All On Black

ou seem tired still,” said Lunara.

Oesora hid a smile.

Morning rolled clear over Caerhaven, sunlight warming the old stone by degrees and drawing color from the banners along the walls. Somewhere below the keep, shutters opened upon the market. Stable doors swung wide. Carts began their slow passage through the gates, and the ordinary noises of a city waking carried upward beneath a sky untroubled by smoke or storm.

Av’elyth remained in the care of the restoration druids. Above the trees of the inner grove, the strange green radiance still moved in slow translucent currents, visible even beneath the morning sun. Oesora had watched it through breakfast.

Lunara finally caught her by the sleeve.

“You’ve done enough worrying,” she said, drawing the priestess away before she could find another reason to remain. “Come on! Let’s go see something that isn’t bleeding!”

Oesora looked once more toward the distant trees. The green light drifted peacefully above them, unchanged, until the priestess surrendered to the archer’s energy.

The market within Caerhaven’s outer walls was not grand enough to overwhelm, which suited them both. Awnings leaned across narrow stretches of road, sheltering tables crowded with cloth, pottery, leatherwork, knives, tools, dried herbs and little carved things made for no purpose beyond being pleasant to own. The air carried bread and warm stone beneath sharper traces of spice, horse and lamp oil, and the crowd moved without hurry around them.

Lunara wandered easily until a bowyer’s stall. Several bows stood behind the merchant, each different enough that she dismissed the first two almost at once. The third she lifted carefully from its rest. Its wood was pale blue, with silver inlays flashing where the sunlight found the grain, and the long curve seemed lighter than it had any right to be. She set one end against her boot, strung it, and drew.

Once, then again.

A grin escaped her before she could make anything dignified of it. “Aha.”

The bowyer saw the answer before she asked the price. Lunara paid without bargaining and stepped aside while other customers moved through, turning the bow slowly in her hands and testing the draw one last time.

Oesora smiled at the concentration on her face. “Will you name it?”

“Already.” Lunara held the pale wood against the morning sky. “Aloy.”

She let the string ease forward beneath her fingers and nodded to herself. Whatever she had been measuring seemed finally satisfied.

“Aloy feels right.”

They continued through the market at an easier pace after that, Lunara’s new bow resting across one shoulder. Oesora began stopping for reasons of her own. A small silver pendant shaped like a leaf disappeared into her satchel, followed by a pair of dark onyx bracers and several bundles of herbs. At another table she lingered over tiny bottles of scented oil, comparing them with such solemn concentration that Lunara finally leaned over to see what crisis had captured her.

Oesora barely noticed. She had moved on to a tray of small trinkets and was turning one between her fingers. “What would Av’elyth like…”

Lunara looked from the tray to the growing contents of the satchel. “Wait. Are you buying all of us gifts?”

The question seemed to surprise her. Oesora glanced down, as though the collection had somehow accumulated independently of her intentions, then smiled. “It seemed right.”

Lunara watched her choose between two small pendants before settling upon one. “You know you’ve quite literally saved our lives countless times over, Oesora.”

“And all of you mine,” the priestess replied with a laugh. There was enough earnestness in the answer to take some of the teasing from Lunara’s face. Oesora tucked the pendant away and adjusted the satchel against her hip. “In any case, the world is hard enough. A gift says, ‘I thought of you when you were not beside me.’”

Lunara regarded her for a moment, then gave a small nod. “That was very priestess.”

They moved on together, Oesora still smiling.

Jaeshu, meanwhile, had spent most of the morning pretending not weto want a knife. Karneth had noticed ten minutes earlier.

The blade was narrow and practical, with a dark leather grip and none of the ornament that usually raised the price of such things beyond their usefulness. Jaeshu had tested its balance, examined the edge and asked enough questions of the merchant to make his interest obvious. Only when the price was named did his enthusiasm encounter difficulty.

He opened the pouch at his belt and counted what remained. Karneth leaned against a nearby post with a cup in one hand, watching without comment. Jaeshu counted a second time, perhaps in the hope that coin behaved differently under scrutiny.

