Three Coins for Confession Read online

  All of it seemed so long ago now. An itch in mind, like the itch of his once-missing finger. A memory someone else had passed to him, not something from his own life. A secret he would keep as he kept the secret of his sight, his hearing. His father.

  Another thing he might be killed for if the truth were ever known.

  In the back rank, he was less important as point watcher, his keen eyes no use where the trails ahead were obscured by a screen of trunks and low-hanging branches and the constant fall of evergreen leaves. Ambush from behind was always a risk, but he trusted his hearing to warn him of any approach or bowshot, even as he focused his sight on the ground at his horse’s feet.

  Something about the trail tugged at his mind, harrying at his senses without revealing itself. Something wrong, like he’d tried to tell Thelaur, but he still had no idea what it was. He hung low across his horse’s neck to scan the dirt and moss of the track, half-thinking about dropping down to his feet for an even closer look, but not wanting to risk the sergeant’s wrath.

  All at once, he made a fast halt, hauling straight back on the reins to bring his horse to a stop. As he stepped it backward three paces, Chriani chopped his hand to his palm three times, loud. The two other back-rank riders skidded to a stop and wheeled back toward him, even as they echoed the signal for the riders ahead. To a casual listener, the steady staccato beat would sound like the fast thump of wings. A grouse sailing clear of some obstacle before touching down again. It was the signal for fall back, imminent danger. Every bow was ready and nocked, every eye to the trees, horses guided by knees and instinct as they circled in close.

  Thelaur split the line, a smallsword in each hand as she stopped beside Chriani. He was already on the ground, close up and peering at the sign that had stopped him.

  “Explain,” she hissed.

  “There,” Chriani said, though in truth, it was a moment before even he saw it. From the mad jumble of markings and impressions that movement and nature laid down on the trail, his senses had caught it even before his mind could make sense of it. The edge of a single hoof print, a horse unshod. Regular notches in the leading edge of the toe callus. An impression created, like three circles cut into a half-moon. “We need to move. Fall back to…”

  “Explain,” Thelaur said again, louder this time. Her voice was ice.

  “Ilvani horse track,” Chriani whispered. He marked off one print beneath circled fingers, shifted back to mark off another. A long pace apart, the horse moving quickly. The Ilvani rode their horses unshod, trusting to the strength of callus built up on the soft forest trails, and to varnishes with which they painted their steeds’ hooves. It was hard as iron and long lasting, but no Ilmari alchemist had yet been able to recreate it.

  “I’ve seen this horse before,” he said. “More than once.” It had been three times, in fact, the memory coming back to him. “The farmstead patrols. Twice, a week past. Then the first time a week before that, the half-blood shepherd with his root cellar burned and his flock and best dogs shot. Each time we followed the raiders’ trail, I’ve seen this mark, lord.”

  Chriani used the honorific of rank rarely heard in the presence of anyone below captain outside the Bastion. He knew in advance how little it would do to improve Thelaur’s mood.

  The iron-hard hooves of the Ilvani horses left marks as distinct as any boot print, but Chriani was certain he was one of the few in the troop who ever bothered to read them. The softer dirt of the open fields where the raiders ventured forth from the forest by night held the tracks best. Here within the forest, across its tangled floor of leaf mold and loam, dark earth torn through and pounded down by the horses’ passage, only the barest hint of the prints could be read. Not enough to note the faint but distinct details worn into the tread of each Ilvani steed. Not except this one.

  “So as we pursue those raiders,” Thelaur hissed, “you’re somehow surprised to find them ahead of us?”

  “Not ahead of us, lord. Beside.” Chriani pointed in the two directions along the axis of both tracks, then marked out the edge of the nearest beneath his hand again, hoping against hope that Thelaur would actually see it. Shadow on shadow, a faint impression in the dark. But it was there, he was sure of it. “This one, cutting across our path northward, even as we move east. They’ve slipped off the trail to wait for us while we follow first squad.”

  If Sergeant Thelaur’s look could kill, Chriani understood that he would have been dead, burned, and spread as ash months before. He ignored that look this time as he had all the rest.

