Chapter 401: Beneath the Living Branches

The first report from the forest arrived tied to a phoenix’s leg.

Perrin found this personally disappointing.

“We have message cases,” he said as the bird settled on the garden wall.

“It has a message case,” Mary replied.

“That one isn’t weatherproof.”

The phoenix looked down at the little leather tube, then at him.

“I dry quickly.”

Perrin considered that.

“The paper doesn’t.”

Mary removed the dispatch before diplomacy could become an argument about stitching.

The messenger had come from Vaelith’s scouting party. Our allies had found a surviving unicorn herd sheltering people in a wooded valley east of the old charcoal road.

They had also found the enemy force moving toward it.

Mary’s expression changed as she read.

I put down my cup.

“How long?”

“They believe the valley will be surrounded tomorrow night.”

The map showed three ways out.

One had already fallen behind the advancing enemy. Another crossed open ground beneath a ridge where scouts had seen skeleton archers assembling.

The third followed a stream through a narrow wooded cut.

Aelune studied it beside Thor.

“The herd knows that path. They have not used it because the youngest cannot manage the fallen trees.”

“Can people carrying stretchers?” Eleanor asked.

“Not without help.”

“Then that is what we bring.”

Surtr’s force included two giants, several bands of living soldiers, and a column of undead under a robed commander. Werewolf scouts had been sighted near the southern approach. We had no reliable count of them.

Thor placed markers at the two places where the enemy could most easily reach the stream.

“We open this route. We hold these approaches long enough to move everyone through.”

“And the commander?” I asked.

“If it gives us an opportunity. We aren’t turning an evacuation into a hunt.”

Avarn stood across from me.

He did not speak.

He didn’t need to.

Perrin wanted to accompany the carts.

Eleanor assigned him to the receiving station instead, where he could repair whatever the difficult road broke.

He accepted after one argument rather than three, which I took as evidence of growth.

Aldren would oversee the crews opening the wooded cut. Liora joined the healers stationed behind them, with supplies packed for injuries, exhaustion, and several kinds of patient they had never treated before.

“Aelune is sending someone to advise us,” she told Evelyn. “I won’t assume a unicorn is a horse with an extra part.”

“A promising beginning,” Aelune said behind her.

Liora turned.

The unicorn inclined her head.

“You would be surprised how often we must explain that.”

Evelyn stayed at Greykeep to prepare for those who would need longer treatment. Adriana helped Mary coordinate the arrivals and sent word to the meadow crews.

When I went upstairs to collect my cloak, both were waiting.

Adriana caught my hand and placed it against her stomach.

The baby moved beneath my palm.

“There,” she said. “Something to remember when you feel inclined to stay behind everyone else.”

I kissed her, then Evelyn.

“I remember.”

Julian found me before I reached the stairs.

He was holding a folded sheet so tightly that the corner had begun to curl.

“Are you leaving now?”

“In a few minutes.”

“Then it can wait.”

“What can?”

He looked at the paper as though it had betrayed him by existing.

“Nothing important.”

I leaned against the wall.

“I have a few minutes, Julian.”

He hesitated, then unfolded it.

There were three lines written near the top. The first had been crossed out. The second was mostly crossed out. The third ended halfway through a word.

“Mother asked whether she should speak to King Halric,” he said.

“I remember.”

“I don’t know what Elowen thinks.”

“Have you asked her?”

His expression suggested that I had proposed single combat with Surtr.

“Not about that.”

“You could begin with something smaller.”

He waited.

“Tell her you enjoy spending time with her.”

Julian looked down at his abandoned sentences.

“That sounds too simple.”

“It has the advantage of being true.”

He folded the paper again, more carefully this time.

“Come back,” he said.

“That’s the plan.”

We reached the receiving station before sunset and entered the forest at first light.

Vaelith met us beneath branches heavy with rain. He wore his human shape, his boots muddy and one sleeve torn where something had caught it during the night.