It did not.

He placed the knife back upon the cloth.

“Cards?” Karneth asked.

Jaeshu glanced at him. “No.”

The dwarf drank. “Dice?”

Jaeshu tightened the strings of his pouch.

That was enough to bring the grin out. “Oh ho, there were dice. How much?”

“Less than you’re imagining.”

“I’m imagining all of it.”

Jaeshu gave him a long look, then continued his walk.

Karneth glanced toward the knife that Jaeshu was no longer purchasing, then fell into step beside the ranger with the leisurely satisfaction of someone who had found entertainment without paying for it.

“There were cards too,” Jaeshu admitted eventually.

Karneth laughed.

They crossed beyond the busiest part of the market, where the awnings gave way to wider roads and fewer people. Jaeshu had recovered what remained of his dignity by then, although the empty space in his equipment where the new knife might have gone was clearly still bothering him.

“Look, Jaeshu. You want that knife, and I’ve found a brewery five streets over that makes ale from my corner of this world.” He huffed. “But it’s priced accordingly.”

Jaeshu sighed under his cloak. “Why are you bothering me, dwarf?”

“We are both low on coin, yes?”

“My finances are no concern of yours.”

“Be that as it may, I have a plan.”

Jaeshu turned his head without breaking stride. Karneth allowed the silence to stretch another few steps before asking, almost casually, “Ye said once you’d never fight a paladin, am I right?”

The change of subject was abrupt enough that Jaeshu looked over. “I said I would be stupid to.”

“Aye. Why?”

Jaeshu frowned as though there were very few sensible answers to the question besides the obvious one. “Because a paladin in a fight is quite a thing.”

Karneth waited, and the ranger eventually gave the matter the serious consideration it deserved. If he knew the confrontation was coming and could plan for it, Jaeshu said, he would need wide open ground and enough distance to make use of it. Night would be preferable. Surprise would be better.

He would prepare the ground beforehand if given the chance, carry every useful tool he owned, acquire whatever magical assistance was available, and make certain he had more than one route of escape before the first blow was ever struck.

Karneth listened with increasing amusement. “That all?”

“No. And luck.”

The dwarf laughed again, but Jaeshu did not. There was no fear in the ranger’s answer, merely the practical respect of someone accustomed to judging which fights could be survived and which ones were better avoided.

Karneth walked a little farther before asking, “Alright, then… what about without it?”

Jaeshu looked over.

“The Light. Holy fire. Blessin’s. Glowin’ blades and all that flashy nonsense. Take ’em away.”

For once the ranger had no immediate answer.

He slowed without realizing it. Paladins were rare enough that he had spent far more time imagining how to survive one than considering what remained when the thing that made one legendary was stripped away. He thought of Navian on the road, of the silver armor, the shield, the sword bursting white against darkness. He removed each piece from the image one by one.

“I suppose…” Jaeshu said at last. “You’d have a soldier.”

“Aye. A mere soldier.”

“A very well-trained soldier,” Jaeshu amended. “But… yes. Without the Light…”

The dwarf’s eyes wandered toward the southwestern wall, where the roof of Wolfhart Stables rose above the surrounding buildings. Jaeshu followed his gaze, then he looked down at the meager weight of the pouch at his belt.

Karneth glanced back at him. “A ranger ought to have the best steel at his belt, wouldn’t ye say?”

“For the good of the company, of course.”

Karneth put his heavy hand on Jaeshu’s shoulder. “For the good of the company.”

For several seconds neither man said anything.

A slow smile passed between them.

Rikaard turned a cracked strap beneath the light and frowned. “Whoever repaired this last should be forbidden from touching leather.”

By midafternoon Wolfhart Stables had settled into the warm idleness particular to places built around horses. Animals shifted within shaded stalls, tails occasionally disturbing the flies, while the smell of hay, leather and sun-heated timber hung comfortably beneath the roof. Newcastle slept near the open doors with its head across his paws, apparently having concluded that nothing occurring in Caerhaven that day required his involvement.

