Steel And Flame (Book 1) (66 page)

Colbey studied the mage, who stood watching him, one
hand resting on his hilt.  Again a sense of familiarity struck the scout,
though he could not place where from, except after two seasons among the
Crimson Kings he had probably seen the man in passing once or twice.

“Can you run for long?”

“I left my mail and pack behind.  I only have my
sword, so I can keep up with you for as long as you can move.”  A hint of
challenge colored the mage’s words.  He probably sensed Colbey’s animosity, but
then Colbey never made much effort to mask his dislike of these outlanders.

And a mage in chainmail?  With a sword?  What is this
one’s story?

“Come then,” he stated, before scaling down the ridge.

The rise sloped less vertically here, making it
relatively easy going.  It was the effort of making the trip while avoiding
notice that made it so arduous for the others.  After a lifetime among the
Euvea and his advanced Guardian training, Colbey hardly noticed the stress on
his muscles at all.

They gained the forest floor as the sun descended.  It
would be dark for the return trip, which bothered Colbey not one bit except the
mage would likely have problems.  Which meant Colbey would have problems.

Three miles lay between where they stood and the
Nolier camp.  Colbey turned to the mage.  “Are you ready?”

“What, for the run?”

“Yes.”

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.”

“Then follow me.  I know the quickest paths that are
free of most forest debris.  Try not to make
too
much noise.”

The mage replied but Colbey did not listen.  Instead
he concentrated with his Guardian’s will.

Colbey visualized himself, his every muscle, his every
pore, his every fiber, as he had during the run back to the village before he
learned how horrible life could become, how savage the sight of the hells could
be.  His stamina rose, his strength peaked, his body overflowed with energy.

So, you can keep up as long as I can run, can you
mage?  Let’s see about that.

*        *        *        *        *

“Then follow me.  I know the quickest paths that are
free of most forest debris.  Try not to make
too
much noise.”

What’s that supposed to mean?  This
scout
does have an attitude, doesn’t he?

“Don’t worry about me.  I’ll
try
not to hold
you back
too
much!”  Marik hated being treated like an inexperienced
child.  So far this man Colbey had obviously regarded his charges as nothing
else.

He wanted to craft a scathing remark, one that would
scorch the bark off the surrounding trees, but his spine abruptly underwent
that peculiar crawling he had not felt since his talent had awakened.  It
captured the whole of his attention.  Without a thought for it, he opened his
senses, peering into the etheric through his magesight.

Colbey’s aura glowed the moss green Marik had only
seen whenever he looked at Sloan.  Unlike Sloan, Colbey’s pulsed, as if his heartbeat
surged though it, a lightning core illuminating a stormcloud for the brief span
of its life.

What in all the world?

Before him, Colbey’s aura seemed to…tighten?  Rather
than the oval nimbus surrounding his body, his aura reformed like clay in a
sculptor’s hands, becoming
Colbey shaped
, a second intangible body
existing within the physical one.

“Then let’s go.”

Marik heard the words and worked to free his mind
enough to interpret them.  While their meaning came clear, the scout sprinted
away through the trees.

Half a mark later, Marik’s only concern was avoiding
an apoplexy attack and falling over dead.  Had he believed himself back in
shape, with only sporadic training last winter and the scattered battles
throughout the spring?  After riding since arriving on the frontline, avoiding
the normal marching of the Ninth Squad on contract?

But he would be damned before this holier-than-thou
scout
showed him up.  Of course Marik shook, close to collapse, and the scout still
breathed no faster than normal.  Marik also had the distinct impression he held
his speed down so Marik could remain apace.

All at once, Colbey stopped.  Marik nearly crashed
into a thorny blackberry bramble when he swerved to avoid running into the
scout.  “Picket line,” Colbey muttered, which explained enough.

Marik forced his lungs not to bellow while he opened
his sight to see what Colbey had already detected.  They were near the Nolier
camp.  Several guards were posted on the outskirts.  None were alert, expecting
forewarning from the lookouts on the ridge in case trouble flared.  Two had
left their positions so they could pass the time talking to each other.

“Are you close enough yet, mage?”

Marik shook his head.  “It would be better to get as
close as possible,” he gasped back.  He pointed north to a gradual incline. 
“Over there, I think.”

Colbey frowned and tugged his mottled tunic, then led
them through the picket line.

