Read Online Warautumn by Tom Deitz - Free Book Online

through training, and was therefore not so much an achievement as it otherwise might have been.
    In spite of the formal address, one hand sought the dagger beneath his bed pad even as he squinted into the gloom of his tent. The voice belonged to one of Avall’s former Guardsmen, a man named Ravian, whom he did not know well. He wore full war gear, however, which meant that he was fresh from the front, where the army kept watch in shifts, day and night. He also carried a small lantern, the light of which obscured a lean and fine-boned face.
    “Lower that so I can see you,” Vorinn yawned, rising up on an elbow and scraping the hair out of his face one-handed. “You have a message, I assume?”
    Ravian nodded. “The Ninth Face is moving. We can’t tell much in the dark, sir, but there’s activity on the galleries
and
behind their palisade.”
    “Activity?”
    “As I said, we can’t see much in the dark—unfortunately. And the enemy isn’t using torches.”
    Vorinn was already reaching for his clothes as he slid upright. “Has Tryffon been informed?”
    “We came to you first, as is proper. But word should be reaching him and the rest of your Council even now.”
    Another yawn. “What time is it?”
    “A hand before sunrise, more or less.”
    “So Zeff does intend to enforce the deadline,” Vorinn muttered, mostly to himself.
    “He intends to do something,” Ravian agreed. “We should know what very quickly.”
    “Not soon enough, probably,” Vorinn snorted. Scowling, he snared his leather war-trews from the stand beside his cot and began to draw them on. “Send in my squire and tell the Council I’ll meet them behind our palisade in half a hand. Faster, if they can manage.”
    Ravian sketched a bow, then backed toward the entrance flap. “You have but to say, Lord Regent.” And with that he ducked out. Vorinn heard the squire fumbling around in the outer room, but didn’t wait on him to continue dressing. He preferred to manage that on his own, anyway; but squires
were
useful for things like adjustments and buckles.
    One finger later, fully armed down to war-cloak and helm, with a sleepy-eyed squire and a pair of anxious-faced guards in tow, he was striding uphill toward the palisade that ringed his own camp, angling toward the gate that would admit them to the corral in which their warhorses were lodged, ever at ready—in case.
    Tryffon bustled up to join him, along with two other subchiefs from War. “Preedor’s coming,” Tryffon grumbled. “He moves slowly in the morning, but he’s moving.”
    “As is Zeff,” Vorinn replied tersely. “Is there any more news?”
    “Movement and more movement is all I know,” Tryffon replied through an unsuppressed yawn.
    “I guess we’ll know by dawn,” Vorinn retorted, gazing east, to where the sky was quickly brightening. The peaks of the Spine were crowned with red fire where the ice on their summits caught the first light, but pink was spreading down their slopes, dispersing midnight blue and purple and banishing black to the shadows where it belonged.
    Someone had possessed the foresight to get their horses ready, and Vorinn mounted handsome black Iron with the same casual ease with which he donned his boots. It was mostly for effect, he conceded; he couldn’t imagine that Zeff would press for battle now, given that he had lost two major bargaining points. But Zeff was wily, and the game of feint and parry barely begun. Vorinn would have preferred to fight—perhaps single combat. But he also knew that combat was not—yet—an option.
    The gate swung open before them as they exited the camp and entered the slope that ringed the vale. Fires burned everywhere, if small ones: one to every eight soldiers, two of which number changed every hand. They waited there in the predawn gloom: good soldiers from all the clans and crafts, their heraldry like springtime flowers, though Warcraft’s red predominated—entire or quartered with the colors of other