'Don't make me regret this,' Maze said, and she stomped off to examine the boy. Jaeriko watched her go, then turned to the woman whose eyes reflected much of the terror she'd felt that day.
'You're the boy's caretaker?' Jaeriko asked. She placed one hand on the hilt of the knife, and one hand on the flesh it pinned. The woman nodded and bit her lip. Jaeriko pulled the knife out with a wet slurping sound. The woman's lip began to bleed and she swayed on her feet, but she did not cry out.
'I can't heal him,' the woman said. Her voice was weak with pain.
'Shhh. No one's asking you to,' Jaeriko said, stroking the torn meat of the woman's hand. The wound was deep. Even with magical healing, it would take awhile for it to regain its dexterity. 'Now who are you—are you a servant of Talona?' The woman looked horrified at the thought of the goddess of disease. A good sign, Jaeriko thought.
'Ilmater, like the general is—was,' the woman said. She sucked in a breath as Jaeriko dug her fingertips into the wound, her other hand clasped around her locket. 'My name is Kalmia. I'm an herbalist. The general keeps me because I can't do any harm—or good—without his supplies.' Kalmia closed her eyes in relief as golden swirls of healing magic coursed through Jaeriko's fingertips and puckered the woman's flesh closed. It wasn't much—it would still leave a nasty scar and it would take a couple of days for the feeling to come back, but it should be enough to keep her from disease or permanent injury. 'He only gives me enough herbs to keep his son alive— never enough to cure him or to end his suffering.'
'What kind of man does this to his son?' Jaeriko said, more to the world than to the red-haired woman holding her healed but still blood-drenched hand and staring at it as though it wouldn't obey her commands. The fingers twitched but refused fuller motion.
'The general does not like losing,' Kalmia said, sighing and letting her hand rest, useless, by her side.
'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
