A Darkness Forged in Fire Read online

  "Let's go home," he said.

  Jir stared at him with apparent disdain. Konowa wasn't sure he didn't deserve it.

  They walked for several minutes before he found a tree that he'd notched earlier that day with his small hunting hatchet. Cutting a tree was as much an act of defiance as an aid to navigation. The elves of his tribe would have been appalled to see him deface a tree with a steel ax, but they weren't here to guide him.

  Feeling smug, Konowa lengthened his stride. He took one complete step and pitched forward into an unseen hollow.

  "Yirka umno!" Konowa swore as he fell. He landed with a thud. As he lay there catching his breath, he realized with some surprise that he'd used a tribal curse, invoking summer lightning, the forest's most feared natural predator. I'm going native, he thought, pushing himself up to his hands and knees. He froze halfway up, coming face to rear with the hindquarters of one severely agitated skunk dragon.

  "Yirka!" Konowa shouted, scrambling backward as the awful-smelling fire burst forth. He began to roll and beat at the flames, all the while gagging on the stench. Jir growled and wagged his tail furiously at the little black dragon and was no help at all. Konowa rolled and beat out the last of the foul-smelling flames, cursing all the while. He staggered to his feet, wielding his musket like a club, ready to dash the animal's brains onto the forest floor, but the dragon had already scampered off. Finally running out of breath, he leaned his musket against a tree, unstoppered his canteen, and poured the contents over his head.

  He stood like that for several seconds, his face dripping, his chest heaving, and his eyes darting wildly from side to side like an elf possessed. When the roar of blood in his ears quieted enough for him to hear the perpetual hum of the forest, he flung the canteen away. No sooner had he thrown it away and watched it disappear among the trees than he realized he'd need it.

  Konowa took stock of his situation. Aside from what felt like a bad case of sunburn, he was uninjured. His uniform, however, was absolutely ruined. He stripped off his cartridge pouch, shirt, boots and trousers, leaving only his loincloth on as he gingerly hopped from foot to foot on the carpet of nettles from the bushlike tree he found himself under.

  After a few moments of that, Konowa decided it was time to try something new. Thoughts of the clean, cool water by the hut spurred him to action. Shooting a withering glance at Jir, he put his boots back on after carefully brushing any clinging nettles off his bare feet. Flies, gnats, and a dozen other bugs he couldn't identify were now buzzing about his head, but none dared land; the stench of the skunk dragon acting as the first effective remedy he'd found to keep them at bay. Picking up his musket, he hung his soiled clothes and pouches from the muzzle and rested the weapon on his shoulder.

  "What else can go wrong?" he muttered, and started to walk for home with Jir padding alongside at a discreet distance.

  The unmistakable sound of a tree falling carried in the twilight, and for the briefest of moments, Konowa sensed pain. It was gone so fast he wasn't sure it had happened, but when he looked over at Jir he knew something wasn't right. The bengar stood stiff-legged, his ears straight up, muzzle sniffing the air.

  "It's nothing," Konowa lied, and kept walking, anxious to outpace the smell that clung to him. The light was fading quickly now, and he wanted to get back to the hut before it was completely dark. The sound of the forest changed at night, a subtle, gradual shift that crept up on the unsuspecting…along with things that made no sound at all.

  Konowa turned to scold Jir to get a move on. The bengar was gone.

  "Jir," he called softly. Jir had excellent hearing, but that wasn't why Konowa kept his voice low—the forest had gone silent. The constant hum of life that surged through the trees was absent, the forest was preternaturally still, as if time itself had ceased to exist.

  "Not good," Konowa whispered to himself as he tipped the clothes from his musket and began to load the weapon, just to be safe.

  Cradling the musket in front of his body, Konowa checked that the flint was still secure, then half-cocked the hammer as his old regiment's collect sounded in his ears.

  Heavenly spirits, who watch over us…

  He fished out a cartridge from his pouch with his right hand, bringing the waxed paper tube up to his mouth in one practiced motion and biting the end off.

  …guide us into battle and make sure our hand…

  The gunpowder mixed with his saliva and he grimaced at its familiar salty, bitter taste.

