans you made with Mihn and Ehla — why keep them secret from your closest friends?’
‘You would have tried to stop me.’
‘Of course I would! It was insane! Look at yourself, Isak, look at what you put yourself through — there had to be a better way!’
‘I couldn’t find one,’ he said softly. ‘And you — you had a life to lead, a family to hope for. Mihn chose to be a weapon in this war and I — well, I was born to be one. It didn’t make sense to ask that of anyone else.’
‘What about your family, your friends? What about the chaos back in Tirah? Lord Fernal is barely holding the Farlan together, and his grip is even more tenuous without the Palace Guard on hand!’
‘And if I had stayed in Tirah, fighting a civil war while Narkang falls to the Menin, forever frightened to face them in battle because I know it will mean my death? Who does that serve?’
Vesna gave up, unable to find the strength to argue further. ‘I only wish you’d told me, not let us mourn your death.’
‘I didn’t know if it would even work,’ Isak whispered. ‘Some days I’m still not sure.’
‘The news of your death — it broke Carel, you know? Aside from when he shook me from my grief, he couldn’t look me in the face.’
‘Who?’
Vesna looked up, remembering too late. Tears were leaking from Isak’s eyes, and his faced was screwed up in the pain of lost memories.
‘Carel,’ he said gently, ‘the father you should have had.’
Isak’s hand started to shake and he hunched over, his elbows clenched tight to his body as though protecting himself from blows. ‘Tell me,’ he croaked, ‘tell me about him.’
‘He-’ Vesna didn’t know where to start. For a while was paralysed by the sight of the shuddering white-eye, but at last he said, ‘He loved you like his own. He tempered you; you always said Carel helped you be more than just the colour of your eyes. He retired from the Ghosts when you were a child and worked as a wagon train guard. He was the one who taught an angry boy how to fight, and when not to. He would — ah, he would be amazed you’d bought your own tobacco for a change.’
‘If he was broken by news of my death,’ Isak said, ‘what would it do to him to know I can’t even remember him?’
The Mortal-Aspect of Karkarn looked Isak in the face, the ruby tear on his cheek glowing with inner light. ‘It would kill him.’
Isak smiled sadly and rose. ‘Perhaps it’s best he doesn’t know, then.’ He tapped out the pipe and turned to head for his bedroll, but then he hesitated. ‘I stole this from Sergeant Ralen though,’ he said, tucking the pipe away. ‘Maybe there’s still hope for us.’
The miles passed quickly, thanks to daily changes of horses and the advance supplies secured by the Ghosts. The locals were curious, but they were glad to see the soldiers, for nightfall brought lone daemons prowling the village boundary stones. This was a part of the country that had known peace for a long time, the garrison towns on the Tor Milist border ensuring Duke Vrerr’s mercenaries had looked elsewhere for plunder during the civil war there, so even foreign soldiers didn’t provoke much fear.
Vesna, Karkarn’s Iron General, drew the most curiosity. King Emin had been careful to spread the news that the God of War had favoured them with his Mortal-Aspect. Though he might scowl at the pointing fingers and whispered awe, it was clear Vesna was born to play such a role, willingly or not. The Farlan hero was tall and strong and handsome, and adulation settled naturally on his shoulders.
Behind the tattered shawl he used to shade his face from the afternoon sun, Isak smiled as he watched Vesna chafe under the attention. He didn’t need to remind anyone of their last journey together through Narkang lands: Isak Stormcaller, riding like a figure of myth in shining armour of liquid silver, a crowned emerald dragon on his cloak. Now he was anonymous in tattered clothes and a face masked by scars; marked out only by his size, he could be any hired Raylin mercenary.
At the southern border of Tor Milist they found Doranei and Zhia waiting for them at a ferry station with a large barge ready to take them all downriver. They would travel down the River Castir halfway to the sea, then follow the King’s Highway to Canar Thritt, around the slow-to-traverse hills south of Vanach and into the crumbling city-state itself. Mage Ashain would be sent here with a mirror, ready to provide them with an escape path, should one be required.
A small village had grown up around the ferry and as Isak’s party rode up they spotted the unlikely couple sitting at a table outside the inn, shaded from the evening light, with a bottle of wine between them. The villagers watched them arrive anxiously, not unhappy that the mercenaries would be staying overnight, but wary these days of anything that arrived in the waning light. As far as Isak could tell there had been few actual daemon attacks, but more scares or sightings, and many more rumours.
‘Now there are a few faces I could have gone a few months longer without seeing,’ Doranei called as boys ran out to stable the horses, jostling each other to reach Isak’s huge charger first. ‘But since you’re here, you might as well join us.’
He gestured expansively to the table while the travellers dismounted and stretched out the stiffness from their bodies.
‘Ah, there you are, Mistress,’ Doranei continued as the innkeeper appeared to survey her new guests. ‘I think we’ll need food and a lot more wine.’ He wagged a finger in Daken’s direction. ‘And a whole lot of beer for the fat one.’
Daken grinned and took up a seat opposite Doranei, his axe slung from one shoulder and saddlebags draped over his thigh. ‘You still being a sore loser then?’ the white-eye replied, taking Zhia’s hand to kiss in a fit of chivalry.