Navian stood farther inside beside Rikaard, helping the stablekeeper examine Lilly, checking her coat. He had abandoned his armor for the day and rolled his sleeves beyond his forearms, looking considerably less like the figure who had ridden through Caerhaven’s gates beneath silver plate and more like any traveler pleased to have nowhere important to be.

Navian examined the crooked stitching. “We’ll need another horse or two when we leave, Rikaard. If you can spare it.”

“Your poor chestnut carried an elf and a fully armored rider across the Downs for days.”

“Yes, she’s earned this rest.”

“Perhaps you can split your time between her and the dwarf’s shoulders.”

Navian laughed and handed the reins back.

Karneth wandered into the stable a short while later and found them still at it. He made no announcement of his arrival, but Rikaard noticed the dwarf leaning against a timber post and eventually asked if he needed a pony.

“Dwarves do not ride ponies.”

“Dwarves exclusively ride ponies.”

Karneth nodded toward Newcastle. “Your majestic hound over there looks sturdy.”

Rikaard laughed. “You are free to try, friend.”

The dwarf muttered something beneath his breath and shifted aside as Rikaard carried the saddle past him.

“It’s Karneth, isn’t it? I had heard your people favored Craghoofs?”

Karneth laughed. “You’re thinkin’ of mountain kin, lad. Taarn Castali dwarves ride Bramblehorns into battle. Faster than Crags. Stronger than Grimtails.”

“Aha.” The beastmaster nodded gravely, as though committing the distinction to memory. “Then I shall do my best to find you one before you depart.”

Rikaard returned to the saddle. After a moment, he glanced toward Navian.

“And what about paladins? Do they do anything besides bend the spines of mares? Haven’t seen one around here in more than a decade. What is that life actually like?”

Navian seemed amused by the question. “Usually less interesting than the stories make it.”

Rikaard gestured for him to continue.

Navian rested an arm against the stall while Lilly nosed curiously at his sleeve. “Training takes years. Sword and shield, certainly, but also discipline, law, doctrine. Preserving your oath and dedicating your life to a cause bigger than your own.”

“And the Light?”

Navian considered. “Depends upon the paladin. Some take to it quickly. Some spend years learning to hold it without exhausting themselves. But once people see holy fire come off a blade, they tend to forget the years before it.”

From the post, Karneth made a doubtful sound.

Navian glanced his way.

The dwarf lifted one shoulder. “Years of practice are less impressive when the fellow beside you can set his sword ablaze by thinking holy thoughts.”

Rikaard smiled. “Magic doesn’t teach his feet where to go.”

“No,” Karneth conceded. “But it helps when the opponent’s sword doesn’t glow.”

Navian returned his attention to the horse without rising to it. That seemed to disappoint Karneth, who let the silence sit for a while before suggesting that paladins had a convenient habit of attributing everything to discipline after arriving at the fight in enchanted armor with divine fire in their hands.

Navian scratched beneath the horse’s jaw. “If the stories are to be believed, a dwarf’s preferred answer to any tactical problem is to become angrier and strike it harder.”

Karneth gave a short laugh. “Works more often than you’d think.”

“I do not doubt it.” Navian smiled.

The exchange had remained friendly, but Rikaard had begun looking between them with increasing suspicion. Karneth, having finally found an edge that Navian was willing to push back against, pressed it. Paladins carried shields because they needed them, he said. Dwarves did not.

Rikaard abandoned all pretense of working and leaned against the barrel to watch it unfold.

Karneth was enjoying himself now. “Take the shield away, then.”

Navian smiled. “From this fight we are apparently not having?”

“Take the armor too.”

“Anything else?”

“The Light.”

Navian’s smile remained, though something more attentive entered his eyes.

Karneth pushed away from the post. “No holy fire. No blessings. No glowing tricks. Just a sword in your hand and whatever all those years of training left behind.”

Navian regarded him for a moment and then gave the smallest shrug, as though the question interested Karneth far more than it did him.

The dwarf folded his arms. “Without all of it, you wouldn’t last three rounds against a dwarf.”

Rikaard closed his eyes.