  …that we might slay our enemy…

  The weight of the small lead bullet pressed against his tongue, and he heard again the whip-crack of regimental pennants unfurled in a gusting wind, the creaking timber of gun carriages, the whinnying of horses, the pounding of their hooves, and the echoing barks of sergeants relaying their officers' commands.

  …destroy them as those that went before us…

  A tremor of anticipation coursed through Konowa's body.

  …and keep our honored place as your faithful servants, your harbingers of death. We are the warriors of the Hynta. We fear nothing, for we are the Iron Elves!

  "Amen," Konowa said out loud, no longer alone.

  He prepared the musket for firing to the cadence of a sergeant long ago dead, killed by a swarm of battle-crazed orcs in a land even more foreign than this. Something cold and black touched Konowa then, and he felt the presence of the lost souls of his old regiment. He trickled a little gunpowder into the pan of the musket before closing the hammer. Keeping time with the past, he set the musket butt down in front of him and poured the remaining charge down the barrel before stuffing the lead ball and finally the paper cartridge after it. Without pause, he pulled out the ramrod slung beneath the barrel from the four brass pipes that held it in place and tamped down the wadding and bullet, all the while scanning the forest. He replaced the ramrod and brought the musket up to his hip, imagining the bristling line of soldiers to his left and right and drawing comfort from their stoic silence.

  He nudged the cock all the way back, the chunk of flint held in its steel jaws glinting with purpose. He stood like that for several seconds, his hands growing slick on the wooden portions of the gun. All too quickly the nostalgia of the past bled away, leaving him alone again in a strange land very far from home.

  Another sound came from somewhere to his left and Konowa moved toward it, allowing his senses to guide his feet as he kept his eyes searching the shadows ahead. The stillness of the forest hung like a veil from the branches, and the longer he walked the harder it seemed to push forward. He had decided he would only walk another fifty yards when he stepped into a clearing, and what had only been an exceptionally bad day became a waking nightmare.

  FOUR

  Not more than thirty yards away across the clearing crouched four rakkes around a fallen tree.

  Four seven-foot-tall, boulder-shouldered, black, scraggly haired rakkes all staring at Konowa with milky eyes deep-set in scarred, leathery faces.

  But rakkes were extinct.

  What Konowa was seeing was impossible, yet he knew they were rakkes. He'd seen the drawings on stretched hides handed down from generation to generation, heard the ancient tales, even held a skull of one of the creatures in his hands. They had lived high in the mountain, coming down like nightfall to ravage the land below. The elves of the Long Watch had hunted them down and destroyed them. Centuries ago, and an ocean away.

  Yet all of that meant nothing now. Four rakkes were only thirty yards away from him. They stood up as one, teetering slightly in this new bipedal stance, like drunks one round away from falling. Long, curving claws slid out from pawlike hands that hung down by their knees.

  The largest of them opened its mouth to reveal long, yellow fangs glistening with saliva. It screamed a high, mewling cry and the other three responded in kind, shaking the forest floor.

  It was a sound as cold and black as the depths of time it should have been lost in.

  "Cawwnnnawahhhh…"

  Konowa's ch
est heaved, his breath rushing out as forcefully as if he'd been hit with a cannonball.

  The largest of the four rakkes had clearly said his name. The creature's mouth contorted with the effort as it struggled to pronounce it, its tongue more used to moving around lacerated flesh than words.

  "Cawwnnnawahhhh…"

  He should have run away. It was the sensible thing to do.

  Konowa fired his musket, then ran straight at the rakkes, screaming for all he was worth.

  There was a loud crack, followed by a huge billowing cloud of acrid-smelling smoke flecked with sparks as the musket bucked in his hands. The musket ball passing through the chest of the rakke saying his name with a wet thwack, blowing out chunks of eerily white spine through the now gaping hole in its back.

  Running hard, Konowa grabbed the musket by its warm muzzle and swung the weapon in a smooth arc at a second rakke's head. The musket struck flesh and bone, jarring Konowa's arms and shoulders and cutting off his yell as he bit his tongue. The closest rakke went down whimpering, its skull crushed like an eggshell, one white eye pulped and oozing down its cheek. Konowa laughed then, a habit he had in battle, tasting the salty liquid of his own blood in his mouth. He swung a low backstroke at another rakke, feeling the satisfying crunch of bones travel up the musket and into his own.

