Styke and Jackal pulled back beneath the closest ridgeline and took a long, circuitous route around the Castle. The dragoons had plenty of scouts, but they seemed to focus their efforts deeper in the Hock, at the halfway point between their camp and that of the Mad Lancers. Other than hiding on occasion, Styke and Jackal reached the south side of the Castle without issue.
The cliffs here were indeed the lowest—perhaps ten or fifteen feet of near-vertical rock. A single dragoon stood watch at the top, peering into the forest as darkness began to spread, cradling his carbine. Styke continued along the south side and looped around to the west, searching for better spots to climb the cliffs and finding nothing that looked promising. He returned to Jackal, falling onto his hands and knees to watch that one dragoon patrol the top of the shallow cliff.
“Do you remember the fortress at New Adopest?” Styke asked.
Jackal’s placid face wrinkled, the hint of a smile on his lips. “I remember it.”
“I’m not as spry as I used to be,” Styke said. He wanted very badly to climb the cliff and do the job himself, but he did not have confidence in his own abilities to do so in silence. He shot a glance at the wound on Jackal’s leg. “Are you?”
“None of us are,” Jackal replied. “But I think I’m up to the task.” He touched his leg. “This looks worse than it is, and there were a lot more guards at New Adopest.”
Twilight was quickly upon them, and Styke and Jackal got to their feet. They moved slowly through the underbrush, careful not to make too much noise, until they were at the very base of the Castle cliff. The guard had changed, and another man now patrolled this small section, torch in hand.
Jackal waited until the guard had passed, and began his ascent, climbing the cliffside in almost complete silence. He shimmied up, grasping the old roots and reaching the top in less than a minute, just as the guard came back in his direction. Styke pressed himself against the cliff to hide from the light of the torch.
Silence followed, though Styke strained to listen for a grunt or a yell. A few moments later he heard a distinctive “Psst” and began his own ascent. He reached the top to find Jackal standing over the body of the sentry. Jackal stood stiffly, his posture all wrong, like a deer too scared to run.
“Everything okay?” Styke whispered.
Jackal nudged the body with his foot. “He just offed himself.”
“What?”
Jackal came close, leaning in to whisper in Styke’s ear. “I stepped on a twig. He turned to look at me and instead of shouting out, he drew his knife and slit his own throat.”
The hairs on the back of Styke’s neck stood up, goose bumps spreading on his arms. He knelt beside the body and found the guard clutching his own knife, still lightly convulsing as he silently bled out onto the dirt. Styke reached out to touch him but pulled his hand back, thinking better of it. He leaned over, putting his nose up next to the body. He took a deep breath, catching hints of copper.
He stood up to find Jackal’s knife out, breath held, staring toward a pair of Dynize dragoons about thirty feet away. Styke held his breath, waiting for a shout, as the pair slowly approached them.
Styke readied his boz knife, preparing to spring forward when they got close enough, but was arrested when they spoke out in unison in perfect Adran. “You’re wanted at the commander’s tent, Colonel Styke.”
Jackal’s lips were pulled back in a snarl, nostrils flared. “I can’t see a spirit for a mile,” he said. “Even the ones I was talking to back in the forest have fled.”
“Please,” the pair of dragoons said again. “You’re wanted at the commander’s tent.” Their words were mechanical, their backs straight and faces forward, though they stood at an angle to Styke and Jackal. “Follow us.” They turned in unison and marched into the camp.
Styke kept his knife handy, looking at Jackal and seeing the whites of his eyes. He’d never seen Jackal this startled, not even facing down Privileged sorcery on an open battlefield.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Jackal whispered. “Is this her sorcery?”
“I think it is,” Styke said. “Or the sorcery of a bone-eye who wants us to think it’s Ka-poel. But I didn’t know the bone-eyes are capable of this kind of control.” Hesitating just a moment longer, he followed the pair of guards into the camp, Jackal bringing up a reluctant rear.
The camp was quiet, with the occasional cookfire burning to coals and only a handful of Dynize up and about. None of them seemed to notice Styke and Jackal, and he wondered if they were also under some kind of sorcery or if they were just that inattentive within their own camp. He heard the occasional scream or moan from the east—the wounded from the other day’s ambush—and they passed a corral in the open center of the hill where nearly three hundred horses were tied up for the night.
The two guards suddenly stopped in between a row of tents, stepping in different directions and gesturing for Styke to go ahead. He looked over his shoulder at Jackal, who still looked like an animal who wasn’t sure whether to attack or run. With a shrug, Styke continued between the two guards.
There was a large clearing in front of a tent bigger than all the others around it—no doubt belonging to the company commander. A well-stocked fire and a handful of torches illuminated a macabre scene in the middle of the clearing. Two dozen Dynize soldiers—all of them wearing epaulets that marked them as officers—sat cross-legged in two rows on either side of the clearing. They didn’t look up when Styke approached, or seem to move at all. They were so inhumanly still that he wondered if they were still alive.
Across from the tent stood the officer that Styke had brawled with when they ambushed the Mad Lancers a few weeks back. Her hands were clasped behind her back, her spine straight. She had the same expression as Jackal with eyes wide and lips pulled back, but hers was as strangely frozen as those of the men flanking her.
Years ago, Styke had been present when a gift had been sent from the king of Kez to then-governor Lindet of Redstone. The gift consisted of several life-sized facsimiles of Kez soldiers done up in wax. They were so well done that they looked like the real thing, until they began to melt in the Fatrastan heat. This scene had the same uncanny strangeness to it.
Sprawled in a camp chair like a bored queen receiving guests was Ka-poel. She lifted a hand in greeting to Styke, the other propped under her chin as she gazed at the dragoon commander.
Styke put away his knife and gestured for Jackal to do the same.
“I thought you were going to come for me this morning.”
Styke nearly jumped out of his skin. The words came from the mouth of the commander, but they were spoken in perfect Adran and in a voice that did not belong to a burly, war-weary dragoon officer. The tone was soft-spoken, the voice a gentle soprano with a hint of a laugh to it. He looked at Ka-poel, who hadn’t moved except to adopt a rather smug smile. He pointed at the officer. “Is that you?”
Ka-poel nodded.
Styke forced himself to relax. He walked down the line of frozen officers, leaning over to feel the soft breath coming from their lips and wave a hand in front of their eyes. He even pushed one over, watching him topple like a statue and remain cross-legged without so much as a flinch. Styke finished his examination by walking around the dragoon commander, examining her flushed face. Upon this closer look, he found her just as frozen as her men—except the eyes. They stared straight ahead, but there was life in them, and if he was forced to guess, he would say that she was still there, under the surface.
Styke wondered at this show of power. He’d been told that Ka-poel was more powerful than her fellow bone-eyes by several orders of magnitude, but that she was unpracticed. Could an enemy bone-eye do this to Styke? Could she do this to Styke? The answer to that second question was an obvious yes, and it made Styke’s skin crawl.