???
In battle was the only time Venick’s mind went truly quiet. He had come to love that feeling. The blessed emptiness. The break from thought.
The fighting was vicious. There were losses—heavy and quick—on both sides. But when the Elder’s reinforcements arrived, the battle began to tip. The Dark Army, large but underexperienced, began to waver.
As the fighting continued, Venick reclaimed Eywen, charging to the front ranks to lead the assault. Sword-blisters had torn his hands open. His hip and foot ached from old injuries. There was blood on his face, it was in his mouth. At one point, an enemy slashed his arm. The wound burned, but it was a detached sort of pain. The kind he could put off for now. He would feel it later. After this battle was over, Venick would return to himself. His wounds would hurt then as they should.
His decision to marry Harmon was like that. Later, he would feel the scope of it. He would understand. But not now. Now, he did only what he must do. War had a certain flavor, Venick had learned, not so different from the blood in his mouth. It was thick, coppery. It pushed all thoughts from his head, so that his only focus was his sword, and the elves dying at its end.
THIRTY-FOUR
The Elder came on a red stallion.
Venick and his soldiers watched the man ride across the now quiet battlefield. The earth smoked where fires had recently burned. The sky, limned with the sun’s last light, was as deep as an ocean.
The Elder approached their waiting army. He rode alone, a solitary figure against a wide landscape. No sigil banners. No guardsmen. He was armored in a full metal kit, a sword on one hip, a war hammer on the other. He looked huge atop his horse, like a god. Untouchable.
It was only after he dismounted and drew off his helm that Venick remembered how old the man truly was. The Elder’s skin was loose around his jaw. His hands were a web of wrinkles.
“A decisive victory,” the Elder said to Venick. There was approval in his voice, clean and sheer. “My men report that you command an army well. With the help of my soldiers, you overwhelmed the conjurors and drove the Dark Army out.”
Venick peered across the battlefield, which was no longer a battlefield, but a graveyard. “They’ll be back.”
The Elder gave a slight smile, as if that’s what he’d expected Venick to say. “We’ll be ready.”
???
“You and my daughter make a good match,” the Elder told Venick later in the city. Their men had marched through Parith’s gates, some on horseback, many on foot, their wounded borne on carts and litters at the army’s head. Venick’s own injuries had been tended by the Elder’s personal healer in the privacy of his new rooms. After his cuts had been dressed, he’d been given fresh clothing, boots, and a steel sword that was beautifully forged, but bulkier than the green glass blades Venick was accustomed to wielding. The new sword felt clunky in his hand. When he pulled the steel from its scabbard, it dragged. Yet Venick understood that all of it—the rooms, the sword, the healer—were a gift from the Elder. Venick couldn’t refuse them without offending the man. He belted the sword to his waist.
“The timing is good, too,” the Elder continued. He’d invited Venick to walk the castle’s battlements. The city stretched beneath them, the afternoon sun setting the red and gold rooftops afire. “It is the perfect season for an engagement banquet.”
Venick glanced sideways at the mention of a banquet. “I’m not sure it’s wise to put our resources into a banquet,” he said carefully. “Not when we might need them on the battlefield.”
“We have resources enough for both.”
“But not time enough. The Dark Queen won’t wait. We suffered heavy losses in our last battle, and she knows it. She’ll order her army to strike again, soon, while we’re recovering. She’s likely already planning her next attack.”
The Elder clapped Venick with a friendly hand. His eyes, though, were cool. “The war can wait a few more days. Besides, the people of Parith are curious to meet their new master, as well as their elven allies. The banquet is a wise political move. Unless there is some other reason you do not wish to celebrate your engagement to my family?”
“No,” Venick replied. There was nothing else he could say.
They walked back through the castle and onto the grounds. The Elder wanted to show Venick the barracks and the armory. “So that you may see what you have won.” He didn’t seem to mind drawing attention to the fact that Venick’s marriage to his daughter had been a bargain with human lives as the prize.
The Elder’s army was as impressive as the stories said. It became quickly apparent that the men he had sent to defend Venick in yesterday’s battle were only a fraction of their total number. As they walked the training grounds, they passed men sparring with blunted swords in rows of six and ten, men currying horses and sharpening blades, men waiting for the baths in long, neat lines, their shirts flung over their necks, skin gleaming with sweat. Everywhere there were soldiers, polishing swords, weaving nets, hauling cannonballs, fletching arrows. Their activities were organized, their movements collective. The Elder pointed them out. Here was where the men worked. Here was where they rested. Here they ate, and drank, and wrote their letters. Here they planned for battle, and here—if they were discovered in disloyalty or deceit—they were hung.
Harmon was there, sitting among them. The soldiers crowded her like eager children, smiling, teasing, asking for her opinion on this injury, then that one, showing off their new wounds and the size of their scars. Despite Harmon’s claim that she’d never trained as a soldier, she’d clearly spent time around these men. A lot of time, if their adoring faces were any indication.
The Elder followed Venick’s gaze. “The army will be yours to command,” he emphasized. “After the wedding, of course.”
Venick forced himself to meet the man’s eyes. “Of course.”
???
In the days that followed, the castle became a hive of busy activity. The banquet was to be held in five nights’ time.No chance to prepare, the Elder’s staff could be heard whispering, their words jagged and fretful, like chewed nails.No time at all.The servants dashed frantically through the halls, opening unused rooms, washing linens, chopping wood. Wine barrels—huge, iron-bound things—were rolled up from the underground cellars, and winter wheat rations were torn open early to be ground and baked into bread. The Elder had invited dignitaries from every major highland city, and many smaller ones besides. They would come to the castle and stay through the engagement banquet. There would need to be food and drink and room enough for all.
The Elder kept Venick close. He asked questions of Venick’s homeland, his journey through the elflands, his ability to speak elvish. That last, especially, caught the man’s attention. “What a marvel you are,” the Elder said, “that you have opened your heart to the elves, enough even to learn their language.”
Those words, though they sounded like praise, filled Venick with unease.