Navian’s expression changed, though not by much. A slight exhale was followed by the beginning of a smile Karneth recognized immediately.

“Three?”

Karneth yawned. “If you’re lucky.”

For several seconds the only sound in the stable was the shifting of horses behind them.

Rikaard sighed. “I suppose I’m about to lose the yard now.”

Navian glanced toward him. “No, you don’t have to.”

“If I refuse, the two of you will find somewhere with expensive windows.” Rikaard pointed toward the rear of the stable. “If either of you breaks himself badly enough that I have to explain it to a healer, I’m telling them it happened somewhere else.”

Karneth grinned and headed for the yard. “Practice then, nothin’ more.”

Navian pushed away from the stall, rolling one shoulder as though testing how long it had been since he had used it for anything that did not involve carrying armor. “A little exercise might do me good.”

Rikaard watched him follow.

“You know the little shit is baiting you, right?”

Navian looked back.

“Yes.”

That seemed to satisfy him.

Above the rear yard, Gaz had spent most of the afternoon doing precisely what Navian had not: nothing strenuous.

He had found a narrow balcony along the stable loft where the breeze reached beneath the roof and claimed it for himself. New maps were unrolled and spread across his knees, each inked more carefully than the weather-stained charts they had carried on the road.

One showed the lands surrounding Caerhaven; another traced routes south toward the Ferraro; the third concerned Gaz most, and he had been following a series of smaller eastern roads for the better part of an hour when footsteps sounded on the stairs.

Jaeshu emerged onto the balcony alone.

Gaz acknowledged him with a nod and returned to the map. The ranger came to the railing, stood quietly for a time, then noticed the parchment.

“New?”

“I acquired them this morning.” Gaz moved one aside and showed him another beneath it. “The old map was rather charitable in what it chose to call a road, and positively neglectful around the river. This one, at least, has the decency to mark the southern crossings, and this—” He tapped a thin line threading eastward through the hills. “—may spare us several days of discovering what the cartographer failed to mention.”

Jaeshu studied it with genuine interest. “Where did you find them?”

“A cartographer near the north end of the market. His manner inspired considerably less confidence than his work, fortunately; the maps were rather better than I expected to find.”

“Expensive?”

Gaz gave him a mildly curious look. “Expense is relative.”

Jaeshu let his gaze travel across the three maps. Good parchment, careful ink, none of it made cheaply. “You bought all three?”

“I did.”

That answer appeared to satisfy some question Gaz had not realized was being asked.

Jaeshu settled comfortably against the railing and looked out over the yard. Gaz returned to his maps, and for another minute or two the afternoon remained wonderfully uneventful.

Below, Karneth emerged carrying a blunted practice axe.

Gaz lowered the parchment.

Navian followed him into the yard with nothing more than a plain practice sword, his sleeves still rolled and his armor nowhere in sight. Rikaard came behind them wearing the expression of a man who had seen events escape his control some time earlier and had decided merely to prevent property damage.

Gaz folded the map completely. “What… precisely are those two preparing to do?”

Jaeshu looked down with an innocence that would have been more convincing had he not been expecting exactly this. “Apparently Karneth talked him into a spar.”

“And Navian intends to participate without so much as his armor?”

“Without anything, by the look of it.”

That caught Gaz’s interest. He leaned against the rail, all thoughts of eastern roads temporarily forgotten, while Rikaard inspected the practice weapons below.

Jaeshu waited.

Only when Navian and Karneth moved to opposite sides of the yard did he open the pouch at his belt.

“Three rounds,” he said, placing what remained of his coin upon the railing. “Do wizards wager?”

Gaz reached for his own pouch, counted seven coins and set them beside Jaeshu’s before returning his attention to the yard. “My brother. I see no compelling reason to make the afternoon more complicated than that.”

Jaeshu glanced at him. “Without the Light?”

“Especially without it,” the young wizard replied, not looking away.

The certainty gave Jaeshu a moment’s pause. Then he looked down at Karneth: broad through the shoulders, practice axe held easily in one hand, strength apparent even in stillness. Across from him stood Navian in ordinary clothes with an ordinary sword.