  “They’re setting an ambush, sergeant. We need to fall back.”

  Thelaur spit in response. Chriani felt and saw a surge of impatience shift through the other riders as they edged away.

  “Your shadow chasing and your thoughts of yourself as a tracker try my tolerance,” the sergeant murmured. “You’ve cost us time and light.” She called out to the others, voice louder than was safe. An edge of anger in her that Chriani knew was all for him. “East, three and three, before third squad rides over us.”

  She spurred her horse forward as Chriani angrily swung himself up to the saddle. As the sergeant pressed on ahead of him, an ash-grey Ilvani arrow took her through the chest.

  It happened slowly, as it always did.

  The hiss of the arrow and the scattering of leaves were loud in Chriani’s mind. The warning he shouted sounded out through the shimmering green shadow of the wood — “Black scout marked! Black scout!” An immobile ambush. Rangers down. A call for anyone within earshot to fall in, come to the rescue. But his voice was lost to his own ears as he tracked the flight of arrows erupting from the shadows to all sides.

  He saw and heard eight archers, then stopped counting. He felt the panic rising from all sides as horses and riders scrambled to get clear, saw the confusion as the other rangers circled. All new-made guards like him, younger by two years or more. Panicking now as their sergeant clutched feebly at the gout of blood that fountained out around the dark shaft, the serrated hunting head still clinging to fragments of flesh and leather where it had punched out her back.

  Thelaur’s horse took the brunt of a second volley as it screamed and reared. Chriani had to fight to twist his own horse around, grabbing Thelaur as she slipped from the saddle. The muscles of his shoulder and back screamed in protest as he twisted to pull her across him, felt his horse balk as he turned it hard.

  The light of life was already gone from the sergeant’s eyes, the blood soaking her cloak and armor spilling warm across Chriani’s arm. He hung onto her all the same as he let his senses loose, felt as much as heard the hiss of horses moving within the leaves. Almost surrounded, but he saw the one opening still left to them, marked the sliver of path it held.

  “Ride!” he shouted. “On me!” Then with a kick, his horse was off, the others following close behind.

  The sun was well past high, the great roof of limni overhead eating the daylight hungrily and showering the forest floor with faint stains of green and gold. Dusk was on its way, the gathering gloom of the forest’s early night already pursuing them from the east as they rode.

  “Gold scout marked!” someone behind him was shouting, setting their westward trajectory back toward the forest wall. The voice was punctuated by intermittent arrows flashing past them, Chriani marking their trajectory as he shifted the squad’s course, trusting his horse to hold the trail. A single glance back showed him the Ilvani, riding bareback at speed. Their armor was green leather when they wore it, but many of the Valnirata rode only in light cloaks of mottled green and grey, their clan war-marks set across them in twisting lines of black. Their fleet horses were painted patchwork with mud, letting mount and riders all but fade away unseen within the shadows.

  He needed to make sure the rest of the squad stayed close, even as he had no idea what he would do if one of them fell. He was desperate to retrace the route they had followed into the forest, knowing the disaster that would come of hitting one of the Ilvani’s dead ends
at speed. He was even more desperate to reach for the horse bow at his hip, but it was taking both hands and all his strength to hold Thelaur fast across the saddle. She hung head down and limp, the blood that dripped from her caught on the clutching wall of leaves and branches as it whipped past.

  “Red scout stands!” came a familiar voice from the trees ahead. Rangers holding, countersigning Chriani and the other riders’ approach. Too close.

  Something twisted in his stomach as he shouted, “Break right!” Not one of the rangers’ codes, but just a desperate warning. He hauled his horse hard to the side, felt it scramble off the path just in time.

  Thelaur had been right. Third squad had almost ridden them down in the time it had taken Chriani to fail in explaining the tracks he’d seen. They were scattered across three sections of trailhead, ranked around a broad grove of new limni growing within a hollow marked out by the crumbling stumps of three once-great trees. Six riders led by Umeni, ranking guard of the troop under Thelaur.

