2
The hangover headache was the first thing Megs felt when the sunlight filtering through the canvas of the tent woke her the next morning. The second thing she felt was Azza’s breathing – soft, warm, and rhythmic against her neck. The third thing she felt was guilt, because she hadn’t told Azza about the scouting trip yet. Megs had procrastinated about telling her all week, but she and Zandra were supposed to leave at first light tomorrow morning, which meant she couldn’t put it off any longer.
Head throbbing the moment she began to move, Megs carefully, silently extricated herself from the arm draped across her chest, sliding out from under it and replacing a bundle of blankets where her body had been before setting Azza’s arm back down again.
Outside the tent, her camp of seventy lost souls already buzzed with activity, despite the fact that the sun wasn’t even completely up yet. Grent, the former butcher’s apprentice from Pellon, was cooking something with Aldusa, an older woman from the same region who walked with a limp and covered one eye with a leather eyepatch. The two of them stood at a crudely constructed table near the fire, backs facing Megs, chopping something.
And speaking of chopping, there was Dalon, chopping firewood – a chore he hated but had stopped arguing about once Dwennon teased him about needing to add muscle to his stick-thin arms.
Allard snored loudly on one of the makeshift benches beside the fire. He’d probably passed out there last night and had never bothered to drag himself back to his tent.
Two of the camp’s children squatted in a far corner of the camp, each with a stick in their hands, probably poking at some poor toad or turtle or beetle they’d managed to capture.
All was quiet. All was well.
For now.
Megs leaned back, opening her arms wide in a morning stretch, squeezing her eyes shut when the movement sent a new bolt of pain through her skull.
“You’re up early, Empress,” said Rom when she opened her eyes again.
She jumped. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.” Her voice was scratchy from the lack of sleep, and probably from the woodsmoke and ale the night before. “And don’t bleeding call me ‘Empress.’ I told you that already.”
He grinned around the lump of drena leaves stuck into one cheek, then spat a mouthful of juice onto the ground. Megs grimaced.
“Ye tell yer woman about the scouting trip yet?” Rom asked.
Megs shook her head. “I will.”
Rom spat again. “At dawn when ye leave, or…?”
“Today.” She gave his shoulder a light, backhanded slap. “And what are you so concerned for, anyway? Are you my mother now?”
“I remember what it’s like to have a wife,” said Rom.
They both fell quiet at that. Neither of them talked about their past, their lost lives and lost loved ones before this ramshackle home they’d carved from the wilderness. Rom’s comment had come dangerously close to shattering the spell of forgetfulness they’d both so painstakingly woven about themselves.
Megs broke the silence with a grunt. “Azza’s not my wife.”
“No. But she’ll be sore with ye for not telling her sooner all the same.”
Megs shrugged indifferently, as if she didn’t care. As if she was as hard as she pretended to be.
“Half the camp’s going to be sore with ye,” Rom went on. “You’re supposed to be their leader. But you’re never here to lead anymore. Always off chasing this patrol or that, always bent on finding the Rabbit Clan or the Wolf Clan or the Gods-Know-What Clan.” He paused, turned a hard gaze onto Megs. “If I didn’t know ye better, I’d be tempted to say you lost the vision that got us all calling you ‘Empress’ in the first place.”
Megs gave him a sharp look. “I haven’t lost anything.”
But still, he had a point, didn’t he? Megs had gathered these seventy-some-odd survivors, a haphazard collection of Imperial Army veterans and displaced villagers, on the promise that together they would build a new home, an island of Empire within an ocean of mountain tribesmen. They wouldn’t raid or fight with other gangs of Imperial survivors, as some did, and they would focus more energy on raising their families and preserving their way of life than they would on fighting for an unattainable revenge.
Two years had passed since she met Rom and they started building this new home, this corner of Empire in the Sunrise Mountains. Two long, exhausting, bloody years. Two years of thinking that rest – peace – was just around the corner, only to find that peace had been an optical illusion, like a rainbow’s end or a lake in the desert.
Two years of chasing peace. One year since she’d faced the terrible realization that perhaps all she had succeeded in creating was a new tribe of mountain people. The Imperial Clan. And their tribal crest would be the tattered battle flag bearing the faded double-eagle and crescent moon of the House of Dorsa that Rudd had somehow salvaged from a battlefield as he fled it, decorated with Dwennon’s collection of dried ears.
What if this was all they would ever be? Dirty, half-mad survivors who’d burrowed into the forest like rats in a granary, hiding and fighting and hiding again until their last breaths? Megs was tired of this life. But no other life was available at the moment.
Rom broke into Megs’s private despair with a soft question. “You sure ye haven’t lost anything, now?”
“I’m sure,” she said, telling the lie with a practiced and confident ease. “I’m scouting because of what Allard and Dwennon said they saw. If they’re right about the patrols coming closer to our hunting grounds, we need to know. We can’t build a future if the camp’s discovered.”
Rom looked ready to argue, but Reece, who’d been on duty in the western guard stand since the pre-dawn hours with Jart, came into view at the far edge of camp. Reece approached at a speed that was faster than a jog but not quite urgent enough to be called a sprint.
“Glad you’re both awake,” he said, panting for breath. He leaned forward, resting his palms on his knees for a moment before straightening and gesturing behind him. “Jart an’ me … we spotted an Empire man skulking about the western border. Army veteran. Beat up pretty bad.” He glanced from Megs to Rom. “Says there’s an entire tribe massing, not five miles west of camp.”
Rom cursed under his breath. “A tribe? Do they know we’re here?”
“We didn’t get that far,” Reece said. “But this soldier – well, ye should just see for yourself.”
