The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (37 page)

Perrin spied Gari Yordin holding his bleeding
arm, still on his horse. A soldier on foot was straining to bind
the major’s wound, but Yordin caught Perrin’s eye and grinned.

Hoof beats came up fast to Perrin’s side. He
glanced at Shem and Brillen, then did a startled second look.
Brillen was bleeding from his leg, his eyes were filled with pain,
yet he too was smiling.

But Shem was pensive, studying Perrin and
trying to read his mood. Perrin returned the gaze, hoping Shem
would recognize that he was as firm and strong as ever, but he
noticed the doubtful expression in his friend’s eyes. Their staring
contest was interrupted by a triumphant roar.

Naturally, it was Gari. “If you won’t declare
it, then I will, Colonel: the night is ours!”

The men cheered and Perrin finally smiled as
well. “Only on this field, Yordin,” he said, trying to calm his own
growing enthusiasm.

Guarder bodies were everywhere, more than
he’d expected. Probably over one hundred in the field alone, and
they’d passed dozens on the way. It was an infestation, and they
had arrived just in time. His chest burned with the desire to roar
back. Not only had they succeeded, he was still feeling as whole
and solid as a boulder.

But it wasn’t the commander’s place to act
like a relieved first year soldier. The offensive wasn’t over just
yet.

“
We need thirty men to stay
here and to bring the injured back to the staging area,” he
gestured to the field. “The rest of you will finish going through
the houses, then meet back at the old fort at the front of village
for new orders. I’ll oversee removing the wounded here. Zenos, you
appeared uninjured. You can relieve Yordin.”

“
No, he won’t,” Gari said
cheerfully as he slipped off his horse to allow the soldier to
properly wrap his gash. “But he can ride by my side. I’m not going
back yet!”

Perrin eyed him. “You’re losing a lot of
blood, Major. You’ll lose consciousness soon, too.”

“
Tighter, man,” Gari said
to his wound wrapper. “That’s better. Zenos will watch out for me,
won’t you, Sergeant Major?”

Zenos nodded at Yordin. “Colonel Shin, why
don’t you get Karna and the others back,
now
,” his voice
heavy with meaning. “That Rivers captain can oversee things here.
This fire will take over the rest of the village soon and there
will be little left to find.” He gave Perrin another searching
look.

It was one Perrin had seen every day for the
past year, and alarmingly in the middle of the night in his house.
While it was astonishingly presumptuous for a sergeant major to
suggest the next procedures to the colonel, Yordin and Karna didn’t
censure Zenos, but instead watched the colonel closely.

Perrin winked at Shem and sent him a quick
facial tick that indicated that he was all right.

Shem’s shoulders relaxed and he offered a
small smile back.

Yordin and Karna exchanged a relieved
nod.

Perrin turned to the field of standing men.
“How many of the Mountseen group? Excellent. Start locating our
wounded. Those trained as surgeons’ aides from each fort—stay here
with me. The rest of you follow Yordin and Zenos to help Fadh. And
men,” Perrin said with a glint in his eyes, “I guarantee an extra
day off when this is over to whomever picks the unconscious Major
Yordin off the ground and brings him back to me before dawn.”

The soldiers laughed and Perrin sent one last
appraising look to Gari who was helped on to his horse by his
men.

“
Remember, Colonel—you’re
already in trouble! And now, we have witnesses.” Yordin grinned and
kicked his horse, and a pack of soldiers followed him and Shem back
to the village.

Perrin turned to Brillen who, upon closer
inspection, looked worse than Gari. “You’re growing paler than me,
Brillen. Get down. Let’s wrap that leg.”

Brillen merely nodded and practically fell
off his horse. Perrin dismounted and rushed to his side to help him
lay on the stubbly field. The thigh wound was deeper than he
expected, and the dark blue cloth of his trousers was already
saturated.

Perrin groaned when he realized the severity
of the gash. “I’m so sorry, Brillen,” he whispered.

Karna’s eyes closed in pain and fatigue.

“
This is all my fault.
Aide!” Perrin called.

