Steel And Flame (Book 1) (77 page)

“Oh, honestly!” Dietrik exclaimed.  “It will make a
nice trophy to brag about.  At the least, you can sell it off for a nice bit of
coin.  Take the dumb thing!”

“Besides,” Kerwin added with a nasty smile.  “Think
how much it would irritate Balfourth to see you strutting around with it
strapped to your back.  He sure didn’t cover himself with glory.  All he did
was run west to get away from the Noliers so he wouldn’t get skinned.”

“Pity about that,” Edwin nodded.  “A perfect
opportunity to put an arrow into his back if we’d seen him, and say it was a
bloody Nolier what did it.”

Marik took the blade from Colbey.  Someone had
retrieved its sheath from the fallen mount.  A matching crest was etched into
the leather on the scabbard as well.

“Does anybody know whose crest this is?”

Colbey answered.  “The officers say he was Duke Ronley
of the Third House of Nolier.”

“Who’s that?”

“About the fifth highest ranking noble in Nolier after
the king,” Colbey replied, utterly unimpressed.  “I will see you later.”

He departed, his task accomplished.  Torrance addressed
Marik.  “Do you realize you’ve just irritated the spit out of my chief mage?”

“Sir?”

“Not that that’s anything new, from what he tells me.”
Torrance paused.  “I’ve received reports from men who were scattered over the
battlefield.  So have the army officers.  By all accounts, you and Colbey
played a pivotal role.  You could say the outcome of the entire battle suddenly
hung on the outcome of your own fight against the duke and his knights.  Duke
Ronley headed the combined Nolier forces for this campaign.  Our reports say
that his cousin, the king, personally placed the army under his command.”

“Sir,” Marik repeated.  Should he acknowledge his role
in the battle, or its importance?  Not in front of his friends at least, who
were hanging on Torrance’s every word.  They would never let him live it down.

“Troop morale is every bit as important as troop
numbers or troop position.  When the duke’s banner fell, the Noliers’
confidence faltered.  Did you realize that?”

Marik shrugged.  “It seemed like the right thing to do
at the time.”

“That was a good tactical move.  And I understand the
fight was impressive as well.”  Torrance smiled grimly.  “So you two turned the
tide of the battle all by yourselves, and
you
did it with your sword
rather than your magic.  I’m going to be hearing about it from Tollaf all the
way back to Kingshome.  Only the thought of the massive fee I can charge the
seneschal for your accomplishment is soothing my ire.”

Marik saw no need to admit he had been using his
talent for magecraft.  He felt his new working existed as a fighting technique
rather than magic.  Instead, he chose to repeat a comment he had once made to
Tollaf.  “I agreed to study as a mage for the band, commander, but I never
agreed to give up my sword.”

Torrance snorted.  “Well, in any event, consider
yourself raised one fighting class in the band.  Since you won’t stay away from
combat, we’ll have to maintain your records as a frontline fighter.”  He made
to leave, then added as an afterthought, “About your new sword, by the way. 
Galemaran tradition since the Unification states that any man who defeats an
enemy of the kingdom, an enemy who happens to be of noble parentage, may claim
the crest of that noble for his own.”

Marik, confused, asked, “You mean I’m part of a Nolier
family now?”  He sounded alarmed.

This made Torrance chuckled.  “Not in the least.  It
simply means that if you ever design your own device to mark your shield and
blade, you have the right to include Ronley’s crest within it.  That’s why so
many of the old Galemaran family devices are such a hodge-podge of symbols.” 
He shrugged.  “More in the nature of listing your defeated foes than anything
else.  But the army is nothing if not rigidly attentive to tradition.”

When the commander left, everyone talked about Marik’s
elevation and his prize.  In the end it was agreed that Marik would keep the
sword as a trophy even though it meant having to carry the giant hunk of metal
all the way back to Kingshome.

“Still,” Marik said while he finished re-packing his
belongings, “it’ll be nice to get back home.  I need the rest.”

“Even with Tollaf shouting at you every day?” Dietrik
asked with a grin.

“I suppose so.  Come help me put this tent back up.  I
can’t do it myself with only one good arm.”

