Crimson Spring Ch2

CRIMSON SPRING

BY JEAN LOWE CARLSON

A KINGSMEN CHRONICLES PREQUEL NOVELLA

CHAPTER TWO

Elohl and Ihbram paced down the path, back toward the bunkhouses. Beside them rushed a brook of chill white water; far more full than Elohl would have liked. The highpasses were melting, and this skirmish would mark the start of the fighting season. Battle after battle, climb after climb. The Brigade hunkered down at High Camp upon the alpine shores of the Elsee all winter, and it was normal for Valenghia to test the highpasses in spring. But to send so many of their elite in such a concentrated push was unheard-of in the nine years that war had raged between the two nations. 

The thought made Elohl’s dark brows scowl as he paced a low wooden bridge spanning the snowmelt stream. He hefted the coils of rope at his shoulder, and Ihbram glanced over.

“You worried, Elohl?”

It was a personal question, but Ihbram had earned the right. He’d saved Elohl’s life enough times over the years, in battle and out of it. Elohl’s glance fell to the old scars at his inner wrist that showed between his sleeve and glove. It had been nine years since he’d tried to kill himself after being press-ganged into joining the High Brigade. Nine years since Ihbram had found him bleeding out on the cold boards of the bunkhouse and saved his life.

“Yeah, I’m worried.” As their First-Lieutenant, Elohl couldn’t voice his true thoughts with his men. But when it was just him and Ihbram, honesty reigned. “Arlen’s only got a hundred climbers to go up the Devil’s Vale right now. Our team climbs point, den’Mhessua’s leading the rest. We’re the only three commanders with experience picking up Angelhair Falls.”

“Den’Lithou and den’Bhern could have led point,” Ihbram’s words were soft.

“Avalanches spare no man. No matter how cautious.”

Elohl’s hard words got no response from his Second Hand. The Brigade was thin of good climbers this winter. Twenty-five teams had been swallowed in an avalanche last year during a skirmish against the Red Valor in Didria Pass. Five hundred Brigadiers, not to mention eight hundred Valormen, swallowed in a torrent of ice and snow when the melting summer glacier had suddenly decided to shift with the weight of over a thousand men clashing atop it. 

The battle had been nulled, instantly. Elohl’s team, fighting at the edge of the glacier near the pines were some of the few who had survived – and only because Elohl had clipped in a fast line to the nearest tree the moment he’d felt his sensate sphere tingle, right before the glacier cracked. The devastating avalanche had created a sudden end to skirmishes last year. Replacement recruits still had not arrived, snowed-in as the High Brigade had been for the past four months. 

And now, the Valenghians thought they could hamstring the Brigadiers before their numbers improved.

“So we’re gonna be outnumbered two-to one, huh? I like those odds.” 

Ihbram grinned, showing his impeccably white teeth. Elohl couldn’t help but smile, feeling Ihbram’s wildness. Something furious lived inside the affable, half-Highlander miscreant. A vicious nature that only came out in battle, but which Elohl was grateful for. 

Elohl’s sensate sphere tingled suddenly. Sharp like daggers, it lanced him from above. His wyrric instinct, a wild magic that few knew he had, shot a surge of lightning through his veins. Acting without thought, Elohl was already leaping aside, shoving Ihbram out of the way. With a sharp crack, the top of a high-pine suddenly broke and came crashing down – right where they had been standing. Laden with wet spring snows, the heavy boughs hit the path with a boom and splashed into the icy stream, sending up plumes of water to sluice the thawing banks.

Ihbram sprawled onto his butt in the snowy ferns. Elohl fell next to him, crushing tender shoots and drier plants. They’d fallen in a ring of white mantrelle mushrooms, their angel-wing delicacy smashed. Ihbram’s green eyes were enormous, gazing at the massive tumble of tree that had come down just feet away. He breathed hard in shock, then suddenly burst into laughter.

Men came running from the camp in the clearing. Somber-eyed Harlis den’Sellen with alarm upon his chiseled face, merry Jovial den’Fourth with a shout of dismay, horror in his bright blue eyes. But Ihbram was all humor as Elohl hauled him up from the mushrooms and ferns. Slapping Elohl’s jerkin, Ihbram laughed, “Fast as a keshar-cat! Damn if I don’t know how you heard that before it even fell!”

“Intuition.” Elohl steadied Ihbram on his feet. 

“Finest intuition I know,” Ihbram grinned.

But the piercing clarity in Ihbram’s eyes spoke volumes. Most men thought Elohl climbed and killed like he did because he’d been born with a sword in his hands. But Elohl’s gift wasn’t simply intuition. It wasn’t fleet reflexes or excellent hearing. And gazing at his Second Hand’s knowing smile, Elohl was suddenly certain that Ihbram knew the truth about his wyrria – his magic, unique to the Alrashemni Kingsmen, that caused him to save lives. Innate magic that told his body how to move. A gift that survived only in Elohl and the Kingsmen who were left.

If any of the others were still left alive.

Once-elite fighters of the King – who had suddenly disappeared without a trace nine years ago.

“Let’s get these things to the ready-hall and finish gearing up,” Elohl spoke in his cool baritone. “We set out in twenty.”

“Lead Hand,” Ihbram nodded, his smile thoughtful. 

Elohl made to turn away, to focus on the battle ahead. But before he could, Ihbram reached out, gripping his shoulder. A subtle power rolled out from Ihbram, that Elohl could almost feel tingling his sensate sphere. With a touch of gray in his red braids, Ihbram was older than Elohl, and Elohl felt the man’s stolid presence. It had comfort in it; the same kindness that had stopped Elohl from offing himself nine years ago. 

“We’ll make it through this skirmish, Elohl,” Ihbram’s green eyes burned with a fire Elohl could almost feel.

“What makes you so certain?” Elohl questioned, feeling something cold buried inside his gut. A despair he always carried, a wretchedness of living that he never showed his men.

“Because our enemies never see you coming,” Ihbram’s green eyes laughed. “And you always see them.”

Elohl stared at Ihbram. The man’s lips twitched in a smile so knowing that Elohl blanked of any response. With a chuckle, Ihbram turned, striding toward the knot of wide-eyed Brigadiers gathered around the fallen tree. They hailed their commanders, and Ihbram moved into their midst with a laugh, clapping shoulders and sending them jogging back to the ready-hall to finish preparing for battle.

Elohl watched them go, wondering how many of his team his wyrric instincts would not be able to save today.

Copyright 2018 Dragonlight Publishing LLC. No portion of this text may be copied or distributed without written permission of the author.

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