Kip and Cruxer helped push off and jumped aboard. The Mighty’s skimmer would follow. They were off instantly, if clumsily. The Ghosts were still figuring out the skimmers.
Conn Arthur said, “There was a red wight yesterday who escaped our clash at the warehouse. Distinctive. No skin on his forearms. Several other wights and soldiers escaped as well, of course. But him… him we recognized. Name’s Baoth. He’s a former novice of Shady Grove who left us years ago. It was not an amicable parting. His gifts lay… elsewhere. Clearly he’s been exploring those gifts, and now he’s found a home for them with the Blood Robes.
“Trouble is, he recognized us. One of our scouts caught sight of him, last night. He was carrying some scroll cases. We think he’s heading back to the main army to report everything that happened here, both above and below the falls. And, of course, who we are. Regardless, we get those papers, and we get some idea of what they know.” He grunted, and it sounded like a bear huffing as it tore apart a fallen log, looking for grubs.
“And you want to go after him,” Kip guessed.
“One of our women who grew up here said she knows a river valley he’ll have to pass through tonight. It’s narrow enough we can be sure he won’t slip through our fingers there. After that, he’s gone. We don’t know exactly where the White King’s army is, and there are many paths available to him. Most of them not on the river. These skimmers are our biggest advantage right now. Here’s our chance to use their speed.”
Kip looked to Cruxer for his take.
“Anything we can do to minimize what the Blood Robes know about us…” the young commander said.
“Can we go after him and still get back to Fechín Island the day after tomorrow?” Kip asked. He’d promised to meet the Cwn y Wawr there.
“It’ll involve some backtracking, but… with the skimmers? Not a problem,” Conn Arthur said.
So they skimmed up the wide river for a few hours. Kip noticed that one of the Ghosts with the conn—a newly established bodyguard—had a white spear etched with many yellowing runes. The leaf-blade of the spear was hellstone. “That a sharana ru spear?” Kip asked.
The young man looked immensely pleased. “My great-great-grandfather was given it from the hand of Zee Oakenshield. He liked to say he should have changed history with this spear. He coated the blade with poison before the battle, and during it, he stabbed Darien Guile in the arm, but it turned out the wise man who’d mixed the poisons was a charlatan—gave Darien nothing more than an itch for three days! Later my father served in Darien Guile and Selene Oakenshield’s household. Grandpa Sé said he was worried he’d be killed for that scratch when his betters made their peace and married. But the Guile laughed about it with him instead. Kept Grandpa Sé close for many years. Even came when my great-great-grandfather was on his deathbed and laughed with him about it one last time. Great man, Darien Guile. Wish our family could have stayed with yours through the Blood Wars, my lord.”
There had been so many back-and-forths in that interminable conflict that Kip wasn’t even sure when the houses might have been pulled apart. “Well, the good news is that we’re on the same side again,” Kip said. “What’s your name?”
“Garret, sir.”
“Well, Garret, if you ever want a rapt audience who will ask you a million questions about that spear, talk to Ben-hadad. In fact, if you don’t want to talk about it, you’ll probably have to hide.”
Just then, there was a shout as one of the conn’s skimmers blew off one of its reeds.
Half an hour later, ashore, Ben-hadad hobbled over on one crutch and reported, “Repair shouldn’t take more than an hour.” He was taking the failure personally.
Kip didn’t blame him. There was simply no way to expect reliable drafting out of amateurs. He blamed the masters of Shady Grove. What the hell kind of drafters went their lives without drafting? Sure, you’d live for seventy years instead of forty or fifty, but a drafter was a candle. She was made to bring light and be consumed in the process. These were candles who lived and died having barely touched a flame.
To one who’d always heard that drafters were given their powers and privileges for their communities’ betterment, it seemed astoundingly selfish.
Still, in purely utilitarian terms, it did give him more of their drafting lives to use, if he could teach them quickly enough to keep them from getting killed.
Kip didn’t want to split up the platoon if he could help it, so he consulted with the woman who knew the valley Baoth would pass through, and decided they could lose two hours without losing their chance to catch it. Ben had asked for one.
“You have an hour and a half,” he told Ben-hadad. Everything always takes longer than you think it will.
In the meantime, as the others kindled a fire and made lunch and checked their own skimmers for damage, Kip memorized maps and made plans for where they would beach the skimmers, who would stay with them, and how the rest would spread out through the woods. The Ghosts would look for tracks to find the red wight’s trail if he was ahead. If they’d passed him, they would prepare an ambush point. Otherwise they would wait until after dark when he could no longer draft and set upon him at his camp. Baoth was a red, so Kip figured the wight would light a campfire to give himself a source. It would make him much easier to find.
“You’re confident in your trackers?” Kip asked the conn.
The conn nodded. “Not that I wouldn’t mind having me a Daimhin Web.”
“Daimhin Web?” Kip asked. There was an odd buzzing low in his ears at the name.
“Young man. Scary. Way over on the other side of Green Haven last I heard, though. In the old tongue, they call him Sealgaire na Scian.”
“He Who Hunts with Knives?” Tisis asked.
Conn Arthur said, “I know it doesn’t sound very imposing, but—”
But it hit Kip between the eyes.
Everything disappeared in a rush of leaves.
The next thing he was aware of, he was lying on the ground, blinking at concerned faces ringing him.
“Orholam’s hairies, Breaker, you almost fell in the fire,” Ferkudi said. “If Big Leo hadn’t grabbed you—”
“Does he have the falling sickness?” Conn Arthur asked Tisis.
“Stop!” Kip said. “Silence, please.” He reached after memories that were fading like a scent in the wind.
A scent. That was it. Something burning.
No, something that had been burning.
Kip opened his eyes and grabbed a stick from the fire. He stubbed it out on the ground and walked away, wafting the smoking wood in front of him, concentrating.
As with the first link of a chain, the rest came as he pulled on that. The smell, the memory, was from a burning village.
He blinked. Blinked again. He went back to the fire to stand next to Tisis. He murmured in her ear, “Was I gone for long, just now?”
“What?” she asked. “No. A few heartbeats.”
Oh, good.
“I’m sorry, but I must ask,” Conn Arthur said. “Are you ill? More to the point, are you too ill to lead us?”
“No, and no,” Kip said. “It was momentary, I’m better now. I must have eaten something that disagreed with me last night.”
Winsen cleared his throat behind his fist. “Didn’t sound like she disagreed much.”
The rest of the Mighty cracked up.
“Hey!” Kip said.
In a falsetto, as if in the throes of passion, Big Leo went, “Ah! Ah!”
Kip’s silver tongue failed him. He glanced at Tisis.
Her color was high, but she shot back at Big Leo immediately, “Oh, you think that was me?” She looked over at Kip significantly.
They burst out laughing.
“Ah! Ah!…?” Big Leo said, somehow managing to append a question mark to his falsetto while giving Kip the side eye.
Kip nodded, taking his lumps. “Fine. Fine. I’ll practice making acceptably manly… ejaculations. Nightly. While you boys get to cuddle with each other.”
“Ooo,” Big Leo said.
“That’s low, brother,” Winsen said. “Did Ferk tell you how Big Leo threw his arm over me last night?”
“No,” Tisis said. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t get away! He wouldn’t wake up!”