  One of those six riders was Kathlan, sitting her horse at Umeni’s right hand. It was her voice Chriani had heard. He was afraid suddenly, felt a chill trace up his spine. He was aware of his breathing, the pounding of his heart as Kathlan expertly slipped the chestnut mare she rode back and away, giving him and the others room as they slewed their foam-flecked horses to both sides.

  “Ilvani!” he shouted, to Kathlan and Umeni and all the rest. “Through the grove! Shoot from cover!”

  The rangers at his back continued on their course with a sureness that surprised him, Kathlan following suit as she turned her horse and spurred ahead. But the attention of Umeni and his other riders was focused entirely on Thelaur slumped across Chriani’s horse. Her sergeant’s insignia was barely visible in the gloom.

  “Report…” Umeni said as he tried to get his horse in front of Chriani’s. He was Thelaur’s second, had control of the troop by right in her absence.

  “Move!” Chriani struck Thelaur’s horse on the flank, driving it forward as he rode past.

  They had bows drawn and arrows nocked, horses twisting between the tight screen of the trees as the Ilvani shifted behind and around them. The hiss of arrows was a moment’s warning, the haze of dark shafts arcing toward them from three directions. Even to Ilvani eyes, though, the screen of trees was a wall that those shafts were shattered and split off against as fast as they were fired. As they always did, the Valnirata warriors fought in an unsettling silence. No battle cries, no orders called out. No sound from the dying.

  A warning shout against spell-fire came from somewhere to Chriani’s right. Spellcasting was second nature to the Ilvani, but the war-mages of the prince’s guard were few and far between. He saw knives of white light flash within the trees, heard the cries of rangers and horses as they were struck but ran on.

  Kathlan was racing hard and close beside him. She was the best rider in the troop, and showed it by the way she twisted her horse through brush and undergrowth. She might be the best rider of all Chanist’s rangers one day. But even so, Chriani had to fight the urge to vault toward her, hold himself in front of her as if that would make any difference to the peril riding hard on their heels.

  “Folk get strangely stupid,” Barien had told him once. “Protecting what they love.”

  Even held to his own saddle, Chriani was conscious of trying to cover Kathlan as he swiveled toward the targets he still couldn’t shoot at. Those were unfortunately plentiful, his eyes pulling detail from the shadow, counting fifteen Ilvani in a wide formation. He had seen four of them hit so far, the rangers catching them through breaks in the trees, when something changed.

  “…break through!” Umeni was calling, but Chriani missed the rest of the guard’s frantic cry. Something was wrong. He felt it. Sensed the chill tracing his spine that told him his eyes had caught something his mind couldn’t yet see.

  Around them, the Ilvani were pressing, holding tight to the rangers as they raced through the grove. The steady pulse of arrows hadn’t slowed. But the timing was wrong. Erratic. The thought came stray to Chriani’s mind, burning in him with an instinct he couldn’t name as he lurched his horse forward with a quick kick. He pulled himself next to Kathlan, feeling both their horses shy at the uncomfortable closeness as they ran.

  “What are you…?” was all she got to say as he hefted Thelaur’s body from his horse to hers. Both horses stumbled, but the sergeant was light even in armor. As Kathlan clutched at the body, Chriani pulled his bow from the hitch at his saddle.

  “Ride hard,” he shouted to Kathlan as he pulled away. Then he called out “Lomyr! Collyn, Taedry!” With the exception of himself and Thelaur, those three were the best archers in the troop. A half-dozen paces ahead and beside him, all of them glanced back. “On me! Now!” Then Chriani dug in hard to wheel his horse, spurring around, then running hard back the way they’d come.

  Far to the front, Umeni shouted after him with a strangled cry. “Hold formation!”

  Chriani ignored him, not looking back.

  He had seen an Ilvani fusillade once. Only once. On that path he’d taken to a changed life, he had watched a cloud of shafts spill out of the darkness into a running battle with unerring precision, only a moment ahead of a mounted assault. He hadn’t known the Ilvani tactics then. Had spent his life blissfully distant from the Greatwood and all the myriad ways one might die there.

