Tales of the Three Kingdoms: Silver Falcon Falls

"We did it," I mumbled, almost in disbelief. "We beat back the Demon."

I turned to where River stood, staring after the swirling mists in his wake. Even now we could hear the frightened voices of the Demon's forces breaking and running with him. I couldn't believe it. A moment ago, I thought we'd all die one by one, or, barring that, River's Mandate would wipe out every soul in the pass, including, unwittingly, our boy back at the camp. But now…

I stepped toward where my wife still stood at the edge of the battlefield.

A steak of red-brown went steaming past me, followed shortly by the rest of the Tiger's bloodbays.

"This time, the Tiger feasts first, little Sparrow!" I heard the voice in the lead howl as he disappeared in the distance.

"Flashammer!" I turned toward the lists, but Flashammer was well ahead of me. He had remembered my orders, even if I had forgotten them in the chaos. He was already mounted at the head of his light cavalry, my horse and River's on a lead. He paused only briefly to allow us to mount, before we all kicked our mounts into a gallop to make good on the rout.

"You're sure about this?!" Flashammer shouted above the thundering of thousands of hooves beneath us.

I looked over at him, trying to meet his eye with all the jostling.

"We're not the right force to be in front! If Dreadwolf's army still holds that old wall!" he shouted.

I nodded… as best I could while we were all bouncing in our saddles at full speed. "What man can hold his ground if even the Demon turns and runs?!" I shouted back.

The shadow of the old wall came into view through the mists, and for a moment I didn't feel so confident about my gambit as our hooves ate up the last stretch of the pass.

Flashammer fed my doubts by saying, "Half a watch ago, I thought the same thing about our White Stallion and her god-horse. Heroes rise and fall, Sparrow."

I saw commotion atop the wall. But no arrows flew at us. No stones rained down on us. And most telling of all, the Tiger and his cavalry were nowhere to be seen along the stretch of dark, ancient stone. The partially rebuilt gate of the old wall lay tilting on its hinges, and I smiled. "Not these heroes. Not today."

We seethed through the gate three at a time. To any of Dreadwolf's men who lingered, our eleven hundred cavalry would have seemed like an endless stream of fast-flying horse.

Was it too strong to call us heroes after winning three battles, and taking only a dozen li of enemy territory. My forces had only been directly involved in two of those conflicts, champions from other factions dying before River even got her shot.

Hers was the only power that put her firmly in the camp of Hero of the Times, but that would only be once we saw fit to unveil it. I looked over. She looked as grim as ever in full padding and armor, but I could tell she was growing more and more eager to unleash herself fully on the world.

She knew what she could do, and it was the fastest way to kill everyone who threatened the land under Heaven and get back to raising her child.

Once she had feared her power. Maybe she still did. But perhaps she feared more what the Demon would do to our clan if ever we should lose in the field. The Demon was, after all, the man who had killed her own adoptive mother. And not just the Gray Dowager. Her entire clan. Women, elders, children, babes…

He had ended their line. Perhaps on orders from Dreadwolf. Perhaps on orders from some other courtier. It didn't matter.

As the slope of the pass began to descend into what would eventually become the valley of the City of Lanterns, shapes materialized from the mist. They were too tall to be men, too strange to be trees. I almost called a halt, but in this fog, at this speed, going downhill now, pulling up might be as dangerous as continuing on. It only took one stumbling horse to bring down dozens. With this much momentum, that meant death for rider and horse both.

I gritted my teeth and prayed to Heaven we weren't riding right into a trap. But no, the Tiger was ahead of us. I think I was beginning to like being second into the fray. I think I-

We crossed some invisible threshold of elevation and the fog began to thin. I finally got to see what the shapes were, and I wished I hadn't. Hundreds upon hundreds of figures nailed to wooden poles. Some spilled their entrails, still moaning as they died slowly. Some were missing heads or hands or legs, and they hopefully had died long before the carnage had been wrought upon their bodies.

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Knowing Dreadwolf, I doubted it.

As, without a conscious thought, I began slowing my mount, letting Windshear's pace devolve into an amble through the forest of crucified dead and dying on the slopes of the pass, I began to notice a theme.

I looked over to River, and she returned my gaze from beneath the shadows of her helm. She nodded.

Every one of the corpses, those that retained their clothes, were dressed opulently, and in the latest fashions in the City of Lanterns, at least as I had known them the year that I had fled.

