Crusader

“Someone died?” Aisling asked. “No … someone was killed, if there’s that much blood.” Martaina could hear the young dark elf, and the slow line of reasoning as she drew it out in her head.

“How close by?” Odellan asked. “After all, there are armies encamped to our east, north and west-”

“Somewhere between here and Enrant Monge, I think,” Martaina said, sifting through it.

“Let’s go take a look.” Aisling’s hand went to her dagger, resting on the hilt, palming it. “After all, it could be-”

Odellan whistled, and a few nearby warriors came trotting over. “Short march. I’ll need a couple of rangers as well, as runners if need be. And a healer, so someone fetch one and bring them to catch up.” He looked to Martaina. “Lead on?”

“Yes,” Martaina said, and let her bow find her hand, and an arrow nocked itself. “Follow.”

She didn’t run through the trees, not exactly, but followed the path, the one that Aisling and the others from the northern expedition had come in on just moments earlier. The wind had shifted directions, now, and was blowing from the east. I hope what we’re looking for is on the path, because wandering afield on a search like this will be like trying to hit an apple at forty yards with a black hood on. She smiled. I can do it, but it’ll strain me.

The wind was fair but shifted again as they got closer down the path. It was all woods around them now, slight bluffs and rises on one side of the road. She ran along, her feet on the uneven path, the suggestion of rocks through the leather soles of her shoes. Hers gave flexibility but not as much support or protection. But neither were they as weighty as what the warriors wore, either, and she had to slow down to keep from outrunning the escort behind her.

The wind shifted again, and the smell was obvious now, close, a bend or two ahead in the road. Too many scents, mingled together to make a distinction about what she was smelling other than blood. The leaves whipped by her on either side, the string of her bow bit into her fingers the way it always had, the elven twine. It wasn’t a problem and hadn’t been in the thousand years since she first started to use it, but it was there, the pull of the string, just another feeling, a reminder to her that she was alive.

She came around the corner, a hard twist in the road just beyond a rise that blocked the view and there it was; blood, plenty of it, oozed out all over the road. The bodies were gone, dragged off, save one, the black armor so familiar that she knew the scent then, at least one of them. Martaina heard a hiss behind her as Aisling came around the berm, and she too saw what was there in the road.

The body was laid out, defaced in the cruelest ways possible, the head missing. The sword was still there, amazingly enough, and stuck in the body, which had been stripped naked, the armor left off to the side. It was still obvious, even so, whose body it was, being so tall and muscled as it was. She dropped next to it, felt the slide on the dirt road against her knees, as her fingers ran over the shoulder, as though she could offer the corpse some reassurance.

Aisling was across from her now, kneeling, not saying anything. There was a pall and quiet, the warriors who had followed them speaking only in hushed voices. It was obvious to them, too, who it was, and the rage and tension in the air was palpable. The words “The General” were bandied about, over and over, and she heard one of the rangers that had followed along running back to camp even as another ran down the road toward Enrant Monge.

“How long?” Aisling asked, jarring Martaina out of the long stare she had given the uneven cut around the throat, the place where the lifeblood was draining out onto the sand even now, aided more by gravity than the beating of a heart that had ceased minutes ago. Martaina looked up at the dark elf, who stared her down, and in the red eyes there was a fierce flame, as though the gates of the Realm of Fire had opened and all blazes had spilled loose into the dark elf’s soul. “How long?”

“He’s been dead ten, perhaps fifteen minutes,” Martaina said as she felt the arm again. It wasn’t cool to the touch, not yet, and wouldn’t exactly cool in the warm summer sun. “It’s possible that the head is around here, somewhere-”

“Unlikely,” Odellan said, and he was standing over them. “If someone takes a head, it’s either meant as spite to deprive them of resurrection or it’s a trophy. It’s not meant to be done just to kick it around a clearing.” The elf grew thoughtful, his helm held in the crook of his arm, his usually dark, sun-kissed skin a bit white. “Not in an orchestrated attack like this.”