  He had learned much of the Valnirata Ilvani’s combat in the first months of taking his place of rank in the Bastion, and newly commissioned to the prince’s guard by the Prince High Chanist himself. He had learned more in the five months of his assignment to the rangers, and of patrolling the boundaries of the forest. And all of what he knew now, and of what he remembered of that dark night from a year and a half before, was that the Ilvani war-clan fighters used their arrows always as a prelude to running their foes down. But these had stayed out of sight, circling. Waiting for something. Giving him and the three who had followed him a chance.

  A twisting track through bracken and low branches took them out of the grove and onto the trails again. He had Lomyr and Taedry beside him, the sound of Collyn’s horse coming up from farther behind. He let his eyes pull all detail from the shadows, following the trails torn up by the Ilvani horses. The hiss of arrows came from ahead, but still trained on the main body of both squads, the trees screening Chriani and the others as they closed. The forest to both sides was green and black, leaf-shrouded sunlight and shadow flashing past. The trails were uneven, broken through by the great limni’s twisting roots. Chriani’s horse stumbled once, his knees locking tight to the saddle.

  He was the first to break through the screen of trees to bring the Valnirata troop into sight. It was a carontir patrol, not the border bandits they had been pursuing. They wore no livery, but Chriani recognized the sureness of their riding, the speed with which they shot.

  Three paces in front of him, an Ilvani set two grey shafts flying from her bow, sending both into the wall of the grove where the fleeing Ilmari could be seen as flashes of grey and green. The Ilvani had time to register the sound of horses behind her as she wheeled. Chriani’s shot took her under the arm as she tried and failed to flatten against her horse’s neck in time. The momentum sent her tumbling from her mare’s bare back, hitting the forest floor in a tangle of limbs and dead leaves.

  In a heartbeat, the air around Chriani and the others was a haze of arrows. Ilvani and Ilmari alike unleashed a storm of bowshot. Both sides were shooting for each other rather than their horses, knowing that the mounts were an easier target, but knowing also that a horse could take multiple arrows and run on. Especially at this range, one well-placed shot could take a rider out of the fight with ease. Chriani ducked down more than once as a wide-bladed shaft twisted past his head. But as he had hoped, the unexpected attack from the flank was sending the Ilvani scattering, creating a gap to one side.

  “Umeni, break left!” he shouted over the thunder of hoofbeats, not bothering with codes anymore
. A call came in answer, the Valnirata breaking even farther as bowshot from the troop crossed over in front of them. The Ilvani riders were slowing, shifting to both sides now, the careful order of their assault broken.

  Tearing through the trees a half-dozen paces to the left, a wild-eyed Ilvani warrior turned her horse hard as she saw Chriani appear beside her. Their bows came up at the same time, both shots crossing over. The sharp bite of steel hit high on Chriani’s right arm, a flare of pain rising even as his return shot struck home.

  The Ilvani was naked to the waist, golden hair flowing behind her, arms and shoulders and breast knotted with the dark tattoos that were the war-mark of the Valnirata. Tight lines twisted along her skin in black and green, laying down glyphs and sigils that spoke of clan and family, the battles she’d fought, the enemies fallen before her. Chriani’s arrow took her along the edge of that mark but didn’t drop her. Her teeth were set with a feral rage as she forced her horse alongside his, a long-knife flashing in her hands.

  A touch to his quiver told Chriani he was out of arrows. He swung the bow instead, hearing it and the Ilvani’s cheekbone break at once. The knife flashed past him as the rider went down.

  Ahead, he saw light. A sudden shift from green shadow to blue and hammered gold, the open sky turning molten along the horizon with the setting of the sun. They were within sight of the forest wall and the open grasslands beyond, a hundred paces away.

  Under normal circumstances, Chriani would have called them safe as they hit open ground. The horses and horse bows of the war-clans were both made for speed and maneuverability in tight quarters, not for straight range. As well, over five months of playing cat-and-mouse along the forest’s edge, the Ilvani carontir had shown little reluctance to pass beyond their woods. But this attack was already unusual in too many other ways.