'More like he doesn't know when he's lost,' Maze snapped, but her eyes held a distant softness as she beheld the stricken boy. Her hands moved almost of their own accord, wrapping the boy in his bed linens.
'Can you. .?' Kalmia began, looking at her hand and then up at Jaeriko, but the druid shook her head.
'Sorry. But I can take him to someone who can,' Jaeriko replied. The herbalist's eyes filled with fear. 'The General of Reth has nothing against the General of Arrabar's son. He sent us here to rescue him.'
Kalmia's eyes closed and her head fell back to rest upon the wall. Indecision held her features taut until resolution poured over them like a soothing balm. She opened gray eyes cleared from doubt.
'Take him, then,' Kalmia said. 'But go quickly. It is the general's habit to check on his son after vespers and before bed.'
'Way ahead of you,' said Maze.
Jaeriko looked over to see that Maze had finished bundling the boy in his sheets and was carrying him to the window. If the general came in and saw his son gone, Kalmia would likely prove yet another senseless casualty of the general's misplaced loyalty. It wasn't fair. Kalmia had doubtless already suffered enough for her care of the boy.
'You should come with us,' Jaeriko blurted, looking over her shoulder at Maze as she left the boy in the sheet at the window and climbed outside herself. 'The general will be angry-we can protect you.'
'No, I can't.'
'Why?'
'I just can't!' Kalmia said, wringing her hands. Jaeriko was about to press her further, but Maze glared at her from the window. Time was running out. 'He's got my brother,' Kalmia whispered. 'My brother. . He's always been there for me. Protected me. Even when the war got bad, and he was called away. Now it's my turn to protect him.' Her dark eyes searched Jaeriko's. 'I can't just leave him.'
Jaeriko softened. 'Then take this.' Unhooking a gnarled ivory wand from her belt, Jaeriko handed it to the trembling herbalist. Kalmia looked as though she was about to protest, so the druid added, 'For self-defense.'
'I won't use it,' the herbalist promised, but her fingers devoured the wand's shape.
Jaeriko ran over to the window, confident the woman would use it if she had to. Maze had just dropped to the ground, and held her arms out for the boy. Bracing her feet against the sides of the window, Jaeriko lowered the sheet-wrapped child into Maze's waiting arms. Then, with one look back at the herbalist and the now-empty sickroom, she, too, slipped out the window.
Ash snowed down from the charred trees around the citadel and drifted on the breeze in a gray miasma, choking their vision and their breath. The sickly green of faerie fire licked the gathering storm clouds above, heralding a tempest that had yet to be unleashed. Armed men stood still enough to be statues among the trees, their armor darkened with soot to match the forest's painted hue. The night was silent but for the trumpeting horn that echoed off the inside of the crumbling citadel.
It let them know he was coming.
Jaeriko and Maze stood by the boy they had rescued and the man they had brought him to-the General of Reth. Only one part remained to their task-the largest part of which was to stay alive. The smallest part of which was to keep the boy alive as well.
The boy, still swaddled in white linens, lay on a simple cot, lost in the oblivion of disease. His nursemaids, the blackened trees, stood all around him, and the General of Reth stood right behind him, holding a long, slender knife, like a surgeon's tool, to the boy's throat.
They waited like a drawn bow, aimed at the gate to the crumbling citadel.
The General of Arrabar burst through the gate like a lion, his ragged gold mane flying like a banner and his haunted green eyes fixed first on his son and then on the man above him. His face was haggard; his sins written as deeply upon his flesh as upon his soul. He was still dressed in the armor of Ilmater, with a white tabard emblazoned with the ribbon-threaded hands, but the white of the tabard had turned brown with dirt, and his armor bled with rust.
Twisted, pale men hung with the brassy remnants of armor poured out of the citadel and arrayed themselves around the Lion of Arrabar in a ghoulish honor guard. Upon reaching their positions, they stood still-unmoving and not breathing.
