The duty of the Outriders is threefold: bring peace to the wilds, ward off external threats, and shield the native solborn herds from exploitation and foreign hunters.
– Code of the Outriders
Stars breached the darkness above as Ceridwen and Finnian wandered into the night. Sometimes they walked, her boots thudding, her spurs jingling faintly, his steps falling cloaked and unheard. Sometimes they rode, shadower and fireborn matched stride for stride. Sometimes they talked, and sometimes they lapsed into comfortable, companionable silence.
Even then, in the quiet, Ceridwen did not allow herself to think.
She simply moved, simply lived, simply breathed, letting instinct guide her—onward, ever onward—until she sensed Finnian’s steps slowing, his backward glances growing more pronounced.
Until his voice broke across the hushed velvet of the moonlit night. “Where, exactly, are we going?”
The question drew her back to herself, to an awareness of where her wandering feet had taken her, across the empty plain covered in rustling grasses, skirting the camps of the various war-chiefs, and now rounding the eastern side of the fortress of Rysinger where the farthest stretches of the Gauroth range tumbled down in spurs and folds.
Suddenly, she knew where she was headed.
She drew upon her reins, and her fireborn came, snorting softly. Setting boot to stirrup, she looked at Finnian over the seat of her saddle. “Once, when I was young, my father told us the story of Ingold, the first earthrider who ruled from Rysinger, long ago, before Soldonia was a kingdom.”
Finnian looked curious. “I have never heard of her.”
“She awoke, one day, to find Rysinger surrounded by foes.” Ceridwen swung astride her steed and waited for Finnian to mount his, then rode forward at a gentle lope. “By a force so vast, it stretched to the horizon. She knew that she could not win, but she flamed her warriors to courage with a speech, then disappeared within while they held the outer walls against clouds of harrying stormers until the attackers retreated with the setting sun.
“Earthriders charged the gates with the dawn, and once again, Ingold rallied the defenders, commanding them to dismantle the old Keep, which was built of stones carved from mountain-root to reinforce the gate, and then she again disappeared. All the long day, they built onto the barricade, while the earthhewn charged again and again without breaking through. But when the next sunrise revealed smoke hanging low and thick on the eastern horizon, the courage of the defenders failed them. They confronted Ingold, demanded to know where she was going, what she was doing, why she kept leaving them to fight alone.”
“Can you blame them?” Finnian remarked. “I would have done the same.”
Of that Ceridwen had no doubt. He had confronted her often enough, challenged what he perceived as recklessness, yet still rode willingly at her back when she held to her decision.
“Ingold told them she needed more time. So once again, they held the wall while she went below. My father broke off the tale then and called Rhodri to join me and Bair. He took us below the fortress into a rough-hewn cavern. Ingold had carved it out with her steed.” Some of the awe Ceridwen had felt upon seeing that work for the first time seeped into her voice. Finnian might not understand it, for shadowers were a subtle breed, but most of the solborn could be blunt instruments, and earthhewn and fireborn alike tended to destroy with abandon. True mastery came not in rock-breaking displays, but in restraint.
“He asked us,” she added, “what we thought it was for.”
“And what did you say?”
She could no longer see him or his shadower at her side, for both had melted into the dark of the night-washed grasses, but she could sense the tension in his voice over the humming of cicadas. They were very near the walls of Rysinger now, near to her enemies and her goal, so she slowed Mindar to a walk. So close, an errant spark might draw arrows upon them.
“I said that Ingold sought to undermine the fortress, so if it was taken, it could be collapsed from within, burying the living and the dead.”
He whistled softly. “So, you were a firestorm even then?”
She heard in his voice a trace of the strange, distant look she had seen in her father’s eyes when she’d said it. “Bair thought it an attempt at escape, a way out for everyone inside.”
“I agree with him.”
“Of course you do.”
“So what was the answer? How did the story end?”
“Sadly, how else?” Most of the old stories did. Glory and death so often rode in step. “She was slain as she emerged from the fortress that night, cut down by some of her own warriors who were desperate to surrender, so we can never truly know what she intended.”
“Which makes for a fascinating story but doesn’t explain what we’re doing here.”
“This is where my father took us next. There’s a crevice ahead, connected to a natural system of caves that runs below Rysinger. If Ingold had managed to tunnel through to them . . .”