Marik left his inner eyes open, finding concealed men
as easily as if they waved torches.  After the cold stare he received from the
scout when he pointed them out, he kept silent and watched, intending to assert
himself when Colbey verged on making a mistake.

That seemed unlikely to happen though.  Colbey proved
as capable as Marik at knowing where the Nolier men were, and he reminded
himself the scout was a Crimson King, not an army soldier.  He must have passed
the qualifying trials to enter the band.  Marik recalled Hayden on the wall,
speaking about the squad Colbey hailed from.

They’re the specialists.  A lot of them are B Class
fighters to a various degree.

Given that, Marik decided to trust the scout instead
of trying to prove his value.

Eventually Colbey led them up the slope, finding a
position away from the picket that afforded them a decent view.  Marik leaned
against a large oak tree, studying the forest clearing and the Nolier base,
sorting out what he could.

When he searched for a line, he only needed to
concentrate on the feel of the energy and his sight would travel through the
very ground as far as it could to show him what he needed.  With further
practice, Marik thought he might be able to control it enough so he did not
need to be in a direct sight line with unfamiliar targets.  For now, the
process remained new enough that he commanded minimal control.  His target in
sight, he could shift his focus from here to there with little trouble.

First he studied the encampment’s structure.  The
tents were scattered at random, which might be intentional to prevent an
outsider from locating the command tents.  Though the tents were devoid of
regulated formation, several direct paths had been left clear to the forest. 
Wagons dotted the area with no horses in sight to pull them.  He searched the
camp, mystified by their absence.  The few horses in theater were nowhere near
enough.

He widened his field of vision, searching the
surrounding forest for auras, finally finding them a half-mile off.  Several
soldiers were leading them back to the camp from a creek that supplied their
water.

Casual activity filled the camp.  Men went about their
business, comfortable in their safety.  Marik studied their auras in an attempt
to determine what he could.  He found little success.  To his sight, these men
were no different from his fellow Galemarans across the ridge.  Tollaf’s aura
had never been remarkably different from anyone else’s when Marik had studied
the old mage.

What am I doing here?  I
told
Trask I couldn’t help, but he doesn’t want to
hear that!

The captain also did not want Marik to come back
without intelligence he could use, so he continued scanning the camp, back and
forth, praying to learn anything at all.

If he could read the enemy’s maps with his magesight,
then that would have been useful, or even if he could accurately count enemy
forces.  So far, picking out men from their hiding places remained the only
useful application of his gift.  As helpful as that might be, it merely
confirmed Marik’s believe that mage talent was unworthy of the trouble.

“Aren’t you finished yet?”

“No.  Shut up.”  He must have sounded as cold as
Colbey but he disliked having his concentration interrupted.

Marik wanted to stop brooding, knowing once he started
he would go on for marks.  Instead, he recalled what little he knew about
magicians, which turned out to be almost nothing.

Tollaf would die laughing if he could see this.

If the Noliers retained a magician, he would need
components for his spells.  Marik spent several minutes searching for those,
fully aware he had no idea what to look for.  Objects tended to be dark shapes
without detail.  What little he could distinguish seemed perfectly usual in a
normal camp.

One of these tents must be his alone.  I doubt he
would want anyone else disturbing him.  If there’s a magic worker here at all!

Examining tents walls and passing through them like a
wandering spirit revealed only men sleeping, eating, dicing or repairing
possessions.  Not the merest suggestion of magic.  He decided to tell Trask
that Donnel must have taken out the enemy mage when one last notion occurred to
him.

Marik ignored the camp and studied the clearing
instead.  He looked not at the shape forced onto the etheric plane by the
physical world.  Rather he looked at the etheric plane itself, at the mass
diffusion’s pale mists.  The purple haze that hung in the air, that
formed
the
air, reacted to the slightest traces of mage workings the way smoke swirled
away on a mere puff of breath.  He had witnessed this during his practices with
Caresse.

He allowed his eyes to wander where they willed,
subconsciously looking for any minute pattern in the random chaos.  From the
corner of his eye, he noticed a faint distortion.  When he looked directly at
it, it seemed no different from the rest until he relaxed his vision.

The etheric energies had altered, like throwing a rock
into a fast moving stream.  In still waters, the expanding rings across the
water could be seen clearly but in faster currents, the rings disappeared in an
instant.  Or so they seemed to.  If watched closely, a person could sense
traces of the rings’ movement through the faster water.  As soon as that
person’s attention wavered, only the sun sparkling on tiny dips and waves could
be discerned.

