With the new day would come some clarity. I was awake and yawning when Bran climbed out of his bunk. Mira and Elle both cracked open an eye when his bed creaked. Sergeant Doornail had taught us in painful ways to sleep lightly over the last year, so we’d all become light sleepers. I got up and out of bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

  “You look refreshed,” I said softly to Bran.

  “Yeah. I had a dream with a slight variation from the usual last night. I can’t explain how, but I know that we have to do this, and soon. The sword is the key to the whole thing,” Bran whispered with surety.

  Mira turned over the other way under her covers. Elle just looked at Bran steadily without moving (and probably without thinking), her eyes fluttering sleepily and her golden hair spilling around her pillow.

  “What exactly are you talking about?” I asked softly.

  “We need the sword to defeat the undead on the island. It’s the only way we can deal with something very evil and end their curse. We’ll rectify many wrongs and help a lot of people in the process. We have to do this.” Bran paused, getting a read of the room. “Well, I have to do this,” Bran said.

  “Hey, if you have to, I have to. You can count on me,” I said.

  By that time, Elle had gotten down out of her bunk and adjusted her linen shift. “I have a feeling that this is the right course, Bran. I’ll go with you. I’m really scared, though.” Elle drew close to Bran, and he put his arms around her in a gentle embrace.

  “I’ll protect you with my life, Elle,” Bran said softly.

  The tender moment ended with Mira’s sarcasm. “Oh, how romantic. Let’s all go die together.” She pantomimed barfing and got out of her bunk as Bran and Elle stepped apart. “Yeah, this’ll be fun,” Mira said on her way to the bathroom. Bandit peeked out from under Mira’s covers and blinked sleepily. I wondered. How did Bandit get there when she wasn’t with us last night when we arrived? The guards must have seen her. Can she open doors? Some mysteries will never be solved, I thought.

  Before we knew it, we were back into the swing of things in our militia duties. Even though we were doing the right thing, we somehow had to arrange for our absence without being declared deserters, and we had to let the prince know of the danger without telling him how we discovered it. That would bear some thought. Thinking was good to do on guard duty, though. There was plenty of time for that.

  -----

  Despite all our brainstorming, we were no closer to figuring out how we were going to proceed when the answer to our dilemma came unbidden two days later. We were marching back into the keep for lunch break when I spied Dortham and Grath Warsong talking with Warleader Goodman in the great hall.

  Grath was a giant of a man with thick black hair and a beard who wore a suite of golden scale armor. I’d never seen him without it in all the years he’d done business with my family. Grath was the only son of the Lord of Warsong Keep, which was the only source of horses and cattle in this region. He had a sense of gravitas, a seriousness about him that kept people at a distance. Despite that, I always felt a sort of magical tugging towards Grath whenever I saw him. I felt it again when we got closer to the trio. Something was different with him that I couldn’t explain, and I was getting tired of being ignorant. It was a feeling like fate was drawing us together or something.

  “I’ll remind you, Councilor, that as Warleader I have operational control over the Stonekeep Militia,” Councilor Goodman said.

  “Of course, of course, Councilor,” Dortham said good naturedly with his hands up to placate Goodman. “That’s why Lord Warsong and I are here speaking with you about it. I told him that I couldn’t help with his urgent need, but I knew just the person he should speak to. It’s an emergency that only you or the prince can help with, so naturally, we came to you first.”

  Goodman seemed to think about it for a moment and relaxed. “Very well, gentlemen. Lord Warsong, as a gesture of goodwill between our two communities, I’ll help you in your hour of need.” Turning his head towards us as we marched by, Councilor Goodman spoke loudly to Sergeant Doornail. “Sergeant! Your attention, please!”

  Sergeant called a halt, and we stood in formation. Though we were in formation, Bran’s posture was very tense for some reason. “Yes, sir?” the sergeant asked as he turned to the Warleader and saluted.