Jaeshu nudged his coins toward the center. “Then I’ll take the dwarf. Strength has a way of settling things between men.”

Gaz scoffed.

“Men…”

Below them, Rikaard called the fighters together.

He set the terms plainly. A clean strike ended each. No deliberate injury, and no magic of any kind. At Karneth’s insistence, Rikaard made the prohibition specific: no holy fire, no blessings, no Light worked through weapon, armor or shield.

The bells of Caerhaven would mark the third hour soon. Rikaard glanced toward the tower above the walls and decided that the third toll would begin the match.

Karneth settled the axe into both hands. Navian tested the balance of his sword.

The first bell rang.

Its deep note traveled across the keep, reverberating through stone and timber before fading into the afternoon. Both men glanced toward the tower.

The second followed.

Navian continued watching it.

Karneth looked up at him and drove his elbow into Navian’s face.

The paladin went down so abruptly that Gaz’s laughter burst across the balcony before Jaeshu had quite understood what he had seen. Rikaard shouted Karneth’s name at precisely the moment the third bell began to toll.

Karneth was already moving.

The axe came down in both hands while Navian was still on one knee. The sword rose just in time, steel meeting steel with a flat crack that silenced even Gaz. Karneth’s blow drove Navian’s arm toward his shoulder and tore one boot backward through the sand; for an instant, the entire weight of the dwarf seemed to hang above him.

Navian did not collapse.

Karneth knew exactly what he had put into the strike, and the surprise showed before he could hide it. Navian’s mouth had split where the elbow caught him, a thin line of red bright against his lower lip. He looked up beneath the crossed weapons and shifted the angle of his sword by scarcely enough to see.

Karneth’s weight slipped sideways.

Navian moved with it, rolling clear beneath the haft and coming to his feet in the same motion. The practice blade flashed back toward Karneth’s ribs, forcing the dwarf to abandon his follow-through and catch it at the last moment.

Rikaard stepped farther from their path while Navian wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. “I believe you were meant to wait for the third bell, Karn.”

“I did.”

“You struck me on the second.”

“Then it wasn’t part of the fight.”

Navian considered the argument. “Convenient.”

Karneth grinned. “Should’ve kept your eyes on me, paladin.”

Above them, Jaeshu slowly leaned back over the railing while Gaz, still chuckling, gathered his maps safely away from the edge.

The spar began in earnest.

Karneth owned the opening exchanges. His strength required no embellishment; every time axe met sword the difference announced itself through Navian’s arms and shoulders. He advanced behind one heavy blow after another, forcing the paladin steadily across the yard while sand shifted beneath his boots. Navian tried once to stop the axe directly and nearly lost the sword for the effort.

After that, he changed.

Instead of resisting what Karneth gave him, Navian yielded to it—but never quite as much as expected. A step backward became half a step and a turn. A blow aimed through his shoulder found the sword angled just enough to carry it past. Karneth pressed harder, and Navian yielded more easily rather than less, allowing each burst of force to travel somewhere that was not through him.

Jaeshu watched a pattern form. There was nothing obviously remarkable in it. Navian was quick, disciplined, and clearly far more practiced than his ordinary clothes suggested.

Karneth drove him toward the rail and committed to a sweeping strike meant to leave nowhere else to go. Navian turned with it. The axe passed, and the paladin’s sword touched Karneth between the ribs.

One.

Rikaard called the first round. Karneth stared at the blunted edge for a moment before backing away, more amused than troubled, but by the beginning of the second he had already changed his approach.

The broad swings shortened. Karneth crowded closer, denied Navian room to turn, and forced the fight into ugly little contests of leverage where dwarven strength ought to have settled the matter quickly. For a while, it nearly did. Navian gave ground in inches now, his sword held tighter to his body as he slipped around the edges of Karneth’s attacks rather than trying to send them elsewhere.

A hard strike caught Navian’s guard near the hilt.

Jaeshu saw his footing fail—or thought he did. Navian’s rear heel shifted through the sand, one knee bent, his weight settling lower into himself, and somehow the force that should have thrown him aside merely moved him enough. Karneth lunged after him.