  A set of claws whistled by his head and Konowa dove forward, ducking underneath. His right shoulder slammed into the body of a rakke, and he pivoted onto his heels and brought the muzzle of the musket upward with all his strength.

  The rakke screamed as the steel barrel slammed into its stomach, but without a bayonet on its end the musket only enraged the beast. The rakke wrapped both massive arms around Konowa and crushed him to its chest. Konowa was lifted off his feet and swung wildly through the air as he desperately tried to let go of the musket and reach for the hatchet strapped to his calf. He heard a crack—and a bolt of lightning exploded in his chest as one of his ribs snapped. His head growing lighter by the second, Konowa finally pried his hands free and reached for the hatchet. His fingers crawled along his leg in a weakening search as the grip around his chest tightened.

  He found the handle, only to have it drop from his fingers as he was physically pounded into the ground. Konowa's breath rushed out of him in a scream, and he lay helpless on his back, waiting for the end to come.

  A pair of milky eyes came down to hover inches from his, and he could smell the putrid raw meat of the rakke's last meal. Konowa smiled in one last act of defiance.

  Jagged white teeth flashed in front of his eyes and hot, steaming blood splashed across his face.

  When he focused his vision again, all he could see above him were stars. Konowa drew in a shuddering breath and propped himself up on one elbow.

  Jir held the rakke by the throat, shaking the massive beast like wheat in a storm. When Jir was satisfied it was dead, he opened his mouth, letting the rakke's body fall to the ground with a thump.

  Three more dark forms dotted the clearing, and the smell of blood and death thickened the air. Calling on the last reserves of his strength, Konowa staggered to his feet, using his musket as a crutch. Jir looked up at him and bared his fangs, a chunk of rakke flesh hanging out the side of his mouth.

  "Easy, boy, I'll never be that hungry," he said, carefully sidestepping the feeding bengar to check that the other three rakkes were once again extinct. The large one that he had shot was clearly dead, the fist-sized hole in its back already swarming with flies. He could see the same was true of the second one he had hit, and Jir was making a meal of the third's innards. That meant Jir must have also killed the fourth one.

  Konowa looked around for the body, spying one crumpled twenty yards away. He limped toward it, but immediately saw that something wasn't right.

  As he got closer he realized it was an elfkynan woman. So where was the fourth rakke? He looked back at Jir, but the bengar showed no sign of unease as it ate. The fourth creature must have fled and never looked back.

  Konowa let go of the musket and stumbled the last few feet to the woman's side, kneeling carefully while still holding his aching ribs. The woman lay facedown, dressed in huntsman's garb of toughened linen dyed brown and green. Like most of her people, she had dark skin, darker even than Konowa's. With only starlight and his own elvish eyes, Konowa could just make out the intricate pattern of tattoos that adorned her arms. A single plait of long brown hair with dull-looking bits of pearl woven in it snaked down her back and lay in a coil on the ground. Bracing himself for what he would find, he grabbed the body by the shoulders and gently turned it over.

  Only the ingrained reactions of a warrior saved him as a thin stiletto dagger flew up. Konowa jerked forward so that the flat of her palm, and not the blade, hit the side of his neck. Before she could thrust again, Konowa butted the top of his head into the side of her face and rolled out of range.

  A startled yell pierced the meadow and Jir growled in surprise, lifting his blood-stained muzzle into the air, spewing bits of meat. Konowa fought to stay conscious while he looked around for his musket. He finally spotted it, but it was too far away. The woman was already on her feet and advancing toward him when she suddenly wobbled and sat straight down, the stiletto tumbling from her hand.

  Konowa's eyes went to the dagger. The blade gleamed unnaturally under the starlight, and he realized it was polished wood, not unlike the oath weapons of the Long Watch. He looked back at her and waited a moment to see if dropping the dagger was a ploy, but she just sat there, her eyes unfocused. The head butt must have done the trick after all. Choosing caution as the better part of valor, he sat perfectly still and concentrated on regaining his breath. While he did so, he studied the woman across from him.

