Dragon Bones

Kirkovenal stopped, his back toward Beckram. "I went to Ciernack's shortly after Paulon died. I didn't think there was any co

"Gods," swore Beckram. Even the dimness of the tent couldn't disguise the severity of the scars on Kirkovenal's back.

He jerked his shirt back in place. "It wasn't the worst part of what she did to me. I thought I was a dead man."

"Why didn't she kill you, too?" Beckram asked.

"She had me there for two days. I convinced her Paulon never said anything to me. That I thought I'd paid her to…hurt me while I was drunk, as if I'd paid women to do that to me before. I said she had to keep it quiet, that my brother would cut me off if he found out I'd been paying to have women beat me. It seems to have worked. I'm alive." He turned back to Beckram. "I haven't had so much as a drop of wine since."

Beckram stood up. "Thank you. Ward needs to know this. Do you know who I should ask to find out where Ward is? He rode out this morning—with Bastilla—and I can't for the life of me remember where he told me he was going."

Kirkovenal nodded. "I'll find out. Then I'll take you there myself."

Tisala nursed her left arm as she listened to her sublieutenant list the men who had died and the ones who were wounded. She knew every man in her command down to his favorite color, and losing them was hard. Fourteen of her fifty were dead today. Another dozen were seriously wounded, and the rest were all sporting cuts and bruises.

She directed the sublieutenant to see to the gathering of enough wood to build a pyre for the dead. She would see to mounting a guard herself. No sense being caught unprepared if the Vorsag decided to return unexpectedly. Then she sifted out ten of her men who were still whole to mount a patrol. She'd just finished with her orders when the priest came shuffling up to whine at her.

"The goddess's artifacts need an escort to Callis," he said.

"We'll all be going back to bring this news to my father," she said. "You and the people of the village are welcome to come with us when we leave tomorrow morning."

"There are not enough riding animals in the village—"

She interrupted him impatiently. "We'll mount who we can, but the rest will have to walk. Tell them to pack lightly because they'll have to carry what they take."

He looked disappointed. Did he want to leave half the village behind?

Exasperated, Tisala turned on her heel and strode to the pyre to see how far they'd come in laying it. Before she made it there, the slender, dark-haired wizard who traveled with Ward of Hurog caught her arm.

"Have you seen my lord?" he said urgently. "Penrod's horse was caught ru

She frowned. Some battlefields seem to swallow the dead, but this one wasn't that big. "Just before the retreat, I saw Ward chase off into some trees. I think some of your people were following."

"Which trees?"

Tisala looked at the strain on his face and compared it to the work she still needed to do. "I'll show you. Let me get my horse."

One of Ward's men lay in the shelter of the woods, killed by a clean sword thrust from behind, and Oreg almost fell off his mount in his scramble to examine the fallen man. "Penrod?" He checked pulse points, but she could see that the man had shed too much blood to live. While the wizard fiddled with the body, she paced out the clearing. Here that big beast Ward rode had stood for a short while—impossible to mistake the size of hoofprints. The ground was too soft with rain and dense with grass to hold many indications other than the most obvious. She couldn't distinguish the human footprints from the general muck.

"The horses went off this way…" She let her voice trail off when she got a good look at the wizard.

She took half a dozen quick steps and thrust a shoulder under his arm before he fell. "Are you wounded?"

With an eerie keening sound, he became a dead weight.

The bushes behind them shook. Tisala dropped the wizard and drew her sword, but it was only another of Ward's people, Axiel. She only remembered his name because her father had said it was dwarven, and the dwarves used to trade at Callis.

Axiel took a quick look at the dead man before he knelt beside the wailing boy. "Oreg?"

"Does he do this often?" She had to raise her voice to be heard.

"Never seen him do this." Axiel took the younger man's face in his hands. "Oreg, what's wrong? What happened to Penrod?"

The mage jerked away and curled into a fetal position, but he quit wailing. "He's gone. My fault, he's gone."

"Who?"

"Ward, I think," answered Tisala when Oreg didn't reply. "We came out looking for him and found Penrod here. Ward's stallion has been here as well as a couple of other horses, but I can't tell much more."

Without a word, Axiel began to pace the little clearing as she had. After a moment, he returned and nodded. "If we'd had a foot or two less rain in the past few months, I could do better. Someone took three horses off in that general direction and set another free—probably Penrod's. All three of the horses were big, which means that they belonged to our group rather than yours. Oreg's here. Penrod's dead. Ciarra is helping with the wounded. That leaves Ward, Tosten, and Bastilla."

"They left together?"

He shrugged. "Their horses did, anyway. Maybe they took off after the man who killed Penrod."

"And they'll be back when they're finished."

Axiel grunted as men do, and Tisala decided to take it as an affirmative. "Right. Then we'll take Oreg and bed him down with the rest of our sick men. I'll send someone back for Penrod." She'd seen enough men in battle to know that battle fever and its aftermath took people strangely sometimes. As long as Oreg wasn't wailing and sobbing tomorrow, he'd be no worse off than any other soldier she knew.

"I'll come back and get Penrod after I'm through with Oreg. Penrod and I've been comrades for too long to leave him to other hands." Axiel picked up the young mage without visible effort, though Tisala doubted there was a stone of weight between them.

"I'll find Ciarra and let her know what's going on." She held Axiel's gelding while he dealt with the difficulty of getting Oreg on his tall horse. She bit her lip and didn't say anything disparaging about the Northern horses. Some people you could tease, and others you didn't. Despite her father's comments, she did actually know which were which, and sometimes she even cared.

Axiel covered Oreg with the blankets from both of their bedrolls, but it didn't stop the shaking.

"I've got to go get Penrod's body."

Oreg didn't appear to hear him. After a moment, Axiel stepped into his saddle. His horse let out an almost human sigh, but made no other protests.

"That's it Foxy Lad," he told his horse. "I don't know why the aftermath of battles are always more a trial of endurance than the battles themselves, but that's how it is."

Axiel was tired, too. There was some basis for human rumors of dwarven endurance, but he was half human, and his arms told him that he'd been in a fight. A dull ache in his ribs let him know that he hadn't come out unscathed, but it would have to wait until after Penrod was taken care of.

You'd think after all these years, Penrod would have learned to watch his back. Axiel stopped himself. Much easier to just accept death rather than rail at it, and he should have learned that by now.

Penrod's body lay undisturbed. The growing shadow gave the glen an unsettling feel, though it might just be that he was here alone. Axiel bent down to pick him up.