They came to be known as the Night People, for they struck most often at night and vanished into the darkness before they could be identified. They went with soot-blacked faces, their bright eyes the more fearsome. They moved like shadows, like darkness.
The Night People. Kerian spoke the name to her growing band of warriors gleefully, proudly as though it were the name of a renowned fighting order.
“They come out of the woods on all sides,” one dying Knight reported to his lord.
The Skull Knight took the man’s head in his two hands, leaned close so his eyes were the only thing the dying man saw. A great shudder went through the man, and blood spurted from the wound in his side. In his mind, he felt Thagol walking, prowling, searching for something.
He wanted a name. The Lord Knight desired to see a face, a form, to know his enemy. The dying man couldn’t give him that, and in the end the agony of his death didn’t have all that much to do with his wounds.
The Night People changed strategy. They stepped up their raids, killed as many Knights as they could, as quickly as possible, then fell back, drawing the infuriated survivors after them and into the mouth of a trap that had been well set-a wall of waiting elves who let through their compatriots and closed around the Knights, howling terrible war cries, curdling the blood with screams. They killed swiftly, and they left nothing alive behind, not Knights, not horses, not draconians. They stripped the dead of weapons and what equipment they wanted, then destroyed the rest, leaving nothing but corpses for Lord Thagol to claim.
Some of die Night People died too, but their bodies were always stolen away and hidden and buried, so that the occupying force no longer knew who to trust in the dale.
Sitting in the tavern at Acris, Lord Thagol ransacked the minds of his dying men. He sent word to every town and hamlet in the forest, every farmstead in every dale, that the elf who gave him what he needed to know, who brought to him the head of the outlaws, would he richly rewarded-but not even then was he able to learn the face of his enemy.
At last, though, he was able to learn of one strike before it was made.
Chapter Fourteen
Felan stood before the lord Knight, his hand trembling slightly so that the parchment he held out rustled, whispering of his poorly suppressed fear. A line of sweat ran down the side of his face.
“M-my lord,” he said.
Lord Thagol didn’t look up. Before him lay spread a map of the countryside, wide and newly made. Upon the map Felan noted the Qualinost Road, that artery connecting this rural part of the kingdom to the capital and places beyond. Today a wagon of fat sacks filled with grain waited in a secluded place, guarded by draconians and Knights. Others would join it tomorrow and the next day until there were enough to escort to the capital. One would be filled with weapons and war supplies, another perhaps filled with the tribute the dragon loved-ancient treasure. In the south of the forest, where rich manors lay, lords and ladies were beginning to pay the dragon’s tax with the family jewels.
Felan registered a series of small red marks on the map, like check marks ticking off a list These were the sites of recent encounters between the Lord Knight’s forces and the Night People. In none of these had Lord Thagol’s men fared well, and in the last, the battle near a small creek known as Brightflow, fourteen Knights had died. Two of the outlaws had perished as well, one killed by a sword, the other gone screaming to his death in a pool of acid, the revenge of the kapak draconian he had killed.
Felan swallowed, wishing his hand would steady, wishing for a sip of white wine like that in the Knight’s cup or simply a drink of water. At his hip hung a water flask, but he dared not move to reach for it. The draconian at the door had stripped him of every weapon. He’d endured the dry, cold touch of the creature’s clawed hands, its reeking breath on his cheek as it grabbed away the knife at his belt, the bow and quiver across his back, even the small eating knife everyone in this part of the country carried as a matter of course. He felt that disgusting touch even now, even as, standing before the Knight’s table, and he felt the draconian’s reptilian eyes still on him. He didn’t doubt that reaching for the flask would be a mistake.
He said again, “My lord.”
At the bar, the taverner looked up, an old elf with thickening jowls and thinning silver hair. No one but these four, taverner, Knight, draconian, and Felan, occupied the large common room. Lord Thagol had taken up residence here and made it his command post for the region. If this were another Knight, Felan might have wondered whether the human missed the comforts of the capital, the glittering towers, the good food and quarters. This Knight out of Monastery Bone, though, bore the look of one used to the lack of comfort and the imposition of discipline. Here, in the Waycross, he looked like a man in his element, poring over maps and messages, wailing for the reports from soldiers. He’d been here all the summer long, the winter before, and back to the end of autumn. In all that time, the owner of the tavern hadn’t had payment for the food and wine Lord Thagol demanded for his Knights and draconians, and no elf for miles around came to dine at his tables or drink at his bar. The poor taverner had the pinched, white-eyed look of a man who sees ruin ahead of him.
Felan waited, and Sir Earautt Thagol put another check mark on the map, his face white in the flickering firelight and shadow. His lips compressed in a thin, hard line. Beside his hand the crystal inkpot looked like a small carafe of blood. Now he set aside the quill pen, moved the inkpot aside with the side of his little finger. When he finally looked up and met Felan’s eyes, the elf’s knees wobbled. His blood changed to ice, washing through him so that he thought the horrible cold would stop his heart.
“Remind me. Do I know you?” the Knight asked.
In his mind Felan heard a sound like footsteps so clearly he almost turned to see who’d come up behind him. He swallowed again, this time harder.
“I am Felan of the Northern Dales, my lord. I-I don’t-we have never met. I have brought a letter-a paper.”
Sweat ran on him now, soaking his shirt. In his mind, he heard the footsteps coming again. He looked over his shoulder, very carefully. No, the draconian stood at its post, a tall, reeking presence in the shadows by the door.
Felan held up the paper, in the dim light seeing the sweat stains on it. None of the ink had been smeared though. He’d taken care to preserve it in a condition to be read. When Thagol took the paper, his fingers brushed against Felan’s.
“M-my lord,” the elf gasped.
Lord Thagol read. The lines were few, the message clear. The bearer was to receive compensation according to the measure of his worth.
“What,” the Knight asked, “shall I use to measure your worth?”
Felan regretted coming. He wanted to run, to risk that bolting the room, flinging past the draconian and out the door. He held still. “I have valuable information, my lord.”
Thagol looked up. Felan thought, as others before had thought, that the man’s face was so pale it looked like a burn scar. The Knight’s eyes seemed flat, dead, and empty. Felan had to lock his knees to stay standing in place. In his head the footsteps stopped, as though a searcher had come close to what he was looking for.
“And that information is … ?”
“The outlaws …the ones they call the Night People. I-I know about them.”
The Knight remained silent, staring.
“I-I have entered their trust, my lord. I know how they work. I know-” He stopped and swallowed, trying to ease his parched throat. “I know that they sweep out of the forest and do their foul work, and I know they vanish into it again, invisible. They are not invisible, my lord, and they are not such an army. The leaders, at the core, are only four.”