Here, the same principle appeared to be at work.  A
faint distortion surrounded one tent.  If the etheric mists had been cloth,
Marik would describe this area as worn thin.  No other tent harbored any
disruptions in the energy around them.  Marik drifted inside.

A man slept on a pallet, no different from anyone
else, except the mists around his aura were scraped the way the mists around
his tent were.  In a clothing pile, he barely distinguished twin belts with
several small pouches tied to them.  Marik decided he had seen enough.

He came back to himself at the same moment Colbey’s
hand descended onto his shoulder in a firm grasp.  “The pickets are moving.  It
is time to go, mage.”

Marik shook off the hand and noticed the dimming
light.  Sunset had begun with full dark close behind.  “Fine.  I’m ready.”

Colbey brought them back west.  They followed a
different course this time.  The scout’s knowledge of enemy movements struck
Marik as nearly supernatural as his own.  At one point Colbey stopped entirely,
standing frozen while his ears twitched.

Eventually they broke through the picket line into the
empty Reaches.  “Why run?” Marik asked, still feeling the effects from the last
dash.  “It’s safer to move slowly, even if you do know the paths around here.”

“Fine.  Then you can feel free to climb over the ridge
in the dark.  Don’t expect any help from me.”

Marik winced.  “Never mind.  Let’s go on then.”

Colbey did that strange shifting of his aura again. 
This time Marik watched for it, and he still did not understand what the scout
had done.  He would think about it later.  For the moment, he could only hold
onto his sword to prevent it from swinging too much while he ran after.

The nine men Colbey brought across the ridge were
excellent hunters by their outland standards.  They had mastered the art of
moving silently through woodland terrain while tracking prey in the forests
near their home.  Better by far than the officers he had led the previous day,
though they still sounded loud to Colbey’s ears.

Each man carried a long bow with a range of nearly
four-hundred yards on level ground.  Colbey’s mission demanded that he bring
them closer than that.  Accuracy suffered with every additional foot the arrow
needed to travel.  The strike against the forest supply base depended on taking
out the seven Nolier scouts watching this pass.

Four were situated on the far side of the ravine that
cut through the ridge.  Eighty yards separated the two sides.  Colbey
positioned two archers for every Nolier directly across the way.  The lookouts
had spent seasons sitting in the same positions and were long since bored. 
They expected trouble to come along the ravine floor, not directly across from
them.

Colbey took the last archer with him toward the
nearest of the three Noliers on this side.  Trask’s orders had been simple. 
Make sure no enemy scout escaped to report back to the main camp.  The captain
had refrained from burdening Colbey with a flood of details, and that was the
way the scout liked it.

He had scouted this area all spring and knew it as
well as he knew every curve and branch in the Euvea groves.  The Noliers had
never once shifted the lookouts.  Scouts were in the same positions as when
Colbey had first marked them.  A Nolier strategist learned in theory yet
lacking experience had studied the land’s lay, decided the best positions and
assigned lookouts to each.  To his mind, that ended the matter.  Now, it would
cost them.

Colbey signaled to his companion using gestures agreed
upon beforehand.  They would risk no speech this close to the Noliers unless an
emergency erupted.  The soldier nocked an arrow and held it ready in case the
target bolted.  It would not be needed, Colbey knew, except one never took
chances when the stakes were large.  Not even one as skilled at their job as
himself.

The first lookout sat in a valley oak, one of its
major branches having grown sideways, low to the ground.  Nearly hidden among
the hand-shaped leaves, he rested four feet off the ground, leaning against the
trunk with one leg dangling over the side.

Colbey eased around the slanting trunk as silent as a
passing cloud.  The archer drew a tighter line on the target.  Soon, Colbey
stood beside the oak, only inches from the back of the man he intended to
kill.  His knife rested in his hand; eight inches of silvered steel that had
served him well thus far.

He whistled low as he swung upward in an arc. 
Surprised, the lookout turned to see what the noise had been, exposing his
throat to the lethal point.  Before he could register Colbey’s presence, the
blade pierced his neck, digging into the tree bark behind.  Colbey stepped back
to avoid the spurting blood.  The man writhed, trying desperately to speak, to
call for help.  His windpipe and vocal cords were severed.  All he managed were
a few wheezes scarcely louder than the summer breeze rustling the leaves on his
death tree.