#
On his way to find either Megs or Rom, Reece found Ellick and Wymer first. Unwilling to leave Jart alone with the stranger, even if the stranger was Imperial, he sent them to reinforce Jart. At least, this was what Megs surmised when she saw Ellick and Wymer standing over the stranger, berating him with questions, while stony-faced Jart stood a yard or two behind them, scanning the tree line across the rushing stream that marked the western edge of camp because, after all, he was technically still on guard duty until Big Seth and Little Seth came to relieve him and Reece. Megs made a mental note to praise Jart for his vigilance later.
“You really expect us to believe you wandered over here alone?” Ellick was asking as Megs, Rom, and Reece jogged over to the group.
The stranger did not reply. He sat motionless at the base of a fir tree, back to the trunk, arms wrapped around knees, forehead bowed against forearms. The posture meant that Megs couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to see it to know that he definitely was Imperial. He wore the plain leather jerkin of an Imperial foot soldier, and though his short sword and rune-marked dagger had been confiscated when Reece and Jart discovered him, their empty sheaths still hung from his belt.
Megs eyed the short sword sheath, checking the marks stamped into the leather. There was the double eagle and crescent moon of the House of Dorsa, which confirmed that his uniform, at least, was authentic. Below that was stamped the three-tiered chevron and one horizontal stripe of lieutenant.
Not just a soldier. An officer.
But the Imperial Army no longer existed out here, and Megs, who had never risen beyond the level of First Sergeant – a squad leader – was the only Imperial law that mattered anymore.
The stranger, whose short-cropped blond hair was shot through with grey, must have felt Megs’s eyes on him, because he lifted his head and looked in her direction. One eye was swollen shut, red and raw and surrounded by purple blotches. The other eye was bloodshot and bulged unnaturally, a clear blue iris swimming in a sea of red. Dried blood smeared his cheek, and a gash on his jaw looked as if it had only recently stopped bleeding.
“Ho there, Lieutenant,” Megs said, stopping a few yards from the stranger so that she stood next to Jart. Out of habit, she put her hand on the pommel of her rune-marked dagger. It did not buzz a warning against her palm. Which was good. Before the army fell apart, she’d had to use the blade to liberate more than one shadow-infected comrade.
“Ho, soldier,” replied the officer, his voice raspy.
Megs turned to Ellick and Wymer. “Have you given him any water? Food?”
“I … We was waiting for you,” Ellick said, perhaps confused at why his leader would have wanted him to feed and water a suspicious stranger, or perhaps defensive now that she’d pointed out his lack of hospitality.
But Megs didn’t ask the question for Ellick’s sake. She’d said it for the lieutenant. She wanted him to trust her. To assume she was a friend.
“Mother Moon,” Megs huffed in feigned offense. “Give the man a water skin and some jerky.”
Ellick turned halfway to Megs – enough to see her but not enough to expose his backside to the stranger. He frowned at Megs in sort of surprised disapproval, but then he must have seen something in his leader’s eyes, because the tension in his face relaxed.
The lieutenant accepted the water skin from Wymer with a nod of gratitude, and Megs waited for him to finish drinking before she spoke again.
“Looks like your face might’ve been misdirected into a tree trunk,” she observed.
The stranger chuckled and wiped the back of his mouth with his wrist before handing the water skin back. His cheeks were rough with stubble, but not much. A day or two’s growth at most.
“My face looks better than most’a the rest of me,” said the lieutenant. He spoke with a Capital Lands type of accent. Or Northeastern, maybe. The blue eyes and blond hair would fit with a Northeastern accent. Megs had never visited either place, but her years in the army had introduced her to men and women from every corner of the Empire.
“So was I right? Was it a tree?” Megs asked, keeping her tone light.
He shook his head. “If only it was. Tribesmen. Bumped into them a day, day and a half ago en route back to my men. I was lucky it was only a patrol of ten, luckier still that I was mounted. Rode hard away from them, then sent my horse in one direction while I took off in the other.” He grimaced. “It worked for a few hours. But only a few.”
Megs wanted to cross her arms against her chest, because she already had problems with this story. But she hooked her thumbs into her sword belt instead, determined to keep her body language non-threatening.
She clucked her tongue. “Your men sent you scouting all by yourself? Doesn’t seem like sound strategy.”
Of course, he hadn’t said he was scouting. Which they both knew.
The stranger said nothing, only grinned. He wasn’t going to give her any clues about what he’d been doing out here by himself, and he certainly wasn’t going to say anything about the rest of his crew.
So Megs changed direction. “What’s this I’m hearing about an entire tribe massing a few miles from here?”
“Aye, that’s where the patrol came from. I don’t know why they’re gathering, but I’d estimate eight, maybe nine clans at least. Five miles west of here.”
Megs chewed her bottom lip while she studied the stranger, trying to decide if she believed him or not. A clan of mountain men usually consisted of a matrilineal group of twenty to fifty men, women, and children – an extended family directed by the eldest grandma, or, if grandma was dead, grandpa. A tribe was an even larger extended family the size of a village, maybe eight to ten clans strong, but it only came together as a whole group when it was time to elect new tribal leaders, solve territorial disputes between clans, or make war on common enemies.
It didn’t matter which of those reasons explained the presence of an entire tribe five miles to the west. If the lieutenant was telling the truth and he was right about the numbers, the presence of a tribe that close to the camp represented an existential threat. All it would take was a hunting party or an extended patrol discovering them, and everything Megs had built over the past two years would go up in smoke.
Literal smoke.
Megs took a step closer to the stranger and squatted in front of him. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” she asked, dropping any pretense of a light, friendly tone. “How do I know you’re not working with them, luring us into a trap?”
His one good eye, if it could be called good, met her gaze. “You don’t,” he said bluntly. “You shouldn’t trust me. Just like I don’t trust you to not kill me.”
“If you don’t trust me not to kill you, why expose yourself to my guards in the first place? Why tell me anything at all?”