A soldier rushed to his side and opened his
surgeon’s aide pack. Perrin pushed him out of the way and hurriedly
dumped the contents of the bag on the ground. He grabbed a large
wad of cotton and the soldier unfurled a long wrap.

“
Colonel, please,” the aide
said, clearly not pleased that someone was taking over his job. “I
can do this. Go supervise the others.”

“
No! I caused this, I fix
this.”

The captain gently pushed the colonel away.
“Sir, you’re
not here
, remember? I’ve been trained. You
haven’t. Now, go supervise the others. Sir.”

“
Go, Perrin,” whispered
Brillen, his eyes still closed. “Doctoring is not your talent.
Killing is. I noticed that you were as deadly as ever tonight, and
I don’t want to die.”

The corner of Perrin’s mouth went up ever so
slightly. He nodded and patted the captain on the arm, who was
already cutting the drenched wool to expose the gash.

Perrin got to his feet. He had promised
someone he would come back for him.

He jogged through the slain on the ground,
his attention focused on the far side of the field. Soldiers were
already attending to the injured, and placing small strips of white
cloth by those who were dead. Not a single Guarder seemed to have
survived—either because of the efficiency of the soldiers or the
Guarders’ custom to commit suicide rather than be taken
prisoner—but right now Perrin didn’t care about that. His mind was
too preoccupied by what he might find when he reached his
destination.

If Lemuel Thorne were dead, there would be a
lot of questions to answer.

If he were alive, there would be even
more.

He found the captain lying motionless in the
brown grass, his eyes closed. As he stood over him, Perrin pushed a
variety of thoughts from his mind, most of them not altruistic. He
paused for a moment before reluctantly kneeling at Thorne’s side to
place his fingers on his neck.

There was a pulse, slow and weak.

Perrin didn’t know whether to be relieved or
annoyed.

He unbuttoned Thorne’s jacket. The gash had
sliced neatly across the bottom of his ribs, and he had lost a lot
of blood, drenching his formerly white undershirt. But the wound
wasn’t deep and likely not life-threatening if taken care of
quickly enough.

Again Perrin hesitated. Only for a fraction
of a second, but it felt much longer than that.

He looked around the field and waved over an
aide who was helping another soldier to stand up on a wrapped leg.
The aide jogged over to him.

“
Get the captain bandaged
up. We need to start moving the men out of here. The wind’s
shifting, and the smoke from the fires will soon grow too heavy to
see clearly.”

The aide nodded and started to work on
Thorne.

Almost an hour later Perrin watched as the
last of the wounded were helped out of the field and onto litters
and wagons to be sent to the staging area where surgeons were
already at work. Brillen’s eyes were still closed and his face even
grayer when his litter passed Perrin.

“
Don’t worry, Colonel,”
Karna’s captain assured him. “The surgeons at the camp will take
care of him. He should be all right.”

Perrin nodded and gave him The Dinner smile,
hoping it would mask the guilt he felt for yet again leading a
willing and devoted Brillen somewhere Perrin wasn’t supposed to be.
They had both been serving at the Fort at Edge for less than two
seasons when Perrin had ordered a nervous Lieutenant Karna to
follow him into the forest. Today Brillen had followed him
willingly, and was seriously wounded for his loyalty.

Misplaced
loyalty, Perrin sighed to
himself. If Brillen Karna didn’t recover, or lost his leg . . .

Perrin shook the thought out of his head and
watched as the rest of the soldiers were carried past him. When
Thorne’s litter passed, Perrin only glanced his way. Lemuel was
hazily conscious with a faraway look in his eyes. He’d survive.

With a heavy sigh, Perrin mounted his horse,
a creature proving its worth that night. Perrin patted its neck
gratefully; perhaps he’d finally found a horse he’d claim as his
own. He looked around one more time, evaluating the remaining
soldiers. The last aides went to find Yordin and his men still
searching the houses with Fadh. Soon they, too, would be back at
the staging area. Everyone alive was on their way out of
Moorland.

