A sharp pain woke Riot and he saw that he had scratched the half healed scabs off of his arm and they bled freely. The channels in his body were so dry he wished he could peel his skin like an onion to scratch under it. The barrier he had put in place in desperation in the woods was solid, but a faint trickle of leypower leaked in, and he seized at it like a man dying of thirst, feeling sickened by how much he needed it. He needed to master this power, and he needed spellcraft. But he wouldn’t have one of the lumpen scars that some of the others had; if he was going to lead them, he would need to have the best. The ability to crush the ley power into a small, devastating charge that he could send a hundred paces with killing power.
Outside, the Leybound huddled around a fire and Rimmer dunked a battered tin mug in the blackened cookpot and handed it to Riot. It was camp tea, the same leaves had been used for days, and it was as weak as dishwater, but nothing had ever tasted better.
“Nothing to eat?” Riot asked.
“You won’t get much more than tea down you Sarge, not without throwing it up again,” Rimmer said.
Riot searched for any hint of a mocking tone but instead saw only a kind of hesitant concern.
“Moran?” Riot asked.
“Went off early doors with the Friar and took Loic and Crease with em’. Something's going on he’s not telling us.” Rimmer dropped his voice to a whisper. “We don’t really know nothing about him do we? He’s not one of us. You think he’s working with the long ears?”
A couple of days ago, Rimmer had been shouting at Loic to beat Riot’s brains in, and now he was handing out mugs of tea and whispering about Moran being a traitor. But could Riot really blame him? The man didn’t believe in loyalty, because no one had ever shown him any.
The other Leybound tried to act as though they were engrossed in their own thoughts, but Riot knew they were listening hard.
“The commanders got a plan, Rimmer. I’ve seen it,” Riot lied. “It’s going to make heroes of all of us, so you just mind your cookpot.”
“Sarge,” Rimmer replied with a salute.
Norton waited behind Riot. The boy saluted, his chest puffing out. “I made up the shaving bowl, sir, left it by the wood pile over there.”
“You don’t have to call me sir, Norton and its officers that use the shaving bowl first, I’m not an officer.”
“Okay, ah sir. Commander Moran’s not here sir. It’s just you. I left the bowl by the wood pile.”
By the time the shaving bowls got to sergeants it was usually cold with a layer of grey loam and lumps of drowned hair. But the water was warm and soapy. Riot steadied a shard of mirror on the wood pile and as his knife rasped the stubble from his chin he thought he could get used to hot shaving water. His thoughts turned to Moran’s mission. Could it make heroes of all of them? Could it get him the impossible, a chain of a lieutenant around his neck?
He resolved to talk to Moran, but first he would find Natalia Quinn. She would be leaving in the morning and he hadn’t thanked her for coming for him in the forest—not really. There was curiosity there too. He’d been so sure that her destination was the same as theirs and that her secret mission for the wikkan had something to do with whatever was in the leather pouch Moran carried. But if she was leaving, then perhaps she really did just use them as an escort.
He had last seen her taking the trail into the forest and it was as good a place as any to look for her. Riot started off down the road and paused. Fletcher was on sentry duty at the gate, and the older man was avoiding his gaze, the faint smell of pipe smoke lingering in the air.
“Have you seen Miss Quinn pass by Fletcher?” Riot asked.
“No Sarge. Not likely I would neither, not if she don’t want to be seen.”
“You might as well enjoy a smoke, you could see the long ears coming from a mile away from up here,” Riot said leaning against the low stone wall and looking out over the undulating land that lay between them and the coast.
“Thanking you, Sarge,” Fletcher said, a pleasant surprise on his face.
“Not many leybound your age, Fletcher,” Riot said as the older man thumbed a pinch of tobacco into the pipe.
“Most don’t make it, Sarge. But there was an Arcanist that I worked for—you know, getting hold of hard to find items—and when I got nabbed, he saw fit to repay me with some linium. They made me drink the stuff, if you can believe it, and I survived alright.”