“They’ve begun moving sooner than expected.”

Thor looked toward the trees.

“How much sooner?”

“The eastern patrol withdrew an hour ago.”

We heard the distant crack of falling timber before he finished.

A giant clearing a road.

Or destroying whatever stood beside it.

Our guide, the slate-coated unicorn who had accompanied Aelune, stepped into the stream and lowered his horn toward the current.

He lifted it almost immediately.

“Upstream is fouled. Keep the horses from drinking.”

Liora’s party would establish its water point from the covered barrels until the spring could be checked.

The forest smelled of wet bark and smoke.

As we moved deeper, another smell joined them.

I recognized it before I could see its source.

The dead came through the undergrowth without trying to hide.

Three skeletons first, armor hanging strangely from frames that no longer filled it. Behind them stumbled bodies in the remains of ordinary clothing.

One still wore an apron.

Our soldiers tightened their line.

Thor lifted her hammer.

“Hold until they reach the stones.”

The command steadied the men more effectively than any reassurance could have.

Arrows struck the first rank. Some broke bone. Others passed through gaps or lodged in bodies that kept moving.

Then Serevan swept low over the stream.

His fire ran across the dead in thin golden lines.

Several collapsed at once. Others faltered, the magic holding them moving resisting his flame.

Thor struck the nearest skeleton hard enough to scatter it against a tree.

“Shields forward!”

We met the rest together.

It was ugly, close work. There was no cry of surrender, no hesitation to exploit. We broke the limbs that carried them and the workings that drew them onward.

When it ended, Serevan landed on a branch above us, breathing hard.

“Scouts,” Vaelith said.

The army behind them would already know where we were.

Aldren’s crews began cutting immediately.

Construction golems lifted the heaviest trunks while workers cleared branches and laid rough footing across the softest ground. Nobody tried to build a fine road. They needed a path that would carry a frightened child and a loaded stretcher without dropping either into the stream.

I helped shift one enormous fallen tree before Thor called me forward.

The first refugees had appeared between the living trunks.

A woman carried a sleeping child with both arms. An older man leaned against another’s shoulder. Behind them came a unicorn mare walking beside a foal whose legs shook with exhaustion.

Our guide went to them.

For a moment, the mare pressed her forehead against his neck.

Then she turned and called into the trees.

More people emerged.

Not an army. Families, wounded travelers, woodland folk with bundles of salvaged possessions. A dryad walked with a pot of dark soil cradled against her chest.

I had no time to ask what she carried in it.

A horn sounded from the ridge.

Thor pointed me toward Avarn.

“Eastern approach.”

The first giant came between two trees that barely cleared its shoulders.

It wore overlapping plates of iron fastened with chains. Its club had once been part of a tree, reinforced at the striking end with bands of metal.

I understood Avarn’s lesson about reach before the weapon moved.

Then it swept toward us, and understanding became considerably less comfortable.

Avarn sprang back beyond the blow.

I became wind and rain.

The club passed through the place my ribs had occupied, scattering water across the leaves. I remained conscious of its movement through me, a violent pressure without the impact that would have shattered bone.

I struck at the giant’s wrist with my hammer while still in storm form.

The blow landed.

Its fingers loosened, but not enough.

The giant bellowed and dragged the club back through the ground, throwing mud and stones toward the evacuation path.

Avarn shouted.

“Eyes up!”

A second weapon came over the giant’s shoulder.

The other one had arrived.

I moved as lightning to a bare stone I had seen beside the nearer giant’s foot.

The world flashed white.

I arrived too close to its turning knee and had to roll before I could strike.

Instant movement did not make a poor destination better.

Avarn caught the attention of the second giant with a cut across an exposed hand, then drew it toward the open ground away from the stream.

I drove my hammer into the first giant’s knee.

It staggered.

Winter climbed the mud around its planted foot, binding earth, roots, and iron together. The ice began cracking almost immediately under its strength.

