Paksworld

Continuing the story of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol of Halverics in northern Lyonya after the Pargunese released scathefire.

Northern Lyonya is, like most of Lyonya, forested country ranging from some swampy forest near the Honnorgat and along some of its tributaries, to forested uplands with rocky outcrops.    Although dominated by deciduous trees for the most part, there are some stands of conifers (and isolated conifers throughout).  Pargun, north of the river, has fewer deciduous and more coniferous trees.  Blackwood, the best wood for longbows on that world,  grows only south of the river.

In winter, with the leaves fallen,  the forest may seem easier to navigate,  harder to hide in…but not to its natives.

Vardan blinked back tears.  No fire she’d ever seen had done that to human bodies…but it was too late to help them, and she had the others to think of.  “Pick ’em up,” she said to the others.  “My guess is the Pargunese will come this way–we don’t want them messing our friends about.”

“Where are we going?” Malden asked.

That was the question.  They’d been on the way back to camp when they first saw the fire loom and heard that fearful roar…and from the look, it might’ve passed over the camp.  Vardan shuddered, and told herself it was the cold.

“We’re taking their bodies into the woods,” she said.  “Then we’ll find the camp.”  If it’s there.  If anyone survived, as we did.

Moving the bodies into the woods proved difficult.  The strange fire had kindled others along its margins, and that more normal burning left piles of smoldering trees, bushes, debris.  Vardan finally gave up looking for a safe place to exit the lane the fire had made, and led her people back to what she thought was the site of their camp.

Nothing remained.  She stared into the darkness, now lit only by the flickering of normal fires to right and left…the taste of bitter ash in her mouth as the wind blew it in her face.  No camp.  All the others dead, no doubt; she could only hope it had been quick, as quickly as the fire passed over their ditch.  No camp and no supplies, no food–no spare weapons–no clothes to replace the wet remnants in which she and the others stood shivering.  They had kicked through the ash–not so much as a metal buckle left.

“Well,” she said.  For a moment she could say nothing more, her mouth dry with the taste of ashes and grief, her heart heavy with something near despair.  But she had been at Dwarfwatch during the siege, not yet then a sergeant.  She had despaired then–and she had survived because one person had not given up, one person had–beyond all hope–brought rescue and saved those who remained.  Paks Yellow-hair hadn’t been a paladin then, only a common soldier of Phelan’s…and Phelan was now Lyonya’s king.

Vardan’s heart gave a single painful beat, then steadied.

“Your box…” Kir said.  “Sergeant, your box.”

Her box, full of a lifetime’s collection of jewelry from the south: her security in old age, her delight always.  The silver armlets with leaping fish, the gold ring with the ruby, the necklace like a wide silver collar: loot from campaigns in Aarenis that she’d found herself, and traded for, and purchased outright.

“Box doesn’t matter,” she said.

“But Sergeant–you always said–” Kir, barely twenty winters, had already shown a talent for not knowing when to keep quiet.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.  “We matter.  Our people matter.  Surviving matters, and killing Pargunese matters.  That’s all.”  They all had things they’d lost–Kir had kept a braided ring of his mother’s hair in his box.  She told herself that hair meant as much to him as her finery did to her–and even if it didn’t, this wasn’t the time to worry about it.

“We’ll find some rangers,” she said.  “When the Pargunese come–because they’ll be following this trail, I’ve no doubt–we’ll hold them until the king comes.”

“But–we’re less than two tensquads, sergeant.”

“We’re less than two Halveric tensquads,” Vardan said.  She squinted into the wind.  No sign of Pargunese approaching, and with the wind from the north, she would hear them before she saw them in the dark.  Would they have torches?  “We’re going close to the edge-fires–get dry, clean our weapons–and then we’ll find a gap in the fires and a place to lay our comrades.”