Navian was already elsewhere.

The practice sword stopped against the dwarf’s shoulder.

Two.

Gaz did not celebrate. He merely rested his forearms against the railing with the comfortable expression of someone watching an expected result arrive on schedule. Jaeshu looked toward him; Gaz noticed and smiled.

The third round lasted longer than either of the first two. Karneth had begun watching Navian rather than merely attacking him, searching his feet and shoulders for whatever warning preceded those maddening little adjustments. Navian, in turn, became more economical. Their earlier joking had given way to the pleasant seriousness of two fighters who had discovered something worth solving.

That was what had begun to irritate Jaeshu. Navian was not overpowering Karneth; nothing about him had suddenly become stronger or faster. Each victory had simply required exactly as much as he possessed and not one measure more. Karneth committed, and somewhere inside the exchange Navian altered himself by degrees too small to matter until they did.

Sweat darkened Navian’s shirt. Karneth’s breath came heavier through his grin. The yard had become a record of them: overlapping tracks, long furrows where Navian had been driven backward, deeper marks where Karneth had planted himself to strike.

Karneth changed direction halfway through a combination and caught Navian before the familiar turn could carry him clear. Navian stumbled, recovered, and barely escaped a second strike that passed close enough to disturb his hair.

Jaeshu leaned forward. “There.”

Karneth drove in with his shoulder and left Navian nowhere obvious to go. His axe rose, and for a strange fraction of a second Navian became completely still. His heel moved scarcely half a handspan; one knee softened, his hips turning beneath him just as Karneth struck.

Navian remained where he needed to be.

Jaeshu’s brow tightened, but the moment was already gone. Navian moved with the descending axe, turning beneath Karneth’s committed weight rather than away from it. The dwarf was carried one step farther than intended, and the sword rose along his side.

Three.

Rikaard raised his hand.

Karneth looked down at the blade and remained there for several seconds, breathing hard, before lowering his axe and shaking his head. “By every sensible law in the world, that should’ve gone differently.”

“Still can,” Navian replied, equally winded.

“Aye. Tomorrow.”

Navian wiped the last trace of blood from his lip. “Tomorrow I’ll remember to stand farther away before the second bell.”

Above them, Jaeshu continued watching him.

“Huh.”

Gaz gathered the wager without ceremony. “I believe I did make some effort to warn you.”

Jaeshu watched the last of his money vanish into the wizard’s pouch. Gaz reopened one of his maps with infuriating calm.

“You seem pleased.”

“I have acquired several useful maps, improved my understanding of the eastern roads, and somehow been paid seven coin for the privilege of simply watching my brother do all the work. I would be ungrateful to describe the afternoon as anything less than exceptionally agreeable.”

The ranger turned back toward the yard.

Below, Karneth had resumed arguing the finer points of the second bell while Navian leaned against the rail and listened with the patient amusement of someone storing the argument for later. Rikaard had returned to the stable entrance, shaking his head as he went, and the ordinary sounds of the afternoon were already beginning to settle back around them.

Jaeshu’s gaze wandered beyond the stable roof.

He looked toward the keep, then beyond it.

Something caught at him.

Not a sight.

An absence.

He straightened slowly.

Gaz noticed.

Jaeshu did not answer. He stepped closer to the railing, his eyes fixed across the courtyard toward the ancient trees of the restoration grove.

Then he lifted one hand.

“Navian!”

The sound of his voice ended the conversation below.

Navian looked up. The worry in Jaeshu’s eyes erased the last of his smile. He followed the line of his finger.

The sky above the grove was empty.

The green radiance that had drifted there since their arrival—the quiet ribbons of living light that had remained through dusk and darkness and morning—was gone.

No pale shimmer lingered beneath the afternoon sun. No current moved above the canopy.

Nothing.

The massive tree was dark and still.

Karneth’s smile disappeared.

Navian stared toward the trees.

“No…”

Av’elyth.

The practice sword slipped from his hand and struck the sand.

Without a single word, they all ran.