The General of Reth dipped the point of his knife in the hollow of the boy's throat and a drop of blood beaded there like sweat. The boy screamed, though whether in fevered dreams or pain, Jaeriko did not know.
'Stop! Don't kill him, Thais.' The General of Arrabar's face and voice twisted in distress.
'Tell me why I shouldn't, old friend,' said the General of Reth. He turned the knife to display its ruby shine. 'Surely he has suffered enough.'
'It's what she's been waiting for,' the General of Arrabar said. 'My bargain with Talona is broken the same moment as her hold on him-by death or by new life. If you kill my son, the ghouls will no longer obey me, the war will be lost, and all my suffering will be for nothing. Do you understand me? The boy's suffering will be for nothing.'
The General of Arrabar stood, an arm extended as though he could stop the knife from his son's throat by will alone. Thais, the General of Reth, eyed him, as expressionless as the walking dead.
'A bargain with the Lady of Poison, Paladin of Ilmater? Sacrificing your son, and for what-another chance for Arrabar to subjugate Reth and Hlath?'
'To keep our kingdom whole,' the General of Arrabar corrected. Thais shook his head.
'I wouldn't kill your son, Dominic,' Thais said, and he sheathed his knife. 'You were doing a fine job of that yourself.'
The moment the knife ceased threatening his son, all pleading left Dominic's face.
'Now!' the leonine general commanded, dropping his arm and drawing his sword. Ghouls swarmed forward like a plague of spiders over the crumbling walls and over their brethren, murderous animation driving their limbs to inhuman speeds.
Soldiers fell out of the woods to meet them, bringing shields to bear and forming a wall of steel around the general and against the oncoming horde. At a gesture from the general, Maze and Jaeriko snapped into position; Maze guarding the body of the boy, Jaeriko farther back, clasping one of Maze's knives in a white-knuckled hand and searching frantically for ghouls who might be trying to circumnavigate their defense. Bodies splattered unhurt against the shields of the living, testing the soldiers, who held it strong. She could hear the General of Arrabar shouting orders, and in answer, pale fingers sharpening into long yellow nails gripped the tops of the shields, and ravenous eyes cleared the wall.
Thais stood with his back to Jaeriko, between her and the battle, head bowed under the ashen rain as though in mourning for the deaths to come. Soft brown hair obscured his features, and his shoulders were back. Then his hands shot out, fingers spread like talons, and clamped into the blackened bark of the trees that guarded him.
Darkness seeped out of the charred trees and out of his skin, spilling onto the ground and down his body like sap. His men cheered as the waves of night overtook them, but the ghouls skittered and keened, pulling themselves back away from the shield wall, unwilling to step into the spread shy;ing sea of glistening ebony. It overcame them anyway. Thais's head snapped back, stars burning for eyes, and the roiling shadows took flight, swirling upward in a deepening tide until everything was painted in shades of black.
Then the shield wall broke and surged forward, and the battle was joined in earnest.
An explosion of light burst from Reth's general, and for a heartbeat, even the shadows ceased to exist. Jaeriko could see soldiers in the process of impaling ghouls and ghouls with their long fingers plucking out human eyes. Maze stood in front of the boy, her long knife wet and dripping, spinning low with a leg extended at knee height. And the General of Reth dropped down from the heavens like a bird of prey, angling his burning blade at the paladin of Ilmater, who just managed to raise a sword in defense. The dark general hit the ground, and the paladin spun with the energy of the deflected blade, angling a strike at his opponent's back.
Just as it looked as though the blade would shear the General of Reth in half, he rolled backward and to his feet, slicing at Arrabar's unprotected neck, but the paladin stepped forward and bashed the hilt of his sword up into his opponent's face. The dark generals head snapped back and he stumbled, his body weaving. A well-planted kick on Reth's ribs threw the wounded general to the ground. Arrabar lunged after him, his sword poised for the killing stroke. His would-be victim cracked a smile, and an ebony tide swept over the battle, plunging the forest into darkness.
