Brightly Burning Read online

  Lan’s throat closed in a spasm; he swallowed hard to clear it. No matter what he did, he’d never be able to undo what had happened to Pol. . . .

  And he recalled, only too vividly, a scene that had played out in the tent before Tuck had come to replace Elenor.

  “I can’t do it!” Ilea had wept, quietly, hopelessly. “I’ve tried everything I know, and I can’t—I can’t Heal him, and I never will! He’s going to be blind for the rest of his life, and it’s my fault!”

  No it isn’t, he’d wanted to shout. It’s my fault, all mine, and I’m so sorry—

  “Mother, you can’t do it all at once,” Elenor had soothed, taking her mother away.

  He hadn’t heard anything after that, for they had been outside the tent, but he had turned his face to the wall and wept into his pillow, crying himself to sleep with the pain of his own guilt.

  “Anyway,” Tuck continued, blithely oblivious, “Ilea isn’t arguing; if the promotion sticks, Pol will never have to leave the Collegium again, and she says she’ll stick to teaching.”

  “That would be nice for them,” Lan managed to say, without sounding like he was about to cry. “Where’s the food?” Guilt-ridden or not, his stomach was oblivious to his emotions, and wanted tending.

  Tuck laughed and gave him a hand up, then led the way to the mess tent. The army was spread out over the expanse of several hillsides, but there were several mess tents, it seemed, and the nearest was not that far from their own camp. It wasn’t a very large tent, and served mostly, it seemed, to keep the snow and wind out of the cook-fires. Army rations weren’t the most elaborate in the world; Lan got a bowl of grain porridge from a big kettle, and considered himself fortunate to have that. It was sticky and full of lumps, but it was food, and there was enough honey to make it taste all right. Outside the tent, logs had been set up along the hillside to make rough seats, so that was where he and Tuck took themselves; Tuck had decided in favor of skipping a second breakfast. Lan polished off the bowl, ignoring the whispers as some of the fighters recognized him. It made him feel even more awkward and unhappy as some of them left their meals and scuttled off, though.

  Joyous. I get rid of the Karsite monsters, but now I’m a monster.

  Tuck kept up a bright stream of chatter, and Lan shoveled in his food, forcing it past the lump in his throat. More people crammed into the area outside the tent, staring at him and whispering, and he ate faster.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered to Tuck as he shoved the last bite into his mouth.

  “Sure,” Tuck agreed, and they left they stood up to leave—

  —only to find that the crowd near the tent was the merest hint of the one on the opposite side of it.

  Lan backed up a pace; feeling cold and queasy, he stared back into all those strange faces, wondering what they wanted. Were they only curious? Or were they as afraid of him as his own parents were? They pressed in around him, separating him from Tuck, surrounding him on all sides. He couldn’t see any officers, much less other Heralds.

  What do they want? Where was Kalira? Had they bound her up somewhere so that they could deal with him without her interference?

  He straightened up, and faced them squarely; there was a whisper of voices from farther out in the group, but those nearest him didn’t seem hostile—

  The chant started in the rear of the crowd—a few voices at first. And for a few doubtful moments, he couldn’t tell what they were saying.

  Then it became clear.

  “—Firestorm, firestorm, firestorm—”

  More voices took up the chant.

  “Firestorm! Firestorm! Firestorm!”

  Now they were all shouting it, and the crowd surged forward, seizing Lan and hoisting him up onto their shoulders.

  When they grabbed him, he very nearly passed out—

  But the huge grins and enthusiasm quickly persuaded him that they meant no harm, and when he realized that they meant to thank him by parading him around the entire camp, the excitement made it very hard to breathe. More and more people joined in as Lan’s bearers trotted him through the lines of tents, swelling the chanting chorus until he couldn’t hear anything else. Up and down hills, even out to the sentries and back, running now, so that he hung on to the shoulders of two of his supporters for dear life!

  They finally marched up the hill with him, heading toward the command tent, where the Lord Marshal and his generals were standing, with Pol and Satiran beside them.