Content that the field of battle was deserted
except for the dead, Perrin quietly clucked to his able horse and
set off for the crater that used to be a building.

---

“
Come on,” one man in green
mottled and brown clothing whispered to another. He glanced up
nervously at the burning timbers above. Ash and sparks floated
down, singeing their clothes with tiny holes. “We need to get out
of here!”

“
But Dormin, where’s he
going?” asked his companion. “Shin’s headed the wrong way! He
should be going out, not back into Moorland. We should do
something.”

“
You’ve done enough!”
Dormin hissed in his ear. “I can’t believe he didn’t see
you.”

His companion flushed with the growing heat
and embarrassment. “I couldn’t help myself. There he sat on his
horse peering in, and the next thing I know, I’m saluting him.”

“
You’re not the first one
to do that,” Dormin said, dragging him away from the flames and
deeper into the forest. “I was surprised too. It’s been decades
since I’ve seen Relf’s sword. I admit I felt the urge to salute as
well. However, those who do so are usually hidden well away in the
forest, not under burning embers threatening to expose them to his
view!”

The other man blushed deeper. “I just didn’t
expect to see him. He’s not supposed to be here, you know.”

“
Yes, we know,” Dormin
said, deftly winding his way along invisible paths, his companion
struggling to keep up. “But beyond that tree line is no longer our
jurisdiction. We accomplished what we came to do, and now it’s time
for use to melt back into the forest.”

The second man followed him obediently,
constantly looking back at what used to be Moorland.

“
But
where
is he
going?”

---

What used to be the village green was eerily
quiet.

The fire traveled north through the forest,
since there was little left to burn in Moorland. Yet still a few
stubborn logs and planks refused to give up, and lit the way to the
massive hole.

About a hundred paces away from the crater
was a tree still standing. Well, significant parts of it were.
Perrin tethered his remarkably calm horse to the remaining trunk
before picking his way through the debris. He slowed as he neared
the pit that now had only a fine wisp of smoke rising from it. The
smell of sulfur still hung in the air, as well as a faint scent
that reminded him of urine.

He crept over to the edge of the hole and
peered in. The ground all around was relatively smooth, as if an
enormous spoon had scraped out the contents in one scoop. He looked
around the perimeter and noticed that the remains of the building
were scattered from the crater in an almost uniform manner, with
black lines and ash radiating outward.

Perrin kneeled on one knee, scraped up some
of the black powder, and sniffed it. Definitely sulfur—

And then he understood.

He scrambled to his feet, panic rising and
his lungs gasping for air.

They were trying to harness the power of the
forests—

They were trying to make their own
eruptions—

And they had succeeded.

He took a few stumbling steps back, his
breathing rapid and shallow. If they could do this amount of damage
here
. . .

Images flashed across his mind that he
couldn’t stop. All that he’d successfully fought for more than two
moons was back, forcing him to see all new horrors.

Exploding eruptions in Edge. At the fort. His
home. His family.

A sharp pain stabbed him in the chest, as if
the knife he nearly plunged there was sticking out of his
heart.

Perrin twisted away from the crater, closed
his eyes, and gripped his head. “No, no, no,” he told himself, “Not
real. Not happening anywhere else but here. You did it.
You
killed them
. You killed them
all.
They killed
themselves!”

Perrin fought to breathe more slowly, more
meditatively. Feeling something hot near his feet, he opened his
eyes to see a log smoldering by his boots. Another smell reached
him.

The object wasn’t a log.

“
NO!” Perrin cried as
nausea wrenched his stomach. Images clouded his vision, and he
sprinted from the crater to his horse, leaping over debris and
other objects he chose not to identify. He yanked the reins off of
the tree and scrambled on to his steed. The pain in his chest
intensified, and he pushed on his heart in a vain attempt to slow
its beating.

“
No, no, no. Only happening
here. Get away from it! It can’t follow you,” he told himself as he
kicked the horse and rode as fast as he dared from the village.
“You killed them all. You didn’t even get a scratch! Mahrree will
never know.”

Tears of pain and worry streaked down his
face.