“Forget the titles, Ironhelm.”
Brack scowled, but there was a light in his eyes. “Some army you've let this become.”
“It's as much an army as it needs to be.”
“That it is. And I'm glad to see it.”
“You'll always be a soldier.”
Brack looked across the cot. Sparse as the tent, the white furs still rolled at the foot. Lashed together with a leather strand. A pack of clothes tossed at the other end as a pillow.
“First you're late,” he said. “And now you're not staying.”
Havrain nodded, pressing his lips together. “Not any longer than we have to. Tonight if I have my way.”
“You march all the way from the Ringed City for two nights watching a dead dragon burn, then you march back? And through this land, too. You know they could take this as an act of war in Kraestal.”
The captain snorted, shaking his head. “If that coward they have on the throne wants to stand against the Ringed City, let him stand. It'll take us all of three days to raze that place to the ground. Two if we fight past dinner.”
“That's asking for a mutiny.”
Havrain laughed. “I suppose.”
“But you're skirting it,” Brack said. “Who sent you? We both know it was before the dragon was in the plains. So you're not hunting it.”
“No, we're not.” The man reached down with arms powerful from years in this world, adjusting a swordbelt that didn't need it. “We didn't know of the dragon until two weeks ago. We pushed on as hard as we could, but we already were and there was nothing more for it. Doesn't look like you needed us anyway.”
Brack was silent for a moment, watching him. Then he scowled again and looked back at the flap to the tent. “Then you're here for me.”
“We are,” Havrain said. Quietly. Looking at Brack now, but not looking like a man who enjoyed it.
“Was it Wayland?”
“Wayland's dead.”
“Then who runs the priesthood?”
“Carron. But it wasn't the priesthood. It was Marazene.”
He tried not to let it show on his face but he felt that it must, even with this captain who was only human in the dimly lit tent. He could feel the heat from that lamp now, smell the oil burning and the hides so thick and full of years and must.
“The emperor himself,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“Do you want a drink?”
Brack looked at him a long moment, then nodded. “Do you have ice?”
“It has been too long since you were a soldier.” Havrain went to a bag lying next to the cot and the furs, untied the pulls around the top, reached in, and pulled out a stout glass bottle that could only be from the South Sea. The cork in the top, the gold lettering. He held it up in the light so that Brack could see the warm, rich color of the bourbon inside the glass, then stood and handed it to him.
“This is a drink?”
“We don't have cups. That bottle itself is a foolish luxury.”
Brack pulled the cork out and turned the bourbon in the bottle once and raised it to his lips and drank. It tasted like dragonfire. He lowered it and handed it across and the captain drank and handed it back.
“Tell me,” Brack said.
“Two years ago we lost a company in the mountains. The whole thing, not a sound. Nothing recovered. Two teams spent a month each looking for them and the most we ever found was a dagger with the blade broken off. Buried in the snow. Then the winter came on and we called it off and in the spring no bones turned up. Just gone like ghosts.”
“A whole company.”
“We waited that spring for war and nothing came. Even after the passes were clear. The watchtowers on the spine didn't see anything. We moved a company to the old fortress to watch the underground river, but it was as silent as it's been in a thousand years. Since Earmond's army died in their burning ships. Everything was quiet, from every direction.”
“And a solider hates peace.”
“When my men are dead I damned well hate it.” Havrain motioned for the bottle back, took it and drank again. As unflinching as he'd ever been. “We didn't know who would come but we thought someone would. Then that fall we lost another company, this one in the foothills. Doing maneuvers. A green unit but still a company of the ironclad and not prone to being killed to the man. All dead. We went out when they didn't report and found them. The heads, anyway. In a clearing of dead birches, all on stakes. The skin stripped off of them and the eyes eaten by the birds. The helmets and armor all gone, just a ring of dead men's skulls.”
“A ring.”
“I know.”
“What was the third one?”
“You know there was a third?”
“Marazene doesn't send for me unless there's a third. If there are more it's worse than you're letting on.”
Havrain nodded and Brack watched him drink again. Thinking of that snowswept country around the Ringed City. The jagged foothills of stone, the forests of cedar and birch, the spine of mountains rising up into their far off and snowdrenched fury, a white backdrop running up to the harsh blue of the ice sea.
“The third time,” the captain said. “The third time, they killed Crathe. Two companies and the entire town. Nothing left alive. Had to be five hundred people dead, maybe more if there were ships in port. We don't know how many there were. They burned the whole thing to the ground. We found two ships on fire and floating, all hands dead. Men lashed to the masts and railings, chained belowdecks. All alive when they put the ships into the current and lit them up.”
“So they're coming down the coast.”
“We don't know. We don't even know who did it.”
“And he sends for a dragon hunter.”
“It wasn't a dragon,” Havrain said. “I went to Crathe. I saw it. It wasn't a dragon.”
“But I still am what I am.”
Havrain raised an arm, fire playing now in his eyes. A bridled fury just below the skin. “You tore that thing from the sky and now it's just burning pieces of flesh and bone. That beast that destroys cities at its pleasure. Whatever is coming for the Ringed City, you can wade through it like a god. I've seen you do it.” Nearly snarling now. “Marazene isn't sending for a dragon hunter, he's sending for the man who stood on the wall at Terrorth and killed five hundred men before sunset. He's sending for the man who rode alone into Keelok and rode back out not an hour later with the king's head. That's who he sent me for.”
Brack was silent, closing his eyes. Smelling the caribou again and flashing quickly in his mind that house in the mountains, sitting there with the wine and the warm glow of the sun. Then thrown back to this, a march toward winter and some unknown enemy, standing in darkness and obscurity, surrounded by a ring of staked heads.
“It's an abuse,” he said at last. “You know that. It's an abuse of what I am.”
Havrain looked past him, the fury fading somewhat, but settling into a grim determination that was this man in every memory Brack had of him. Enlisted once and now a captain on the back of that sweat and focus and singleminded will.
Then he reached up and he touched his closed fist to his own chest. His hand just slightly shaking. “We need you,” he said. “We all need you.”
Brack stood outside the tent feeling the bourbon in his bones and skin and looked to where they still carried pieces of the dragon to the flame. Kayhi stood between him and the fire, her back to him, the smoke rising all around and above her. This girl who had really killed the dragon, the only family he had left in this world. A man who had lived the lives of ten men, and he had one daughter left alive.
You'll kill her, Ironhelm. You'll kill her.