One down, two to go.

When the man’s body stilled, Colbey retrieved his
knife, causing the corpse to tumble from its perch.  A quick search revealed no
intelligence material on the body, though he had never expected such a prize
from a lookout.  Still, one must always be thorough, even when one already knew
the answers.  Thomas had taught him that.

He wiped his knife on the man’s tunic before sheathing
it, then stealthily moved to the second lookout.

The second proved no more trouble than the first.  Nor
the third, though this one forced Colbey to react quickly.  A sense of danger
tickled the third’s instincts.  He turned sharply while Colbey inched up on
him.  With instant reflexes Colbey hurled his knife through the air.

His knife had never been designed for throwing.  It
wounded the man across his forearm, which he’d raised to shield his face and
throat.  Before he could cry out, Colbey leapt atop him, his second knife
finishing the job.

It impressed the archer.  Colbey thought it sloppy and
gave himself low marks for the performance.  After a hasty check of the body,
Colbey whispered, “Time for the others.”

With a nod, the archer sifted through his quiver until
he found his screamer.  Its hollow arrowhead had been carved from wood and
pierced with several holes.  The archer located a spot across the pass covered
with light vegetation and dirt rather than hard stone.  He wanted to keep the
head unbroken and retrievable if possible.

The arrow’s screech would fade before reaching the
main camp, yet the stationed archers would have to be deaf to miss it.  Of
course, the Nolier lookouts would hear it as well.  By then it should be too
late, even if they figured out what the sound portended in the seconds they had
left.

Colbey heard bowstrings thrumming in the distance.  He
waited near the easternmost end of the pass to see if any lookouts would run
his way to report interlopers.  Five minutes.  Ten.  A full quarter mark passed
with no survivors.  None attempted to return across the ridge’s crest either,
hoping to circle around his ambush.

“Good.  We got them all.  Let’s get back.”

He crawled down the side with the archer following. 
As he walked west he signaled for the other eight to join him.

“You three run back and tell your captain the pass is
clear.  The rest of you search the bodies you shot for anything relevant.”

If the soldiers disliked taking orders from a scout,
and a mercenary one at that, they concealed their ire.  Trask had made it clear
before sending them out that Colbey ruled the pack, and the dogs better not
challenge his appointed alpha.

The four dead men revealed no secrets either.  By the
time Trask’s company reached the pass, Colbey had stationed the remaining six
men to watch for activity from the Noliers, though in different locations.

“Good job.  None escaped?”

Colbey nodded, skipping the tedious effort a reply
would require.  Hadn’t the men he sent back reported as much?

“I hope you aren’t tired.  It’s time you take Marik
and pick a spot to watch the show from.”

“Dusk?”

“Yes.  Be ready.”

Colbey slept in a state of readiness.  “Fine.  Where’s
the mage?”

“Coming up with the rear.  Go find him.”

Trask turned to other business.  Colbey decided to
wait for the mage to appear instead.  He loitered long beside the moving mass
before finally spotting the mage leading his mount over the irregular ground.

“Mage!”

The man glanced up in search of the voice.  “Oh. 
You.”

“Ready to run?”

“We don’t have a ridge to scale in the dark today.”

“We have to be in place on time.  Let’s go.”

He lowered his head to curse.  The man beside him
laughed and said, “Think of it this way, old boy!  You’re finally getting back
into shape after a winter of ease and leisure!”

“Shut up.”

“Now, now.  Be nice.  Go on, I’ll look after your boy
here.”  The second man took the reins from the mage.

“Thanks, Dietrik.  See you tonight.”

“I hope so, mate.”

Colbey led the way, neither walking nor running.  Soon
they were at the ravine’s opening.  The ravine mouth was shielded by trees
extending from the main forest.  The advantage this particular pass bore over others
was the covering foliage that made it possible to move a large company through
without being seen from the Nolier camp.

“Why are you taking that with you?” he asked the mage
with a gesture to the sword belted around his waist.  “You won’t need it.”

The mage dropped a hand to the hilt in a familiar
manner.  “You say.  I’m not going anywhere near the enemy unarmed.”

“Why is a mage carrying a sword?  It’s dead weight. 
It will slow us down.”