  For the first time, he wondered what the Lord Marshal would have to say about this demonstration. To Lan’s relief, the Lord Marshal had a smile on his face; he didn’t look at all angry about it.

  :Well, you are the hero of the Battle of White Foal Pass,: Kalira said, poking her head over her sire’s shoulder. :Be properly gracious, now.:

  Lan’s supporters deposited him in front of the Lord Marshal, and finally the chanting died away. The old man took Lan’s shoulders in both his hands, and turned him around to face the crowd. This was very like being on that high platform in the city square—and very unlike, for these were all people who had no doubts about him. All the smiling faces peering up at him, spreading out in a human carpet down the hillside, made him feel so wonderful he could hardly stand still.

  “Fighters of Valdemar!” the Lord Marshal declaimed, his voice carrying easily to the farthest man. “Here is the partner that you have so desperately needed to drive the Karsites back to their own land! While you conquer their armies, here is the gallant Herald who will see to it that their foul demons and insidious trickery can do you no harm; that their vile monsters are sent flying back into the faces of those who would use them against you! I give you Herald Lavan Firestorm!”

  Dizzy with exhilaration, Lan thought the cheering would never end.

  LAN bent over the map table with the others, intent on the reports of scouts and Heralds with FarSight, although he hardly felt as if he belonged there. After all, what was he doing, the youngest Herald in the Circle, in company with the Lord Marshal and all the Commanders of the army? No one else even gave him a second glance, though, so he held his tongue and tried to concentrate on the reports like everyone else.

  There were charcoal braziers going in all four corners of the tent and the flap was shut tight, but it was still cold in here. The white canvas moved in the wind, belling inward and outward again. The Lord Marshal’s cot and chests were pushed back against the rear of the tent, giving everyone room to stand around the map table.

  Everyone except Pol, that is, whose continued weakness left him sitting while the rest stood.

  “The main force of the Karsite army appears to be here,” Herald Fedor said, marking a rough oblong on the map on the far side of White Foal pass with his finger. “Right at the moment, they don’t seem too keen on trying the pass a second time. I haven’t seen any more of those new priests of theirs—”

  “That doesn’t mean that they aren’t there, however,” the Lord Marshal rumbled, though he did look fairly well satisfied with the current situation. “Best guess from the ForeSeers?”

  “Is that they’ll move eastward, along here,” Fedor replied, tracing a path along the back of the mountain ridge divided by the pass. “You can see that there’s a small river running along here, enough to cut a long valley without too many obstacles, and there’s something of a roadway beside it. It’s not the easiest place to take a major force, but it’s the best they’re going to get. That’s what the two with ForeSight think.”

  “I wish it was what they knew, but beggars can’t be choosy about what they get,” Commander Releigh sighed. “Well—look at this, if they come along this route here, can they come through at us here?”

  His finger stabbed down at a minor pass, one that came out in a heavily wooded area on the Valdemar side, marked only as Pine Forest. Lan noted thankfully that there didn’t seem to be any major habitations there, not so much as a village.

  All eyes went to the chief scout, who pulled at his lip, the
n nodded. “It does go though to their route, if that’s the one they take, and it’s wide enough at that point to bring them through in numbers. Odds are they aren’t going to give up, not at this point. For all they know, it was their own priests that did something wrong, and not something we did.”

  The Lord Marshal grimaced. “And they can make better time than we can to get to that pass; their route is shorter, with fewer obstacles in the way. Damn. Well, pass the word, we’ll march in two candlemarks. Are we dealing with anything between here and there?”

  “Some pockets here, here, and here,” the scout pointed. “Maybe more; we’ll find them before they know where we are.” He sounded confident, and Lan knew that he should be; the Valdemaran scouts had yet to be detected by the Karsites, and brought far more information than the couple of FarSeers, who had to concentrate on areas where they already knew were worth spying on.

  “Young Lavan—” the Lord Marshal said, turning to him, somewhat to his surprise. “I want you to work with Fedor and Scout Calum, here, while we’re on the march. You’re going to be our—catapult. Our way of getting at someone entrenched. If any of those pockets of Karsite force are well-entrenched, I’d rather deal with ’em at a distance than winkle them out like snakes in a crevice.”

