A Memory of Light

knife to them.
    He laid Bulen down, then knelt and gently took the hadori from Bulen’s head. Lan would carry it into battle—so that Bulen could continue to fight—then return it to the body when the battle was through. An old Malkieri tradition. “You did well, Bulen,” Lan said softly. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”
    He stood up, boots crunching the snow, and strode out through the gateway, hadori in hand. Narishma let the gateway close, and Lan asked for the location of the mountain—in case Narishma died in the fighting—so he could locate Bulen again.
    They wouldn’t be able to preserve all of the Malkieri corpses this way, but one was better than none. Lan wrapped the leather hadori about the hilt of his sword, just below the crossguard, and tied it tight. He handed Mandarb off to a groom, holding up a finger to the horse and meeting his dark, liquid eyes. “No more biting grooms,” he growled at the stallion.
    After that, Lan went looking for Lord Agelmar. He found the commander speaking with Tenobia outside the Saldaean section of camp. Men stood with bows nearby in lines of two hundred, watching the skies. There had already been a number of Draghkar attacks. As Lan stepped up, the ground started to shake and rumble.
    The soldiers didn’t cry out. They were growing used to this. The land groaned.
    The bare rock ground near Lan split. He jumped back in alarm as the shaking continued, watching tiny rents appear in the rock—hairline cracks. There was something profoundly wrong about the cracks. They were too dark, too deep. Though the area was still shaking, he stepped up, looking at the tiny cracks, trying to make them out in detail through the rumbling earthquake.
    They seemed to be cracks into nothingness. They drew the light in, sucked it away. It was as if he was looking at fractures in the nature of reality itself.
    The quakes subsided. The darkness within the cracks lingered for a few breaths, then faded away, the hairline fractures becoming just ordinary breaks in stone. Wary, Lan knelt down, inspecting them closely. Had he seen what he’d thought? What did it mean?
    Chilled, he rose to his feet and continued on his way. It is not men alone who grow tired, he thought. The mother is weakening
    He hastened through the Saldaean camp. Of those fighting at the Gap the Saldaeans had the most well-kept camp, run by the stern hands of the officers’ wives. Lan had left most of the Malkieri noncombatants in Fal Dara, and the other forces had come with few others except the warriors.
    That wasn’t the Saldaean way. Though they normally didn’t go into the Blight, the women otherwise marched with their husbands. Each one could fight with knives, and would hold their camp to the death if the need arose. They had been extremely useful here in gathering and distributing supplies and tending the wounded.
    Tenobia was arguing tactics with Agelmar again. Lan listened as the Shienaran great captain nodded to her demands. She didn’t have a bad grasp of things, but she was too bold. She wanted them to push into the Blight, and take the fight to the Trolloc spawning grounds.
    Eventually, she noticed Lan. “Lord Mandragoran,” she said, eyeing him. She was a pretty enough woman, with fire in her eyes and long black hair. “Your latest sortie was a success?”
    “More Trollocs are dead,” Lan said.
    “We fight a glorious battle,” she said with pride.
    “I lost a good friend.”
    Tenobia paused, then looked at his eyes, perhaps searching for emotion in them. Lan didn’t give any. Bulen had died well. “The men who fight have glory,” Lan said to her, “but the battle itself is not glory. It simply is. Lord Agelmar, a word.”
    Tenobia stepped aside and Lan drew Agelmar away. The aged general gave Lan a grateful look. Tenobia watched for a moment, then stalked off with two guards following hastily at her heels.
    Shell be off into battle herself at some point if we don’t watch her, Lan thought. Her head is full of songs and stories.
    Hadn’t he just encouraged his men to tell those same stories? No. There was a difference, he could feel a difference. Teaching the men to accept that they might die and to revere the honor of the fallen . . . that was different from singing songs about how wonderful it was to fight on the front lines.
    Unfortunately, it took actual fighting to teach the difference. The Light send Tenobia wouldn’t do anything too rash. Lan had seen many a young man with