“Who ever said I was a mage?”  Before Colbey could
respond, the mage took a breath and dashed past into the trees.

Colbey swore while he ran after. 
The damned fool
doesn’t know where he’s going!

He quickly passed the mage, whose breaths already
exploded from him in ragged gasps.  Behind them, Trask led his company into the
eastern Reaches.

From this position there were no clean or easy routes
to cover the few miles to the Noliers, so Colbey saw no point in boosting
himself.  He had no need to anyway, had only done so lately to keep in
practice.  No challenge he’d met in the outlands to date had required anything
beyond his own strengths and skills.  Besides, the focusing technique remained
most efficient for flat out runs.

They made good time, if less so than the day before. 
Every few steps they needed to change course, navigating around trees or briar
patches.  Twice they stopped so the mage could regain his wind.  Once they
stopped so Colbey could dispatch a wandering Nolier scout.

After a candlemark they reached the picket line.  They
came at it from the south this time, and the men here were as lax as everywhere
else.  Colbey guided them through with ease.

“Where am I taking you?”

“As close as we can get,” Marik huffed back.  “I need
to be able to see the whole camp.  That hill from yesterday would be good.”

Colbey nodded.  No point in mentioning that the picket
line crossed that very hill every time they changed shifts.  Instead, he
brought them farther east until he found what he wanted.

The gnarled old forest oak was larger than most other
trees.  Its branches were big.  Any child could have climbed to the crown with
ease.  Colbey brought the mage to the trunk and pointed.  “Up.”

“What?”

Colbey looked skyward, a plea for patience.  “Climb
up!  No one will find us.”

The mage was unhappy with this development.  He glanced
upward a long time before he finally he obeyed.  Colbey watched him climb the
first few branches, his swinging sword knocking against the trunk.  “Farther,”
he hissed when the mage stopped only ten feet from the ground.

After several additional angry hisses, the mage sat
two-thirds to the top.  The perch was well concealed from sight.  Colbey
spurned his climbing spikes for such an easy task.  He ascended with
squirrel-like grace, reaching the mage in moments.

“Move over,” he told the mage, who rested on the
branch above with one arm around the trunk.

“No.”

“What did you say?”

“Go find your own seat.  I like where I am just fine.”

Colbey glared, then moved further out on his own
branch.  He reached up to grasp the mage’s.  It grew thick as his torso and he
pulled himself upward, feeling the bark begin to tear away when he swung his
feet over.  The bark tumbled from his hands to the ground, which he watched
before sidling closer to his charge.

“Do you have a problem with me, mage?”

“No.  I just don’t like high places.”

The mage stared straight ahead at the camp.  Upon
closer inspection, Colbey noticed he clutched the trunk tightly with the arm
wrapped around it.  They were hardly twenty-five feet above the ground.

“You think this is high?”  Amusement flavored Colbey’s
voice.

“It’s high enough.”

Unable to help himself, Colbey barked out two or three
laughs.  It earned him an unfriendly glare.  He realized after the last left
his throat that he had laughed at no other time since leaving his home.

“All right, hotshot!  I’ve got a question for you! 
Why haven’t you told anyone you’re a mage?”

Colbey’s mirth vanished in an instant.  “What?”

“Or some kind of magic user.”

“Are you addled?”

“Don’t look at me like that!  I saw what you did
yesterday, when we were getting ready for our little run.”

“You’re seeing smoke.”

“Don’t play games, Colbey.  I don’t know what I saw
exactly, but I know you did something weird.”

“Listen
mage,
” Colbey growled through clenched
teeth, suddenly angry.  “I don’t know what you think you saw, but I’m as much a
mage as this tree.  Don’t you forget it!”

“Then tell me what you did.  It isn’t normal to be
able to run the way you did.  You left me in the dust, and I’m not that far out
of shape!  And, you’re one of the band.  I can tell you haven’t told anybody
there about whatever it is you can do.”  The mage looked over at him with a
curious emotion behind his eyes.  “If you want to kept your talent a secret, I
can understand that. 
Believe
me,
I can understand that.  But if
you turn out to be a threat to the Kings, I have to tell Tollaf and Torrance
about you.”

Colbey studied this strange mage carefully.  Did he
mean what he had said, or was he bluffing to make him spill his secrets?  “I
told you, I’m no magic user.  And I don’t lie.” 
At least not until it suits
my purposes.