  Lan saluted the Lord Marshal, as he had seen other Heralds do, with a quick snap to attention and a nod. “Yes, my Lord,” he replied simply. “I’ll need Herald Tuck as well. I can’t Mindspeak while I’m—ah—working.”

  “Take him,” the Lord Marshal replied simply, and waved Lan, the other Herald, and the chief scout off, as he and his Commanders got back to detailed battle plans.

  Lan didn’t at all mind being dismissed; he followed Fedor and Calum out of the tent and into the sunlight. Fedor took his elbow and pointed at a Companion near to a tent on the upward slope of the next hill. “We’re over there; make sure there’s someone assigned to handle your tent and supplies, then meet us there. And bring the other boy as well.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lan replied, and the scout and Herald hurried away. Already the camp was a sea of activity as tents were broken down and supplies packed up. He ran to the tent he shared with Pol and Tuck.

  Word had already been passed, and the Lord Marshal’s own chief servant was at the tent with a couple of other servants, packing things up for them. Pol and Satiran were with the Commanders, of course, but Tuck and the other two Companions watched the packing with interest.

  “Hey, Tuck!” Lan called, waving, as he ran towards them. “We’ve got an assignment!”

  Tuck’s face brightened, and he jumped up into his Companion’s saddle; Kalira cantered down the hill towards Lan, who mounted on the run. He was secretly pleased to be able to accomplish the maneuver, especially in front of an audience.

  :With a little help from me, of course.:

  :Of course!: he acknowledged, as Kalira paused just long enough for Tuck to catch up. Then they loped through the encampment, which now seethed with activity, heading for the Scout camp.

  Fedor and Calum and the rest of the scouts who were not currently out on patrol waited for them there, at the edge of the main encampment, supervising the final pack up of their own belongings, such as they were. Scouts tended to pack lightly.

  The scout contingent was a very mixed bag. There was Calum, who looked like most of the career fighters in the Guard or army, and a couple more men and women like him, but the majority were nothing at all like professional soldiers. The youngest was no older than Lan, a dim-looking, shaggy-haired youth mounted bareback on a pony that was just as shaggy, whose main article of clothing was a rough-sewn coat of sheepskin and hat and boots to match. The oldest was a stick-scrawny graybeard, whose horse could have been plucked from the King’s stable just before a parade, and whose costume seemed to consist of odds and ends he’d picked up over the course of his lifetime.

  The rest of the group was just as eclectic, and included a young woman who kept close to the old man and was obviously highborn, a male and female pair of hunters (or at least, that was what Lan guessed their profession had been), a couple of farmers, and five people who were clearly civilians, or former civilians, but whose former professions weren’t immediately obvious.

  Calum didn’t bother to introduce anyone; he just fired off some orders, and roughly half of the scouts mounted up and vanished over the next hill. The rest formed up into a rough group behind him, and with Herald Fedor, followed him over the hill at a slower pace. Tuck and Lan, with Lan leading, worked their way through to Calum’s right, since Fedor was already on his left.

  “Did you have anything in mind for me, Sir?” Lan asked diffidently.

  “We’re going to wait at the outermost picket for the army to get marching,” Calum replied, with an amused quirk of his lips, perhaps at Lan’s diffidence. “Then this lot will spread out and work the leading edge of the march. You Heralds will stick with me, until someone comes back with word—either of a pocket of trouble we already know about, or something we don’t. I’ll decide if it requires the—hmm—catapult solution. If it does—” He pointed a finger at Lan. “You and your friend there will go with the scout to deal with it.”

  That seemed simple enough, and Lan nodded.

  “I hope you’ve got an arrow in your quiver that’s a bit more subtle than what you did at the pass,” Calum continued. “We won’t need to burn down the forest; in fact, the people that live here wouldn’t appreciate that.”

  “I do, sir, I do!” Lan hastened to say. “I—we—we’ve never done anything like that before, Kalira and I. I—didn’t know we could.” If the last words came out in a faltering tone, Calum didn’t comment on it.