"These are the wealthy and the nobility," I said to Flashammer, as, at a trot now, we picked our way through the crooked posts slick with blood and bile, glimmering black in the overcast light. "No doubt Dreadwolf found cause to kill them and commandeer their wealth."

"Why are so many of them in gold and brown?" asked Flashammer. He was a bandit, a cousin from a minor branch of my father's family who had little knowledge of the great families beyond the Plains of the Falcon. Even so, he had noticed what I hadn't.

I sighed and closed my eyes, my heart breaking for judging my friend so harshly back in the pass. "The Golden Lion clan," I said. "They have a long history of serving the Emperor in the capital. Normally, it's one of their greatest political strengths. When Noble Lion rebelled, they became hostages in the very city they served."

Flashammer set his jaw. "He must have known what he was risking. He must have known Dreadwolf could take it out on his kin."

I nodded. "Once again our general bears the brunt of our war. And he doesn't even mention it. If ever I wondered why he pushed us so hard… If ever I questioned his sense of urgency…"

"What's done is done, Sparrow. This doesn't change the plan, does it? This doesn't change your orders, right?"

I shook my head and was about to respond, when I heard a voice up ahead in the fog. It was a single voice, but still, it gave me pause. It was… haunting, not just because of the horror around us, but because it existed in such a horrendous place… and it belonged to a child. They sang:

A throoooone foooor my broooother;

A noooooose foooor his queeeeen.

The wooooolf fleeeees and bluuuunders,

To tommmmmbs where nonnnne can see…

As we drew closer, it devolved into humming, and then became intelligible again to repeat that one verse.

I dismounted, but the child seemed not to notice. He was gaunt. No, not starving. Just lanky in the way that kids were when they started to grow fast. He remained bent to the dirt, flicking stones, with his back to us. He seemed immune to the carnage around us.

I pulled my horse to a stop and dismounted.

"Boy," I said as I approached, slowly and cautiously, so as not to frighten him. He didn't seem to hear me but kept on singing and humming alternatively.

"Young man. Why are you out here?" I didn't have the heart to ask where his parents were. In all likelihood they were nailed to a pole somewhere above us.

I reached a hand out toward the child's back. "Young man. What are you-"

"NONE CAN SEE! NONE CAN SEE!" he shrieked, and as he turned toward me I saw a face with only gaping red mouths for eyes. I was so startled, I fell back, and the child pushed past me. In two steps he was gone. Not just hidden away somewhere, not around a bend in the pass or behind a turn in the stone. He was there running toward a wall of my mounted soldiers one moment, and the next he had vanished. River had dismounted to walk her horse behind me, and suddenly she fell over as if something invisible had careened into her. Just as quickly as the lanky boy had disappeared, he reappeared in River's arms, kicking and thrashing. And when I ran over toward her, I saw the child begin to grow calm in her arms.

His wails and shrieks devolved into sobs and whimpers, and as close as I was to her, I could hear that River was speaking to him, as softly as a mother would. All knobby knees and elbows, he curled up against her. I turned in place to see if any of my soldiers were close enough to hear that River's voice was distinctly and obviously feminine, but I was the closest.

"Longspear!"

An aquiline man known as Longspear kicked his mount forward. He was not a very good rider, and I could spare him. River looked up to notice his approach and quickly stopped talking.

As Longspear dismounted and River passed the boy off to him, I saw that there was nothing monstrous about the lanky lad, but he had fallen into the clutches of monsters, no doubt. Where his eyes had been, there were only weeping red pits.

"Take him back to camp. See that his wounds are treated and he's looked after. And make sure they know not to let him out of their sight. Find one of Castellan's men if you need to … devise… something." I gave the man a significant look, making sure he understood my meaning. The boy could make himself invisible. Should he flee, he would likely freeze or starve, otherwise his wounds would become infected and he would die. To leave the boy or to let him disappear was to condemn him to certain death. But it's not like I could put the lad in a cage.

Castellated would figure it out.

Longspear was a bad rider, but a good man, and it seemed he had understood all of this.

I looked up to see Flashammer looking at me.

"We can spare one man to save a child. If we can't, what are we even fighting for?"

Flashammer nodded then and handed me Windshear's reins. I watched as Longspear left, the lanky child sitting in the front of the saddle, wrapped in the rider's long arms. What a strange Mandate? And for one so young? There would be more to that lad, I knew, if only we could keep him safe and alive. The two were not always one and the same.

Seeing Longspear safely off, back toward our camp, I turned my eyes forward once more.

"Right, let's keep moving. To the City of Lanterns."