Summer came to an end.  The Crimson Kings slowly
followed the road home.  Marik had overestimated their damage.  Only one third
of the men in the band had perished, while the rest nursed injuries of varying
severity.

They passed southwest through the port town of Rawlings
where Marik had anticipated that spring’s original contract would take them. 
If the merchants still suffered raids on their riverside warehouses, he could
see no evidence of it from the streets.  Business boomed from the stalls and
shops throughout the town.  Dietrik, Marik and Colbey led their mounts around
the town during their one-day layover to shop for impulse items and spend a bit
of the pay they had accumulated over the fighting season.

Strangely, Colbey had taken to riding with the pair, though
he never offered an explanation why and usually refrained from contributing to
their conversations.  Marik knew it for odd behavior through both his own
assessments on Colbey’s nature and the rumors that reached his ears all the way
from the Second Squad.  It mystified them as well.  In the end they chalked it
up to the bonds that form on the battlefield, especially between men who had
faced foes side by side.  He would have thought the same, except he remembered
the promise Colbey had wrangled from him in exchange for the secrets behind the
stamina technique.

Marik wondered.

Dietrik stopped at a stall to examine flat crates
filled with fresh fruit and to exchange gossip with the lady running it.  She
burst with questions about the war against Nolier.

“Oh my!” she kept exclaiming while Dietrik filled her
in on the details.  When he finished, she paid him with her own news.  “Well, I
should say!  I suppose you boys will be ready now to put down Tullainia after
going through such a battle!”

“How’s that?” asked Dietrik.  “Is the situation
worsening over there?  I thought they were in the midst of a civil war between
highlords or some such buggery.”

“Well, that’s what
everyone
thought at first,
but the refugees running across the border are all full of the wildest stories
you’ve ever heard!  I wouldn’t give them any credence, except I’ve seen their
faces myself!”

“I thought they were being turned back at the border.”

The woman was delighted to share her gossip.  “Well,
you know they tried to at first, but there were just too many after awhile! 
The highwayguards try to regulate them at the border crossings but they’ve been
spilling over along the entire border, and there weren’t enough soldiers to man
the whole length!”

Colbey picked through a pile of small grape clusters
as Marik commented, “Yeah, they were fighting off the Noliers!  So the refugees
came all the way to Rawlings?”

“Yes!  The ones I’ve talked to were all scared right
out of their wits, let me tell you!  The poor dears!  Like I said, I never would
have given tales like theirs a second thought, except I’ve seen them while they
were talking.  Shaking like they were frozen right through and weeping on for
candlemarks.  A few plan to keep right on running until they hit the east coast
of Nolier!”

Marik could tell the woman desperately wished them to
ask, so he obliged her.  “What’s so terrible?  War’s a horrible experience, no
question, but it sounds like something else is going on.”

“Yes!  Yes!  They all tell different stories, but they
come to same in the end.  Monsters and demons are running loose over there,
killing everyone they can.  Strange warriors and awful magics destroying
everything in their path, and the Tullainians can do nothing about it!”

Dietrik and Marik looked skeptical, forcing the woman
to defend her story.  “It’s the honest truth!  I heard the tales from so many
different families.  They saw them up close, and only lived because the demons
were too busy killing their neighbor to stop them from running.  Monsters
bigger than you and covered in fur with giant horns on top of their heads! 
Most of them destroying everything they see!”

“What?”

Colbey’s whip-crack shout startled the other two. 
They turned to him, seeing his eyes burn with fever, his fists clenched so hard
he paid no heed to the grape pulp dripping from his hand.

“It’s the honest truth,” the woman repeated, though
softer.  She took a step backward from the scout.

“What else have you heard?” he demanded, advancing
like a rampaging bull, but her pool of information had run dry.

They paid for their purchases, including Colbey’s
destroyed grapes, and rode back to the camp outside Rawlings.  Marik watched
Colbey from the corner of his eye while the silent man burned with an inner
fire.  A miasma of dark, murderous emotion rolled off the scout in waves so
thick Marik half-expected them to form into a second aura.  Perhaps as black
mists engulfing his body, visible to these non-magical people in town as
clearly as the etheric ovoid shone to his magesight.  He forced himself to ignore
the impulse to lean away from Colbey.  Superstitious thoughts raced through his
mind, suggesting he would be scorched anew should he stray too close to the
wrathful pyre riding beside him.