  “Good. That’s a relief. Yo, Ben, Diera—come over here and tell the boys what they’re likely to be up against, will you?” Calum waved at the old man and the young woman with the magnificent horses, who cut across a line of brush to take their places on either side of Lan and Tuck.

  “I’m Diera Ashkevron, and this is Ben Dotes, our Horsemaster,” the young woman said.

  “Retired, missy,” the old man corrected. “Barnebin be every bit the Horsemaster I ever was.”

  Diera smiled, and continued. “We volunteered, first thing; brought a string of horses from the Home Farm and volunteered ourselves. We don’t know this country, but we do know scouting and horses, so here we are.”

  Diera was not an attractive young woman; she had a face like an abused ax-blade, but her friendly and open personality made her face irrelevant. But it was Tuck who identified her, not Lan.

  “Ashkevron?” he gulped. “The Ashkevrons? Of Forst Reach?”

  :Oh, my ears—that’s the family that Herald Vanyel came from!: Kalira exclaimed as the girl nodded.

  “We’re all girls but my one brother, and he can’t fight, he’s laid up with a leg broke in three places,” Diera continued. “There’s more of us coming, but I was the only one ready to go now. Fancied I’d go into the Guard, and been training for it.”

  “And I wasna about to let her go off alone,” the old man added, with a stubborn set to his mouth. “But thas’ neither here nor there. We’re to tell you ’bout what we know, eh? So les’ get to it.”

  Over the next league or so, the ill-matched pair detailed the three or four pockets of Karsite strength they thought would fall to Lan to eliminate. Rather as he had expected once they began, these places were all small fortresses, manned by no more than twenty or thirty, that overlooked key passes. With that handful of fighters, the Karsites could easily delay the Valdemaran army by a day and perhaps more, if they had Sun-priests with them who could command similar powers to the Heraldic Gifts.

  The excitement of being called a hero had long since worn off, and when he realized that he would be expected to burn these people out, he began to feel queasy. Kalira sensed his unease, without knowing the cause, and enveloped him in a wordless blanket of assurance.

  There were hundreds, thousands of fighters in the army depending on him, who could—woul
d—lose their lives if he didn’t do what he was expected to do.

  “You’ll be able to take care of them, won’t you?” Diera asked anxiously. “If you can’t—it would be bad, very bad, I think.”

  I hesitated once. I swore I never would again, and I won’t. I won’t.

  When that didn’t extinguish the queasiness, he called up the mental image of Pol with his bandaged eyes . . . Ilea beside him, with a reproachful look aimed straight toward him.

  That awoke guilt, but guilt was better than indecision. “Just get me there,” he told Diera. “I’ll do the rest.”

  SINCE they would travel with the Lord Marshal and the bulk of the army, Pol and his family were left at loose ends until everyone was underway. There were servants to pack up the Healers’ gear, and the Lord Marshal’s people dealt with Pol’s. So Pol found himself with a rare moment of leisure to share with his wife, as they perched on a log with the last scrapings from the mess kettle to eat (nothing went to waste when a Guard-cook was in charge) and tried to stay out of the way.

  “What’s wrong with Elenor?” Pol whispered to Ilea to get her mind off of her own failure to restore his sight, although he was afraid he already knew the answer. His daughter’s listless behavior since Lan had awakened was something he would have called moping in anyone else. Most of her conversation was in monosyllables, and although he couldn’t actually see her face, he suspected that her eyes were reddened from secret crying.

  “What do you think?” Ilea replied, with a distinct edge to her voice. “Lavan woke up and didn’t ask for her, didn’t look for her, didn’t even thank her. In fact, Lavan hasn’t even looked at her since your accident.”

  “Ah.” Well, that was what he had expected. Though it would have been better for poor Elenor if her infatuation had turned to anger that Lan hadn’t prevented the accident. “And you? How do you feel about the boy?”

  “I am . . . mixed in feeling,” Ilea admitted. “It’s not the boy’s fault, but I am annoyed with him; I wish he’d at least notice she’s in love with him! But he’s so thick-headed!”