  She was definitely no elf. Konowa stared at her alluring face, drawn in by the almond-shaped eyes. He guessed she was no more than twenty, although the elfkynan's exotic look meant matrons in their fifties could look much younger. Whatever her age, her smooth, dark skin and full lips were a wonderful change after having only Jir's furry face to stare at. And then there was the matter of her rather quick reflexes. Konowa tried to chuckle, the absurdity of the day growing by the minute, but the effort sent stabbing knives through his chest and he gave up.

  When the pain finally subsided to a more manageable level of agony, Konowa slowly stood. Speaking Gharsi, the most common of the twenty-three languages spoken in Elfkyna, Konowa hoped he could make himself understood. "I don't want to hurt you," he said, "well, again, anyway." Each word was a sharp stitch in his rib cage.

  The sound of his voice jarred her back to sensibility and her eyes narrowed. She scooped the dagger from the ground in one swift motion. Konowa remained still, hoping she didn't have the strength to come at him again. He wasn't sure he had any left to fend her off if she did.

  "Who are you?" she asked, answering in the common tongue of the Empire, marking her as educated. She risked a quick glance around the meadow. "And what are those things?"

  "My name is Konowa," he said, slowly lowering his hands. "Those things…are rakkes. Creatures perverted by a dark magic. They were supposedly destroyed a long, long time ago." Suspicion made him cautious, despite the pain. "Their master was an elf-witch…"

  Her eyes narrowed. "I saw no elf-witch," she said coldly. She looked over at the dead rakkes scattered about the clearing. "So why are these things here, now?"

  Konowa stared at her for a long moment before answering, trying to gauge her sincerity. He finally decided she wasn't responsible for them…though he hoped his reasoning went deeper than his immediate attraction to her. "I couldn't begin to guess," he lied, refusing to contemplate why and how one of them called his name. "They shouldn't be. They're supposed to be extinct."

  "So you keep saying," she said, the skepticism in her voice plain.

  "Well, if something's extinct it should bloody well stay extinct, right?" Konowa said, suddenly exasperated by it all.

  She opened her mouth to say something else, then paused, l
ooking at him with renewed interest.

  "Your name again?"

  "Konowa," he said, feeling a sudden sense of dread.

  "Colonel Konowa Heer Ul-Osveen of the Iron Elves?"

  If blood could freeze in this steaming cauldron of a land, Konowa's did. Only minutes ago he'd thought his past was as dead as rakkes were supposed to be.

  She looked up at him with eyes as green as the forest around him, and he saw his doom in them.

  "The slayer of the Viceroy?" she asked again, finally sheathing her stiletto and rising slowly to her feet.

  "Among others," he said, sinking to the forest floor.

  She walked over and looked down at him. "I've been looking for you."

  She took a deep breath, brushed a strand of hair from her eyes, and from within the hunting jacket she wore pulled a thin paper scroll bearing a large wax seal, which she expertly broke with a fingernail. Konowa closed his eyes and prayed for deliverance.

  "Konowa Heer Ul-Osveen, by royal decree as dutifully witnessed this day in the Greater Protectorate of Elfkyna of the Calahrian Empire, you are hereby ordered to resume your commission as an officer in Her Majesty's Imperial Army effective immediately. Oh, and sir," she continued, a look of concern crossing her face, "I strongly suggest that at the first opportunity, you take a bath and put some clothes on. Your time of communing with nature is at an end."

  Konowa sighed. If anything was to deliver him from this fate, it was probably out lost in the bloody forest.

  FIVE

  No."

  She let the scroll roll up with a snap and kicked a nettle with her foot, sending it bouncing toward Konowa and forcing him to turn over onto his side. He winced with pain as tiny flashes of light popped and winked before his eyes. Despite the fresh reminder of his ravaged rib cage, he noticed for the first time that she wore delicate-looking sandals of woven green grass revealing portions of her slender brown feet. She couldn't have walked far at all in those, he realized. "You will report to the nearest encampment at once," she said as if speaking to a slightly dull child. "Besides, we'll be safer with the army than out here in the forest with those extinct creatures around."