I used the few seconds it gave me.

Hammer away. Sword drawn.

The giant reached down with its injured hand, trying to seize me. I stepped inside the grasp and cut across the straps holding the armor beneath its arm.

The plate shifted.

It was not enough to end the fight.

It was enough to make it defend itself.

Behind me, another stretcher crossed the stream.

That was what we needed.

The horn sounded again.

Skeleton archers appeared along the ridge, accompanied by living soldiers carrying hooked poles.

Farther back, between two dark trunks, stood a robed figure with a staff of pale wood.

The lich.

For one moment, I saw it clearly enough to consider the distance.

Lightning gathered at my wrist.

Then a child screamed behind me.

The giant had torn its foot free.

I let the lightning fall into the hammer as I called it back to my hand and struck before the club could reach the stream.

Thunder rolled through the valley.

The giant fell against a tree, bringing half its crown down with it.

An arrow passed through my shoulder as I dissolved again.

Another struck the solid ground where I had stood.

I wanted the lich.

I stayed between the archers and the people crossing behind me.

Vaerun arrived along the stream like a storm given direction.

Water rose from the channel and swept across the slope, striking the archers hard enough to break their formation. Living soldiers clung to roots. The dead tumbled without a sound.

Serevan passed above them.

Golden fire met the cold light running from the lich’s staff.

For several breaths, neither yielded.

Then the phoenix veered away sharply, one wing trailing sparks of a harsher, greenish color.

Vaelith caught him against his shoulder as he landed near our line.

“Stay back!” the dragon shouted to an approaching soldier.

He stripped away the clinging working with a hiss of concentrated heat.

Serevan shuddered.

Across the slope, the lich withdrew behind its guards.

It had learned something about phoenix fire.

We had learned something about the danger of assuming it would be helpless against it.

Thor’s signal sounded from the southern path.

The last of the herd was moving.

Aldren stood in knee-deep water holding a plank steady while two soldiers guided the final cart across.

The wheel slipped at the edge.

He shouted for the team to stop.

A golem braced the cart from beneath, lifted it just enough, and waited while the workers laid another board.

The whole operation took less than a minute.

It felt much longer from where I stood holding back a giant.

Avarn had opened a deep cut across the second one’s thigh. Thor reached him as it stumbled, and together they forced it away from our withdrawal route.

Mine tried to rise again.

I broke the club near its grip and drove it back with a wall of winter that climbed between the trees.

The ice would not hold forever.

It did not have to.

Aldren lifted his arm.

Clear.

Thor gave the withdrawal signal.

We went.

I was among the last to reach the narrow cut, but not the last.

Avarn remained beside me. Vaerun covered the stream behind us, and Thor watched the ridge until its trees hid the enemy from view.

My instinct was to turn each time we heard a branch break.

Avarn noticed.

“Keep walking.”

“They could follow.”

“Then we meet them at the next position with the others.”

I kept walking.

The forest opened around the receiving station as afternoon began to fade.

Liora knelt beside the exhausted foal, listening to the unicorn attending it before placing her hands anywhere near the trembling legs.

Perrin lay half beneath a cart, arguing with a bent bracket.

Aldren sat on a stump while a healer cleaned a cut on his shin.

He looked up when he saw me.

“Mud,” he said.

I looked down at my boots.

“I remembered.”

The count took time.

Families had become separated during the movement. Some people answered to names our clerks could not easily write. The unicorns counted their own and then helped us distinguish who had remained with which group in the valley.

By evening, we had accounted for everyone the guides had expected to bring out: one hundred and sixty-eight people and nineteen unicorns.

Three griffins reached the receiving station independently after Vaelith’s signal, one flying so low its claws brushed the grass before it landed.

We had wounded among our escort. One soldier would lose two fingers. Another needed Evelyn’s care for an arrow that had struck beneath his collarbone.

All had reached the station alive.

Nobody called the day easy.