“So Bair was right? She intended to create an escape?”
“Maybe.” Ceridwen halted Mindar on the stony rim of a gully that ran toward Rysinger. “But Rhodri offered a different theory. He felt that Ingold dug the cavern not to die, or to escape, but to—”
Somewhere in the gully, a dislodged stone clacked and clattered.
Ceridwen smothered the sparks that sprang to life in Mindar’s mane and eased her sabre from her scabbard. Not to die, no. Or to escape. But to bring the fight to her enemies on her own terms.
Whenever a thunderstorm loomed over the sea in Kerrikar, the entire island stilled. Wildlife retreating, bees quieting, the air itself hovering close and thick until the rain struck with a force that set all the trees dancing in the howling wind. Jakim felt a similar hush coursing through Rysinger now as warriors streamed into Rhodri’s wake and refugees emerged from the shadows, clutching satchels and baskets and children’s hands, and they all moved on together in a gathering tide. On the outward side of the path, closest to the gates, soldiers of Nadaar rose as they neared, discarding whetstones and oil rags and gripping spears to ward off attack.
But Rhodri was not heading for the gates.
He led the way down a ramp carved into the ditch that encircled the wall of the inner fortress, and there, concealed beneath the drawbridge, was a tunnel. A way out. Jakim sat up higher behind Ineth and spied soldiers guarding the tunnel, blocking the way with shields interlocked, torches and spears bristling between them.
Rhodri rode right up to the formation before halting, his steed snorting sparks that skipped harmlessly over their shields. “Stand aside,” he commanded in Nadaarian. “I will not ask again.”
Boots scuffed. Weapons shifted. The line remained.
Jakim’s skin tingled as Rhodri drew his fireborn back a step, and its head dropped low, dragging in a breath that he could almost hear sizzling in the air. Suddenly, a harsh voice rang out among the soldiers. “Hold your fire!” It was a voice like scraping metal or grinding stones, recognizable even before Nahrog the priest shoved through the shield wall, the chains of his service that ran from his wrists to his neck clanking with each deliberate stride. Grounding his spear with a thud, he raised his baleful expression to Rhodri.
Ineth tensed and reached for the blade slung at her side.
“Do not think, priest,” Rhodri said in a quiet, measured voice, “that I will not kill you where you stand. Vakhar longs to rage, and only my will restrains him.”
Nahrog didn’t flinch, only slowly, deliberately, turned to address the soldiers, exposing his back to the fireborn. “Hear me. They ride upon the will of Murloch, and none shall hinder them. The Voice has spoken. Let them pass.”
That, Jakim certainly hadn’t expected.
Ineth either, apparently, for she released a breath but not her blade as the priest’s command took effect. Shields shifted, spears lowered, and the soldiers drew back, allowing the warriors and refugees amassed behind Rhodri to begin to flow past him into the tunnel and on until the darkness swallowed them.
Rhodri brought his steed one step closer to Nahrog. “The tsemarc will not look kindly upon your interference here, priest.”
“The tsemarc will do as the tsemarc wills. I ride with you.”
“Ride with me? You trampled upon our agreement and told me to be grateful I yet live. Convince me to let you continue to do the same, creature of Murloch.”
Nahrog’s lip curled. “Your betrothed will speak for me.”
Confusion etched on his brow, Rhodri shifted to view Astra, but she forestalled any questions with a gentle touch to his arm. “Later, my love. Just think how useful he may be to us.” She lowered her voice then. “The tsemarc may have the emperor’s ear, but there are other powers at work within the empire. We need not win this fight alone.”
“Later,” Rhodri repeated in a tone that made it a promise, then turned to the priest. “We travel at speed. One of my riders can—”
“No need.” Nahrog flicked a hand, and an attendant emerged from behind the soldiers, guiding a tiger and chariot. Despite his bulk and flowing robes, the priest sprang easily aboard, slid his spear through a pair of rings mounted on the inside, and seized the reins in both hands. He snapped the ends against the tiger’s back as Rhodri spurred his steed forward.
“You should recall, my lord,” Ineth said in Soldonian, urging her steed up alongside Rhodri’s, “that the engineer’s plans for the tunnel were carried out. We should be cautious.”