He wondered what had set the scout to fire.  In the
midst of those thoughts he suddenly wondered exactly why Colbey had joined the
Crimson Kings.  Colbey never had revealed his reasons after hinting at deeper
motivations and Marik had never asked, though he felt curious as he studied the
terrible expression twisting the scout’s face.  Was it a madness, or an
affliction sprouting from far delving roots?  Only time would reveal that
answer.

Marik decided to closely watch this man once they
returned to Kingshome.  That unspecified churning in his stomach, that sense of
ominous premonition that had fallen over him prior to the worst changes in his
life now chilled his spine again.

But after a summer like the one past, how could
matters possibly worsen while he continued the search for his father?  The
thought redoubled the turmoil of his intuition.

So ends the first volume of Marik’s and Colbey’s
adventures!

BUT……

Even as Colbey plunges into the viper’s lair to
investigate the weirdling invaders responsible for the deaths of his fellow
villagers, Marik’s new reputation draws him into the machinations of the
nobility as an unforeseen development sends the search for his father in an
unexpected direction!  War, intrigue, strange magics and monstrous beasts
abound in Volume Two of the Chronicles of the Crimson Kings, “Arm of Galemar”!

Other books by Damien
Lake:

World of Folcrist:

Chronicles of the Crimson Kings:

Steel and Flame

Arm of Galemar

Forest for the Trees

Masters of the Wind:

Silver in the Darkness

**Silver in the Daylight

** = In Production

Abbreviated Excerpts from “
Arm of Galemar
”,
Volume Two of
The Chronicles of the Crimson Kings:

Torrance flipped through the papers on his desk,
searching for the relevant documents, when a knock on the door drew his
attention.

“Yes?”

Wainright entered.  “There’s a client waiting to speak
to you.”

“A client?  Who?”

“Baron Garroway.”

Now
here
was a surprise.  The baron was a
longtime contractor with the Kings, though had contracted no men last year. 
Torrance had assumed Wainright meant one of last year’s few clients wanted to
complain about their results.  Garroway could only have come to arrange for a
new contract next year.

“Why is he here now?”

“He said he’d rather discuss it over brandy.”

Torrance snorted.  “Did he?  Very well, have him come
in.”

Why come to Kingshome so early?  Garroway was among
the very few nobles able to call directly on his office, the benefit of being a
longtime contractor who treated the mercenaries as well as his own men.  Most
prospective clients had to work their way through Janus’ clerk network, several
never meeting the commander at all.  Either their contracts were rejected or
the situations so standard an agreement could be hammered out by the
subordinates.

Torrance lifted two crystal glasses when the door
opened to admit Baron Garroway.

“Ah-ha, Torrance!  It’s good to see you, my friend!”

“Likewise, baron.  You’ve arrived rather early this
year.  Come, have a seat by my hearth.”

“It is my great pleasure!”

Garroway accepted the proffered glass, then sat before
the cheery blaze in Torrance’s fireplace.

“You treat your guests well, commander.  I should ride
down more often and run up your supply bills!”

Torrance set the bottle on the small table between the
guest chairs and took the matching seat.  “We are neighbors, Carrick.  It’s
only sensible to be on good terms.”

“I was at the Hollister.  My men and I were pushed
south after the northern catapult was fired.  We were fighting for our lives
when a pair of men stepped forward to take on the entire Nolier army
single-handedly.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“Not by much!  I saw their entire bout, Torrance.  And
so did countless others.  And not just soldiers,” Garroway confided with a
lowered eyebrow.

“Should that concern me?”

“I’m not certain.  The nobles talk, don’t you know?”

“I doubt you rode south to pass on such a simple
warning.”

“No, not at all.  I need men next year, of course.”

“I concluded as much.  Are you anticipating an
increase in bandits due to the war?”