“How do you fight it?” Riot asked, speaking in a low tone so his voice wouldn’t carry.
Fletcher leaned back and puffed on the pipe, the coals glowing faintly. “Been asked that before many a time, most by them that just got bound, like yourself. Guess I never rightly saw it as a fight.”
“It's a bloody war, a war I fight like hell all day and wake up on the losing side.”
“Respectful-like, Sarge, that’s what say them who aren’t long for this life. At first, it feels like that, a bit like this situation we’re in right now really, with an enemy just out of sight. You can't see 'em, but you know they’re there alright. You learn to live with it, not comfortable at first, not comfortable for years. But after a time, that leyline don’t bother you so much. Like these old hands after forty years pulling on an oar, or my old pa swinging an axe his whole life, what do you call 'em, the hard bits of skin?”
“Calluses.” Riot recalled his grandfather carving the small wooden Erudoran figurines he sold on the streets of Fallow-Neck. The old man's had thumbs like pads of leather.
Fletcher clicked his fingers. “Calluses, that's it. Well, inside gets like that, but you gotta keep at it, each and every day, regular, like taking a piss.”
“The barrier keeps failing.” Riot searched the face of the old soldier for any sign of amusement or mocking, but all he saw was a kind of fatherly concern, and his eyes flickered to Riot's hands.
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“You don’t have no spellcraft, that's all. When you get it, it’s like tapping a barrel of wine, lets it all drain away, or more like sticking a boil perhaps. But you speak to any leybound they’ll tell you different. Lehan gave his a name if you can believe that, he talks to it. Says it's like a big cat like what they have in the jungles out west. It scratches on the door, and he lets it in, gives it a look around, then lets it out when it's bored.”
“What about Loic, what does he say?” Riot asked.
Fletcher gave a rueful smile. “Northmen are a bunch of superstitious bastards. Up there, they have a killing wind they call the Cold Bite, he says the leyline roams around and comes when he calls. Powerful leyline he has, saw him smash an oak tree down to matchsticks one time.”
The older man tapped the pipe out on the stones, the small glowing coals hitting the floor where he ground them out with his boot.
Both men looked up as a flare of arcane light flashed in a grove of trees below them.
"Rekon, Miss Quinn is down that way,” Fletcher said.
“What about her? How does she move around without anyone seeing?”
The old boatman wore a pained expression. “Begging your pardon, Sarge, but I won’t speak on that. No disrespect o’ course, you make me watch my step so to speak, but she scares the living piss right out of me.”
Riot tripped on a tree root and cursed. The darkness down here in the small copse of trees was almost absolute, but he could follow the smell of burning metal well enough.
He froze as the tip of a blade rested on the back of his neck, raising his hands slowly. “You told me not to sneak up on you, Nathaniel. You would do well to follow your own advice.” There was something else about her voice—an elation that overrode the usual disdain. The blade was removed, and he turned slowly to see that ice that locked her stern expression had melted, her face open and full of life. Then she was gone, walking away, deeper into the trees, her footsteps barely making a sound.
He followed her to a clearing that let the slim light of the waning moon shine down. The grass had been flattened for several yards in each direction, burned and blackened.
Natalia's long hair was loose and fell about her shoulders like a dark river. She had taken off her leather armor, and though the wound on her shoulder had been bandaged, the blood had leaked through. Her face was flushed and she wore a smile.
No man could deny she was attractive, but it had always been the molten attraction of a freshly forged blade. Now she seemed disarmed somehow, and he tripped over his words.
“You’ve been training?”
“Always.”
“I wanted to ask you about the spellcraft and the leypower, before you go.”
“It took Gerrard Price to convince you to take this seriously?”
“I want to know how it works. How are some spells better than others?”
“It depends on the skill of the spellcrafter.” Misting leypower bled down the scars on her bare forearms and gathered in her cupped hands, ebbing and flowed like liquid gas. The runes on her skin blazing beneath it.
“The runes contain the power, the better the skill of the spell crafter, the more power you can hold and form.”