“Hoygraf, then,” Aisling said, and she stood. “Actaluere.”

“That would seem the most likely.” Martaina stood, the wind blowing a few grains of sand from the road across her face along with a few stray strands of hair.

“This is not an opportune time or place for us to make war on Actaluere,” Odellan said, responding more to the sudden rumble that ran through the thirty or so warriors, armored and armed, standing behind him arrayed along the road and even up on the embankment. “Calm yourselves.”

“I don’t wish to calm myself,” Aisling said, though she kept her pitch well under control. “I wish to find the bastards responsible and collect their heads for myself while returning his to where it belongs.”

“This is not a moment for rash action,” Odellan said.

“This is not a moment when we can afford to wait and NOT act, either,” Aisling said. “We have less than forty minutes to find his head and have a healer reattach it or else he will not be coming back to life. I would have to guess that will put at least some kink in our efforts to defend Luukessia.”

“We cannot simply charge into the midst of the army of Actaluere,” Odellan said, “regardless of how strong our suspicions might be. What if this is some feint by Galbadien, some political game by the Syloreans? Or a simple, ill-timed and gruesome bandit attack?”

“This is about as likely to be a bandit attack as you are to sprout gills and start swimming about in the wellsprings under Saekaj Sovar,” came a voice from the embankment. Martaina looked up, but not far; Partus stood there, a few feet above them, along with others now arriving, trickling in from the encampment as the news spread. The clink of chains heralded the arrival of Mendicant, Terian in tow. The dark knight’s eyes flashed as he saw the body, but his mouth was covered by the gag and his expression muted by the cloth that covered half his face.

“What’s he doing here?” Martaina asked Mendicant. She saw the goblin start in surprise at being addressed.

“I couldn’t just leave him at the campsite,” Mendicant said. “They’re all heading over here, now. So I brought him along.”

“He’s probably getting a deep feeling of joy from seeing this,” Aisling said, leering at Terian. The dark knight shrugged then shook his head. “No? Must be because you wanted the joy of doing it for yourself.” She waited, and Terian looked at her knowingly then nodded once. “A finer friend I doubt he’s ever known,” she said, and touched the headless body with the toe of her shoe, delicate, almost a caress. “At least when he killed your father, he didn’t know what he was doing, that he was harming you. His excuse was duty; what’s yours? Spite?”

“Enough of this,” Odellan said. “We need the officers, and we need them now.”

“They won’t be here for twenty more minutes,” Aisling said, wheeling about on him. “By then it’ll be too late to act. Do whatever you will, but I’m going to the Actaluere encampment. I’m likely to stir some trouble, and anyone who wants to come with me-”

“No,” Martaina said. “You know he wouldn’t want it. Not like this. Not a war without any proof, not a fight to no purpose. Odellan is right; we don’t know for fact it is Actaluere.”

“You’re a fool if you think it’s otherwise,” Aisling said, her eyes narrowed. “But since you make mention of it, there were other bodies here and now they’re gone. Why don’t we simply follow the trail, oh skillful ranger?” She indicated the drag marks in the dirt of the road that led off the embankment, back up into the woods, with a sweeping gesture that was as much sarcasm as grandiloquence. “You know … while we wait for the officers to appear and make their august rulings and decisions and whatnot.”

Martaina wanted to slap her own forehead. Of course. Follow the trail. She didn’t waste time agreeing or disagreeing, but instead sprang into motion, her feet finding purchase on the embankment as she followed the drag marks. It was a short jaunt, only a few feet, as the bodies were tucked into the underbrush, covered by a few pine needles and a couple of fallen branches. Their livery was obvious, and the smell of the fish and sea that was so dominant in the soldiers of Actaluere that she had met was present.

“The most obvious conclusion is most often the right one,” Aisling said, and her daggers were in her hands now. “Actaluere soldiers, dead at the edge of Praelior.”