Serevan sat beside the covered lamp, his injured wing folded tightly.

Perrin adjusted the shutter so its light would not strike his eyes.

After a while, the phoenix looked at the little message tube lying on the table.

“You may show me the weatherproof case.”

Perrin carefully concealed his triumph.

Not well.

We brought the first wounded home that night. The remaining travelers would follow in rested groups under escort.

Evelyn met the stretchers. Adriana met the people walking beside them, directing families toward food and the names board without letting the crowd swallow anyone who looked uncertain.

I washed, changed, and submitted to having my bruises inspected.

My storm form had protected me from weapons.

It had not prevented me from falling badly when I chose the wrong arrival point.

Evelyn found that distinction worth discussing.

At length.

When she finished, Adriana brought me a bowl of stew.

“Everyone expected?” she asked.

“Everyone the guides knew about.”

She sat beside me.

We both understood the difference between that and everyone who needed help.

For tonight, she let me eat before asking anything else.

Before I finished eating, Mary brought word from the meadow.

Aelune had met the first unicorns brought through with the wounded. The exhausted foal was resting beside its mother, and the mare had finally allowed herself to lie down.

“She wouldn’t, at first,” Mary said. “Not while the little one was still standing.”

Adriana drew her own hand across the curve of her stomach.

“And the dryad?” I asked. “The woman with the pot.”

“A cutting from her tree. Eleanor found her a sheltered place to keep it until she can choose where it should grow.”

I set down my spoon.

“Did she say whether it would live?”

“She said it has new roots.”

Mary let that answer stand before opening the smaller book beneath her arm.

Corvin appeared in the doorway carrying a cup.

“Melody said you’d forget this.”

Mary accepted the tea.

“Melody makes assumptions.”

“She told me to say they are informed ones.”

His eyes moved to the open book, but he did not ask her to close it. Instead, he took the empty tray from beside my chair and gathered the dishes.

“I’m going past the kitchens.”

Mary watched him leave.

Then she took a sip of the tea before returning to the arrival lists.

Adriana caught my eye over her head.

Neither of us said anything.

Julian waited until the bowl was empty.

He approached with an expression that was almost solemn, except for the smile he seemed unable to keep entirely hidden.

“I spoke to her.”

Adriana looked from him to me.

I shook my head slightly. Later.

“And?” I asked.

“I said I liked spending time with her.”

“That was a good beginning.”

“She said she’d hoped I did.”

His smile escaped completely.

Then he looked at his sister.

“Please don’t tell Cassia yet.”

“Why?”

“She’ll look pleased in a very loud way.”

Adriana considered this description of her sister.

“That’s fair.”

Julian sat on the edge of the next chair.

“We said we’d keep walking together. And doing things. I don’t think either of us knows about anything else yet.”

“You don’t have to know tonight,” I said.

He nodded.

For once, he seemed willing to believe it.

Liora came to find Evelyn before we retired.

She had returned with the last medical party and looked tired enough that Evelyn immediately pointed her toward the bread and cheese still on the table.

“Eat while you tell me.”

“There isn’t a problem.”

“Then eat while you tell me that.”

Liora obeyed.

Her news came from the hospice. The attendant had sent it before the relief party arrived.

Lethan had used the bell twice that morning. On the second occasion, the movement had taken longer, and they had moved it aside when his hand began to tire.

“What did he want?” I asked.

“The song read aloud.”

Evelyn’s expression softened.

“And the first time?”

Liora smiled.

“He wanted to know whether Perrin had finished the phoenix staircase.”

Adriana laughed so suddenly that she startled the baby.

She put a hand to her stomach, still smiling.

I leaned back in my chair.

Tomorrow there would be more maps, more wounded, and an enemy who now knew exactly where we had opened the forest road.

Tonight, somewhere beneath Greykeep, a man had called someone into his room because he remembered a joke and wanted to hear it again.

I asked Liora to tell him that the staircase remained a matter of fierce debate.