Garroway grimaced.  “That might be a problem.  We’re
not so far from the front, after all.  No major roads run through my barony so
the highwayguards can’t be counted on for aid.  And everyone’s nervous about
the problems in Tullainia.  Except none of that’s why I rode in person.”

“I wondered at that.  You could have as easily sent a
representative.”

“Then I wouldn’t enjoy your fine liquor!”  Garroway
raised his glass in a toast before continuing.  “Anyway, this time of year,
there’s not much for me to do except sit around and worry over how I’ll afford
my barony taxes.”

“Is that why you rode so early?  As you noticed, we
haven’t even held our applicant trials yet.”

“I wanted to make sure I was your first client this
year.”

“For what?  You couldn’t afford to hire the entire
band, and I don’t think you’d ever need that many men.  If the Tullainian
aggressors cross the border, no doubt the seneschal will try to conscript us,
and hiring fees be damned.  We would have to call off any contracts we’d
signed.  Even one with an old friend.”

Garroway’s grin wiped away his concerned frown.  “For
the contest, of course!  I only need a few of your boys for bodyguards.”

Torrance blinked, then asked, “Are you sure that’s
still on?  The last rumors I heard said the tournament might be canceled if
Tullainia heated up any further.  The king will have too many other worries to
deal with.”

“It is on.  Yesterday I received a notice from the
palace that went out to all the nobles.

“I wouldn’t want to be the Arm for the next three
years.”  Torrance shifted his gaze to his guest.  “You are going to compete,
then?”

“Not I, no.  It will be my eldest son, Hilliard.  He’s
dreamed of it for as long as he’s held a sword.  The fault of his damn fool
nursery attendant’s tales, no doubt.”

“I see.”

“He’s finally of eligible age, and nothing is going to
dissuade him.  I’ve never been able to afford many regular fighting men, you
know that, and right at this particular time I’ll need every one of them who
survived on patrol for the next few seasons.”

Torrance nodded.  “For the tournament, we customarily
assign four men.  That’s enough for bodyguard duty.”

Garroway cleared his throat.  “Well, that brings me to
the heart of it, my friend.”

“Something else?”

“Maybe not.  I hope not.”  He paused for a moment. 
“You know Duke Tilus.”

It had been a statement, not a question, but Torrance
replied as such.  “Indeed.  One of the few nobles who live up to the
definition.”

The baron ignored the veiled jibe.  “He’s an old
friend of mine, actually.  We were fostered together at Earl Radburn’s holding
as boys, don’t you know?  Oh, I could tell you stories about what we got up to
at the earl’s place.  Did you know all his maids nicknamed him ‘Earl Rugburn’?”

“I’m sure you could, and no I didn’t know that.” 
Torrance shook his head in feigned solemnity.  “How did your class manage to
convince the rest of us to call you ‘nobles’?”

“Anyway, Tilus is duke in Spirratta these days.  He
takes on a greater number of fosterlings than most, and he took on my eldest as
we’re good friends.”

The remaining picture solidified for Torrance.  “I
see.  The duke’s been having difficulty the last few years.”

“That’s a mild way of putting it.”  Garroway’s grimace
returned tenfold.  “He’s always been death on the underworld and anyone
associated with it ever since we were kids.”

“He’s lived through several attempted assassinations
by the dark guilds, yet held fast to his principles.”

“That’s Tilus, for certain.  Then last year the
thieves switched tactics.”

“I believe one of the fosterlings was killed.  A
warning to the duke, if I’m not mistaken.”

“It slowed him down for awhile, but he’s renewed his
polices against crime with a vengeance.  There haven’t been any new attacks
against the fosterlings under his care, except that doesn’t mean they’ve given
up on the idea.”

“You feel they might think an attack while abroad would
be easier than while the fosterlings are under the duke’s roof.  That’s a
reasonable assumption.”

“And that’s why I wanted to talk with you before you
assigned away those two men of yours who took down Ronley.”  Garroway met the
commander’s eyes over his glass.  “I intend to get the best men I possibly can
to protect Hilliard while this tournament is going on.  I want them.”

*        *        *        *        *

Without warning, a figure abruptly stormed into the
Fourth Unit’s bunk area.  A figure who had never been there before.

