Page 66 of An Archer's Reckoning

“Fine. As we pass through, send scouts to recall those Mages. I want every magic user we have in the column when we enter Melucian territory.” I turned to Minister Bril, and the rest of the hour was consumed with supply lines, convoys, and how best to get artillery through the mountain pass. By the end of the meeting, my enthusiasm over finally reaching the border had morphed into utter boredom. I understood the old axiom, “An army marches on its stomach,” but that did not mean I cared to know every detail of how they were fed.

Danai caught my eye. None of the others knew him well enough to catch the slight quirk to his lips. He was enjoying this almost as much as I was. And yet, there was something . . . something in his gaze as he met mine. Hesitation? Fear? My Empathic sense reached out but was met with a wall of silence. Perhaps I saw shadows—or perhaps the snake hid behind a veil of magic.

He still fawned when he stared, the same look I remembered from a millennium past. It amazed me that all those years and a different body had yet to quell his passion. Still, there was something other than adoration in the set of his jaw and slight narrowing of his eyes.

He caught me staring and smiled broadly, whatever darkness I thought I had seen evaporating like morning dew.

It mattered little.Hemattered little.

I stood suddenly and made eye contact with each general around the table. “Gentlemen, the Melucians stole our Gifted. They stolemydaughter. They murdered your Prince and your King. The time for sitting around tables in comfortablechambers has passed. The time for action, for decisive retribution, is here. We march at dawn.”

Chapter 23

Aaron

It took an hour for the rush to evaporate and the soreness from riding an unfamiliar mount to cause the insides of my thighs to throb—but throb they did.

Despite my aches, I couldn’t decide whether I was more excited to be tasked with something important, afraid of possible pursuit, or exhausted from the past few days. Everything was so jumbled in my mind. Two days into my week-long ride to Saltstone, I started to wonder if the journey would ever end.

I sat a dozen yards off the road by a small fire, shivering from the cold. My tent was a poor excuse for shelter, but it would block the worst of winter’s winds. As I stared into the flames, my mind wandered to a time before I wore the cloak, a time before scouts and Rangers, a time before signal fires and wars.

I was a teenager before I left my village for the first time.

The place I called home was more a collection of a few farms and a ramshackle general store than a proper town. There wasn’t much for a young boy to do in the desolate place, but my fatherkept me busy anytime the sun cast even a dim light across our fields. I grew up thinking all boys worked fourteen-hour days baling hay, herding sheep, and doing whatever else needed doing on a farm. I enjoyed the peace that came with an honest day’s work—and the utter exhaustion that sent me into deep, dreamless sleep each night.

My father died when I was fourteen, leaving leagues of sprawling land and scattered livestock for my mother to tend. She’d never been hardy, or even particularly healthy. The Healers never could understand the tremble in her hand or the tremor in her voice. Both started a few years after I was born and were annoying inconveniences, not life-threatening illnesses—or so we thought—until her ability to focus or concentrate began to flicker. Some days were better than others, but the clarity of thought that had shown so brightly in her eyes when she was young never returned. Before my father died, one Healer suggested I might inherit her affliction and should be watched carefully. Thankfully, the tremors never came.

I tried my best to take my father’s place, to tend the fields and livestock, manage the duties of a landsman, but it was too much for a young boy. I was quickly overwhelmed, and the farm spiraled into disrepair. Fields went untilled, crops unharvested, and the family’s proud fence that ran for a hundred leagues around the property sagged and fell in places.

Then the Rangers came.

Our farm’s northern border was only three leagues from Grove’s Pass and the Rangers’ headquarters. The men in green were some of my father’s most loyal customers, buying wheat, livestock for slaughter, and any vegetables he might plant. Seeing Rangers arrive a few times each year was cause for celebration, and my mother would cook a feast in their honor—and in anticipation of their much-anticipated purchase. When I was young, the visiting men would spend hours chasing andwrestling, but as fond of the Rangers as I became, I never expected I would one day wear their fabled cloak.

When my uncle personally visited to offer his condolences following my father’s death, he also offered to purchase our family’s farm, proposing that my mother move to Grove’s Pass to work in the kitchens at headquarters, while I could find a place within the border guard itself. He said the Rangers would find a way to salvage the farm and continue the family’s tradition of feeding the nation’s troops. After many tears and objections, my mother agreed. Her heart ached at the loss of our family legacy, the last remnant of her husband’s presence in our lives, but she knew we’d never receive a fairer offer, both for the land and our futures.

While she was conflicted, I was elated. My wildest dreams were filled with visions of green-clad men in the mountains, proud and strong. Somehow, in my childhood daydreams, my face always turned green with the coat. My mother tried to explain it didn’t work that way and that I would always have the ruddy, tanned complexion of a farm boy, but I insisted it wasmydream, and my face could turn whatever color it wanted.

Now, years later, I reveled in the warmth of the fox-fur lining of my heavy winter cloak—aRanger’scloak.

My face never did turn green.

I doused the fire and dove into my tent, wishing the thin bedroll was a cot and my cloak was a heavy blanket. Armed men filled my dreams once more; only these were no Rangers. They did not offer peaceful rest. Their presence chilled my soul and caused me to stir many times throughout the night.

Six more cold, painfully boring days passed.

I pressed the Captain’s horse for speed, more to break the tedium of the long, straight road than anything. In all those days of travel, I only passed one man, a farmer, headed home with an empty cart after selling crops in a capital city. He saidSaltstone was late in preparing for winter and bought everything that passed through their gates. The man waved a greeting, then disappeared over the horizon, leaving me once again alone with my wandering mind.

I liked being alone, but over the past few days, images of Bret pinioned by arrows, blood flowing freely from his wounds, haunted my thoughts. They plagued my dreams even more so. I couldn’t wait to ride through Saltstone’s gates, deliver my message, and return home to the peace and quiet of the forest and my life of simple duty.

Then I remembered the content of the letter pressed tightly against my chest.

Would there be a home to go back to?

Would the men skulking through the forest still be there, bows at the ready, blocking me from my peaceful woodland?

Why were they there in the first place?

What had I done to deserve a shot in the back?

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