The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper (howl and other poems TXT) 📗

soldiers from Criwath nor even the reinforcements from Heliodar, fresh as they are, can mistake the meaning of this attack, or be in any doubt of what will follow.

We have discussed, for eight months, what deviltry Thyran might be up to out in the forest, where we have no strength to reach. We have come to no conclusions.

I suspect we’re about to find out.

—In the Order’s Service,

Vivian Bathari

The Traitor, Gizath, murdered his sister’s lover, they say, because he thought it a disgrace that a goddess should lie with a mortal. Over the centuries, his hatred for mortal life has expanded far beyond that.

Then one hundred years ago, Gizath’s servant Thyran slew his wife and her lover out of jealous rage, and then his own servants to seal a pact with Gizath. Jealousy swiftly became spite: anger that the world did not give him what he believed was his by birth and blood.

In the north, when he called those of like mind to him and merged them with demons, perhaps they too wished to order the world by their standards. Perhaps even then Thyran did likewise.

After a hundred years, and two losses, I suspect his desires may have shifted.

He may strive still for conquest, if such a mild word can describe a world ruled by him and his twistedmen.

If he is thwarted in that, I think he will turn his sights to annihilation. And he will do so quickly.

—Lycellias, Knight of Tinival

Chapter 1

The dream left him cold in the darkness. Sweat coated his limbs, cooling rapidly in the spring night. He tasted blood in his mouth: he’d bitten his lip again.

None of it was new, but it was worse this time. His heart was thudding between his ribs and his chin, the images danced evilly in front of his open eyes, and not even the sound of three other knights snoring could make the memories seem as unreal as Olvir knew they were.

Dreams, he told himself, as Edda had told him when he was far younger. Nightmares had been different then: shapes outside the window, ghouls behind the house, the sort of stories youth repeated and parents could generally dispel with warm milk and a few words.

Olvir doubted that soothing words would’ve helped completely. He’d long since grown to prefer whiskey to warm milk, too, and a liquor-mazed head was the last thing he’d need the next day, particularly considering the quality of whiskey that went around the front lines.

It was a myth that Tinival’s knights never surrendered. The training was very clear about recognizing lost causes. Sleep, right now, was among them.

He disentangled himself from his sweat-dampened bedroll as quickly and quietly as he could manage. None of his companions stirred. It was funny: their alertness was legendary, but a knight—or any trained warrior, Olvir suspected, though he hadn’t exactly asked—grew accustomed to certain sounds. In camp, these included both snoring that could shake the earth and the noises of a tentmate trying to make a stealthy exit in the middle of the night.

Tinival hadn’t given them heroic bladders, after all.

Putting on armor would be more likely to rouse his tentmates, so Olvir simply tugged on his breeches, then picked up his boots and tunic in one hand. He carried the belt with his sword on it in the other. The camp was relatively peaceful, no attack expected, but there was no point tempting fate.

Edda had taught him that long before he’d entered the Silver Wind’s order as a page.

He stumbled outside into a chilly gray predawn. The remains of fires made the camp a little brighter but, at that hour, mostly just added smoke to the air. A flash of Olvir’s dreams sprang from fading memory to vivid detail with the odor, and he sat down hard on a rock.

Vomiting would only waste rations, and the army had a strictly limited number of those. Screaming would only wake soldiers who had too little rest as it was. Olvir scrubbed his hands hard across his face, wishing that he could do the same to his mind, trying not to look too long at his hands themselves. They had been the worst part, and that was new.

If your thoughts are sour, turn to deeds. It was another of Edda’s sayings. And he was already sitting down.

Olvir pulled on his boots, listening to the sounds near him. The camp was mostly still abed, but not entirely. Out of the three thousand or so souls who defended that part of Criwath’s border, fifty-odd were assigned to patrol the fortifications. He could look up and see two of them walking behind the wooden palisades, looking through cracks too small for arrows to spot any activity beyond. He could certainly hear their footsteps, regular drumbeats behind the more irregular noise of snoring sleepers and shifting horses. Their presence was reassuring, but he’d have been a fool as well as an oaf to distract them.

A few rows of tents behind the defenders, the wounded slept restlessly. The Mourners, noncombatant servants of the Dark Lady whose domain included healing, kept their own vigil among them, watching for sudden declines. Letar’s priests were good company as a rule, but Olvir didn’t want to disturb the Mourners on their duty either.

There was always practice. The few sets of pells were barely holding together after rounds of recruits, so by common agreement nobody used them except those who truly did need help hitting the target. Fighting the air, however, required only space. Olvir stood up and turned to retrieve his tunic.

A woman stood a few feet away from him.

That itself wouldn’t have been a surprise, or a problem—a relief, though he wouldn’t have wished it, to find another who couldn’t sleep—but Olvir hadn’t heard her approach. Coming on top of his dream, it was more than he could reason through calmly. Before his brain caught up with his body, he’d hissed in a wary breath and reached for his sword.

“It’s a shade early for a duel,” she said.

As