Paksworld

A Christmas present snippet that is not a spoiler for Echoes of Betrayal, though it was originally intended to be part of that book…but grew out of balance.     It actually “happened”  in Kings of the North,  during the early part of the Pargunese attack on Lyonya.   You will meet Sergeant Vardan in Echoes, a few chapters in…but her viewpoint of what she and her patrol had gone through isn’t given there. This is from her backstory, and not found anywhere but here.

“Holy Falk, Gird, and Camwyn,” Linnar Vardan muttered, shivering where she crouched in a ditch, icy water up to her neck, watching the strange fire race toward her.  She had never seen anything like it, the purple-white glare tree-tall, as intense as the hottest fires smiths made.  She was going to die–they all would–no wet ditch could protect them from something like this.

It burned like no mortal fire, moving as if it had a purpose, an intent behind it.  Waves of heat reached out ahead of it, smelling more like a forge-fire than ordinary burning trees.  It sped nearer; Vardan yelled “Down!” at the patrol, threw her head back, under the water and held her breath.  It would not be enough; she would die, but–

Violet-white fire flowed over the ditch; for the instant before the water turned to steam and obscured vision, Vardan saw what no mortal had ever seen, the underside of a dragonlet, the fire-colored structures that would be, if the dragonlet survived, breastbone, ribs, heart and lungs and limbs.  And she saw the mad eyes, alight with glee.  Instinctively, she rolled over, burrowing face-down in the water; she felt heat on her back and legs, and then searing pain, and then cold again as the light passed with the fire.

Desperate for air, she raised her head.  All around, but the ditch they lay in, was ash–not a stump, not a branch, but a lane of ash, blowing south on the bitter north wind, lit by the fire that still burned on toward the south.  She heaved himself up, surprised to be alive, and heard around her others doing the same–coughing out the muddy water, grunting in pain.

“What was that?”  Tarvol asked.

“Sergeant?”

“I’m here.  I’m fine.”  Vardan said.  She didn’t feel fine, but right now alive was fine, by definition.  “Thank the gods.” Her back felt scorched, but when she reached back over his shoulder, her fingers met wet leather and shreds of wool, not bare burnt flesh.  “All right,” she said, hearing her voice regain its accustomed timbre.  “Who’s with me?”

One by one, they gave their names, clambered out of the ditch, wet, cold, and shaken, but alive.  Except for the four who weren’t…who hadn’t gone all the way under the water.