The First Snow of the Northern Empire
The First Snow of the Northern Empire
"Who are you?"
The encircling moose halted, and the soldiers mounted atop them shifted their stance, leveling their weapons.
Sheaves of javelins, crossbows, and bows trained on Rumel's head. She watched the priests approach through the gaps between them without a trace of tension.
A heavyset middle-aged man and a handsome youth.
Both priests resembled ordinary humans at first glance.
Fur cloaks over scale armor. Unremarkable weapons.
They looked like perfectly average men, nothing noteworthy about them.
But that very ordinariness stood at odds with the soldiers surrounding them — and that was how Rumel knew they were priests.
The skirmish moments earlier had made that clear enough.
Rumel glanced at the moose whose head had been torn clean off by her thrown javelin, then surveyed the encircling soldiers.
The two priests were formidable opponents, but these soldiers were no ordinary troops either.
Every last one was a seasoned warrior. Their faces were hidden beneath their helms, but the sheer weight of their presence said enough.
'This is trouble.'
Rumel ran her fingers along the shaft of her spear and suppressed a grimace as the priests drew closer.
'They're already pushing this far forward.'
The place where Rumel and these soldiers and priests now stood was not far from the encampment.
Perhaps a day's march — close enough to matter.
She couldn't gauge their exact speed of advance, but she knew exactly what would happen if she let them pass.
They'd reach camp before Rumel could and launch an attack.
Something she had to prevent. Aslan had sent her out here precisely to avert that outcome.
So Rumel had to keep them pinned here.
The question was how.
How to hold them — and, failing that, how to force them back.
If it were Angie standing here, she could stop them just by charging in headlong. But Rumel was Rumel.
Nothing more than a woman who happened to wield a spear with uncanny genius.
So she thought it through.
The deliberation didn't last. There was only one way to buy even a few more seconds.
"Rumel."
The middle-aged priest halted at the sound of her voice. She met his gaze.
"General Rumel."
Her single option for keeping them here: play along with their expectations and stretch out a conversation as long as possible.
"The woman of rumor."
The middle-aged priest stroked his chin at her introduction. Beside him, the young man let out a soft hum, his voice carrying its distinctive lilt.
"A self-styled general, then."
Was he hostile to Rumel herself, or merely scornful of anyone claiming a general's title?
Either way, Rumel had only one posture she could adopt.
The bearing of a general — charismatic, commanding.
An attitude she'd learned by playing the part of Gerald.
She called to mind every Blessed One who'd ever affected that same condescension, then cocked her head.
"That depends on one's perspective."
"Perspective?"
The middle-aged priest took the bait. His gaze drifted to Rumel's waist, and she followed it, bringing her hand to the heirloom sword hanging there.
Shnnk. The blade slid free — a distinctive weapon.
A parrying hook jutted from the blade, and an oversized crossguard made for easier deflection sat above the hilt.
Yet it was a one-handed sword, not a two-hander.
A longsword designed for use in concert with magic.
Aslan had once described it, in that fluid way of his.
"The Emperor's Sword..."
That was what they called this heirloom blade.
The middle-aged priest's eyes flew wide. The young man's mouth fell open as though stunned.
"The symbol of a general..."
As the young man murmured, this sword was effectively a general's insignia in the Northern Empire.
It was also the blade the founding ancestor of House Holne had seized while striking down Northern raiders.
The middle-aged priest simply watched Rumel in silence. The young man, by contrast, nodded to himself.
Like half the Blessed Ones who'd joined Valder's faction, he clearly regarded the Emperor's Sword's reappearance after so long as something fated.
He all but confirmed Rumel's guess.
"I cannot vouch for its authenticity, but I accept that you may be a true general."
A softened tone. Rumel let out a breath she made sure no one saw.
"Then, General Rumel. What brings you here?"
She could hardly say she'd come to stop them outright. As Rumel weighed her answer, the young man tilted his head.
"I had heard you were Valder's general. Yet here you are, on this remote ground, far from Valder's territory. So I must ask: what business brings you?"
Rumel shut her mouth and thought hard.
If he already knew she was Valder's general, a half-hearted lie wouldn't hold.
And he was a priest — a being of overwhelming martial superiority.
She had no knowledge of his true capabilities or the depth of his information. Aslan might have; Rumel had no way of knowing.
But one thing she was certain of, even with so little to work with. She could not allow these two into Valder's sphere of influence.
More precisely, she could not let them anywhere near Aslan.
Grasping for a way out, Rumel glanced sidelong at Fay, who was still wearing her mask of wide-eyed innocence.
"General Rumel?"
The young priest wasn't inclined to wait.
At his prodding tone, Rumel slowly closed her eyes and opened them again, wearing the look of a woman arriving at a difficult decision.
She feigned resolve and faced the young man directly.
The best she could do now was wield the one skill she'd always relied on — her empathy.
She strained to read the truth behind everything she'd seen: the expressions, the tones.
'...There's something here.'
Both the young man and his older companion had reacted sharply when she drew the Emperor's Sword.
A violent current of emotion. Rumel felt it and set about forging her way forward.
She didn't realize it herself, but this empathic sense of hers wasn't something that could be learned through experience or knowledge alone.
It was innate — a talent rooted in instinct.
In its purity, it rivaled Tiyamal's preternatural senses or Fay's innate perception. Something closer to a detection ability, bordering on genuine intuition.
And Rumel wielded that intuition by instinct, choosing the path that came closest to an answer.