“Mage!”

Marik fumbled with the book, the shout having
surprised him.  Colbey stood in the empty space where the half-wall ended. 
“Colbey?  What are you doing in here?”

“Get your sword and follow me.”  It was delivered as a
directive.

Before Marik could respond, the scout vanished. 
Now
what’s going on?

A break would be in perfect order.  He shoved aside
the clothes hanging in his closet to retrieve his father’s sword.  In the back,
the Nolier duke’s giant blade barely fit inside.  Shifting the enormous book
diagonally, it too just managed to squeeze in.

He took his leather gloves and a cloak as well, hoping
he would be prepared for whatever the scout had in mind.  Predicting anything
regarding Colbey was a waste of time.

The scout stood beside the main door when Marik
entered the dining area.  He immediately departed without a word.  Clearly he
expected the apprentice mage to follow.

I guess I’ll play along.  When did he get back,
anyway?

Colbey brought him west across the town.  When he
continued straight across the Marching Grounds without slowing, Marik suspected
where they might be going.  His thoughts were confirmed when they came to a
thick tree line behind four barracks identical to his own.

The First Training Area, exclusive to Squads One
through Four.  Marik had never been to this part of town despite starting his
third year of residence.

From the wall, Marik had never been able to see
clearly into this training area.  He expected it to open up once inside the
trees.  Instead, he found quite the opposite.  It grew into a thick brush
tangle, much like a forest groundcover between taller trees in a deep forest.

The scout stopped in a small clearing that was free of
obstacles for roughly thirty feet in every direction.  To the north, Marik
judged this sylvan cover might thin out.  He estimated the thicker growth
filled the entire lower half of the training area.  Trees hid the barracks well
enough to nearly conceal the fact they were inside a town at all.

Colbey drew his sword.  He held the hilt in one hand
with the bare blade laying across his other palm.  It possessed a ceremonial
feel, and he lowered his head while rotating his hands.  The sword ended
straight up, the hilt gripped firmly, the other palm pressing into the steel
backside.

His head rose.  His sword tip lowered to an inch above
the ground.  “We will spar.  Show me what you are capable of.”

Marik had half-expected this, and voiced the question
floating in his mind.  “Why?”

“You owe me a favor, mage.  I need to see how deeply I
can rely on you.”

That’s rich!  Didn’t we take down those knights
together?

But he needed the exercise after spending the morning
curled up on his cot in various awkward positions.  Colbey cast one quick,
scornful look over Rail’s old blade.  Dietrik was correct; he needed to visit
the armory soon.

The guard stance would be best for openers, Marik
decided.  It would give Colbey the first move, which he would counter…except
the scout refused to budge.  He stood in the same posture, not moving so much
as a finger’s width.  After a full minute, Marik knew Colbey would stay that
way until vines grew around him.

Fine!  Be like that!
  Marik leapt, striking with an eastern slash that would come from
Colbey’s west.  He almost missed the smaller man’s sword move, so fast did it
flick up.  The shock vibrated through his arm.

Marik tried to use the reflected momentum to his
advantage.  He swung the sword around, flowing into a southeast slash.

Before he knew what happened, he lay flat on his back,
straining to inhale through the coughs wracking him.  Colbey’s sword was at his
throat.  The scout back-stepped after making the point, allowing Marik to
regain his feet.

His breathing smoothed while he rubbed his midriff. 
He glared at Colbey, wanting to ask what had happened yet too prideful to admit
he didn’t know.  Marik harshly reminded himself that he was not sparring
against his friends in the Ninth, but an elite Second Squader.

This time he advanced with greater caution and
instigated his best strike series.  Every blow was met and deflected, and Marik
sensed Colbey refrained from striking out in a counterattack between each.

Colbey had always treated those around him with mild
contempt.  This had annoyed Marik tremendously when he’d first been required to
work with the scout, but the teachings he received at the Hollister Bridge were
enough to make him tolerate the attitude.  Even so, the old emotions returned
despite the control Marik had mastered over his temper since joining the band.

Marik pushed his speed, striking with alternating high
and low blows before eating the dirt a second time without warning.