Natalia trapped the power in her hands, and it blazed out of the cracks as if trying to free itself. The muscles on her hands strained, and in the gray light, Riot watched the strain in her expression as she crushed the power down. There was no fouling, her hands perfectly clean.
“This is the truest leypower, better even than Moran could form. Arcanists naturally draw ley power from their surroundings, it is weak, takes time, and can’t be made any more potent by cycling.”
In her open palm was a small, round sphere of gray light, the width of a copper guilder, held by the runes that shimmered with the same light. She held out her arm, palm facing directly at Riot, the sphere glued to her skin. With a mischievous smile, she moved slightly and released it with a crack. Riot ducked, and on the other side of the clearing behind him, a sapling exploded, showering leaves and wooden shards.
Riot waggled a finger in his ear. “So you’re more powerful than Moran?”
Natalia lifted both hands, palms up, as if weighing her words. “Yes and no. I have more power, but it is limited. I can use all of the stored ley power in my body, then take in more, perhaps once or twice, but if I tried again, the channels would rupture. Arcanists do not touch the ley lines, they absorb latent ley power from the world around them, like breathing, and do so almost indefinitely, though it is weaker.”
“Can Moran give me a spell?”
“No. I hear he is a talented duellist, but only a few living arcanists can craft the kind of spell you want.”
“Who?”
“Someone powerful and learned. Alric Rook, for example.”
A chill wind disturbed the leaves, and Riot's gut twisted.
“You can relax, Nathaniel. I know enough to guess what happened in Ivansrook, and if you did kill him, then you did this world a favor. Alric was a monster, and he didn’t work alone.”
“There are others?” He almost choked on the words. Other rooms, other basements, and other broken and burned bodies.
The dirty gray light misted down her arms and dripped to the floor. “I have seen and survived them.”
Was that how Natalia was made leybound, in a dark room strapped to a table?
“I think you are a good man, Nathaniel Riot. You have won the loyalty of the leybound, and mine also.” She stepped close enough that he could feel the warmth from her skin. “I leave in the morning. The night is cold, and we are reaching the end. Will you stay with me?”
Had she dropped the cold veil for him? This woman from the east needed no-one for her mission, but now she wanted him. And the night was cold, and they were near the end.
“I will,” he replied.
***
Hours later, the morning light found its way through the cracks in the tiled roof, and Riot lay in one of the old priory stables with Natalia in his arms and spoke of leylines, spellcraft, and distilling the ley power. He held her hand in hers, gently turning it to see the hundreds of small runes that had been cut into her skin and left soft, silvery scars.
He learned that distilling the power filtered the impurities and prevented the fouling from staining her hands. He pestered her with questions about timing, distance, and damage.
“Enough talk of battles and fighting; you are obsessed,” she complained.
“If only the regiments knew how useful they could be,” he continued, his head filled with battle plans and maneuvers.
“No one knows, because they treat them like fodder, expendable. Now you see how they could be more.”
“That won’t mean anything when we get back; we’ll all be locked up again.”
“Then you need a victory. Speak to Moran, he has his mission and he needs your help, you might not like him, but his success can be your success.”
“You must know what he’s doing.”
“Why must I know?”
“Because you spy for Kerne, it’s your job to know.”
“Can you keep a secret, Nathaniel Riot?”
“Yes,” Riot replied, sitting up slightly.
“Good, so can I,” she replied with a laugh like falling water.
“Why did Kerne send you here?” He was blundering along like a fool and he knew he would lose her, but it was too late to take the words back.
Quinn tensed, her eyes flashing like a fresh edge on a blade. “I told you. My mission is mine to complete alone.”
With that, she rose and dressed, pulling on the leather armor, tying her hair back, and tucking it in securely. With her sword belt tied, the transformation was complete, and she was once again cold and unassailable. “Speak to Moran. Now that you are here, he will use you, but take care, he will not hesitate to leave anyone behind to fulfill his mission.”
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