She read the emotions both priests directed at the blade — the Emperor's Sword.
Then she acted on what she'd read. She aimed for the outcome they would least want to see.
Rumel unhooked the scabbard from her waist and extended it, along with her spear.
"...Hm?"
The young priest cocked his head. The older one said nothing. Rumel etched the micro-expressions of both men — the flickers in their pupils — into memory.
"His Majesty Valder desires peace with the two of you. The Monster of Kravrig and the Knight of Lelanda."
I am his emissary. At those added words, the young man fixed his eyes on her. Rumel let a note of regret color her expression.
"What His Majesty Valder bestows upon you is the golden spear once wielded by Law and Order, one of the Ancient Gods... and the Emperor's Sword."
The young man's eyes widened. Rumel held his gaze and nodded, cutting off whatever he might have been about to say.
"At the same time, he guarantees you the rank of archduke, a general's command, and full autonomy."
Unprecedented terms. A price she had no authority to promise. The young man stroked his chin at those honeyed words — and grinned.
"...Clever."
The one word, delivered with a smirk, carried all the arrogance of an outsider passing judgment on the wider world.
"Even I would not wish to face Habrisg, Kravrig, and Lelanda all at once. A bit of land to keep one's forces intact — that's a cheap price to pay..."
"Exactly."
At Rumel's unhesitating lie, the young man smiled, plainly pleased.
He looked almost impressed with his own insight — as though pleased to see events conforming so neatly to his own reasoning.
"That also explains the non-threatening composition of your party. You've been searching for us from the start, intent on peace. Leading only the smallest possible retinue."
Rumel answered with a broad, unguarded grin, and the young man nodded to himself with satisfaction.
"If that is true, then your courage is truly astonishing. Most would be too terrified to speak properly. Remarkable nerve and loyalty. Valder — that whelp — I almost envy him, having such a subordinate."
He was twisting everything to fit his own assumptions, and the conclusion was a foregone one.
Something about the way he so readily fooled himself and forced the pieces together struck Rumel as oddly familiar. She kept it off her face and extended the Emperor's Sword.
Greed and longing flickered in the young priest's eyes.
Even someone without Rumel's intuition could have read emotions that transparent.
A reaction as good as a declaration of success. Rumel approached with a clear smile.
'It worked.'
Gripping the scabbard, she'd meant to press the hilt directly into his hands.
She stopped short when the middle-aged priest stepped forward, planting himself between her and the young man.
The young priest turned to his comrade at the sudden movement. The older priest stared down at Rumel with an expressionless face.
"General Rumel. What house do you hail from?"
An abrupt question.
Rumel gave him a look of genuine bafflement. The middle-aged priest kept his mouth a hard line, gazing down at her.
His black eyes glinted, unreadable. Then the question came again.
"Your name, General Rumel. Will you give it?"
She couldn't fathom what he was after.
The young priest broke in, affecting mild irritation.
"Sigurd. What are you doing? We already know her name—"
The hulking middle-aged man — Sigurd — ignored his comrade and took another step toward Rumel.
A movement that could only be read as a threat, even charitably. The young man's expression soured.
"Sigurd! Do not threaten the general! Has she not come with good intentions?!"
Good intentions. At those words, Sigurd let out a derisive snort and turned his head slightly toward his fellow priest.
And in that brief turn, Rumel read the emotion seething in those black eyes.
Hatred.
With hatred blazing in his gaze, the middle-aged man spoke.
"Arne. When and where did we lose our general?"
The young priest — Arne — stiffened.
His brow furrowed. Slowly, he turned his head toward Rumel.
Suspicion crept into his eyes.
Something was going wrong. Rumel took a step back.
"Who was it," the older man continued, "who cost us our general?"
"...Light-brown hair. Light-brown eyes..."
"Do you remember who cut off our general's head and threw it into the river? Who took the Emperor's Sword?"
As Arne stared at Rumel, the middle-aged priest turned back to face her.
His eyes held certainty and hate.
Rumel heard those words, saw that hatred and certainty — and a memory surfaced unbidden.
The tale of her ancestor. The one said to have crushed the Northern Empire's raiders in a great campaign.
As Rumel recalled it, the priest also remembered.
A humiliation generations old. The loss of a general during a desperate raid for survival, the bitter years spent swallowing that shame.
He spat the word as if chewing and discarding it.
"Holne."
His eyes never left the Emperor's Sword in her grasp.
Rumel and Fay weren't the only ones who reacted to the name.
In the eyes of the soldiers encircling them, hatred flared to life in an instant.
Every last one of them had been there that day — survivors of that routed force.
Of course they had.
As if to prove that inevitability, the soldiers transformed in unison.
Crrr-crack. Crunch.
The sound of bones twisting, realigning, reassembling.
Beast-forms emerging inch by inch.
Rumel raised her spear. Fay clicked her tongue and drew her crimson longsword.
But the most harrowing sounds came from the two priests.
Crrrrrack. Craa-unch.
Crunch. Snap. Crrrk.
In the space of a breath, two monsters stood where the men had been.
A great bear-like horror, its skull sheathed in a coat of bone, another skull fused across its head.
And a half-man, half-beast amalgam of horse and stag, clutching a unicorn's spiraling horn like a cavalry lance.
Both creatures' eyes blazed white with hatred.
Oooo-oooh-ooo-oooh!
The monsters howled and surged forward.
To tear apart the last daughter of Holne. To have their revenge.