  “Sergeant Doornail, you are to take talons five, six, seven and eight to Warsong Keep under Lord Warsong’s direction and help him in any way he sees fit. It seems he lost thirty men in an avalanche, and he needs help with the excavation and transportation of the dead. Since I have sent Captain Safarac to Mithram on a matter of some importance, you will assume command.”

  “That may create some contention with the other sergeants, don’t you think, Warleader?” Dortham asked innocently. Or maybe not so innocently, knowing my father.

  Warleader Goodman waved a dismissing hand. “I suppose a promotion is in order, then. Congratulations, Captain,” Goodman said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Doornail replied with a salute.

  “Also, since these recruits are only a few months away from ending their service, all four talons will remain in Warsong Keep in the service of the honorable Lord Warsong until New Year’s Day, when they will be relieved of duty,” the Warleader said in an unblinking monotone.

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  “Surely, Warleader, some other group of talons can take this most dangerous of duties…” Dortham suggested. He glanced innocently at Bran and me as he said this.

  “I want my best men on this, Councilor,” Goodman said icily. “Surely you won’t have a problem with that, will you?” He clearly knew of Dortham’s connection with this talon, and he was in no way sympathetic. He probably thought sending the talons out to fend off attacks from the innumerable monsters outside the walls would be a good way to rid himself of me indirectly.

  Dortham took a step back and shook his head ruefully. “No, sir. I see your wisdom.”

  “Very well, then,” the Warleader said. “If you’ll excuse me. Carry on, Captain.” He marched off towards his suite.

  “Captain, I’d like permission to speak with you and your talon in your barracks, if it isn’t inconvenient,” father said.

  “As you wish, Councilor,” Captain Doornail said. He resumed his place at the head of our talon and called the march back into the barracks. Once the door was safely closed with only our talon, Dortham, and Grath inside, the captain gave the order to be at ease.

  “Good to see you, Dortham!” Captain Doornail said happily. He and father gave each other a rough hug and a clap on the back.

  “Good to see you again, Dorminius,” father said with a grin.

  “You just had to use my full name, didn’t you?” Doornail asked in feigned exasperation. “Here I’ve got this whole army thinking I’m a legendary warrior, and you coming in here and blurting out my name like that ruins the whole thing.” He clutched his chest like he had a mortal wound.

  “Bah, you really are a legend, though. A name means little,” father said.

  “Yeah, tell that to those snickering fools behind me. Oh, and thanks for arranging that promotion. Goodman had no idea what you were doing. Now, are you going to tell me what that load of crap was about?” Doornail asked.

  Dortham lost his smile. “Dark days, Doornail. Dark days are upon us. Here’s what you need to know. There is a horde of ogres and goblins marching towards human lands under the command of Kromwell Surekeel, and we think that we’re his target and that he means to do unspeakable things to our fair citizens when he gets here. We have at least two months until he gets close, depending on what enclaves or cities he attacks on the way here. I’m not sure that he’ll delay his march or waste his warriors at any other city, given the way I killed his bastard father. I‘ve reason to believe that Councilor Goodman’s a Xerith, which is an evil shapeshifter for those of you who don’t know. Even if he’s not a Xerith, he’s certainly complicit in trying to murder Jeron last Sevenday. He’s also the one who sent your talon into the goblin trap you barely survived.” That revelation was met with angry muttering from the members of our talon.

  “You boys have a plan now, don’t you?” father asked.

  “Um, yeah, we guess,” Bran said lamely. He really didn’t inspire my confidence right then.

  “I knew you would,” Dortham said. “To that effect, I conspired with Lord Warsong here, who happened to be in town today, to get this talon reassigned to Warsong Keep so a certain four people can be about the business of getting us some help in our hour of need. You should all also be aware that our glorious Warleader is being completely incompetent on purpose. He’s acting for the destruction of us all. That’s why he hasn’t appointed a general, why he sends away your captain on a fool’s errand and then sends four talons of troops off on a dangerous mission when he secretly knows there’s an invasion imminent. Of course, I’ve no proof of anything, so I can’t go to the prince, so we have to be just as sneaky as Goodman if we want our city to survive.”