Which sounded ominous enough to Jakim.
But then Nahrog demanded to know what her words meant.
“It means, priest,” Rhodri answered darkly, “that you should be wary of antagonizing me and sparking open flame from my steed. Very wary.”
So, on they rode, with only the weak glow of a few hooded lanterns held aloft on scattered spears to light their path through the lurking dark. Hooves clopped on stone. Tack creaked, and weapons clanked faintly. Snorted breaths rang out harshly, echoing off the walls, but none of the riders spoke, and soon, Jakim found the oppressive cloak of silence suffocated even his thoughts. Occasionally sparks pierced the inky gloom but were smothered so hastily that whatever traps the engineer had designed did not ignite. Yet.
Stars finally broke the dark above as they emerged from the tunnel, and Jakim breathed freely again as the wind that forever roamed this rugged country once more drifted across his face. No longer tinged with smoke or the reek of battle, it carried to him only the faintly musty scent of countless steeds and the metallic tang of oil and rust from the armor of countless riders, and for a brief moment, as it gusted and shifted, a taste of fetid dampness. Was there rain sweeping in?
Or just water nearby? A lake, or maybe a river?
Nahrog broke the silence. “Something is wrong. There should be guards.”
Ceridwen tried to still her breathing as warriors streamed from a crevice in the earth not a hundred strides away. Pulse still racing from the scuffle, blood spattering from the tip of her blade, she rubbed her rein hand across Mindar’s neck and whispered calming words, so soft none but he could hear.
Tonight, one spark could kill, not just her but Finnian too.
He had dismounted to retrieve his arrows from the corpses of the Nadaarian guards they had discovered and was now ghosted like his steed. Probably crouched with arrow to string, watching intently while the riders streamed past. Only a few paces away, a Nadaarian voice rumbled a warning into the night, and a voice she knew all too well replied in the same tongue, “Be wary. If I know Ceridwen, she will not be far.”
The blade trembled in her grip. Rhodri.
She had come looking for him, but flames, she hadn’t expected to find him in the midst of making his move to bring the fight back to the war-chiefs.
“Shoot him,” she breathed, knowing Finnian would hear, for his senses were as sharp and attuned as those of his wolfhound. “Shoot him, Finnian.”
His hushed response came startlingly close beside her—even now, after being paired for so many months in battle, the way his bond silenced his movements still unnerved her. “Ceridwen—”
“Shoot him now.”
“They’re not alone, Ceridwen.”
The hooded lanterns drifted toward the ragged edges of the force, and she understood what his enhanced vision had enabled him to see. There were people there, marching all along the outskirts—not warriors but refugees, escaping the fall of Rysinger with the clothes on their backs and the children in their arms. They were her people, and Rhodri had gotten them out.
Something gently nudged her arm. Finnian’s bow. “You see?”
“I see.” She could not order him to fire, not without a clear shot. She could only watch, helpless, as Rhodri himself moved on with the rest, angling southward. From that direction, he could attack any of the war-chiefs, or take her own forces from the flank.
Ormond would be at risk first, then Telweg.
Then her own patrol, gathered for song and tale around the fire.
No. She would not let Rhodri escape, nor would she let Iona, Liam, and the others come to harm. She whispered for Finnian to mount and a moment later, his shadower brushed alongside her. “Shades, Ceridwen, how did you know they’d be here?”
“Because I know Rhodri,” she said simply.
As he, apparently, knew her.
“Go, Finnian. You must ride and muster the hosts.”
“While you do what?”
“Seek trouble, what else? I will tail them, see where they go.”
“You do realize Sif is better suited to that task. They won’t see or hear me.”
“But they will see me if I race back to camp like a torch in the night.” She spoke quickly, hoping to quell all arguments at once. “You know how Mindar runs, how it stokes his flames. They will know they’ve been seen, and all advantage will be lost.”
He shook his head. “Markham will have my hide if I leave you again.”
Tightening her reins, Ceridwen felt Mindar quiver with anticipation. “Go, te Donal, and tell him your queen commanded it.”
She sensed rather than saw his reluctant salute, and then he was gone, his absence a swirl of emptiness at her side. Setting her jaw, she rode after Rhodri.