  “That bastard,” Doornail said with real anger in his voice. “What do you need us to be doing while we’re away from here, Dortham? Surely we shouldn’t be lounging around in Warsong Keep while all this is going on.”

  “I thought you should be notifying Aerie and Indigo of the danger that’s coming. Tell them of ‘reports’ of rampaging war parties approaching, and they’ll take appropriate action. The army will be closer to those cities, and easier to verify. They would be the first ones hit when Kromwell’s army gets hungry. We’ll send the same warning to the king and prince in Mithram, but I don’t know if that message will get us any help here,” father said. “Mithram is a lot harder to defend.”

  “How do you know about that army, if it’s so far away?” Doornail asked shrewdly.

  “I have sources,” Dortham said evasively, but with a little glance at me. Captain Doornail seemed to pick up on the hint. “I made up a story about a trader who supposedly saw the army mustering west of Fellton and came back by ship.”

  Grath, who had been very quiet through the conversation thus far, spoke up. “I’m arranging for transport across the Deepflow River four days’ travel south of here at the crossroads to Warsong Keep and Goldsprocket,” he said. “You’ll find provisions prepared for you as well as stout horses for yourselves the supplies.”

  “My thanks, Lord Warsong. The lads have had almost no training on horseback, but we’ll make do,” Captain Doornail said with gratitude. “So then, I take two talons with me to Indigo and two talons go to Aerie to bring warning. I imagine I’ll have to scout out the enemy to see what they plan to do, also.”

  “That’s a good plan,” father said. “Whatever you do, don’t engage the enemy with only twenty soldiers, Doornail. They have over fifty thousand troops, all howling for blood.”

  “Can’t say I like those odds much,” Doornail said. “By the way, what are the four of you going to be doing while all of this is going on?”

  Bran answered, saying, “We’re going to a ruined keep to find a magic weapon that we need to fight our way through a horde of undead, then return with a pile of money we’ll use to secure the Grimguard.” You could hear a pin drop when he said that. Now that I thought about it, the plan seemed a lot more far-fetched than I thought it was.

  “Are you sure that’s gonna work out?” the captain asked.

  “Have faith,” Elle said, perfectly composed.

  The others in our talon looked at us incredulously, probably wondering how only four people were going to do something so grand. It was like a bard’s tale we were trying to live out, and truth be told, if a bard were to tell a tale of daring deeds that four friends were about to do but hadn’t done yet, people would probably look at him strangely, too. Grath just regarded us in inscrutable silence, his thoughts his own.

  “I don’t like it,” Captain Doornail said.

  “Neither do I,” Dortham said. “It seems extremely far-fetched.”

  There was shifting and grunting from the others in my talon, and it was obvious what they thought about everything.

  “We’ve been having dreams about this, dad,” Bran said.

  “We? You and Elle, you mean?” Dortham guessed.

  “Yes, sir,” Elle said. “This will work. I just know it.”

  There was a pause then as we all considered the situation.

  Dortham shrugged and looked at Doornail.

  “I’ve got nothing else. We have knowledge of the invasion, and we can prepare,” Doornail said.

  “I’ll talk with the other smiths, and convince them to start making arrowheads exclusively, then I’ll get all the fletchers in the city to make arrows as fast as they can. I’ll make up something about building up the armory or some such,” Dortham said.

  “We’ll need everything we can get,” Doornail said.

  There was another pause.

  “Well, we have our plans drawn,” Dortham said stoically. “Let’s get to it.”

  Before Captain Doornail marched us out to guard duty, father gave Bran and me a warrior’s handshake and a hug and gave a hug to Elle and Mira as well. He left without saying a word. We knew what he meant.